by Tamar Myers
Doc nodded. ‘Hmm. Why do you reckon that seems to be more of a Southern thing; those dramatic falls from Grace, followed by televised appeals of slobbering evangelists begging for forgiveness?’
‘I know!’ Alison had her hand raised like she was in school, although I doubted that she ever raised it there.
‘Do tell, dear,’ I said.
‘Because Southern women dress sexier, and that makes them prettier, just like that Ramat lady, who was some kind of beautiful.’
‘She was not!’ Agnes said sharply.
I smiled at poor Alison, who looked as if she’d been slapped. ‘Anyway, Alison, you didn’t address the issue of money. Why does it seem like more of the high-living, mega-church ministers live in the South?’
‘That’s easy too,’ my daughter sniffed. ‘It’s the accent, see? It sounds much nicer to be asking folks to be coughing up money for God when ya sound just as poor as they is. But ya can’t be begging for no money if ya sound like Pastor Nate. That don’t sound right, ya see? I mean, why would ya give ya money to a college man?’
‘That kid has a good head on her shoulders,’ Doc said.
‘Ya think so?’ Alison said. She was beaming. ‘’Cause I got me another possible theory about who mighta killed that beautiful author lady.’
‘Is that so?’ Doc said. I could tell that he was tempted to reach out and pat her on the head. ‘Who would that be?’
‘You, of course. You, and Auntie Agnes.’
‘Alison!’ I was genuinely shocked at her bringing Agnes into this.
‘Mom, don’t look so fierce! You was saying to Dad that Uncle Doc and that gorgeous foreign lady had themselves a roll in the haystack.’
‘I said no such thing!’
Tears immediately spilled from Alison’s eyes. ‘Mom, there’s no need to make a liar out of me just because you’re embarrassed about what you said. Auntie Agnes, go ahead and ask Uncle Doc if he thinks I’m a big fat liar, like my mother wants you to believe.’
At that point, it is doubtful that Agnes even heard her, so focused was she on Doc. Most certainly, Agnes was not paying attention to Alison’s shifting grammar.
‘Snickerdoodle,’ Agnes said, ‘did you sleep with that two-bit tramp of an author?’
Doc appeared genuinely rattled, I’ll grant him that. ‘Two-bit?’ he rasped. ‘Do you think that is all that she cost me? Just two bits? She demanded that I take her to Smokin’ Joe’s Steak House up the highway in Bedford, and then shell out $11.95 each for a proper steak meal with all the trimmings. Each! And that is not including gratuity. I’m telling you, those people on the other side of the Pond, don’t know how lucky they have it not having to tip wait staff.’
Despite her impeccable Mennonite-Amish lineage, I thought Agnes was going to haul off and punch Doc so hard that he’d be forever planted on the surface of the moon, along with an American flag and some famous foot prints. Instead, her voice raised another octave as she swivelled back to face Alison, her accuser.
‘I can see why you might think that he is guilty, given how low he can stoop, but why do you paint me with the same brush?’
‘Huh?’ Alison said.
‘She means,’ I said, ‘why do you put her in the same category as Uncle Doc?’
Alison responded first with a very loud, and long, belch. She was, after all, just a young teenager who had stuffed her face with pie. While I do wish that she hadn’t behaved in this manner, neither was I mortified, as perhaps someone thought I should be.
‘Well, say something to her,’ Agnes directed me, after a minute or so had elapsed.
‘Alison, please answer Auntie Agnes’s question: why do you think that she could be guilty as well?’
‘Not that question,’ my friend said, and angrily stamped a foot.
I nodded. ‘OK, then, let me try again. Alison, what is the capital of Oklahoma?’
‘Oklahoma City,’ she said proudly. State capitals were something we’d worked on together when she first came to stay with us.
This answer was correct, but not what Agnes wanted, and that fact incensed her. An incensed Agnes is a fearsome beast – not one to be trifled with. My Alison, however, unlike me, is not a coward, and does not back down from a position she has taken when she knows that she is right.
‘You can get as mad at me as you want, Auntie Agnes, but ya should be getting mad at Uncle Doc and my mom. They’re both lying to ya. If ya don’t believe me about Uncle Doc, just look in them beady eyes of his, and ya can always tell when my mom is lying because she sticks a finger under that silly bun on the back of her head and starts scratching something fierce.’
