Custard's Last Stand (An Amish Bed and Breakfast Mystery with Recipes Book 11)

by Tamar Myers

  Sure enough, when I stepped into my kitchen, there she was with the receiver pressed to her head. What’s more, she didn’t look the slightest bit guilty. How was I not to feel that I had failed as a mom?

  “Alison!”

  “No, I’m not making this up,” she said. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”

  I took a deep breath and prayed for patience. It is my least-answered prayer.

  “How would a certain young lady like to have her allowance docked?”

  She hung up without even saying good-bye. “Mom! Ya oughta seen him! He was the grossest thing I ever saw. He was big and hairy, and boy did he stink.”

  My heart sank. “You had that Jimmy character over here while I was gone?”

  Alison howled like a leashed hound with a fox in front of its nose. “Jimmy? You say the dumbest things, ya know that? No, it weren’t Jimmy, silly. I’m talking about Bigfoot.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ya know, like in Harry and the Hendersons. Only this one was real.”

  I still didn’t have a clue as to what the child meant. “Your reference eludes me, dear. Please elaborate.”

  “Man, are ya, like, stupid, or what? Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Abominable Snowman. Ya know, those big apelike creatures that everyone knows exist, but the government likes to pretend they don’t, on account they’ll scare the crap out of people. Just like with the aliens.”

  “Oh, that.” I have glanced at the supermarket tabloids from time to time, but only while in the checkout line. I feel it is my right for having been made to wait. “Alison, dear, those stories are just the figment of someone’s imagination. There is no such creature.”

  “Ya calling me a liar?”

  “I’m saying you are mistaken. Perhaps it was a shadow or something. Where did you see it?”

  She pointed toward the kitchen door. “I was studying for my test, and suddenly I smell the worst thing ever. Like a dead skunk or something. So I go to the door to look out and I see this thing—and it was Bigfoot—come out of the chicken house. And I’m like, holy shoot.” (Alison used a slightly different word.) “So I call Uncle Melvin ’cause he’s the police chief and all, only he wasn’t home, but I left a message anyway, so then I called Jimmy, and he’s like, ‘I’ll be right over if I can,’ and then you come barging in.”

  “Jimmy’s coming here?”

  “Yeah, if he can get his mom’s car to start. She even had to hitch into work today. Jimmy thinks it’s just a clogged fuel line or something like that—”

  “Alison, sweetie, did you say the chicken house?”

  “Yeah. Ya turning deaf or something on me, Mom?” I brushed aside the cheery gingham curtains that cover the glass portion of the door and peered into the darkness. It was like looking down my well. It took a second for my peepers to focus.

  “The door to the henhouse is open!”

  Alison grinned. “What did I tell ya! Believe me now?”

  I am not afraid of things I know for a fact don’t exist. And if there really was such a creature as Bigfoot—well, I’d give him what for. There was no way his tootsies could be anywhere near as big as my size elevens. While mine is a peaceful sect that doesn’t condone violence, that ban applies only to mankind. The Bible very clearly encourages us to subjugate the beasts of the field—just not drive them to extinction—and surely Bigfoot, assuming he even existed, was a beast. I grabbed the heavy-duty flashlight I keep by the door, quite confident that whacking Sasquatch atop the head was not a sin.

  “Hold the fort, dear!” I cried and sailed out into the night.

  7

  The door, as I’ve stated, was open, and there was a faint odor of skunk in the air, but inside the coop nothing appeared amiss. The hens blinked at me from their perches, and I counted sixteen of them, just like I was supposed to. The fact that there was no rooster was due to the unfortunate visit a month ago by a coyote that was directionally challenged and ended up in my yard instead of a California suburb. Chanticleer, may he rest in pieces, put up a brave but futile fight defending his harem. I heard the ruckus before it was too late, and the conquering canine escaped with just the carcass of my courageous cock.

  At any rate, satisfied that there was no big hairy beast lurking in the shadows, I closed the door for the second time that evening. Something was fishy all right, but it didn’t have anything to do with any mythical beast. Some person had undone the latch of my henhouse, and I had a sneaking suspicion who that might be.

