by Tamar Myers
“Good morning, Magdalena. Mel—Chief Stoltzfus tells me there’s been another incident here.”
“You can go ahead and say it, dear. There’s been another murder.”
“Another?” Marge Benedict looked only slightly more alive in the winter white pantsuit in which she’d arrived. What a pity those enormous brown eyes and luxuriant brown-black hair were wasted on a mere twig of a woman. If God had given me assets like those, I would have eaten myself into a fine full figure—either that or bought one.
“Those were a long time ago,” I said quickly.
“Maybe in dog years,” Melvin said.
Zelda, bless her mannish, but painted little head, has always been a peacemaker. “Well, back to the current incident, are we all present and accounted for now?”
“Alma’s still not back,” Freni said, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Oh, yes, I am.”
We all turned to face Alma, who was standing in the opposite doorway, the one that opens on the back hall. Her blue jeans were muddy at the knees, and she was still wearing her multicolored parka, which had mud streaks along the front. The thick glasses had slid even farther down than usual, and the mound of thick, graying hair had come down on one side and was covering one lens. The other side of her do was barely held aloft by a tortoiseshell comb. I don’t mean to be insensitive, given that she’s a minority and all, but she looked like a loser. Even I could see that.
“What’s up?” she said, between deep gasps. “Did somebody die?”
“You tell us,” Melvin snarled.
“Yes, I’m afraid there’s been a murder,” I said. “Mr. Mitchell is dead.”
“Oh, my!” Alma steadied herself against the doorjamb. Unfortunately all the chairs were taken.
“You can cut the act,” Melvin said. “We have our proof.”
I strode over to Alma, forcibly ejected the saucy Carlie from her chair, and seated the older woman. Kids nowadays have no manners.
“What proof,” I demanded.
“This,” Melvin said. From the pocket of his trench coat, he extracted a small plastic bag containing a tortoiseshell comb.
“That’s a very nice comb, dear,” I said, “but first you have to grow your hair a little longer.”
“Very funny, Yoder. It’s not mine. It’s hers.” He nodded at Alma.
“Is it?” I whispered.
Alma patted her head. Apparently she wasn’t even aware of the missing comb.
“Well, I guess it is—”
“This doesn’t prove anything,” Freni said, stepping forward in defense of a fellow Native American. “Lots of English wear combs. She”—Freni pointed at Ms. Holt—“has them in her hair.”
“Well!” Ms. Holt patted her mother-of-pearl combs. They were both accounted for. “I would never wear that disgusting thing. It’s plastic!”
“Let me see the comb.” Alma sounded exhausted.
“You don’t have to say anything without a lawyer present,” I whispered.
“I heard that, Yoder.”
Alma looked at me. “It doesn’t matter. I have nothing to hide.”
Zelda, bless her heart, took the bag containing the comb from Melvin, loped across the room, and showed it to Alma.
“It’s mine,” Alma said without expression.
Melvin’s orbs lit up like twin spotlights. “Aha! I thought so.”
“But I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Oh, no? Officer Root found that thing just outside the barn.”
“Ach!” Freni clapped a hand over her mouth.
I patted Alma’s shoulder. “Tell us what happened, dear.”
Alma shoved her glasses back into place and wedged a hank of the lose hair behind her ear. She crossed, then uncrossed, her chubby legs.
“I’m in the habit of getting up early, you see. Back home I’m a waitress at Cherokee Bob’s Wigwam of Pancakes. Breakfast shift. Anyway, I woke up at five o’clock like I usually do, and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. Instead of just lying there, I decided to take a walk.”
“You headed straight for the barn, didn’t you?” Melvin’s mandibles were chomping at the bit. He couldn’t wait to arrest poor Alma Cornwater.
“No, sir. It was cold down here, so I decided to surprise Mrs. Hostetler and light a fire.”
I cleared my throat loudly and nodded at the sign. To my credit, I didn’t verbally chide her in front of the others.
