by MYERS, TAMAR
“It looks like she’s glad to see us,” Agnes declared happily.
“Can you hear what she’s saying?”
Agnes cocked her head. “She’s saying ‘It will blow.’ ”
“Does a bulldozer have a whistle, Magdalena? I would have thought it had a horn.”
It took a few seconds for my thoughts to catch up with my cranium. “Oh, my stars,” I croaked. “She means the engine is going to explode; it must be leaking fuel.”
“In that case, Frankie should climb out of that hole.”
For a fraction of a millisecond I wanted to push Agnes into the hole for stating something so obvious. Instead, I took a deep breath and shouted down to Frankie.
“How can we help?”
“Don’t be a dolt, Magdalena; I need a rope.”
I gazed at the walls of the sinkhole. They were almost as smooth as the Babester’s chest that time he waxed it as a joke and got a terrible rash for the effort. There was one narrow ledge, a calcified swirl of limestone that began almost directly below us and followed the curve of the wall, widening as it descended, until it melded with the floor. An ancient whirlpool (not more than five thousand years old, of course) had carved this sinkhole and left an impression that looked for all the world like a giant scoop of soft-serve ice cream. Well, then again, we nursing mothers can never get too much to eat.
“Frankie,” I bellowed, “can you climb up on that shelf?”
“It’s too narrow! I keep falling off.”
“You need something to steady yourself with.”
“I need a ding-dang rope!”
“With language that blue, dear, you’ll not being having a white Christmas next year.”
“Magdalena, you’re the biggest boob to ever walk the earth. If you don’t shut up and get me out of here, we’re all going to blow.”
“Okay, but there’s no need to get nasty. Where can I find some rope? In your truck?”
“Like I said, you’re an idiot,” she screamed. “It’s going to blow any second. I need some rope now!”
“Let’s take off our clothes,” Agnes said calmly, “and tie them together in a knot chain. I saw that once in a movie.”
“Did it work?” I said.
“Yes, until one of the sleeves ripped, and the hero plunged to his death.”
“This is impossible, then. We’ll just have to wait until help comes.” I do have one foot in the twenty-first century; maybe one hand as well. I was wearing my cell phone in a flowered pouch dangling from my dress belt, and as I spoke I got it out and speed-dialed 911, even though I knew it was hopeless.
“I already tried that,” Agnes said. “You were right; there’s no service out here. This place is like the Twilight Zone.”
Meanwhile, Frankie’s cries for help were getting louder and more desperate. Something had to be done, even if it was drastic and full of risks.
“Oh, Lord,” I prayed aloud, “give me clarity of vision and the wisdom of Solomon.” I paused to tuck a wayward strand of hair back behind a clip. “If a clothes rope is the way to go—” The annoying strand slipped right out, forcing me to pause again.
“If you don’t quit fussing with your hair,” Agnes said, “any answer to your prayer will be a moot point.”
Hair! That was it! Does not the Lord work in mysterious ways?
“Agnes,” I cried, “how strong is human hair?”
“That depends on the human. There are many types, you know; straight, curly, fine, thick, black, blond—”
This was no time to update the encyclopedia. I raced back to Wanda. The restaurateur was lying in a heap, her face buried in her arms, and panting like a woman in the advanced stages of labor. Clearly she needed a project to take her mind off herself.
“Wanda, how long is your hair?”
“What?” she gasped.
“Your hair, dear. This is a matter of life and death. If you undid that beautiful mound, how long would your hair extend?”
She looked at me, color creeping back into her cheeks as her suspicions rose. “It’s twelve feet, three inches,” she hissed. “What about it?”
Agnes caught up with me. “How do you feel about saving somebody’s life?”
As Wanda’s head swiveled, her enormous bun teetered precariously. “Whose life? How?”
“Frankie Swartzentruber is down that sinkhole,” I said. “The only way for her to get out is to climb up a very narrow ledge with nothing to hold on to. We—she needs you to let down your long hair so that she can keep her balance.”
“Like Rapunzel,” Agnes said.
