“Have you tried to get in touch with her?” I asked him.

“I went up to Gadsden. Nobody had heard of the church. There’s no Holden Crawford listed in the phone book.”

“There are a lot of Lutherans up there,” Sister said. “Their families all came over from Germany. A lot of Catholics, too.”

I tried to figure out if there was any point to this remark, decided there wasn’t, and took the sweet rolls out of the oven.

“What I was hoping,” Luke said as I handed each of them a plate and a napkin, “was if you two would help me.”

“Help you how?” Sister reached for a sweet roll. “Ow. Hot.” She stuck her finger in her mouth.

“Help me find Virginia.”

“How could we do that?” I poured each of us more coffee.

“Well, we know the man’s name and that he’s a painter and a preacher. And we know his church is somewhere around Gadsden. Just because nobody that I asked in town knew him doesn’t mean anything. We could check with the sheriff’s office, branch out.” He looked from me to Mary Alice who was already chewing orange roll and didn’t look up.

I sat back down and reached for an orange roll. “Have you called Richard?”

Luke shook his head. “Didn’t want to worry him.”

“But look.” Mary Alice held up her hand for silence. We waited for her to swallow. “That’s what children are for. I think, Luke, that you ought to call Richard and tell him that his mama’s run off with a preacher who’s a painter on the side and may have joined a cult. Tell him it’s the Jesus’ Open Hand church or whatever you said. Maybe the federal government has a file on them.”

Luke blanched beneath the several days’ growth of beard. “You think the federal government might have a file on this group?”

“Oh, sure. Every time you see one of those groups out waiting for the end of the world on a mountaintop, there’s an FBI man right in the middle of them.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. This was fast getting out of control. “This Holden Crawford is a minister of a small church. Right?”

Luke and Sister agreed.

“The fact that it’s a small church certainly doesn’t mean it’s a cult.”

They nodded.

I continued. “He’s attractive, in his fifties—”

“And he’s up on a ladder painting the soffits,” Sister interrupted. “What are soffits, anyway?”

“Those things under the eaves,” Luke explained. He turned to me. “What are you getting at, Patricia Anne?”

“As I was saying—” I hesitated, expecting Sister to finish my sentence, but she didn’t. “He’s attractive, younger than Virginia. Maybe she was feeling a little lonesome.”

“And there he was right outside her window reaching up to paint the soffits,” Sister added.