by Tamar Myers
“Close enough.”
“Oh, Doc,” I wailed, “what will I do?”
Doc reached out to pat me, but instinctively I pulled away. Fortunately he didn’t seem to mind. “Look, Magdalena, if I were you, I’d keep my eyes open for clues leading to whoever really did it, and point Melvin in that direction. He might not stay with the scent long, but it will at least give you a breather. In the meantime, you might be able to piece together a few things yourself.”
“In other words, I should solve the crime myself, just to keep Melvin off my back?”
Doc looked genuinely sorry for me. “Considering the alternative, I’d have to say yes.”
“Life isn’t fair!” I wailed.
“Of course not,” said Doc. He looked around, as if trying to spot spies, and lowered his voice to an almost inaudible whisper. “So cheat a little bit.”
Chapter Eight
Sometime during my brief absence from the inn, a plague of reporters had descended on my front lawn. Although they weren’t eating my grass as locusts might have, they were damaging it all the same.
“Get off my grass,” I said not unpleasantly at first.
But reporters, like locusts, are not known for their acute hearing. Locusts don’t even have ears, and as for reporters, the appendages they sport are for show. A reporter’s ears might as well be made of latex.
“Get off my grass before I pitch you off,” I said perhaps carelessly.
“Would that be with a pitchfork?” asked a particularly obnoxious-looking young woman. I hate pert and perky little women who are color-coordinated and flawlessly coiffed. And it’s worse if they’re young.
“No comment,” I said, still living dangerously.
“Then perhaps you might care to comment on the deceased’s mob connections.”
“His what?”
“Oh, come now, you’re not going to pretend you don’t know anything about Don Manley’s ties with the syndicate? He was scheduled to go before a New Jersey grand jury at the end of the month on money-laundering charges, something he presumably did to help pay off a huge debt that—”
“Arnold Hetrick from Far Out Magazine,” interrupted a rather seedy-looking man. “Is it true, Miss Yoder, that you and Don Manley were lovers, and that you killed him because he was having an affair with Darla Strutt on the side?”
“That’s absolutely not true, Arnie,” I said. I grabbed the unsuspecting pert reporter and put my arm around her shoulders. “It’s we who are lovers.” Then I gave her a quick smooch on the forehead and fled inside while the two of them were still in shock.
Susannah was furious when I got back to the inn. She got right in my face, as they say. “Some dude named Jumbo called for you four times! What do you think I am, Mags, your damned answering service?”
I smiled sweetly. “Swear at me again, Susannah, and it will be your last time.”
“What is this, another murder threat?” my sister asked meanly, but she backed off.
“So, what did Jim want?”
“How should I know? Call him and talk to him yourself.”
I did.
“Jumbo Jim’s Fried Chicken and Seafood Palace,” said the cheery voice.
“Hi, Jim, it’s me, Magdalena.”
“Doll!”
“Susannah said you called. Sorry I was out.”
“No prob. We still on for this weekend?”
“That depends, Jim. There’s been another murder out at my place, and our police chief thinks I’m a suspect.”
“You guilty?”
“Not of murder, Jim.”
“Then no prob, doll. Be at your place at six sharp on Saturday.”
“Things are a little bit hectic here, Jim, what with the movie and the murder. Can we meet at Ed’s Steak House in Bedford? It’s right off the turnpike, on old U.S. 220.”
“Can do, doll. See you then.” Jim hung up.
Okay, so Jim isn’t big on words. Anyway, talk is cheap, as Grandma Yoder used to say. At least I had the makings of a man in my life, which was more than I could say for a long time. All right, so it was the first time, but we all have a first time. It’s nothing to get proud about.
In Hernia, when someone dies, people take notice. Men shine their shoes and get out their ties, and the women bake a couple of pies for the post-funeral meal. Things must be different in Hollywood. Once Don’s body was removed from my barn to the county morgue, Reels and Runs Productions proceeded with their business as if nothing had happened. The very morning after the murder, shooting resumed.
“There have been a few script revisions, folks,” Steven stated as he passed around new copies to those of us with speaking parts.
