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

by Tamar Myers

  I would have clamped a hand over the child’s mouth, but experience has taught me that she has no qualms about biting the hand that feeds her. Instead I pulled her out of the room and down the hallway to the teachers’ lounge. Much to my surprise, Alison was a willing follower. She smiled and waved with her free arm to her openmouthed classmates.

  This was the first time I’d set toe in the lounge, which I’d always regarded as a holy of holies. I’d imagined gossiping faculty lounging about on velvet fainting couches, nibbling on seedless grapes, or maybe bonbons, but definitely drinking tea from real china cups. It was both a shock and a relief to see that my tax dollars went to a pair of ripped brown Naugahyde sofas that were held together with gray duct tape, and a purple-and-green plaid armchair, the bottom of which scraped the floor. The only comestible to be seen was a half-eaten slice of cake stuffed in a cup next to an empty coffeepot. The cup, by the way, was Styrofoam.

  There were teachers in the lounge, of course, but I gave them a glare guaranteed to make raisins out of grapes, and steered my charge to the least populated corner. It smelled strangely of gym socks—which might explain its unpopularity—-but a lecturing mother can’t afford to be picky.

  “What are you doing here today, Alison? I thought Freni was going to get you into the Amish school.” “They have to be there at seven thirty. This don’t start ’til eight thirty.”

  “But I thought you were looking forward to attending that school for a few days. Didn’t you say Freni’s neighbor kids go there?”

  “Yeah, but I got to thinking that it was kind of a dumb idea, on account I ain’t really Amish, and even Sarah and Rebecca get freaked by my holes, and they seen them a million times.”

  “Holes?” Surely the child was past that stage. I was four when I played doctor with the Stutzman twins. Thank heavens it was their mama who caught us, not mine.

  “Ya know, like in my tongue and stuff ’cause you won’t let me wear my stud.”

  My sigh of relief stirred up a fresh wave of sock stench. “As well I shouldn’t, dear. When you grow up to be a doctor or an astronaut, you’ll thank me.” I would have said “President,” but the girl is without guile.

  “I ain’t gonna be no astronaut.”

  “Doctor, then. ‘My daughter, the doctor.’ Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”

  “Ain’t gonna be no doctor neither.”

  “What, then? A nurse? A teacher?”

  “Jimmy’s wife.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I jiggled a pinkie in each, just to make sure they were working.

  “That seventeen-year-old? The one whose car can’t start?”

  “He’ll have him a new car by then,” she said, and stuck her lower lip a full inch in front of her face.

  Arguing with a teenager, even one just barely on the cusp like Alison, is like running blindfolded through a maze. No doubt about it, she was blindfolded as well, but she had still managed to lead me far away from my original agenda.

  “Alison, why were you in the principal’s office?”

  “I wasn’t. I was outside.”

  “Whatever,” I said, and rolled my eyes. This is a trick I learned from Susannah, and it annoys her to no end. However, it didn’t seem to have the same effect on Alison. “So what were you doing outside the principal’s office? And don’t you dare say ‘waiting.’ ”

  “All right, all right, ya don’t have to get so huffy. He wanted to yell at me for making a little money, that’s all. And I’m like, I only made one hundred and sixty dollars, so what’s the big deal?”

  I gasped, which was a huge mistake. You can be sure the next time I set foot in the teachers’ lounge, I would take an assortment of air fresheners with me. Even a hunk of Limburger cheese would be a vast improvement. “This doesn’t have to do with Bigfoot, does it?”

  She nodded.

  “Alison,” I said, trying to keep the pride out of my voice, “how could you?”

  “It was your idea, Mom. You said five dollars was too little, so I drew up these tickets on the back of some papers—Freni don’t own a copy machine, ya know—and was selling them for ten bucks when I got busted.”

  “Sixteen kids paid to see me?”

  She nodded again. “You’re hot stuff, Mom. Of course last night when I made up them tickets, I didn’t know you’d be on the cover of all them magazines. Could have sold a lot more if I had. Why didn’t ya tell me?”

