Gruel and Unusual Punishment

by Tamar Myers

  "Ach!" I squawked back at her. Freni may be short, but she's every bit as heavy as a millstone. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger would have staggered under her weight.

  Meanwhile Mose, whose genes do a better job of keeping him under control, fidgeted nervously. "Good to see you," he said.

  I extricated myself from Freni and shook Mose's hand. Then I hugged him. I hugged Freni again too.

  "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," I said.

  Despite the bottle-thick lenses she wore, I could see the tears welling up in Freni's eyes. "Yah, dead, that's what we thought."

  "Freni made me drive all over the county to look for you," Mose said, his accent heavier than usual. "I am sorry I could not find you."

  I smiled through tears of my own. The thought of a septuagenarian Amish man roaming the byways of Bedford County in his buggy looking for me was touching beyond words.

  "So what do you eat when you are dead?" Freni asked, in a rare attempt at a joke.

  "Not your chicken and dumplings, dear. Mostly sardines and granola. But as you can see, I'm fit as a fiddle now—a couple of scratches and bruises notwithstanding."

  Freni studied me closely for the first time. "Ach, the nose. It goes this way, and then that way."

  "Just think, dear, now it will be harder to stick into someone else's business."

  She nodded. "So, how long will you be dead?"

  "Just as long as it takes. How's Alison?"

  "A good child, Magdalena."

  "Really? You think so?"

  They both nodded.

  "She helps me with the milking," Mose said. "And the horses! She loves the horses."

  "Still, it must be a little crowded, what with Jonathan, and Barbara and the three babies."

  "Yah," Freni said, a naughty gleam in her eye. "Barbara complains that now we are too many. She wants always to know why I take this Alison home with me."

  "What did you tell her?"

  "I ask her if she thinks the child would be better off with that no-good papa of hers in the land of a thousand ponds."

  "That's lakes, dear. And I think there's supposed to be ten thousand of them. Does she know I'm still alive?"

  Freni frowned. "Susannah said not to tell anyone."

  "Susannah was right. Too many people know already. Say, Freni, how well did you know Emma Kauffman?"

  Both Freni and Mose seemed to shrink. Mose looked as if he were looking for a hole into which to crawl.

  "Which Emma Kauffman?" Freni asked, as if she didn't know. "That is a very popular name."

  "The Emma Kauffman, dear. The one who turned her back on your faith to paint."

  "Ach, that Emma Kauffman." Freni turned her head so I couldn't see her eyes. "So why do you want to know?"

  "It's part of my investigation, dear—and incidentally, this is also top-secret information. Anyway, I just want the name of someone—maybe an old friend, or family member of Emma's—she keeps in touch with. Someone who might be able to shed some light on her character."

  Freni clucked dismissively. "And this I should know?"

  "Hannah Zug," Mose said, his voice a harsh whisper.

  I smiled at him.

  He shuffled from foot to foot, but not having found that hole, it got him nowhere. "They are sisters. It is known that Hannah finds it difficult to obey the Ordnung. She does not agree with this ban that has been placed on Emma. It is said she sometimes goes to see her. There is talk even—"

  "Ach!" Freni waved her arms at Mose in a vain attempt to silence him.

  "There is talk," Mose said defiantly, "that Hannah will herself be banned. This is a very sad situation, yah?"

  "Yah," I said. "I mean, yes. Do you know where Hannah Zug lives?"

  "She lives with her husband," Freni snapped. "Mr. Zug. Magdalena, is it necessary for you to speak with Hannah?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Why? What will you learn?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know. In an investigation like this, things sometimes turn up that you can't anticipate."

  Freni grabbed one of my arms. Her short fingers are capable of extracting juice from a walnut.

  "You will not be so hard on her, yah?"

  "I promise."

  She gave me what was meant to be a meaningful stare, but the thickness of her lenses made her come across as comical, rather than threatening. At last she sighed.

  "Hannah Zug lives on Gindlesperger Road. The third white farmhouse after you cross Kanagy Creek. You will see by the flowers."

  "The flowers?"

