Mean and Shellfish

by Tamar Myers

  As newly minted Apparition-Americans, the Morris’s were most unlikely to be using their room again. In my many years as an innkeeper, and an amateur sleuth, it is folks who die tragic and sudden deaths who hang around after they pass because they have unfinished business. But almost to a corpse, they stay within fifty feet of where they died. My point is, I had room, even if that weird Texas couple, big Tiny and loudmouth Delphia, insisted on being selfish and hogging most of them.

  We pulled into my sister-in-law’s driveway alongside my car. Before I could draw another breath, Toy had flipped on the flashing red lights atop the cruiser.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  ‘Call Cheryl,’ he ordered. ‘And you both stay put.’

  I called Cheryl, but no one answered. I tried again, still with no luck.

  ‘Toy, what is it?’

  ‘Someone has slashed your tyres, Magdalena,’ he said. ‘I’m calling Officer Cakewalker for backup, and then I’m going in to check on Cheryl and her mother.’

  But Officer Lucinda Cakewalker was at the corner of Juniper and Tulip Streets, involved in a rather serious accident. More specifically, it was she who had run a stop sign whilst texting, hitting an SUV broadside. As Toy was still getting details from her, she passed out, and the call was dropped.

  ‘Holy guacamole!’ Toy swore. Then he just sat there beside me in the driver’s seat of his cruiser, motionless, like a pillar of salt.

  ‘Call the ambulance for her,’ I said. ‘You know where she is. Then press the pedal to the medal, and let’s get over there and see if we can help. We’re a whole lot closer than anyone in Bedford.’

  ‘Right,’ Toy said, ‘but I need to check on Cheryl and her mother first. About your slashed tires – that’s a crime scene. I will admit that I didn’t see it at first, but someone is clearly out to get … well, at least to scare the dickens out of you. So sit tight while I run in.’

  So that’s what Toy did, while I called the ambulance for Lucinda Cakewalker. He jumped out of the cruiser, ran up her walk, and then leaped up her front steps two at a time. Cheryl didn’t answer her door, and it appeared to be locked from the way Toy acted. Next he appeared to be talking to someone on the phone for far too long, given that his sergeant might have been lying in the street at the corner of Juniper and Tulip. Officer Cakewalker might even have been dying of mortal injuries for all Toy knew. Frankly, I was mighty irritated by his behaviour.

  When he finally returned, I started in on the third degree before he’d had the chance to say anything. Over the years I’ve learned that the person asking the questions is less likely to be interrupted than the one who is put in the position of having to answer them.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ I said.

  ‘Cheryl,’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t you just go in?’ I asked.

  ‘Because she’s at your house.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Following your visit,’ he said ‘after she’d learned what the couple in the magenta jumpsuits and duck masks had been up to, she had second thoughts about sleeping in town. She’s decided that she’d be safer a few miles out, at the inn, and with her brother.’

  I sighed so hard that Toy’s cruiser was flooded with dust motes. ‘I suppose that she took my beloved mother-in-law with her.’

  Toy reached over and patted my knee gently. Confidentially, under normal circumstances, such a gesture might have sent teensy-weensy sparks of pleasure to my lady parts. Then after a microsecond of bliss, I’d spend days, if not weeks, wallowing in shame and guilt. I might even feel a strong desire to convert to a faith where private confession of sin was one of the services offered. On this occasion, however, I felt nothing other than a hand on my knee. It might have been Gabe’s hand, or a monkey’s hand, for all the difference it made.

  ‘Yes,’ Toy said. ‘Both Cheryl and Ida Rosen will be bunking at the inn tonight, so it’s a good thing that Agnes won’t be going back with you.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘I thought there was supposed to be safety in numbers.’

  Toy laughed. ‘You know the thing that I like best about you is that you’re a real trooper. Always making jokes, even when you’ve had a really lousy day. When danger comes your way, you keep calm and carry on. Are you sure that you’re not British?’