I yanked my finger out of my bun so quickly that I ripped my nail on a bobby pin. ‘I do not do that!’ I wailed.
‘Anyway,’ Alison said, ‘all I know is that she did say that Uncle Doc and that gorgeous dead woman was dating for a time. This makes me think that maybe you wanted her dead, so that she was out of way, and then you could date this old man.’
‘Why, you little imp!’ Agnes cried.
‘No ma’am,’ Alison said. ‘Both my legs work just fine; I don’t limp at all. Now it could be that you is innocent, and it was Uncle Doc who wanted the beautiful writer lady dead so that he could date you, but that don’t exactly make sense now, do it?’
‘What?’ Agnes said.
‘What I mean is: why would he give up a chocolate cake for a piece of broccoli? Even if he did, ain’t no jury gonna buy that.’
Dear, sweet Agnes. She was a smart cookie – uh – floret of broccoli, and as such, immediately understood Alison’s analogy. She is also, essentially, a kind, Christian woman, and I could see her attempt to swallow her irritation until I thought sure that the poor dear was going to explode like an overfilled balloon.
Then suddenly, much to my horror, it occurred to me that Alison had a valid point. The Bible extols the wisdom of babes, and whilst my daughter was a mite beyond that age – perhaps even capable of producing her own babe – I would do well to give her views more credence. Especially when they made sense.
‘I don’t think that either of you are capable of murder,’ I said carefully. ‘Oops, let me start over,’ I said even more carefully. ‘I know for a fact that neither of you are capable of murder. Doc, when you were a practicing vet and had to put down one of my cows, I saw you weeping.’
‘That was sweat running into my eyes,’ Doc growled. ‘I’d been up all night trying to help the darn calf survive its birth.’
I laughed pleasantly. ‘Sweat, tears – they’re both salty liquids, right? And you, Agnes, have trouble stepping on ants. Try denying that!’
Agnes gave a long, exasperated sigh, which thankfully deflated an otherwise dangerous situation. ‘Magdalena, I have trouble stepping on ants because I have trouble seeing them. I’ve been putting off seeing my optometrist for far too long.’
‘Nevertheless,’ I said, ‘can we agree that if the two of you were to be suddenly extracted from this scenario – excised if you will, by a giant pair of scissors – and another pair of players inserted in your stead, that these new players would be suspect?’
‘I most certainly would not agree!’ Agnes snorted. ‘To do so would be to admit to plausibility, and you ought to know, Magdalena, that my character is beyond reproach.’
‘You’re treading on dangerous ground, Mags,’ Doc growled.
‘Puh-leaze,’ I said, ‘get it through your thick skull, Agnes; I can’t conceive of you murdering anyone. I’m saying that to someone on the outside – to someone like Chief Toy, for instance – it could appear that you had a motive.’
‘Only if your little brat brings up her cockeyed theory in the first place.’
That did it; that raised my hackles like nobody’s business. It raised them from my scrawny chicken legs up to my featherless armpits. Nothing gets this old crone’s juices going like a direct attack on her children.
‘Agnes Delores Miller,’ I hissed, there being sufficient S’s in her name t
o make it sibilant. ‘If you intend to remain my best friend, let me warn you, you are standing on perilously thin ice. If the ice starts to crack and push comes to shove, I’ll push you off my ice floe and then give you an extra shove out to sea – if that’s what it takes to keep Alison safe from drowning. Don’t ever make me choose between my little seal cub and my best friend, the polar bear.’
‘Brava,’ Doc said. ‘I find expanded metaphors to be downright sexy.’
‘That was really gross,’ Alison said, ‘the way you spat all over me when you said Auntie Agnes’s name.’
‘Polar bear?’ Agnes raged. ‘Is that how you see me? Big, white and furry?’
I smiled noncommittally. ‘Hmm. More like fluffy than furry. Now, dear, let us take a page from our friends across the pond—’
‘Hold it right there,’ Doc roared. ‘I’ve been a pretty good sport, considering your accusation, but now you want us to take a page from the Perpetually Pathetic Sisters in that sham convent across from you on Miller’s Pond?’
