by Tamar Myers
I teetered to my feet. Incidentally, folks who are envious of tall persons would do well to watch nature films of baby giraffes attempting to stand.
‘But we’re still best friends,’ I cried. ‘We’re bosom buddies without the bosom part, because that would be a sin. Besides, I’m a carpenter’s dream: I’m flat as a board.’
‘Just shut up, Magdalena. There are times when I find your inane prattle amusing, but not now. I can’t believe that you would think, even for a second, that I would be capable of killing someone. I just need enough money to survive, that’s all. I’m not some money-grubbing woman who enjoys fleecing the pretentious elite just because they’re too stupid to realize that they’re being conned.’
‘You’re ninety percent right,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘Everything that you just said was true, except for one thing.’
‘What was that?’ Agnes snapped.
‘I’m not telling you!’ I shouted. Then like an oversized toddler I stomped from the house.
‘Magdalena, come back now,’ Agnes called.
I didn’t as much as turn my head.
‘I order you to come back!’ she screamed. ‘I want to know what that one thing is. Come back!’
TWENTY-SEVEN
I kept walking to my car. After I got in, I roared away in a spray of gravel, although I’m quite sure that none of it hit Agnes, because in my rear-view mirror I could see that she had already gone inside. Most probably she’d even slammed the door behind her.
Before I got to the end of Agnes’s long drive, I knew that I would be returning to throw myself at her feet to beg her forgiveness. I couldn’t blame her for being furious with me. But I wasn’t ready to grovel just yet. The truth hurts, and at the moment I felt like I’d been attacked by a nest of hornets. Hornets of my own making, to be sure, but that didn’t mean that their stingers were any less painful. It’s been said that time ‘heals all wounds’. Or was it ‘kills all wounds’? Either way, we were both wounded animals who both needed a little time to lick our wounds before reconnecting.
Obviously, I needed to talk to someone about what had just happened, but I needed it to be someone who was both a friend, and who would be impartial. That ruled out Sam. Agnes and Sam had always been cordial in my presence – post-puberty, that is – but only out of their mutual love for me. What I didn’t want at the moment was for Sam to see my fight with Agnes as an excuse to start badmouthing her.
It occurred to me that the friend who was most likely to remain neutral on the subject of Agnes would be Police Chief Toy Graham. The police station is located in the heart of beautiful downtown Hernia, across the street from Yoder’s Corner Market. In recent years, due to our village’s notoriety as a community chock-a-block with corpses (thanks to my inn), the downtown has exploded in growth. Besides the first Mennonite Church and the First Baptist Church on opposite corners of Main Street, between the police station and Miller’s Feed Store, one can find two antique stores. The first one (going west) is called Amish Quilts and Treasures and is owned and staffed by Miss Belinda Thornapple. In the same building is Pennsylvania Dutch Antiques owned and operated by Miss Virginia Thornapple, who is Belinda’s identical twin sister. The women are in their mid-sixties and it is said that they have not spoken to each other since they were in their twenties. There is a red line painted down the centre of their building, and which extends all the way to the curb.
The south side of Main Street gives off a friendlier vibe. Two related, but non-competing businesses set up shop recently. Across from the antique shops we now have Timothy’s Auto Repair, and right next door to it is Stucky Brothers’ Blacksmith Shed. On any given day, folks getting their cars tuned up can wander next door and watch a horse getting shod by one of their distant cousins who still keeps the faith of his forefathers, and who preserves the old-time traditions.
But back to Toy, our disconcertingly handsome, young, Chief of Police. I’d called him soon after exiting Agnes’s long driveway and accessing Hertzler Road, and I was relieved to find him at his desk. I was even more relieved when I learned that Sherry Baumgartner, his gal Friday, was off that day. I’m ashamed to admit that Sherry had gotten under my skin like a bad vaccine. It had little to do with the fact that she was a Lutheran, and much to do with the fact that she was named after an alcoholic drink. Plus, she laughed like an asthmatic hyena – not that I’ve ever heard one, mind you.
‘Hey there,’ Toy said brightly, when I knocked on the doorjamb. ‘Come in and have a seat. What’s up?’
