Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth

by Tamar Myers

  “Okay,” I said at last. The gas tank was almost empty, and Hernia didn’t have a full-service station. Since Susannah would rather go to church than pump her own gas, it was a safe bet that she wasn’t going to get very far.

  “Goody!” cried Susannah. She rubbed her hands gleefully together and then cupped them to her mouth like a little girl about to gossip to her best friend. “Not only is that awful Jeanette Linda’s mother,” she whispered, “but Congressman Ream is her father.”

  “Come on!” I’m almost positive I felt at least a tug on my hose.

  “I kid you not. And not only that, but I think Jeanette’s been blackmailing the Congressman. I think she’s been putting the screws on him for years. Her showing up yesterday was no coincidence. And you know what else? I think the Congressman’s wife has known about this all along, but for some stupid reason she won’t or can’t divorce him. That’s what I think.”

  “You think? You think? Susannah, blackmail is a serious crime. You can’t be making allegations like that based on things you heard through the ceiling. I can’t believe Lydia Ream would put up with such a sordid situation.”

  “I have news for you, Sis. Lydia Ream is not the saint you make her out to be. I heard her telling her husband that it was his turn to start paying, remember? And she didn’t sound like a choir member when she said it either. In fact, she used words that you have probably never even heard of. It’s obvious that she’s mad as hell about the blackmail and isn’t going to take it anymore.”

  “I think they call that circumstantial evidence.”

  “You are such a skeptic, Mags. You don’t believe anything unless you have pages of documentation.”

  “I still don’t believe Shnookums is a dog. Circumstantial evidence leads me to believe that he is a species of hairy rat.”

  “That does it!” Susannah stood up in a billowy huff and stormed from the table. At the doorway she stopped. “And one more thing, Miss Yoder, Billy Dee Grizzle already has a girlfriend, and Delbert James just happens to be gay!”

  “And so is Shnookums!” I screamed at her back. Any animal psychiatrist would have a field day with a canine that was perpetually carried around in a purse or a half-empty bra.

  To my disappointment, Susannah didn’t respond to my last remark. Shnookums, however, did. I didn’t get a chance to see the puddle the nervous little pooch produced, but Susannah bolted for the bathroom, and later on I found that pile of polyester swirls she’d been wearing crammed into my hamper.

  Chapter Twelve

  The second my car, with Susannah at the wheel, disappeared from sight, I bolted up the steep stairs of my gloriously empty inn and headed straight for the sealed-off room. It was a little tricky getting the orange tape off the doorjamb in such a way that I could replace it without anyone’s being the wiser. Only a sharp-eyed detective would notice my tampering when I was through, and even Chief Myers, God bless him, wasn’t that perceptive. If he was, he would undoubtedly have noticed that his wife, Tammy, had knock-knees, a mouth like a mule, and brayed when she laughed. He should have bought her a saddle instead of that engagement ring, back when we were in high school.

  I don’t know what I expected to find in Miss Brown’s room. I simply started looking through her things, which, with the exception of a pair of rinsed-out hose hanging on the towel rack, a pair of brown house slippers with gray piping, and the shoes and dress she’d worn the day before, were all still in her suitcase. Her purse had apparently been taken by the Chief.

  That her suitcase was locked didn’t slow me down a bit. Every Mennonite girl worth her bonnet knows how to wield a hairpin with the skill of a surgeon. I had that drab little valise open in less time than it takes Freni to smile, not that it did me any good. Two beige bras, two mostly white pairs of panties, a gray sweater, a pair of brown slacks, an oatmeal-colored blouse, and a toothbrush didn’t tell me a whole lot more than I already knew—except that she wore a size ten panty, which meant that her dress had done a fine job of disguising her big caboose.

  Out of habit I started to make her bed, which had apparently been slept in, but then caught myself. Corpses aren’t known for their bed-making skills, especially after they’ve been carted off to the morgue. Hernia might not have the sharpest police department around, but they weren’t complete slouches either. At least that’s what I thought back then.

