by Tamar Myers
“Whatever you say, Magdalena.”
“And you’re going to have to take orders from me. Do you think you can handle that?”
During the ensuing pause my beloved country elected its first female President—a black Jewish woman with a Spanish surname. “Yeah, yeah,” he finally grumbled. “I can handle it.”
“Good. Because my first order is that you don’t touch anything until I get there.”
“But I—”
“Already did?”
“You hadn’t given me any orders yet.”
I sighed again. “Well, stop touching. Have you called the coroner?”
“No.”
“The morgue?”
“The morgue?”
“Never mind. I’ll be right there.”
One can see Stucky Ridge from my front porch, but getting there took me fifteen minutes. That’s because I had to first put on some clothes, and then I had to parry anxious queries from my guests. Also, this local landmark is more of a mountain than a ridge, and the road to the top winds like an uncoiled Slinky.
Melvin hadn’t said where the murder had occurred, and I was hoping against hope that I would find him on the picnic table side and not the cemetery. Settlers’ Cemetery is where my parents are buried, and it’s spooky enough at high noon on a bright summer day.
To my immense relief my nemesis was on neither side of the ridge, but in a copse that straddles the middle and serves as a divider between these two key areas. I could see the flashing blue lights of the cruiser as soon as I crested the ridge. What I couldn’t figure out was how he had managed to get the car into the dense woods I cruised down the road that leads past the picnic area, and finding no access, started down die cemetery lane. That’s when Melvin came charging out of the trees waving a flashlight.
I rolled down my window. “How on earth did you get the cruiser in there?”
“You go past the cemetery—all the way to the end, and make a sharp left. But don’t worry about that. Leave your car where it is and follow me.”
I did as I was bid. “What’s with the road back there? I never knew it existed.”
“It’s not a real road, Yoder. It’s a way the teenagers get their cars in the woods”
“Why would they do that?”
“To have sex, Yoder—and to drink. You should see all the empty beer cans and discarded condoms.”
That was a shocker. I knew that amorous couples parked in the picnic area—the Babester and I once exchanged a chaste smooch there—but it never occurred to me that someone would go all the way, so to speak, in a public place. Stucky Ridge was beginning to sound a lot like Sodom and Gomorrah.
I trotted gingerly behind Melvin. Should I accidentally step on something unpleasant, the Hernia Police Department was going to owe me a new pair of brogans. When we’d gone about thirty yards I could see Ron Humphrey standing next to the cruiser. A few more yards and the corpse was visible, facedown and illuminated by the headlights.
“Hi, Ron,” I said. But I was looking at the dead body. Even from the back I could tell it was Buzzy.
“Hello, Miss Yoder. Just so you know, I had nothing to do with this.”
I nodded. The young man is a computer programmer who lives in Hernia but works in Bedford. Other than the fact that he drinks alcohol—in church, no less—and believes in infant baptism, and is a fairly recent arrival in town, I have nothing against him. By all accounts he’s a hardworking, taxpaying citizen, who involves himself in civic affairs. He isn’t married, but the grapevine has it that he’s heterosexual. My hope is that he will marry a Mennonite woman who can show him the error of his ways.
Now, where was I? Oh yes, Buzzy Porter’s trunk and extremities appeared to be unmarked. However, the back of his head was covered with blood, and there seemed to be a slight depression at the crest.
“Has either of you touched the body?” I asked.
“I already confessed, Yoder. Of course I touched the body. How else could I tell if he was really dead?”
“Good point. But did you move it?”
Melvin’s left eye was trained on the corpse; his right eye stared into mine. It gave me the willies.
“Yoder,” he snarled, “what was I supposed to do, run over him?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You can’t back up in here. You’ve got to make a loop to get out, and he was right in the way.”
There is no use in beating a dead horse—or a rationally challenged arthropod. “Show me exactly where you found him,” I said to Ron Humphrey.
He led me about ten feet past the cruiser. “Here, I think.”
I studied the surrounding area with a flashlight I borrowed from Melvin. As Melvin had warned, the ground was littered with empty cans, bottles, and unmentionables. There was even a brassiere hanging from a bush. Size 36C.
There was, however, no indication of a struggle, although I did find splotches of dark blood on fallen leaves. Most of it was concentrated where Ron had pointed, but there seemed to be a trail as well. In my opinion there was nothing more I could do until the world below awoke. But since the sky to the east was beginning to brighten, it wouldn’t be long.
“Melvin, did you call the sheriff?”
“You know I can’t do that.”
There was no need for him to elaborate. Sheriff Hobson thought the same way I did about Melvin’s investigation skills. Besides, due to the optimistic attitude of the founding fathers, Stucky Ridge was well within the city limits. Technically, it was Melvin’s bailiwick, unless he sought outside help from the county. With the election three weeks away, that wasn’t going to happen.
“But you finally called the coroner?”
“Yes. He should be here any minute.”
“Good. I’m going to give Ron a ride home, then I’m coming right back. You wait here for the coroner.”
“Alone?”
I couldn’t blame the guy for sounding nervous. “Play the radio.”
Melvin followed us to the edge of the copse. When I looked in the rearview mirror he appeared poised, as if at any second he would break into a run and beat me down the mountain.