“What?” Wanda snapped. “You want her to climb up my hair?”
“Absolutely not, dear,” I said soothingly. “She merely needs to steady herself.”
“In a pig’s eye!”
“Wanda, please,” Agnes pled. “Surely you don’t want her to die.”
“What about Magdalena’s hair? How long is it?”
“Eighteen inches, tops,” I said quickly. “I cut it when I was pregnant.”
“Well, too bad, then, because I’m not going to have someone yanking on my hair. And FYI, I don’t even like Frankie Schwartzentruber.”
I opened my mouth to give Wanda a piece of my mind, but a sequence of misfired synapses contributed to an “aha moment” that got me sidetracked on a more productive tangent. It occurred to me that there is only one thing that can change a Hemphopple mind, once it’s been made up, and that is flattery.
“Wanda, dear,” I said, “how would you like to become a famous hero?”
“Cut the crap, Yoder. I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Yes, save a life. And do you know how many people are saved each year by a beautiful woman who lets her hair down into a limestone washout?”
“None, I bet. So what? I’m still not doing it.”
“Not even to be on the Today show? Take it from me, dear, Matt Lauer is one long, tall drink of water.”
“You don’t even watch TV, Magdalena.”
“He stayed at the inn once.” It was only a small lie; I’m sure that he had once stayed at some inn, somewhere in the world. “As for Meredith Vieira; she’s not my brand of tea, but if she was, I’d drink a full pot, and then some.”
“Do you really think they’d have me on?”
Agnes threw herself into the game. “If not them, then Good Morning America. I bet they’d put you on the evening entertainment shows too. And of course you’d be all over the national news and in every newspaper.”
“How would you feel about People magazine doing a spread?” I said. “I’m sure you could convince them to do several shots showing the Sausage Barn. But oh, my stars, then you’d be rich, and not everyone is cut out to be wealthy; not everyone can handle things the way I can.”
Wanda’s eyes blazed. “You think you’re special, don’t you?”
“Well, you have to admit; I haven’t let my staggeringly large fortune change my standard of living a great deal. Sure, I drove that sinfully red BMW, but that was for a very short time. With the exception of Big Bertha, my whirlpool bath with more heads than Medusa’s snake, I really haven’t splurged at all. I still live in the same old farmhouse—well, a facsimile thereof—dress the same, and eat the same food. One might say that I live the lifestyle of ‘old money,’ rather than that of the nouveaux riches. It’s quite an art, you know.’ ”
“And you think I can’t do that?” Wanda was on her feet and had begun tearing out her hairpins. “Magdalena, I can out-rich you any day of the week.”
“Show that stuck-up Goody Two-Shoes,” Agnes hissed. She was, perhaps, getting too good at this game.
Wanda had no patience for us now. They say that love conquers all, but I do believe that greed and its lesser brother, envy, are both more powerful. Wanda and I have competed since we were both in pigtails, and now that we wore buns, she was determined to prove that hers was made of steel. Despite her fear of gaping apertures, my nemesis ran for the sinkhole, and we practically had to
tackle her to keep her from going over the edge.
Once at the edge of the abyss, rather than giving us a hard time, she merely closed her eyes and instructed us to each grab a foot and to hold on tight. That said, she unloosed the final pins, and hair that had not been freed from its mooring in three, maybe four, decades cascaded like a waterfall into the chasm below. Unfortunately—and I had expected this—Wanda’s inverted crown of glory did not quite reach the grasping hands of Frankie Schwartzentruber.
“We’ll have to lower you by your ankles,” I shouted over the roar of the engine.
“What if we drop her?” Agnes said. In all fairness, she had to speak loudly to be heard over the roar of the engine and Frankie’s scream.
“I heard that,” Wanda shouted.
“We won’t drop you,” I shouted back. “Because then how would Frankie get out?”
“Ha-ha, very funny. That woman’s a murderess. And just so you know, I wear panties with the days of the week embroidered on them; my mother-in-law made them for me last year for Christmas. I even wear them on the correct days, except that for some strange reason she forgot to include a pair for Thursday. So that’s when I go au naturel.”