Instead of looking at me, Alma turned to Kimberly McManus Holt. “Then I went into the kitchen, and I ran into her.”
Ms. Holt fidgeted with the monstrous gold buckle. She did not look up.
“I get up early too,” she said. “We start taping Cooking With Kimberly at nine, but I have to be there by seven-thirty for hair and makeup. And I don’t live right in Boston. Anyway, I was in the kitchen, about to fix myself a cup of coffee, when Ms. Cornwater walked in. We had a brief conversation in which she told me she was going for a walk in the woods.”
“And then?” Melvin asked with uncharacteristic gentleness. Susannah and Zelda exchanged worried glances.
“And then I made the coffee and took it up to my room. I brought a lot of work with me. Being the star of a cooking show is much more than slinging hash.”
“Ooh,” Arthur said. “Low blow.”
Melvin focused on Alma again. “So that’s it?”
I cleared my throat, and rolled my eyes at Zelda. She’s both the brains and brawn of Hernia’s fearless duo.
“Please finish your story, Miss Cornwater,” she directed.
Alma readjusted hair and glasses. Perhaps she didn’t have the money for contact lenses, but the odds were she had a pair of scissors.
“Just like Ms. Holt said, I told her I was going for a walk in the woods. And I did. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I kind of expected it to be like the woods back home. I live right next door to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, see? It’s thousands of acres of forest that—”
“Spare us the travelogue,” Melvin snapped.
Poor Alma looked like she’d just been slapped. “Well, there was less than a mile of woods before I hit a fence—y’all sure have a lot of fences around here—anyway, I climbed over that and hadn’t gone much farther when I saw the naked man.”
Chapter Seventeen
I looked at Freni, who was trying to suppress a smile.
“I mean, it’s really cold out there, and suddenly there’s this guy walking along stark naked—well, except for a hat. He had on one of those three-cornered hats, the kind they wear in Australia.”
Melvin smirked. “Yeah, right.”
“Dinky Williams,” Freni said, shaking her head. Zelda was nodding. “I’ve heard of him. He’s that back-to-nature freak, right?”
“An urban refugee,” I explained for everyone’s benefit. “Dinky—I think his real name is Bill—moved here from New York City last year. He’s a retired architect. Anyway, he bought a piece of the Mishler farm so he could build his dream house. All glass, I hear. Only thing is, Dinky and his wife are nudists and seem to be very fond of nature walks. In the summertime it’s hard not to see what the Good Lord intended to be covered.”
I turned to Alma. “I didn’t realize Dinky was a cold weather buff as well. Did he speak to you?”
Alma flushed and fiddled with her glasses. “Oh, yes. He asked me if I wanted to see his Tinkertoy collection.”
“Ach!” Freni clapped her hands to her cheeks.
“What did you say?” Melvin asked, with sudden interest.
“I said ‘no,’ of course. Then I walked away as quickly as I could, without being too rude. Only I got turned around somehow and—and—well, I got lost.”
“There’s no shame in that,” Freni said loyally.
“But I’m a Native American!” Alma wailed.
“Yah, but so am I, and I get lost all the time.”
“Ladies,” Melvin said sharply, his patience having waned along with Dinky’s Tinkertoys, “can
we just get on with the story?”
Alma took a deep, brave breath. “Well, I tried to look for landmarks, but since y’all don’t have any mountains—”
“Just a minute,” I heard myself say, “we’re surrounded by mountains! These are the world-famous Alleghenies.”
“I meant mountains that you can see over the tops of the trees.” She looked at Melvin before continuing, and he had the audacity to look at me.
“Quit interrupting, Yoder. Continue, Miss Cornwater.”
“Anyway, I found a little stream and I was following it when I heard two men talking. At first I couldn’t see them, and I didn’t want to say anything—just in case they were—well, you know—nudists too. But boy, was that ever a big mistake, because then I heard one of them say, ‘It’s a big buck. A six-pointer.’ The next thing I knew they were shooting at me.”
