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

by Tamar Myers

  Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. The confused bird popped back into its cubbyhole. Of the three of us, it was perhaps the sanest.

  I had intended to swing by the high school after the feed store and visit Herman Middledorf, the principal, who had been quite vocal in his opposition to the colonel’s hotel. But the Lodema Schrock thing intrigued me—and, I must admit, a valid excuse to egg her on was just too good of an opportunity to miss.

  To reach Lodema’s, I had to backtrack to the center of town. Beechy Grove Mennonite Church, which sits back from a country road, is nowhere near the parsonage. The latter is right around the corner from Sam’s store in the Victorian part of town. The pastor and his wife live in a white gingerbread house on a corner lot shaded by towering maples. One would expect a kind, rosy-cheeked couple to live there, and if one did, one would be half right.

  I rang the bell with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, fully expecting Lodema to fling open the door in her customary rage. Silly me, I certainly did not expect the reverend to open the door.

  “Good afternoon, Magdalena,” he said with a smile that was quite genuine. Reverend Schrock and I truly get along, and even if we didn’t, I contribute more money to the cause than any other member of his congregation.

  “Is your lovely wife in?” Compliments do not fall under the category of lies, if you ask me. They are merely good deeds, unsupported by facts. Besides, the woman in question might well have a comely visage. I wouldn’t know, because the second I met her, we got off on the wrong foot. In my mind she has always looked like Medusa.

  “Lodema?”

  “No, your other wife.”

  The good man was taken aback. “I—uh—Magdalena, are you joshing with me?”

  “Certainly, Reverend. Is she home?”

  “Ah, yes. She’s in the kitchen—”

  “No, I’m not.” Lodema shoved her long-suffering husband aside and planted her feet firmly in the doorway. “What is it you want, Magdalena?”

  Her poor husband sighed. “If you ladies need me—”

  “Stir the pasta,” she snapped.

  While my spiritual shepherd trotted off to do his wife’s bidding, I prayed for patience. If the Good Lord chose not to answer that prayer on the steps of a parsonage, then He just plain didn’t mean for me to have that virtue.

  “So,” Lodema said, interrupting my petition, “what brings you here? You finally decided to join the Cookie Brigade? Well, if you have, first you need to apologize.” Lodema has been after me for months to join a group of devout women who have taken upon themselves to bake cookies to send to the state prison. She views this as a ministry. I loathe baking. I have also tasted many of the Brigade’s efforts. It was with that knowledge in mind that I proposed, at the organizational meeting, that we purchase our cookies from the Girl Scouts—repackage them if need be—and send them along to the lockup. We’d be doing both the Scouts and the cons a huge favor and save ourselves a whole lot of bother. Much to my surprise, my suggestion was met with stony stares.

  “This isn’t about cookies,” I said, still waiting for my dose of divine patience. “It’s about Colonel Custard.”

  “What about him? No, let me guess. You and your cronies aren’t having any luck in railroading the poor man out of town, so you’ve come for my help. Well, I told you before, Magdalena, I think the hotel is a good thing. It’s a golden opportunity to save souls.”

  “Let’s hope the colonel’s was saved,” I mumbled.

  “What was that?”

  “Lodema, dear, the colonel was murdered this morning.”

  She stared mutely while her skin went through several color changes. “Where?” she finally asked.

  “My inn. He was shot in the head.”

  “Magdalena, you”—she shook her head—“no, even you aren’t that cold-blooded.”

  “Why, thank you. And I don’t suspect you either—although a little birdie did send me this way.”

  “Who?” She looked more sad than startled.

  “I can’t reveal my sources, dear.” Although I had not promised Elspeth that I’d protect her, there is power to be wielded by withholding information. Keep them guessing, Mama always said, and the fact that she was referring to her age does not change the wisdom inherent in her statement.

  Lodema’s face underwent several more color changes, and then it appeared to dissolve. She put her hands over it, presumably to hold what remained of it in place—well, that’s how it looked to me. And no, I most certainly did not experiment with hallucinogenic drugs in the sixties.

