Butter Safe Than Sorry

by Tamar Myers

  “Yeah, but she’s a cagey old woman.” The second voice was familiar as well, in addition to being cheeky.

  “She’s downright stupid—that’s what she is,” the first familiar voice said.

  “Yeah,” said the second voice. “But what do you expect? She’s supposedly some kind of cousin of his. Them Yoders is all alike if you ask me. Couldn’t none of them find their way south from the North Pole without a compass.”

  That did it! That hiked my hackles so high that they dug into my armpits, forcing me to fling open the armoire doors to defend my honor. It’s one thing to pick on me personally, but to disparage the entire clan? I won’t stay stuffed in a portable closet on that account.

  “You take that back!” I shrilled.

  The men stepped back, but they didn’t seem at all surprised to see a woman in a black cape fly out at them from an oaken armoire. In fact, they doubled over laughing.

  I stared angrily at them for a full minute before realizing that they were the security guards from First Farmer ’s Bank. Almost immediately then I wised up and tried a sweeter approach.

  “Talk to your ma lately, Johnny?” Okay, so it was mean of me to call him by his nickname in front of his bud. But for the record, I did it in self-defense, and I have since confessed this sin. The only reason that I bother to mention it now is that I have since come to believe that full disclosure is good for the soul.

  At my snide comment the man called Johnny immediately clammed up. He balled his fists and a vein popped out on his temple.

  Alas, John’s buddy was no more sensitive than was I. “She got your goat, eh, Johnny Boy?”

  “Shut up, the two of yinz.”

  Instead of shutting up, his companion turned and offered me a hand the size of Connecticut. Normally I eschew handshakes on the grounds that they are unhygienic, but there times when one is simply caught unawares.

  “This is a good way to catch a cold,” I said, as I pressed the flesh. “Besides it’s an archaic custom dating from the days when men commonly carried weapons, such as swords. Extending an open hand was a sign of neutrality.”

  “Yeah, and my name is Bill—not Billy Boy.” He laughed briefly. “We seen you get out of that cab and break in. Decided to follow ya.”

  “I didn’t break in! I merely entered uninvited.”

  “Hey, don’t get your panties in a bunch there, Miss Yoder, ’cause I ain’t judging. We was gonna break in anyway.”

  “Shut up, Bill,” John said even more forcefully.

  Bill turned to his friend. “What’s wrong with being up front with her? Ain’t she that famous detective from Hernia? If we were ta throw in with her, we just might figure something out? There’s answers in numbers; ain’t that what they say?”

  “If you ask the right questions, dear. And speaking of which: why were you two going to break in?”

  John nudged Bill aside. “Same reason as you, I imagine: we don’t think that Mr. Yoder killed Amy. We think it was a setup. If they get away with this, and he gets sent to the pen, then there go our jobs.”

  “Yeah,” said Bill. “Ain’t no one gonna take a chance on me the way Mr. Yoder did—me not having a high school diploma and all.”

  “I told you to get your GED,” John said, “but all you wanted to do was party.”

  “Quit yer complaining,” Bill said.

  “No, you quit,” John said.

  “Shut up,” Bill said.

  I clapped my hands. “Children! Focus, please. Who is this ’they’ that you referenced?”

  Bill stepped forward and gave his buddy a not so playful tap on the biceps. “Hey, what’s with this refer—whatever? You been holding out on me?”

  John shook his head as he rolled his eyes so far back they resembled two freshly peeled hard- boiled eggs. “You see what I gotta put up with? What she’s talking about, Bill, is the people I was talking about who really did kill Amy.”

  “Yeah?” said Bill. “So you do know who they are! Like I said, you were holding out on me.”

  John growled. “No, you dumb piece of—”

  “Stop it!” I commanded. “Put a zipper on it, the both of you.” Believe me, it was the first and last time a Mennonite has ever uttered such strong words. “Bill, your friend John and I think that someone other than Mr. Yoder killed Amy, but we don’t know who. That’s why I’m here—to find out. So, for now, I’m going to ask the questions and you two are going to supply the answers. Capisce?”

