by MYERS, TAMAR
Freni adores Alison and thinks of her as a granddaughter, but her Swiss-German genetics make it all but impossible for her to express physical affection. Instead of hugging the girl—and I’m sure Alison wouldn’t have enjoyed that either—Freni flapped her stout arms, which made her look like a black-and-white turkey trying in vain to achieve liftoff.
“Yah,” she said, “this family is very much changed. But now you have a baby brother.”
“So? What good is that? He can’t talk, and he don’t even listen when I talk to him. How am I s’posed to boss him around?”
“Yah, maybe now he is not so much fun. But someday he will be a very good friend to you. You must trust me, Alison; a brother—or a sister—is the best friend to have.”
“Yeah? Do you have brothers and sisters, Freni?”
“I had nine brothers and five sisters,” she said, her plump round face lit by the memories of bygone years.
“What d’ya mean ya had ’em? Ya saying that ya ain’t got ’em no more?”
“Freni’s seventy-five,” I explained gently. “She’s also the youngest child in her family.”
“Oh, I get it; all the rest of them are dead.”
“Ach, not all!” Freni turned her attention to a pot of stew that was simmering on my institutional-size stove. “I still have one brother and two sisters. Each is a blessing. You will see.”
“Ha! I don’t even think so,” Alison said before stomping from the room in a prerequisite teenage snit.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “She seemed so excited at first. You would have thought she was the mother when we first brought Little Jacob home.”
My handsome husband, who’d relinquished his chair for me, stooped to plant a kiss on my forehead. “It’s a normal reaction, hon. First she had you all to herself, and then she had to share you with me, and now there’s him. How can she compete with a helpless baby?”
“But she doesn’t need to compete!”
“Yes, but she doesn’t know that—not on an emotional level. Listen, I’ve had some cross-training in basic psychology. Why don’t I talk to her and see if I can’t get her to understand that she’s still every bit as much a part of this family as she was before?”
“Would you?” My heart swelled with love.
“Of course.”
“A good man,” Freni muttered. “Never mind what they say.”
“What?”
“Ach!”
It was too late. With Little Jacob as firmly attached as a nit, there was nothing to stop me from leaping to my feet and cornering her over the stew pot.
“What did you mean by that?”
My stout little cook didn’t even have the nerve to turn and face me. “What is this that of which you speak?”
“Freni,” I said sternly, “dissembling is lying just as much as telling an out-and-out falsehood.”
“Hon,” Gabe said, his tone pleading, “leave her alone. She can’t help what anyone else says.”
“Yah,” Freni said, sneaking a peek at me through the corner of her right eye, “this is very true, because I do not even know this Mr. Dis Embling.”
I sighed. No matter how long he lived in our community, my Sweet Baboo would always be an outsider. Hernians were graded like diamonds; not by clarity and color, but by the year in which their ancestors first set foot on our sacred soil. Not to brag, but my ancestor Jacob Hochstetler (indeed, I share him with most Amish and many Mennonites in Hernia) passed through the area in 1750 as a captive of a Delaware Indian raiding party. That unfortunate fact makes me a triple-A, gem-quality Hernian of impeccable credentials. It wasn’t until 1820 that the village was founded, but again my ancestors were represented.
The third-tier cutoff date is usually given as 1860, the fourth is 1900, and the last, which barely counts for anything, is 1946. After World War II the book on new arrivals was closed; marriage to a triple-A gem did nothing to change an immigrant’s status. As one local wag described it, “Putting a cubic zirconia and a diamond in the same ring doesn’t make the CZ a diamond.” To be sure, though, the gentlefolk of Hernia will never mention this distinction to your face, for with the exception of the occasional cold-blooded killer, they shy away from confrontation.
“Okay,” I finally said, “subject dropped. But I need to have a serious discussion with the both of you.”
“Ach!” Somehow Freni managed to squeeze out from between me and the stove. It must have been instinct that propelled her to Gabe’s side. He might not be blood, but he was the only other possible ally in the room.
