“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.”
“I suppose it’s mine?”
“Elias saw it happen, but he didn’t do a thing! He could have helped Jimmy find the pills.”
“And because Minerva was such a glutton,” I said, “she ate a whole griddle’s worth of hotcakes in one sitting, thus sparing everyone else.”
Agnes finally found the nerve to speak. “How much was Elias asking for?”
Frankie snorted. “A million dollars! Ha. Where was someone like Jimmy going to find that kind of money?”
“But Elias was rich,” I said.
Frankie snorted again. “Are you rich, Magdalena?”
“Why, yes, I am-not that it’s your business, dear.”
“Well, goody for you. But apparently not everyone who appears to be rich actually is. Sure, Elias owned a fancy mountain-top house, but BUM was about to go out of business.”
“The Chinese?”
“The Indians-from India. An enterprising young man in New Delhi has started a company called Sacred Cow Udder Massage. It’s supposed to be a superior product, plus it’s much cheaper. American farmers are switching in droves from BUM to SCUM. Believe me, Elias was desperately in need of cash.”
“And so,” Agnes said, “a bad decision that turns out fatal is covered up by murder. Of course, sin can’t stay covered up. Doesn’t the Bible say that, Magdalena?”
“Be sure your sin will find you out,” I said. “Numbers 32:23b.”
“Shut up, but both of yinz,” Frankie said.
I alerted Sheriff Hughes the second I was within calling range, and we were met by a fleet of squad cars and a flotilla of ambulances before we even got to Hernia. Just how fast the sheriff and his crew drive, I don’t even want to know, for fear that I may have to perform a citizen’s arrest on one of them sometime soon.
Flannery Hughes is one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet, and just because his mama smoked a lot of marijuana while she was pregnant is no reason to suppose that he’s not intelligent; he gets his lack of brains from his papa’s side of the family, and I mean that charitably. His father sold the family farm and sunk the proceeds into a mail-order business selling pocket-size bags of sand at a dollar each. These were marketed as food for pet rocks, back during that craze. Papa Hughes actually managed to sell twenty-nine of these little bags-all to people from Marin County, California. When it became sadly apparent that his business was a bust, he spent the rest of his life writing unsigned reviews for Publishers Weekly.
At any rate, the sheriff insisted on riding in the ambulance with me to Bedford Memorial Hospital, which meant that the Babester had to follow by car. There was no time to find a sitter, so Baby Babester rode with him.
“Sheriff,” I said, “I had an epiphany this morning, before I got the call from Agnes Mishler telling me that Wanda Hemphopple was over at her house.”
“Miss Yoder is delusional,” Sheriff Hughes said to the ambulance attendant over the back of his hand. “Epiphany was in January.”
“So it was, dear. At any rate, I have reason to believe that Melvin Stoltzfus, Hernia’s most notorious criminal-given that he was once our chief of police-is now posing as a nun, traveling cross-country with a newfound sect called the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy.”
The ambulance attendant chuckled politely, but the sheriff laughed outright. “Miss Yoder, now, that really takes the cake! Even those silly mystery novels my papa used to review wouldn’t have plots as far-fetched as that.”
“Life is stranger than fiction, dear. But when you think about it, that’s a perfect way for him to leave the area without being detected.”
“Except by you?”
“I put two and two together. I learned to add in elementary school.”
Now the ambulance attendant snickered. This time Sheriff Hughes was not amused.
“And how was it that you deduced that it was Mrs. Schwartz-uh-the woman in custody-who ran over the young, exceptionally good-looking Elias Whitmore?”
“I was working on the assumption that the second killer was also a member of our brotherhood. Then I remembered that Frankie Schwartzentruber’s father had been in the driveway construction business. It was a long shot, granted, but my papa was a dairyman, and I do know how to milk a cow. Anyway, that was my first clue. Then my daughter-well, she is only my pseudo-daughter at the moment, but that will all change shortly-said something provocative about folks protecting the ones they love, and that’s when I remembered I’d seen a photograph of Frankie with James Neufenbakker, and the two of them were looking like a pair of New Caledonian lovebirds. I don’t know if you’ve met James, but the man is held together by Band-Aids and a bad temper, my real point being that I was sure he took a variety of medications.” I paused to inhale some much-needed oxygen.