  I took one last quick look around. None of my furnishings had disappeared. The cheaply framed print of “The Angelus” still hung on the wall, the Gideon Bible remained on the desk, and in the bathroom I could still see two towels. There were even two drinking glasses on the sink instead of the usual one, which was quite all right with me. Any guest who wanted to leave usable items behind was welcome to do so.

  If I must say so myself, I did a superb job of replacing the tape. Only a slight wrinkle on the end of one of the strips betrayed my intrusion, and for all I know, it had already been there.

  The next item on my agenda was to call the phone numbers Miss Brown had listed on her guest application. Of course, they were toll calls, but what’s a buck or two when you are about to lose your shirt—make that a blouse—to the cleaners?

  I called the number listed as her residence first.

  After about the fourth ring a mechanical voice, supposedly female, got on the line, told me my call could not be completed as dialed, and then proceeded to lecture me on how I should consult my phone directory in the future.

  The second call, to her place of business, was slightly more satisfying. That call was answered on the second ring by a rather hearty-sounding male voice. “Jumbo Jim’s Fried Chicken and Seafood Palace,” it said. “Jim speaking.”

  “Is this the workplace of Miss Heather Brown?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, but you must have a wrong number,” said Jumbo Jim. He had a very pleasant voice, sort of like the Chief s, but with just a tinge of southern twang. “Is this 410-555-3216?”

  “Correcto. And what’s your number, doll?”

  Of course I was taken aback. “I don’t give my number to strangers.”

  Jumbo Jim laughed, but I didn’t feel he was laughing at me. “ ‘Strangers’ is a relative term, doll. Most relatives are strangers. Or at least pretty strange.”

  “You’re telling me!” My double first cousin Agnes Miller married a wealthy corset manufacturer and moved not only to Philadelphia, but to the snobbiest address on the Main Line. When the bottom fell out of the corset market, Agnes had to work at the hat-check stand at the Club just to make ends meet. Her husband got work there as a busboy. Of course, both Agnes and her husband wore disguises to their jobs, and it was fourteen years before the other members discovered that Agnes, the hat-check girl, and Alfred, the busboy, were really their friends and neighbors.

  “So, what’ll it be, doll?” asked Jim in that wonderful voice.

  I’m easily rattled. “One of Hamlet’s soliloquies?” I asked hopefully.

  Jumbo Jim laughed again. “Sorry, doll, but I sell chicken and shrimp. Did you want to place an order?”

  I forced myself to stick with my program. “I’m trying to locate a Miss Heather Brown. This is the number I was given as her place of employment. Are you sure she doesn’t work there? Maybe under another name?”

  “What does she look like?”

  I described Heather to him. The Heather I’d met the day before, of course, not the Heather that resembled a bag of potatoes.

  “Sorry, doll,” said Jim sympathetically. “I know a lot of women like that in Baltimore, but none of them works here.”

  “In that case, I’m sorry I wasted your time,” I said. I knew that mine certainly had not been wasted.

  “No problemo, doll. You want to go ahead and place an order anyway? Our special this week is an eight-piece bucket of chicken, extra crisp, and a dozen deep-fried shrimp, all for the low price of $12.99.”

  “With or without skin?” I asked.

  “With, of course. Fat’s where it’s at. Want that deli
vered, or are you coming in, hon, to pick it up?”

  “I live in Hernia, Pennsylvania, Jim.”

  “No problemo, doll. Just give me directions from Baltimore. I’m off next weekend. I’ll run it up then.”

  “Just take Interstate 70 all the way up until it joins the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Go west until you get to Bedford. Then take Route 96 south. I’m at the PennDutch Inn. Everyone in Hernia knows where it is.”

  “Will do, doll.” He hung up.

  Of course I was just kidding, but was Jumbo Jim? I could hardly wait until the next weekend to find out. I’m very partial to chicken fried extra crisp.

  Having struck out on both phone numbers, and having found nothing of interest in Miss Brown’s room, I decided to retire to my own room for a much needed nap. Of course, I tidied up the room a bit and made my bed before lying down on it. Susannah would have thought it stupid to make a bed before you lie on it, but then again, Susannah thinks it’s stupid of me to clean the house before I go on a trip. The fact that I wash the breakfast dishes before I go to church on Sunday mornings is, to her, a ridiculous waste of time. Then again, so is church. If cleanliness is next to godliness, as they say, Susannah’s best quality is automatically third-rate.