My dearly beloved was on his feet, a look of genuine concern written all over his classically handsome features. “What is it, hon?”
“Sit back down, dear, because you’re not going to like what I’m about to say.”
12
But there would be no sitting for the man who had cared enough about me to finally sever his mother’s apron strings, and a full month before our son was born too. Although it had been a grizzly operation, the only victim appeared to be Ida. She now lived alone in what was formerly Gabe’s house, across from us on Hertzler Road. In the intervening weeks my husband seemed to have transferred most, if not all, of his concern onto me. Yes, it did get a little wearing to have him follow me around like a puppy all day, but a good Magdalena would just shut her mouth and count her blessings. At least I didn’t have to assume all of Ida’s former duties, such as cut his meat for him at dinner—well, not unless it was exceptionally tough.
“How did his checkup go?” he demanded. “Tell me everything the doctor said; don’t leave anything out. I knew I should have driven you. It’s only been a month; it’s far too early for you to be driving yourself. I don’t even know how you even could be sitting now.”
“Month, shmonth,” I said. “In Africa the women give birth in the fields, and then go right back to work.”
Freni shook her head. “That is too soon. We Amish women wait at least one day before we help the men to bale the hay.”
“You’re kidding,” Gabe said. “Aren’t you?”
“She is kidding,” I said. “Plus she composed a rhyming couplet. The next thing we’ll hear from her is the pitter-patter of iambic pentameter.”
“Ach,” Freni squawked. “How you talk! I am too old for such a thing to happen.”
Gabe smiled. “As for the African women thing, that sounds more like missionary lore than fact. But back to you, Magdalena; what did the doctor say? How did Little Jacob’s one-month checkup go? How are you doing?”
“Uh—you see, that’s why you should be sitting down, dear. I didn’t exactly go to the doctor, except for maybe sort of.”
Gabe stared. “What does didn’t exactly mean, exactly?”
“She did not go at all,” Freni said, crossing her stubby arms in front of her ample bosom, “because the appointment is in two days.”
“Magdalena, is that true?”
“But I was very close to the doctor’s office,” I said. “I went to the bank.”
“Bank? What for?”
“To put the screws to George Hooley; he’s a member of my church.”
“I repeat my question: What for?”
“To investigate the privates,” Freni said, in the ultimate act of betrayal.
“I am not a private investigator, merely an undeputized post-partum woman in charge of a postmortem event.”
“Mag-da-leen-a!” When Gabe does his ventriloquist bit, spitting my name out without moving his lips, it’s time to get to the point.
“Remember Minerva J. Jay, the woman who died while eating pancakes at my church?”
Gabe cocked his head. To tell the truth, he looked maddeningly handsome.
“Hmm,” he said. “Wasn’t that the day my wife gave birth on the floor of Sam Yoder’s Filthy Corner Market?”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, dear, sarcasm really does become you. But yes, that was the day, and even though the paper said that Miss Jay died of undisclosed circumstances,
they were disclosed to me, and—”
“You’re working on another murder case?”
“But the suspects are all Mennonites, so they can’t be so bad.”
“Huafa mischt,” Freni muttered.
“What?” Frankly, I couldn’t believe my ears.
“You heard her,” Gabe roared. “Horse manure! They may all be Mennonites, but one of them is a killer. Am I right?”
“Agreed. But the weapon of choice was pharmaceuticals. Just as long as I don’t ingest anything during my investigation, I shall be as fine as frogs’ hair.” By the way, I owe that colorful description to my southern friend Abigail Timberlake.
“This one is meshugah,” Freni said in a louder voice. Meshugah means crazy in Yiddish, not Amish. Unfortunately my kinswoman learned this word from my mother-in-law, who usually applies it to me.
“Et tu Brute,” I said, deeply hurt.
“Ach, such a terrible thing you say!” She blinked behind her grease-and-flour-covered spectacles. “What did you say?”
“That you’re a traitor, Freni. I thought you were my friend.”
“Yah, but this I do for your good.”
