“Well, you know it’s the truth, Bertie. Killed two of his wives. One of them was snakebit and didn’t even handle. And the other one drowned in their well. Just happened to fall over a four-foot-high rock curbing.” She slathered butter on her bread. “Sure ruined that water supply.”

I passed on the cornbread and handed the plate to Albert Lee.

“But why would he want to kill Monk and Susan?” Mary Alice asked.

“Well,” Miss Beulah took a bite of cornbread, chewed, and swallowed. “Monk told me that Joe Baker wanted him to give him his snakes when he quit handling, said he thought he was due them. But Monk gave them to Susan, instead.”

I looked down at the Southern Living table, at the beautiful, rare books in the next room. There was a surreal quality to this conversation. To this whole place.

“More soup?” Albert Lee offered. Sister held out her bowl.

“Will Joe Baker be the head honcho snake handler now?” she asked.

“I expect so. Up here on Chandler Mountain, anyway,” Miss Beulah said.

I remembered how strong Joe Baker’s handshake had been. How it had hurt my hand. He could twist someone’s head around, force someone’s hand into a basket of poisonous snakes. I shook my head when Albert Lee offered me more soup.

“She’s anorexic,” Sister explained. “Doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.”

I denied the accusation, but no one was listening to me. Miss Beulah was reciting Joe Baker’s criminal record, which was astounding. Several drug charges, federal racketeering (whatever that was), manslaughter (killed a woman while driving drunk). Bunch of other stuff she couldn’t remember.

Obviously, in Joe Baker’s heyday, the three-strikes-and-you’re-out law wasn’t in effect.

“Bad news,” she repeated. “If I was Virgil Stucky, Joe would be at the top of my list, I guarantee you.”

Mary Alice perked up at the mention of Virgil’s name and asked Miss Beulah if she knew him very well.

“Nicest man in the world. Needs to get him another wife and settle down.”

Mary Alice nodded in heartfelt agreement.

Miss Beulah pointed her spoon toward Albert Lee. “Bertie does, too. Look at that beard. Scraggling down like Spanish moss. No woman in the world would put up with that.”

“Patsy left me because I’m gay, Mama.”

“Gay, my foot, Albert Lee Packard. She left you because of those damn books in yonder.”

Mother and son smiled affectionately at each other. From what she had said about Albert’s affection for Susan Crawford, I doubted that he was gay, but saw that whatever he was, his mother adored him.