by Tamar Myers
“Dummkopf,” I cried, and hit myself on the forehead with the ball of my hand. “Magdalena, you are such an idiot.”
“That is the truth.”
I whirled. It was the bird lady herself, having flown within inches of me on silent wings.
“Elspeth!”
“That is my name, yah. So do not wear it out.”
“Not much danger of that, dear.”
“What are you doing dressed like the Amish, Magdalena?”
“Practicing.”
“For what?”
“Well, you have to admit this cape and bonnet are pretty snappy. If I like the way they wear, I might just consider switching over.” The word “might” makes all the difference, don’t you think?
Elspeth’s beady eyes could bore through steel. She stared at me so hard I was forced to look away.
“You think I do not know the customs because I am a foreigner? The Amish do not drive cars, Magdalena, but you have a foot of lead. You would not be happy with the horse and buggy.”
“I’m rich,” I said. “I could buy a racehorse and have an aerodynamic buggy especially designed for me.” My retinas would have been scorched had I the nerve to be looking her in the eyes.
“Yah, maybe you could do that, but the Amish would not approve. And they will never accept that you marry the Jew.” She pronounced the word “chew.”
Elspeth wore her anti-Semitism on short English-style sleeves, but she had a point. Reverend Schrock was willing to overlook the fact that Gabriel Rosen was as Jewish as Jesus, but the Amish would not. Conformity to the rules of the Ordnung is what identifies them as a people. You are either Amish or not, and if you are, then you act like one. That includes who you marry.
“Okay, okay,” I said, scrambling to think up another necessary he. “I needed something from the store, and since I know you hate my guts, I decided it would be easier on both of us if I sneaked in wearing a disguise.” Elspeth grunted. “Why did you not send Freni or Mose?”
“What? Use a septuagenarian Amish couple as errand boys?”
“This does not stop you before.”
Judging on my past encounters with the merchant of menace, I figured I had about fifteen seconds left before she planted a foot on my bony behind or, worse yet, stabbed me with a pitchfork. It was time to get down to business.
“So, dear, what happened to your lovely display garden? It always made me want to try the various seeds.”
“Bullcrap,” she said. Actually, being a Lutheran, she was permitted a much worse expression. Unofficially, of course.
I feigned an even temper. “I remember one September you had the most spectacular display of mums—”
“Leave now, Magdalena.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Or I make you leave, yah?”
“Is that a threat?”
She may have thought her smile masked her deadly secret, but it was a wasted use of facial muscles. Still, an itty-bitty murderess—because that’s how I now thought of her—who dared threaten a woman of stature in broad daylight was much to be feared. Perhaps she had another gun hidden somewhere on her miniature person.
“Don’t get your nasty Nazi knickers in a knot, dear. I’m out of here. But first be a sweetheart and write down the name of those fabulous mums.” I fished in my purse for a palm-size notebook that I sometimes use to take notes when I’m working a case but, if the truth be known, is more often used for making grocery lists during Reverend Schrock’s less engaging sermons. Before Elspeth could react I thrust the tablet at her. With any luck she’d grab it, thereby giving me a good set of prints.
Her first reaction was to reach for it, but the second her fingers closed on the smooth, shiny cover, she practically threw it in my face. “I am not a fool, Magdalena. I know what you are up to.”
I caught the notebook by its spiral binder and dropped it in my purse. “Maybe you do know, or maybe you don’t. Either way your gig is up.”
Having said that much I had no option but to hustle my bustle up the street to the Hernia Police Station. Halfway to my car I turned and looked, like Lot’s wife. Fortunately I did not turn into a salt sculpture. Neither did Elspeth. In fact, she was no longer in sight.
29
Zelda was too busy painting her nails a glossy shade of black to look up when I burst into the station.
“I need a warrant,” I gasped.
She finished spreading the goo on her right pinkie and then closed the lid tightly. “You’re not authorized to make arrests, Magdalena.”
“Then you arrest her.”
“Arrest who?”
