by Tamar Myers
“To brilliant ideas,” Dottie cried and took a swig of her drink.
Cleveland did likewise, so I had no choice but to follow. But when that home-squeezed juice passed my lips, I nearly gagged.
17
It was all I could do to swallow. Clearly the Hamptons were used to inferior produce back in the Big Apple. Even the frozen concentrate Sam Yoder sold at the Corner Market tasted better than the orange swill in my glass.
“To generous neighbors!” Cleveland said. The poor, ignorant man seemed quite pleased with his beverage.
I was forced to take another slug of the awful stuff. It was exceedingly bitter. Either the oranges had been picked too green, or else the opposite was true, the fruit had been allowed to ripen too long and had turned. Yes, that almost certainly was it. The Hamptons, sophisticates that they were, had served me the juice of rotten oranges.
“To Magdalena!” Dottie held her glass up again.
Well, I simply had no choice but to quaff the horrible-tasting orange juice. Experience has taught me that the best way to consume a foul substance is to do it quickly. Why, even as young as age ten I could down one of Mama’s cod liver oil milkshakes—given whenever I was constipated—without pausing to breathe.
I slurped the last drops loudly. I read somewhere that this is considered good manners in some island societies. Perhaps Manhattan was one of these.
“My, that was good,” I said. The lie came surprisingly easy.
“Then have some more.”
Before I could protest, Cleveland was back in the room with a half-filled pitcher. He filled my tumbler almost to the brim.
“Now you make a toast, Magdalena.”
I felt surprisingly relaxed. “Okay, to—uh—to new neighbors and friends.”
“Yes, friends,” Dottie said. Although she and Cleveland took healthy sips of their drinks, they came nowhere near to draining their glasses. Never mind, I would set them a good example.
“More?” Cleveland asked.
I nodded. “Frankly, Frank, I mean Cleveland—what kind of name is that for a man from New York?”
“It was my mother’s maiden name. She was related to the President.”
“Bush?”
“Grover Cleveland.”
“Oh. Well, at any rate, I didn’t think so much of this juice of yours at first, but now it’s kind of growing on me.” I giggled. “Am I turning orange?”
“Cleve, I think she’s had enough,” Dottie said.
“Nonsense. Orange juice is full of vitamin C. You can never have too much.”
“Yes, but—”
“Pour away, Cleveland!”
Cleveland poured and then set the pitcher down on a glass-covered slab of granite that passed for a coffee table.
I drank. The amazing thing about those mimosa oranges, the juice gets sweeter the more you drink.
“Mmm,” I said, licking my lips, “now that really hits the pot.”
“Cleve, I think she’s getting tipsy.”
“Topsy-turvy!” I cried.
“People will think we’re a bad influence on the Mennonites and Amish.”
“Ah, exactly,” I said, and poked at the air with my index finger. “That’s why I’m here.”
“To drink mimosas?”
“To influence your badness. Do you, or do you not, sell drugs to the Amish?”
They gasped in unison. “We most certainly do not,” one of them said.
“Yes, but do they sell you drugs?”
“Of course not!” Cleveland snatched the pitcher off the coffee table and cradled it protectively in his arms.
“I see.” I waved my empty glass aloft. “To the Amish. May they all be as cute as what’s his name. And speaking of cute”—I smiled at Cleveland—” you’re not so bad yourself.”
“Cleve, we should do something.”
“Cleve—now that’s from the Bible, isn’t it? ‘For this reason,’ ” I said, quoting the book of Mark, “ ‘a man will leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.’ I bet you’ve been doing a lot of that.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Cleaving.” I giggled.
“Cleveland, do something!”
Still holding the pitcher, Cleveland turned to me. “Coffee. I can get you coffee.”
“Never touch the stuff so early in the day.” I laughed at my little joke. “But you know what? You can tell me about yourselves.”
“Maybe some other time,” Dottie said.
“No time like the present,” I said.
Dottie stood. That was definitely the body of a sixty-year-old. I told her so.