  “I was so young,” she sobbed.

  “There, there,” I said, relieved that the strange transformation was only apparent, and due to tears—something I never in a million years would have associated with Lodema—and not related to the knock to my noggin earlier that day.

  “ ‘Be sure that your sin will find you out,’ ” she blubbered, quoting from the Book of Numbers. “And my sin has found me out, hasn’t it?”

  “Well—”

  “You won’t tell the reverend, will you, Magdalena?”

  I laid a bony arm around her well-padded, but sloped, shoulders. “Tell me everything you don’t want me to tell him, dear. And please be specific. Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep my stories straight.”

  She turned her tear-stained face to the door. “Can’t we please talk somewhere else?”

  From inside came the smell of something burning—the pasta, no doubt—and the sound of clanging pots. I doubted if Reverend Schrock was paying any attention to our conversation, but I was not about to let this golden opportunity slip through my mitts.

  “Any suggestions, dear?”

  “There’s a gazebo over there.” She pointed to the side yard, where a flimsy white structure struggled to stand in the spreading shade of a sugar maple.

  “You got it.”

  Just because the Good Lord was a carpenter is no reason one of His pious servants should fancy himself one. What was supposed to be a garden ornament looked more like an outhouse that had seen hurricane-force winds. I know we don’t pay our pastor as much as we should (it’s for his own spiritual good, mind you) but it looked like he had scavenged for the materials at the town dump. Every kind of board imaginable had been incorporated, and even a few pieces of plastic. At least he’d had the sense to paint the mess white.

  There were supposed to be benches inside the gazebo, but the plywood shelves wouldn’t have been able to support the mere thought of sitting, much less the actual thing. We both stood.

  “Now tell all, dear,” I reminded her.

  First she needed to blow her nose in the worst way. Unfortunately, she hadn’t come to the door prepared to cry, and the only tissues I had were in my bra. If I were to remove them I would become a carpenter’s dream, and thereby risk being utilized in a possible expansion of the so-called gazebo. Therefore I suggested Lodema use the hem of her skirt to clear her sinus passages, and to her credit, she gamely complied.

  “I was only a college freshman,” she said, sniffing. “A very impressionable one at that. You see, Mama and Daddy were very protective—and I didn’t, uh, have any experience with the world, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do indeed. I thought babies grew under cabbages until I—”

  “Magdalena, this isn’t about you.”

  I slapped my mouth lightly. “Indeed it’s not.”

  “So anyway, when I met Colonel Custard—”

  “You met him in college?”

  “Yes, but he wasn’t a colonel yet; he was my biology professor. Now, where was I? Magdalena, it is so hard to talk when you’re constantly interrupting.”

  “You’d just met,” I said, and then mimed locking my lips and throwing away the key.

  “Yes, well, he was the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on. Magdalena, he just exuded charm and like I said, I was only eighteen and—uh—I don’t know how to put this delicately—”

  “Horny?” I hate that crude word, but it is
a succinct description of a crude human condition.

  “Magdalena!”

  I pretended to lock my lips with a second key. In addition to patience, I should have prayed for a case of lockjaw.

  “I wasn’t that word you said,” she growled. “I have never experienced those base carnal urges that seem to be driving the young folks of today.”

  “Not even with the reverend?” I slapped my mouth so hard I tasted blood, and she didn’t bother to chide me.

  “But I did experience a certain lack of judgment.”

  13

  It is hard to communicate with only one’s eyes, especially when shouting is called for. I rolled my eyes with such vigor the left one nearly popped out. Since it is by far the better-looking of the two, I did my best to hold it in place, and just roll the right.

  “I’m getting there, Magdalena,” she said, reading my eye. “Well, I don’t know any other way to say it, except that I eventually agreed to know him. In the biblical sense, I mean.”

  My right eye came dangerously close to leaving its cozy socket, but Lodema got the message.