“Elspeth Miller. Not only did she kill the colonel, but she knocked off her husband, Roy, as well.”
Zelda smiled. No doubt it gave her a sense of superiority to be patient with me.
“Elspeth couldn’t have killed Roy, Magdalena. Nobody knows where he is.”
“I do. He’s buried in her parking lot where the flower and vegetable display used to be.”
While Zelda mulled over what I’d said, peace came to the Middle East and my size elevens began to sprout roots. When the bulb finally clicked on in her head, both ears emitted a soft glow.
“So that’s why she didn’t want the hotel built. The road would have eventually been widened and poor Roy—” Zelda clapped a hand over her mouth, the freshly painted nails gleaming like wet obsidian.
“Mazel tov,” I said, borrowing from Gabe. “So you’re going right out there to arrest her, right?”
She shook her bleached spikes. “Not without a warrant. And for that I need proof.”
“So get it.”
“But I need a warrant to search the parking lot.” She moaned. “Where is Melvin when you need him?”
“Good point. Where is he?”
“Don’t you know? That was a historical question, Magdalena. He’s headed out to your place—”
“What?”
“He called and said he had some checking around to do and—”
“Didn’t you warn him about the snake?”
“Of course I did. But you know our Melvin. Said he wasn’t afraid of a little thing like a snake.”
“A twenty-five-foot supersize sneaky snake,” I hissed. “An African rock python, one of the most aggressive species in the world.”
Fear flickered across her eyes. “You think he might really be in danger?”
“Are those nails of yours the height of fashion?”
“What—oh, he is, isn’t he? Magdalena, what shall we do?”
“You call the county sheriff dear. I’ll try to head our bumbling bumpkin off at the pass.”
I turned and ran to my car. True to my reputation, I pressed that pedal to the metal so hard it nearly broke through the floorboard. In fact, I made it back to the inn in record time. Sure enough there was the Hernia squad car parked in my driveway, but the menacing mantis was nowhere to be seen.
I’m not a total fool. I checked the barn and the henhouse before turning my attention to the inn. The sheriff was taking his sweet time about showing up, and I doubted if Melvin Stoltzfus had a whole lot of that precious commodity at his disposal. Not if he was indoors battling a snake. The nincompoop Chief of Police is a scrawny man, as befits a mantis. Any creature that could get the better of the bad-tempered Miss Thrope—and I do not mean to speak ill of the dead—would find my brother-in-law easy pickings.
As much as I abhorred the idea, it was up to me to enter the house and rescue my nemesis. If I didn’t, I’d have his blood on my hands, and my sister back under my root I really had no choice.
“Melvin! Melvin!” I opened the back door to the kitchen just wide enough for my probing proboscis, one eye, and half of a very loud mouth. Surely a twenty-five-foot snake could not fit through a crack that narrow. If it did leap at me and got my nose, I might even come out ahead.
There was no response to my shouts and no sign of a reptile, so I pushed the door all the way open and stepped in. The kitchen was as comfy an
d inviting as it had always been. Despite the lingering odor of some fancy-schmancy dish prepared by the late Miss Thrope, perhaps one containing that heathen herb cilantro, I could still smell Freni’s homemade cinnamon rolls.
I poked my head into the dining room. “Melvin! Melvin!”
Still no answer. Before leaving the kitchen I grabbed a meat fork with eight-inch tines and a can of nonstick cooking spray. Freni uses only butter and shortening to grease her baking pans, like the Good Lord intended, so the no-calorie stuff must have belonged to the deceased. The only reason I picked those two items was that they were both within easy reach.
It would be a lie, and one without an obvious moral benefit, if I were to say I wasn’t scared. My legs were trembling, my heart was pounding, and the short hairs on my neck stood out at right angles. Even my bun strained at the bobby pins that held it in place.
“Oh, Lord,” I said aloud, “if you get me through this—help me to find Melvin unharmed—I promise to never say anything sarcastic about him. Well, at least not for a week. I’ll even try and find something to compliment him on.”