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” Cleveland said.
“I do so. And I have nothing against plastic surgeons. It’s the rubber ones I can’t stand.”
“Magdalena, we will be happy to give you a ride home.”
“But I’m not through with my interrogatives.”
“Your what?” Dottie asked, her voice rising.
“You know, my questions. Like have you ever taken drugs? Maybe smoked a little reed?”
“I think she means ‘weed,’ ” Dottie said. “Cleve, we have to do something.”
“Confess!” I cried.
“Confess to what?”
“That you sold fairy dust to the Keims, of course. It killed Lizzie Mast, you know. That would make you murderers. Actually that would make you a murderess and Cleveland here just a plain murderer. But you’re both killers!”
I stood up to make my point, but my legs were as fluid as a rubber surgeon’s and I slumped to the floor in slow motion. I pretended to be a melting snowman.
“I’ll grab her arms,” Cleveland said, “you get her legs.”
“Rock-a-bye baby in the tree tops,” I sang, as they carried me out to their car.
From the depths of my meager bosom Little Freni mewed an accompaniment. I hate to say it, but I think she was the only one on key. At any rate, that was the last thing I remembered for a while.
Somebody put me to bed, and in the middle of the day! When I awoke from my nap, I was surrounded by loved, and not-so-loved, ones. I wanted to puke.
“Yoder, you are a disgrace.”
I stared up at the moving mandibles of my brother-in-law Melvin. Fortunately for me, praying mantises don’t eat ailing innkeepers. Or do they?
“Give me a little space, dear. I don’t feel so hot.”
Freni touched my forehead quickly with a pudgy little hand. “Yah, she feels cold to me.”
“I’m not cold,” I wailed, “I’m about to throw up.”
“Way to go, sis!” Susannah said. Her eyes were shining with pride.
Melvin rudely pushed his wife aside. “Yoder, what the hell am I going to do now?”
“You’ll stop swearing in my inn,” I said. I tried to sit, but was hit by a wave of nausea, which mercifully subsided somewhat when my head reconnected with the pillow. Still, it was touch-and-go. I felt like I could blow anytime.
“You still don’t get it, Yoder, do you? You have really screwed up big time on this one. It’s bad enough that you shamed your family, but what you did just might be illegal. I have Zelda checking on that now.”
“Drinking orange juice is not against the law.”
“But drinking alcohol while on duty might be.”
I started to roll my eyes, but even that made me dizzy. “You’re crazy, Melvin. I’ve never had a drink in my entire life—okay, so there was that one time I tasted beer in college. But I didn’t swallow!”
“Oh yeah? According to the Hamptons you drank almost half a pitcher of mimosas.”
“So what’s your problem?”
“Mimosas contain champagne!” Susannah chortled with glee. “Oh, Mags, I’m so proud of you. Your first drunk! Of course, it’s a little late for you—I was fifteen when I first blacked out—but better late than never, right? Maybe next time we’ll tie one on together.”
“Ach!” Freni clapped her hands tightly over her ear
s. As our surrogate mother, she is genuinely concerned about our welfare and strives to keep herself informed, but because she is only our surrogate mother, and unofficially at that, she reserves the right to tune out whenever she is confronted with more information than she wants to know.
I struggled to a sitting position. I was now too shocked to be sick. Besides, if I did blow, I’d make sure to aim at Melvin.
“Champagne? There was alcoholic champagne in with the mimosa juice?”
Susannah twittered. “Don’t be silly, Mags. Champagne and orange juice is mimosa. But they don’t usually make people drunk. I guess it’s because you never had anything to drink before. Next time try the orange juice with vodka. They call that a screwdriver. Half a pitcher of those and you’ll really be sailing.”
“But I’m innocent!” I wailed.
“Like a weasel in a hen house,” Melvin growled. “Now the Hamptons know you suspect them in Lizzie’s death.”
“But I don’t. I just wanted to sound them out. After all, they’re from the city, and everyone knows that’s where drugs come from. Besides, talking to them was Freni’s idea.”
