by Tamar Myers
‘He is a real person, and not to be toyed with, Toy, you Henry VIII heretic. Now, if you suspend your rational thinking – all that intellectual Episcopal, Anglican, twenty-first century, scientific Motherbo-jumbo and just listen to me for a minute, you might learn something.’
‘I’m suspended with both ears cocked,’ Toy said insouciantly, not to mention nonsensically.
‘Hammurabi had a code,’ I said.
‘Say what?’
‘Oy!’ I said, borrowing from my mother-in-law’s lexicon. ‘And to think that a simple Mennonite woman, like me, would be better schooled in history than a worldly lad from a city the size of Charlotte.’
The perfect symmetry of Toy’s features was ruined by a scowl. ‘No lectures, please. Besides, I’ve had lots of colds – everyone has – big deal.’
‘Not that kind of code! Think Morse Code.’
Toy scratched his handsome head and appeared to think; at least that was a start.
‘Listen,’ I whispered, on the off-off chance that my guardian angel had momentarily tuned out, ‘I can’t come right out and lie. That’s one of the Big Ten. But on the other hand, we’ve been given tacit permission to lie by people supposedly far more important than us.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Toy said.
‘Forsooth, ’tis true. Presidents, heads of state, politicians, car salesmen, religious leaders, fiction writers – they lie all the time. I, however, refuse to do so. Nay, I much prefer the word “prevarication,” seeing as how it is not to be found in my well-thumbed copy of the King James Bible.’
‘But it means the same thing as lie, right?’ Toy said.
‘Let’s not be picky, dear,’ I said, my voice unconsciously rising. ‘Now about my code, pay attention: as your mayor, I am not going to give you instructions that might brush up against county or state law. But as the owner of a horse and two cows, they each have their own what in the barn?’
‘Poop.’
‘Excuse me?’
Toy flushed. ‘Well, they are live animals, aren’t they?’
‘The word is stall.’
‘Stall?’ Toy said.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Leave poor Yoko-san right where she is for the meantime. Trust me, she’s in no hurry to go anywhere and no one is expecting her anytime soon.’
‘But what about the fur inners?’ Toy said.
‘Huh?’
‘Fur inners,’ said Toy, much louder this time and with some irritation.
Then it clicked. Fur innards! The clean-shaven young man was caught up in that zombie, werewolf, vampire trash craze that was ruining our young people’s minds. This rubbish was tearing them from their Bibles and the teachings of their churches, and setting them on a slippery path of occultism which would eventually funnel them straight into Hell.
I shook my head. ‘Oh, not you too, Toy! Please tell me that our very own Chief of Police has not stooped so low as to watch zombie movies and that television program that I hear so much about called The Walking Head.’
Toy shook his head in turn. ‘For your information, it’s called The Walking Dead and it’s fabulous. Magdalena, forgive me for saying this to you – my elder, my mayor, my employer, and my friend: with a mind as narrow as yours it’s a wonder that there is room enough on your face for two eyes. While I do indeed watch many zombie movies and TV shows, I fail to see what my viewing habits have to do with this investigation.’
‘Then what’s all this nonsense about furry guts?’ I wailed. Perhaps what I really did was howl, because from somewhere in the woods behind the house a coyote responded.
Toy’s reaction was priceless. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.
‘Well, duh,’ he said, ‘I forgot to speak Pennsylvanian there for a moment. The word I meant to say is foreigners. You know, as in your English guests.’
‘Ah, foreigners,’ I said. ‘Well, I would never have guessed it because the context does not apply. The English are never foreigners, you see, because they are – well, English. They are the nexus of the universe by Divine Ordinance – or so I’ve been told. Granted, it’s a hard concept to grasp unless you are English, or at least a member of the United Kingdom.’
‘Actually, it’s not,’ Toy said. ‘My mother’s family is originally from Charleston, South Carolina.’
‘Oh,’ I said excitedly. ‘Does she know Abigail Timberlake?’
‘What? Who?’
‘Never mind, go ahead with your diversion.’
‘The point of my diversion is that in Charleston there are folks who see no need to travel because they are already there. In other words, Charleston is all that anyone should ever desire.’
