The Death of Pie (12 page)

‘She means
her
mother-in-law,' Doc was quick to point out, ‘not mine.'

‘Oh,' Agnes said, and set down her fork. ‘Yes, I remember now. You dated Mother Malaise, didn't you?'

Doc grimaced dramatically. ‘Guilty as charged. But in my defence, she was Ida Rosen back then, and her elevator stopped at more floors than it does now.'

‘I beg your pardon?' Agnes said.

Fortunately I am multilingual and butted in. ‘He means that she wasn't quite as whackadoodle as she is now.'

‘Oh.' Agnes nodded slowly as comprehension set in. ‘But please, Doc, go back one step; how did I offend you?'

‘You referred to him as elderly,' I said. I pretended to sniff the stuffy air of Doc's sitting room. ‘Why, the scent of virility is positively overpowering.'

‘Would that it were,' Doc said.

‘Down, boy,' I said. ‘My companion is a lady who has somehow managed to live a life even more sheltered than mine.'

‘Not for want of trying,' Agnes said.

‘Which is a pity,' I said, ‘because she'll try just about everything.'

The old goat's eyes gleamed. ‘I suppose that Magdalena has filled you in on my many attempts to woo her throughout the years.'

‘Indeed, she has,' Agnes said.

Doc sighed, overly dramatic as usual. ‘I always offered her food.
Plus
, I dished out wisdom whenever I had any to give.'

‘You were always there for me, Doc,' I said.

‘I could be there for you, Doc – I mean,
here
,' Agnes said.

‘Spare me,' I groaned. ‘You two should get a room already. This is obscene.'

‘Whatever do you mean?' Agnes demanded, turning rhubarb pink. ‘I'll have you know that I'm a good Christian woman and that I resent your insinuation. I meant just what I said, simply that I could be here to comfort him on his journey as a poor, grieving widower.'

‘Oh, I see,' I said. ‘You could clasp his hoary head against your ample, heaving bosom, all the while muttering sweet nothings into his mesquite-choked ears. Why, that's as plain as a winter's day above the Arctic Circle.'

‘Your references are so arcane,' Agnes said. ‘Someone who knew you as well as I do might conclude that you're showing off.'

‘Heaven forefend, friend,' I said, feigning offence. ‘I only wish that the widower with the wandering eye should find contentment with yesteryear's maiden, now blossomed into a full-bodied, voluptuous woman who is more than eager to grab life by the horns – oops, perhaps not the image I was going for, but I'm sure you get it.'

‘Huh?' Agnes said.

‘She said that she approves of us dating,' Doc said to Agnes.

A sly, happy, smile spread slowly across the space allotted for it between Agnes' apple cheeks. Suddenly Agnes remembered her manners; she was the lady, and must therefore always play the part of the prey on the verge of escape.

‘Really, Doc,' Agnes said with a wave of a plump hand, but one with long, shapely fingers, ‘you say the funniest things. And even if that were true, I'm sure that you have better things to do with your time. I know that I have work to do at my church, feeding the volunteers who are renovating the Sunday school rooms. These are big, strong men who are doing the renovating. Did I mention that some of them are young, strapping men with bulging muscles and abdomens that are rippled like Freni Hostetler's washboard?'

‘Really, Agnes,' I said, ‘it is one thing to signal to the male of the species that you are receptive to his advances, but quite another to build an autobahn that leads to your bed.'

I knew that the old geezer, forsooth, was finding our verbal sparring to be a great turn-on (to use the modern, vulgar expression). It would please me greatly if the ancient, but not yet decrepit Doc Shafor and the portly, but surprisingly not-so-prim Agnes Miller hooked up (another vulgarism) and did the horizontal hootchie-cootchie. Yes, of course, I would insist that they get married first, and that I be the one to give away the bride with the rhubarb complexion. Meanwhile, her uncles could watch the ceremony whilst wearing straitjackets from the front row of the church if they wished, or even in the altogether, but from closed-circuit television from over at the State Mental Hospital in Harrisburg.

