by Tamar Myers
“Oh my gracious, oh my soul,” I said. “There goes Alice down the hole.”
“Where?” Olivia, aka Melvin, glanced around the parlor. His panic was practically palpable, just like my shock.
“It’s just a kid’s rhyme,” I said. “I couldn’t think of what else to say, and since I’m never speechless, something had to slip out.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a tongue that can cut cheese. But this time, Yoder, I outsmarted you. Admit it.”
“I will admit nothing to you!” There is a theory that cold water boils faster than warm. It may not be true, but the ice in my veins had turned to steam in a matter of seconds. “You killed Amy, didn’t you?”
“She was a nosy girl who deserved what was coming to her.”
“She was a young girl just getting started in life.”
“Boo-hoo. Your sister rots in jail and you waste emotion on a kid from the wrong side of the tracks?”
“And what side would that be? We don’t even have tracks in Hernia!”
“You want to get riled up about someone, Yoder, get riled up about Mary Berkey. Now there was a fine woman—good breeding hips on her too. It was a shame she had to go.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. The evil man was making a full confession, but there were no witnesses besides Yours Truly. My kingdom for a tape recorder. Or even just a number two pencil!
“Why did she have to go?” I said, as I edged for the back door. “She wasn’t nosy. She had nothing to do with the bank robbery.”
I’d already figured out that Melvin had been one of the three armed robbers. If he could convincingly pass himself off as a matron from the Garden State for several days running, pulling off the role of a hit-and-run Amish man must have been a piece of cake. (In for the penny, in for the pound of makeup, it seemed.) As much as I hate to admit it, his ability to disguise himself had kept him a free man for past five years.
Melvin pulled his wig back into place before answering. “Yeah, too bad. Mary was a class act. And with all those kids to support. How many were there? A dozen?”
“Six,” I hissed.
“Yeah. She ought to have thought about them a little more and a little less about what I was up to.”
I was flabbergasted. “So it’s her fault that she’s dead.”
“Yeah, basically. For starters, she should have refused to make you that silly outfit that you’ve got on now. Don’t think you fooled anyone, Yoder. You look like the Halloween version of a Beverly Lewis book cover.”
I thought I heard footsteps in the kitchen. In any case it was to my advantage to keep the kook yammering on as long as I could.
“I didn’t think that you could read, Melvin, and just so you know, this outfit happens to be very authentic. You said ‘for starters. ’ What else did she do to irritate you?”
“What do you think, idiot? She saw through this getup! Well, not exactly this getup, because she made me strip down to my bra and panties when she measured me for my Amish dress.”
“Your Amish dress?”
“Pretty smart, huh? Local banks might be suspicious of Amish men for a while, but no one would suspect an Amish woman. And I have you to thank for it, Yoder. You’re the one who put the idea in my head.”
“And here I thought it was impenetrable.”
“But Mary had to go and ruin it, on account of she had eyes like a hawk.”
“On either side of her head?”
“And all because she saw my hairy chest. Somehow that got her attention right away. It was like she got fixated on them.”
“Three hairs will do that to a gal. Trust me, four hairs and she would have swooned.”
“Very funny, Yoder. No need to remind me why I hate you so much.” He reached down the front of his frumpy frock and pulled out a pistol, which he aimed at my head.
“But, Melykins, I’m your flesh-and-blood sister, remember? Our birth mother, Elvina, was quite sure of the gory details. And if that’s not enough, please cogitate on the fact that I am the only sister—and friend—of your darling wife, Susannah.”
I’ve often (quite unkindly, I admit) likened Melvin to a praying mantis because of his bulging eyes, which operate independently of each other. I was wrong; I should have compared him to a chameleon—one from the island of Madagascar. That’s because apparently he did cogitate, and while he did, the longest tongue I’d ever seen came slithering out between slightly parted and extremely pointed teeth. This serpentlike appendage proceeded to lick his dry lips and clean crusted bits of lunch from the corners of his mouth before slithering back into its den.