Freni gasped.
Melvin snorted. “That’s impossible. Deer-hunting season isn’t for another two weeks.”
“That’s never stopped the Mishler brothers,” I said.
Freni nodded vigorously. “And they’re both blind as cats.”
“You mean bats, dear.” I turned to my nemesis. “Well, just don’t stand there. You’ve a job to do.”
“What the hell—”
“Maybe we should check it out,” Zelda said. “If what she said is true, that doesn’t leave a lot of time in which to commit a murder.”
“How much time does a murder take,” Melvin growled. “Besides, that still doesn’t explain this.” He waved the bag containing the comb.
“Maybe it does,” I said angrily. “You never even let her finish her story.”
“Finish!” Melvin barked.
Alma looked like a deer caught in headlights. “When they shot, I ran. I kept following the creek, and I slipped in it a couple of times. But they kept coming and shooting. ‘Make me a nice trophy,’ one of them yelled.
“So I left the creek as soon as I found a thicket. It had a lot of brambles in it, you see, and it tore at my hair. Anyway, after a while I didn’t hear them shouting or shooting anymore, and I was a little calmer by then myself, so I started to use my head. I remembered that Miss Yoder’s inn was set in a little valley between two hills”—she glanced at me—“I mean, mountains, and that the mountains run north and south. I also remembered that just outside of town there is a bigger creek—”
“Slave Creek,” I said helpfully.
“Yeah, that’s it. So, I figured the little creek had to run into the big creek, and since I hadn’t crossed the little creek—only sort of followed it—that meant Ms. Yoder’s place was to the north. By then the sun was up high enough so that I could see it through the trees. It was easy finding my way back then.”
“The comb!” Melvin flapped the bag. At that moment, he looked more like a vulture than a mantis.
“Well, it must have come undone in the brambles. I wasn’t paying attention to my hair then.”
“Of course not, dear.” I patted her shoulder.
Melvin gave me a look that could scald milk. “But Officer Root found this just outside the barn.”
Alma swallowed and looked at me. “I wasn’t trying to be a snoop, really. I saw that the barn door was open, but there was yellow tape across it—you know, like the kind the police use on TV to seal off a crime scene. I thought it was odd that the tape would be there. I only wanted a closer look. Anyway, my comb must have fallen off then.”
Melvin sneered. “Just like that?”
“Coincidences happen,” I said. “Live with it.” Perhaps I had gone too far. Real mantises are capable of flight, and Melvin looked as if he were about to fly across the room, grab my scrawny neck in his front teeth, and bite off my head. Thank God for Zelda Root. She may not be much to look at, and she has the personality of a washing machine, but she’s one levelheaded woman.
“Isn’t it time to implement departmental procedure number two?” she asked calmly.
“Number two?” It was clear Melvin didn’t have a clue as to what she meant.
Zelda turned to me. “Magdalena, do you have a more private room where we could interview the official suspects individually?”
“I’m sure that can be arranged, but just out of curiosity, who are your official suspects?”
“Every last one of you,” Melvin snarled.
“Ach!” Freni squawked. “I was at home nursing a sick husband and daughter-in-law. I only thought about murder—I didn’t do it.”
“Even me?” I couldn’t believe the chutzpah, asking me to hostess my own interrogation.
Zelda nodded. “As I understand it, the victim was the sponsor of a contest, in which most of you had a stake.”
Marge Benedict waved her arm like a schoolgirl who knew the solution to a math problem no one else could answer.
“Not me! I’m just a judge. I didn’t care who won or lost, so I certainly didn’t have a reason to kill George.”
“I guess that leaves me out,” Gordon Dolby said, the relief evident in his voice. “I’m not a contestant either.”
Susannah yawned. “Count me out too. I just live here. This contest thing is my sister’s responsibility.”
I glared at her. “Thanks!”
Carlie jumped up. “Hey, don’t forget me. I just came along for the ride.”
