Authors: Tamar Myers

Tags: #Bank Robberies, #Mystery & Detective, #Mennonite, #Hotelkeepers, #Yoder; Magdalena (Fictitious character), #Fiction, #Mennonites, #Religion, #Pennsylvania Dutch Country (Pa.), #General, #Mystery Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #Crime, #Christianity

Butter Safe Than Sorry (25 page)

BOOK: Butter Safe Than Sorry

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Freni glowered through glasses that needed a cleaning when Mary Magdalene was a little girl. "
That
one--she gets on my nerve, yah?"

"And which nerve would that be?" Okay, so I was being mean, but it irritates me that Freni so dislikes her daughter- in-law. I find Barbara Hostetler to be utterly delightful--all six feet of her--even if she is from Iowa.

"On the nerve that would break down if I stayed home," Freni said, without missing a beat. "This morning she tells me that times have changed and that it is no longer the Grossmudder 's place to punish the child."

"Indeed."

"So you agree?"

"Well--I guess it all depends. If Ida--aka Mother Malaise--were ever to hit Little Jacob, I'd be tempted to hit her back. And I'm a dyed- in-the-wool pacifist like you. But if she was living with us, and told him that he wouldn't get dessert until he finished his veggies, well, then I'd back her."

Freni nodded vigorously, which took even more effort than shrugging. Those of us blessed with necks would do well to ponder the plight of the neckless, especially those of that ilk who must bear the double whammy of sporting enormous bosoms. After all, there is always the danger of hurting oneself whilst expressing vigorous agreement.

"Yah," she said, "it is exactly this kind of thing!"

"Hmm. The thing that matters is that you're back. Little Jacob will be so happy to see you."

"Where is he?"

"Across the road with
her
." That he was still on the butter farm was a fib told only to save my son's life. So you see, they were wholesome words, just told incorrectly, so as maintain the secrecy of my son's location. If you ask me, the occasional misstatement of fact, like fresh dairy products, often gets a bad rap.

A sly smile spread slowly across Freni's lips, leading me to consider the possibility that being Amish does not exempt one from the fleeting, but very real, pleasure one derives from schadenfreude. I smiled sweetly back at her.

"It's not quite the same, dear. You see, in this paradigm I'm Barbara and you're Ida."

"More riddles," Freni said, and turned to stir the homemade butterscotch pudding.

"Freni, have I ever told you that I love you?"

"Ach!" Tears welled in my elderly kinswoman's eyes, and when she attempted to wipe them away with the corner of her apron, she knocked her glasses up onto her forehead in the most endearing way.

Truly, I had so much for which to be thankful, most especially the love of someone like Freni. I
kvelled mit goyishe naches
. At the same time, the centuries of inbreeding amongst austere, pietistic ancestors had left me incapable of appreciating the moment without making some sort of deflecting wisecrack.

"Now you're going to make me cry," I said, "and I'm a really ugly crier. Once Bigfoot looked in the window and saw me bawling, and he's never been seen in Bedford County again."

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say; Freni let loose enough tears to float Noah's ark.

"Just so you know, dear, there really isn't such a thing as Bigfoot, but if you think there is, I can try and get him to pay you a visit--although frankly, I would think that your six- foot daughter-in-law would satisfy that itch."

Freni was supposed to laugh, but instead she put her stubby hands on her broad hips and glowered at me beneath her pushed-up glasses. "Have you no respect, Magdalena?"

"Uh--well, of course, I do. You know that I respect you. I was only making a joke."

"Ach, not about the big feet! I shed maybe some tears, but they are for the children of Mary Berkey."

"Yes, it is very sad how the community treats their mother." It was not a personal indictment, because Freni is one of the few Amish in Hernia who has always given Mary the benefit of the doubt.

Freni paled. "Then you do not know?"

"Of course the rumors: suicide, murder--it happened so long ago, I don't see why folks can't let it go. The kids, for sure, didn't have anything to do with it."

"Ach, not the father, Magdalena." Freni moved toward me, and her short arms encircled my waist as the smell of chopped onions and bell peppers filled my nostrils. "It is Mary now who has gone to meet the Lord."

I pulled loose.
"Excuse me?"

"Yah, she was run over by a tractor this morning."

"An accident, then. How awful! Forgive me, but which one of the children was responsible?"

Freni's eyes flashed. "The children were all in school, and the babies were in the house. It was the mailman who discovered Mary lying under the tractor."

"Then it was an accident!"

"Yah, maybe, but there were three sets of tracks on the body. The tractor very much wanted her dead."

I gasped as I groped for a chair. "Or somebody else did--somebody with the initials MS."

Freni shook her head solemnly. "Meryl Streep is a fine woman. When she stayed here, she had only good things to say about my cooking. She would make an Amish man a good wife."

"Oh, please. She's
such
a good actress that you'll believe everything that she says--whether it's accurate or not."

"Harrumph," Freni said, giving it a Pennsylvania Dutch accent. It's one of her favorite new words.

I smiled, happy for just a couple of seconds of diversion. Speaking with Freni of death in the kitchen was becoming an all-too-frequent pastime. Just a month before this, Freni and I had been standing in the exact same spots that we were now, discussing the recent passing of Silas Coldfelter, our town's most accomplished builder of multiple-passenger buggies, when all of a sudden Little Jacob walked in from the dining room.

"Hi, Mama," he'd said, almost blithely. "Hi, Aunt Freni."

