Butter Safe Than Sorry
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5 - Sea Turtles
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10 - Rosemary Blue Cheese Ice Box Cookies
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15 - Lemongrass Snowballs
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20 - Thai Coconut-Ginger Sticky Rice Jumbles
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25 - Sea-Salted Coffee Toffee Bars
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30 - Lavender Sugar Cookie
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35 - Sour Cream Pound Cake
Epilogue
Praise for Tamar Myers’s Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries
“A pinch of acerbity, a scoop of fun, and a pound of originality . . . a delicious treat.”
—Carolyn Hart
“A piquant brew, bubbling over with mystery and mirth. I loved every page of it.”
—Dorothy Cannell
“As sweet as a piece of brown-sugar pie.”
—Booklist
“Snappy descriptions . . . humorous shenanigans.”
—Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
“A hoot. Guaranteed you’ll be laughing by the third paragraph.”
—The Charleston Post and Courier (SC)
“Think Mayberry R.F.D. with Mennonites. Think Murder, She Wrote with a Pennsylvania Dutch accent. Instead of Jessica Fletch-er, think Magdalena Yoder, a plain-dressing, blunt-speaking middle-aged innkeeper who frequently rescues the incompetent chief of police by solving his cases.”
—The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)
“With her sassy wit and odd habits . . . Magdalena is a delightful main character.”
—The Champion Newspaper (Decatur, GA)
“Masterful.”
—Kirkus Reviews
OTHER PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH MYSTERIES
by Tamar Myers
Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Crime
No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk
Just Plain Pickled to Death
Between a Wok and a Hard Place
Eat, Drink, and Be Wary
Play It Again, Spam®
The Hand That Rocks the Ladle
The Crepes of Wrath
Gruel and Unusual Punishment
Custard’s Last Stand
Thou Shalt Not Grill
Assault and Pepper
Grape Expectations
Hell Hath No Curry
As the World Churns
Batter Off Dead
OBSIDIAN
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, February 2010
Copyright © Tamar Myers, 2010 All rights reserved
OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Myers, Tamar.
Butter safe than sorry: a Pennsylvania Dutch mystery with recipes/Tamar Myers.
p. cm.
“An Obsidian mystery.”
eISBN : 978-1-101-17164-6
1. Yoder, Magdalena (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Pennsylvania Dutch Country (Pa.)—Fiction.
3. Hotelkeepers—Fiction 4. Mennonites—Fiction 5. Bank robberies—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.Y475B87 2010
813’.54—dc22 2009033379
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author ’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third- party Web sites or their content.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
http://us.penguingroup.com
This book is dedicated to my dear friend Kay Chalk.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special thanks to the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, who graciously consented to the use of the recipes in this book. For lots of other delicious (and free) recipes with butter, consult their Web site at www.eatwisconsincheese.com.
1
Finally, after almost two hundred years, my hometown had its first bona fide hooker. Of course I don’t approve of a woman selling her body for sex—or even for a great deal of money—but I must confess that I found this particular situation rather titillating. After all, Dorothy Yoder was the wife of Hernia’s most notorious lecher. But apparently Sam wasn’t enough for her, so she tried selling herself to a handsome young tourist and got herself arrested. I mean, really, it had all the ingredients of a poorly written novel, a medium with which I am well acquainted.
To be painfully honest, when I first heard this news, my feet began a happy dance of their own accord. Since dancing is a sin, and I could not stop my tootsies from moving, I had no choice but to hop on my husband’s bicycle and take a couple of spins around the farmyard. For once, hallelujah, Hernia’s confirmed floozy wasn’t my sister, Susannah.
No siree, Bob. This time Hernia’s strumpet without a trumpet, her trollop who packed a wallop, was none other than the Dorothy Yoder, my cousin-in-law, a woman
who had never been nice to me! Oh how the mighty had fallen—both literally and figuratively. The day after her fiftieth birthday, Dorothy—who’d managed to consume four entire sheet cakes and three half gallon cartons of Breyer ’s Butter Pecan Ice Cream—was being transferred to a new, and larger, bed, when the main cable broke. Dorothy was not severely injured, but apparently jolted enough to consider a very dangerous surgical option over dieting.