“Ach!” Freni squawked. Covering her ears was just an excuse for selective hearing. She removed her right hand from that ear. “Did you talk to them about you-know-what, Magdalena?”
“I didn’t get a chance, dear.” There was nothing to be served by telling her I plum forgot.
“What did Freni mean by you-know-what?” Susannah asked. She knew from experience that there was no point in asking the woman directly.
It was a reasonable question under the circumstances, but the answer would have needlessly embarrassed Freni. A small detour from the truth was in order.
“Freni has extra eggs to sell. You want to buy some?”
“Nah. The ones I get from the grocery store have the chicken poop already washed off them.”
“Well,” I said, “it has been nice of everyone to be so concerned about my welfare. But now”—I yawned—” if you’ll excuse me, the sandman is calling.”
Freni dropped her left hand as well. “Ach, in the middle of the day? You have already missed lunch, Magdalena.”
“I always sleep after a bender,” Susannah said sagely. “It restores damaged brain cells.”
“I wasn’t on a bender! I was doing police work for your husband. Remind me next time to just let him flounder on his own.”
The mantis loomed menacingly over me. “I wasn’t floundering, Yoder. And if it’s the big-city connection you’re after, why didn’t you talk to your boyfriend? Rich doctor like him packing it in to take up life in the country—sounds mighty suspicious to me.”
That hiked my hackles. That made me so mad I was no longer nauseated. That in turn made me even madder, since now I couldn’t hurl on my tormentor.
“Aaron—I mean Gabriel—is not a drug dealer!”
“Yeah? From what I hear, doctors get hooked on drugs all the time. From using to dealing, that’s just a matter of time.”
“That may be, but it has nothing to do with Gabe.”
“Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you’re covering for him.”
“Get out!” I ordered.
No one moved.
“Out!” I shrieked.
Big Freni scowled, Little Freni yowled, and Shnookums, Susannah’s dinky dog, howled, but no one budged.
“Hey, Yoder, take it easy. I was just yanking your chain.”
“Well, you’ve yanked it too far this time. If I was feeling any better—and if I wasn’t a pacifist—I’d wrap that chain around your scrawny neck.”
“Sweetie Pie,” Susannah said meekly to her spouse, “maybe you should apologize to sis.”
“In a pig’s ear.”
“But Sugar Lump, if you don’t apologize to Mags, she might drop out of this case, and then you won’t have time to work on your campaign.”
“Forget it, Susannah,” I said. “Too much damage has been done. You’re right, I’m off the case. In fact, not only am I off the case, but I have just decided to devote all my spare time to running against Melvin in the election.”
Susannah wears too much makeup to ever visibly pale, but Melvin turned baking soda white. For the first time that morning both eyes focused on me.
“You’re kidding, Yoder, right?”
“I never kid when I’m drunk. Face it, Mel, you don’t stand a chance now. I’ve got plenty of money for a campaign, everyone knows who I am, and unlike you, I’ve never had to arrest somebody’s son, or brother, or cousin. You get the picture. Besides, it’s the year of the woman.”
Melvin’s enormous noggin teetered on his knotty neck as one eye focused on Freni, the other on Susannah. “She’s just kidding, right?”
Freni shook her head. “That Magdalena is a stubborn one. She would do this thing just to spike you.”
Susannah nodded. “That’s ‘spite,’ Freni, but Stud Muffins”—my sister put a long slender hand on her husband’s shoulder—” I’m afraid she’s right. And if she does run, Mags could win the election.”
Both oversized orbs attempted contact with me, but only one eye made it. Melvin’s left eye focused on my ceiling, which quite frankly was in need of a good dusting.
“Okay, so I apologize. Is that good enough for you?”
“Not hardly.”
“Well, what the”—he caught himself just in time—” what is it you want, Yoder?”
“Say ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
“I’m sorry.”
“Now say it with feeling.”
“I’m sorry!”
“And you’ll have my car towed from the Keims’ farm and replace the three ruined tires?”
