“Guess I’d better keep it, then,” Virgil said when Fred came back with the news that neither Luke nor Richard had recognized the cameo.

He put it back in his pocket.

“No use telling anybody about it yet.” He looked right at me. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You better make her cross her heart and hope to die,” Sister said. “She can’t keep a secret two minutes. Never has been able to.”

“Pot calling the kettle black.”

Virgil smiled. “Cross your heart, Patricia Anne. You too, Mary Alice.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Virgil,” Sister said. “I’m always discreet.” Then, “Quit laughing, Fred.”

“Sorry.” He reached over, took my hands, and pulled me up. “We’d better call it a night, oh, sister of the discreet one.”

“I need to help Sister clean up.”

“I’ll help her,” Virgil offered.

We said our goodnights and thank-yous and headed home. We both agreed that we liked Virgil. Fred even went so far as to say Mary Alice might have found herself a winner this time. He also warned me again not to get involved with this “snake-handling foolishness.”

“Dangerous as hell, honey.”

I agreed.

It was a clear, cold night. A full moon was rising over Red Mountain, a moon as pink and delicate as a cameo.

It was the first night since we had gotten back from Warsaw that I had had trouble sleeping. I finally gave up, went into the den, snuggled under the afghan, and tried to read. But even the new Carolyn Hart mystery couldn’t take my mind off of everything that had happened in the last few days.

I thought about Richard asking if there could have been a few minutes outside the church while Mary Alice and I had been waiting for Luke, a few minutes when we hadn’t been paying attention. Long enough for someone to have attacked Luke and then darted to the house or hidden behind one of the rocks.

Probably so, I decided.

Or they could have run out the side as we opened the front door looking for Luke. Had I called his name as I pushed open the door? I couldn’t remember, but it was possible. That would have warned them. Or they could have ducked behind one of the pews and slipped out the front during the confusion while Mary Alice and I were discovering a bleeding Luke and a dead Susan Crawford.

A Susan Crawford placed on the bench as if she were lying in state. A Susan Crawford who might have been killed in the church, but who had red clay on her boots. Which could mean nothing. The soil on Chandler Mountain wasn’t red clay, but it’s common enough in most parts of north Alabama. She could have gotten it on her boots walking in her own front yard, for all I knew.