Between a Wok and a Hard Place

by Tamar Myers

  “You can’t drive, Melvin, remember? Your right leg is in a mammoth cast.”

  “I’ll get Zelda, then. Or Susannah. But you don’t move a muscle, get it?”

  “Got it.”

  I hung up and did a silly little jig. It wasn’t a real dance, mind you, since that is forbidden by my faith. And I certainly didn’t mean to be disrespectful to the dead. But the pieces to Rower’s murder were beginning to come together, and I had a gut feeling that before the day was over that jigsaw puzzle would be complete.

  When my jig was over I called Pittsburgh International Airport and rescheduled Pops’s flight.

  It’s not over until the fat lady sings, Mama always said. She meant that literally. It was her way of getting in the last word.

  Dr. Wilmar Brack seemed determined to prevent Mama from singing. “Where do you keep the knives?” he asked when I walked into the kitchen.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. Freni was barely out the door and already there was a man rifling through her drawers. And in broad daylight, too.

  “What on earth are you doing?” I demanded. “Is nothing sacred anymore?”

  “I’m trying to make myself a sandwich, that’s what. I need something to spread the mustard with. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any pickles, would you?”

  “The kitchen is not open to guests,” I said, raising my voice only slightly.

  “I didn’t have lunch,” he said and clattered among the cutlery.

  “That was your choice, dear. You chose not to go to the Augsburgers.”

  “Ah,” he said, picking up a bread and butter knife and wielding it like a scalpel. “My guest agreement clearly states that the PennDutch Inn will supply me with three meals a day and two light snacks if so desired. This”—he pointed to a loaf of bread and an open packet of bologna—”is a light snack. I still expect lunch.”

  “But it’s almost supper,” I snapped, and then realized with horror that there was nobody there to make the meal. My cooking skills are serviceable only if one has had their taste buds surgically removed. At least that’s what Aaron said the first (and only time) I tried to cook a romantic dinner for the two of us.

  “What is for supper?” Dr. Brack asked.

  Then I remembered Freni’s frustrated efforts for lunch. “The world’s best chicken salad. You’re going to love it.”

  “Maybe. I’m pretty picky about food. I’m what you might call a connoisseur. In fact, you might say I taught Julia Child everything she knows.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Well, I did see some ripe tomatoes on the vines out back. And there are some cucumbers in the refrigerator. I could whip up a nice tangy gazpacho—”

  “Whip away, dear,” I said. “In the meantime I’ll duck down to the cellar and retrieve a jar of Freni’s delicious homemade pickles for you.”

  I will confess that I was feeling very proud of myself for having turned the tide of the conversation. The truth is, I really owed it all to Mama. “Make a man feel useful and he’ll move mountains for you,” she once said. Fortunately for Papa’s back, she didn’t mean that literally as well.

  Freni’s cache of home-canned goodies takes up most of the space not used by the furnace, but there is a small room behind the furnace which, in the old days, was the coal room. Papa gave it a thorough cleaning when we converted it to gas, and it was his intention of installing fluorescent light fixtures and using it as a wintertime workshop. I would never air dirty family linens in public, but if I were to do so, you might expect to see sheets of marital discord flapping on the line. Just because a couple stays married for thirty-five years, doesn’t make them a pair of lovebirds in private.

  Well, more than enough said. The point is that it was where Papa planned his private getaway that I had so graciously permitted Angus Dixon to set up his darkroom. Papa had already installed a water line—even a commode where he could read in peace. At any rate, while I was down there plucking pickles from the pantry, I thought I may as well pop into the darkroom and see what a Pulitzer prize-winning photographer does on his vacation.

  Of course I ignored the homemade sign that said DARKROOM—KEEP OUT. It is my establishment, after all. In fact, few things make me more aggravated than seeing a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from one of my guest room doors. If folks want privacy, they should stay home.

