“She’s only kidding,” Gabe said. “Little Jacob just started having sleepovers; in fact, this is his first one.”
If my arms had been long enough, and if I hadn’t had five hundred years of pacifist breeding to overcome, I’d have reached the length of the table and throttled my dearly beloved. What was he thinking! Someone in this bunch could be in cahoots with Melvin. At the very least, there was bound to be a bug somewhere, and the dining room seemed like a likely location.
Yes, I’d conducted a thorough search before supper, but surveillance systems these days are extremely sophisticated. Short of taking a torch to the room, there was no way I could be sure of disabling everything anyway.
“Miss Yoder,” Olivia said, a new bite of egg familiarizing itself with her dentures, “I don’t find you in the least bit amusing. It’s a shame, you know, because at first I thought we might really get on, given the fact that we are roughly the same age. But you are rude, crude, and generally very abrasive; you are not anything like what I expected a Mennonite woman to be like.”
“I think she’s delightful,” Tiny said.
“Me too,” Barbie said.
I looked at the men, one at a time.
“Sorry, but I’ll have to agree with my wife,” Carl said.
“And I’ll agree with mine,” Peewee said, “even though you did insult me with your ‘didn’t starve’ comment.”
“Which was true,” Tiny said. “You promised me you’d go on a diet.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“What about you, George?” I said.
“You’re a hoot, Miss Yoder.”
I turned to Surimanda. “And you?”
“I adore you, Miss Yoder.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said. “I will continue to be myself, we will continue to feed you sturdy peasant fare, and you will butt out of our family business. Capisce?”
“Hon!”
But everyone except Gabe laughed-even Olivia snickered.
I used to have lofty dreams. Often in them I flew without the benefit of wings. Since the birth of Jacob, my dreams tend to be darker and have, in fact, included a few in which he is somewhere far away, and I am trying to reach him. In these dreams there are always insurmountable obstacles, such as the road keeps disappearing, or Jacob’s whereabouts continually change. I’ve even had a few dreams in which I can no longer remember what he looks like or, worse yet, I see Ida’s head on my dear son’s body.
This particular night I was dreaming that Agnes and Dorothy Yoder were one and the same person. Agnes was actually Dorothy’s fat suit, which she could take off and put on at will,
“But you can’t quit on me now,” Agnes pleaded. “You were supposed to arrange a sleepover with the Royal Moroccan Marching Band. They’re only going to be in town one night.”
“What?”
“ Magdalena, you’re getting very forgetful. My rendezvous with the Shriners was Saturday night in Somerset; it was my breakfast in bed with the Jaycees-”
“No, no, I won’t!”
“ Magdalena, it’s only me-Gabe.”
“Gabe? Best friend or not, you get your hands off my Cuddle Buns!” I lunged for Agnes with both hands, claws bared.
“Hon!”
“What?” I popped up in bed as the bad dream drained away like the remains of a large soap bubble.
“You were having a nightmare, hon, and were fighting back at something tooth and nail; I have the scratch marks to prove it.”
“I’m so sorry! There’s some hydrogen peroxide under the sink-”
“Don’t worry about me. There’s someone here to see you.”
Unconsciously my hands balled into fists.
“Agnes?” I bleated guiltily. Now that’s a fine “how do you do” for a woman with five hundred years of pacifist blood flowing through her veins. Clearly I was in need of a vacation somewhere: just me and my hunkylicious Babester and my precious little Babykins-preferably someplace far away from Hernia. The Marquesa Islands in the South Pacific came to mind.
“No, not that busybody; it’s the police chief.”
Chief Jerry Memmer is a pleasant, mild-mannered man who hails originally from somewhere near Indianapolis. So far his sensible Hoosier ways seem to be just what Hernia needs.
During the year and a half that he’s been running the show, our crime rate has fallen substantially. There have been no murders committed, no horses stolen, and no overpasses painted. The only case of a “malicious mischief” reported involved slit diaper bags on the horses tied up outside Yoder’s Corner Market one morning. Either someone had it in for Sam, or the Amish who were shopping inside, but apart from a few spilled “road apples” there was no real harm done.