‘Hmm,’ I said, ‘I shall cogitate on your analogy. In the meantime, let us return to the corpse in my shaft – not to be too coarse about it. I was hoping that we could agree upon a course of action that would be predicated on the status quo, which would give us both plenty of time to do our jobs. I’ll do my best to keep the Brits here voluntarily but if they want to leave you must find a way to detain them so that we have time to investigate how Cee-Cee got her information on Yoko-san.’
Toy scratched his handsome head, and for a fleeting moment I had head envy. Down, girl, I told myself. Back off.
‘Why didn’t you just say all this from the beginning?’ Toy said.
‘Well, duh,’ I said, ‘I guess I forgot to speak pseudo-legalese. I mean, aren’t you supposed to report all deaths to the state? And isn’t a coroner supposed to examine the remains? I was just hoping that we could stall things a bit and give ourselves more time before the big boys come in and mess up the crime site.’
‘O ye of little faith,’ the lapsed Episcopalian, not-quite-an-Anglican said, throwing scripture at me with all the alacrity of a Born-Again Mennonite. ‘Sorry to burst your bubble, Magdalena, but in this booming metropolis called Hernia, which lacks even one traffic light, your police department – that is to say, me – has complete autonomy. I decide when, and what, needs reporting. And as far as a coroner goes, at this point, all we need to do is to confirm that the subject of my report is dead.’
Toy can be most annoying at times, and so as not to let me forget, he cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Hello,’ he called. ‘Hello? Is there a doctor in this house?’
At that very instant, the front door opened with a slam that almost brought the rafters down upon my head. When I saw who the intruder was, I wished that the roof had indeed crashed down upon me, rendering me senseless among the rubble.
FIFTEEN
FRESH FIG BREAD
Combine and let sit for fifteen minutes:
1½ cups chopped ripe figs
¼ cup cooking sherry
Mix in small bowl:
12/3 cups flour
½ cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp salt
Beat together in large bowl:
1½ cups sugar
½ cup salad oil
2 large eggs
Blend flour mixture into oil mixture; gently fold in figs. Pour batter into well-greased 5×9 inch loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1¼ hours. Cool in pan for 10 minutes; invert on rack to cool. Freezes well.
SIXTEEN
Pastor Diffledorf is a kindly old man who possesses at least two faults of which I am aware. His most obvious failing is that he insists on retaining a silly-sounding family name that I can’t, for the life of me, seem to remember. His only other flaw is that he never had enough ambition to get a real paying job. My church pays him, of course, by passing around two much-battered offering plates every Sunday morning. However, even though we have not become godless pagans like the unchurched Brits, our attendance has dropped drastically as our young people flock to the shopping malls, stay home to watch sports on television, or in the case of Elmer Gingerich and Rudy Swinefister, misbehave in the hayloft. The sad truth is that not even a church mouse on the dole could survive on t
he pittance we pay Pastor Dufflediff.
‘Pastor,’ I cried in alarm. ‘It’s not my turn to serve you Sunday dinner is it?’
‘No, Magdalena, it is not, but neither is it your turn to skip church.’ He looked around with mock astonishment, which in God’s eyes is surely just a hair’s breadth away from a lie. ‘Why, just look at the earthly mansion which you inhabit. It is no wonder that you care naught for your Heavenly abode, which is even now being prepared for you.’
‘This is a bed and breakfast hotel,’ Toy said gallantly, ‘not just Magdalena’s private residence.’ He paused only a millisecond. ‘Although, I would wager that she’s raking in the loot with both hands and could afford to put a mansion down anywhere that she wants – even in Heaven.’
‘Toy!’ I said while waggling my long, shapely index finger at him. Hernia’s young, Episcopalian peace-keeper and my aged clergyman do not see bright blue eye to grey-blue eye. I turned back to Pastor Daffleduff. ‘Now that you are here, looking after my soul, who is back at the church, hectoring the flock – I mean, delivering the sermon?’
‘My wife.’
‘Your wife?’