  I napped only about twenty minutes. That was just long enough to feel refreshed, and too short to get that groggy, headachy feeling that can result from midday naps. When I got up, I washed my face and put on my sturdiest pair of walking shoes.

  From the front closet, next to the check-in desk, I got my winter coat. It is a brown wool hand-me-down that is as old as dirt and as ugly as sin, but I can’t bear to part with it. Not only is it as warm as August, but it used to belong to Mama. She would have been wearing it that day she and Papa got run over by the sneaker truck, but Mama was having hot flashes then and chose to leave the coat behind.

  Whenever I put on the coat I can still smell Mama on it. I don’t mean that Mama smelled bad. And she certainly never wore perfume. She had a slightly musty, earthy smell, not unlike the garden after a rain.

  I’d intended to put on my brown and gray plaid scarf, too, but it wasn’t on the hook where it should have been. Susannah again. What that woman can’t get by begging, she gets by borrowing, but without the owner’s permission. At least this time she’d asked me for the car. At any rate, I had to make do with a bright orange strip of polyester that supposedly belonged to Susannah, but which she may well have borrowed from a highway maintenance crew. Thus, decked out warmly, but admittedly not fashionably, I set out the back way for Freni’s.

  On the back steps I paused to wave at Mose, who happened to be leading Matilda, our main milker, out of the barn. Mose shows up every day, regardless of the weather or his wife’s employment situation. I am immensely grateful for this. I hate milking. Even though we own automatic milking machines that you attach directly to the cow’s teats, and which do all the work for you, I despise the job. Maybe it’s because I wouldn’t want something like that attached to me, or maybe it’s because I know just how much damage a misplaced cow’s hoof can do, but I would rather sell the cows and buy my milk from the store than have to extract it myself. Fortunately, not once following the thirty-six times Freni has quit her job, or the nine times she’s been fired, have I had to perform this loathsome chore. Mose, as one of my guests once said, is a “mensch.”

  Mose and Freni live on their own farm, although actually today the farm is run by their eldest son, John. I suppose that Mose and Freni love their son John, and get along with him reasonably well, but the same cannot be said for their relationship with their son’s wife. Barbara Zook was born and raised in one of the western Amish communities, Iowa I think, which is not to disparage them, but I know it’s always been an issue. Perhaps it would be less of an issue if Barbara Zook Hostetler was a timid little thing who knew her place in the pecking order.

  But this is not the case. To the contrary, Barbara stands at least six feet tall in her woolen hosiery, and is as timid as a Leghorn rooster. Barbara’s perceived place in the pecking order is to peck back when pecked. When Freni and Barbara start pecking at each other, more than just feathers fly.

  Less than six weeks after John married Barbara, Mose and Freni retired and turned their farm over to their oldest son. That’s when Mose came to work for Papa. Then, after Mama and Papa’s death, when I started up the PennDutch Inn, Freni jumped at the chance to work for me. She’s been jumping at the chance ever since.

  There are two ways to get to the farm where Freni and Mose Hostetler live. If you take the road, Augsburger Lane, to the left, and then turn left again on Miller’s Run, and then left one more time on Beechy Grove Lane, it’s exactly 6.3 miles from the PennDutch. But if you simply go out the back door and head straight out between the old six-seater and the chicken coop, it’s only eight tenths of a mile. Even when I have the car I seldom drive it.

  The path between the PennDutch and the Hostetler farm is as hard and defined as if it had been poured from concrete. Generations of our two families have used this path, which runs due east and west. Tradition has it that it began as an Indian path and that our common ancestor, Jacob Hochstetler, was taken along this path by the Delaware Indians after he was captured in eastern Pennsylvania in 1750. In fact, when we were growing up, Susannah and I referred to it as “Grandfather’s path,” as did virtually everyone else we knew.

