by Tamar Myers
“Tommy Lee and his mother hate each other’s guts. To my knowledge they haven’t spoken to each other in years.”
“You don’t say!”
“You see,” Magdalena glanced around, perhaps expecting Sly to be done with his pie, “Rebecca Yoder was Tommy Lee’s girl.”
I gasped.
“That’s right. Tommy Lee took it just as hard as Sam. I don’t think he’d hesitate to make his mother come across as wicked as Jezebel.”
“Tommy Lee Teschel and Sam Yoder’s daughter. It’s hard to imagine.”
Magdalena shrugged. “The truth is Rebecca was always a little wild. She wasn’t a Mennonite you know. Sam married a Methodist and converted. Three hundred years of tradition went right down the drain.”
I gave her my heartfelt sympathy. “Tell me,” I added, “how did Billy Ray fit into the equation. Whose side was he on?”
“Near as I can guess, he played it right down the middle. He worked with his brother in the family business, and he still managed to live at home with his mother. The Bible warns us about that, you know?”
“Living with one’s mother?”
“Ach, against serving two masters.”
“Well, now he’s dead, and I understand Tommy Lee moved in with his mother.”
“Yah. How do you know this?”
“I spoke to their neighbor. A very lonely woman from New York.”
“Ach, there are so many of them now. Urban refugees they call themselves. Hernia used to be such a quiet, God-fearing place where everyone knew everyone else.”
“You still seem to keep track of people, dear, and Betty Cole is no slouch in that department either. And speaking of knowing folks, what can you tell me about Adrienne Wheeler, Tommy Lee’s ex-wife?”
“Ach, what a beautiful woman!”
I beamed. “How kind of you.”
She leaned forwarded and studied me. “You know, you bear a faint resemblance to Adrienne. If you fixed yourself up a little you could be very pretty.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “So, you know her well?”
“I’ve known Adrienne since we were girls. We didn’t move in the same circles, of course.”
“You didn’t?” I wondered how many circles a town the size of Hernia had.
“The Wheelers—that’s her maiden name—are Baptists. Still, it broke her heart when she married Tommy Lee—which of course she wouldn’t have done, if Rebecca Yoder hadn’t died in that terrible accident.”
“What kind of person is Adrienne? Do you trust her?”
“Ach, she’s the salt of the earth. I don’t believe in divorce, you know, but Adrienne Wheeler is—well—she would be the sister I’ve always wanted.”
“You have a sister—Susannah.”
Magdalena colored. “Just the same. Adrienne is smart and hardworking. And if you ask me, she’s just as pretty as any movie star.” She nodded to the gathering inside, which was growing rowdier by the minute.
“But Adrienne has bleached hair,” I wailed.
I might have had a chance to prove that I was just as smart, if not as pretty, as my twin sister, but a horrible discordant noise inside drove Magdalena to her feet.
“Mercy me,” I said, “it sounds like a cat fell down your chimney.” I prayed that it wasn’t Dmitri.
“It’s that heavy medals again.”
A heavy pulsating base clarified her statement. “You mean the rock music—heavy metal.”
“Yah, that’s the stuff. I told him no more heavy medals!” Magdalena shouted over the din. “It puts the cows off milking.”
“Who?” I shouted back. “Surely not Little Richard!”
“Pat!” she cried and stormed back inside.
I never saw her again.
The fact that I had to turn on my headlight—my rented wreck had only one—should have tipped me off to the time. At that northern latitude the sun in May goes to bed well after decent folks have had their supper. Therefore I have no choice but to admit that I was a thoughtless, inconsiderate friend.
Wynnell, C. J., and Peggy were pissed. Pardon my French. I really do disapprove of that vulgar term, but it best fits the scene I walked into when I returned to Room #9 at the Roach Motel. I didn’t expect a welcoming committee, but neither did I envision a pack of howling banshees, eager for blood. I dropped Dmitri, who disappeared, tail inflated, beneath the nearest bed.
For the next several minutes the women ranted and raved half-heard complaints, while I hung my head and muttered half-heard apologies. At last they calmed down enough so that we could begin a conversation of sorts.