  “No, thanks,” Bill said. “Mama made that stuff once and I threw up.”

  “Hunh?”

  “He thought you meant ‘quiche,’ ” John said.

  I quickly did some mental gymnastics, converting run-of-the-mill questions into pointed queries that Bill might understand. “What did the men look like who tried to rob the bank last month?”

  “Two of them was old.”

  “What?” I would have fully expected the word “Amish” to be part of any one-sentence description.

  “To Bill anyone over thirty is old,” said John.

  “What else?” I coaxed.

  “One of them was—uh—I guess they say ‘overweight’ these days,” said John.

  “But I call them ‘fat,’ ” said Bill. “He was so fat that he was sweating in them fake Amish clothes of his.”

  Finally, there it was; the A word. “What do you mean by ‘fake’?”

  “Well, maybe them clothes was real, but he weren’t no real Amish man; I could see that he was wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt under that white shirt of his. And red socks. Ain’t no Amish man that wears red socks.”

  “You’re right about that,” I said.

  “And they was mean.”

  “Of course, they were mean,” John said, and shook his head again. “One of them shot little Amy, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but I could tell they was mean a-fore that. There was something in their eyes, something you don’t see in no Amish man. These fellars was out to get what they wanted, come hell or high water.”

  I shuddered. “Please, dear, watch your language. ‘Fellars’ is such a bastardization of the word ‘fellows’ that it offends me to no end.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is there anything else you two can think of that set these men apart from real Amish men?”

  “No,” said John.

  “Their shoes,” Bill said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Two of them was wearing Amish work shoes—like the kind you might wear if you was gonna plow some field, but one of the men was wearing a fancy foreign type—maybe Eye-talian.”

  “Bill is very fashion conscious,” John said, without a trace of irony.

  “I’ll make note of that,” I said, without a shred of sarcasm. “Was it the heavyset man who was wearing the fancy shoes, or one of the other two?”

  Bill scratched his head as he pondered my brain teaser. “I think it was the fellar with the mustache—yeah, that was him. Them shoes had little tassels on them. I always wanted to get me a pair of shoes with tassels, but my mama said no. Now she’s dead, but I still have to answer to John.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I ain’t so smart, that’s why.”

  “I won’t argue that, dear—” I slapped my cheek for being so cheeky. “But why John?”

  “Because I’m his older brother,” John growled. “You have a problem with that, Miss Busybody Yoder?”

  “Not at all. In fact I stand here chastised.”

  “We ain’t Catholics,” Bill said.

  Whilst I was intrigued by his enigmatic statement, we hadn’t another moment to waste in idle prattle. “We need to fan out, men, and look for evidence.”

  “What kind of evidence?” John said.

  “What do you mean by that? What kind were you looking for when you broke in?”

  “We were going to look for something we could use as blackmail if we lost our jobs.”

  “Yeah,” Bill said. “I told ya John was smart.”<
br />
  Thank heavens irritation has very few calories, because I had to swallow enormous chunks of the stuff before I could speak. “What we’re going to look for now is something—possibly a letter, or a document—that shows that Pernicious Yoder III is already being blackmailed. That’s why he hasn’t pursued the robbery case any further. Perhaps it was even an inside job.”

  “Hmm. What you say makes sense, but we can’t both be helping you.”

  “Why not?” I said. “Are you in need of a coffee break?”

  “Bill can’t read.”

  “Oh. Excuse me for a minute while I eat crow.”

  “Ya ain’t really gonna eat a crow, is ya?” Bill asked. The concern in his voice was touching. “Them’s nasty birds that eat roadkill and the like. Mama said that eating them will make ya sick. Except she weren’t right about that—but it still don’t taste good.”

  “You ate crow?” John said. “When?”