I glanced anxiously at my copy. After a couple of seconds, I gave up glancing and sat down to read, as had virtually everyone else. The script fairies, or whoever they were, had been very busy overnight. Whereas the old script had been primarily about a berserk Amishman who strangled and then did unspeakable things to women in a bathtub, the new script called for the movie to be filmed almost exclusively in a barn. My barn. And instead of a mad Amishman drowning women, there was now a mad but grossly deformed Amishman living among the hay bales who was terrified of anyone entering his secret domain. A sort of The Hunchback of Yoder’s Barn. Only this was no sweet, passive hunchback, but a mean-tempered fellow with a deadly aim when it came to throwing pitchforks. Of course, there might have been other elements to the story as well, but it was hard for me to see them. Although this new version lacked exploitive sex, it was still packed with violence—a distinctly un-Amish or Mennonite trait.
I wasn’t the only one who was dissatisfied with the revision. “I won’t do it, Art,” said Rip Oilman through clenched teeth.
Art mumbled something that presumably Rip heard, but Rip still wasn’t placated. “I won’t play a grossly deformed hunchback. My fans want to see me as I am.” He patted his chest. “You’re going to have to get someone else for the part.”
“Try Melvin Stoltzfus,” I couldn’t help saying. “He’s a natural.”
Art ignored me and mumbled something else to Rip. I couldn’t hear everything, but it had something to do with a contract.
“Then I’ll buy myself out,” said Rip. “I didn’t want to come to this backwater location to begin with. The set is a dump, the food stinks, and you call that a motel we’re staying in?”
“Right on,” said Darla rudely.
Art broke character and shuffled over to Rip. Grabbing him by the arm, he steered him over to the far corner of the room. Then both men mumbled for an interminable length of time. When they broke huddle, Rip was smiling, and Art, at least, looked pleased.
“Then I want more money too,” whined Darla. “I’ve been a star longer than Rip.”
“Far longer,” agreed Rip.
Darla flashed him daggers. I’m sure she would have flashed him pitchforks if she could have done so.
Steven swiftly translated Art’s latest mumbling. "Okay, folks, we’re going to break now for an early lunch, and then afterward, we meet at the barn for a rehearsal of Scene Thirty-two, on page one hundred and forty. There’s no dialogue in that scene, so it shouldn’t give us any problems. Miss Strutt, Mr. Oilman, Miss Yoder, and the Biddle sisters, we’ll be needing all of you.”
"And not me?” asked Susannah on the verge of tears. Steven smiled. “Of course you. We can’t shoot any of Miss Strutt’s scenes without you to block them in. You’re a very important person.”
Susannah elbowed me on the way to lunch. “Did you hear that, Mags? Steven said I’m a very important person.”
Fortunately, before I could think of a suitable response, Freni ambushed me. “Psst! Magdalena!”
I stepped gratefully into the kitchen, which smelled wonderful, as it always does when Freni cooks. “What is it?”
There was panic in Freni’s voice when she spoke. “This early lunch. They can’t do that. It’s not ready yet!”
“Just do the best you can, Freni. It�
�s they who called an early lunch. It’s not your fault.”
My temperamental little kinswoman untied her apron and pulled it over her head, nearly knocking off her white prayer bonnet in the process. “I quit, Magdalena. These English are too unpredictable. A meal is ready when it is done cooking, not before.”
“What are you cooking?”
“Roast beef and barbecued chicken. But the roast beef is still raw and Mose just now put the chicken on the grill.”
I patted Freni reassuringly. “You don’t have a problem after all. The English love their beef raw. They call it ‘rare.’ And as for the chicken, stick it close up under the broiler for a few minutes until it turns nice and black. Then tell them it’s Cajun style.”
Freni reluctantly did what I suggested and got her highest reviews ever. Even the rude Rip Oilman, who had previously criticised her cooking, said that it was the best meal he’d had in recent memory. Allowing for the fact that Rip’s memory probably goes back only a matter of days, it was still a nice thing to say.