“Abigail Louise!” Wynnell hissed, sounding for all the world like Mama when I have sorely missed the mark. “How could you do this to me?”
“Do what, dear?” I asked calmly.
“Stick me with them for a day!”
The cacophony resumed, and I had to wave my hands like an umpire to bring the volume down a few decibels.
“She has a lot of nerve,” C. J. said, tugging at my arm. It was clear to me that her intention was to steer me into the bathroom for a private audience. Not being quite the fool folks generally think I am, I resisted.
“Ladies, please—”
“But Abby, the quilt auction was supposed to be a group event, wasn’t it?”
“I already explained my absence, dear,” I said with utmost patience.
“No, I mean the three of us.” She nodded at Wynnell and Peggy. “We were supposed to go to the quilt auction, together, right?”
“So?”
“So Wynnell and Peggy didn’t even go. They dumped me off there by myself. You might not be aware of this Abby, but I’m still a vulnerable young girl.”
“You’re twenty-four years old, for crying out loud,” Wynnell muttered. “Quit acting like a baby.”
I glared at her and Peggy. Neither of them had the decency to flinch.
“Well?” I demanded.
Peggy shrugged, but said nothing.
Wynnell sighed. “Okay, so I got sidetracked. We passed a museum of miniatures on the way to the auction and I made Peggy drop me off. Oh, Abby, you should have seen what they had in their collection! I could have spent days there.”
“I didn’t know you were fond of miniatures, dear.”
“Well, I used to be fond of you,” Wynnell humphed, and picked up my hairbrush. I prayed that she would resist the temptation to use it.
“And you, Peggy,” I said sternly, “what did you do?”
“Men!” C. J. and Wynnell chorused.
Peggy barely blushed. “The men at the auction were all Amish. I may as well have been in church. So, I decided to have a cup of coffee at the service center on the turnpike.”
“Pick anyone up?” I asked, not unkindly. After all, with Greg on the verge of exiting my picture, I could use some trolling tips.
C. J. and Wynnell cheered. This time Peggy had the decency to turn a respectable rose.
“Well, actually—hey, this is really none of y’all’s business.”
“It is if you have to wait an hour outside a museum after it closes,” Wynnell snarled.
“You’re just jealous,” Peggy hissed.
The hedgerows met in a scowl that would have frightened a scarecrow. “I have a husband, Peggy. I don’t need to throw myself at the first thing—”
“Ladies, pleeease,” I begged. I turned to C. J. “Did you buy any quilts?” I asked brightly.
She nodded. “Three. A Dresden Plate and a Star of Bethlehem. But the third one is really strange.”
“Oh?” Much better to encourage C. J.’s inane fantasies than allow a full-blown cat fight in a ten-by-twelve motel room. Especially when the only real cat present was too scared to show itself.
“The third quilt,” C. J. said loudly, “is a very simple patchwork, but when you look at it closely you can see that there is a secret message embroidered along the hem.”
“You don’t say!”
“Oh, yes. Of course I can’t read it be
cause it’s in Amish, but I can guess at what it says.”
“You can?” Perhaps I had committed a tactical error.
“It probably says, ‘Help, I’m being held captive by the Amish.’”
“I’m sure it does, dear.”
C. J. grabbed my arm. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“Well—”
“Because a similar thing happened to me when I was ten.”
I pulled loose from her grip. “You bought an Amish quilt with a secret message?”
“It was the first day of summer vacation, and to celebrate I bought a box of Crunch ’N’ Snack. You know that caramel corn with the little prize inside?”
At this point I was more intrigued than annoyed. “Do tell,” I said dangerously.
C. J. beamed, but the pair of two-legged cats moaned. Apparently they’d heard the story before.
“Like I said, I was eating a box of Crunch’N’Snack, but instead of a toy, I found a little rolled-up message stuffed in a tiny plastic tube. It looked like a piece of aquarium hose. Anyway, I had to use a magnifying glass to read it, and it said, ‘Help, I’m being held captive in a Crunch ’N’ Snack factory.’”