  “It happened only once, and I didn’t experience a moment of pleasure. But once I did it—well, a card played is a card laid, as they say. Not that I play card games either. You understand.”

  Despite the impression I sometimes give, I am only human. “Try substituting the word ‘woman’ for ‘card.’ That man used you, and you were barely more than a babe in arms.”

  “You’re right; I was just a child. So I really can’t be held responsible for that, can I?”

  “I certainly don’t,” I said. Well, I mostly didn’t hold her responsible. I’d like to think that I would have remained virtuous, but to tell the truth, if either Aaron or the Babester had come along when I was that age—I shuddered to think what might have happened. Then I shuddered again to re-create the feeling. And to think I’d settled for my Maytag all those years.

  “In retrospect,” Lodema said, “I should have had my head examined. Sure he was handsome and all, but his hands always smelled of formaldehyde, and he had this thing about snakes.”

  “Snakes?”

  “There was this huge terrarium in the biology lab, and Professor Custard—that’s what we called him then— had a pet snake he kept in it. An African rock python. I remember, because before we got a passing grade, we each had to feed it a mouse.”

  “Gross. Wasn’t that dangerous?”

  “Not really; we just had to drop the mouse in the tank. Of course legally he couldn’t make us do it, but it was a tradition in the department. Kind of like a rite of passage.”

  “We all had to take turns clapping erasers,” I said. I was talking about fifth grade, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “Magdalena, you’re not going to tell the reverend, are you?”

  I started to shake my head, but it throbbed. “I’m not a busybody.”

  “And you think I am?”

  “If the shoe fits, dear. What I can’t figure out is why you of all people would welcome the colonel to town— no—wait a minute! He was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?”

  She shook her head like the paint mixer at the Home Depot over in Bedford. No sign of concussion there.

  “Actually he wasn’t blackmailing me. But you see, there was always the possibility that he might. That’s why when he first wrote last year and asked about development potential—”

  “He wrote last year?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So you’re the one who got him interested in Hernia in the first place?”

  “What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want to appear unfriendly.”

  “You knew his plans all along?”

  “I still think that hotel would have presented a good opportunity for us to share our witness.”

  “And I think the bridge mix is missing a nut,” I said, not without charity. “Do you know the meaning of playing with fire?”

  “Magdalena, you said you wouldn’t tell my husband.” I happened to glance past her to the house. Silhouetted in the window was the forlorn figure of my friend and pastor, Reverend Schrock. He looked like a burned gingerbread man. I couldn’t even tell if he was looking at us or away.

  “I won’t tell him. You have my word.”

  Lodema extended her arms, as if she meant to hug me. Just as I started to respond in a likewise if highly uncharacteristic manner, she hugged herself. “I hope you don’t climb up on your high horse now, Magdalena. If so, let me remind you that you are a former bigamist who plans to marry a man of a different faith.”

  I was out of there faster than a greased pig shot from a cannon—not that I’ve seen a whole lot of those, mind you. But I had yet to lose my patience. For the first time, the Good Lord had seen it fit to answer that prayer. I wasn’t about to mess that up.

  Where does one go to celebrate an answered prayer, especially if one is ravenous, and not inclined to cook? Why, the Sausage Barn, of course!

  This satisfying restaurant is part of the backlash against the low-fat trend of the nineties. Wanda Hemphopple, Mennonite owner of the joint, subscribes to that time-honored Anabaptist tradition that fat is where it’s at. Although Wanda was the second worst cook in our home economics class (I was the worst), she managed to find a pair of Mennonite cooks who know a thousand and one tasty ways to serve lard. Everything at the Sausage Barn comes swimming in grease of some kind. But to her credit Wanda makes up for this, in part, by banning smoking altogether. At the Sausage Barn non-smokers get to eat their grease in peace.