My prayer brought me a good deal of comfort, because I had been very generous with the Lord. Hence I found the strength to look in the parlor and my bedroom, both of which are downstairs. There was no sign of Melvin or a giant python. For a second there, I wanted nothing more than to push heavy furniture over the vents, lock my bedroom door, and crawl under the covers. All the way, so that not a strand of hair showed. Add a bedpan and some food—brownies and milk— and I wouldn’t have to come out for hours.
It was, of course, a fleeting fantasy. Hiding under the covers was not going to save Melvin’s carapace. I fortified myself by repeating my earlier prayer, and even added a clause whereby I promised to be nice to Lodema Schrock for an unspecified period of time.
Having girded my loins with new courage, I faced my impossibly steep stairs. “Melvin, dear, are you up there?” Again no answer.
“Well, here I come,” I called to the snake. “If you value your scales, stay out of my way.”
“Help! Magdalena, help!”
I could hardly believe my ears. Someone, or something, was answering. The voice was high-pitched, about what you’d expect from a snake—if one could talk—and it didn’t sound a bit like Melvin. Could it possibly be that the Devil really was masquerading as a twenty-five-foot African rock python? The serpent in the Garden of Eden talked up a storm, so there was certainly a precedent for such a phenomenon. But surely Satan didn’t know me on a first-name basis.
“Melvin, dear. Is that you?”
“Magdalena, help, help! It’s got me!”
It was definitely not Melvin. And unless the Devil had a German accent—always a possibility, I guess...
“Elspeth, is that you?”
“Do something, you dummkopf, or this snake will eat me.”
I charged up my impossibly steep stairs. Don’t ask me why I flew to this woman’s aid. She wasn’t supposed to be in my house, for crying out loud.
You can’t imagine what a twenty-five-foot snake looks like until you’ve seen one. Who knew that it would be as thick around the middle as Gabriel’s thigh, or that its head, which was quite big enough, was small compared to its body? This particular monster was tan with brown spots outlined in black, and had a tan V-shaped mark on its face. Its eyes had the curious quality of being both vacuous and vicious.
The behemoth was coiled in a corner, between the bed and an armoire. Gripped in its death embrace was the tiny frame of Elspeth Miller. The snake’s hideous head rested on her shoulder, and all I could see of the woman at first was her head. My first impression was that the reptile had two heads—although one had scales. The other was as pale as rice and sweating profusely.
“Do not just stand there,” she panted. “Do something, you idiot.”
I looked at the meat fork in my right hand and the can of PAM in my left. The casual observer—one who managed to miss Elspeth altogether—might have surmised that I was about to cook something. Perhaps sweet-and-sour snake.
What was I supposed to do? Stab the reptile? What if I missed and stabbed Elspeth in the neck? Or what if I actually hit the snake, but merely succeeded in wounding it? What if it let go of its ill-tempered dinner and lunged at me? I am prepared to meet my Maker, but prefer not to leave this world as an animal’s entree. If I wasn’t discovered in time—Lord knows Elspeth wouldn’t try to save me—there’d be nothing left to bury but a pathetic pile of python poop. I wouldn’t even need to be cremated. The scat could be scattered in my garden. Talk about a good crop of mums.
“Well, you idiot, are you going to help me or not?”
“Oh, Lard, give me strength,” I cried, and raised the hand with the fork.
I must have a simple mind, because indeed, the reptile read it. He lifted his head, uncoiled half a loop, and strained to reach me. “Go ahead,” he seemed to say, “make my day. I’d rather eat you anyway.”
“Stab him, stab him, you idiot!” Elspeth’s voice was stronger now that the distracted snake was loosening its grip.
What is wrong with me that I couldn’t even stab Satan’s older brother to save a human life? It was all I could do just to aim the can of PAM at the python and spray it in the eyes.