‘Not that pond,’ I said, ‘but the Big Pond.’
‘She means the “ocean,’’’ Alison said. ‘Like Atlantis, for instance.’
‘Yes, or another instance,’ I said. ‘And on that page would be written Keep Calm and Carry On. So in that spirit – which I’m sure we can all agree upon is a very sensible way of conducting business – I shall herewith carry on calmly. Agnes and Doc, the facts of the matter speak for themselves in this case. We have an aged lothario and a libidinous Lolita of uncommon beauty, carrying on what could only be described as a torrid affair, especially when judged by community standards.
‘Then along comes a premenopausal spinster, of extraordinary intelligence, but whose face, alas, can barely launch a dinghy, much less a ship – no hurt intended, dear. The lothario immediately espies the value that the homely woman offers him over the two-bit trollop who lolls about in his bed, and he fiercely desires to be twain with the brain – but lo, he cannot, lest he be blackmailed.’
‘Blackmailed!’ Alison said. ‘Cool. Hey, Mom, what exactly does that mean?’
‘Well, dear, when you blackmail someone, you make them pay you in exchange for you not telling one of their secrets.’
‘Ah, I get it. Just like at camp when Tracy snuck in two hours after curfew and I made her pay me fifty bucks for not telling.’
‘Alison,’ I said, ‘I am ashamed of you; I would have asked for a hundred bucks and then settled for seventy-five.’ I knew, by the way, that she was kidding. My daughter always tugs absentmindedly on her left earlobe while she’s trying to pull my leg.
‘Huh?’ Three people looked in danger of having their eyes pop out.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘what is that old saying? Shoot for the moon, and if you miss, at least you stand a good chance of hitting a star. Right? Fifty bucks was way too low. But back to you, Doc. You didn’t want Hernia to find out that you’d been dating the likes of that worldly floozy, and she was threatening to tell. For some incomprehensible reason, women find you attractive. Even physically attractive.
‘I know what you’re thinking: who am I, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen, that I should judge that? Fair enough. Just look at me. Agnes might be pressed hard to launch a dinghy with her face, but I could bring a hot air balloon down just by smiling at it. On the last day of October when I flew down to Tampa to visit my cousin Bertha, airport security told me to remove my Halloween mask. My point is that I’m no looker, and neither are you, but women sure do find you attractive.
‘So, instead of giving me grief, it would be in your own best interest if the two of you stepped up to the plate and helped me find the real killer. The real killer, Agnes – not you. Get it? Because I don’t think that it’s you.’
‘Harrumph,’ Doc said, and rubbed a gnarled, liver-spotted hand over a sparse scalp. ‘What about me? Do you feel as strongly about my innocence as you do your girlfriend’s?’
Alison, bless her heart, had had enough of Uncle Doc for the day. ‘Oh, Uncle Doc,’ she said, affecting a light tone, ‘put a sock in it.’
‘Ach du heimer,’ I squawked, reverting to my ancestral Pennsylvania Dutch. It’s a meaningless phrase invoking a hammer, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it substituted for something more sinister. Nonetheless, it’s a handy thing to say when all else fails.
‘Going all “Dutchy” on me, are you now?’ Doc demanded. He’s a good man, a kind man, but I’d never seen him so angry. Then again, Doc wasn’t used to hormonal teenage girls – well, except for the ones he’s dated.
I looked at my watch. It was a simple analogue watch: the same Timex I’d been given as a baptismal present when I was twelve years old, nigh on to thirty-seven years ago. We Mennonites, and our close relations, the Amish, are Anabaptists. So are the Baptists, of course. This means that, unlike Anglicans and Roman Catholics, we do not baptize infants, who haven’t the slightest idea what is happening to them; we only baptize people who have made a conscious decision to accept Jesus into their hearts. To baptize a squalling baby who is still incapable of caring one whit about her salvation is absolutely ludicrous – not that I’m judging, mind you. That is merely common sense; any thinking person can come to that conclusion.
I tapped my trusted Timex. ‘My how time flies,’ I said, ‘even when you’re not having fun.’
