The Death of Pie (26 page)

Just then the door to our little police station flew open and my precious daughter burst in. ‘Hey, yinz, what's going on?'

Sam turned and smiled. ‘What's going on is that your brave mother just fired this guy before he could toss her bony butt into the slammer.'

‘Why, the
chutzpah
of that remark,' I said.

Sam winked lasciviously. ‘Beg your pardon, cousin. Trust me; I have nothing against bony butts. In fact, if you'll recall, I've been keeping my eye on yours since the fourth grade.'

‘Sam, that was my
braid
, and you dipped it in my inkwell.'

‘Whatever. I've always said that we could have a life together, and now seems the perfect opportunity, what with you on the lam, and Dorothy—'

‘Mom, what does Cousin Sam mean?' Alison said. ‘I don't understand any of this crap – I mean cud. And somethin' else: yinz sure do a whole lot of winking here in Hernia. Maybe yinz oughta get yer eyes checked.'

‘Thanks for the cow-related correction,' I said, as I'd been working hard to tame my adopted daughter's vocabulary. ‘Also, I appreciate the ocular advice. As for you, Sam, haven't you ever heard the saying: if they'll cheat with you, they'll cheat on you?'

Sam has less lip than a lizard, perhaps as a result of constant licking. ‘Though,' he said, as a result of bad timing on the part of his tongue, ‘are you trying to say that you'd cheat on
me
? On Sam the Magnificent?'

‘
Ick
,' I said.

‘Like, Cousin Sam is really weird,' Alison said.

‘Y'all are both idiots,' Toy said. ‘He's trying to distract you by pretending to be attracted to you. Give me a break, Miss Yoder. I mean, no offence, but have you ever taken a good look at yourself in a mirror? You're the only woman I know – besides my Aunt Gladys – who could walk through the North Carolina woods alone and not have to carry a can of bear mace. Bless y'all's hearts, of course.'

‘Of course,' I said.

I know that I should have been terribly offended by Toy's implication that I was ugly enough to scare away bears. Instead, I was feeling curiously exhilarated. All at once, at age forty-nine, I had the possibility of a new career opening up in front of me; one that I had never even known existed. Still, one can see why I was always so confused about my body image, can't one?

Anyway, I could immediately picture my business cards. They would be printed on heavy stock paper, in a classy shade of ecru and embossed in a froufrou font that was just barely legible. In the upper left corner would be the silhouette of a tall, thin woman with a walking stick, and in the upper right corner the silhouette of a running bear. Between the two graphics, beneath slanted lines suggesting mountain peaks would be the following words: Magdalena Yoder, Professional Bear Chaser.

On the reverse side I would list some other uses for a mug as miserably ugly as mine. These include the fact that I can also scare curly hair into being straight and straight hair into being curly, induce labor, turn drunks sober and, sadly, cause sober people to drink.

Of course, I'd include my contact information. On second thought, since a picture is said to be worth a thousand words—

‘Earth to Mom,' my urchin said.

‘Well,' I said, ‘to be honest, I was thinking of all the ways that I could put this hideous face of mine to work frightening things other than bears. Bears, you see, can be really dangerous when provoked. I would much rather be slapped by a mop of curly hair than mauled by a grizzly bear.'

‘Mom, stop it!' Alison cried. ‘You're not supposed to think of yourself that way. Didn't the psychiatrist say that you suffer from body diarrhoea disease?'

‘That's body dysmorphic disease, dear. It means that my body image doesn't match what's really there.'

‘Bingo,' Sam said, ‘because you're a real looker.'

‘She's a head case,' Toy said. A good Southern boy, born and bred, he tipped his head slightly in my direction. ‘If you don't mind me saying so, ma'am,' he added.

‘Oh, but I do mind,' I wailed. ‘I don't mind you calling me a head case, because the Good Lord Himself knows that I'm nuttier than a five-pound fruitcake, but I do mind you calling me a cold-blooded killer. Ramat Sreym was an atheist – she told me this herself. Unless she had a so-called “death-bed” conversion, that poor woman is going to burn in the fires of Hell for all of Eternity. Have you ever burned your fingers on a match, Toy? Or on the stove?'

