Grape Expectations: A Pennsylvania Dutch Mystery With Recipes
Page 24
“Yes, but—”
“We’ll take it,” Crabby Face said.
Of course, there were details to work out, and we agreed to a few over a quick breakfast of cornflakes, skim milk, and the weakest coffee available outside a nursing home. But first we hightailed it over to the Jamesons’ cottage to use the telephone.
Ed Gingerich was apprehended just south of Charlotte, North Carolina, on his way to Florida. He was still driving the pickup filled with firewood. The authorities reported that his eyes were glazed over with exhaustion and that his first words were: “It’s all Magdalena’s fault.”
He had the nerve to blame me for escaping and the fact that he spent the rest of the night driving back and forth on a dirt road looking for me. When asked what he was doing on that road to begin with, he said he’d heard on the radio that there was a roadblock up ahead, and the police were checking cars. Ed was right about one thing: the police were checking cars—miles away in Hagerstown, and they were following a drug tip.
At his trial, five full months later, Ed broke down on the witness stand and cried so many crocodile tears he nearly flooded the courtroom. Justice might have been blind, but she saw right through his phony act, and the former farmer was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole. In a statement to the press a still sobbing Ed said he was only glad he didn’t live in Texas, because dying twice was bound to be twice as painful.
For the record, Agnes made a complete recovery and is just as nosy as ever. Maybe even more so.
Chief Olivia Hornsby-Anderson sent the handsome young Chris Ackerman to Maryland to fetch me. He brought with him the Babester, Susannah, Alison, and Freni.
Thank heavens for my scrapes and bruises, which gave me the right to ride up front with Chris, and no one else. My four loved ones were squished in the backseat as tightly as Vienna sausages in a dented can. At least, had there been an accident, Freni would not have flown through the windshield. She was the one who elected to go without a seat belt—there were only three back there—on the grounds that she had the least experience with them. It should be noted that this arrangement was totally illegal, even in Maryland.
“Hon,” Babe said for the umpteenth time, “thank God you’re alive.”
“Yah,” Freni said. “We must thank God, but perhaps me too a little.”
I tried to turn my head, but I was as stiff as an overstarched shirt. “Excuse me?”
“When this one was little,” Freni said, “she did not like to drink her milk. Her mama, her papa, no one could make her drink. Then one day I make the mustache on myself and say, ‘Look what you can have if you drink.’ From then on she drinks milk every day—two big glasses—and now she has bones of steel.”
“Mom is awesome,” Alison said proudly. “Not everyone has a mom with buns of steel.”
“Ach!” Freni squawked. “I said bones.”
“Whatever.”
“Mags,” Susannah said, leaning forward as much as her seat belt permitted, “you really are awesome. Yesterday morning I woke up feeling like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, and this morning it was only Otto.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, when I woke up he—”
Sore neck or not, I whipped my head around. “Susannah, dear, may I remind you there is a child present?”
“Mom,” Alison bellowed in my ear, “I’m not a child.”
“Oh Mags,” Susannah said, “you’re always jumping to conclusions. What I was about to explain is that yesterday I was still feeling sorry for myself, you know, on account of my Shnooky Wooky was—”
“A crooky,” I said.
“Right, and in jail. But then the very second I woke up this morning the phone rang, and it was Otto inviting me out on a date. Can you imagine that?”
“I imagine you told him that you’re not about to start dating until your divorce goes through.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Speaking of dates,” my beloved said, “you might be pleased to know, hon, that Ma and Doc Shafor are leaving this afternoon for three weeks in Bora-Bora.”
“Get out of town!”
“They were going to leave this morning, but they wanted to wait until they knew you were all right.”
“Right as rain!” I turned around so Gabe couldn’t see my face. “While we’re still on the topic of dates—although I have a slightly different meaning in mind—does anyone have plans for May fifteenth?”