“Does Jack Hanna know where you are?” I said. Sometimes I just can’t help myself.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Was that a put-down?”
“Is a put-down like a touchdown? Does it count for, or against, me?” One can always be hopeful, can’t one?
“I’m going to put you down, Yoder, and Susannah’s never going to know that I did it. Now move!”
I read somewhere that one should never, ever go with a gunman. Apparently the odds are that what happens after abduction is invariably worse than what would happen if one tried to make a break for it while at the original site of the crime. After all, it is extremely hard to hit a moving target. This is excellent advice, but it’s better suited to areas other than small Victorian parlors.
Much to my dismay the chameleon was able to move with lightning speed. I felt the barrel of the gun against my back while in midlunge. By the time my size elevens hit the ground, I was indisputably his prisoner and his temper was nowhere to be found.
“Now you’ve done it, Yoder. Any mercy I might have shown you at the last minute, you just threw away.”
I could definitely hear someone else moving about in the house. Was that a chair scraping in the dining room?
“I can’t believe you used to be the chief of police,” I said, speaking just as loud as I dared. “When folks were in trouble, they would call the police, and that was you.”
“Shut up, Yoder, and get moving.” He used the gun barrel to push me toward the dining room door.
I needed no additional prodding. Perhaps if I stumbled in the doorway, whoever was in the room would see the gun and might think fast enough to make a run for it. Or I could just fall backward on top of Melvin. After all, he was a spindly thing, mostly arms, legs, and misshapen head—not to be unkind. My overly active brain came up with other scenarios as well (some of them far-fetched, one even involving duct tape), but before I even reached the ding dang door, it was opened from the other side.
“Tiny Timms!” I couldn’t help but gasp. Her presence was literally a godsend, because I had been praying for deliverance. Since the Good Lord sent an angel to shut the mouths of lions for Daniel, it seemed perfectly logical to me that He would send a small but big-busted woman to help me fight a chameleon.
Tiny smiled. “Hello, Miss Yoder. Hello, Olivia.”
“Yinz are wearing out my name,” I said, whilst gesturing madly with my eyes. Unfortunately my eyes neither bulge nor swivel dramatically in all directions; hence, any gestures I make with them are somewhat limited. And since Tiny was not an astute enough observer of regional dialects to pick up on my uncharacteristic usage of Pittsburghese (I never say “yinz” unless compensation is involved), I was unable to warn her of the sure and present danger behind me.
“Tiny,” Melvin said, “the jig is up. She knows.”
“What?”
With his free hand, the chameleon must have pulled off his wig; I’m certain that I heard Tiny gasp. A second later a very expensive head of hair sailed into the dining room and landed on the table, where it lay like a road-kill centerpiece.
“Oh, my,” Tiny said slowly. “I thought you were going to wait until her husband got home and then we would get the two of them together.”
“She wouldn’t let me,” Melvin whined. “She had to go and spoil everything by outing me.”
“What did you say?” I managed to rasp. Tiny�
�s words had shocked the bloomers right off me and so filled me with despair that I could barely catch my breath.
“We’re going to kill you,” Tiny said calmly. “Really, Miss Yoder, you’ve become quite a liability.”
“But first,” the Chameleon said, “we’re going to learn where you’ve hidden that kid.”
Adrenaline is an amazing thing. In an instant my fear had been replaced by anger. “That kid is your nephew,” I growled. “And he has a name—Little Jacob—in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Oh yeah,” the Chameleon said. “How do I know that you’re even his mother?”
I looked Tiny straight in her tiny eyes. “The fact that my son emerged from my womb means nothing to a man of your leader ’s intelligence. Apparently only a ‘made in Magdalena’ stamp on my son’s backside will satisfy this man’s unusually high standards.”
“You’re darn tooting,” Melvin said. He was deadly serious.
“Well, Mr. Stoltzfus is a genius,” Tiny said. She was deadly serious as well.