‘Yes, ma'am, but—'

‘But nothing, dear. You are a lapsed Episcopalian, are you not? And Episcopalians are the American form of the Church of England, right? You probably explain Hell as nothing more than a spiritual separation from God, but believe you me, it's much more than that: it's physical agony. It is flames eating your skin, licking it off your body with red-hot tongues, over and over again while you scream in pain. Like this.' I threw back my head and screamed like a banshee. ‘So you see, young man, I would never murder an unrepentant heathen, lest the Devil – the
real
one, with the capital D – escort that poor woman's soul straight to you-know-where.'

I wasn't trying to be cruel; my intention was to convey the strength of my conviction. Granted, for a mild-mannered woman I can be bellicose at times, and for the shy, retiring woman that I truly am, I can be verbose upon occasion. However, we are none of us composed of just one trait, and that day, at
that
time, there was least one person there who believed in me. In this person's eyes I was not a murderess.

‘Aargh!' Alison cried, or something similar to that. Her fists were balled and her elbows locked as she ran straight at Chief Toy, taking him by surprise.

Alison was tall for her age, but skinny. She was also very motivated, which counts quite a lot when one is intent on turning oneself into a human battering ram. Being knocked back on his Carolina butt was one thing that Toy had not counted on happening. He gasped as the air left his body, and once on the floor he floundered about like a fish on the end of a line. Clearly, he was going nowhere fast.

‘Come on!' I shouted, grabbing Alison's hand. ‘It's time to make tracks.' I stopped in the doorway. ‘Sam, call the town council. Tell them that I just fired Toy and have them approve it. Also, notify Sheriff Crabtree. Oh, and you're a peach, Sam, but don't be getting any ideas. You're a first cousin, and in my book that's still too close for kissing.'

‘But you were adopted, remember?'

‘Yes,' I said, wasting precious time, ‘but even then, we're second cousins on one side and third cousins on the other.'

‘Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when Amish-Mennonites conceive,' Sam muttered disconsolately.

Do you see what I mean by wasting time? By then Toy was groaning and beginning to pat his pockets in search of his phone.

‘Get his phone, Sam!' I shrieked in farewell, and then Alison and I flew out the door like hawks in search of new prey.

T
ake my word for it, when one is the mayor of a village like Hernia, and one has paid for the police cruiser out of one's own pocket, then one is not stealing it – under any circumstances, am I not correct? If one asks a silly question, then one should expect a silly answer.

Nonetheless, I pressed the pedal to metal and, I say this shamefully, I drove twice the speed limit, all the way to the Sausage Barn. This greasy spoon eatery sits twelve miles north of Hernia, just south of the booming metropolis of Bedford, Pennsylvania (population 3,121). Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against ingesting grease, particularly bacon grease. I firmly believe that while Jews may be the Chosen People, God shows his love to us gentiles by permitting us to eat all manner of delicious pork products. Ham, pork chops, pork roasts delight my soul, but nothing makes my taste buds dance (in an almost sinful way) as plain, ordinary B-A-C-O-N.

That said, the last half mile to the Sausage Barn was so coated in pig grease, thanks to Wanda's wonky exhaust system, that I had to apply my foot to the brake rather than the gas pedal. That's normal for the course, and every time we pull up Alison squeals with glee. Gabe, who is a Reform Jew, does not see the need for him to keep kosher in today's world (I beg to disagree), and neither does Alison, who is, of course, still searching for her religious identity.

‘Wow,' Alison said as she staggered out of the car and regained her land legs. ‘Now what?'

‘I'm glad that you asked, dear,' I said. ‘The best way that you can help me in my detective work is to please just make yourself look like the specks on the inside of Wanda's walls.'

‘Ooh,' Alison said. ‘Gross! You want me to look like a bunch of dead flies?'

‘Well—'

‘Mom, she swats them things and then leaves them smooshed on the walls until they fall off on their own accord. Once, one of them dead flies even landed on my pancakes.'

‘How nice for you, dear.'

‘Huh?'

‘It's all in one's perspective, sweetie. We eat cow muscle and call it steak. Folks in other countries eat big fat palm grubs, thicker than your thumb, and are glad for opportunity to do so. For them, the grubs are protein. It's all in one's upbringing.'

