by Tamar Myers
Chapter Eleven
“Shhhhh!” Stayrook clamped a beefy hand over my mouth. “Somebody might hear you. If I take my hand away, will you promise not to scream?”
I nodded.
Stayrook removed his hand, which, by the way, smelled curiously like licorice.
“Do that again, buster,” I hissed, “and somebody will be digging your grave.”
My vehemence must have taken Stayrook aback some. He didn’t say anything until he’d slipped out of the backseat and around to the front.
“Drive,” he ordered.
I’m no expert on Ohio, but I doubt that even there it is customary for Amish men to hijack cars. If I laughed, it was because I was feeling such immense relief that it was only Stayrook who had waylaid me. That, and I could appreciate how ridiculous the situation was.
Stayrook could not. “Do you want my help, or do you just want to laugh at me?”
I bit my tongue, and my laugh sputtered to a stop. Even in the dark I could see the hurt look in Stayrook’s eyes. “Yes, I want your help.”
“Then drive. We can’t talk here.”
“Where to?”
“That way,” he said, pointing north. “When we get to the second crossroads, turn left. Then your first right.”
Stayrook’s directions brought us to the end of a narrow gravel road that petered out in a streambed. Tall, gaunt trees stood sentinel above dense underbrush. The only lights to be seen were those in the sky, and the place felt wild and forlorn. It was hard to believe I was still in Ohio.
“This is where the young folks come to court,” Stayrook said matter-of-factly.
I recoiled in shock. For all their strictness, my Amish relatives were surprisingly relaxed when it came to the latitude they allowed their teenagers. Not that their teenagers would do the same things you’re thinking of, but still, it was a lot more than my Mennonite parents would have tolerated. I tried unsuccessfully to conjure up images of black buggies filled with amorous Amish teens, boldly holding hands. It was too much for my blood.
“Here?” I asked weakly.
“Yah.” Stayrook grinned. He had straight white teeth, or at least that’s what they looked like in the dark. “But don’t worry, they won’t be here tonight. Because of the funeral.”
That relaxed me a little. I certainly wasn’t up to a hijacking and a passionate display of manual interdigitation. Not on the same night. “So, tell me all you know about my cousin’s death,” I said. I felt a need to be in charge again.
Stayrook glanced about, as if even there, beyond the pale of civilization, danger might be lurking. “Magdalena, you were right. I do know something more about the deaths of Yost Yoder and Levi Mast.”
“Yes?”
“They were not accidents.”
“You don’t say.” Sarcasm is an art form, and Susannah, my tutor, is one of the masters.
Stayrook shifted nervously. “You must give me your word that my name will not be brought up in connection with this matter.”
“You have my word,” I said solemnly. From one of the gaunt trees an owl hooted.
Stayrook took a deep breath. “Yost, Levi, and I all used to supply milk to Daisybell Dairies. So did our fathers. In fact, most of us in Farmersburg County were connected to this dairy in one way or another. Those of us who didn’t supply milk worked in the factory.”
“The place that makes the fancy cheese.”
“Yah, but that was back when Mr. Craycraft was in charge. Wesley P. Craycraft III, who founded the dairy. He was an Englisher, of course, but like the salt of the earth. He cared about the cheese, and he cared about his workers too.”
“Go on.”
“Then Mr. Craycraft died, and his nephew from West Virginia came up and took over. Things were never the same.”
“How so?”
“Mr. Hem—Danny, he wanted us to call him— started taking shortcuts. Shortcuts that he thought would save him money.”
“What kind of shortcuts?”
I could feel Stayrook’s gaze boring into me. He must have thought I was stupid. “You ever make cheese, Magdalena?”
“Yes.” That wasn’t a lie. Once, after Mama died, Susannah and I tried to make cottage cheese by pouring sour milk into a sock and then hanging it up to drip.
“A good Swiss has to age, you know.”
“Of course.” Our cottage cheese had started out plenty aged, if you ask me.