  Please understand that by praising the Sausage Barn, I am not espousing high cholesterol or advocating heart attacks. I am merely stating a fact: Fat tastes good. Animal fat tastes the best. What can compare to a greasy strip of bacon, fried crisp on the ends but with just a little play in the middle? Didn’t the Good Lord forbid His Chosen People to eat pork so that the rest of us could have more? Frankly, as a good Christian I consider it my religious duty to eat as much bacon as possible, thereby sparing Jews temptation. In short, I do it for Gabe.

  But just because I frequent the Sausage doesn’t mean I’m a welcome guest. Wanda Hemphopple and I have never gotten along. It all started back in high school when I inadvertently stuck a pencil through Wanda’s beehive hairdo, thinking it was the pencil sharpener. It was not, as Wanda claims, a malicious act intended to focus attention on me.

  I have long since forgiven Wanda for this accusation. She, on the other hand, has not forgiven me. If you look closely you can still see a faint indentation where my writing implement penetrated her lacquered coiffure. Perhaps this is why she refuses to wash her hair. At any rate, my advice is to eat Wanda’s grease, but stay away from her if you can help it.

  Taking my own advice, I tried to sneak past the hostess station and seat myself in a booth at the back. This is my favorite booth because it is so well screened by plastic ferns in hanging baskets and plastic philodendrons in cheap divider walls, it’s almost like entering a canopy bed-one with plastic green curtains. Dusty curtains.

  Because it’s near the rest rooms, which are not the most hygienic in the world, most customers elect not to take this booth. What they don’t realize is that it is also close to the kitchen, so that your hotcakes arrive hot, and with any luck, your bacon still sizzles.

  “Whew!” I said and plunked myself down on the green Naugahyde seat. It had been touch and go there for a second. Wanda had been on the phone, her back to the door when I entered, and turned just as I dived into my sanctuary.

  “Well, it’s about time.”

  I jumped so high my bun bumped a basket of ferns. “Gabe!”

  “That would be me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for my dinner to be served. Mind if I ask you the same?”

  I waved away a cloud of settling dust. “I came to eat, but I didn’t expect to find you.”

  He grinned. “You’re the one who showed me this secret spot.”

  “So I
did.”

  “Look, Mags, I realize that we didn’t part on the best of terms—”

  “Maybe you didn’t, but I did.” Okay, so that was an out-and-out lie. But when I got down on my knees to say my prayers that night, I would confess it. In the meantime, what did I have to gain by letting him know that I carried a grudge over a silly thing like a rooster?

  “Yeah, you’re right, I was a little pissed—pardon my French. But then I got to thinking; it really was my fault. I gave you something I thought you needed, not something I thought you might like.”

  I picked up the plastic-coated menu, which was covered with enough grease to lubricate the axles of an eighteen-wheeler. I knew everything on it by heart, but in order to come across as nonchalant, I had to look busy.

  “Like, schmike, I really don’t care. What counted was the thought, right?” Not that a chicken took a whole lot of thought.

  “But maybe you will care about this,” he said. Gabe fumbled in his pants for a moment. Given that we were in such a secluded booth, I began to worry. “Here,” he said at last, and placed a black velvet box on the table between us.

  My heart pounded like a madman on a xylophone. “What’s that?”

  “Open it and see.”

  I’m not as dumb as I look. I knew darn well what was in that box—at least what I hoped was in it. And it wasn’t a rooster. Even the smallest bantam wouldn’t fit in that box. My fingers shook as I opened it, and I kept one eye closed for psychological protection; if I didn’t like what I saw, then only half of me saw it.

  “Oh my stars!”

  “You like it?”

  “Uh—uh—” For the first time since I could talk, I was speechless. What was not to like? It was a sapphire and diamond engagement ring, just like the one Prince Charles gave to Diana, only a wee bit smaller. I know whereof I speak, because I saw that ring once.

  Gabe was on a mind-reading roll. “It’s a replica of Princess Diana’s, only a bit smaller. I’m a retired doctor, not the Prince of Wales. But that sapphire is just over five carats and the diamonds are all VVS grade.”

  The woman who had dished out a thousand scoldings couldn’t find her tongue.