by Tamar Myers
“Yes, but at your age you have to figure the difference out in dog years. Think of Jimmy as being twenty-eight years older than you. That would make him forty-one.”
“Gross. That’s ancient. No way I’m gonna date any-one that old.”
There was no point in reminding her just then that she wasn’t going to date anyone—period—^until she was older. At least not for another two dog years.
“Sweetie,” I said as sweetly as I could, “did you have anything to eat at the tractor pull this morning?”
“Man! Somebody busted me, didn’t they?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And them Southerners seemed like such nice people.”
“It was Nurse Dudley, dear.”
“Figures. Oh well, go ahead and yell at me, Mom.” “I’m not going to yell, Alison. I think you already learned your lesson. Now, put Freni on the phone, please.”
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“She quit.”
“What? She just unquit a few hours ago.”
“Yeah, but you see, that nice Japanese lady and them farmer hicks—”
“You mean the Nortons, dear.”
“Whatever. They went into Bedford and came back with fancy groceries and the Japanese lady is going to make everyone lunch. Something called terry yucky. Oh, and she had to buy herself some new clothes too, on account of you.”
“It’s not my fault that cabdriver hasn’t been caught. And by the way, that’s teriyaki, dear.”
“Whatever. Mom, do I have to eat it?”
“No.” Normally I would have said ‘yes’—both to teach her a lesson about gorging on pastries and to expose her palate to a wider range of tastes, but I was miffed that my guests had commandeered the kitchen. “Cool. Mom, you’re the best.”
“Remember that the next time you’re tempted to say I’m the meanest mom in the whole wide world.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
“Alison, dear, did you still want to go to the greased-pig chase this afternoon?”
“Nah. I want to hang out here. My stomach still hurts.”
“Okay, but Jimmy does not come over. Is that clear?” She mumbled something unintelligible.
“I said, is that clear?”
“I heard ya. And anyway, he can’t come over because he’s going to be in that stupid pig race.”
“It’s not a race, dear. It’s a chase.”
“Whatever. Can I go now?”
“Yes, dear,” I said. My tone was still sweet, even though my patience had been stretched as thin as phyllo dough.
Frankly, I was glad my charge had decided to stay home. It was time to take my investigation of Buzzy Porter’s death to the next level. I decided to skip the po-lice station and go straight to the heart of Hernia’s law-enforcement team.
13
Zelda Root is our only full-time police officer other than Melvin. She’s a short thing with enormous breasts, no hips, and matchstick ankles. In other words, the poor woman is shaped vaguely like a rooster, except that a cockerel has only one breast, and Zelda has almost no feathers. But few people ever notice Zelda’s intriguing physique, not if they get a gander at her head first. Her bleached hair is short and worn in spikes, like greasy porcupine quills. As for her face—don’t get me wrong; there is nothing inherently homely about it. The fact is Zelda applies her makeup with a trowel, making even Tammy Faye seem like a minimalist. For years there were rumors that Jimmy Hoffa was alive and well and living in Hernia, disguised by layers of Maybelline.
Since there had been no sign of Zelda downtown, I had a hunch I’d find her at home. Sure enough, her beat- up 1978 blue Oldsmobile was parked in the carport ad-jacent to her vinyl-sided bungalow. Zelda never uses her front door, so I knocked on the side kitchen door. Al-most immediately I could see Zelda through the unobstructed pane. She was teetering toward me on heels as spiky as her hairdo. The second she saw who it was, her puttied face began to crumble.
“Now what?” she said, opening the door just a crack. I could barely fit my nose through the space, for crying out loud.
“Zelda, dear, aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Magdalena, this is my day off.”
“It is? Melvin said you would be directing traffic, and whatever else it took to keep those unruly Amish and Mennonites in line.”
She shrugged, precipitating a shower of spackle speckles on her broad shoulders. “I put in my application to take today off last year. Melvin okayed it.”