“Mr. Hem didn’t think so. He wanted to cut the aging time from six months to three. Then he cut it back to two. Imagine that!” Stayrook laughed, and the owl hooted along with him. “Two months is not Swiss. Not Farmersburg Swiss!”
“Certainly not,” I agreed. Come to think of it, that sour milk might have been in our fridge for two months before we tried to make cheese out of it. After our parents’ deaths, before Freni bustled her way into our lives, I sort of lost track of things.
“So, it was false advertising, you see. Mr. Hem was selling this nothing cheese as Farmersburg, and in the beginning he made a lot of money. Without an aging period, he could produce a lot more cheese in the same amount of time.”
“Couldn’t the public tell the difference?” Once as an economy measure at the PennDutch, I tried serving my guests instant coffee, instead of the real McCoy. That I survived that mistake is due only to the fact that I know a good hiding place or two around the inn.
Stayrook sighed. “Of course the public could tell the difference. Sales started to drop, but not as fast as you would think. A good reputation is a hard thing to overturn.”
I certainly hoped so. I planned to be in business a long time. “Well?”
“Well, although sales had begun to taper off, Mr. Hem was still making more money than his uncle ever had. Of course, it wasn’t honest money, and that bothered us. Some of us talked about not selling any more milk to Daisybell Dairy. We even took the matter to the bishop.”
“And?”
“The bishop said that we should stop selling our milk to Mr. Hem unless he agreed to age the cheese at least four months. Even that would be cutting it close.”
“And did he?”
“We never got a chance to see. Before the four months were up, Mr. Hem made improper advances to one of his factory employees. A young woman named Elsie Bontrager.”
“Amish?”
“Yah. A good woman. Elsie had just been baptized, but she wasn’t married yet. To put it frankly, Magdalena, I have three Holsteins with faces prettier than Elsie Bontrager.”
“Tsk, tsk,” I chided. “There is no correlation between marriage and looks. Some of us have simply chosen not to tie the knot.”
Stayrook coughed politely. “Yah. Anyway, when Mr. Hem bothered Elsie, that was the last straw. All the Amish that worked for Daisybell Dairies quit and we formed our own cooperative.”
“Aha. But did Elsie Bontrager press charges against this Mr. Hem?”
I could see Stayrook squirm. “She has gone to live with an aunt in Indiana.”
“I see,” I said, but I didn’t. If Mr. Hem had laid one finger on me, he would now be missing it. In jail, if possible. Perhaps it was just as well my branch of the family was no longer Amish; even as a Mennonite, my attitude was an anomaly. Perhaps I was really destined to be a Presbyterian. I would have to talk to Susannah about it sometime.
“Anyway,” Stayrook went on, eager to move the story away from Elsie, “we elected Levi and Yost to head the cooperative, because the actual processing was going to be done on their farms, and because they were younger and had more knowledge of the way things worked.”
“With the world, you mean?”
“Yah, with the world. And things worked very well. Since we had eliminated the middleman, we were able to age our cheese the proper length of time, and still sell it for less than what Daisybell was selling theirs for.”
I sat up straight. “Daisybell continued to make cheese? How could they do that when you stopped supplying them milk?”
Stayrook shrugg
ed. “Other farmers, English farmers from outside the county, they trucked their milk in to the dairy. But I heard it wasn’t the same.”
I had to stifle a chuckle. “Amish milk is somehow better?”
Stayrook nodded. “Amish milk in Farmersburg County is.” He was quite serious. “Some say it is the richest in the world.”
That was quite a claim, coming from an Amishman. Unless it was absolutely true, Stayrook was guilty of pride, the worst of Amish sins.
“Perhaps it is something in the soil,” I suggested.
“Yah, perhaps. Anyway, Mr. Hem was not happy with our success. Twice he came to see Levi at the farm when I was there delivering milk, and once I saw him at Yost’s place.”
“Did you hear what he wanted?”
“Yah, and it was always the same. He wanted to buy out the cooperative and for us to start delivering milk to him again. Of course, we refused. Even after he apologized for what happened to Elsie, we refused.