“Where is Chicken Little when I need him?” I cried. “At least he was sane!”
“You see what I had to put up with all those years?” Melvin had the nerve to say. Then he prodded my shoulder with the pistol. “Now move it, Yoder. I want you to exit your dump of an inn just as calmly as you would under more normal circumstances. There is a white van waiting for us in the driveway. I want you to climb in the back. Don’t even think of running. If you do, I’ll shoot you from behind, and Tiny here will shoot you from in front. One of us is bound to hit a vital organ. Personally, I’m hoping that we don’t kill you right away; I’d like to see you suffer a good bit before you join our birth daddy and your adoptive parents in their mansions in the sky.”
I’m all for procrastinating—as well as fact-finding. “Tiny has a gun?”
Tiny reached between her enormous bosom and withdrew the largest handgun I had ever seen. She also removed a small hand mirror, which she laid on the table behind her, and two sandwiches.
“What the heck?” Melvin said. (He actually used a much stronger invective.)
“Don’t swear in my house,” I snapped.
“Turkey or ham?” Tiny said, just as casually as if she was laying out a picnic.
“I prefer cheese,” I said. “A well-aged baby Swiss with weensy-teensy tiny holes. Oh dear, did I use your name in vain?”
“You were right, Melvin,” Tiny whined. “She’s every bit as sarcastic as you said she would be. But she’s not at all afraid.”
“Actually, I am,” I said. “I’m shivering in my brogans—can’t you tell? And you would be too, if you were trapped between a crazed chameleon and Tinkerbell.”
“Tinkerbell? Oh, Miss Yoder, you don’t realize how much that burns my bum! All my life I’ve been called that, and for something I can’t help. How would you like it if I called you Queen Kong or something like that?”
“Ha-ha, that’s a good one,” Melvin chortled.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” I said, “but words will forever hurt me.” I know those aren’t the real words, but they’re much more accurate. Besides, when folks are that familiar with a saying, they seldom listen to its recitation closely.
“Well, you just have to shut up, Miss Yoder,” Tiny said, “because I didn’t offer the sandwiches to you. Only Melvin gets lunch.”
“I don’t get to eat?”
“Oh no,” she said calmly. “What would be the point? You’re going to be dead within the hour; that’s barely enough time to get the digestive process started. To feed you now would be a waste of this planet’s precious resources.”
“Hmm,” I said, “that does make some sense. But you can’t get away with this—you know that, right? You fire that gun and someone is bound to hear it. Your husband, for instance.”
“Ha, that’s what you think. Tell her, Melvin.”
“Yes, tell me, Melykins.”
“I’m not your Melykins! Only your sister gets to call me that.”
“Sorry,” I said, “but you look so adorable in that outfit. All I want to do is to hug you.”
“You see, Tiny?” Melvin cried. “What did I tell you about her?”
Tiny’s clenched fist was barely larger than a brussels sprout. “For your information, Miss Smarty-pants, the others aren’t going to help you, because we’re all here together.”
Now that took the wind out of my sails. “Together?” I asked in a tiny voice. (To be sure, it was my own tiny voice, not hers.)
“Together,” they said in unison.
“Chew on that,” said Tiny triumphantly.
I did. A million years later, I had the courage to speak again.
“So in that case, dear, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t tell me how this brilliant plan of yours was supposed to work. First and foremost, are you supposed to be an organized crime gang, and secondly, why on earth would you return to the scene of the crime? Especially to the home of a witness?”
Melvin thrust his scrawny chest out like a bantam rooster out to impress a rival. No, wait—that was one animal metaphor too many. Suffice it to say, his hackles were hiked and his dander was raised.
“Of course, we’re an organized crime gang, Yoder. Haven’t you ever heard of the Mafia?”
“You’re Mafia?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Yoder. Of course, we’re not the Mafia—you have to be Danish or something to belong to that; we’re the Melfia.”
“Melfia,” Tiny said, in case I’d missed it. “Isn’t this man awesome?”