  I shook my horsey head vigorously. ‘No way!’ I neighed. ‘I’m never calm. I lurch from crisis to crisis like a Soviet era lorry on a rutted dirt road, and with each new spot of trouble I wail like a banshee on the Scottish moors. I mix my metaphors as frequently as you mix your cocktails, but one thing is for sure, I am never, ever calm. And for the record, about half the time that you think that I’m joking, I am not. Conversely, half the time that you think that I’m being serious, I am not.’

  Toy nodded sombrely. ‘Which is it now?’

  ‘At the moment I’m so scared that I don’t know,’ I wailed.

  ‘Then change of plans,’ Toy said firmly. ‘We’re collecting Agnes on the way to Juniper and Tulip. It won’t take but a minute. She’s spending the night with you – and so am I. I’ll drop the two of you off at the PennDutch, but I should be back to stay about nine.’

  ‘I don’t think we have room,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, you do,’ he said. ‘Agnes and I—’

  Toy was interrupted by an ambulance dispatcher telling him that EMTS had arrived at the accident scene and were already loading Lucinda Cakewalker and a thirty-six-year-old man with life-threatening injuries into their vehicles for the trip into Bedford. Toy changed his plans again and we drove straight to the scene of the accident. We arrived to find a crowd of gawking neighbours, and the damaged vehicles still in the intersection, but the injured parties had already departed. With the help of volunteers, Toy managed to relocate both cars to one side of Tulip Street, where he also wrote down the names of three people who claimed to have seen the accident, and one who had merely heard it.

  After that, siren wailing (even louder than I can), lights flashing yet again, we sped back to pick up Agnes. Toy broke the law by not even fastening his seatbelt, shame on him. Although he is neither Superman, nor an angel, I would swear (if it weren’t against my beliefs) that he flew to my best friend’s door. She didn’t answer either, so he paused to call her, and when that proved fruitless, he raced around to the back of the house. A moment later he was back at the car, breathless, and practically witless.

  ‘She’s gone! Agnes has gone missing!’

  TWENTY

  ‘Calm down, dear,’ I said, ‘so that you can carry on.’

  Toy pulled himself together a tad as he slid back into his seat. ‘You don’t understand. Her back door is wide open, and two of her patio chairs are overturned. I’m calling Sheriff Stodgewiggle so he can issue an all-points bulletin.’

  ‘Think carefully, Toy,’ I said. ‘For one thing, Sheriff Stodgewiggle is your arch-nemesis. Second, Agnes is an adult, fully in charge of her faculties, and can’t be classified as a missing person for forty-eight hours, and even then there needs to be just cause. Have you considered calling Esther Sweetgrass?’

  ‘Her next-door neighbour?’

  ‘Yeah. Esther is Agnes’s SBFF.’

  ‘Second best female friend?’

  ‘Yup. She grew up with us and goes to Agnes’s church. She’s also a dynamite baker, which Agnes isn’t. From what I hear, when Agnes is finished eating her single portion frozen dinners, she heads over to Esther’s house for pie or cake. Maybe both. Not that this is gossip, mind you; it’s police business.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ Toy said. He jumped out of the cruiser once more, and this time sprinted to the lovely little Cape Cod owned by Esther Sweetgrass. As soon as he disappeared inside, I called Gabe to give him an update.

  ‘Oh, babe,’ he said, ‘I was just about to call you!’

  ‘What is it, dear?’ I said. ‘Did you hear from Alison? You sound distressed.’

  ‘No, hon, no word from our daughter. And we probably won’t for
a while; she’ll need time to settle in.’

  ‘Crushed crumpet crumbs! With all the tsuris I’ve been having today, I’ve managed to put her dancing out of my mind.’

  ‘Dancing? What are you talking about?’

  ‘By now our beautiful, innocent daughter has most assuredly done the bedspring bossa nova with her boyfriend Alex, that’s what. There can only be one “first time”, you know.’

  ‘Oy veys Meer,’ Gabe moaned. ‘I can just see the two of them, having just arrived in this strange place, taking time off from their orientation program to dance the pillow sham shimmy.’

  ‘But theoretically, it’s possible! And here I thought that fathers were especially protective of their daughters.’

  ‘Who says that we’re not? You stopped me from racing to the airport like an idiot after she’d already boarded her plane. What is it that you expect me to do now? Anyway, at least you had the all-important sex talk with her. Didn’t you?’