  You may call me frugal if you like, but I see no point in putting a high-wattage light bulb in a refurbished coal bin. Therefore it took my eyes a minute or two to adjust, and I wish they hadn’t. The Bible tells us to pluck out our eyes if they cause us to sin. Fortunately it doesn’t command us to pluck our peepers if someone else has sinned. Just judging from what I saw that afternoon, Angus Dixon was racking up his frequent-traveler miles on that wide and winding road that leads away from Heaven.

  I slammed the door shut without turning off the light. Freni is right. It is true what the Bible said about sin loving darkness. I had never seen such filth. Hanging from wires strung across Papa’s planned workshop were photos of women in various stages of undress. Some, and I shudder to say this, were as naked as the day they were born, and smiling about it.

  But that wasn’t the half of it. Hanging up there right along with the photos of these happy harlots, were photos of Amish children. Thank God the Amish children were fully clothed. I’m sure my ticker couldn’t have taken it any other way. Nonetheless it made me furious just to see them up there with the trash, and I bolted up the basement stairs two steps at a time.

  At the top of the stairs I ran smack into Melvin. Fortunately, I wasn’t hurt, but the jar of pickles made a second trip to the bottom of the stairs. Dr. Brack was out of luck.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  It was a toss-up as to who was madder, Melvin or me. I might have apologized for knocking him over, had he not started screaming at me from the get-go.

  “Do you know how hard it is to drive a stick shift when you’re wearing a cast?”

  Having never broken anything made out of calcium, I couldn’t say that I did. Besides, I had yet to drive a standard shift vehicle for more than a thousand feet. That, incidentally, was when Papa got his first gray hair. I kid you not. He left the house with a full head of wavy brown hair, anxious to teach me how to drive, and returned an hour later a broken man, whom Mama barely recognized.

  “You said you’d have Zelda or Susannah drive you!”

  “Zelda’s mother needed her and Susannah—well, you know.”

  “You’re going to have to get tougher with Susannah, dear. When she lived with me, I made sure she was up before lunch.”

  “I didn’t come to talk about your sister, Yoder. I came about that damn key.”

  “You hush your mouth, Melvin, or I’ll wash it out with soap. And that’s no empty threat. There’s enough smut in this house already.”

  “Make me,” Melvin muttered.

  “I could make you from scratch—out of pie dough, because I wouldn’t need a brain.”

  “Children, please,” Dr. Brack said foolishly.

  I glared at him, and I think one of Melvin’s eyes made visual contact as well. At any rate, Dr. Brack grabbed the bread and bologna and scooted to the far corner of the kitchen.

  “The key, Yoder!”

  I must have stared blankly.

  “I stopped at the pond first, Yoder, and there was no key. That means you took it, which undoubtedly means you got your greasy fingerprints smeared all over it. Now what the hell am I going to do?”

  I lunged for the bottle of dish detergent by the sink. Oh, for a big chunk of lye soap like Grandma Yoder used to make. Melvin would lay off swearing for the rest of his life.

  Alas, I didn’t even have the pleasure of making Melvin gargle with Joy. Before I could get my hands on him, the door from the dining room swung open and in walked Terry Slock with little Caitlin on his shoulders. The child’s head nearly hit the doorsill, causing visions of a lawsuit to dance through my head.

  “Put her down at once!
”

  Terry grinned and slid her to the floor. “Whew! You were getting heavy anyway,” he said to her. “I think you’re turning into stone.”

  Caitlin giggled and came bounding to me. As usual she had that silly little doll with her.

  “Ni how,” she said, waving that doll practically in my face. “Ni how ma?”

  “Speak proper English,” I snapped. “You’re too old for baby talk.”

  “It isn’t baby talk,” Dr. Brack said, his mouth full of sandwich.

  “What?” I’d just as soon snap at him, as I would the child.

  “What she said. It isn’t baby talk. The little girl was speaking Mandarin Chinese. She asked how you were. Did I tell you that Pearl Buck was a dear friend of mine? As a matter of fact, it was I who suggested she write—”

  The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle fell neatly into place. Unlike the game, however, this real-life puzzle did not resemble the picture on the box. Not the mental picture I’d painted, at any rate.

  “This is all very interesting,” Melvin said, “but you people are interrupting police business.”

