“One of my errands this morning takes me to visit a traditional Amish woman-one who has remained virtually untouched by tourism and the modern world. After all, we are a tiny, somewhat isolated community, not at all like Lancaster. Would any of you be interested in accompanying me?”

Surimanda Baikal immediately raised her petite aristocratic hand, but the other six guests traded looks as if their glances were hot potatoes and the guests were playing a party game. Frankly this really annoyed me. It hadn’t been easy to make this offer. Mary Berkey was more than likely to be skittish if I brought any English with me, and besides, not a single one of these guests was likely to add joy to my day.

I decided to pare my offer down. It had been too generous to start with, and as we all know, universal availability breeds contempt. Diamonds are coveted because the diamond industry conspires to have us believe that they are rare; the truth is, however, that these stones, which are controlled by a cartel, fill up warehouse after warehouse, and are purposely released in a trickle to the retail market.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “I’m only going to take two of you. Miss Baikal, you get to come along. The rest of you nominate one person who you think is the most deserving of this honor, and he or she should meet me at the front desk in exactly one hour. Oh, by the way, has everybody met Amy, my new receptionist?”

The subsequent buzz sounded as if a hornet’s nest had been knocked loose from my barn rafters and thrown in the middle of the dining room table. It was clear to me that no one gave a hoot about Amy; all the chatter had to do with the selection of the unlucky victim.

“I met Amy,” Gabe offered gallantly. He was sitting at the other end of the table, spooning sugar on our son’s cornflakes. “I think she’ll work out nicely.”

“Her mother’s hideous,” I lied. “Look at the mother to see how the daughter will age; isn’t that what they say?”

“Hon, you know I only have eyes for you. Besides, she’s far too young for me. I would only ever consider a mature woman who knows her own mind.”

My extraordinary peripheral vision gave me a glimpse of Olivia Zambezi hiking her bosom heavenward with one hand, while patting some stray hairs back into her gray coiffure with the other. How does that old saying go: hope springs eternal in even the most sagging of breasts? Well, something like that.

“Here’s to my mind, dear,” I said, speaking to the coffeepot in front of me. But Olivia’s unseemly, not to mention pathetic, attempt to appear comely in Gabe’s eyes had reminded me of the puzzle involving the transport of a goat, a wolf, and a head of cabbage. The trick is to get them all across the river in a small boat, one at a time, before the wolf can eat the goat, and the goat can eat the cabbage. Using this paradigm the three wives present at the table all represented wolves, the tiny blond one with the not so tiny assets stood the best chance of being the most successful predator: Gabe had a “thing” for blondes, natural or bottle.

“Tiny, dear, I pick you to come along on this morning’s exciting excursion.”

“Oh, thank you, Miss Yoder,” she trilled in her tiny voice.

“Meanwhile, what am I supposed to do?” Peewee whined.

“Why, read a book, dear. Take a long walk. There’s a wooded trail through a boulder-studded glen just across the road. Or drive into town and check Yoder’s Corner Market. In the so-called produce section, you’ll find a head of lettuce that bears my initials. They were carved into the stem three years ago.”

“Piffle,” Peewee puffed dismissively.

“She isn’t kidding,” Gabe said. “But you’d have more fun at Miller’s feed store or watching the blacksmith shoe the Amish horses.”

“That really still goes on?” Barbie asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “We permit only well-dressed horses in Hernia. In fact, the farrier ’s name is Jimmy, so the horses all wear Jimmy’s shoes.”

The women groaned in unison, whereas the men looked as if they’d been asked to name the three countries which compose North America.

“Hey,” Gabe said, “now that we have someone to watch the desk, why don’t I take you on a tour of the area?”

“And what about our son?” I asked archly.

“What about him?” Gabe said. “What were you planning to do with him?”

Caught between a rock and a hard place, I chose to lean on the rock. After all, diamonds, sapphires, rubies-they’re all rocks.

“Why, he’s coming with me, of course. I was checking to see if you’d thought of him.”

“I want to go with my papa,” Little Jacob said.

“But your mama is so much fun,” I cooed.

“Yes, but Papa lets me do things.”

I gave everyone at the table a stern look; in other words, my glare informed them, unequivocally, that they were to stop listening to what was essentially family business. “What things?” I said.

“He buys me ice cream.”

“What else?”

“And candy.”

“Uh-huh. What else does he do?”

“He lets me put my arm out the window.”

“What?”

“Just his hand,” Gabe said. “Every little boy needs to feel the breeze on his hand.”

“Tell that to Kurt Zimmerman-or One-Armed Kurt, as the kids used to call him at school.”

Gabe recoiled. “Is that how he lost his arm?”

“Lost it to the side of a farm truck on Yutzy Road.”

Our guests gasped.

“Well that settles it,” I said. “This morning our son rides with me.”

Mary Berkey has been a single mother for the past half dozen years, ever since the day her husband suddenly disappeared, leaving her with six children under seven. One minute Lantz was there, tending to their commercial chicken operation, and the next minute he was gone. It even occurred to Mary that the rapture had taken place, leaving her behind; although why her somewhat-innocent children hadn’t been caught up to Glory was a bit puzzling to her.

I mention the rapture business because it proves that I am not a nutcase for having jumped to a similar conclusion from time to time; after all, this is the way Mary and I were both brought up to think. I must confess, however, that I am as curious as a stimulus package full of cats as to what it was that Mary had done to make her think that she was undeserving of Heaven, even after she had accepted Jesus as her savior. Oh well, you know what they say about the quiet ones.

At any rate, several weeks after her husband’s disappearance, Mary Berkey noticed a foul odor emanating from the tall silo in which they stored the chicken feed. She had it emptied, and sure enough there was Lantz’s badly decomposed body-still dressed in his outside work clothes. An autopsy showed that the poor man had fallen into the silo from the trapdoor in the roof, and had literally “drowned” in the sifting grain.

There were those in the community who chose to believe that Lantz had committed suicide. However, as far as anyone knew, there had been no suicide note, so most of us chose to believe otherwise. After all, there were well-documented cases of men having fallen into silos while inspecting their grain levels, and subsequently suffocating. But sadly, there were even a few folks-and I am not one of them-who went so far as to speculate that perhaps Mary Berkey, in a moment of passion, may have pushed her husband through the trapdoor and into the silo. Their flimsy theory rests solely on the fact that the Lantz and Mary Berkey union, six children aside, was clearly not a match made in Heaven. While most Amish couples strive to at least present a peaceful face to the world, the Berkeys were either incapable of doing so, or else their marriage had deteriorated to the point that neither of them cared anymore.

Whether it was the stigma of a possible suicide, or the rumor that she may have murdered her husband, the sad fact is Mary Berkey would always live under a cloud of suspicion. Although no formal shunning was ordered by her bishop, Mary’s in-laws (Mary’s own parents were no longer alive) refused to have anything to do with her after the funeral. This harsh treatment unfortunately set the tone for others, and soon Mary and her children found themselves living on the periphery of the Amish community.