“How would you feel about People magazine doing a spread?” I said. “I’m sure you could convince them to do several shots showing the Sausage Barn. But oh, my stars, then you’d be rich, and not everyone is cut out to be wealthy; not everyone can handle things the way I can.”

Wanda’s eyes blazed. “You think you’re special, don’t you?”

“Well, you have to admit; I haven’t let my staggeringly large fortune change my standard of living a great deal. Sure, I drove that sinfully red BMW, but that was for a very short time. With the exception of Big Bertha, my whirlpool bath with more heads than Medusa’s snake, I really haven’t splurged at all. I still live in the same old farmhouse-well, a facsimile thereof-dress the same, and eat the same food. One might say that I live the lifestyle of ‘old money,’ rather than that of the nouveaux riches. It’s quite an art, you know.’ ”

“And you think I can’t do that?” Wanda was on her feet and had begun tearing out her hairpins. “Magdalena, I can out-rich you any day of the week.”

“Show that stuck-up Goody Two-Shoes,” Agnes hissed. She was, perhaps, getting too good at this game.

Wanda had no patience for us now. They say that love conquers all, but I do believe that greed and its lesser brother, envy, are both more powerful. Wanda and I have competed since we were both in pigtails, and now that we wore buns, she was determined to prove that hers was made of steel. Despite her fear of gaping apertures, my nemesis ran for the sinkhole, and we practically had to tackle her to keep her from going over the edge.

Once at the edge of the abyss, rather than giving us a hard time, she merely closed her eyes and instructed us to each grab a foot and to hold on tight. That said, she unloosed the final pins, and hair that had not been freed from its mooring in three, maybe four, decades cascaded like a waterfall into the chasm below. Unfortunately-and I had expected this-Wanda’s inverted crown of glory did not quite reach the grasping hands of Frankie Schwartzentruber.

“We’ll have to lower you by your ankles,” I shouted over the roar of the engine.

“What if we drop her?” Agnes said. In all fairness, she had to speak loudly to be heard over the roar of the engine and Frankie’s scream.

“I heard that,” Wanda shouted.

“We won’t drop you,” I shouted back. “Because then how would Frankie get out?”

“Ha-ha, very funny. That woman’s a murderess. And just so you know, I wear panties with the days of the week embroidered on them; my mother-in-law made them for me last year for Christmas. I even wear them on the correct days, except that for some strange reason she forgot to include a pair for Thursday. So that’s when I go au naturel.”

“That’s nice, dear,” I bellowed impatiently. I wasn’t about to get my brains blown out over a prolonged discussion on cute lingerie. “You ready? Because here we go!”

Working smoothly in unison, Agnes and I each grabbed an ankle and propelled Wanda forward. She shrieked like a teenager in a bathtub full of spiders, and like spiders, her hands clung to the walls as we lowered her slowly downward. We jockeyed her forward until we were lying on our stomachs, and Wanda was dangling parallel to the wall, her skirts fallen about her head and shoulders (alas, I had quite forgotten that today was Thursday).

“Can she reach it now?” I could barely hear myself above an engine gone berserk.

There was no immediate answer, but in a few seconds she jerked like a bass on the line; contact had been made.

33

Somehow we managed to get Frankie safely out of the sinkhole, although by that time all four of us were as skinned and bruised as processed chickens. The woman had the nerve to try and make a run for it, but given her age and general state of health, it was easy to apprehend her. When we got to the car, I parked her in the backseat between Wanda and Agnes, since the two of them were every bit as good as handcuffs.

I was just turning around when the earth beneath the car shook, and black and orange clouds billowed out of the ground to the east. Had I not already known the cause of the conflagration, I might well have assumed that the Battle of Armageddon had begun.

“It blew,” Agnes said, stating the obvious.

I executed some fancy steering, whilst pressing the pedal to the metal. “Hang on, ladies. Many of those sinkholes are interconnected by underground streambeds. And some of those caves lead to dead ends where natural gas gets trapped. This whole place could blow up.”

“You witch,” Wanda said. I could only hope that she was speaking to Frankie, not me. “How could you have killed a good-looking young man like that?”

“His looks were not important,” Frankie said.

I switched on the recorder I keep in the console of my car. I am, after all, a mere gatherer of information. Unable-unwilling-to carry a firearm, I carry a big mouth, along with the technology to record what others say in response to it. In this case, I was quite happy to yield the floor to Hernia’s very own Rapunzel.

“I demand an answer,” Wanda said.

“If you must know,” Frankie said, spitting out her words like they were fish bones, “he was blackmailing poor Jimmy.”

“Elias was blackmailing James Neufenbakker?”

“Ha, and you probably thought he was some holier-than-though charismatic youth leader.”

“ ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ ” I said. “Romans 3:23. That would include you, my dear.”

“Strictly speaking,” Agnes said, “blackmailing is foremost a legal problem, seeing as how it does not appear on the list of the big ten. Therefore, Wanda, you are the bigger sinner.”

“Shut up, Agnes,” Frankie said.

“Why, I never,” Agnes whimpered.

“There was no need to be so rude,” I snapped.

“Save your breath,” Wanda said. “This woman ran over a kid with a steamroller. “Do you think she cares about manners?”

Rather than save my breath, I took a deep one. “I know that you and James were close,” I said. “Were you lovers?”

All three of my passengers gasped. “Y-you evil-minded sex maniac,” Frankie said, barely able speak, so great was her indignation. “We were special friends. No more.”

“I saw a photo of you two looking quite cozy; it was in Minerva’s photo album.”

“And your mind went directly to the gutter? To join Minerva’s? We were friends-that’s all. A lonely widow and a lonely widower. Soul mates only, but we did not join in the flesh.”

“Whew, that’s a relief. I’ve been wanting to poke my mind’s eyes out for days.”

“Now who’s being rude?”

“I’m sorry; I’m only human-despite rumors to the contrary.”

“Can we get back to the interrogation?” Wanda said. “I left half my scalp back there in that sinkhole, and it better not all be for nothing.”

“Right. So, dear, what was the holier-than-though, richer-than-sin, cuter-than-the-dickens chick magnet blackmailing Jimmy about?”

“It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault!” Frankie began to thrash about until Agnes half sat on her. “It was an accident! Do you hear me?”

“Of course, dear. The dead in Somerset County can hear you. But they, like me, are going to require details.”

“He was leaning over the mixing bowl, see, and his pill case plopped in the batter. It could have happened to anyone.”

“Was it open?”

“That too could have happened to anyone. Haven’t you ever not quite closed something all the way?”

“Yes, of course. But why didn’t James just fess up and throw the batter out?”

“Because we were running out of pancake mix, you idiot! Plus he thought that it wouldn’t be that concentrated. And anyway, it’s all your fault; you’re the one who bought the supplies.”

I prayed for the strength to stay focused. “What was in that pill case?”

“Does it matter now? Just so you know, Jimmy did his best to pick all the pills out, but he can’t see so well anymore, and that’s not his fault either.”