  I gave Melvin a look that could freeze asphalt on a summer day. Then I took a deep breath and smiled warmly at Caitlin. She smiled back.

  “I’m fine, dear,” I said to her. “How is your dolly?”

  “Wan Oou likes you,” she said and giggled.

  “Tell her I like her, too.”

  She said something to the doll in a singsong voice and then thrust the sorry thing at me. I reluctantly took and patted it, and returned it forthwith.

  “Where are your mommy and daddy?” I asked the urchin gently.

  She shrugged.

  “I’m sitting for the kids,” Terry said. “They had some things they wanted to do in town.”

  My blood ran cold. “Which town?”

  “Bedford, I guess. They said they might be gone for a couple of hours. Don’t worry, I’m good with kids.”

  “I’m counting on that,” I said and bolted for the door.

  I have a list of ten things I want to ask my Maker some day, and one of them has to do with why hospitals serve their evening meal at such an ungodly early hour. My uncharitable guess is that the staff are in a hurry to get home to fix their own meals, to be eaten at the regular time.

  The front receptionist was unfamiliar to me, so I tried to read her name badge. It wasn’t easy to do, because the woman was hunched over a magazine laboriously sounding out the difficult phrases like “six easy payments” and “a collector’s piece you’ll be proud to call your own.” When I finally read her name I did a double take. Hillary Clinton. This woman was not the First Lady, I was pretty sure of that. She didn’t look a day over twelve to me.

  “Excuse me,” I said politely. “Which room is Thomas Arnold in?”

  She glanced up casually from her magazine. “Visiting hours don’t resume until after supper. Come back at five.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was four thirty-two.

  “This is an emergency,” I snapped. “I have to see the patient now.”

  She treated me to a wide yawn. “He’s not here.”

  “What?”

  She looked down at her magazine. “I said he’s not here.”

  “What do you mean he’s not here?” I screamed.

  The lady in the gift shop must have heard me, because she was looking nervously my way. I smiled and waved until she waved timidly back.

  Hillary, however, was not impressed. “You speak English,” she said without looking up. “Which word didn’t you understand?”

  “I understand that your job is in jeopardy if you don’t cooperate, toots. I’m here on police business.”

  Hillary slowly turned a page in her magazine. “You don’t look like a cop.”

  “Hernia Police Department, dear. If you don’t believe me, let me use your phone.”

  “You’re supposed to have a badge. Do you have a badge?”

  “It’s in the car, dear.” All right, so it was a lie, but a young man’s life was at stake.

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  She turned her attention back to her magazine and was immediately captivated by an ad for perfume. While Rome burned down around her, Hillary Clinton ripped back a paper flap and rolled her wrist around on the page. The scent that reached my nostrils smelled like the dead squirrel I found in the rain gutter last spring.

  It may surprise you to learn that patience has never been my forte. It certainly surprised me when I reached over the counter and grabbed her skinny wrist. Not the one that smelled like a dead squirrel.

  “Where is Thomas Arnold?” I demanded through clenched teeth. My adrenaline was pumping.

  At last, I had Hillary’s undivided attention. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if I did, I would want to come back as someone who was big and strong and had a viselike grip. Either that, or a natural blonde for whom wearing a bra was a necessity, not a privilege.

  “Hey, you’re hurting me,” Hillary whined, but she didn’t scream, or try and jerk away, so I knew I was well on my way to obtaining her cooperation.

  I squeezed harder for good measure.

  “Okay!” she gasped. “You win. The guy you’re asking about just left with his parents.”

  I let go of her wrist. “He what?”

  Her newfound respect for me began to fade before my eyes. “You’re not going to make me repeat everything, are you?”

  I thought for a moment. “Were his parents Amish?”

  “Oh, please! Give me a break,” she said and returned to her magazine as if nothing had happened.