“That’s nice, dear,” I bellowed impatiently. I wasn’t about to get my brains blown out over a prolonged discussion on cute lingerie. “You ready? Because here we go!”
Working smoothly in unison, Agnes and I each grabbed an ankle and propelled Wanda forward. She shrieked like a teenager in a bathtub full of spiders, and like spiders, her hands clung to the walls as we lowered her slowly downward. We jockeyed her forward until we were lying on our stomachs, and Wanda was dangling parallel to the wall, her skirts fallen about her head and shoulders (alas, I had quite forgotten that today was Thursday).
“Can she reach it now?” I could barely hear myself above an engine gone berserk.
There was no immediate answer, but in a few seconds she jerked like a bass on the line; contact had been made.
33
Somehow we managed to get Frankie safely out of the sinkhole, although by that time all four of us were as skinned and bruised as processed chickens. The woman had the nerve to try and make a run for it, but given her age and general state of health, it was easy to apprehend her. When we got to the car, I parked her in the backseat between Wanda and Agnes, since the two of them were every bit as good as handcuffs.
I was just turning around when the earth beneath the car shook, and black and orange clouds billowed out of the ground to the east. Had I not already known the cause of the conflagration, I might well have assumed that the Battle of Armageddon had begun.
“It blew,” Agnes said, stating the obvious.
I executed some fancy steering, whilst pressing the pedal to the metal. “Hang on, ladies. Many of those sinkholes are interconnected by underground streambeds. And some of those caves lead to dead ends where natural gas gets trapped. This whole place could blow up.”
“You witch,” Wanda said. I could only hope that she was speaking to Frankie, not me. “How could you have killed a good-looking young man like that?”
“His looks were not important,” Frankie said.
I switched on the recorder I keep in the console of my car. I am, after all, a mere gatherer of information. Unable—unwilling—to carry a firearm, I carry a big mouth, along with the technology to record what others say in response to it. In this case, I was quite happy to yield the floor to Hernia’s very own Rapunzel.
“I demand an answer,” Wanda said.
“If you must know,” Frankie said, spitting out her words like they were fish bones, “he was blackmailing poor Jimmy.”
“Elias was blackmailing James Neufenbakker?”
“Ha, and you probably thought he was some holier-than-though charismatic youth leader.”
“ ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ ” I said. “Romans 3:23. That would include you, my dear.”
“Strictly speaking,” Agnes said, “blackmailing is foremost a legal problem, seeing as how it does not appear on the list of the big ten. Therefore, Wanda, you are the bigger sinner.”
“Shut up, Agnes,” Frankie said.
“Why, I never,” Agnes whimpered.
“There was no need to be so rude,” I snapped.
“Save your breath,” Wanda said. “This woman ran over a kid with a steamroller. “Do you think she cares about manners?”
Rather than save my breath, I took a deep one. “I know that you and James were close,” I said. “Were you lovers?”
All three of my passengers gasped. “Y-you evil-minded sex maniac,” Frankie said, barely able speak, so great was her indignation. “We were special friends. No more.”
“I saw a photo of you two looking quite cozy; it was in Minerva’s photo album.”
“And your mind went directly to the gutter? To join Minerva’s? We were friends—that’s all. A lonely widow and a lonely widower. Soul mates only, but we did not join in the flesh.”
“Whew, that’s a relief. I’ve been wanting to poke my mind’s eyes out for days.”
“Now who’s being rude?”
“I’m sorry; I’m only human—despite rumors to the contrary.”
“Can we get back to the interrogation?” Wanda said. “I left half my scalp back there in that sinkhole, and it better not all be for nothing.”
“Right. So, dear, what was the holier-than-though, richer-than-sin, cuter-than-the-dickens chick magnet blackmailing Jimmy about?”
“It wasn’t Jimmy’s fault!” Frankie began to thrash about until Agnes half sat on her. “It was an accident! Do you hear me?”