“Yoder,” Melvin said, “if you had half a brain, you’d know that a good criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.”
“Oy vey,” I said. “Elvina must have had two wombs; I can’t believe that we’re products of the same one.”
“You think you’re so smart, sis, don’t you? Well, you don’t deserve an answer, but I’ll tell you anyway. I had to see if there were loose ends that needed to be tied up—and there were. Like your kid, for one.”
“Don’t call me ‘sis,’ but do call him ‘nephew.’ He’s your nephew Jacob. And just out of a dead woman’s curiosity, why did you wait so long before you—Well, what I mean is that you could have gotten to your nephew right away.”
The bantam’s chest deflated just a tad. “I wanted to get to know him first. Is that so bad?”
“Stop listening to her, Melvin,” Tiny said. “She’s trying to make you feel guilty. To establish a human connection.”
“Would that were possible,” I said.
“Yeah, I read about that connection thing somewhere,” Melvin said. “I think it might have been in my Policing 101 textbook.”
“Remember, Melvin,” Tiny said, “that we’re a proud crime family—the Melfia—and you’re our godfather.”
I tried to stifle my nervous laugh, but it came out as a snort, and not as a human snort either. From out on Hertzler Road, I could hear an Amish horse neigh its lovesick response.
“Ahem,” I said against my better judgment, “the way a certain someone is dressed, wouldn’t that make him your godmother?”
Tiny stamped a doll-size foot. “Make her shut up, Melvin, so that we can eat.”
29
Now wait just one apple-picking minute! Why hadn’t I seen it before? Timms, Zambezi, Nyle—they were all names of important rivers, although in some cases the spelling was not the same as the actual body of water. And the mysterious Russian? Surimanda Baikal? Wasn’t Baikal the name of the world’s deepest lake?
One may wonder how a mere Mennonite woman stuck in the hinterlands of southern Pennsylvania would have such a grasp of geography. I would be inclined to let one rudely wonder, were it not for the fact that this presumption sorely vexes me. In all modesty I summarily report that I am extremely well-read. I read primarily nonfiction books—books that feed my mind. I see little point in reading fiction, as it is all made-up. (I find comedic mysteries to be the least satisfying, as they rely too much on clever
wordplay and not enough on plot.)
Now where was I? Oh yes, it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that all my guests had great water features for names. But now that I knew something very strange was going on, what was I to do? At the moment, nothing, of course, but in the future— Well, maybe I should not be so quick to despair. I had one small advantage in this cat-and-mouse game—unfair as it was, with seven cats and just one rat—er, mouse—I’d just figured out from their aliases that they were all in this together, and power always comes with knowledge.
Melvin picked the ham sandwich, which left Tina the turkey, but neither took the time to eat just then. With guns poking in my back, they hustled my bustle out the seldom-used rear hall door, the one located right next to the root cellar.
“Oh, please, please, don’t put me in the root cellar. It’s dark down there and it’s cold.”
“Listen to her beg,” Melvin said gleefully.
“I’m not begging; I’m imploring. Melvin, I’ll do anything you want. I’ll forget this whole thing, if only you don’t put me in the root cellar. There are spiders down there. You know how I feel about spiders.”
“She hates them,” Melvin chortled. “Once I sneaked up on her when she was reading a book, and I dangled a plastic spider in her face, and you know what she did? She peed in her pants!”
Alas, it was a true story, but Melvin had neglected to mention that it had happened when we were kids—a very long time ago. No matter. In the interim I’d gotten over my arachnophobia.
What mattered now was that I convince Melvin that putting me alive in the cellar was the worst form of torture he could possibly devise. What Melvin apparently didn’t remember was that my root cellar had survived the tornado of the 1990s completely intact. Also still intact was the secret tunnel that led from the root cellar to the floor of my current henhouse. The tunnel had been dug by the original owner of the house, my ancestor Jacob the Strong Hochstetler, whose father had been taken captive by the Delaware Indians when Jacob was a boy.