“Get out of town!”
“I’m not kidding. But my mama thought it was a prank I was trying to pull on her. She pretty near beat the tar out of me.”
“Bless your heart.” Just between you and me, I was speaking to C. J.’s dead mother.
“But that wasn’t all, Abby. A couple of months later—I know, because school was back in session by then—I bought another box, and it too had a note in it. I even showed it to my friend Tina on the playground the next day. It said, ‘I’m still being held captive at the Crunch ’N’ Snack factory. Why didn’t you get help?’”
“Why didn’t you see a shrink?” Peggy grunted. “Lord knows all that Crunch’N’Snack went to your head.”
C. J.’s chin shot up and forward and she held up a poorly executed fist—a girl’s fist, Toy called them when I was growing up. You know the kind, with the thumb inside the clenched fingers.
“Eat this,” C. J. said.
I gently pushed C. J.’s fist down. “Well,” I said, “what a lovely little story.”
“It’s not just a story, Abby, and I’m not through.”
I gulped, but wisely said nothing.
“In fact, I haven’t even gotten to the good part. You see, a month after that, there was this story on the front page of the Shelby Gazette about a dead body they found in a secret warehouse of the Crunch ’N’ Snack factory. It was a woman, and she was chained to the wall. She was wearing some kind of work smock, and in her pocket they found a notebook, a pencil, and about two feet of plastic tubing, just like the kind they use on aquariums.” She glanced at Wynnell and Peggy triumphantly. “So now you know the rest of the story.”
“Lord have mercy,” I said, and then struggled to suppress a yawn.
Wynnell was not nearly as gracious. She gave us all a chance to study her uvula.
“Y’all have to excuse me,” she said, “I’m beat and I want to hit the sack. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”
I cocked my ears—well, metaphorically speaking, although in high school I dated a boy who really was capable of doing just that.
“You have big plans for tomorrow?” I asked sweetly.
Wynnell yawned again, setting off a chain reaction. “We all do. We’re going home.”
“Excuse me?”
“H-O-M-E,” Peggy said. “What part didn’t you get?”
I felt like slapping her.
“Where the heart is,” C. J. said, and somehow managed to sound wistful.
I didn’t stamp my foot, but I’m sure they could tell I was plenty peeved. Mama says my mouth puckers when I get highly emotional.
“Did y’all just forget to consult me, or was this intentional?”
The hedgerows rose and fell. “Good grief, Abby, you said we were coming up here for a couple of days. Well, it’s been a couple of days. Besides, we’ve already rented the U-haul to take back our loot.”
“Et tu, Brutus?”
“Well, somebody has to drive it, Abby. All we could get is a truck with a manual transmission and C. J. doesn’t know how to drive one.”
C. J. nodded vigorously. “I do so know how to drive one. I just said I’m more comfortable with an automatic.”
“Close enough,” Wynnell snapped.
“Ah, come on, give me a chance!”
I waved at them to shush. “So, that’s it then? I bring y’all along on my trip, and y’all decide when it’s over?”
“It was my car,” Peggy said, “and it still is. We can leave any damn time we want.”
I slapped my thigh instead of Peggy’s face. There was no point in arguing further. I was outvoted by my so-called friends.
With apologies to Dmitri, there is more than one way to skin a cat. There was still an opportunity for me to get a look at the Southern Pennsylvania Metalworks Company, and not involve the ladies. The Mushroom Man lived within walking distance of the motel and had agreed to let me keep the car keys overnight. Not only had I planned to use the vehicle the next morning, but I had in fact paid dearly for the privilege to come and go with it at will. In retrospect, if would have been far cheaper to buy a used car. That, I could at least leave behind as an act of mercy to whomever followed in my footsteps.
Fortunately, it is very easy to tell when Peggy is asleep. When she is fully under, her mouth hangs open wide enough to swallow a tennis ball, and she drools like a mastiff. It was simply a matter of lying quietly, and allowing my eyes to adjust to the dim light created by the street lamp outside. Finally, when Peggy was in danger of drowning, I pushed Dmitri gently off my stomach, and slipped out of bed. It took me about ten minutes to dress, even though I had cleverly made the clothes I planned to wear accessible by announcing to Peggy at bedtime that I was setting out my traveling clothes for the following day.
