“What?” Elias demanded. “She’s crazy!”

I pretended to glower over horn-rimmed reading glasses. Dismissive looks are always more effective when delivered over black plastic frames, don’t you agree?

“Elias is right, dear,” I said. “Your statement does put your sanity in doubt.”

“And why is that?” Frankie said passionately. “Everyone knows how much he detested Minerva.”

“Yes,” I said calmly, “but you all hated her. What I meant is that it’s highly improbable that anyone, especially a woman of your dotage, would just come right out and call Elias handsome to his face. One might think such a thing, but one doesn’t say it.”

“What on earth are you blathering about, Magdalena? I said no such thing! You, however, just did.”

“Oops. Perhaps my internal dialogue could use a wee bit of editing.”

“Minerva tried to blackmail me,” George said, taking me quite by surprise.

I nodded encouragingly. “Go on, dear.”

“She accused me of having an affair with my secretary.”

“And?”

“I confessed, of course. That’s the only thing an honorable man can do when confronted with the evidence. You can expect me to be making a public confession at church this Sunday, Magdalena.”

“Was the secretary named Steve?”

“ Magdalena, that’s just cruel,” the Zug twins said in unison.

“But George told me-”

“She’s always been this way,” James Neufenbakker said. “Ever since she was a little girl. I used to say that if there was one child in Hernia who was going to end up on the wrong side of the law, it would be Magdalena.”

“Is it any wonder she can’t keep a man?” Wanda wondered aloud.

Suddenly I felt sick, and I had yet to eat a single bite of the three basic Mennonite food groups: fat, sugar, and starch. “What?”

“Oh, come on,” Wanda said, and pointed a badly maintained fingernail at my minuscule, but arguably beating heart. “Everyone in Hernia knows that Dr. Rosen walked out on you this morning, except for Widow Hastings, who is deaf and dumb-and by that I mean literally less intelligent than a hunk of salt pork.”

When no one objected, I stamped a size eleven down as hard as I could without permanently injuring myself. Having done it many times before, I seem to know just how far to go.

“That was so mean! If I had said that, you folks would be all over me like grease on one of Wanda’s menus.”

“That’s because we know you’re mean-spirited, Magdalena,” Frankie said. “Wanda, on the other hand, doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”

“Yes, she does,” the Zug wife said. “What else would you call that Dieter’s Surprise?”

“They’re only tourists,” Frankie hissed.

“Yes, but they could have been Canadians.”

Elias Whitmore sprang to his feet, and in the process knocked his chair backward to the floor. His rage made him more than handsome; it made him downright sexy-of course, in a Christian, older-married-lady, younger-unmarried-youth-leader, not-adulterous sort of way.

“And that would have made it all right?” he shouted.

“Simmer down, young fella,” James snapped.

“Don’t you tell me what to do,” Elias shouted, still caught up in his righteous rage. “I organized this intervention so that we could talk some sense into Magdalena, but I almost didn’t invite you. Do you know why? Because you can be a rude old coot, that’s why.”

My ears burned with indignation. “An intervention? Is that what this is supposed to be? For what? I have no addictions except for hot chocolate and ladyfingers.”

“It’s to stop you from picking on the brotherhood volunteers,” Frankie said.

But Elias wasn’t through with his tirade. Turning to George Hooley, he began wagging his finger, à la Bill Clinton.

“You, sir,” he said, “are no longer going to be my banker. I have to trust my banker.”

Merle Waggler snickered.

“Which brings me to you, Merle. I put up with you only because we’re commanded to love one another. If it was a personality contest, Magdalena would win hands down every time.”

I patted my bun, flattered to the hilt, as a strange stirring swept through my…

“Loins,” Wanda said, apropos the prospect of a dwindling profit. “I have several nice pork loins slow roasting in the kitchen; it doesn’t have to be breakfast.”

“Stuff your pork loins, Wanda,” Elias said. “Maybe I’ll come back for dinner.” Then he stomped out, no doubt ruing his decision to join forces with Frankie Iscariot Schwartzentruber and the not-so-merry band from the brotherhood.

“Just so you people know,” I said, “I’ve already spoken privately to each and every one of you, and each of you has what would appear to be ample motive to have done away with the quite ample Minerva.”

“That’s an out-and-out lie,” one of the Zug twins said. “You spoke to my brother, not me.”

“And I didn’t tell you anything,” the other one said.

“But it’s not fair! You have no business looking so much alike. What are you going to do, pray tell, if one of you makes it to the Pearly Gates, and the other twin ends up at the opposite place-”

“ St. Louis International Airport, Concourse A?” the Zug wife asked.

“Something like that,” I said, “only not quite as bad, from what I hear. Anyway, what if your destinations are switched? At least one of you is going to have to do some mighty fast talking.”

“Oh, they’re not that hard to tell apart,” the Zug wife said. “Trust me.”

The twin closest to her sat bolt upright, like he’d just plonked his patooty on a tack. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Once just for fun-never mind, darling. Perhaps this isn’t the right time and place, eh?”

“The Concourse A it isn’t!” the Zug twin shouted. With that he clambered to his feet and stumbled from the room, blinded as he was by tears. A few stunned seconds later he was followed by his cuckolded brother and the intentionally adulterous woman from Manitoba.

I say intentionally here, because one must always take care to differentiate between an inadvertent adulteress from Hernia and a wanton bed hopper from a thriving metropolis as large as Winnipeg. Yes, I had the wool pulled over my eyes by Aaron Miller, but the Zug wife, no doubt, pulled a colorfast, hypoallergenic poly-wool blend over two sets of Zug peepers and thus deserved every minute she’d spent in the St. Louis International Airport.

“Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming,” Frankie said as soon as the coast was clear.

Wanda, true to form, was busy taking notes on her order pad. “Leave it to Magdalena to clear out a room,” she mumbled.

I glanced around in mock surprise. “And yet I still hear voices. Unless someone tells me right now what you guys hoped to accomplish by this ambush, I’m going to continue swinging my wrecking ball until not a single one of you remains standing. Wanda, in your case, that would apply to the Ruti Tooti Faux-Fruiti Pineapple Upside-down Muffin recipe you swiped from Freni.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Start with one package of blueberry muffins from Pat’s IGA-”

George Hooley slipped an expensive-looking pen from the breast pocket of his three-piece gray suit and was writing every word down on his paper napkin.

“Stop!” Wanda cried.

She lunged at me, no doubt hoping to clamp a spidery hand across my lovely, loquacious lips (I say that with all modesty). Unfortunately for her, I sidestepped her charge, sending her sprawling headlong into Merle Waggler ’s chair. One would think that a man of Merle’s girth would have been able to anchor said chair and remain in a sitting position, but apparently he was like my favorite candy bar-“fluffy, not stuffy.”

It happened so fast that I barely had time to enjoy it, even in retrospect. The sight of Wanda and Merle tangled in a melee of waving arms and legs and a wobbling beehive was nothing short of a balm for my aching heart. Of course I repented of this sin, but to be absolutely honest, I did so a bit later in the day. After all, schadenfreude, like a cup of good homemade cocoa (served with ladyfingers for dipping), is to be savored.