“Mr. Hem didn’t understand that. ‘You Amish are making a big mistake,’ he said. ‘You are in far over your heads.’ We told him that we could all swim and would have to take our chances. ‘Then you’ll pay for this,’ he said. That was the second time I saw him at Levi’s farm.”
“Sounds like a threat to me.”
Stayrook nodded silently.
“You have, of course, told this to the sheriff,” I said needlessly.
The sharp sound of Stayrook sucking in his breath startled me. “Ach, no!”
I was incensed, but not surprised. “Stayrook Gerber, the sheriff has to be told if there was a threat. And this is not just an Amish thing anymore. Murder is a capital crime, a crime against the state. You can’t sit on evidence out of religious conviction.”
Stayrook turned and faced the window. Since it had fogged, I knew it wasn’t because something outside had suddenly caught his eye. “Magdalena, the Bible says that God will seek his own judgment in his own time. It is arrogant and sinful for a man to interfere with God’s plan.”
“Ha!” I could no longer restrain myself. “So now what are you going to do? All start working for Mr. Hem again? He could be a murderer, you know, or doesn’t that bother you? I suppose you see him as part of God’s plan as well.”
The Stayrook Gerber who turned from the window and faced me again was a different man. The big brawny gravedigger had somehow shrunk considerably and was now a scarecrow propped up on the seat. “We are going to sell our farms and move.”
The owl hooted mournfully.
“What?” I spoke loud enough for the owl to hear me, and he obliged me with an answering hoot. I ignored him. “You are all going to sell and move? To where?”
Stayrook answered in a voice that matched his diminished size. “To Indiana. La Grange County. Most of us have kin there anyway—”
“So what? So do I, but you don’t see me living there, and believe me, I’ve had my life threatened a time or two. What does the bishop think of this?”
Stayrook’s voice dropped. “The bishop thinks that Levi and Yost may have been possessed. He thinks that if our people move to Indiana, they can leave behind the forces of evil.”
“And you?”
He shrugged. “Have you come across evil before, Magdalena?”
“Have I ever! But I didn’t move.”
“It is God’s will for us.”
“Says who?”
“The elders. They are all in agreement with the bishop. That is how we know it is God’s will. Part of his plan for us.”
I observed a rare moment of silence. I bit my tongue and counted to ten. Twice. The counting, I mean, not the biting. “Well,” I said calmly, “maybe I am part of God’s plan as well. In fact, you may henceforth refer to me as Phase One.”
“Ach du lieber,” Stayrook moaned. “As if we don’t have enough problems right now. Just who do you think you are, Magdalena Yoder?”
“Whoooo?” the owl echoed.
It was time to turn around and drop Stayrook off at the Yoder farm. If my instincts were right, life was going to be complicated enough without my having to dodge rumors that I was having an affair with Stayrook Gerber. In the words of Susannah, I “peeled out of there and burned rubber” all the way back.
It wasn’t yet nine o’clock when I got back to the Troyer farm, but they were already home and in bed. I felt deliciously guilty as I slowly opened and then closed the front door behind me and crept up the creaky wooden stairs. If that had been Mama’s house, she would have been out of bed and swinging a rolling pin seconds after the first creak. The pin, by the way, would have been meant for my backside, not a burglar.
Either the Troyers were all asleep or else they were totally uninterested in disciplining me, because no one intercepted me, smelled my breath, or checked my seams. For one intense moment I allowed myself to envy the Troyer boys and the relative freedom they would experience when they hit their teen years. Then I remembered the sardine omelettes. Mama might have been strict, but she was a first-rate cook. Love can come and go, after all, but a stomach is forever.
I was dreaming that Aaron and I were trying to ice-skate on Miller’s Pond, in our bare feet, when Susannah crawled into bed and stuck her icy feet against mine. It took me a minute or two to become fully awake.
“Susannah Yoder Entwhistle!” I glanced at the luminescent hands of my watch. “It is four thirty-five in the morning! You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“For what?” she asked sleepily.