Because Toy asked, I gave him an earful. However, because I am my own harshest critic, I tried to present both sides of everyone who’d had dealings with me ever since I’d received that first phone call from the now deceased Sarah Conway at A Woman’s Place. I even tried to find excuses for Ida’s hostility. Granted, I can be an emotional woman, but I try to be fair at all times, even when faced with obnoxious and unreasonable people.
Toy listened attentively, his masculine chin resting on his folded hands. If only I was a quarter of a century younger, and not married, I thought – then: ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ I said aloud.
‘Excuse me,’ Toy said.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ I said.
‘Yes, you did. Something about you and Satan’s behind.’
‘Oh, you mean that?’ I said.
‘Yes, that,’ Toy said. His cornflower blue eyes were twinkling like the tanzanite earrings a guest once wore.
‘Well, if I told you what “that” was about, then I’d have to kill you, and since I’m not a killer, that’s a nonstarter.’
Toy smiled and stretched. ‘OK, Magdalena, you came in to unload, and for a little feedback. Am I right?’
‘Right as rain.’
‘Then hang on, because the ride is going to be a little bumpy for you at first,’ Toy said.
‘I can hardly wait,’ I mumbled.
‘You were dead wrong to confront Agnes the way you did. Or even at all. Yes, until Miss Conway’s killer is caught, theoretically anyone could be guilty of her murder. But Agnes? Come on, Magdalena, what were you thinking?’
I hung my head in shame. ‘I wasn’t. Thinking that is. Now I’ve probably ruined fifty-one years of friendship, and over what? My ego? And all because I wanted my best friend to finally express even a little bit of envy over something in my life.’
Toy smacked the top of his desk with palms of both hands. ‘Gee golly whiz, Magdalena! I can’t believe you. So that’s what it was about, huh? You risked alienating your best friend just so you could see if she was jealous of your success? What are you? Stuck back in high school?’
‘Sixth grade,’ I said. ‘I’m not trying to be funny. Because I was five feet, eight inches tall when I was eleven, I had to do everything else perfectly if I wanted to get any respect. Or so I thought. Anyway, I sort of went overboard on that. By the way, I was five feet, ten inches in the ninth grade, but rumours that I topped out at six feet are patently untrue.’
Toy’s blue eyes lost their sparkle. He shocked me then as he leaned back in his high-end office chair and propped his feet up on the hideously expensive desk which I had paid for out of my own pocket.
‘This may come as a surprise, Magdalena, but you’re not the only one to have had a difficult childhood. Some of us never even made it to five feet, eight inches. Ever. Toy is not my given name, if you’ll recall. It’s Terrence. However, when I went away to prep school, I was bullied for being named Terrence. It so happened that nicknames, like Toy, were considered cool. That’s why I stuck with it. Since we’re not going to get anywhere debating who’s had it worse, the world’s shortest giantess, or the world’s tallest male toy, then I suggest we move on to topic number two.’
I gasped in indignation. ‘Giantess?’
‘Shortest giantess,’ Toy said. This time he at least winked.
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I could see you as a Ken Doll. But not a GI-Joe figurine. Since we’re a pacifist family that would have t
o be a GI-No.’
Toy nodded. ‘Item two is the reason you caught me in my office. Sheriff Stodgewiggle just called to say that he was faxing me the toxicology report on Sarah Conway.’ Then he slowly shook his head.
‘Don’t leave me in suspenders!’ I cried. ‘What does it say?’
Toy smiled ruefully. ‘Suspenders? Our Magdalena, Hernia’s unique gift to mankind. Forever cracking jokes, even at the most solemn moments.’
‘Solemn my butterscotch! This isn’t Sarah Conway’s funeral, Terrence, but it just might be a clue to helping me clear my name. I think you’d be a mite more understanding if you had to wear an orange jumpsuit for the rest of your life and perform your bodily functions in front of a cellmate named Bertha.’
‘Terrence, huh? I certainly didn’t expect that from you, Magdalena. Until now, you’ve been my best friend in Hernia, in Pennsylvania, in all of the north, as a matter of fact.’