“So what am I, chopped liver?” I asked. “And anyway, like I said before, Mr. Mitchell could just as well have been killed by a total stranger.”
“Magdalena,” Zelda said through clenched teeth.
“All right. How about the dining room? If you take the quilt off its frame, it makes a nice torture rack, and none of the furniture is upholstered.” Well, it was my inn after all, and I would decide where they would set up the bright lights. I surely wasn’t going to allow my furniture to fade.
Zelda glanced at Melvin and gave her eyes a quarter turn. Take it easy, she said silently. I can handle the idiot, if you’ll just give me a chance.
“It needs to be more private,” she said aloud.
“Okay, you can have my bedroom. But I reserve the right to be grilled first.”
Take one verifiable idiot, and one heavily painted but otherwise almost normal person, throw in yours truly, and what do you get? A headache, to say the least. Still, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been, thanks to Zelda, and a surprise call from Reverend Schrock.
“Babs, is that you?” Hope springs eternal even in the boniest of breasts.
There followed what would have been a moment of silence, were Melvin not breathing so hard. The man had the nerve to be exasperated because I answered my own phone.
“It’s Reverend Schrock,” the caller finally said. “Did I call at a bad time?”
“Oh, you mean the heavy breathing? No, that’s just Melvin Stoltzfus, as usual.”
“But isn’t this your private line? The one that rings only in your bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Then I did call at a bad time.”
“Any time with Melvin is a bad time,” I muttered under my breath.
“Who is that?” Melvin demanded. “Are you talking about me?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t he mind that you’re on the phone?” the reverend asked.
“Yes.”
“Whoever it is, you better make it snappy,” Melvin said. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t hear you, Yoder!”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” I screamed.
Mercifully, both men were silent for a minute. “Well, well,” Reverend Schrock said at last, “I must say, this certainly is a first.”
“Oh, don’t let it bother you. It happens all the time.”
“Magdalena! Isn’t this a little soon—I mean, after what happened with Aaron and all.”
“As if I had any control over it,” I wailed.
The reverend mulled that over. “Confidentially, I know what you mean. There are times when my loins ache so bad I just have to give
in to the urges of the flesh. Of course the good Lord in His mercy—”
“What? Loins? Flesh? Reverend Schrock, shame on you!”
“Shame on me'? You’re the one who does it all the time!”
“There’s been a murder,” I shrieked. “Melvin’s here to investigate a murder!”
I could hear him swallow, and it was a gulp big enough to suck up Jonah. “Melvin’s there investigating a murder?”
“Eureka! Say, how did you get my private number anyway?”
“It’s written on the wall of the men’s room at church.”
“Remind me to kill Susannah. Oops, sorry, Reverend.”
“No harm really meant, I’m sure. Uh—about what I said before, it was said in confidence, you know.”
“I can only hope you were talking about that razor-tongued wife of yours.”
“Why, yes, of course! And speaking of whom, that is why I called.”
“I know, I know, I’ve been booted out from teaching my Sunday school class.”
“Actually, you haven’t. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Come again?”
“Lodema told me about her visit yesterday. She had no right to say what she did.”
“You can say that again.”
“It’s not within her power to drop you from our Sunday school teacher roster. Would you like me to have her apologize?”
It was time for me to schedule a hearing test with a specialist over in Bedford. “I thought I heard you offer”—I chuckled pleasantly—“to make your wife apologize to me.”
“That’s exactly what I said. She’s out right now, but as soon as she comes back, I’ll have her give you a call. Better yet, I’ll make her come over in person. Would you like me to be along?”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said graciously. “Since she insulted me one on one, that’s how she should apologize.”
“Consider it done. Magdalena—this is rather awkward for me, but you do still plan to remain an active member of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, don’t you?”
“Why, yes, my beef has to do with your acid-mouthed spouse, not with God.”
“So, you’ll continue on as usual?”
“I only missed that one Sunday!”