Then for the first time I remembered who it was Susannah had been out with. It was the murderer himself, Danny Hem. Even if it wasn’t him who pushed Levi from the silo, or held Yost under as he drowned in milk, it was him who had ordered their deaths. I was positive of that. My baby sister, whom I was supposed to protect now that Mama and Papa were gone, and who surely couldn’t look out for herself, was dating a cold-blooded murderer. Mama must be spinning in her grave so fast that the people in Tokyo undoubtedly were feeling the vibrations and expecting a tidal wave.
“Susannah, you can’t—” I stopped. What my baby sister didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. At least not yet. But her relationship with Danny Hem could help lead to justice for the Amish community of Farmersburg, whether they wanted that justice or not. Foolishly I kept my big mouth shut.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning I passed on the sardine omelettes and left the house while Susannah was still sawing logs. However, that’s not saying much. Once, shortly after she graduated from high school, my sister slept for thirty-six hours straight. Aaron tells me that she was probably drunk and none of us knew it at the time, but I don’t think that had to be the case. Susannah slept so much when she was a baby that Mama, who was going through the change of life and was easily distracted, forgot to feed her for an entire day. Of course, she hadn’t checked Susannah’s diaper either, and wouldn’t you know, at the end of the day it was still dry. One thing for sure, my sister has a world-class bladder.
Outside it was just beginning to get light and promised to be another cold but clear day. Over in the mountains of Pennsylvania, according to my car radio, eight more inches of snow had fallen overnight, and six more were forecast. It was as if Hernia were in another part of the country altogether, instead of just two hundred miles away. It seemed bizarre to be driving on flat, clear roads when back home everyone was snowed in. I said a quick prayer for Aaron, Doc, and Mose, who were undoubtedly cooped up with restless guests and numerous complaints.
Farmersburg is easily twice the size of Hernia, but it certainly is no Pittsburgh. Even Somerset and Bedford dwarf it. That was fine with me. I am not a fan of big-city driving, and Farmersburg was just my cup of tea. For a real cup of tea I stopped at Pauline’s Pancake House, right where U.S. Route 62 comes into it from the west. Frankly, I didn’t expect much from Pauline, but after eating with the Troyers, it couldn’t help but be a pleasant surprise. The pancakes were light and fluffy, the butter real, and the syrup warm. That the syrup was only two per
cent real maple didn’t matter to me. Mama gave us only corn syrup when we were growing up; the maple she saved for when we had company, and to this day I can’t imagine eating the real thing unless the table is decked out in its finest and I am in my Sunday best.
Pauline, the proprietress, was a plateful herself. I could hear her gum snapping from three tables away. There is something palpable, perhaps a pheromone, that proprietresses emit, and that others of their ilk pick right up on. Whatever it is, Pauline made a beeline for me.
“Hey, hon, where you from?”
Since I could read between the lines, I cut straight to the chase. “The PennDutch Inn, Hernia, Pennsylvania, and I’m only here for a few days.”
Pauline’s smile of relief was so wide that her gum fell out, but with a practiced hand she caught it and popped it back in her mouth, without missing a beat. “Then welcome to town, honey. It’s always good to see a visiting face.”
Between the lines that meant she could relax now that she knew I wasn’t competition moving in on her territory.
“This is a charming little town, and quite a place you have here, dear. You get a lot of tourists?”
Between the lines I meant that Farmersburg was about as far off the beaten track as one could get, her restaurant was more than adequate, and did outside troublemakers show up with any regularity?
Pauline slid into the red vinyl seat across from me. “May I, hon? Most of my Joes are home-grown, but we get a few cameras now and then, usually in the summer. The tourist you’re talking about is from West Virginia.”
“West Virginia?”
Pauline nodded, and her beehive hairdo tilted precariously. Fortunately it was stanchioned with enough bobby pins to secure the Empire State Building in gale-force winds. “Big tipper, but a slow eater, if you know what I mean.”
I did. “So he’s here for a while,” I said. “What’s his game?”
Pauline tapped the creamer in front of me. “A little squeeze from the cow, but he’s squeezing more than that if you ask me.”