“You could have the decency to sound surprised. Besides, I’m not sure they all do, as I spoke to only one Zug twin.”

“Right, but unless we can figure out which one is which, I think we should treat them as one person. Nonetheless, what are your impressions of them?”

I waited while, off to my left, in the woods, a mourning dove sounded its plaintive coo. “I’ll start with George Hooley,” I said. “Did you know he was gay?”

Chief Ackerman put both hands on his hips in mock surprise. “Say it ain’t so!”

“Of course you did; everyone does. Still, somehow Minerva managed to blackmail him. At least that’s what he claims.”

The chief scribbled on his pad. “That’s serious stuff. Can you get proof?”

“I’ll try. But I don’t think George did it. Murdering someone requires a mind that is able to think outside the box, and George is stuck in a rut so deep he can hear Laotian voices at the bottom.”

“Not Mandarin?”

“George isn’t straight, remember? When he digs a hole, it doesn’t go down to China. As for James Neufenbakker, he may have been a Sunday school teacher-my Sunday school teacher-but that man’s got a temper worthy of a Bush.”

“Is that a straight euphemism?”

“No! I meant George Bush. Anyway, James-or Jimmy, as I call him-practically chased me off his porch. He also called Minerva a trollop.”

“Hmm, do you think that means he slept with her?”

“Chris, dear, is that what you call your-uh, paramours?”

“My what?”

“Lovers,” I said reluctantly, “but my, how I hate that word. It’s just so-well, so accepting of the whole notion of sex without the bondage of holy matrimony.”

The chief shook his impossibly handsome head. “First of all, I don’t call my lovers trollops-although I have called a few of them sluts. And second, while I believe you meant to say the holy bonds of matrimony, I think I prefer your slip of the tongue. And third, I was suggesting that Mr. Neufenbakker’s strong negative reaction might be a decoy to keep us from discovering an ongoing physical or emotional relationship with our victim. Such affairs are often hard to end satisfactorily, and sometimes one or both parties suffer deeply.”

“Dr. Chris Ackerman, I presume,” I said, unable to keep all my sarcasm at bay.

“Well, I did take freshman psychology at the junior college before I joined the police academy,” Chief Chris said proudly.

More power to him; better a half-wit than a dimwit, I always say. Still, we had a lot more ground to cover. I laid little Jacob over my shoulder and gently patted his back.

“Gwerrp.”

“Good boy.” I continued to pat lightly. “Frankie Schwartzentruber, however, really does have a reason to be upset with Minerva. That woman hit on her husband.”

“That old battle-ax is married?”

“Was is the operative word. Decades ago. Frankie has a long memory, but like they say, there is no statute of limitations on crimes of passion.”

“Who says that?”

I may have swallowed hard, but I didn’t look away. “Well, somebody has to start those sayings, so why can’t it be me?”

Young Chris smiled. “I figured as much. Go on.”

“There’s not much else to say. I tried to talk to Merle Waggler, and although he admitted he didn’t like Minerva, he and I-Look, the man’s an anti-Semite, and I kind of got into it with him.”

“You fought with him?”

“We argued. At school. But it was on behalf of Alison, who was being teased, so it was completely justified.”

“What about Elias Whitmore?”

“He’s a real hottie, isn’t he?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, really cute. Good-looking. Isn’t that the lingo these days?”

“ Magdalena, I’m a police officer, and you’re a married woman assisting me on the case. We can’t use language like that.” He glanced around as if to make sure that no one had heard us-except maybe for the mourning dove in the woods, and two sparrows hopping between the headstones twenty feet away.

“Sorry. I don’t know what came over me; it was like a hot flash of Presbyterianism. Anyway, that kid is so popular. His house is like an ashram or something-but Christian, of course. See that brown square there, poking above the trees on Buffalo Mountain? About an inch from the end?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“That’s his rooftop porch. You can see all the way to Maryland from there. Anyway, despite being a Christian guru, Elias really hated Minerva J. Jay. He blames her for his father’s death.”

Chris rubbed his hands together. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Maybe. Elias’s father was a drunk who tried to walk the straight and narrow path a number of times-at least to hear him tell it-but each time, Minerva pushed him off. Supposedly she thought she could get her hands on his fortune easier that way. Oh, and Elias volunteered the fact that Minerva was poisoned. You didn’t mention that to him, did you?”

“Absolutely not. Very interesting. What about the Zug twins?”

“I have failed,” I wailed.

“Your wailing is really getting to be annoying-if I may say so.”

“You may, but now I’m annoyed. It’s not like I go through a verb-selection process when I emote and then come up empty-handed. Wailing happens to be my signature vocalization.”

“The Zugs,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, all right. Those Zugs! Rather, I should say that Zug! He weaseled out of my grilling by appealing to my vanity.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking the easy way out, so long as it’s effective.”

“Whose side are you on anyway?”

“Uh-yours, of course. Although I guess strictly speaking I’m on the side of Lady Justice. Hmm, interesting that she’s a lady, isn’t it?” He rubbed his face with hands that were better tended to than mine will ever be. “Hey, speaking of ladies, we may not be able to tell the twins apart, but their wives look nothing alike. Why don’t you try talking to them? Maybe invite them over to tea?”

“Tea? I’m not Agatha Christie, for Pete’s sake; this isn’t an English cozy. Besides, I hardly know them.”

“Don’t they go to your church?”

“That’s the thing. The Zug twins are Mennonite by birth and joined Beechy Grove as soon as they moved here from Canada, but, like me, they are unequally yoked.”

“I don’t get it. Is that some kind of egg thing?”

I reined in my smile. The chief is a lapsed atheist, a man raised without faith, but he is now at least open to exploring the options. Still, when one is talking to him it is easy to forget that biblical references, which pepper everyday speech in Hernia, are as foreign to him as tofu is to Amish cooking.

“It’s what happens when you hitch an ox and a donkey to the same plow. Take the Babester and me: he’s the bull and I’m the ass, and spiritually speaking it’s not a good match. The Zug twins also married outside the Mennonite fold. One is a Pentecostal-I think-and attends the church with thirty-two words in its name, and the other is a nothing. At any rate, neither of them ever shows up at Beechy Grove for services, although they do come for potlucks and anything that basically involves food.”

“So you have met them.”

I sighed. “Okay, I’ll invite them to lunch at the Sausage Barn and put the screws to them there.”

“When?”

“I’ll call this evening, but I can’t guarantee I’ll even be able to get through. The man who invented caller ID-and it had to be a man-will have his own special place in you-know-where.”

“Why don’t you slip a note under their door on your way home this afternoon, suggesting lunch tomorrow? Say, noon at the Barn?”

“Noon,” I snapped. Let’s face it, it’s hard to be pleasant when someone half your age is micromanaging your avocation.

Yes, a retired husband can be a big help, and so can a mother-in-law. Ditto for a daughter and a housekeeping cousin. But only yours truly was equipped to feed a growing boy in the middle of the night, after which said boy refused to go back to sleep. As a result, I got as much sleep as a polygamist on a ten-minute honeymoon.