‘That would be Daphne Diffledorf, a woman whom you know quite well. Sits in the front right pew every Sunday morning. Black hat, black gloves. Anyway, since she has to listen to me rehearse my sermons all week long, she practically knows them by heart.’
Of course I knew the pastor’s wife! I’m the head of the search committee that gave the elderly gent his job. But Daphne Fiffledord didn’t just sit in the front right pew, she filled it. Once, after a particularly long service on a hot, humid day when Daphne stood up, the pew rose with her. I am not being unkind when I relate this detail, mind you; I am merely fulfilling my duties as a keen observer of the human condition.
‘But Pastor Dumblefirth,’ I exclaimed, ‘is a woman even allowed to preach in our denomination?’
The old man nodded. ‘With consent of the individual congregation, the answer is “yes.” Perhaps I should have checked with you, however, given that you, a woman, are the Senior Elder in the church, but then again, you were nowhere to be found – except for here, keeping company in your own bed and breakfast hotel with an exceedingly handsome young man.’
‘I explained everything,’ I mumbled miserably. ‘But for what it’s worth, given that I am already an inadvertent adulteress – having once unknowingly married a bigamist, I mean – my reputation is so tarnished that I sometimes think I should just bid my morals adieu and become the scarlet woman whom I have been made out to be. At least I might have a bit of fun for a change. No, no, I take that all back – I didn’t mean it! Living into my reputation would be a terrible sin, of course. I’m just saying that – oy! Look, it isn’t easy keeping to the straight and narrow path when one is always being judged. Besides, red is really not my colour.’
‘I didn’t come here to judge you,’ Pastor Faddledeaf said. ‘And maybe you did already explain things; I’m getting old and my hearing isn’t what it used to be. Anyway, where are the royalty? The ladies of the church have prepared a bounteous buffet for the Queen and her entourage.’
It was Toy who snickered then, not me. ‘Pastor, dear,’ I said kindly, ‘Her Majesty is approaching ninety, if she hasn’t already achieved it. Therefore I doubt if she has plans to visit Hernia in this lifetime. My guests this week are merely members of the aristocracy – lords and ladies and, alas, a lad who will not be entitled to a title.’
Dear Pastor Fiddlefuddle looked absolutely befuddled. ‘Magdalena, yet again you have managed to communicate naught with your flowery verbiage.’
‘Thank you, dear. That is indeed my intention – at least half of the time.’
The wise old gent shook his head sadly. ‘I suppose that the rest of the time you babble incessantly without a direction in mind?’
‘Oh, woe is me; I’ve been found out for the charlatan that I am!’ I cried as I beat my chest with my fists (lightly, of course, given my lack of natural padding).
Toy snickered again. ‘I’m sure that happened a long time ago,’ he said.
‘Indeed, it did,’ Pastor Fiddlesticks said. ‘Magdalena, you are aware that the ladies of your church, although they do not hold titles of nobility, are going to be beside themselves with disappointment when they learn that your titled guests have already returned to their palaces in England. What are they to do with the sumptuous potluck lunch which they have prepared with their old, arthritic, and I am sure, very painful hands that have been damaged by years of hard labour as they toiled side by side with their husbands in the fields?’
‘Well, uh—’ I was admittedly slow on my boat-size feet.
‘They haven’t left yet,’ Toy blurted. I am sure that he was only trying to help, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt, but only because he is so easy on the eyes.
‘Oh?’ Pastor Fumbleforth said. He had ears like bonnie Prince Charles and was able to rotate them in my direction like a pair of remote-controlled satellite dishes. ‘Am I to believe that they are up in their rooms as quiet as palace mice or, perhaps, as still as the young Japanese tourist in yon elevator shaft?’
The hairs on my head stood on end, causing my white organza prayer cap to teeter precariously atop my do. Granted, that statement was hyperbolic, but not by much. Even Toy seemed to be caught off guard.
‘What is this about a Japanese tourist?’ he said, recovering faster than I did, although his voice was almost an octave higher than usual.