It helps that the Memmers are good Christian folk of the conservative bent, who put noodles on their mashed potatoes. They have blended into the fabric of Hernia almost seamlessly, and that has been a blessing for me, because at this stage in my life, I would like nothing more than to leave civic responsibility behind. Jerry Memmer is an avid model-train enthusiast, and his wife, Marilyn, can quilt along with the best of our local quilt masters, which is saying quite a lot. In short, I couldn’t ask for more qualified and congenial replacements.
Jerry is even pleasant to look at, albeit a bit shy. Perhaps my appearance in a bathrobe was too much for the devout man, because he squirmed in his parlor chair, like a grub on a weenie roasting stick-not that I’ve roasted many grubs, mind you.
“Yes, Jerry, what is it?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Rosen-uh, Miss Yoder-uh-”
“How about Magdalena, like I’ve asked you to call me a million times?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry to show up at three in the morning. Honest-”
“Ding dang dong! Is that what time it is?”
“ Magdalena! You have the mouth of a truck driver!”
I slapped the offending lips. “So I do; and I assure you that they are ever so contrite. Now, tell me, what is the problem? Has your wife overdosed on chocolate again?”
“No, it’s about a woman named Amy Neubrander-up in Bedford.”
Although nowhere near a standing body of water, much less one with a current or influenced by tides, I felt the undertow. “What
“She’s dead, Magdalena. The sheriff asked me to tell you, on account of I know you better than he does.”
I felt my way to a straight-backed chair-all the chairs in my parlor are purposely uncomfortable-and sat. “How did she die? When?”
“Apparently just hours ago. A neighbor in her building heard a shot, but by the time he got the super to open up-Well, there was nothing to be done by anyone. She was shot at close range in the back of the head.”
“Dong dong dong,” I said slowly, letting the cussword roll off my tongue like a seasoned pro. “What a cowardly schmuck!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Melvin-Melvin Stoltzfus. It was an execution-style murder, performed either by him or one of his band of not-so-merry robbers.”
Chief Memmer’s eyes bulged and he swallowed hard. “
“We supposedly share some genes, but the jury’s still out, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Have you been tested?”
“This is hardly the time for idle chitchat, Chief.” The truth of the matter was that I feared the outcome of such a test. I would rather go through life living with the possibility that what Elvina said was true-Melvin was my brother-than with the certainty that it was so. The latter would cause me to seek a complete blood transfusion, comprehensive flesh replacement, and universal bone substitution. The last I’ve heard is that one or more of those procedures is still impossible.
“I’m sorry, Magdalena. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes, actually there is.”
“Anything.”
“Keep your guard up. Melvin hates authority of all kind. It wouldn’t surprise me if he stages an attack on you-either at home or at the station.”
“But my wife! Marilyn has nothing to do with my job; she’s a retired nurse who gave back so much to the community in Indiana.”
“Then you might see that she returns there until Melvin is caught. Believe me, I know firsthand how this monster’s mind works, and it ain’t pretty-pardon my use of the vernacular.”
“I see,” he said, but I’m not sure he did. In any case, he sent his pretty wife packing the next morning.
22
I knew that the sheriff wouldn’t let me get anywhere near Amy’s apartment at that hour, so I returned to bed. It was with a bit of a jolt that I awoke the next morning and recalled that Amy had been senselessly murdered-but then aren’t all murders senseless? I hadn’t known the girl well enough to form a personal attachment, but the fact that she was so young, and died at the hands of someone I did know well, haunted me.
My long-suffering husband took it upon himself to cook breakfast for the gang from New Jersey, because he makes an almost-edible Southwestern-style omelet. Meanwhile I set out some boxes of cornflakes and two platters of toast that were sure to please: one pale and the other bordering on burned. Then I rang my five-pound dinner bell.
Tiny Timms was the first to appear. “Good morning, Miss Yoder,” she said, just as perky as Katie Couric after a good night’s sleep.
“And good morning to-Oh no, you don’t, missy! Not again!”
“What? What’s wrong with this one?”
The tiny woman with the enormous assets was dressed in what has been described to me as a baby- doll negligee. Over that, she wore what was supposed to be a duster, but both were constructed from fabric so sheer that I could tell she wasn’t a natural blonde.