  Freni took a deep breath. She apparently had a great deal to say about the flowers, but before she could get one word out, Gabe's front door flew open and in waltzed Susannah.

  "Here I come to save the day!" she sang.

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  23

  My baby sister was dressed in a navy blue skirt-suit, cream silk blouse, pantyhose, and black patent-leather pumps. Her shoulder- length hair, which normally resembles a wheat field after a windstorm, was styled into loose but orderly curls. Near the tip of her nose rested a dainty pair of what we used to call granny glasses. Her makeup had been applied so sparsely that it almost looked natural. I say "almost," because even though this application fell well within the range of what passes for normal, any idiot knows it takes a day well below freezing to produce apples on the cheeks.

  In short, however, Susannah could have passed herself off as a bank president, a flight attendant, or a Methodist church lady. Perhaps I should have been overjoyed by this transformation, but I found it unsettling.

  "Where's that hideous little beast?" I asked suspiciously. The suit jacket was fitted and there didn't seem to be room for even the most minuscule of mangy mutts.

  Susannah patted the left half of her bosom. "My Shnookums is right here."

  As if on cue, my sister's left breast began to bulge. Within seconds it was writhing and pulsating, like a small volcano about to blow. Then, just when I thought it would erupt, the bulge moved across Susannah's sternum and her right breast more than doubled its size.

  "Ach!" Freni had covered her face with her hands, but her fingers were spread wide enough to allow a good peek. Mose had discreetly turned his back.

  "He likes to change cups every now and then," Susannah said matter-of-factly. "I think it gets hot under this jacket."

  "Then lose it, dear," I suggested.

  "The jacket?"

  "The canine in a cup. What do you think that does for his selfesteem?"

  Susannah frowned. "I never thought of that. Are you saying I might be giving him some kind of complex?"

  "It could be, but not to worry. I heard there's a good pooch psychiatrist in Philly. Dinky demented dogs are his specialty. He has a tiny leather couch in his office, just over a foot long." I sighed dramatically. "The thing is, dear, he charges a hundred dollars an hour."

  "Really?"

  I was just kidding, but Susannah apparently wasn't. And I know for a fact that Mose and Freni had taken me seriously, because they fled before any more of my inane English prattle could penetrate their already beleaguered brains.

  "So where's the hunk?" Susannah asked, looking around Gabe's living room. Doggy doctors were already just a dim memory.

  "He's in his study working on his book. You know, that mystery with the Yiddish-speaking, kick-boxing grandmother as the sleuth? Anyway, sometimes he doesn't show his face for hours."

  Susannah clapped her hands. "Goody. Then we can get right to work and surprise him."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Wait right there!" Susannah popped outside and reentered a moment later pulling an enormous suitcase on wheels.

  "What's that?"

  "Your disguise."

  "Think again, dear. I'm not going anywhere dressed as a suitcase."

  "Don't be silly. There's costumes and makeup in here." Susannah dragged the case into the middle of the room and hoisted it
onto Gabe's coffee table. She opened it, displaying a bewildering jumble of wigs, clothes, and cosmetic implements. The inside of that valise was every bit as messy as her room had been when she was a teenager.

  I backed off after a cursory glance. "I thought we agreed I was going to dress like you. I don't see any mummy clothes in there."

  "Very funny, sis. I thought about that, and decided it wouldn't work. There can only be one me, especially here in Hernia. So, I've decided to make you over into somebody so different nobody would every suspect it was you."

  "And who would that be?"

  "Somebody glamorous."

  Susannah was true to her word. I've met a lot of the Hollywood crowd over the years (my inn is a popular getaway for the shallow but wealthy) and have learned that a lot of the image those folks project is just smoke and mirrors. What I mean is, few of them are perfect physical specimens when viewed up close, without the benefit of hair stylists and makeup men. Some of the men are shockingly short, and most of the women have long since forgotten their natural hair color. Why, even the Good Lord probably doesn't have teeth as straight and white as your average starlet's.