“And you, Gabriel Jerome Rosen,” I said through clenched teeth, “are being totally unfair to me. All I am doing is helping out a young man who is totally overwhelmed and, frankly, unprepared to be the sole police officer in this community.”
“But you’re the mayor; you hired him. Don’t get me wrong, Mags, I think he’s a nice young man, but every time you help him you’re putting your life on the line. And now you have more than just yourself and me to think of; you’ve got our little man here. Do you honestly want our son to grow up without a mother?”
There are times when arguing with the Babester is like trying to stop global warming by scattering a tray of ice cubes on the lawn. “I’m already committed to this case,” I said. “But just as soon as I’ve—we’ve—arrested a suspect, I’m turning in my nonexistent badge and hanging up my metaphorical spurs.”
“What does this mean?” Freni demanded.
“It means she’s feeling guilty,” the Babester said. “This is her last case.”
Freni nodded, an action that caused her entire body to shake. “Yah, we shall see.”
“So what will you do about the baby?” Gabe said. “Express your milk?”
I’d heard somewhere that breast pumps were not entirely comfortable, that they were not unlike the electric milk pumps Mose uses on my two dairy cows, Matilda Two and Prairie Queen. Perhaps they didn’t hurt at all. I didn’t care, because I wasn’t about to find out. The times I’d spent with Little Jacob at my breast had been the most fulfilling hours of my life, bar none.
“I’m taking him with me,” I said.
“The Hades you are,” Gabe said. Of course he didn’t use the Greek word.
“I know that you’re his father and that you’re concerned,” I said, “but I’m the one who carried him for almost nine months inside me and then had to expel him through my pelvic region without an epidural. For now, my vote trumps yours.”
“Yah,” Freni said, and nodded even more vigorously than before.
Yes, it was unfair of me to play the birth card—on second thought, no, it wasn’t. Like I’d said, I wasn’t taking him to a play date with Eliot Ness; I was merely going to question upstanding members of my church. Believe me, I would never, ever intentionally use my son for nefarious purposes, but as long as he was along for the ride, would it be so bad if the oochy-goochy-goo factor kept the pharmaceutical killer a little off guard? I think not. (Please bear in mind that I’m the head deaconess in my church; ergo, my opinions should count for something.)
My first victim was James Neufenbakker. I’ve known Jimmy since I was a mere lass in pigtails and flour-sack dresses, except that back then he was known to me as Mr. Neufenbakker, the little kids’ Sunday school teacher. During the week Jimmy worked as a coal miner, a grueling job that he held for forty years, but somehow he still managed to outlive two wives. Jimmy has been retired for the past ten years or so, and although he no longer teaches Sunday school, he’s very active in the brotherhood. Oh, and for what it’s worth, I currently teach the adult Sunday school class that Jimmy attends.
One can be kind to a fault when describing someone, or one can choose to be honest. That said, to put it kindly, Jimmy Neufenbakker looked very much like the male sea lion I once saw at the Pittsburgh Zoo. His small bald head featured watery brown eyes, and his upper lip sprouted bristles that were too sparse to be called a mustache. He appeared to lack shoulders (although he did have functioning arms), and his body expanded exponentially to an enormous rear end—even by Mennonite standards. Alas, I cannot claim that he had flippers instead of legs, but he did walk with a shuffle, and his feet were exceptionally wide.
Because of the mass he had to move, and his peculiar gait, it took Jimmy a good two minutes to answer his doorbell. Meanwhile, I waited patiently, tapping my foot whilst singing children’s hymns to keep Little Jacob quiet in his car seat.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, suddenly opening the door. “I thought it was that pair of feral cats that’s been hanging out under my front porch lately. They screech and holler just like that before they get down to mating, and then they start right back up again. I’ve tried everything in the book to get rid of them: hosing them down, borrowing a neighbor’s dog overnight—I even bought a bottle of wolf urine off the Internet. Seeing as how you know just about everything—or think you do—what would you suggest?”
“But I don’t know everything: there are two mountain dialects of Laotian that I’m struggling with, and the concept of string theory is still a little frayed in my thinking.”
