You may have noticed that my March 17 online column, Spring, Shovels and George Harrison, began rather mysteriously with the words: “The Tracy Files.” I certainly noticed. Immediately—in the way one notices a raccoon in the pantry or a tax document that suggests decisions were made without your involvement. Because I never wrote that. Nor, I am assured, did anyone at the paper.

And so, naturally, I launched an investigation.

Now, I don’t want to overstate things. This was not a full trench coat, corkboard, red-string situation. I did not pin photographs of unsuspecting neighbors under the heading “Possible Tracy.” But I did begin asking questions in the careful tone of someone who has misplaced not just an object, but an origin story.

First stop: The Sullivan County Democrat itself. I inquired, casually at first, then more directly. Is there, by chance, a Tracy on staff? A freelancer? A retired columnist whose ghost has taken to inserting headlines? The answer, across the board, was no. No Tracy. No Files. No one sneaking in after hours to label my work like a mid-century detective novel. Which, of course, only deepened the mystery.

Is it Dick Tracy?

I had to consider it. Dick Tracy was a square-jawed comic strip detective, created in 1931, famous for fighting crime and wearing a bright yellow coat that would be wildly impractical in our current mud season. He was methodical, relentless, and fond of gadgets—particularly a wrist radio that was, in its day, quite futuristic. But even granting all that, it seems unlikely that a cartoon character would be maintaining files on my columns. Cartoon characters exist in a kind of perpetual present. They chase, they solve, they repeat. Filing systems feel like a stretch.

Still, I couldn’t entirely rule him out.

Then I broadened the field.

I know a few Tracy’s. Lovely people, all of them. But I will say this: none strike me as particularly file oriented. These are individuals who, on a good day, have located their phones—though not necessarily in the same room they last remember using them. The idea that any one of them is quietly compiling “The Tracy Files” suggests a level of administrative consistency I have yet to witness. If anything, there would be a pile. A gentle drift. A “Tracy Heap,” perhaps. But files? It strains belief.

And yet, the phrase persists.

Around town, I’ve begun to notice the name more. “Tracy!” someone calls across the post office. “Tracy!” from the far end of the grocery aisle. Each time, my ears perk up. I feel, briefly, like I should tail the individual—conduct a bit of discreet surveillance, perhaps a soft shadowing of the subject as they move from produce to dairy. (That’s a police term, I believe.) But I stop myself. This is a small town. One cannot simply begin tracking Tracys without raising questions.

Instead, I’ve turned to language. If “The Tracy Files” exists, perhaps it is not a person at all, but an acronym.

TRACY could stand for Transactional Records and Chronological Yesterdays—a tidy archive of everything that has already happened, whether we recall it accurately or not. Or perhaps The Repository of Anecdotes, Curiosities, and Yarns—which sounds suspiciously like a Yarnslingers’ compilation. There is also Temporal Recordings Assembled for Curious You, which feels both generous and slightly ominous. And then, my favorite: Things Randomly Appearing, Confusing You.

The more I consider it, the more I suspect that “The Tracy Files” may not be a who at all, but a what—a small reminder that not everything arrives with a clear author. Sometimes a phrase slips in, unclaimed, and dares you to make sense of it.

So here we are. The Tracy Files remain unsolved, open, perhaps ongoing. If you are Tracy, or know Tracy, or have access to any files of a suspiciously well-organized nature, I invite you to come forward. Until then, I will continue my investigation in the only way I know how: by writing things down and hoping they don’t title themselves.

Case, as they say, pending.