  “I didn’t know myself. Usually it takes a few days for those rags to come out. Someone must have been standing by the presses, with one foot in the door of a jet plane. Anyway, those girls yesterday—the ones you brought to the house—they go to this school?”

  “Nah. They’re from Bedford.”

  “Then how do you know them?”

  “They’re Jimmy’s cousins. I seen them over at Jimmy’s house.”

  “You what?” At that point, every faculty member’s head in the room swiveled in our direction. What were they doing loafing about at that hour, even if they weren’t nibbling on grapes or bonbons?

  “Is everything all right over there?” someone asked. “Go pull some ears,” I hissed. .

  They returned to their tasks, which, come to think of it, looked a lot like grading papers. I turned to my problem child.

  “When were you at Jimmy’s house?”

  “When the youth group met at his house for the barbecue Sunday before last.”

  I slapped my forehead, almost knocking myself over. Too bad I didn’t. Maybe a fall would have knocked some sense into me.

  “You mean Jimmy Mast?” Much like the public high school, Beechy Grove Mennonite Church combines its junior and senior groups.

  “Yeah. Ya know him?”

  “I know his mama.”

  “Ya ain’t gonna call her, are ya?”

  “Well, I have to talk to someone in that family. I will not have you dating a seventeen-year-old. Or anyone for that matter.”

  I expected an outburst. But instead Alison seemed to implode. “Oh Mom, please don’t talk to no one.”

  “I’m sorry, dear, but I have to.”

  “No, you don’t, ’cause I don’t hardly know Jimmy Mast.”

  “But you said—”

  “I was just hoping, that’s all.”

  “Hoping for what?”

  “Don’t ya get it? I was hoping Jimmy would ask me out on account of he’s real cute. ’Course he didn’t—and never mind. Ain’t nobody gonna pay me no attention in this stupid shoot-hole of a school.” She actually used a term much worse than that.

  “Alison!”

  “Sorry, Mom, but it just slipped out. Anyway, that’s why I asked them girls over. And that’s why I made up that story about you being Bigfoot. Don’t ya see?”

  “Well, uh—I’m afraid I don’t, dear.” Perhaps if the Good Lord had given me the opportunity to raise a child from birth, I’d understand the machinations of the newly pubescent mind.

  “Because I’m lonely,” she cried. “That’s why!”

  Defying five hundred years of inbred standoffishness, I flung my bony arms around the child. “There, there,” I said.

  To my astonishment, Alison hugged me back. Her arms encircled me for a good three seconds before she pulled away with a jerk.

  “So,” she said, rubbing her sleeve across her eyes, “you’re cool with this, right? I mean, you ain’t gonna say nothing to Jimmy or his mom, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you ain’t mad about the Bigfoot thing.”

  “I’m not angry, but you have to stop selling tickets, and you have to give the money back.”

  She stamped a foot. It was a pitiful gesture; Susannah and I can both do a lot better. Either we were going to have to give her lessons, or she was going to have to grow a whole lot more foot.

  “Dang,” she said, but didn’t sound all that upset.

  I walked her back to the “door of death.” She was now in first place, and suddenly seemed very small.

>   “Don’t worry, dear,” I said. “I’m not going to get you off, but I will make sure Mr. Middledorf keeps an open mind.”

  Although the intransigent children waiting in Principal Middledorfs outer office had been unattended when I’d snagged Alison, the school secretary was now back on duty. Tlie prune-faced Odelphia Pringle had been school secretary when I was a girl. In fact rumor had it—and this one I did start—she’d dated George Washington. In the story it was George who broke off the relationship, unable to stand the woman’s acerbic personality. Another, more credible source than I claims quinine was invented when Odelphia stooped to donate blood in the war to end all wars.

  But it is undeniable that the secretary is ancient. Her hair has been dyed so many times over the centuries that the follicles have been fooled into producing pigment again. Her skin has not been so lucky, and a wag named Mags once quipped that Odelphia had a face only a sharpei could love. In a more perfect world the bitter woman would have long since been forced to retire, and might even now be pushing up daisies—wilted ones to be sure. But since everyone in the district has at one time or another been under her glare, no one has the nerve to make her step down.