Take it from me, the bottom is as low as one can get. Unless Little Jacob, my bouncing ball of joy, the fruit of my once barren womb, refused my embraces, I couldn’t fall any lower. My first impulse was to blame Toy for the depth of my despondency, because I hadn’t said anything inappropriate, and his sarcasm when calling me a ‘unique gift to mankind’ had been extremely hurtful.
I sat across Toy’s desk from him, trying in vain to blink the tears back into my faded blue eyes. Nobody, except Little Jacob, gets to see Magdalena Portulacca cry. The first time that child comments on this very rare sight will be the last time he gets to witness it – unless we cry at the same time, and I can tell him that those are his tears, not mine. As for Toy, the good Southern boy, he was aghast at what he’d done. To bring a woman as old as your mama to tears in the South is tantamount to spitting on the graves of your ancestors and swearing allegiance to General Sherman, post-mortem.
Whether it was real, or I’d just imagined it, I couldn’t stand to see the agony on the poor boy’s face for very long. Therefore, it was me who capitulated.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for hurting you, and I’m sorry for being so flippant.’
‘No, no,’ Toy said. ‘It’s me who should be sorry; I was harder on you than you were on me. It’s just that you’re in a real pickle here, Magdalena, and it worries me.’
‘What kind of pickle? Kosher dill, or sweet gherkin? Oops, hush my mouth.’ I slapped my pie-hole, and none too gently, either.
Toy managed a grin. ‘It’s all right. You wouldn’t be Magdalena without your flip lips. Like I said, I’m just tense right now.’ He reached behind him, plucked a sheet of paper from the fax machine and handed it to me.
I scanned the report, and then reread it slowly. ‘Aconite?’ I said after my third pass. ‘From monkshood?’
‘That’s the problem,’ Toy said. ‘Monkshood grows wild everywhere in this part of the country. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some growing on your property. Or a dozen other places you could just as easily have gotten your hands on the stuff.’
‘But then so could anyone else,’ I said. ‘Besides, I don’t even know what the plant looks like. I have no idea which parts of the plant are poisonous. I don’t know anything about it!’
Toy rubbed his jaw. ‘Those are all good points. Unfortunately, the internet will be your enemy in this case. The prosecution can claim you researched poisonous plants and got the info from a website.’ He turned to his computer and typed in a few words. ‘It says here that the leaves, which are poisonous, have been used on salads to commit murder. The roots are even deadlier. They can be dried into a powder resembling powdered sugar. Then they can be put into medicine capsules, baked into cakes and pies, or just sprinkled on top of desserts.’
‘Barbara!’
‘Oh, come on, Magdalena, not you too. Don’t tell me you’re another of the Barbara Hostetler bashers.’
‘What? No! I’m actually getting to be quite fond of her. The more gossip I hear against her, the more I like her. It’s lonely being the only black sheep.
‘My concern with Barbara is that when folks find out that monkshood can be so easily used in making desserts, then that will not only confirm their suspicions, but now she’ll be arrested without further ado. Sheriff Stodgewiggle is a mite impulsive, as we both know. After all, you said that monkshood grows just about everywhere in the wild around here, and the Hostetler farm has a lot more acreage than my place.’
Toy shook his head. ‘Man oh man, I can’t figure you out. One minute you’re worried about having to wear orange and using the crapper in public – pardon my crassness – and the next minute, you worry about the possibility of having someone else taking the fall. How many personalities reside in that beautiful head of yours, Magdalena?’
‘What?’ Had I just experienced a so-called mini-stroke? Had I hallucinated the ‘b’ word?
‘Nothing,’ Toy. ‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘But you did,’ I wanted to say. I almost said it. After all I was tired, and frightened, and lonely, and had less self-esteem than a piece of old roadkill. I wanted to be desired, to be flirted with, even if it was someone outside the bonds of marriage. But just flirtation, mind you. Why at that point, if the needle on my emotional compass went any lower, I might even appreciate the attentions of my potential cellmate Bertha.
As I sat there, in front of Toy’s desk, pondering the depths of my moral depravity, the door to the police station burst open, and in flew my worst enemy.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘You!’ she said, pointing a stubby finger so close to my right eye, it grazed my lashes. ‘Vere veer you vhen your murder-in-law eez looking everyvere?’