  I could have walked Grandfather’s path in the dark or blindfolded and it wouldn’t have made any difference. I knew it as well as I knew the varicose veins on my left leg. The path cuts between two fields, now turned over to alfalfa, on our land, and then rises up a low wooded ridge that separates us from the Hostetlers. On the other side of the ridge the path descends and divides two cornfields. It’s as simple as that.

  I suppose I was daydreaming as I walked to Freni’s that day, but like I said, it didn’t really matter. It was too cold for snakes and too warm for ice, although just barely, so I had no need to keep my mind on what my feet were doing. I was free to think about more important things, like, did Billy Dee really have a girlfriend, and was Delbert James really gay, and didn’t it bother Susannah that she was probably headed for hell and eternal torment and damnation?

  I had just entered the wooded part when a tree to my immediate right seemed to explode, and my face was showered with wood chips. Then I heard a crack like thunder. I dropped to my hands and knees. Forty- three years of living on a farm, even as a pacifist, have taught me what a rifle sounds like.

  Almost immediately the rock-hard path in front of me rose up to meet me in a spray of pebble-hard particles. The second crack rang in my ears as I dropped to my stomach and rolled under a clump of evergreen laurel bushes.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “This is a person here, not a deer!”

  There came no response, either vocal or mechanical. Besides the whining in my ears, the only sound I could hear came from a flock of crows that had been routed from their rookery and were flying off in the general direction of Hernia, complaining loudly as they went. When distance finally eliminated their disgruntled caws, the only sound I could hear was the faint cackling of my hens back at the coop. Whoever had shot at me was either not moving, or moving with the stealthy silence of a cat on a hardwood floor. Not a twig cracked, or a fallen leaf rustled.

  I lay prone, hidden by the laurel bushes, for the better part of an hour. I don’t think fast on my feet, and I’m even slower thinking on my stomach. I had no reason to suspect that whoever had shot at me was still out there, but no reason to think otherwise. The only sensible thing, it seemed, was to lie there and wait it out. Fortunately, Mama’s old wool coat was as warm as Freni’s kitchen on baking day.

  But how long was long enough? That, of course, I couldn’t know for sure, although I did have a fairly accurate barometer of my readiness to make a run for it. About every five minutes or so I tried to rouse myself from my hiding place, and each time my heart pounded so wildly it actually hurt my chest, and my arms and legs would buckle
out from underneath me, and I’d fall face down in the leaves again. I probably made more noise trying to see if I could run than I would have if I’d actually run, slapping the bushes with a stick as I went. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that if the hunter really thought I was a deer, or was out to get me personally, he or she could have done so easily within the first five minutes.

  Just when I was beginning to gather my wits and strength, and maybe, finally, make a run for it, I heard someone coming down the path. I knew right away it was a someone, and not a something, because he or she was whistling. In Pennsylvania, at least, no critters that walk loud enough to be heard on a hard dirt path are capable of whistling, except for human beings.

  I froze in a crouching position and kept my eyes on the path. At first it was impossible to tell if the approaching person was male or female, because both sexes essentially sound alike when they whistle. That’s simply because whistling is produced by the mouth alone and has nothing to do with the vocal cords.

  Neither could I tell by the footsteps. Perhaps in the days when men routinely weighed more than women, my unsophisticated ear might have been able to detect a difference in tread. Now, however, following the introduction of polyester stretch pants into western culture, it seems to me that women have made significant gains in eradicating this inequality.

  Not that the sex of the person approaching was at all germane to my safety. Female fingers are just as capable of pulling gun triggers as male. Probably even more so, since the average woman has a stronger index finger as a result of pushing so many aerosol spray buttons.

  But anyway, when the approaching person was still several yards up the path, I could see through the bushes well enough to tell that it was a woman. And an Amish woman at that. I could see clearly the hem of a long blue skirt hanging close to the ground, and a pair of heavy black shoes.

  Although the bushes were too thick above me to see anything more, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The odds of my being shot at by an Amish woman were about the same as the odds of Freni stripping off her clothes and dancing naked on the dining room table for our guests. I said Freni, not Susannah.