Of course, Freni really only cared what Art thought about the meal. She was, after all, more fond of him than ever. If Art had grown a beard, shaved off his mustache, and worn plain clothes, Freni would have undoubtedly adopted him. Meanwhile, Freni’s real son, John, toiled meaningfully away on the family farm, less than a mile away as the crow flies, all but forgotten by his mother. And just because he had married Barbara Zook, a six-foot-tall, sturdy gal from one of the western Amish communities, who had the bad habit of speaking her own mind from time to time. Apparently, two unfettered tongues in the same family do not tranquility make.
I was the first of the cast to report to the barn. Although I am normally very conscientious and punctual, those were not my motives. I simply wanted to see the individual looks on the other cast members’ faces when they entered the scene of the crime. My own, I’m sure, was a bit unusual.
Melvin had roped off the immediate area surrounding the post against which Don Manley had been forked, but it was visible from virtually any point on the lower level of the barn. The vast amount of blood the assistant director had spilled had, for the most part, soaked through the cracks of the barn floor, but there was one warped floorboard that had caught some of the blood and held it, as if it were a shallow wooden bowl. The blood had congealed and evaporated to the point that the residue resembled something very close to good old-fashioned German blood-pudding sausage. The entire bloodstained area was swarming with flies. In the midday August heat, my once clean and tidy barn smelled like a slaughterhouse, which, of course, it was.
Anyway, I climbed up to the first level of the hayloft, where most of the mad-Amishman scenes were to be filmed. Already the crew had positioned cameras and huge lights mounted on rolling pedestals. What seemed like miles and miles of cable spread in all directions. It was as if a giant spider had spun her web throughout my barn. Fortunately it was August, and Bessie and Matilda, my two Holstein cows, could spend their days outside. Mose had even volunteered to milk them outside, which would probably work in Bessie’s case, because she was a wanton, shameless bovine anyway. Matilda, however, was very shy about giving her milk, as befits a Mennonite cow.
I sat there on the edge of loft with my feet dangling over, and contemplated what my greed had wrought. There I was, dressed in traditional Amish garb, about to play the mother of a mad, pitchfork-pitching Amishman, in the same barn that had been built by my own Amish ancestors—peaceful ones, all of them. Back in the French and Indian War days, my ancestors, the Jacob Hochstetler family, had submitted to massacre by the Delaware Indians rather than lift a finger in their own defense. Historically we were a peace-loving, plain people, and now here was I, desecrating everyone’s memory, and for what?
Money and a very slim chance at fame, or at least recognition. But it was a lot of money, enough to see Susannah and me well into our dotage, even if the PennDutch failed. And as for the fame, it is indeed a two-edged sword that only the best of us can resist plunging willfully into our own breasts. Clearly I did not number among the best of us.
But of course I didn’t stop there. Like just about everyone else, I made up excuses to justify my choices. The movie would be made anyway, I reasoned. At least by allowing it to be filmed at the PennDutch, I could keep an eye on it and try to exercise my control. We were to be in the world, but not of it, Scripture told us, and I was simply making sure that I was in it. I can admit now that I was in it way over my head, but at the time my ability to rationalize was my most practiced skill. And anyway, the new script, while it called for violence and other behavior un-characteristic of the Amish, was at least devoid of exploitive sex. You’ll give me that much, won’t you?
The first people to return from lunch were some of the crew members. I could tell they were unhappy that I was up in the loft, sitting among their equipment, but I was much older than they and dressed quite a bit differently, so they were too intimidated to say anything. At any rate, besides looking irritated when they saw me, none of them showed much of a reaction when they trooped into the barn. I certainly didn’t see guilt written on their faces. And I know what guilt looks like—I do use a mirror, you know.
Of all the people that showed up on the set that day, only Susannah averted her eyes from the beam to which Don Manley had been pegged. But despite the fact that Susannah is my sister, I very much doubted that she was the killer. To stab someone, even through the abdomen, with a pitchfork as blunted as mine would take considerable strength—something Susannah just does not have. She may be tall like me, but she is rail-thin. And besides which, with all her swirling yardage, Susannah would most certainly have gotten blood on her, and she hadn’t. Even Melvin Stoltzfus hadn’t been so stupid as to not check Susannah for blood. And she had come up clean. Anyway, it seemed to me that the killer was not on the set that afternoon, or else was an expert at masking emotions.