  I was halfway back to the inn when a car came barreling up my driveway, spraying gravel every which way. Thank the Good Lord I’m as thin as a rail and was able to turn sideways and avoid most, but not all, of the missiles. Petrified as I was, I could still feel the pain as a petite pebble pinged my protruding proboscis.

  I waited patiently for the nincompoop behind the wheel to get out, before letting him have it. “Melvin Stoltzfus! I could sue you, you know.”

  He flashed his badge. “Police business, Yoder.”

  I might have done something distinctly unchristian with his badge, had not the passenger door opened. Out popped Zelda Root, Melvin’s sidekick and Hernia’s only other police officer. She’s a short thing with enormous breasts, no hips, and matchstick ankles. In other words the poor woman is shaped vaguely like the dearly departed Chanticleer—except that he had only one breast, and she has almost no feathers. But few people ever notice Zelda’s intriguing physique, not if they get a gander at her head first. Her bleached hair is short and worn in spikes, like greasy porcupine quills. As for her face—don’t get me wrong; there is nothing inherently homely about it. The fact is Zelda applies her makeup with a trowel, making even Tammy Faye seem like a minimalist. For years there were rumors that Jimmy Hoffa was alive and well and living in Hernia, disguised by layers of Maybelline. For the record, I have long since confessed that sin.

  “Zelda,” I said to the more reasonable of the pair, “let me venture a guess. You’re here because an imaginative young girl called in to report that she’d seen Bigfoot.”

  “Magdalena, you saw it too?”

  “No, dear. I don’t normally see what doesn’t exist. Would you like to come in for a cup of hot chocolate before you turn around?”

  Zelda teetered forward on platform shoes that were clearly not regulation. “But they do exist.”

  “You’re damn right,” Melvin said, nodding so hard I thought his head was going to snap off his scrawny neck and roll back down my drive. “Tell her, Zelda.”

  “Well, my uncle Barney up in Maine was on his annual deer-hunting trip with some buddies of his. One morning Uncle Barney wasn’t feeling very well, so he stayed back at the camp while his buddies went off to hunt. Suddenly this big hairy thing rushes into camp and tries to—uh—well, it tries to mate with my uncle. Fortunately one of the hunters had forgotten his cap, and returned just in time. He was able to scare it off by shooting his gun in the air.”

  I gasped. “Was the beast male or female?”

  Even though it was dark, and Zelda’s war paint as thick as ever, I could tell she was blushing. “Male,” she whispered.

  “Oh.” That ruled out Veronica Stucky as an explanation. The big gal, as hirsute as any I’ve known, had a reputation for being the aggressor in her relationships with men. One day, about ten years ago, she left Hernia to become a logger up in Maine. To my knowledge, no one here has heard from her since.

  “So you see, Yoder,” Melvin said pompously, “Bigfoot does exist.”

  “I’ve got one at the end of each leg,” I said.

  “Very funny, Yoder. Now, if you don’t mind I’ll be interviewing the eyewitness.”

  “I do mind.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This is police business.”

  “But she doesn’t even have an attorney!”

  Melvin ignored me and started for the house.

  I might have tackled him, or at least punched him gently behind the knees, had not Zelda attempted to lay a comforting hand on my arm. The
woman has fingernails so long she’s been banned from airplanes, and I could feel the claws right through my sweater.

  “Let him go, Magdalena.”

  “That mantis is a menace. I won’t have him interrogating my daughter.”

  “She isn’t your daughter.”

  “Well, she’s my foster child. It’s the same thing.”

  “Hmph.” Zelda’s eggs aren’t as old as mine, but she doesn’t stand much of a chance of becoming a biological mother either. Not as long as she carries a torch for Melvin, who is happily married to my sister. “Look, Magdalena, if you try and stop him—well, you know my Melvin.”

  “He isn’t your Melvin, dear. He’s married to Susannah.”

  “That’s only temporary, Magdalena. Besides, Alison seems like the type who can hold her own.”