Two years, and many cosmetic surgeries later, seven-hundred-pound Dorothy was a svelte size sixteen and looked twenty years younger than her husband. As our town’s only grocer, married to the daughter of a wealthy man, Sam had long perched on our highest social rung. But when Dorothy got her looks back—her words, not mine—she started wearing clothes that revealed her décolletage and emphasized her still-impressive derriere. Not only that, but she got her flaming red hair cut and styled, and started applying more makeup than even a fallen Methodist has a right to. Trust me, I am not exaggerating—not this time. For her maiden outing as the painted Whore of Babylon, Dorothy had a professional apply the goop and glop, and when she returned home, her three daughters didn’t recognize her and tried to have her arrested as an intruder.
Schadenfreude, that peculiarly German, but oh so useful, word described my feelings perfectly when I heard this. The reason that Dorothy has never been nice to me is because her husband, Sam, carries a torch for Yours Truly. Sam’s torch is like one of those trick birthday candles that can’t be blown out—no matter what. Sam delivered my son on the floor of his so-called grocery store (Yoder’s Corner Market), but even seeing my “business” at its worst, so to speak, was not enough to dampen his ardor.
I should hasten to clarify that I have absolutely no interest in Sam and have never encouraged him. We are, in fact, first cousins on my mother’s side of the family, and whilst I am not biologically related to the woman who raised me, that doesn’t matter: Sam was, is, and will always be, an annoying cousin who must be endured—somewhat like toenail fungus when prescription ointments won’t work.
Thus it was a bittersweet thing to find Dorothy hanging about the store when I popped in that Friday afternoon with my son, Little Jacob, in tow. The woman was wearing a moleskin leopard-print dress and six- inch spike heels. Her eyeliner was so heavy, it looked like she’d glued slivers of charcoal to her eyelids. As for her eye shadow, I guessed the metallic silver was supposed to match her lipstick, shoes, and shoulder- length bangle earrings, but frankly, it gave her an eerily reptilian look.
“Is that a real woman, Mama?” Little Jacob asked the second his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“ ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ ” I said, quoting Psalms 8:2.
“What did that child say?”
“I’m sure he was admiring you,” Sam said. He dotes on Little Jacob and often gives him candy or other treats. I wouldn’t mind that so much if the sweets weren’t stale.
I gave Dorothy a placating smile that was at least partly genuine. Despite the animosity she feels toward me, I feel nothing more than pity for her.
“You always were beautiful, Dorothy. But if you want my opinion, this is a classic case of less being more.”
She teetered closer for a few steps, her eyes flashing with rage. “Well, I don’t want your opinion, Magdalena.”
“But you look like a hoochie-mama, dear.”
My four-year-old son doesn’t let anything slip by him. “Mama, what’s a ‘hoochie-mama’?”
“Hmm—remember the pictures I showed you of your aunt Susannah?”
He nodded. “She’s the lady in the hooch, right?”
“Right.”
“Oh, I get it! So that’s why she’s a hoochie-mama, right?”
“Well—”
“Like this lady, right?”
“Not ex—”
“Cousin Sam, can I have a cookie?”
Sam gave the love of my life three cookies and then got back to me ASAP. In the meantime, the huffy hoochie- mama snarled at me and showed her claws, but mercifully retreated to watch television at the back of the store, where Sam maintains a little “break room” for himself. The redundancy of such a place makes as much sense as a fish wearing a life vest. At any rate, Sam wasted no time in pouncing.
“Couldn’t stay away from me, could you, Mags?”
“I came to buy lined poster board for Little Jacob’s kindergarten project. Do you have any?”
He shook his head. “You’re the tenth person today to come in here and ask for some. It’s for that for family-tree project Miss Kuhnberger assigned, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“She does that every year, and every year you poor parents have to drive into Bedford just to get some poster board. You’d think that old bat would catch on and change her lessons plans.”
“Or”—I leaned forward conspiratorially—“some aging lothario whose wife looks like she’s about to step out on him would catch on to a solution just as obvious and stock poster board each fall.”
Sam rolled his watery blue eyes. “My vendor doesn’t carry it. And since I’d make only about a nickel a sheet on it anyway, it wouldn’t pay me to put in a special order with another vendor. But you can take back your insinuation.”
“My insinuation?”
“That all Dorothy needs is a little loving on the home front and everything will be hunky-dory—as you are so fond of saying.”
