“Hi, Mama,” he’d said, almost blithely. “Hi, Aunt Freni.”

I’d hugged and kissed him, and Freni had patted his head affectionately and offered him a gingerbread man with a glass of milk. Being the fruit of my loins, he’d accepted the snack gratefully, but had demanded a piece of fruit as well.

“It will spoil your lunch,” I’d said.

“Mama, what happens when you die?”

“Uh-well-remember that baby sparrow we found underneath the barn eaves yesterday morning?”

He’d taken a big bite of milk-softened cookie before posing his next question. “Mama, we’re not birds. What happens to people?”

“Well, their souls go to be with Jesus, but their bodies are put into the ground.” There is no use trying to shield a child from death in a farming community. It would be like trying to keep an ice-cream cone from melting on a hot August day.

“I know that stuff about Jesus and the ground,” said my precocious four-year-old, “but what happens to them?”

“Them who, dear?”

“The people who died,” he’d cried impatiently. “You know, the them part!”

“Ach, he asks an ex- intentional question,” Freni had said reverently. Sometimes she is in awe of the little tyke and sometimes it is understandably so.

“Maybe the ‘them’ part is the soul,” I’d said. “Little Jacob, will you still love your mama when you’re all grown- up and can think circles around her?”

My darling son had thrown himself at me and locked his little arms around my neck. “Don’t be silly, Mama. I’ll always love you.”

“And don’t be cheeky, and call your mother silly,” I said, before kissing his eyelids until he begged me to stop.

“Earth to Magdalena,” Freni said, bringing me back to the present. “So now will you tell me who really killed poor Mary Berkey?”

“Only if you promise not to use idioms from the eighties that were annoying even then,” I said.

The expression Freni assumed made her look like a sheep that had been asked to solve the national debt. “Yah, whatever. I promise.”

“And quit being a teenager as well. It doesn’t become a seventy-nine-year-old Amish woman.”

“Oy veys mere.”

“Who pretends to be Jewish when it suits her.”

“Ach!”

“Now where was I? Oh, yes-I believe that Amy and Mary were both murdered by Melvin Stoltzfus.”

“Our Melvin Stoltzfus?” Freni’s hands flew to her throat as she fought for her breath.

“One and the same. Like I’ve always said, the man is evil personified.”

Freni staggered over to the nearest straight chair and dropped heavily on it like a sack of spuds. “Does his mama know?”

His mama. She was my mama too-that was the kicker. Elvina Stoltzfus was my birth mother. Given the circumstances surrounding my conception, and the social climate of the time, I don’t blame her. I do, however, blame her for the way she continues to treat Melvin, even after he’s been convicted of first-degree murder, as if he were a prince, deserving of every consideration. No doubt Elvina has broken every law in the book, aiding and abetting that son of a gun-toting, hunting, deceased husband of hers. If there’s any justice in this world-but I’m beginning to doubt that there is-Elvina will end up in the slammer as well.

“Freni,” I said, “this is just my theory. Susannah warned me that he was back and would try something. How these two deaths are connected, I don’t know-but I intend to find out. And believe me, you’ll be the first to know.”

Police Chief Jerry Memmer was polite as he could be. He listened to everything I had to say and took reams of notes, in addition to recording our conversation. But when it was all said and done, there was really nothing anyone could do but sit and wait.

Aside from the tractor prints, Melvin had left no tracks at the scene of the crime. Yes, Elizabeth Gastelli had seen a tractor driving along Ebenezer Road, but she couldn’t remember exactly when. Besides, trying to identify a tractor in Hernia was like looking for a drunk in a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston.

Amy’s death also remained a mystery. I wasn’t supposed to know the facts, but Chief Memmer filled me in anyway, given that I used to be mayor of his new hometown and was still its unofficial crime solver. At any rate, the young woman had been strangled to death by a bubble gum pink pashmina, which is a kind of scarf, I’m told. There’d been no prints left behind, and no signs of forced entry. The supposition was that whoever had so brutally murdered the girl had either been an acquaintance or in possession of a gilded tongue. The second idea made perfect sense to me: young women that age are easily flattered by the hairier sex into believing that they alone are the special one, and that said relationship will inevitably lead to the altar.

I had just stepped outside into the street, in front of Hernia’s police station, when my cell phone rang. I have chosen as my ringtone the dulcet sounds of Pachelbel’s Canon, so you see, it really is not at all obnoxious. In fact, I have been known to hold up my phone in public places when it rings so that others may be blessed by hearing this classic. It is my fond hope that one day, at the Monroeville Mall, a rapper will fall to his knees in awe and forsake his base ways.

Because there was no one else about at this particular moment, I answered after the first ring. “Yoder ’s House of Fun and Frolic, the owner herself speaking.”

“I need your help,” a desperate voice said.

27

“And a gracious hello to you too, Agnes,” I said. “The answer to eighteen down is ‘fubsy.’ According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, it means ‘chubby and somewhat squat.’ ”

“I’m through with the crossword, Magdalena. This is about my uncles; they’re running amok.”

“Yes, I know. Ida was over here yesterday and I jokingly told her to start a nudist colony.”

“Which she did.”

“She didn’t!”

“Oh, but she did. Just before this morning’s meditation-which was supposed to be on the meaningfulness of mediocrity-ten of the sisters assumed the lotus position au naturel!”

“Look on the bright side, dear: the lotus is a beautiful flower that-”

“That means that they sat with their legs crossed so that their feet were tucked up against the opposing knee. You can imagine what happened next.”

“If I do, I’ll have to perform my own lobotomy, and that can be a laborious process when one is using a number two pencil-or so I’ve heard.”

“This isn’t funny, Magdalena. After the meditation ended, these ten sisters decided to spread the Gospel of Physical Freedom-that’s what they’re calling it-to the good folks of Hernia.”

“Uh-oh. Exactly what does that mean?”

“They’re following Hertzler Road into town as we speak. They plan to go door to door, in pairs, kind of like Mormon missionaries. You’ve got to do something to stop them.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m right here at the station, so I’ll alert the chief-”

“No, you can’t!”

I could practically feel the vehemence in her voice coming through the airwaves. “What do you mean by ‘you can’t’?”

“I mean you can’t tell Chief Memmer what’s happening because if my uncles get arrested, they’ll get locked up for a year-minimum. That was the deal they cut with the judge last time. So give me a chance to talk to them first. Someone put them up to this missionary business. I just know that’s the case.”

“That could be, but in the meantime a whole lot of Herniaites are going to have to ruin their number two pencils, and that’s just not fair. Some of these folks have led really sheltered lives. Why Edith Wharton confessed to me on her deathbed that she had never even gotten a look at her own nether region, much less anyone else’s. That was her one big regret in life,”