8
“So, Ron,” I said in a voice as smooth as Freni’s chocolate silk pie, “do you often jog up the mountain in the dark?”
“Yeah.”
“No kidding? Why?” Perhaps it was some weird Episcopalian ritual.
“I’m practicing for a marathon.”
“That’s what Chief Stoltzfus said. But why in the dark?”
“Because then I don’t have to worry about cars It takes me thirty-five minutes to get up here, twenty to get down. By then it’s just starting to get light, so I run around the high-school track fifty times.”
I gasped. “Don’t you realize you’re using up all your heartbeats?”
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind, dear. So tell me about this morning. What time did you start?”
“I keep my alarm set at four thirty—except for this morning. I got up a little earlier on account I have to get to work early because of a virus that’s shut down two of our biggest clients.”
“Feed a cold and starve a fever.”
“This is a computer virus, Miss Yoder.”
“I knew that.” Show me where it’s a sin to lie in one’s own defense. “So, dear, do you normally run through the woods?”
“No, ma’am. I run to the end of the picnic area, touch the last table, and then start down. But tonight—I mean, this morning—I saw a light in the woods, so I decided to investigate.”
“You didn’t think that could be dangerous?”
He chuckled. “Miss Yoder, I moved here from Boston. What could possibly be dangerous in the woods out here?”
“Too bad you can’t ask the victim that.”
“Yeah, well, that definitely changes things. Anyway, I was hoping for a sighting.”
“Of what? Teenagers doing the—never you mind.” “Thist me, Hernia kids never stay out that late
. I was hoping it was an alien spacecraft.”
That didn’t surprise me coming from an Episcopalian. If he read his Bible—the King James version, of course, because that’s what the Good Lord Himself reads—he wouldn’t find anything about little green men from Mars. Come to think of it, he wouldn’t find anything about computers either. I squelched my impulse to lecture the lad by stepping on the gas.
“Miss Yoder, you really know how to drive.”
We squealed around a turn. “So you entered the woods. What happened next?”
“The light went out and I heard a thud. Then some-one running through the brush. There must have been a car parked on the cemetery side, because the next thing I heard was a car tearing down the mountain—about as fast as you’re driving now.”
I took that as a compliment. “Tell me about the thud. Do you think that was the sound made when Buzzy Porter was hit on the back of the head?”
“No, ma’am. This was off to the side, and it sounded more like something hitting a tree.”
I shuddered. How could the boy possibly discern be-tween the sounds of something whacking a skull, as op-posed to a tree? Perhaps it was knowledge he picked up playing those video games young folks are so fond of. “Then what did you do, Ron?”
“Well, I have this little flashlight I take with me when I rim in the dark”—he held up an object no larger than a pen—”and I picked my way over to where I thought I’d seen the light. That’s when I almost stumbled over the body. Man, it was awful. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing at first. But as soon as I got it together, I called Chief Stoltzfus on my cell phone.”
“You carry that with you wherever you go?” “Doesn’t everyone?”
Cell phones. That’s another c word you won’t find in the Bible. I always leave my cell phone in the car.
“Weren’t you scared,” I asked, “waiting alone there for Chief Stoltzfus to arrive?”
“Not really. Like I said, the car took oft If it came back I would have made a beeline straight down the side of the mountain. Sure it’s steep, but the car couldn’t follow.”
I wouldn’t want to stand guard over a corpse in a copse, especially one so close to a cemetery. No doubt about it, I would have hoofed it back down the mountain to meet Melvin halfway. One had to admire the young man in spite of his bizarre belief in aliens. “Thanks for your help in this matter, dear.”
“No problem. And if you want to know who did it, just ask.”
It’s a good thing I make my passengers wear seat belts. I braked so hard my probing proboscis came within a millimeter of reinventing itself on the steering wheel. But instead of my past fleeting before my eyes, I saw my future. With a bit less beak, and in the right light, I could pass for Meryl Streep. Then think of all the opportunities that would lay before me. I could leave my sheltered life in the hills of Hernia and move to the hills of Hollywood. Of course, I’d have to give up my religion, and maybe the Babester, but if Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford came along ...
“Miss Yoder, you all right?”
I shook myself into reality. “I’m fine, dear. I was just lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory. For a second there I thought you said you knew who killed Buzzy Porter.”
“Drug dealers, that’s who.”
I stared through the easing darkness. “You know that for a fact? How?”
“It just stands to reason. A man, alone, gets murdered in a remote location, it’s night—what else could it be?” I felt as let down as Susannah must have felt when she discovered the truth about Santa Claus. At least I was a mature woman with a job to do, whereas she was barely out of her teens at the time.
“I’ll keep your theory in mind,” I said charitably.
“Oh, it’s a fact. You’ll see.”
I didn’t have much to say to him the rest of the way to his house, except to inform him that I would probably be in touch with him again soon. The second he hopped out, I pressed the pedal to the metal. And why not? The town’s only squad car was up on Stucky Ridge. Besides, there still wasn’t a soul stirring—if you discount the mob of marauding raccoons that were just getting off work. Somehow I managed to miss all of them.