  Buffalo Mountain runs north and south, and Highway 96 between Bedford and Hernia runs right alongside it. There are no parallel roads to connect the two communities. Had there been, I would have succumbed to temptation, taken the one least traveled, and pushed my pedal to the metal. Don’t get me wrong, speeding is a sin, and the Devil is on a first-name basis with those folks who do so just for fun, or can’t be bothered to get up in time to drive to their appointments at the legal speed. But neither of those situations applied to me that afternoon, and I was on a sacred mission to save a life, so I pressed the pedal anyway. If I got a ticket, I would drop it in the offering plate at church.

  I assure you that I neither swore nor gesticulated as I barreled along at almost twice the speed limit, although I had occasion to do so more than once. Tourists might think of Highway 96 as bucolic, but it can be an obstacle course when there is a life on the line. I deftly dodged Delbert Detweiler’s demented dog, which darted out into the highway, but wasn’t quite as successful with Rachel Rickenbach’s Rhode Island Reds. I made a mental note to give Rachel the recipe for Freni’s famous chicken salad. Fortunately the cars I needed to pass were more cooperative, and I didn’t encounter any buggies.

  About five miles out from Hernia the highway curves in close to Buffalo Mountain and begins to follow the lay of Slave Creek, with many quick twists and turns. The fields give way to woods here and some of the old trees hang over road forming a virtual tunnel. This is the most dangerous stretch of Route 96, and Susannah and her friends refer to it as Accident Alley. I was slowing down a mite to take the first turn when I saw a familiar car ahead. It was the Dixonmobile.

  My first reaction was to let off the brake and step on the gas. I would ram the fiends from behind if necessary. But that would undoubtedly injure poor Samuel, and besides the diabolical duo hadn’t a clue I was on to them. No, much better to hang back and follow them. When they made a left turn on Zweibacher Road to get to the Kauffman farm, I’d zoom on past them and then, for better or for worse, get Melvin. And Zelda, too, whether she was done helping her mama or not.

  A few people have accused me of being inflexible in my thinking, and I’m beginning to think they are right. Even though the Dixonmobile didn’t turn left to the Kauffman farm, I nearly did. I mean, my eyes saw the criminal car sail right on past Zweibacher Road, but my brain apparently didn’t—not until I was
halfway into the turn. The corrective maneuver I attempted defied the law of physics and made me a staunch believer in miracles. Although my BMW bucked like a bronco, and I lost a quarter inch of rubber from my tires, I was able to continue my pursuit almost uninterrupted. A faithful Christian, I didn’t forget to thank the Good Lord for inventing antilock brakes.

  Because of my near mishap, I was ready when the Dixonmobile made an abrupt right turn on the gravel lane that winds up Stucky Ridge. That’s not to say, I wasn’t surprised. I had just assumed the diabolic duo would be headed for the Kauffman farm. Why I had assumed that, I don’t know. Let’s just say that my aging gray cells don’t do their best thinking careening on a country road at ninety miles an hour.

  I slowed down considerably since there are no roads that intersect that gravel lane. There was no need to worry about me losing them, and I certainly didn’t want them to discover that I was on their tail. Believe me, my decision to reduce my speed had nothing to do with the damage gravel was capable of inflicting on my vehicle.

  At any rate, with the slower speed my senses returned. Yes, of course, Stucky Ridge, and Settler’s Cemetery in particular, made perfect sense to commit the dastardly deed. The historic cemetery was hardly used anymore, and at that hour of the day one wasn’t likely to find spooning couples on the picnic side, either. The copse of woods between the two areas was the perfect place to dump a body. If their car was spotted and they were later questioned, the Dixons could claim they had driven up for the view.

  My slow speed assumptions were correct, and as I emerged from the last curve I spotted the Dixonmobile parked at the far end of the left fork of the gravel lane, alongside Settler’s Cemetery. I stopped and turned off the engine while I considered my options. The safest thing for me was to turn around and drive into Hernia for help. But if young Samuel was alive—and I had no reason to believe he wasn’t—a brash frontal attack on my part might be what was required to keep him that way. After all, the Dixons had no reason to suspect that I knew what they were up to. I could simply drive up the road and park beside them. My pretext could be a visit to my parents’ graves. Somehow I would find a way to wrest Samuel from them and get him to safety.