I'd hugged and kissed him, and Freni had patted his head affectionately and offered him a gingerbread man with a glass of milk. Being the fruit of my loins, he'd accepted the snack gratefully, but had demanded a piece of fruit as well.

"It will spoil your lunch," I'd said.

"Mama, what happens when you die?"

"Uh--well--remember that baby sparrow we found underneath the barn eaves yesterday morning?"

He'd taken a big bite of milk-softened cookie before posing his next question. "Mama, we're not birds. What happens to people?"

"Well, their souls go to be with Jesus, but their bodies are put into the ground." There is no use trying to shield a child from death in a farming community. It would be like trying to keep an ice-cream cone from melting on a hot August day.

"I know that stuff about Jesus and the ground," said my precocious four-year-old, "but what happens to
them
?"

"Them who, dear?"

"The people who died," he'd cried impatiently. "You know, the
them
part!"

"Ach, he asks an ex- intentional question," Freni had said reverently. Sometimes she is in awe of the little tyke and sometimes it is understandably so.

"Maybe the 'them' part is the soul," I'd said. "Little Jacob, will you still love your mama when you're all grown- up and can think circles around her?"

My darling son had thrown himself at me and locked his little arms around my neck. "Don't be silly, Mama. I'll always love you."

"And don't be cheeky, and call your mother silly," I said, before kissing his eyelids until he begged me to stop.

"Earth to Magdalena," Freni said, bringing me back to the present. "So now will you tell me who really killed poor Mary Berkey?"

"Only if you promise not to use idioms from the eighties that were annoying even then," I said.

The expression Freni assumed made her look like a sheep that had been asked to solve the national debt. "Yah, whatever. I promise."

"And quit being a teenager as well. It doesn't become a seventy-nine-year-old Amish woman."

"Oy veys mere."

"Who pretends to be Jewish when it suits her."

"Ach!"

"Now where was I? Oh, yes--I believe that Amy and Mary were both murdered by Melvin Stoltzfus."

"
Our
Melvin Stoltzfus?" Freni's hands flew to her throat as she fought for her breath.

"One and the same. Like I've always said, the man is evil personified."

Freni staggered over to the nearest straight chair and dropped heavily on it like a sack of spuds. "Does his mama know?"

His
mama. She was my mama too--that was the kicker. Elvina Stoltzfus was my birth mother. Given the circumstances surrounding my conception, and the social climate of the time, I don't blame her. I do, however, blame her for the way she continues to treat Melvin, even after he's been convicted of first-degree murder, as if he were a prince, deserving of every consideration. No doubt Elvina has broken every law in the book, aiding and abetting that son of a gun-toting, hunting, deceased husband of hers. If there's any justice in this world--but I'm beginning to doubt that there is--Elvina will end up in the slammer as well.

"Freni," I said, "this is just my theory. Susannah warned me that he was back and would try something. How these two deaths are connected, I don't know--but I intend to find out. And believe me, you'll be the first to know."

Police Chief Jerry Memmer was polite as he could be. He listened to everything I had to say and took reams of notes, in addition to recording our conversation. But when it was all said and done, there was really nothing anyone could do but sit and wait.

Aside from the tractor prints, Melvin had left no tracks at the scene of the crime. Yes, Elizabeth Gastelli had seen a tractor driving along Ebenezer Road, but she couldn't remember exactly when. Besides, trying to identify a tractor in Hernia was like looking for a drunk in a St. Patrick's Day parade in Boston.

Amy's death also remained a mystery. I wasn't supposed to know the facts, but Chief Memmer filled me in anyway, given that I used to be mayor of his new hometown and was still its unofficial crime solver. At any rate, the young woman had been strangled to death by a bubble gum pink pashmina, which is a kind of scarf, I'm told. There'd been no prints left behind, and no signs of forced entry. The supposition was that whoever had so brutally murdered the girl had either been an acquaintance or in possession of a gilded tongue. The second idea made perfect sense to me: young women that age are easily flattered by the hairier sex into believing that they alone are the special one, and that said relationship will inevitably lead to the altar.

I had just stepped outside into the street, in front of Hernia's police station, when my cell phone rang. I have chosen as my ringtone the dulcet sounds of Pachelbel's Canon, so you see, it really is not at all obnoxious. In fact, I have been known to hold up my phone in public places when it rings so that others may be blessed by hearing this classic. It is my fond hope that one day, at the Monroeville Mall, a rapper will fall to his knees in awe and forsake his base ways.

Because there was no one else about at this particular moment, I answered after the first ring. "Yoder 's House of Fun and Frolic, the owner herself speaking."

"I need your help," a desperate voice said.

"And a gracious hello to you too, Agnes," I said. "The answer to eighteen down is 'fubsy.' According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, it means 'chubby and somewhat squat.' "

"I'm through with the crossword, Magdalena. This is about my uncles; they're running amok."

"Yes, I know. Ida was over here yesterday and I jokingly told her to start a nudist colony."

"Which she did."

"She didn't!"

"Oh, but she did. Just before this morning's meditation--which was supposed to be on the meaningfulness of mediocrity--ten of the sisters assumed the lotus position au naturel!"

"Look on the bright side, dear: the lotus is a beautiful flower that--"

"That means that they sat with their legs crossed so that their feet were tucked up against the opposing knee. You can imagine what happened next."

BOOK: Butter Safe Than Sorry

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