“What else would you expect?” asked Doc that evening over another piece of green-tomato pie. The pie, incidentally, came on the heels of two bowls each of Grandma Yoder’s Secret Corn Chowder, which I had cooked.
“I don’t get you, Doc.”
“Well, they’re actors, aren’t they, Magdalena? Even Art, the producer, used to be an actor, and I bet that Bugsy fellow has had a few drama classes too. Anyway, my point is, they’re trained to wear masks. To show emotions on their faces that they’re not actually feeling.”
“It’s hopeless, then, I guess.”
Doc laughed and shoved the pie dish toward me. “Have another piece, and don’t be so quick to give up. Look, you can’t prove anything anyway by the look on somebody’s face. You need concrete evidence.”
“How do I look for evidence, and how do I know it when I see it?”
“Well, for starters, quit looking on the outside of people, and start looking on the inside. Look for motive. Ask yourself who has the strongest motive, and then, once you’ve got motive, you can start looking for physical clues.”
“I believe they call that method acting.”
“Hunh. Whatever. The thing is, Magdalena, most people don’t go around killing unless they feel they have a good reason.” Doc paused and played with his pie for a few seconds. “Well, at least that’s the way it used to be. Nowadays, if you can believe what you hear on the news, people kill each other for the damnedest reasons. None that makes any sense to me.”
“Or me.”
“But that’s exactly my point, isn’t it? It has to make sense only to them, not us. You and I probably wouldn’t kill for any reason, but there are a lot of reasons out there why people kill, and you need to come up with the most likely one in this case.”
“How about the mob, Doc? A reporter told me Don Manley owed a lot to the mob.”
“Maybe,” said Doc, but he didn’t sound interested in that theory. “If I were you, I’d look closer to home. Find someone this Manley guy stepped on in an unforgivable sort of way. That type of thing. It’s just a thought, Magdalena, but that’s what I�
�d look for.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Say, you still planning to meet that chicken fryer from Baltimore on Saturday?”
“Jim? Yeah, Doc. We’re going to have dinner at Ed’s Steak House. What of it?”
Doc looked away, but not before I caught the look in his eyes. “Just you be careful, Magdalena. Those Maryland folks are a tough lot, and the ones from Baltimore in particular. You want me to go along? Just in case, I mean.”
I patted old Doc’s hand. I was genuinely warmed inside by his consideration. Or was it his jealousy? It didn’t matter. As long as it didn’t get out of hand, whatever Doc was feeling flattered me. “That’s okay, Doc, I’m sure I can handle Jim just fine.” At least I was looking forward to trying.
That night I dreamed about my upcoming date with Jim. In my dream, Jim was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his mid-forties. I suppose he had a handsome face, but all I remember were his cold blue eyes.
“Hi, I’m Magdalena,” I said in my dream.
“My name is Parsley,” said the man with the cold blue eyes. “Elvis Parsley.” He laughed, the kind of laugh that sends shivers down your spine.
“But I thought you were Jim,” I said. We had been standing outside Ed’s Steak House, but suddenly it had become my henhouse. Neither of us seemed to care about the change of setting.
“My name was Jim,” said the man, “but now it’s Parsley. Can’t you ever get anything right, Magdalena?”
“Yes, of course,” I started to protest. Then the man with the cold blue eyes, who I had thought was Jim, turned into my mother. Mercifully I woke up at that point.
Chapter Nine
About four in the morning, I woke up with a full bladder. Mama used to call that hour of the morning the deathwatch. She claimed that more people died at four in the morning than at any other time. When Grandma Yoder died, it was precisely 4:03. I know, because I was awakened by what I thought was Grandma’s voice saying good-bye. I remember glancing at my bedside clock, and telling myself that it was all a dream and I should go back to sleep. But then, before I could as much as close my eyes, I heard Mama crying because, as I learned later, Grandma had just died. Mama had been holding her hand when it happened.