When I got back on top it was barely light enough to read a newspaper. Melvin was standing in the open, silhouetted by the rising sun. His arms and legs looked un-usually spindly, and his head was enormous. Perhaps Ron’s original theory of aliens had been the correct one. If so, our town’s theological pundits were going to have to do some quick thinking. Because God had only one son to sacrifice for the sins of the world, any visitors from outer space were either sinless, or doomed. No matter how you looked at it, it was a sticky wicket.
I rolled the window down. “You looking for a ride, mister?”
“Very funny, Yoder. You bring me coffee and doughnuts?”
“No.”
“Then what took you so long?”
“You didn’t want me to speed, did you?”
He waved aside my question with a sticklike arm. “Bad news, Yoder. The coroner called. There’s been a pileup on the turnpike. We have to handle this ourselves.”
“You call Hernia Hospital?”
“The ambulance is on its way. They’ve agreed to let us keep the victim in the morgue.”
That was a minor miracle. Hernia Hospital is a private institution and really nothing more than a glorified clinic run by the autocratic Dr. Luther and his imperious sidekick, Nurse Dudley. If I were asked to rename them I would pick Dr. Mean and Nurse Meaner. I much prefer to drive the twelve twisting miles into Bedford for my medical care. And yes, I would still feel that way if I wasn’t banned from the premises.
“What are the strings, dear?”
“No strings.”
“Beans.”
“There you go, swearing again. Okay, so I promised to take the ambulance in for a tune-up and lube job. You happy, Yoder?”
Of course I wasn’t happy. A man had died, for pity’s sake.
Now that it was light I could see just how much Melvin had destroyed the crime scene by moving Buzzy’s body. Still, it appeared to my untrained mind that the prankster had not been killed at the site where he was found, but moved there afterwards. Or least he had been badly wounded at some other location. I found a streak of blood on a low-hanging leaf about a yard away, and a splotch of blood on the ground about ten feet from that. Then the trail, if that’s what it was, disappeared.
“Melvin, you wait here for the ambulance. I’m going to get help.”
“Don’t be crazy, Yoder. That boyfriend of yours is a doctor, but he can’t work miracles.”
“The help isn’t for Buzzy,” I said through clenched teeth. “It’s help with the investigation.”
I didn’t stick around to hear Melvin’s ranting. No doubt he felt threatened, but he’d only feel foolish when he saw who I had in mind.
9
Doc Shafor is a retired veterinarian. He is also an octogenarian whose libido got stuck on high sometime during his twenties. But most important, he is the only person I know in Hernia who owns an honest-to-goodness bloodhound.
As I suspected, he was up and about at that hour. In fact, he was in the process of cooking breakfast and had a hard time hearing my knock over the sound of sizzling bacon. When he finally opened the door, his face lit up. “You’re just in time, Magdalena.”
“Doc, I can’t stay for breakfast. I just—”
“Sure you can.”
“No, really. There’s—”
He grabbed my arm with gnarled fingers that had not lost their strength. “Whatever the problem is, it will keep until after we eat. I’ve made scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, two kinds of sausage, hash browns, fried apples, and biscuits from scratch. And not drop biscuits either, but rolled.”
“Man does not live by bread alone,” I said and sailed into the house on a wave of aromas.
“Good call.”
“But I’ll have to eat and run. I’m here on police business.”
I
followed Doc into the kitchen. There were two place settings on the table, but I knew the extra one was not intended for me. Although Doc’s been a widower for thirty years, he hates to eat alone. He even cooks like he’s cooking for two. After we’d loaded our plates, I could have fed the guests back at the inn with what remained on the stove.
“Magdalena,” he said when we were seated, “you’re still a fine-looking woman.”
The way his eyes appraised me, I felt like a horse. I suppose that was fitting, because after the Good Lord made me He didn’t break the mold. Instead He made an exact copy, slapped a saddle on its back, and yelled giddyap.
“Thanks, Doc—I think. You’re looking pretty good yourself.”
“Is that a come on?”
“Gracious, no. You know I have a beau.” I knew Doc too well to be shocked.
“I hope you realize that if this thing with that New York doctor doesn’t work out—well, I’m willing to be more than friends.”
It was time to switch to the world’s second most deliberated topic. “These are the best biscuits I’ve ever eaten.”
“It was my wife’s recipe. After Belinda passed, I had no choice but to learn how to cook. Say, you in the mood for some scrapple?”
“I’d sooner eat ground glass. Doc, I have a question to ask you.”
“Ask away, but I have a hunch the answer is going to be eight inches.”
“Excuse me?”
“You want to know how far I keep the biscuits from the top of the oven, so they don’t burn on top. Right?”
“It’s a favor, Doc, not a cooking tip. You still own that bloodhound?”
“You mean Blue? Yeah, she’s out back. I have to keep her outside full-time now because she’s incontinent.”
“Does her sniffer still work?”
Doc winked. “She let me know you were coming, Magdalena. That’s how I knew to set two plates.”
“Right. Doc, you think I could borrow Blue?”
“Don’t see why not. This the police business you were talking about?”
“Yes. There’s been a murder up on Stucky Ridge.”