  My baby sister knew all that, and had taken it into account. She plucked, puttied, and pulled on yours truly. She even used a bit of duct tape. When she was done, about an hour and a half after she began, I was a curvaceous blonde in a short—by my standards— hot pink dress, with a somewhat wayward nose. My errant schnozz aside, I was downright beautiful.

  "There!" Susannah said with satisfaction. She stood behind me while I gazed into Gabe's bathroom mirror. "What do you think?"

  I caught my breath. "I'm just too good to be true."

  "Look, you even have cleavage."

  I did indeed. "Can't take my eyes off of me."

  "You like that dress, huh?"

  I stroked the silky fabric. "I feel like Heaven to touch."

  "And I want you so very much."

  I whirled. Gabe was standing in the doorway, his blue eyes twinklinjg.

  "Gabe!" My hands flew to cover my cleavage.

  "Wow," he said, "you look really hot, you know that?"

  "I look like a trollop."

  He chuckled. "Boy, I could get really used to this."

  "Well, don't. As soon as I wrap up this investigation I'll be getting back into some good Christian clothes."

  Gabe frowned. "You mean you're actually planning to go out dressed like that?"

  "Why not?" The truth is, I had no intention of leaving Gabe's farmhouse dressed like the Whore of Babylon. Surely there was something else in Susannah's bag of tricks I could wear. If the Good Lord approved of cleavage, he would have given Eve a push-up bra instead of an animal skin when she shed her fig leaves.

  Gabe's frown turned into furrows. A skilled farmer could have planted corn kernels in those disapproving creases.

  "Because like you said, Magdalena, you look like a hooker."

  I fixed my faded blue orbs on his sparkling sapphires. "Is this observation based on personal experience?"

  "Hey, give me a break, Mags. I was just being honest."

  I tugged at the plunging neckline. My gifts may be modest, but the duct tape Susannah had used, plus a product called Bosom Buddies, had all but made my cups overflow. They were teacups to be sure, not mugs, but a gal can't be choosy.

  "And if I did go out like this?" I asked.

  He had the audacity to laugh. "Well, you won't, of course, because I forbid it."

  "You what?"

  "You heard me. No girlfriend of mine is going to strut her stuff looking like that."

  I'd shed my faithful brown brogans for a pair of pink pumps. I stamped one so hard the bathroom mirror rattled. "No one, but no one tells me what to wear. If I want to strut my stuff—as you so crudely put it—I will."

  Susannah clapped her hands with glee. "You go, girl!"

  Gabe's face was grim. "And just how do you plan to get where you're going?"

  "You said this morning at breakfast that you'd loan me your car. In fact, you said that thanks to the revisions you had to make on your novel, you might not be sticking your head out that door for days. Possibly even weeks."

  Gabe grunted and tossed the keys in my general direction. "Go ahead and make a fool of yourself. See if I care. But you'll have the whole town talking, you know that."

  Gabe's keys had fallen on the floor, but I snatched them up before he changed his mind. "That's i/they figure out who I am. But let's say they do—what business is this of yours?"

  At a loss for words, Gabe glared and then strode back down the hallway. No doubt somebody was going to pay for my contrariness, if only in the pages of his mystery.

  "Wow," Susannah said, as the last echo of Gabe's footsteps faded, "you're something else, sis. I always thought you were kind of—well, you know—a stick-in-the-mud. But you know something? You're pretty cool after all."

  "Not in hot pink, I'm not." I whipped the fractional frock off over my head, taking with it Goldilocks' tresses. "Now give me something decent," I ordered.

  "Oh man," Susannah whined, but did as she was told.

  When I pulled into Hannah Zug's gravel drive I was blond again, but I'd shed the tight pink dress in favor of a royal blue one with princess seams and a skirt that came well below my knees. I was still quite shapely, mind you; I just didn't look like I was out to

  welcome home the fleet. I was still wearing pumps as well, but now they were black (Susannah didn't have everything in that suitcase).

  Freni had been absolutely right. Someone in the Zug family had a green thumb. Maybe yellow, red, and purple fingers too. I had never seen such a profusion of flowers, certainly not on an Amish farm.

