“We’re looking for our cousin’s wife. She was here a few days ago with Mr. Crawford, and we were hoping we could find something that would help us locate her. An address or something.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what we thought we might find, to tell the truth.”

“She an old skinny blond woman with pretty teeth?” the woman asked.

“Caps,” Mary Alice said. “All caps.”

“Well, they look good. Real white. I bet they cost a lot.”

“They did.”

“Y’all sit down on the sofa. Bertie, get me some water. It’s pill time.”

“No, it’s not, Mama. You just took them.”

“Well, that’s why I’m so thirsty then.”

We sat on the sofa as we had been instructed to.

“I’m Mary Alice Crane,” Sister said. “And this is my sister, Patricia Anne Hollowell.”

The woman nodded. “Beulah Packard. And that’s Bertie.”

“Albert Lee, ladies. How do you do,” her son called from the kitchen. In a moment he was back with a glass of water, which he handed to his mother.

“Thank you, baby boy,” she said.

Baby Boy appeared to be in his early fifties. His beard was liberally streaked with gray. But I adjusted his age down when he sat in the chair opposite his mother and pulled off the disreputable brown felt hat. His hair was thick and dark. He ran his hands through it, propped his hat on his knee, and looked at us.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?” Mary Alice was getting her composure back.

“You do know what’s been going on around here, don’t you?”

“We’re the ones who found Susan Crawford’s body, if that’s what you mean,” I admitted. I looked from the son to the mother. “You’re neighbors?”

Beulah Packard nodded. “Live right up the road by Horse Pens. Born and raised right here on Chandler Mountain.”

“Not much happens up here Mama doesn’t know.”

Beulah Packard frowned at her son. “I didn’t know Susan was lying over there in that church dead. Bless her heart. Her and Monk both gone.” She put her glass beside her chair. “I’ve got the cat. Guess I’ll keep her.”

We must have looked puzzled.

“Monk’s cat. I keep it for him when he’s gone. He brought it up last Friday, I think it was. Said he was going to be gone a couple of days. They were in that old lady with the white teeth’s car. She was driving.”

“Did he say where they were going?” I asked, thinking this might be the answer to our questions about Virginia.

She shook her head. “Just handed me Flossie and said. ‘Miss Beulah, I’ll be back in a couple of days. You take good care of my Flossie and keep an eye on my house.’”