  ‘You bet your bippy,’ I said. ‘I told her that the act should last five minutes these days and not three like it did for me the first time. I also told her that if she and her husband had been arguing prior to their love-making, and she hadn’t quite gotten over her negative feelings, that it shouldn’t stop her from the proceeding. She need only grit her teeth and think about England.’

  ‘England? Why England?’

  ‘Or Italy, or Greece, or Australia. Just any place that she’d like to visit and then blurt it out at the last minute. Sooner or later her husband will get the hint; it worked for me.’

  ‘Why, you little minx. I’m glad you’ve regained your sense of humour, because we don’t even know if it’s happened. Anyway, it is, or was, bound to happen sometime. She wasn’t born with a chastity belt.’

  ‘I was her chastity belt!’

  ‘Oh, you religious types! You slay me. You know that even some Amish girls don’t remain virgins until their wedding day, and how much stricter can you get than that?’

  I had plenty to say about Amish girls during rumschpringe. That’s the period when Amish parents look the other way as their children in their late teens experiment with a few of the world’s temptations. Boys are generally given more latitude than girls and may go so far as to leave the Amish community for a year or to two and immerse themselves into a secular society. Girls will usually restrict themselves to riding around in their boyfriends’ newly acquired cars, and applying previously forbidden make-up, drinking alcohol, and smoking. Both sexes might engage in actual dancing, something that I, as a Conservative Mennonite, was forbidden to do by my parents.

  If Mama had caught me drinking and smoking, she might well have broken her hairbrush on my backside. Also, as a good Christian daughter, I would have obeyed her when she told me to bend over, and stayed in that position no matter how many whacks she delivered to my stinging bum. I’m just saying that in my opinion Amish girls had it easier than I did in some ways, even though I didn’t have to spend my early years listening to sermons in German, or riding to church in a buggy on cold winter days like the Amish did.

  ‘Magdalena!’ Gabe was shouting into my ear. ‘Have you heard a word I said?’

  ‘Of course, dear,’ I cooed soothingly. ‘It was about Amish virgins on their wedding nights.’

  Gabe swore so long and hard that even my phone blushed. ‘So you haven’t! I said that the Texan woman and her husband just came through the front door, and she’s covered in blood. Oh – gotta go.’ He hung up.

  In a way his timing was good, because I would have been interrupted anyway by Toy’s laughter, and Agnes’s high-pitched, unseemly squeals. I looked over to see the young police chief striding to the car, with my rotund friend riding piggyback. All I can say, and with upmost Christian charity, is that Toy must have a spine made of steel and spend every off-duty hour working out in a gym. Agnes had her feet hooked in front of Toy’s slim waist, and her tiny hands were grasping his bulging pectoral muscles, but Toy was, of course, doing most of the work, holding Agnes’s nearly three hundred pounds aloft. I was gobsmacked. When they got to the car Toy set her down gently, as if she were a life-size porcelain statue.

  ‘Open up, Magdalena,’ Toy said, ‘and let Agnes in. I’ve got to run back into her house and grab her suitcase.’

  ‘And lock up for me,’ Agnes said. ‘And don’t forget to water my plants – sugar.’ Then she giggled for absolutely no reason.

  ‘Yeah, that too,’ Toy said. Then off he ran, like Agnes’s obedient manservant.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ I said, as Agnes slid into the back seat.

  ‘A well is a deep hole in the ground,’ Agnes said, ‘and I already have one. What would I do with two more?’

  I turned around to face her. ‘What about you and Toy? Don’t you know how ridiculous you look riding on his back piggyback style like a small child? What was that about, anyway?’

  ‘Expediency. Toy said to move fast, and since I don’t have long, giraffe legs like someone I know, he squatted, and told me to hop on his back. But since we’re playing Twenty Questions, how about being honest with your best friend from birth and sharing with her the reason that your face looks like a travel poster for Ireland.’

  ‘I beg your pardon!’

  ‘You know – fifty shades of green.’

  ‘Why I never!’

  ‘Mags, you do realize, that when an unmarried woman lusts in her heart, it’s not considered spiritual adultery – even by Jimmy Carter standards.’