My daughter gave me what she calls the ‘stink eye.' ‘You're weird, mom, ya know that? I ain't never ate no cow muscle, and I ain't never gonna, neither!'

‘Ha! Last night you and Dad sat on the couch and each polished off a little tin of cow lips, cow cheeks, cow noses, cow tongues and who knows what else.'

Alison stiffened. Her cheeks drained of blood, and I could swear her hair stood up a smidge under its coating of ‘product.'

‘Whatcha talking about, Mom? We was eating them little Vietnam Sausages; we eat them all the time.'

‘Read the ingredients list sometime. Read the label as well.' I grabbed her hand and led her around to the back of the restaurant where Wanda kept a vegetable garden. Pennsylvania is a Commonwealth that is overrun by whitetail deer, despite our regular hunting season. Many gardeners believe that growing a few castor bean plants around the periphery will keep not only deer away but other troublesome varmints such as racoons, opossums and voles. The beans themselves contain one of the deadliest chemicals known to mankind – ricin. It is believed that plants give off an odour that wild animals can detect, causing them to keep their distance. In any case, castor bean plants can grow to be seven feet tall in a single season and have large palm-like leaves, making them rather decorative, if nothing else.

‘So,' Alison said, ‘what are we looking at?'

‘See those tall, gorgeous plants with the big leaves?'

‘Yeah,' she said. ‘How come we don't have any around our garden?'

‘Because I'm responsible for guests,' I said, ‘that's why. Those plants have seeds that are deadly poisonous. If you chewed and swallowed just two of them, you would die. Those are the same seeds that some people ground into white powder and tried sending to the President and other government officials.'

‘No kidding?'

Oops. I realized that I had perhaps shared too much information with an angst-riddled teenager.

‘The reason I'm showing you this,' I explained quickly, ‘is because we can see these plants from the road when we approach from the south, now that they've gotten this tall. So I got to thinking while we were with Chief Toy—'

‘Which you always do, Mom,' my cheeky daughter said.

‘Right.
What
I was about to say is that it is entirely possible that Wanda ground up several beans into a pie and served just Ramat Sreym a slice of the poisoned pie while everyone else was given a slice of a similar pie baked by someone else. She was the only person working back there in the pie-serving tent, cutting up pie and serving slices, so that would have been as—'

‘Easy as pie,' Alison said. ‘Pun intended,' she said as she gave me a light tap on the arm with a loosely balled fist.

Although I was gobsmacked by her flash of linguistic, and possible literary wit, I am not the dullest knife in the drawer. ‘Judy says hello,' I said, and punched her back.

‘Mom,' Alison said, ‘you're weird, but ya know what?'

‘Let me guess: you love me anyway? Well, I love you too, Sugar Doodle.'

‘Cheese and crackers, ya don't have ta get all mushy on me. I was only going ta say that I like having a weird family. It kinda makes me feel normal.'

‘I didn't think that we were
that
weird,' I said, not unkindly. ‘Now come on, dear, before the woman with the perfidious and pungent pile of pelt atop her noggin gets suspicious.'

It didn't surprise me to see Wanda Hemphopple, erstwhile owner, waitress and my number one nemesis standing stalwart behind the cash register counter. She was decked out in a red-and-white-checked apron that had seen cheerier days. Although her beehive had been reassembled since we'd last seen her, it now leaned like a certain tower in Pisa. In fact, it would not have surprised me if Wanda's less-than-lustrous locks had been hastily recoiled around a calzone and then had some dipping sauce poured on them for good measure.

All right, so I judge the woman a mite harshly – and the Bible warns me not to judge, lest I in turn be judged. But I put to you the following: Wanda Hemphopple is
always
judging me.
Always
. If I didn't judge Wanda in return, and give her some of the karma that she so richly deserves, then isn't it possible that the Good Lord – or God forbid, even the Devil – will come down hard on her in this life instead? The way I see it, my gentle Christian rapprochement of Wanda's errant ways is, in effect, a blessing in disguise for her. She should be grateful for my criticism; enough said.