  That was certainly true. Alison didn’t particularly like her foster uncle, and I’d seen her give that twit tit for tat on more than one occasion. It might be fun to watch them bump heads again—but alas, on the Bigfoot issue, they seemed to be on the same page.

  “He has five minutes,” I said. “Any more than that, and I’m cutting off his allowance.”

  I wasn’t joking either. Although our parents left the farm, now the inn, to both Susannah and me, it states in their will that I am financially in charge until the time my sister achieves emotional maturity. The woman is now thirty-six, and she still receives a monthly allowance. Of course she shares it with Melvin.

  “Good call,” Zelda said, before clopping off in her platform shoes to find Melvin.

  I had every intention of eavesdropping on the Bigfoot conversation, but halfway back to the house my eye caught a glimmer of light emanating from Mr. Custard’s parked limo. You can bet your bippy I decided to check it out. One might think this was none of my business, but whatever happens on my property is my business. And suppose I was wrong about Bigfoot? What if it was hiding in the limo and decided to take it for a spin? I doubted if the creature had had drivers’ education class once, much less twice like me.

  As I approached the extravagant car, the light extinguished but my curiosity did not. I have knuckles that can cut glass, so I rapped gently on the tinted window.

  “Come out, come out, whoever you are,” I cried cheerily.

  A back door opened a crack. “Busted, am I?”

  “That depends on who you are. If you’re a seven-foot ape man—”

  The door opened all the way and the overhead light came on. I was both relieved and disappointed to see that it was only Colonel Custard.

  “Care to join me?” he asked. He held up a bottle of wine and a half-filled glass.

  “I don’t drink. You know that.”

  “I meant for a little conversation.”

  “I’m a happily engaged woman, Mr. Custard.”

  “Believe me, Miss Yoder, I have no designs on you.”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “It’s nothing personal, you understand. It’s just that I don’t have time for women in my life right now.”

  “You mean you’re gay?”

  “To the contrary. I consider myself to be highly heterosexual. There was a time, in fact, when I—well, a gentlemen doesn’t tell, does he? Let’s just say they numbered in the hundreds.”

  “Scoot over, dear.”

  He obliged and I slid into the softest leather I’d ever felt. “Ooh,” I moaned.

  “Smooth, isn’t it? That’s because it’s the foreskin of a whale. Got the idea from Ari Onassis. He had barstools made of the stuff for his yacht. Of course I wouldn’t dream of further endangering whales, so I made sure these foreskins came only from whales that died of natural causes.”

  “Yuck!”

  “Don’t worry. They were freshly dead whales.”

  “Colonel, aren’t you afraid to be sitting out here alone with Bigfoot on the loose?”

  “Bigfoot?”

  “That’s why the cop car is outside. I’m afraid my charge, Alison, has taken her imagination on a ten-mile hike. Claims she saw the critter by the henhouse. The odd thing is the henhouse door was open, and there is a strange smell outside.”

  “The smell,” he said, “belongs to the dead skunk up the road. I believe a car hit it earlier this evening.” He cleared his throat. “Miss Yoder, how did my lynching go?”

  “What?”

  “The meeting you called. Have the townspeople let loose their hounds? Are they traipsing through the woods as we speak, with lit torches? Or is it going to be tar and feathers?”

  “Well, now that you’ve brought it up, I see no harm in telling you that we got more people to sign the petitions than I even anticipated. I’m afraid, Colonel, there is going to be a referendum, and ultimately your building permit will be revoked.”

  He swished the contents of his glass—which emitted a rather pleasant odor—and drained it in one gulp. “You’re a remarkable woman, Miss Yoder. In another place and time, you and I might have made beautiful music together.”

  “Is it too late for just one note?” I asked. Then I slapped myself. Gently of course. But gosh darn it, was I so repulsive that a man who’d bedded hundreds of women wouldn’t even pick up his bat and stand at home plate?

  He chuckled as he poured himself a refill. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re quite a handsome woman, Miss Yoder.”

  I patted my bun and its organza covering. “I am?”

  “Most certainly. If I didn’t have other distractions—well, you wouldn’t be safe sitting here.”

  I kept the smile on the inside of my mouth. “Distractions such as ruining my hometown?”