The evil creature didn’t even blink, but the head bobbed, and its tongue flickered. It was presumably tasting the nonstick stuff, and must not have liked it too much because the top two coils loosened, exposing Elspeth’s neck and shoulders. I don’t get credit for what happened next, because I didn’t stop to think before acting. I dropped the meat fork, grabbed Elspeth by the hair, and pulled. With my left hand I sprayed PAM in the widening gap between her and the upper part of the snake. In order to do so, I had to get so close to the beast that its bobbing head banged against my left arm. It felt like a striking fist.
“Ouch!”
For the record, that wasn’t me, but Elspeth. I ignored both her and the hammering head and sprayed until the can was empty. Then I whacked the python across the snout with the empty can. The beast was not amused and lunged with its jaws wide open. Pythons don’t have fangs, by the way, but can inflict painful bites. They also have viselike grips.
Fortunately, as befits a good Christian woman, I was wearing elbow-length sleeves. The powerful jaws ripped off a mouthful of fabric but missed my arm. Finding nothing on my end to support it, the head swung down and away from me, and in that split second I grabbed Elspeth’s locks with both hands and jerked for all I was worth. She slid out of the coils like a greased pig and, like the said swine, squealed loudly.
“Damn you, Magdalena Yoder. If my hair is ruined, I will sue, yah?”
“Sue away,” I cried. I was too exhilarated by what had just happened to care.
Elspeth’s escape had totally confused the reptile. Instead of pursuing either of us, it was rapidly retreating underneath the bed. Where just seconds ago there had been a pile of coils, now there was only a stained carpet and a gun. A gun!
Again, it was my reflexes, not bravery on my part, but I swooped down on that revolver like a hen on a June bug. Elspeth swooped too, and given that she is part fowl, she normally would have stood a better chance of recovering the weapon. Fortunately for me, being almost hugged to death by a twenty-five-foot serpent had left her wobbly, and she collapsed in mid-swoop. But not without a good deal of sound effects, I might add.
For the second time in two days I held a gun in my hand. I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the snake—an action far less personal than stabbing—but I could never bring myself to shoot another human being. Even Elspeth Miller.
The weak-kneed Nazi sympathizer knew that. After all, I was a Mennonite, wasn’t I? A dyed-in-the-wool pacifist. The colonel’s murderer floundered in my direction, hoping to wrest the gun from my hand. I had no choice but to disable her by connecting one of my size elevens with her solar plexus. My aim was true and she collapsed again, this time as silently as a pile of feathers.
My plan
was to drag her from the room by her crowning glory. Once I got her out of harm’s way, with the door closed safely behind us, I’d deliver another swift kick. One just hard enough to keep her out of action until I could run, carrying the gun with me, for help.
I had the bird woman halfway across the room when the door to the armoire opened and out tumbled Melvin Stoltzfus. “Give me the gun, Yoder. I’m taking over.” My jaw dropped so far even I could have swallowed Elspeth. “M-M-Melvin,” I finally managed to gasp. “That’s my name, Yoder. Don’t wear it out.”
“B-but were you in that armoire the entire time?”
“I was trapped, Yoder. What of it?”
Elspeth started to moan, so I did my civic duty. Even though my toe still hurt like the dickens, it was able to find its way back to her solar plexus. Anyway, I got her through the door before Melvin slammed it behind us.
“What of it?” I cried. “You let me fight with an African rock python and—”
“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? Besides, like I said, I was trapped. That thing was lying right in front of the armoire.”
“But why did you get in it in the first place?”
It was deus ex machina, although Deus was not on my side. As my nemesis and I stood there, he defending his cowardice, and I seeing it for what it was, the front door to my inn flew open and in burst the county sheriff and two deputies. We could only hear them at first, as we were still at the top of my impossibly steep stairs, but even Melvin knew it was the moment of truth.
“Yoder, I’m begging you. Let me tell it my way.”
“Upstairs, boys,” I shouted. I turned to Melvin. “Give me one good reason.”
“So Susannah will respect me.”
“But she adores you now.”
“Yes, but—” Melvin took a step closer to me and then, because I am indeed a dummkopf, he grabbed the gun from my hand.
When the sheriff and his boys rounded the first landing, it was Melvin they saw standing over Elspeth Miller.