My chief impediment to a quick and quiet getaway was that ten-pound ball of purring fur. While I was pulling on a sweatshirt, Dmitri rubbed against my bare leg and meowed. I immediately scratched his cheek, which set him to purring. The second I stopped scratching, however, the monster meowed again.
“Stop that!” I whispered.
But Watson would not be stifled. I dressed with one hand, while scratching with the other, and finally managed to get my blue jeans on, albeit backwards. Of course I took them off and put them on right, but in the course of things, I accidentally stepped on my loved one’s tail. The poor dear emitted a screech that broke the sound barrier. I felt sure my goose was cooked, but luck was with me, and Peggy continued to bubble and burble like an unwatched pot. Believe me, my nerves were shot by the time I was ready to hit the night.
There remained the problem of what to do with the frustrating feline. After all, I just couldn’t leave him. If he stood by the door and meowed piteously or, worse yet, jumped up on Peggy, my absence would surely be noticed. But I didn’t want to take him with me either. If he escaped—or was otherwise “liberated” from the car—I would have a heck of a time trying to find him, even with a can of Mighty Mouser’s as bait. During the evening clouds had rolled in, and the night sky was as dark as Buford’s heart.
“Damn you, Dmitri,” I mouthed.
My precious bundle of potential allergies purred.
They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but I have had three or four brilliant thoughts in my lifetime. I had one just then. Without further ado I scooped up Dmitri and slipped undetected from the room.
23
Peggy’s Lincoln Town Car was going to make the perfect holding pen for my wandering Watson. Of course I didn’t have a key, but it was no secret that Peggy kept a spare inside a little magnetic box affixed to the inside of her front bumper. I found it with no trouble and was ensconcing Dmitri comfortably in the back seat when cerebral lightning struck for the second time that night.
As long as I was g
oing to use Peggy’s car, why not actually borrow it? Why not make myself comfortable in the front seat, and leave my feline friend in the Mushroom Man’s rattletrap? It would certainly make my getaway and return quieter, and besides, what did a cat care about leather seats and a CD player? So, borrow Peggy’s car, I did, but I certainly didn’t steal it.
I had no trouble finding the Southern Pennsylvania Metalworks Company. It was right where Magdalena said it would be, at the junction of Route 220 and Business 220, outside the Bedford city limits. There were a few other businesses along that stretch of road—a brickyard, a used car lot, an automobile repair shop, a recycling plant—but except for the occasional security light, they were dark, and looked deserted. SPMC was no exception.
The two-story brick building was set surprisingly close to the road, separated from it by only a narrow parking lot, barely five spaces wide. Clearly the zoning restrictions in Bedford were more lax than those back home in Charlotte. Two massive oaks anchored this asphalt strip, and despite—or perhaps, because of—the presence of a security light above the building’s main entrance, the extremities of the parking lot were dark and sinister.
I may borrow cars when the opportunity presents itself, but I do not have a criminal mind. Nonetheless, I thought to turn off the headlights (thank goodness Peggy’s model did not come equipped with running lights) before turning into the parking lot. The space marked “Reserved for CEO” was unfortunately within the influence of the security light, so I parked in an unmarked spot deep within the shadows.
It is safe to say that Business Route 220 is not a hotbed of activity at midnight. Since leaving the city limits a mile or so back I hadn’t seen one moving car. When I stepped outside of Peggy’s car the only sound I heard were the distant “barumps” of bullfrogs that inhabited the weed-choked drainage ditch on the opposite side of the road. No doubt they were rejoicing over impending rain, and I couldn’t say that I blamed them. The second I emerged from the air-conditioned cavern of the Lincoln, I was drenched with sweat. Okay, as everyone knows, good southern girls don’t sweat, we merely dew, but I was on Yankee soil after all, and if this was dew, then the Mississippi River could be blotted up with one heavy-duty paper towel.