“Don’t you have insurance?”
“Sure, but I don’t want my premium to rise.”
“Do it,” Susannah urged. “Please, Snickerdoodle.”
“My sister wants to be the First Lady someday,” I said. “Don’t you want to see your carapace in the Oval Office?”
“Okay, damn it, I’ll do it.”
“Don’t swear,” I said sternly, and then dismissed the motley crew again.
This time they couldn’t wait to leave.
18
The first thing I did when I was alone was to get down on my knees and beg the Good Lord to forgive me for my intemperance. “But you turned the water into wine at Cana,” I reminded Him. “So a little bit of champagne—which is really just a fancy kind of wine—is not so bad, is it? No, of course not, because as I recall, your mama got in on the act too. And so did your brothers. Why, that whole wedding party was just sipping away, and none of it mixed with orange juice either.”
When the Good Lord didn’t contradict me, I got up, brushed my teeth, and took a long shower. To be perfectly frank, I was feeling pretty darn good. I, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder, was a woman of the world. Okay, maybe not of the world, because that surely was a sin, but I had dipped my toe in the waters of sophistication and lived to tell about it. No lightning bolt from Heaven, no earthquake from Mama rolling over in her grave. Of course, I would never again let alcohol pass these lips—in case Reverend Schrock was right when he said Biblical wine was really just grape juice—but still, I was glad I’d had the experience.
Then, because I no longer felt guilty, I felt guilty—if you know what I mean. And forget what you may know about Catholic or even Jewish guilt—we Mennonites do it best, and I am particularly skilled in that emotion if I must say so myself. In fact, I would venture to say that I feel more guilty during an average day than any three people in Bedford County. But just thinking about all that guilt made me guilty of the sin of pride, so I got down on my knees again and prayed for deliverance from that sin.
Finally, feeling both spiritually and physically refreshed, I decided to take a walk. That’s the first thing I should have done when Melvin asked me to help solve—rather, to solve—the murder of Lizzie Mast, because walking clears my head. It can, however, do terrible things to the sinuses, so before stoppin
g outside, I sprayed the inside of my generous proboscis with that green thumb thing so frequently prescribed now by allergists.
There are a number of pleasant destinations one can easily reach from the PennDutch Inn. The woods behind my place are lovely, dark, and deep, and not particularly dangerous if one stays away from the Mishler property during hunting season; the pair of elderly brothers are blind as bats and trigger happy. And if one is easily offended, one might do well to stay clear of Dinky and Flora Williams’s place. This couple, transplants from Philadelphia, are Hernia’s first official nudists, and believe you me, Dinky is not aptly named. In fact, I’m almost positive I saw two of them the last time I peeked, and I’ve been meaning to check a medical encyclopedia at Bedford County Library to see if that is indeed possible. At any rate, there is Slave Creek just down the road, and the town of Hernia itself. And then there is the Miller farm.
Don’t ask me why, but the Miller farm has always drawn me like a magnet. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with Aaron Miller, whom I fell in love with, first as a young girl, and then as an older, but still innocent, woman. And perhaps the fact that it is now owned by Gabriel Rosen has something to do with my current obsession with the place. But I daresay, even if the place had always been owned by ugly strangers, I would still find it exceptionally beautiful.
The house, which is backed by wooded hills, is set a long way in from the road. Flanking the driveway are broad sweeps of verdant cow pasture, and the one on the right, as you face the house, is punctuated by a large pond. On the near bank of the pond is a magnificent weeping willow. In short, it would make a perfect painting.
And a perfect painting was exactly what Dr. George Hanson was creating.
“Wow, you’re really good!”
He looked up grudgingly from his work. “My last six won Best of Show. I expect this one to take a blue ribbon as well.”
“I’m sure it will. That pond looks so real I could jump in it right now, if it weren’t for the snapping turtle you painted on that log.”
No comment.
“I love the realism. So much of what you see these days looks like”—I remembered my bout of nausea—“like someone threw up a pizza and decided to call that art.”