‘Somevere else?’ I said.
Meanwhile, Toy had leaped to his feet and pulled up a third chair, which he placed a satisfactory distance from me. Ida, who’d used up a fair amount of energy on her grand entrance, plopped into the arms of the proffered chair, where she panted like a sheep dog on a hot summer’s day. Clearly, it had been a mistake to line the burlap robes of her order with synthetic fabric that didn’t breathe.
‘Now this is an interesting development,’ Toy said, as he regained his seat behind his desk. ‘Is your murder-in-law one of your murder suspects?’
I stole a glance at the woman in question, who was still breathing so hard that she couldn’t possibly hear our conversation.
‘Well, I wouldn’t put it past her. Nothing would make her happier than to have me permanently out of her son’s life.’
Toy frowned. ‘There’s something about that old woman that reminds me of my grandma. And Ida Rosen – a.k.a. Mother Malaise – she’s definitely eccentric, but a cold-blooded killer?’
Ida stopped panting. ‘Old voman? Who you call old voman?’
‘I love my grandma,’ Toy said.
‘Good,’ Ida said. She’d no doubt been placated by his twinkling tanzanite eyes and was beginning to lose her accent. If I wanted to take advantage of her lapse into Standard English, I needed to hustle.
‘Ida, dear,’ I said, ‘why have you been looking for me?’
‘It’s about that magazine,’ she said. ‘A Woman’s Place.’
‘I know that magazine,’ Toy said. ‘My grandmother used to read that. She was really upset when they stopped publishing it.’
‘No, they didn’t,’ I said. ‘Sarah Conway worked for A Woman’s Place. She and the editor, Gordon Gaiters, were here to do a feature on Asian Sensations. That’s why they were staying at my inn.’
‘Yah, und no,’ Ida said.
‘What?’ Toy and I said in unison.
Ida plucked imaginary strands of hair from the edges of her hood in what I took to be a triumphant gesture. She finally had a rapt audience besides her postulants and her adoring son.
‘Yah to vhat dis vomen says about dem staying at my son’s inn. But no to da magazine making feature story on dis one. Da magazine go kaput now for ten years, mebbe more.’
‘It’s my inn,’ I said, ‘not Gabe’s. I built it from scratch twenty years
ago with the money my parents left me after they were squished to death in the Allegheny Tunnel!’
‘Mebbe,’ Ida said. ‘Or mebbe eets fake news.’
‘There’s no “mebbe” about it,’ I said furiously. ‘It’s a fact!’
‘Ladies, please,’ Toy said. ‘Now is not the time to argue about something that happened so long ago.’
I could hardly believe my ears. I wasn’t ‘arguing’, I was ‘declaring’ a fact: one verifiable by obituaries, wills, and operating licenses. Anyone with an ounce of sense could see that Toy’s foolish comment had the power of giving Ida’s idiotic claim validity of a sort. A wise, mature woman would have just dropped the mature and moved on, whereas a woman with a need to set the record straight, and perhaps even up the ante, might have struck back.
‘Check the county records,’ I said. ‘It’s all there. And by the way, maybe Gabe isn’t your son after all. I haven’t seen his birth certificate. When we got married, he wouldn’t show it to me, only to the marriage registrar. Why was that, do you think? Maybe he’s the one who was born in Kenya. Gabriel Hussein Obama, maybe that’s his real name.’
Ida turned the colour of beet borscht and began sputtering like an overfilled kettle on a hot stove. Toy, on the other hand, turned away from her in order to hide the battle that his facial muscles were fighting. To grin, or not to grin, that was the question. In the end, professionalism won out.
‘Magdalena,’ Toy said, ‘when this pair checked into the inn, what sort of identification did they provide?’
‘Uh – well – not much, I guess.’
‘Are you saying that you didn’t ask them for any identification?’ Toy asked.
‘Why should I have?’ I said. ‘They were driving a fancy-schmancy car with Missouri license plates. A Woman’s Place is – was – published in Springfield, Missouri. Everybody knew that. So when they said who they were, should I have drawn their blood? Swabbed their cheeks for DNA samples?’