“Humph. But you’re still a smarty-pants, Magdalena.” He slipped a pair of spectacles out of the breast pocket of a dingy white shirt and perched them on an almost nonexistent nose. “What’s that you’ve got balanced on your hip? A basket of some kind?”
“It’s a car seat, and inside is the cutest baby ever born in Hernia.”
“Ha! That’s a mighty provocative statement. I was born in Hernia, you know.”
“I know, Jimmy, and I was thinking about that on my drive over here. You see, it’s a scientific fact that babies have been getting progressively cuter over the years—some sort of biological necessity predicated on the Cold War and then it’s subsidence—but of course in nature there are always exceptions. So I got to thinking about you, and how handsome you are. That’s how I came to the conclusion that you must have been an exceptionally cute baby—no, undoubtedly the cutest of your generation, that so-called, misnamed, Greatest Generation. If only Tom Brokaw had been ten years younger, he might have seen that it was the leading edge of the baby boomers who marched for civil rights and fought to end racism and sexism in the workplace—but I digress. My point is that you have been officially dubbed by moi, mayor of Greater Hernia, as our second cutest baby.”
“Magdalena, you’re full of baloney, just like you’ve always been. But as long as you’re going to flap your gums, you may as well come on in. No use exposing that baby to the elements and who knows what all those wild cats carry.”
At the second mention of uninoculated cats, I couldn’t get Little Jacob indoors fast enough. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to shuffle in behind him. Once inside, I remembered with a sinking heart something I’d heard another brotherhood member say: “I’d rather hold our meetings out at the dump than in Jimmy Neufenbakker’s house.”
There are folks whose houses are merely messy, and folks with relatively neat houses where dust bunnies multiply at the same rate as their mammalian namesakes. Then, of course, some houses combine both forms of slovenliness, whilst others add food and grime to the mix. Poor Jimmy’s house, bless his heart, had both the smell and look of an exploded garbage truck—not that I’ve had a whole lot of experience with those, mind you.
“Have a seat,” he said as he gestured to a caved-in easy chair.
The crater was a
lmost filled with a mix of pulverized crumbs and lint, so, theoretically at least, one could almost sit on it. The only other option was a sagging sofa, but it was piled high with dirty clothes, empty milk containers, and newspapers, all topped by a three-foot-long stuffed toy lion with one eye missing. There was certainly no place I would be willing to set the car seat down, not even at gun point.
“Silly me,” I said, my desperation mounting by the second, “I forgot to lock my car.”
“It would be silly if you did; no one locks their car in Hernia.”
“Yes, but times are changing. I mean, if we can have murders in Hernia, can car theft be far behind?”
“So that’s why you’re here! I should have surmised as much. You have me pegged as a suspect in the Minerva J. Jay murder. Well, let me tell you something, girlie. I don’t much care for one of my former students—and may I add, a very hardheaded, obstreperous student—accusing me of breaking one of the most important of the big ten. So take that little runt of yours and get out of my house. I don’t have to answer even one of your questions, seeing as how you’re not even a real policewoman, but a busybody. That’s what you are: a busybody.”
I was too shocked to say anything for a good minute and a half, much less move one of my comely, but admittedly oversize feet. Little Jacob was certainly not a runt! Virtually everyone who saw him—murder suspects excluded—invariably commented on what a healthy-looking baby he was. As the shock wore off, I had the almost overpowering urge to respond to that verbal attack on my progeny, yet at the same time the rational side of me began to mobilize with what might be a more useful rejoinder.
“How very interesting,” I said as I edged backward toward the door, “but I never said that Minerva was murdered.”
Jimmy shuffled toward me at the same rate. “Oh, come on. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Yes, at first I thought you might have come to see how I was getting along. As you well know, I do a lot for the church, Magdalena, and a logical person might think that in turn the church would care about me. Someone might even ask if I need a ride into Pittsburgh to see my cardiologist, now that turnpike driving is getting to be somewhat scary for me.”