I would also ask my husband Gabe, who is a doctor, to speak with Doc about discontinuing the use of male goat sex hormones. I was forty-eight when I gave birth to my eight pounds of bouncing joy, and that was cutting it close. Agnes is nearing fifty, and even if it is possible for her to get pregnant, she may see the wisdom in refraining from genetically reproducing. On the other hand, there is no accounting for human nature. It worries me to think of the myriad possibilities that could emerge from our limited, tangled family lines, coupled with the advanced ages of both parents. Add to that mix a black goat, whose unnatural love for a Jersey cow would surely put him in prison in the state of South Carolina, and possibly parts of Utah.

In the meantime, Doc had drawn up his dwindling pects (despite the goat injections) to their full extent, so that he looked somewhat like a cartoon drawing of a bantam rooster. Rather than cutting a pathetic profile, his head-on confrontation with his waning virility made him come across as a bit heroic – at least, in my eyes, on this
one
occasion.

‘So, how about it, Agnes?' he said. ‘Do you want to go out?'

‘W-What? With you?'

‘Ask him to bring his shadow along,' I whispered. ‘It might spook folks if he leaves it at home, and besides, that way you'll have a chaperone.'

‘Y-Yes,' Agnes said. ‘B-Bring your chaperone along.' By now she was as red as a beet salad, and shaking like the paint-mixer at Home Depot. That simile, by the way, is an original Magdalenaism, even though I've read that it was a cliché.

‘Then that settles it,' said Doc. ‘We're an item.'

‘Not yet,' I said. I stood, stretching my narrow frame to its full five feet and ten inches. ‘Doc, since you are such an accomplished mind-reader, surely you know why I am here.'

Doc snighted, which is halfway between a snort and a sigh. ‘Well, since you are driving the familiar cruiser today, I suppose you want to ask me questions about the recently departed, and oh-so-voluptuous, Ramat Sreym. The woman with a thousand graces, and whose face could launch a thousand ships. Now, as for her lips, they were like a thousand pillows of sweetness—'

‘Stop!' Agnes cried. ‘Magdalena, make him stop!'

‘You heard her, Doc,' I said. ‘That was disgusting. You went way overboard with your numbers. Next time, make it a “dozen graces,” etc. You almost rotted my teeth with all that sugar.'

‘Is that all you have to say to him?' Agnes demanded.

‘No, dear, of course not,' I said. ‘Doc, you obviously were very attracted to that woman. Did the two of you do the, uh, recliner chair rumba?'

Doc laughed so hard that his dentures slipped and he had to take a moment to fit them back into place. ‘The recliner chair rumba?' he finally said. ‘Now that one I've never heard of. For a woman who believes that sex standing up is a sin, because it might lead to dancing, you can be mighty creative with your positions. However, I'll pass on this one; it doesn't sound comfortable.'

‘Don't knock it until you've tried it,' I growled. ‘Now back to you and the deceased.'

Doc waved a well-weathered hand. ‘A gentleman never tells.'

‘He can, however, brag,' I said.

‘Good point,' Doc said. ‘In that case – and please forgive me, lovely Agnes – if one were to think of Ramat as a hill and me as a hiker, then allow me to say that the view from atop the hill was most disappointing, and I never mounted it again.'

I scribbled furiously into my wee yellow pad. ‘I see. When was it that you went hiking?'

‘That would be the first time she came to Hernia – the time that she left
alive.
About a week after she ensconced herself in
your
PennDutch Inn, I met her at Yoder's Corner Market putting the screws to our mutual cousin, Sam. So help me, Agnes, I had no control over what happened next; it was like lightning striking a dry haystack.'

‘Hah,' I said. ‘Agnes, wasn't I just saying the other day that using too much bleach will turn
any
mop of unruly hair into an unsightly haystack?'

Agnes giggled and nodded. ‘You did, in fact.'

‘Then make that as if lightning was striking twin haystacks,' Doc said and waggled his eyebrows.

‘Don't be lewd in front of Agnes, Doc,' I said. ‘Cruelty does not become you. My point was that a bleached blond is just that. The drapes don't match the carpet, and you know ding-dang well what I mean.'

‘Well, I don't,' Agnes said. ‘Why have we suddenly segued into home decorating?'

‘Later,' I snapped, but not too unkindly. ‘Doc, do you see what an innocent, sweet woman you're dealing with? You should be ashamed of yourself !'

Doc looked positively crestfallen. Creating sexual tension was his forte, even if following through on his near constant innuendo had never been tested by me. I'm sure that Doc did not intend to hurt Agnes, and when he realized that this was the case, he in turn felt bad. On the other hand, his inability to boast about his conquest of Ramat Sreym had to be painful for him. Bantam roosters live to strut.