Agnes grunted. ‘You can say that again.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Alison said. ‘I had the best time ever; watching the two of you squirm was even better than camp. An ancient man like Uncle Doc and a fluffy woman like you doing the nasty, and trying ta cover it up like ya didn’t do nothing. And ya getting so jealous of that gorgeous writer that ya turn green around the grills – ya can’t make this stuff up, I’m telling ya.’
They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. That is supposed to mean that tough people then ‘step up to the plate,’ as it were. They get the job done. Sometimes, however, tough people can simply be tired and literally just get going. That is what I did.
I grabbed Alison by the wrist and in a not too unpleasant voice I said our goodbyes in a number of salutations I’d picked up through my business as an innkeeper. ‘Sayonara, baby; adios; hasta la vista; ciao; shalom; see ya later, alligator; after awhile, crocodile; over and out.’
SEVENTEEN
If you ask me the only way to decompress – at least when you have a minor in tow – is to put sugar in your mouth. I base this philosophy on firsthand observation: to wit I have never seen a crabby butterfly, or an out-of-sorts hummingbird, and both butterflies and hummingbirds spend their days sucking sweet nectar out of flowers. One can be sure that both of these creatures were under a goodly amount of stress until their current incarnation, the butterfly having begun as a caterpillar, and the hummingbird as an egg the size of a jelly bean. There is, to be sure, a mountain of evidence that proves that sugar leads to all kinds of disease and disastrous consequences but, as a short-term solution, it is God’s gift to the human tongue.
That said, when we pulled up to the police station, which is directly across from Yoder’s Corner Market, and Alison begged to go get a ‘nosh,’ I shocked the poor child by instantly agreeing.
‘No way!’
‘Way,’ I said.
‘But like, you’re kidding, right?’ she said.
‘I’m dead serious,’ I said. ‘Just not deadly. But whatever you’re getting, get me one too. I’m hungry as well.’
‘Yeah, but Mom, what if ya don’t like what I choose – ya know, what with your old lady taste buds and all.’
‘Surprise me, dear. My old lady taste buds will just have to stretch.’
‘Yeah? Well, don’t let them stretch too much, Mom. I weren’t gonna say anything about this on my own, see, but now that you bring it up: ya show a lot of them gums when ya smile.’
I clasped my hands together in mock joy. ‘I do? Oh, happy day!’
‘Mom, that ain’t a good thing,’ Alison said warily.
‘You’re
right, dear; it’s a wonderful thing,’ I said.
Alison leaned as far away from me as she could. ‘Mom, ya ain’t sick, are ya? Because ya sure ain’t acting right.’
‘I’m quite all right, dear,’ I said with a wide, gum-baring grin. ‘I assure you that I am. It is my firm conviction that excessive gumminess is a sure sign that one has noble blood in their veins. You see, there has always been a rumour in our family that we are descendants of the male offspring of a Swiss count. He was kidnapped by the family maid who then fled with the child to America. Now, thanks to you, and your keen powers of observation, we may be another step closer to proving it.’
‘No way! Ya mean I’m cousins with that to-die-for cute Prince Harry, and that I can’t marry him after all on account of your stupid gums?’
I smiled so wide that I proved that I was related to all of Europe’s aristocracy, including some who had been dead for three hundred years. ‘No, you silly billy,’ I said with great affection. ‘Like I said, the kidnapping was just a rumour, and the gum thing is just something I tell myself in order to keep from feeling depressed every time I look in a mirror.’
Then my bundle of sticky hormones leaned in quickly and gave me a peck on the cheek before scooting out on the passenger side. ‘At least ya have a chin, Mom,’ she called over her shoulder, as she headed over to the market to buy my mystery treat.
Until that morning I had never seen an angel, a Martian or a pornographic video. When I stepped into the police station and saw all three of the items on that list, my brain had trouble filing the information. I can only imagine that the feeling I had was similar to what the inhabitants of the Caribbean Islands felt when they saw the first Spanish ships sail into view back in 1492 – no rhyme intended. I make no bones about the fact that mine are a homely bag of bones, but it would be a sin to downplay the exceptionally high intelligence quotient with which the Good Lord has blessed me. It was precisely because my neurons were already performing at an already elevated level that this sudden surge of powerful, yet evil and extraneous information was able to produce such a massive misfiring.