  While Amish do cultivate flowers—they are a gift from God, after all—their beds tend to be simple in design, the different varieties arranged neatly in rows. The Zug flower garden seemed to have been lifted from an English country estate. The plants bordering the drive were low and compact, giving way to successively taller flanks; the colors swirled as on a painter's pallet. The perfume nearly knocked me off my pumps.

  I stooped to sniff a particularly redolent rose in the middle of a bed. "Aaah," I said aloud, "now that's what Eden must have smelled like."

  "Thank you," the rose said.

  "You're welcome—" I recoiled in shock. I would have fallen off my shoes for sure, had I not finally noticed the young woman on her hands and knees behind the rose bush.

  "Good heavens!" I gasped for breath. "You scared the living daylights out of me."

  The woman stood and smiled. She was holding a mason jar containing dozens of scrabbling Japanese beetles, and multitudes of other flying, buzzing, and wiggling insects.

  "In Eden, they do not have these bugs I think."

  "Have you tried Sevrin? It will work on the beetles for sure."

  "Ach, these chemicals I do not like to use."

  I nodded. "It was just a thought. Personally, I like to let my chickens do most of the work in my garden. But then again my garden isn't nearly as nice as yours. Say, you wouldn't happen to be Hannah Zug, would you?"

  Admittedly, it was a stupid thing to say. The bug lady was petite, and herself a blonde. She looked about as much like Emma as I did. She was, however, quite clearly an Amish woman, belonging to one of the more conservative sects in Bedford County.

  My question startled the bug lady. Her eyes widened, and the knuckles on the hand holding the jar turned white.

  "You are from the newspaper, yah?"

  "Excuse me?"

  “The National Intruder." She looked as if she would have happily flown away on the back of a giant beetle, given the opportunity. I could see her eyeing the farmhouse, calculating the time it would take her to run to safety.

  "I'm not from that gossip rag," I said.

  "Then you have come to sell me something, yah?"

  "Absolutely not, dear. I'm a friend of your sister's."

  The ja
r in Hannah's slim little hand shook. "I must go," she said softly, and began to thread her way delicately, but rapidly, through the flowers.

  "But I am," I wailed. "Well, at least I know her."

  Hannah reached the drive and broke into a trot. I have longer legs, so keeping up with her was no trouble.

  "I'm a Mennonite!" I cried. "I'm Magdalena Yoder, owner of the PennDutch Inn!"

  "Magdalena Yoder is dead," she called over her shoulder. "You should not play such games."

  "Everybody thinks she's dead. But I was in a car accident, you see, and two people very dear to me whisked me away before the police arrived. Because they, the police, can't find my body, they think I drowned in some creek. Anyway, I can prove who I am."

  Hannah froze, and I nearly plowed into her. Fortunately I'd been adept at hopscotch as a girl, and I applied some of those moves now. Two hops and a skip and I was in front of her. I whipped off the silly wig.

  "You see? It really is me!"

  I might as well have been Calista Flockhart claiming to be Mrs. Santa Claus. Hannah tried to step around me. One move, though, and I had her blocked.

  She shook her head. "Magdalena Yoder was a famous woman.

  I have seen her picture many times in the real newspaper. She did not look like you."

  "That's because I'm wearing makeup. Tons of it. You have to believe it's me."

  She sighed. "I did not want to be rude, but Miss Yoder does not have the same nose."

  "That's because I broke it!"

  She peered at my probing proboscis. "Maybe. But the rest of you—it is not the same."

  "Well, normally I don't wear royal blue, and of course I never ever wear pumps. Why, a body could break a leg on these. That little hop and a skip I did was pretty remarkable, don't you think?"

  "It is not the clothes. They are English, I can see. It is—ach, how should I say this? Magdalena Yoder is like a pancake. You are like two muffins. Two very big muffins."

  "That's just duct tape! Susannah squished them together—well, never mind. Just trust me. Normally I'm a carpenter's dream."

  She considered that for a moment. "So who are your enemies? If you are really Magdalena Yoder, you will know the answer to this question."