Virgil Stuckey had torn himself away from admiring Sister’s purple boots long enough to ask Luke some questions. Yes, Luke had seen Virginia in the church. That was all he remembered. His head hurt and how come he couldn’t open his eyes good?

“You hit your head,” the sheriff told him. “There’s a bandage on your forehead and your eyes are swollen.”

“Why would I hit myself on the head?”

“We think you fell.”

“Oh. Okay.” Luke closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

“I’ll need statements from both of you,” Sheriff Stuckey informed Mary Alice and me. “We can do it over dinner at Joe’s.”

We walked about a block through fine, powdery snow to Joe’s Family Restaurant. My statement, told while we were waiting for our dinner (fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans), was that I had gone into the church, found Luke unconscious and bleeding, and tried to stem the bleeding. And yes, I had seen the dead woman lying on the bench.

Sister’s statement over pieces of lemon meringue pie and coffee touched slightly on the truth. She had thrown her cape over Luke because she had seen the symptoms of shock, had rushed to call 911, stayed behind to clarify things for the authorities while I had left. And neither of us had seen Virginia or any sign of life, for that matter. Just the poor dead girl, so obviously dead that she, Mary Alice, hadn’t touched her because she wouldn’t want to contaminate a crime scene.

“Good thinking,” Virgil said.

“Hand me one of those little milk things,” I told Sister. “A couple of them.”

I waited until she had them in the air. “We didn’t even know it was a snake-handling church.”

Nondairy creamer squirted all over the table.

“Damn!” Sister hopped up and grabbed my sleeve. “Excuse us a minute, Virgil.”

“What the hell do you mean, a snake-handling church?” she demanded as soon as she closed the restroom door. “We were in there with snakes?”

“That’s what that box was for up at the front. The woman in the ambulance told me. She says they get called up there sometimes when folks get bitten.”

Sister looked pale. I was beginning to feel a little guilty. So she had altered the version of the role she had played at the church. Who would want to admit they had been upchucking all over the parking lot? Especially to a man you were obviously attracted to.

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew,” I lied.

“Biggest rattlesnakes in the world on the mountains around here.” A voice from a stall. The toilet flushed and a plump, very blond woman stepped out, buttoning her pants. She turned on the water and soaped her hands. “Lots of folks like to play with them. They’re not slimy like you think they’d be.”

Neither of us said anything.