  “When you was off in the army,” Bill said, without a second’s hesitation. “We didn’t have nothing to eat and it was Thanks-giving. I plucked them birds before I brought them home and told Mama they was pigeons.” He started to sob great wrenching sobs that shook his body and made me feel like I hadn’t eaten nearly enough crow.

  “Now you see what you’ve done?” John said. “How could you?”

  “I didn’t mean to!”

  “Miss Yoder, I’d just as soon that you and us don’t work together. You go your way, and we’ll look for stuff on our own. If we find anything I’ll let you know. But if you don’t hear from me, just stay the St. Louis International Airport, Concourse A away from us.”

  I gasped. “You’ve heard of that place too?”

  “St. Louis International Airport, Concourse A, yes,” he said. Then, with his arm around his brother ’s jerking shoulders, he led him away from me.

  If one deigns to root around in a strange man’s drawers, then perhaps one should not complain too loudly about what one finds therein. That is an opinion I might well have offered before the fact.

  “Help, help! Turn on the lights! I’ve been violated.”

  To their credit both John and Bill came thundering into the room, and a second later the overhead light came on.

  “What is it?” John’s tone was one of pure concern.

  “It’s that—that disgusting thing!”

  “That thing is a flashlight,” he said. He picked it up, flipped on the switch, and shone it full in my face. “Let there be light,” he said smugly. “Miss Yoder, you have a very active imagination. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “I plead the Fifth. Still, I don’t like searching alone—not when we can search together. I mean, there’s safety in numbers, right?”

  “Yinz never makes any sense,” Bill whined.

  “Oh, all right,” John said. “But I still think we oughta be looking for something to blackmail that old coot with.”

  I sighed. “Separate searches, same room?”

  “Works for me,” John said.

  And it did. Not five minutes later he found exactly what he’d been looking for: something with which to blackmail Pernicious Yoder III.

  25

  Sea-Salted Coffee Toffee Bars

  Ingredients

  First layer

  1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

  1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 cups all-purpose flour

  1½ tablespoons instant coffee crystals

  Second layer

  1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk

  2 tablespoons butter

  2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract or dark rum

  1½ cups whole pecans4

  ½ to 1 tablespoon large crystal sea salt

  Cooking Directions

  Preheat oven to 350°F.

  In a mixing bowl, beat together butter, brown sugar and salt until light and fluffy. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, stirring between additions. Add instant coffee crystals and blend until well incorporated. Pat batter into ungreased 9x13x2- inch baking pan in an even layer. Bake until edges are lightly browned and center is puffy, 12 to 15 minutes.

  Meanwhile, in heavy saucepan, stir condensed milk and 2 tablespoons butter over low heat until butter melts. The mixture will thicken and become smooth. Stir in vanilla or rum, remove from heat, and let sit until bottom layer is done baking. Sprinkle nuts over baked bottom layer and pour hot condensed milk mixture evenly over nuts using a spatula to spread.

  Return to the oven and bake until top is golden and bubbling, 10 to 12 minutes.

  Immediately sprinkle desired amount of sea salt over bubbling toffee top. Cool slightly in pan and cut into bars. Bars can be kept up to one week in an airtight container.

  Courtesy http://www.eatwisconsincheese.com/

  26

  I stared enviously at the briefcase full of one-hundred-dollar bills. Why couldn’t I have found it first? Now John was going to get credit for preventing yet another crime by Pernicious Yoder III. I say “another” because, even though I believe that betting is a sin, I’d almost be willing to bet my dining room table that it was this distant cousin who had snuffed out the life of his pretty young cashier.

  My dining room table, by the way, is the only possession that I hold dear. It was built by my ancestor Jacob the Strong Yoder in the early 1800s. It is the only thing to have survived the great tornado of 1998—the one that picked me up, sent me flying through the air like a sliver of barnyard straw, and then just as quickly, and capriciously, dropped me facedown in a pie of cow doo-doo (a technical term I recently learned from Little Jacob).