  It has only been since my ill-fated marriage to Aaron that I have become bold enough to maintain full bladder control while looking the woman in the granite pebbles she uses for eyes.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t Magdalena Yoder,” she snarled. With each word her wrinkled cheeks expanded and contracted, like a beige paper fan.

  “It is indeed me,” I said. I didn’t pause, however, but strode boldly to the principal’s door.

  “You can’t go in there,” Odelphia croaked. “You don’t have an appointment.”

  “Sure I do.” I rapped on the door with the knuckles that are the envy of woodpeckers.

  “You do not have an appointment. I forbid you to go in there.”

  Thanks to all the trouble I’d seen in the intervening years, the voice that had once caused me to wet myself sounded about as threatening now as the droning of a bee. “Try and stop me, dear,” I said sweetly.

  The collective gasp from the captive students stirred decades of dust. Hernia High has never had a janitor worthy of his broom.

  I waited until it was safe to breathe and rapped again. “Herman, it’s Magdalena. I need to see you at once.”

  “Just a minute.” The reply was so muffled I began to worry that maybe the previous delinquent had bound and gagged the principal. Or perhaps the current troublemaker was holding him hostage. One would think that Odelphia would be wise to a situation such as this, if one was the sort to believe that pigs could fly, and politicians told the truth.

  At any rate, if indeed the principal’s mouth was taped shut, it was nothing short of a life-threatening situation. Especially if he caught a whiff of what was cooking in the cafeteria kitchen. I had no choice, therefore, but to barge in on an errand of mercy.

  Imagine my surprise when I saw the principal alone and unfettered. Imagine my shock when I saw that he was staring at a computer screen, upon which cavorted naked and nubile young women.

  19

  He jerked his attention away from the ladies, and when he saw me, his jaw dropped so low I thought it had become unhinged.

  “W-what are you doing here?”

  “Observing how my tax dollars are spent.”

  “This isn’t what you think.”

  “Oh really? For your information, Herman, I’ve looked at myself a couple of times in a mirror. I know what a naked woman looks like.”

  To be honest, these naked ladies looked nothing like me. Their limbs were just as skinny, to be sure, but these beauties had silicone supplements. A few of the frolicking females were, in fact, so well endowed they looked in need of pushcarts, or perhaps brassieres equipped with wheels, should they ever contemplate serious locomotion. In a word, every one of them was deformed. “Looks painful,” I said, “not that I would know.”

  He fumbled with a button, but managed to shut the machine off. “I was doing research, Magdalena.”

  “On what? How to get fired?”

  “But you can’t do that.”

  “Not by myself, I can’t. But as a member of the school board—the one with the biggest mouth—well, we’ll just see about that.”

  Quicker than double-geared lightning, Herman knocked over his chair and lunged in my direction. For a second I thought he meant to grab me. In a million years—or even just Odelphia Pringle’s lifetime—I wouldn’t have expected him to literally throw himself at my feet.

  “Please, Magdalena. You have to believe me. I really was doing research.”

  Although the Good Lord admonishes us not to judge, I’m sure He means we shouldn’t do so without all the facts. Therefore, by gathering such facts, we become obedient disciples, and that is, of course, a good thing.

  I closed the door behind me. “Herman, you have one minute. Starting now.” I looked at the second hand on my watch.

  “Uh—yeah—uh—one of the students, Harlan Blough, says he acts up all the time because he gets his instructions from the Devil. Off the Web. He gave me the Web site name, you see, and when I typed it in— well, there was this porno. I had just gotten the site up when you barged in.”

  I am the first to admit that I get my exercise from jumping to conclusions, but at least I’m fit. There was, perhaps, a minuscule chance that Herman Middledorf was telling the truth. I say that because the one time I got on the ’net, at Susannah’s, I accidentally stumbled on a site that made it undeniably clear that all men are not created equal.