“Of course, dear. The dead in Somerset County can hear you. But they, like me, are going to require details.”
“He was leaning over the mixing bowl, see, and his pill case plopped in the batter. It could have happened to anyone.”
“Was it open?”
“That too could have happened to anyone. Haven’t you ever not quite closed something all the way?”
“Yes, of course. But why didn’t James just fess up and throw the batter out?”
“Because we were running out of pancake mix, you idiot! Plus he thought that it wouldn’t be that concentrated. And anyway, it’s all your fault; you’re the one who bought the supplies.”
I prayed for the strength to stay focused. “What was in that pill case?”
“Does it matter now? Just so you know, Jimmy did his best to pick all the pills out, but he can’t see so well anymore, and that’s not his fault either.”
“I suppose it’s mine?”
“Elias saw it happen, but he didn’t do a thing! He could have helped Jimmy find the pills.”
“And because Minerva was such a glutton,” I said, “she ate a whole griddle’s worth of hotcakes in one sitting, thus sparing everyone else.”
Agnes finally found the nerve to speak. “How much was Elias asking for?”
Frankie snorted. “A million dollars! Ha. Where was someone like Jimmy going to find that kind of money?”
“But Elias was rich,” I said.
Frankie snorted again. “Are you rich, Magdalena?”
“Why, yes, I am—not that it’s your business, dear.”
“Well, goody for you. But apparently not everyone who appears to be rich actually is. Sure, Elias owned a fancy mountain-top house, but BUM was about to go out of business.”
“The Chinese?”
“The Indians—from India. An enterprising young man in New Delhi has started a company called Sacred Cow Udder Massage. It’s supposed to be a superior product, plus it’s much cheaper. American farmers are switching in droves from BUM to SCUM. Believe me, Elias was desperately in need of cash.”
“And so,” Agnes said, “a bad decision that turns out fatal is covered up by murder. Of course, sin can’t stay covered up. Doesn’t the Bible say that, Magdalena?”
“Be sure your sin will find you out,” I said. “Numbers 32:23b.”
“S
hut up, but both of yinz,” Frankie said.
I alerted Sheriff Hughes the second I was within calling range, and we were met by a fleet of squad cars and a flotilla of ambulances before we even got to Hernia. Just how fast the sheriff and his crew drive, I don’t even want to know, for fear that I may have to perform a citizen’s arrest on one of them sometime soon.
Flannery Hughes is one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet, and just because his mama smoked a lot of marijuana while she was pregnant is no reason to suppose that he’s not intelligent; he gets his lack of brains from his papa’s side of the family, and I mean that charitably. His father sold the family farm and sunk the proceeds into a mail-order business selling pocket-size bags of sand at a dollar each. These were marketed as food for pet rocks, back during that craze. Papa Hughes actually managed to sell twenty-nine of these little bags—all to people from Marin County, California. When it became sadly apparent that his business was a bust, he spent the rest of his life writing unsigned reviews for Publishers Weekly.
At any rate, the sheriff insisted on riding in the ambulance with me to Bedford Memorial Hospital, which meant that the Babester had to follow by car. There was no time to find a sitter, so Baby Babester rode with him.
“Sheriff,” I said, “I had an epiphany this morning, before I got the call from Agnes Mishler telling me that Wanda Hemphopple was over at her house.”
“Miss Yoder is delusional,” Sheriff Hughes said to the ambulance attendant over the back of his hand. “Epiphany was in January.”
“So it was, dear. At any rate, I have reason to believe that Melvin Stoltzfus, Hernia’s most notorious criminal—given that he was once our chief of police—is now posing as a nun, traveling cross-country with a newfound sect called the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy.”
The ambulance attendant chuckled politely, but the sheriff laughed outright. “Miss Yoder, now, that really takes the cake! Even those silly mystery novels my papa used to review wouldn’t have plots as far-fetched as that.”
“Life is stranger than fiction, dear. But when you think about it, that’s a perfect way for him to leave the area without being detected.”