“Mama, what’s ‘hunky-pory’?”
I jumped. The trouble with children is that when not in use, they can’t be folded and put away like TV trays—not that I’ve tried very often, mind you. Lord, if you’re listening, I’m not complaining, seeing as how I fully expected to be as barren as the Gobi Desert, or at the very least give birth to a miniature version of myself, which would be punishment for all the times that I indulged in the sin of self—
“Mama!”
You see? Children can be so impatient at times!
“What?”
“What is ‘hunky-pory’?”
“It’s ‘dory,’ dear, and it means ‘fine.’ Now see if you can find the can that has the most numbers after the dollar sign. That’s the one Cousin Sam is going to give us for free.”
“Okay!” Off he skipped, as gay as a Broadway producer and twice as happy.
“Cous,” Sam said accusingly, “it may be all be hunky-dory on her end, but not so on mine. You have to remember that I’m the one who had to bathe and dress her when she was too big to get out of bed. And I was the one who had to empty her reinforced, jumbo-size bedpan. How do you recapture romantic feelings after twenty years of that?”
“Marriage counseling?”
“Ha! Where would I find a marriage counselor who would have even an inkling of what I’ve been through?”
Much to my surprise, I actually saw his point. In the same vein, I’ve often wondered how a celibate person could offer marital advice—well, I still do. There is, I think, only so much that one can extrapolate from the experiences related to them by others.
I shrugged. “Have you tried the Internet?”
“Mama, what’s ‘twapolate’ mean?”
It was Sam’s turn to jump. “Hey, buddy, back so soon?”
Little Jacob nodded and proudly held forth a large jug of maple syrup. This wasn’t that sugar water over which a maple leaf has been waved; this was the genuine stuff, the real McCoy—literally, in fact, since the sap was harvested and boiled down by Gerald McCoy and his three teenage sons.
Since it takes forty gallons of sap to produce one gallon of maple syrup, the real deal costs a pretty penny, to be sure. In fact, I never serve it to my guests, although I do make it available if they’re on my special luxury plan (at only two hundred dollars more a day, they hardly know what hit them). At any rate, Little Jacob was holding forth a half-gallon jug, for which Sam was asking $39.99.
“I want this, Cousin Sam,” he said.
Sam tried to pat my son on the head. “You gotta pick something else there, buddy. How about a c
andy bar? You want a whole candy bar to yourself?”
“I don’t want no stupid candy bah,” my son said, proving that I didn’t give birth to a cabbage. “Candy bahs cost less than a dollah, but this costs a pwetty penny. Wight, Mama? Besides, Mama says that yoh candy is stale.”
“Hey, Mags,” Sam said, “what’s with this otherwise precocious kid not saying his ‘R’s? Isn’t he in kindergarten already?”
“Sam,” I growled, “he’s right in front of you.”
“Yeah,” Little Jacob gwowled, “I’m wight in fwont of you.”
“Well, then, kid, I think you’re too old for that.”
“Butt out,” I said kindly. “It really isn’t your business.”
“Mama, this is getting heavy,” Little Jacob said.
“Then set it down, dear.”
“But I want my money fust.”
“You heard him, Sam. Pay up.”
“If you make him say his ‘R’s.”
“I most certainly will not.”
“Well, then, he can hold it all day, because I didn’t say when I’d pay.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Sam. I wouldn’t make him say his ‘R’s, even if I could. I mean, what if he decided to move to Boston someday. Would you not want him to fit in?”
“Mama, I can’t hold it no mo-ah!”
The heavy glass jug slipped from my dear son’s tiny fingers and shattered on the hard wooden floor of Yoder ’s Corner Market. I’ll say this for good-quality maple syrup: it’s a pleasure to lick the stuff off bare skin. I even licked some off my clothes and, when Sam went to get a mop bucket, I had a quick go at the nearest shelves.
Of course I was the one stuck with mopping the floor and getting the sticky-sweet stuff out from between the floorboards. In the meantime my cutie pie watched television in the back room with Cousin Dorothy. I worked quickly, as I do not approve of TV, convinced as I am that Satan lives in each and every set, and especially in wall-mounted megasize screens. As if to prove my point, when Little Jacob emerged, he said he’d been watching Opwah, and how come boys didn’t have va-jay-jays too?