The weather had done a complete turnaround in twenty-four hours. It was in the midfifties with bright sun striping the road through bare branches of trees, trees that clung to the rocky bank over the road and threatened to crash down at any minute. We didn’t meet another car all the way up the mountain.

The Jesus Is Our Life and Heaven Hereafter church was built on the bluff side and was, since the road ran so close to the bluff, the first building on that side of the road. I hadn’t realized the day before that the back of the church would have been jutting over a deep ravine if it weren’t for a large rock formation.

There was no crime tape across the front of the church, and the only vehicle in sight was Holden Crawford’s paint van.

Mary Alice pulled into the driveway between the house and church and stopped.

“They don’t have much parking space here, do they?”

“No. Looks like they park in front of the house. The yard’s all rutted.”

Then she voiced what I was thinking. “I wonder what Virginia thought when she first saw this place.”

“That she was in over her head, I imagine, especially when she found out what was going on over at the church.”

“But she didn’t leave.”

“Maybe she couldn’t.”

Mary Alice tapped her nails against the steering wheel. “I wonder if the police checked the back of the van.”

“I’m sure they did. Virginia’s missing and her car is found in Tennessee with Monk Crawford’s body in it. They checked all right.” I looked toward the church. “But, you know, a person could fall off one of those rocks and never be found unless they happened to get caught in a tree.”

“You’re thinking Monk Crawford killed her and went to Tennessee in her car?”

“Well, I don’t know,” I admitted. “He wouldn’t have brought her up here just for her car.”

“And she was nobody’s Pamela Anderson.”

“Who?”

“Baywatch. Boobs.”

“No. She was a sixty-something-year-old woman. Doesn’t make sense.”

“Money?”

“You think she had any?”

“Probably some.”

“Well, that should be fairly easy to check out.”

The sound of wheels on gravel made us turn around. A red pickup truck had pulled into the driveway behind us. I was relieved to see a nice-looking young couple in their late twenties get out. The woman, I realized instantly, had to be Susan Crawford’s sister. The same red hair fell almost to her waist; she was carrying a pot of pink hydrangeas wrapped in pink foil. They walked up to my side of the car, and I let the window down.

“Afternoon,” the girl said. “I’m Betsy Mahall and this is my husband, Terry. Can we help you with something?”

“We just stopped for a minute,” I explained, introducing Mary Alice and myself. “We were here yesterday.”