Pastor Fibberblatt had the temerity to hold Toy’s steady gaze. ‘Forgive my poor choice of words,’ he said. ‘I forgot that you law enforcement types speak only in certainties and the Japanese girl’s final whereabouts were never conclusively determined.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘In fact, one quasi-official party floated the theory that Yoko-san is alive and well in Nebraska, where she owns a noodle shop called Udon Have to Stay Forever. It serves affordable meals to migrant oil pipeline workers.’
‘I see,’ Pastor Flutterbutt said. ‘Is there any chance that this half-baked theory-floater would be you?’
I gasped. ‘Mind your tongue, Pastor Patterfelt! I’ll have you know that I am quite baked – through and through.’
‘Oh, come on, Magdalena,’ Toy pleaded. ‘We may as well come clean for this man of the cloth and tell him where everyone is. He’ll find out soon enough, anyway. You know that what’s-her-name can’t keep a secret.’
‘Aha!’ The clever clergyman’s faded eyes suddenly flickered with an unfamiliar intensity. ‘Your mother-in-law has them, doesn’t she? I should have known as much; Mother Malaise possesses a silken tongue as persuasive as the serpent that coaxed Eve to eat the apple in the Garden of Eden.’
‘Ha,’ I said. ‘Now it is you, Pastor Piffledaffle, who embroiders the truth!’
‘Not hardly,’ he said. ‘And need I say that should Mother Malaise’s words ever fail her, why, that handsome heathen could rely on her looks alone to lead sinners into the gates of Hell.’
‘She might scare them through the gates,’ Toy said, reading my mind and thus earning my undying gratitude for saying what I could not say.
Yes, I know, I should not even have thought such a horrible thing about my husband’s mother. Jesus taught that if we kill someone in our heart it is the same as if we’ve done it in real life. Of course, I can’t argue with my Lord, or can I? My Jewish husband insists that wrestling with God is precisely what we’re meant to do. Well, in my defence, as weak and useless as it might be, I just want to say that Jesus did not have a mother-in-law.
‘Harrumph,’ Pastor Pumppump said. ‘You are certainly a judgemental young man. If I were not already married, and Ida Rosen, aka Mother Malaise, a Jewess and a Heathen, I would certainly set my cap for her.’
‘And you are behind the times, pastor,’ I said, not unkindly. ‘The term “Jewess” is no longer used by educated folk. The suffix “ess” is added to the names of animal species to indicate the female gender, as in lio
ness or tigress, but we don’t apply it to religious or ethnic groups. For instance, when is the last time you heard someone say Baptistess, or Frenchess?’
Pastor Poopdidoo could be argumentative at times. ‘What about baroness? Or marchioness?’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ I said. ‘While you’re splitting hairs, your happy, handsome heathen doth gyre and gimbal in the wabe – and in the altogether too, I might add.’
‘Whatever is she jabbering on about?’ Pastor Huffandpuff said.
‘They are prancing about naked,’ I said, admittedly with relish. ‘Your second choice for a helpmate is frolicking about without a stitch of clothing on, her sagging body parts heaving here and there. But not only that, by now I’m sure that she has seduced the Brits into shedding their clothes as well. After all, the distance from Anglicanism to apostasy can’t be all that far.’
‘Again with the judgement!’
‘A fact is a fact, dear. So, do you want to do something about it – maybe salvage a meeting between the congregation and our English visitors – or just register a complaint?’
‘The third option,’ Toy said with a wicked glint in his eye, ‘is to cross the road to the convent and let it all hang out.’
It appeared to me as if Pastor Diffledorf had just been made an offer that his flesh was having a hard time refusing. It is desire of the flesh, as St Paul was so intent on warning us, that is truly the Devil’s most effective bait. It was up to me to tip the scale a wee bit in the other direction, even if it wasn’t quite the truth. Sometimes the means does justify the end, especially if it can prevent two ends from coming into contact.
‘My dear Pastor Diffledorf,’ I said, ‘by now you have lived in our community long enough to have heard all the rumours concerning me. You know that I was a virgin until age forty-four, when I was tricked into a bigamous marriage with my second-cousin, Aaron Miller. Thus, you know that I am a pious—’
‘Ahem,’ Pastor Diddedorf said. ‘I also heard that you sat on your washing machine during the spin cycle. That is hardly the act of a pious woman.’