‘I'm not stupid, Magdalena,' he said. ‘The late, not so great, author was clearly not shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned – thus the vehicle of her sudden and quite suspicious demise was undoubtedly some type of poison. I have no doubt that the Boy Wonder from Charlotte gave you a list of suspects of who might possibly have poisoned the infamous lady from who-only-knows where, and that my name is on the list. Yes, you don't suspect me in the least, but you had to satisfy His Youthfulness and pay me a visit and you brought your beautiful sidekick along because you want to brush her off on me, despite the fact that she is the second brightest person in Hernia and would make a very helpful addition to your team.'

‘You hear that, Magdalena?' Agnes hissed. That time she did it without an ‘S,' as just many other authors write – but quite wrongly so.

‘I heard it,' I said.

‘But wait,' Doc said. ‘Like I said, you were hoping to dump her off on me.'

‘I was not,' I said.

‘You were so,' he said.

‘Not,' I said.

‘So,' he said.

‘
So
,' I said.

‘Not – hey, that's not fair,' he said. ‘You can't switch like that.'

‘I can, and I did,' I said. ‘Look, it's obvious that the two of you are meant for each other, just like a pound of ground beef and a tin of mushroom soup. Add some macaroni and you have dinner for six.'

Doc snorted to let me know what he thought of tinned mushroom soup, but he edged closer to Agnes. She, by the way, was fluttering her eyelashes uncontrollably, and was
not
moving away.

‘Agnes, dear heart,' I said kindly, ‘no one has ever achieved liftoff using just their eyelashes; you'll need wings as well.'

Doc kept getting closer to Agnes but he was still looking at me. ‘Just so you know,' he said, ‘if I'd killed that woman, I wouldn't have been as stupid as to leave her body around where it could be discovered immediately. I'd have given her a much slower-acting poison, or else used another means altogether.'

Doc is mostly bald now, but what hair he has is snow white. Against the skin of his right temple a raised vein was throbbing. Perhaps I had gone too far by accusing him; perhaps this strong physical manifestation was from stress – he was going to
plotz
at any moment, and I would be charged with his death as well.

‘Doc, I – I—'

He held out his hands. Given our shared ancestry, the gesture was meant to prevent me from hugging him first, not give me comfort. I immediately understood, and smiled my relief.

‘Magdalena,' he said, ‘you're such a bossy pants, and I'm such a stubborn old fool: I have to make sure that we keep to the same script.'

‘Indeed; it would be folly to forget.'

‘Who else is on your list?'

‘Uh – well, it's funny that you just mentioned our mutual cousin, Sam. His wife, Dorothy, is on the list.'

Doc nodded vigorously. ‘I'm surprised Sam isn't on there as well. You can't describe a man's wife as being so fat that a crane was needed to lift her from her bed, when all it took was a bulldozer to give it a gentle tap and out she rolled. I don't care how ravishingly beautiful that bleached-blond foreigner was, or how mesmerizing I found her honey-dipped tongue – or even the words it spoke. If that woman had written hurtful words of that caliber – because my Emma was an itty bitty thing – about my beloved wife, I'd have lassoed her, tied her up good and dipped her in a sheep tank. Then I'd have sheared those long, bottle-blond tresses off her head with my sheep shears and branded her tight little buttocks with a cattle brand.'

‘Shame, shame, shame!' I cried. ‘Doc, how could you?'

‘Aw, come on, Magdalena,' Doc said. ‘You know that I was only exaggerating to make a point. In real life I wouldn't hurt a flea – which is probably why some folks say I'm not the best veterinarian they've ever dealt with.'

‘Oh, stop the pity party,' I said. ‘I'm talking about hurting Agnes's feelings,' I said, jabbing the air in Agnes's direction. ‘The Bible tells us not to covet thy neighbor's ass. I'm pretty sure we shouldn't be describing it to others in great detail either.'

‘But Magdalena,' Agnes said, poking me and not the air, ‘you're misinterpreting the word “ass.”'

‘Ssh!' I said. ‘Quiet, girl; I know what I'm doing.'

‘And doing it very well too, I might add,' Doc said with a wry smile.