  ‘What? You’re wrong!’

  ‘No, adultery has to have at least one married person involved.’

  ‘But that’s so unfair!’

  ‘Aha, so you do lust after Toy; I knew it.’

  ‘Maybe just a wee bit. But you can’t say anything to anyone, because if Gabe finds out, it could ruin my marriage, which has always been on shaky ground. Agnes, I’m fighting a constant battle against the Devil; He keeps popping naked pictures of Toy into my mind.’

  ‘Did you just say naked?’

  I nodded grimly. ‘As mayor I have keys to the police station, both front door and back. Anyway, one time I came in unannounced through the back door to deliver a dinner to our one prisoner. It was Easter, so I also brought some leftover hot cross buns that I meant to drop off for Toy. This was three years ago. You remember the drunk tourist who tried to steal our village sign because he thought the name Hernia was so funny?’

  ‘Yes!’ she practically screamed in my face. ‘Get on with it. Lover Boy will be back here any second.’

  I recoiled in horror. ‘Lover Boy?’

  ‘What else should I call a virile young man who tells me to hop on his back? Mags, I had no choice but to press my bodacious bosom against his muscular scapulae and press my womanhood against the small of his back so that my slim ankles might meet against his glistening eight pack.’

  ‘Clean my ears out with cotton swabs,’ I cried, ‘and then wash them with a disinfecting soap and hot water. That is unmitigatedly pornographic.’

  ‘Oh, Mags,’ my bestie said, ‘you’re such a prude. Besides, if you’re going to be an anglophile, then perhaps you should know that the UK dictionary on some word processors doesn’t even contain the word “unmitigatedly”.’

  ‘Do you want to nitpick,’ I said, ‘or do you wish to learn about the nude photos that I saw of Toy’s lap – I mean, on his laptop?’

  ‘Get on with your story,’ Agnes barked. Honestly, that woman can sound like a trained seal at times.

  ‘OK, OK. Anyway, I went straight to Toy’s office to let him know that I was there, but soon figured out that he was in the bathroom. Then I set his buns on his desk next to his computer, and because the Good Lord gave me an active and curious mind, I glanced at the lit screen. Well, it’s a good thing that I had a tight grip on the prisoner’s dinner tray, because your virile, young Lover Boy, and some equally young woman, with a truly bodaciously large bosom, were lying together on a bed, face up, and grinning lasciviously at a camera that was obviou
sly mounted on the ceiling. It was Sodom and Gomorrah on steroids.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Ask him when he gets back.’

  ‘Well, if it’s true, then why didn’t you fire him?’

  ‘First of all, the photo was on Toy’s personal laptop. Second, I’d given him Easter Sunday off, so he wasn’t on duty. And third, Toy is the best chief of police that Hernia has ever had. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  Agnes looked absolutely crestfallen. So much so that I abandoned my plans to point out to her that, unlike Toy’s woman, her bosom is anything but bodacious. If it wasn’t for her excess weight, she wouldn’t have any at all. What I didn’t do, and maybe should have done, is to inform Agnes that it was around this day that Toy received a ‘Dear John’ letter from a woman named Autumn Tartt. I know this because, not only did I discover him red-eyed on numerous occasions in the next couple of weeks, but one afternoon he actually blurted out the entire sad saga of his sordid love life, and then sobbed on my shoulder.

  ‘Hmm,’ Agnes said, ‘I’m not sure that I believe you, Mags. Toy is an Episcopalian. They’re laxer in their beliefs than we Mennonites, but they’re not altogether godless.’

  I was about to be a good friend and inform her that Toy and the aptly named Miss Tartt were no longer an item, but Toy had suddenly reappeared, carrying a paper gift bag. He let himself in and handed the bag back to Agnes.

  ‘There wasn’t a suitcase to be seen in any of the bedrooms,’ he said, with a wry smile. ‘Only this bag containing a couple of negligees and some silky under things.’

  ‘Shame on you, Toy Graham!’ I admonished our chief of police. ‘You said the “N” word!’

  Toy turned the colour of farmers’ cheese. ‘What? I did not! I said neg-ligees. Not what you thought that you heard.’