“Well, I’m all alone-and don’t ask why-so I thought this might be the perfect time to fit in some sleuthing.”

“The Russian!” I felt a mild shock, as a surge of electrical impulses flowed from Agnes over the wires and to my ear. The woman was besotted with Surimanda Baikal. Frankly, it was unseemly-it was probably even forbidden somewhere in the Book of Leviticus.

“No, dear, not her-although come to think of it, I should take this opportunity to hoof it up my impossibly steep stairs and riffle through her belongings.”

“You wouldn’t!” Agnes sounded positively gleeful. “ Magdalena, what if you get caught? What if it’s a trap of some kind?”

“Riffle first, rue later,” I said blithely.

“Ooh, you’re bad,” she said. “In a fun sort of way. Me? I’m just plain old boring Agnes. Boring, fat Agnes. Do you know I haven’t had a single date since that jerk dumped me?”

She was referring to a visitor from one of the square states who swept round Agnes off her feet, proposed marriage, but then left her standing at the altar. If you ask me, she hasn’t quite found her footing since then.

“Well, tonight’s your chance to shake it up a bit, because I’m inviting you to come along peeping with me-nay, I insist that you accompany me.”

“Really?”

“Forsooth. I’ll be there in twenty. We’ll split the difference and meet in ten in front of the police station. I’ll drive from there.”

“Uh-hey, you know I’d really love to do that; in fact, you don’t know how much I’d love to, but tonight’s really not good for me.”

It was then that I first heard a voice in the background. A woman’s voice, perhaps.

“Oh,” I said. “Do you, perchance, have company?”

“Don’t be absurd, Magdalena. You know I never have company-well, sometimes I still get my monthly visitor, but the doctor says even he won’t be stopping in much longer.”

I jiggled a pinkie in my ear to make sure it wasn’t clogged. “You’re monthly visitor is a he?”

“Well, I guess I never thought about that until now. But he’s silent, messy, and a pain in the-”

“There! I heard it again. Whose voice is that?”

“No one’s.”

“No one doesn’t have a voice, so I’m not buying it. Are the uncles over? Did they bring women? Because I thought they were gay.”

“Only one is gay,” Agnes whispered, “and for the millionth time, I’m not telling you which one. But no, it’s not them. It’s the strumpet.”

“Who?”

“Dorothy Yoder.”

“Oh. What’s she doing there?”

“She says she’s lonely. She’s tired of her life of debauchery and wants to walk the straight-and-narrow path again, but none of her old friends will take her back.”

“I didn’t know she had any.”

“Did you know she played the trumpet?”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. Now that she has the breath to blow it, she practices almost nonstop. She says it brings her peace, but it’s driving me crazy.”

“Hmm. Well, I don’t hear it now.”

“That’s because I’m trying to keep her mouth full of food. Right now she’s eating a crumpet.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s such a smart plan. If she balloons back up again, it’s going to be all your fault. She’ll hate you for it.”

“I’ll just have to lump it.”

I’m not normally a jealous person, and my pendulum does not swing the other way-not that I judge, mind you-but Agnes was my best friend, and it was my duty to make sure she stayed that way. This was for her sake, as well as mine.

“How long is she staying?”

“Well, that’s the thing: she and Sam got into a slight misunderstanding-”

“You mean a big fight?”

“And how. At one point she climbed out of a second-story window and threatened to jump. It was horrible; Sam just egged her on. ‘Go ahead and jump,’ he said. ‘You don’t weigh as much anymore; it won’t harm the sidewalk.’ ”

“That’s awful! So what did she do? I mean, obviously, she didn’t-right?”

“Right. But when she backed down and wanted to just get away, she couldn’t because he’d hidden the car keys. He did it to be mean, of course.”

“What a grump.”

“It was awful being around him, to hear her tell it. Anyway, she had to ride his bicycle all the way over here, but first she had to fix a flat-pump it up and all that. But since it’s almost eight miles out here she decided to take a short cut across the Neiderlanders’ pasture, which at night, as you know, is as dark as the ace of spades.”

“You know I don’t play with face cards, dear, as they are used for gambling; I only play Rook.”

“Yes, well, she hit a stump-it was only a little one, but enough to cause her to fall on her rump. Somehow she ended up in the old village dump. It was the funniest thing-well, to hear her tell it at any rate.”

I sighed. “Well played, Agnes. Now, can we finally get back to business?”

“Business?”

“Peering into windows in the dead of night. Are you in, or are you out?”

“But I can’t,” she wailed. “What am I supposed to do, kick her out?”

Frankly, I was so grateful that it was someone else wailing for a change, instead of me, that I lowered my guard and let bad judgment prevail. “Bring her along, dear.”

“What?”

“Please, don’t make me say it again. Fill a Ziploc bag with crumpets and meet me at the police station in ten minutes.”

“You got it,” Agnes practically shouted in my ear.

“Oh, and one more thing: tell her to bring the trumpet with her. Who knows, but it might come in handy?”

12

I’d never spent much time around the harlot Dorothy Yoder. And although I probably shouldn’t admit this, she was actually a whole lot of fun. Once on the road to Bedford she put away her bag of crumpets and joined right in with our game of I Spy with My Little Eye. But since just about everything Dorothy picked was sexually suggestive, poor Agnes, who had never known a man in the biblical sense, was at a distinct disadvantage.

Strung along the Pennsylvania Turnpike like a strip of discarded Christmas tree garland, Bedford is a bustling city of four thousand or more. The downtown area, which snakes through the valley, is fairly cohesive, but the residential neighborhoods cling to the hills in disjointed patches. Actually, we call these hills “mountains” hereabouts, a fact that elicits hoots of derision from West Coast visitors (who have apparently left their manners behind).

At any rate, Pernicious Yoder III, being a wealthy bank manager, lived east of town high atop Evitts Mountain, in what I’ve heard described as a pseudo- Tudor mansion. Stone columns flanked the quarter-circle drive, and flickering gas lanterns illuminated a massive front door beneath the portico. It was an imposing residence, but a trifle cliché if you ask me. Now, a replica of the Taj Mahal, or a mini-Versailles, that would have been interesting.

“Wow,” Agnes said in a hushed tone. One would have thought she’d never been anywhere-which she hadn’t.

“Good grief,” Dorothy said, “we’re not stopping here, are we?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m going to pull over next to the woods up there, and we’ll walk back.”

“But we can’t!”

“Yes, we can. Your legs work perfectly well now, and I know for a fact that Agnes is as healthy as a horse-no offense, Agnes, dear.”

“Neeeiiigh.”

“You see? She even has a sense of humor about it. So come, ladies, times a-wasting.”

Dorothy’s fingers dug into my shoulder like the claws of a giant prehistoric elephant eagle-had such a thing really existed, which, of course, it didn’t. “You’re not hearing me, Yoder. I can’t be seen near that house.”

Since she’d spit her words out like nails from a gun, I spit some back to her. “Pray tell, why not?”

“Because Perni and I-uh-well, were intimate for a while and we sort of used his house as a rendezvous place while his wife was out of town visiting her sister. Even if he doesn’t see me, his neighbors might.”