Sister opened her eyes, frowned at Tammy, and closed them again.

“You got no idea who put the snake in your car?” Tammy asked. “Must have been a handler. You can’t find big rattlers in the woods in January.”

“Some fool,” Sister said.

I was concentrating on not breathing too deeply. I put my head against the gurney again and thought about what had happened. Obviously the snake had been a warning. The person who put it in the car knew that even if we were bitten badly, we were close to help. There was a phone in the car and paramedics nearby. Of course, we could have gone over the side of the mountain and been killed. Obviously, the person hadn’t cared.

Fortunately, we had hit the mailbox and Albert Lee Packard had come rushing out.

Sister had hit a mailbox with her Jaguar. I felt a giggle burbling up. It was immediately stifled by pain. Damn.

“Snake!” Sister had screeched, batting against the airbag, yanking the door open, and nearly knocking Albert Lee down as she ran away from the car and he ran toward it.

I had heard the screaming, but didn’t see the near collision. Albert Lee told me about that later after he had gotten me out and slammed the door, trapping the snake inside, coiled now on the backseat. Probably more scared than we were, though I didn’t think about that at the time. All I was thinking was that we were out and alive.

Now, gliding around the curves next to my just-a-little-bit-snakebit sister and a paramedic who was going to be blind soon if she didn’t cut her bangs, I tried to think who might have wanted to scare us away from Chandler Mountain and why. We had found Susan’s body, we had looked through Monk Crawford’s house, and I had met Betsy Mahall for lunch. We had also seen some of the handlers, had met a couple of them, Joe Baker in particular. We had gotten to know the Packards, mother and son, and had found out that Eugene Mahall was a tyrant, perhaps a murderer, and that he could walk. But he didn’t know that we knew that. And even if he did, what would he be afraid of? That we might tell Betsy?

Whoever had put the snake in the car had done it in the short time that we had been drinking coffee with Betsy, returning the key. Albert Lee Packard’s car had been the only one that had come up while we were there.

Someone hiding in the church? Parked on the other side of it? Or someone sneaking up through the woods? And who was afraid of what we might know? What did we know?

“Virgil will figure everything out,” Sister said, reading my thoughts.

I sighed; it hurt.