“I’m not questioning that, dear. But he probably wasn’t remembering the festival. It’s been planned for years. A hundred years to be exact.”
“That may be, but I’m not working today. I have more important things to do.”
“Like what? You’re not even enjoying the festivities. Why, the tractor pull must be half-over by now.”
“Yes, but the pig chase isn’t until this afternoon.”
“And you plan to watch that?”
“I don’t plan to watch, Magdalena. I plan to win the competition. The price of meat has been skyrocketing lately.”
“Get out of town!” I have my sister, Susannah, to thank for that worldly expression.
She sighed, and I had to dodge a minor dust storm. “Okay,” she said, “you might as well come in. You’re like a bulldog, Magdalena, you know that? Once you get your teeth into something, there is no shaking you loose.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, dear.”
She opened the glass storm door and I sailed in. I’d been in Zelda’s house dozens of times, so I didn’t even wait for the invitation to plop my bony behind in one of her neon orange beanbag chairs. Just as quickly, I hauled my patooty out of the legumes.
“Zelda, do you have company? I hear voices in another room.”
Zelda blushed. I could tell, because the cracks on her face, the ones from which putty had fallen, were red.
“That’s the radio you hear.”
“I don’t think so. One sounds a lot like Mary Lehman.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“And the other one sounds like Esther Rensberger.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Zelda,” I said sternly, and gave her my best “mom” look.
“All right, I give up. But you had no business stopping by here without calling.” Without further ado she led me to her guest bedroom.
The two aforementioned ladies were seated cross-legged on the floor in front of an open closet. A long low table occupied this narrow space. Atop the table was a framed photograph of the menacing mantis, Melvin Stoltzfus, flanked by two flaming candles. Three yellow roses, laid in a straight line, defined the front of this makeshift altar.
Esther Rensberger was the first to her feet. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
I gave her the look. “Oh?”
“We weren’t actually worshipping him.”
Mary Lehman is on the heavy side and had to kneel before standing. “She means we don’t pray to him. We just pray for him.”
“But we do sing hymns,” Esther said. Although she’s in the choir at my church, Beechy Grove Mennonite, her singing voice has been known to make tomcats commit suicide. Reverend Schrock insists that she has a right to be in choir and cites Psalm 100 to support his stand.
“Just not church hymns,” Mary said, between pants.
A glance at Zelda’s crumbling facade confirmed that our town’s policewoman was mortified. She knew I was aware of the shrine she maintained in my brother-in- law’s honor, but that was all. Thist me, I wouldn’t have dreamed—not in a zillion years—that there could be three people in Hernia this kooky.
I was both appalled and intrigued. “Ladies, please sing one of your hymns.”
“They’re not really hymns,” Zelda muttered. “They’re more like odes.”
“Then honor me with one of your odes.”
“Magdalena, you’re mocking us, aren’t you?”
“
Moi? How can I mock unless I have all the facts? What exactly goes on in this room?”
Zelda and Mary exchanged meaning-packed glances, but Esther stepped right up to the plate. “We affirm that Melvin Stoltzfus,” she said, as if reading from a document, “is the most handsome, charming, and intelligent man in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
“You really believe that?”
“He’s God’s gift to women,” Mary cooed.
Zelda uttered a soft “amen.”
I treated them all to my most withering look. “God gave that gift to my sister, Susannah. If you want to be recipients, you need to find yourselves another man. Besides, you’ve got it all wrong. Melvin Stoltzfus is the least handsome, charming, and intelligent man in the state.”
“Infidel!” Mary shouted, shaking a pudgy fist in the air.
“Blasphemer!” Esther grabbed a rose and hurled it at me. Her aim, like her voice, was far off the mark.
I pinched one of Zelda’s elbows with my talons and hauled her back to the kitchen. “Your friends are nuts, you know that?”
“Magdalena, don’t be rude.”
“Keep them away from caramel, because they could easily end up as PayDay bars.”