  It is possible that I’ve digressed. The point I was intending to make was that John and his brother, Bill, were destined to become Bedford heroes. This wasn’t just my assessment, either. Both the chief of police and the county sheriff agreed. What’s more, they both agreed to sign a letter that was to be distributed to the board of trustees of the First Farmer’s Bank recommending that the Ashton brothers be given a reward—perhaps even as much as ten percent of the amount that Pernicious had stolen.

  After that serving of crow, I didn’t have much room for humble pie, so as soon as I could—without appearing to be ungracious—I made tracks, as they say, back to Hernia. At least there I was somebody, even when I was a nobody. Besides, it was one thing for law enforcement officials to come up with a story for the papers on how the Ashton brothers happened to be snooping around in a banker ’s house, but quite another if they had to explain the presence of a faux-Amish woman.

  But while I fully expected to find the inn in a hubbub and Gabe frustrated to the point of pulling out his beautiful dark curls, I could not have dreamed up the scenario that greeted my world-weary eyes.

  “Freni!” I cried. “What on earth are you doing here? You quit, remember?”

  She shrugged, which of course took a great deal of effort. “The sun sets, but it also rises, yah?”

  “That sounds like it would make a great book title.”

  “The English and their riddles,” Freni said. That’s her way of explaining anything and everything enigmatic about the outside world and we strange folk who inhabit it.

  “That could probably be another book title,” I said pleasantly. “But seriously, why are you back?”

  Freni glowered through glasses that needed a cleaning when Mary Magdalene was a little girl. “That one—she gets on my nerve, yah?”

  “And which nerve would that be?” Okay, so I was being mean, but it irritates me that Freni so dislikes her daughter- in-law. I find Barbara Hostetler to be utterly delightful—all six feet of her—even if she is from Iowa.

  “On the nerve that would break down if I stayed home,” Freni said, without missing a beat. “This morning she tells me that times have changed and that it is no longer the Grossmudder ’s place to punish the child.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So you agree?”

  “Well—I guess it all depends. If Ida—aka Mother
Malaise—were ever to hit Little Jacob, I’d be tempted to hit her back. And I’m a dyed- in-the-wool pacifist like you. But if she was living with us, and told him that he wouldn’t get dessert until he finished his veggies, well, then I’d back her.”

  Freni nodded vigorously, which took even more effort than shrugging. Those of us blessed with necks would do well to ponder the plight of the neckless, especially those of that ilk who must bear the double whammy of sporting enormous bosoms. After all, there is always the danger of hurting oneself whilst expressing vigorous agreement.

  “Yah,” she said, “it is exactly this kind of thing!”

  “Hmm. The thing that matters is that you’re back. Little Jacob will be so happy to see you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Across the road with her.” That he was still on the butter farm was a fib told only to save my son’s life. So you see, they were wholesome words, just told incorrectly, so as maintain the secrecy of my son’s location. If you ask me, the occasional misstatement of fact, like fresh dairy products, often gets a bad rap.

  A sly smile spread slowly across Freni’s lips, leading me to consider the possibility that being Amish does not exempt one from the fleeting, but very real, pleasure one derives from schadenfreude. I smiled sweetly back at her.

  “It’s not quite the same, dear. You see, in this paradigm I’m Barbara and you’re Ida.”

  “More riddles,” Freni said, and turned to stir the homemade butterscotch pudding.

  “Freni, have I ever told you that I love you?”

  “Ach!” Tears welled in my elderly kinswoman’s eyes, and when she attempted to wipe them away with the corner of her apron, she knocked her glasses up onto her forehead in the most endearing way.

  Truly, I had so much for which to be thankful, most especially the love of someone like Freni. I kvelled mit goyishe naches. At the same time, the centuries of inbreeding amongst austere, pietistic ancestors had left me incapable of appreciating the moment without making some sort of deflecting wisecrack.