  Herman must have heard the wheels of justice turning slowly in my cranium. An empty space that large does create quite an echo.

  “Harlan Blough, you say?”

  He nodded. “And I don’t know if you had a chance to see, Magdalena, but those were not young girls on the screen. They were mature women.”

  I had seen that much. It was good to know. If one day I woke up without any morals, and the name of a good plastic surgeon, I too could get a job cavorting in cyberspace.

  “I’ll talk to Harlan,” I said. “You can count on that. And if he doesn’t corroborate your story, not only will I tell the school board, but I’ll have a chat with Odelphia Pringle as well.”

  Herman smiled, which all but confirmed his innocence. “If you do that, call the paramedics first.”

  “In case she has a heart attack?”

  “No, to put together what’s left of me. So, Magdalena, what’s really on your mind?”

  “The late Colonel Custard.”

  He nodded. “Heard about that. Heard too about you calling yourself Bigfoot. You think that was wise?”

  “They were asking for it,” I wailed.

  “Perhaps. But what about the effect it has on Alison? The rumors keep growing, you know. First I heard that you slept with her uncle Melvin—”

  “Not technically an uncle, and definitely not true.” He smiled patiently until I was quite done interrupting. “Now I understand there are several eligible bachelors in town who are dying to meet you.”

  I frowned. “Herman, not you?”

  If he’d recoiled any faster his head would have spun off his neck and done irreparable damage to the framed portrait of his predecessor, Delbert Dick.

  “No offense, Magdalena, but I don’t go in for the gangly type.”

  We were past due for a change of subject. “You inquired about Alison. Well, I think she’s actually proud of it. My notoriety, I mean—my status as someone worthy of being quoted. In her eyes that’s like being a celebrity. Besides, I’m not really the hairy honey of Hernia some make me out to be.”

  “It’s her self-esteem I’m worried about, Magdalena. She hasn’t been adjusting all that well.”

  “Sure she has. The child’s as happy as a lark.”

  “She’s crying out for attention. And those rings of hers aren’t the right kind of attention, I assure you.”

  “Rings?” It was one of those questions o
ne asked when one unequivocally knew the answer, like “Oh, is that your toe I stepped on?”

  “Those body piercing rings. You know she wears them, right?”

  I gulped. “Certainly. But I make her take them out whenever she does, and she never goes to school with them in.”

  “Is that so?” Herman Middledorf yanked a metal desk drawer open and retrieved a spaghetti sauce jar. He shook it and then spread the contents out beside his computer like they were jacks and a ball. For a second I half expected him to challenge me to a game.

  But alas, I recognized the pile of metal—at least some of it. These were the bits of stainless steel that seemed to pin my foster daughter together. There were even a few chains that I hadn’t seen before, but which in context made perfect sense. Connect tab A to tab B and then...

  “Magdalena, are you denying that these are Alison’s?”

  “No, although I’ve never seen that neon ball that looks like it would glow in the dark. Where do you suppose that will go—” I slapped my hand to my mouth. “I’ll try harder.”

  “See that you do. Every morning I send her straight in to see the school nurse. The next day it happens all over again. The child must have brought a trunk load of the stuff with her from Minnesota.”

  “I’m so sorry, I’ll put a stop to this. You can count on that.”

  “I’m sure I can, because if I can’t, I’m afraid I will have to expel the girl.”

  “I see,” I said through lips taut enough to slice boiled eggs.

  “And don’t think you can make me change my mind because of what you just saw on my computer. I already explained that.”

  “So you did. Perhaps you’d care to explain a little more.”

  He stared at me like Freni would gape at a head of fresh broccoli. “Huh?”

  “Why were you so vocal at the council meeting? I should think that from your point of view, growth would be good for Hernia. A larger tax base means more and better qualified teachers. I know the biology teacher will be happy—sewing up those pig fetuses for reuse every year has got to be a drag.”

  He grimaced. “I help him do it every summer. It’s really not so bad.”