She glared at me through faux lashes so thick I couldn’t see the whites of her eyes. “Why did you come here anyway?”
“Police business, dear. I’m afraid there’s been another murder in town. Two murders, actually.”
“The PennDutch?”
“No! Why does everybody assume that?”
“Face it, even Jessica Fletcher wouldn’t spend the night there.”
“Who is she?”
“Never mind. Who are the victims?”
“Well, a man named Buzzy Porter, for one. He was a guest of mine—but the murder happened up on Stucky Ridge. The second victim was Ron Humphrey.”
Zelda teetered on her stilettos. “Our Ron Humphrey?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Where did that happen?”
Although Zelda has a decade on Ron, they were well acquainted. Our town has a small closely knit singles group with the disgusting name of Hernia Hotties. When Zelda isn’t mooning after Melvin, she attends the functions and, I am told, can be quite the flirt. It was obvious from her fractured face that the news of Ron’s death was hitting her hard, so I guided her to one of the beanbags and pushed her gently down. She offered no resistance.
“I don’t know where it happened, dear, but I found him in the morgue at the so-called Hernia Hospital. It was supposed to be Buzzy’s body in that drawer, not Ron’s. I can only conclude that somebody switched them.”
“Dr. Mean and Nurse Meaner?”
You see? I’m not the only one who feels this way about the malevolent duo who run our town’s only health care facility.
“Yes, but Nurse Meaner swears they know nothing about the switch. Zelda, this time I’m inclined to believe her.”
She shook her head in dismay, and chunks of foundation—one the size of New Jersey—flew in my direction. I deftly dodged the Cover Girl comet.
“But he was such a nice young man,” she sobbed.
I squatted beside her and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. I am genetically incapable of displaying any more affection. Seeing how Zelda is a distant cousin of mine, I’m sure she understood.
“Yes, he was. And even though he was Episcopalian—well, I’m sure the Good Lord makes exceptions from time to time.”
Zelda turned to look at me. The Jamaican bobsled team could do their practice runs in the ruts she presented.
“Does Melvin know about this?” she asked.
“He knows about Buzzy. I’ve been trying to reach him to tell him about Ron—but I can’t locate him. That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“I assume you mean my sister. And no, I don’t know where she is. But she isn’t home. I thought maybe the two of them were out raising campaign money, and had clued you in.”
I had to dodge several asteroids when she shook her head again. And it may just be my imagination, but I thought I heard the faint cries of miniature Jamaican bobsledders as they plunged to their deaths.
“We never speak about what he does with her. Magdalena, you’re always coming up with bizarre theories. Do you have any idea why somebody would kill Ron Humphrey?”
“He was the one who discovered the first body. Maybe the killer was hiding and saw Ron Humphrey at the site—although why he or she didn’t just kill Ron then...” I shrugged. “Murder never really makes sense.”
“Yes, it does.”
Oh yeah, smarty-pants? That’s what I wanted to say. Instead I arranged my equine features into what approximated a smile.
“Would you like to explain this murder, dear?”
“I’ll give it a try,” she said, without batting a false eyelash. “But first you have to start at the beginning.”
I pointed with my chin to the guest bedroom. It sounded like a hive of bees had invaded Zelda’s house.
“Oh, don’t worry about them, Magdalena. Now they’re reciting the One Hundred and Seventy-seven Virtues of Melvin the Magnificent. It usually takes us an hour.”
I would have retched, had not my overtaxed nervous system already consumed all the fuel I’d stoked it with at Doc’s bountiful breakfast. Instead, I rolled my peepers like a petulant teenager. If Mama were right, and one of them stuck in a strange position—well, at least Melvin the Magnificent and I might finally see eye to eye.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll start from the beginning. But I’ll need some snacks. Got any chips and dip? No pun intended.”
“Very funny, Magdalena.” But Zelda has Mennonite blood flowing through her veins, and a satisfying mid-day munchie was soon to follow.