  “My hotel won’t ruin it, in my opinion, but you already know that. My distraction is a disease. Melanoma. Have you heard of it?”

  “Skin cancer, right?”

  “Yes. It’s the most dangerous of the three common types and can be fatal if not diagnosed early.”

  “And yours wasn’t?”

  “Unfortunately not. I spent a lot of time unprotected in the sun when I was a boy, growing up on a farm in Kentucky. Had some terrible burns. Got a little sensible in later years but neglected to take my skin seriously. Then about two years ago a mole on my abdomen began to change shape and grow. Sort of bi-colored, it was. Well, you know how most men are about seeing a doctor. Anyway, to make a long story short, I’ve had three painful surgeries since then. After the last they thought they’d gotten it all and I was in remission. But just last week I found out it’s back and spreading with a vengeance. In fact, it’s in my liver now.”

  “So you’re drinking!”

  “Why not? I’m going to die anyway.”

  “But—”

  “Miss Yoder, I can anticipate your next question. Why would a dying man want to build a five-star hotel in a nowhere place like Hernia?”

  “I wouldn’t have used the word ‘nowhere.’ ”

  “Touche. But the answer is, this hotel is my last hurrah. You see, Miss Yoder, I’m a rich man, but my money has all been made in the stock market—mostly investing in hotel chains and restaurant franchises. Don’t get me wrong; even with the bear market of late, I still have plenty. But I have nothing concrete to show for it. Before I leave this planet—or shortly after—I want there to be something real. Something with my name connected to it.”

  “How about an orphanage in India? Or a prosthetic center in Cambodia?”

  “Those things are good—wonderful even—but unfortunately, I happen to be a selfish man. I want to leave behind something really classy. Something legendary. A five-star hotel in this quaint little town—I can see that on the cover of Architectural Digest. You might say this venture is Custard’s last stand.”

  “Well, it isn’t going to happen.”

  He sipped his wine. “So I’ve been told. Miss Yoder, mind if I ask you a big favor?”

  “You want me to share my faith?” Maybe I couldn’t badger Gabe the Babe into seeing the light, but with a dying man I stood a chance. It was for his benefit, of course, not mine. H
e was the one who needed to avoid Hell, and the Bible says it is never too late to repent. Okay, so there was a small, maybe infinitesimal, part of me that wanted to convert this man so that the Good Lord would put another star in my crown. But is that such a bad thing to want?

  He laughed. “No, I’ll pass on that. Every religion I can think of is filled with hypocrites.”

  “But that’s only because we’re human. God isn’t a hypocrite. And I’m just barely one.”

  “I happen to think you’re refreshingly honest, Miss Yoder. No, the thing is, you see, neither Miss Thrope nor Ivan know my cancer has returned. So anyway, I have a doctor’s appointment in Pittsburgh tomorrow, and I plan to go in by myself. I’ve already told my staff they can have the day off, which, of course, leaves them without a car and no place to go or nothing to do.”

  “There are plenty of chores,” I sniffed. “Either of them ever milk a cow?”

  He laughed again. “You’re a hoot, Miss Yoder, you know that?”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.” I rubbed the soft leather seat beside me. “So what is the favor you want, Colonel?”

  “I’d like you to show them a good time.”

  “I beg your pardon! Just because I was an inadvertent bigamist—”

  “What I mean is I’d like you to show them the local sights. Maybe take them out to see an authentic Amish farm. I’ll pay your A.L.P.O. rate.”

  “Well—”

  “Double it, in fact.”

  “What I was going to say is there’s a nice little hiking trail along Slave Creek I could show them—I don’t hike personally, you understand, as it uses up unnecessary heartbeats from the stockpile the Good Lord gave me at birth—and then afterwards I could take them up to the top of Stucky Ridge for a picnic lunch. As for the visit to the Amish farm, this isn’t like some other places where they have models open to the public. Our Amish are very private. But I suppose I could ask Freni if she and her husband, Mose, would mind giving your staff a brief look. Just don’t count on her saying yes. I don’t think she cares for Miss Thrope.”