“That’s not the Fourth of July, is it?” Alison asked. “Because I promised this girl named Heather that I’d go with her to this stupid family picnic that she doesn’t want to go to by herself on account of they’re all old and yucky, but she said she’d give me twenty bucks if I went.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not the Fourth, dear. Well, would anyone like to guess what I have planned for May fifteenth?”
My betrothed cleared his throat. “A colonoscopy?”
“On my wedding day? I think not!”
A chorus of gasps emanated from the backseat, and as you might expect, Gabe’s was the loudest. “Hon, are you serious?”
“As serious as a blindfolded tightrope walker. Reverend Fiddlegarber—that nice man I introduced you to back there—has agreed to assume the leadership of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. He has agreed to marry us as we are. No converting. How does that sound, dear?” “Hon, you’ve just made me the happiest man in the world!”
“Yay!” Alison shrieked.
Susannah is capable of shrieking even louder. “Yahoo! Mags is getting married. Yahoo.”
Freni waited until the din had died down to tolerable decibels. “Mazel tov,” she said, somewhat incongruously. We laughed most of the way home. Mazel tov indeed.
Discover More by Tamar Myers
An Amish Bed and Breakfast Mystery with Recipes Series (PennDutch)
Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Crime
No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk
Just Plain Pickled to Death
Between a Wok and a Hard Place
Eat, Drink, and Be Wary
The Hand that Rocks the Ladle
The Crepes of Wrath
Gruel and Unusual Punishment
Custard’s Last Stand
Thou Shalt Not Grill
Assault and Pepper
Grape Expectations
As the World Churns
Hell Hath No Curry
Batter Off Dead
Butter Safe than Sorry
Belgian Congo Mystery Series
The Witch Doctor’s Wife
The Headhunter’s Daughter
The Boy Who Stole the Leopard’s Spots
The Girl Who Married an Eagle
Den of Antiquity Series
Larceny and Old Lace
Gilt by Association
The Ming and I
So Faux, So Good
Baroque and Desperate
Estate of Mind
A Penny Urned
Nightmare in Shining Armor
Splendor in the Glass
Tiles and Tribulation
Statue of Limitations
Monet Talks
The Cane Mutiny
Death of a Rug Lord
Poison Ivory
The Glass is Always Greener
About the Author
Tamar Myers was born and raised in the Belgian Congo (now just the Congo).Her parents were missionaries to a tribe which, at that time, were known as headhunters and used human skulls for drinking cups. Because of her pale blue eyes, Tamar’s nickname was Ugly Eyes.
Her boarding school was two days away by truck, and sometimes it was necessary to wade through crocodile infested-waters to reach it.Other dangers she encountered as a child were cobras, deadly green mambas, and the voracious armies of driver ants that ate every animal (and human) that didn’t get out of their way.
At sixteen, Tamar's family settled in America, and she immediately underwent culture sh
ock:she didn’t know how to dial a telephone, cross a street at a stoplight, or use a vending machine.She lucked out, however, by meeting her husband, Jeffrey, on her first day at an American high school.They literally bumped heads while he was leaving, and she entering, the Civics classroom.
In college Tamar began to submit novels for publication, but it took twenty-three years for her to get published.Persistence paid off, however, because Tamar is now the author of three ongoing mystery series: One is set in Amish Pennsylvania and features Magdalena Yoder, an Amish-Mennonite sleuth who runs a bed and breakfast inn;one, set in the Carolinas, centers around the adventures of Abigail Timberlake, who runs an antique and collectable store (the Den of Antiquity); and the third is set in the Africa of her youth, with its colorful, unique inhabitants.
Tamar now calls North Carolina home. She lives with her husband, a Basenji dog named Pagan, two rescue kitties: a very large Bengal named Nkashama, and an orange tabby cat who goes by the name of Dumpster Boy. Tamar enjoys gardening (she is a Master Gardner), bonsai, travel, painting and, of course, reading. She's currently working on her next Amish mystery.
tamarmyers.com