“It’s very simple,” Zelda said, as soon as I was finished with my account. “The murder of Mr. Porter was not premeditated. The perpetrator didn’t have a gun, so he or she sneaked up on this guy and bashed him on the back of the head with the most lethal thing he or she could get his or her hands on—in this case a shovel. But you see, even if the perpetrator was immediately aware that he or she had been observed, there was nothing they could do about it then. I mean, you can’t sneak up on somebody when you’ve been spotted. Magdalena, even you should know that.”
If Zelda’s homemade molasses cookies hadn’t been so good, I would have objected to her statement. “Yes, but the person who killed poor Ron Humphrey did have a gun. Are you suggesting there are two killers?”
“Of course not. The perpetrator then got a gun and shot Ron.”
I cogitated on that while the cop cult in the next room chanted their ode. They were up to virtue number ninety-three, which was about Melvin having the wisdom of an owl. A bird brain beats an insect brain in the pecking order of intelligence, but sometimes one has to settle for the second-best insult.
“Amen to that!” I shouted.
Zelda snatched the plate of cookies away. “Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Magdalena.”
“Sorry, dear,” I said in hope of more treats. “But even if your theory is right, what would be the motive? What is so special about a time capsule? Even if it were to contain some deep dark secrets of the past, well”—I laughed pleasantly—”that was a hundred years ago.” My hostess risked losing the rest of her makeup to give me a vastly overblown look of incredulity. “Some things can never be forgotten, Magdalena.”
“No fair! I didn’t know Aaron was already hitched when I married him.”
“Maybe so. But the capsule didn’t have to contain something negative to make somebody want to dig it up. Maybe there’s something positive in there—like maybe a treasure map.”
“Don’t be silly, Zelda, we’re hundreds of miles from an ocean.” Too late I remembered the cookies.
“I didn’t mean a pirate’s treasure, Magdalena. But you’ve heard the stories.”
“Stories?”
“You’re being coy with me, Magdalena.”
“But I’m not! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She cocked her head, precipitating a sudden shower of spackle. “Well, well, well. Imagine Magdalena Yoder not knowing about Hernia’s hidden treasure.”
14
“So clue me in,” I cried.
She took her sweet time in responding. Meanwhile the voices in the guest room informed me that Melvin’s one hundred and thirteenth virtue was virility. They didn’t stop there, but went on and on about what a studmuffin he was. After listening to this litany of lascivious praise, I would either have to poke out my mind’s eye, or never look in my brother-in-law’s eyes again.
“I can’t remember any details,” she finally said, “but it was something my grandmother prattled on about. Something about there being this enormous fortune hidden somewhere around town. I remember looking for it when I was a little girl—digging in the garden with my mother’s spade. Of course, I never found it. Later on I learned that my parents thought it was all a bunch of hooey. Only the old folks took it seriously.”
Zelda’s parents, like mine, had long since left their earthly bodies. There was no sense in talking to her mother. My mama on the other hand, does talk to me from her celestial perch—but she never says anything I want to hear. “Magdalena, are you still slouching? Put your knees together, child. Do you really think you ought to be driving such a fancy car? Don’t marry that man, Magdalena—you’ll regret it if you do.” You see what I mean?
No, what I needed to do was to consult one of our town’s old-timers. But who? Harriet Berkey was one hundred and four, but she suffered from dementia. Irma Yoder, a distant cousin, was almost that old, but she had a tongue that could slice cheese. Come to think of it, a lot of Hernia’s elderly women had rapier-sharp linguae. Perhaps it was something in the water. Much safer to question an elderly gent.
But who? Wilbur Neubrander was pushing the century mark, but he had a reputation for letting it all hang out. Literally. I have not been privileged to witness this display, but from what I hear, I haven’t missed much. Donald Rickenbach was ninety-five, but had already migrated to Florida for the winter season. That left Meryl Weaver, Doc Shafor...