Mean and Shellfish

by Tamar Myers

  ‘Only two times, dear,’ I said. ‘But I survived Melvin’s attempts to murder me, and that’s what counts. What’s more—’

  ‘Mags,’ Gabe said sternly, ‘I wasn’t serious in the parlour. You know, about having this conversation.’

  ‘Well, you could have fooled me,’ I said crisply.

  Delphia swallowed a gulp of tea. ‘Where Tiny and I come from, it’s the height of bad manners to argue in front of your guests. Since y’all have brought up a subject that is obviously important enough to generate some pretty strong emotions, then I believe we, the victims of your negative energy, have the right to know what’s going on.’

  ‘I concur with this rather odd woman,’ Cheryl said.

  My blabbermouth husband needed no further encouragement. ‘I was going to add that at least three other people did die. Plus, authorities are guessing that there are more victims in other states.’ He sighed dramatically. ‘Also, to be perfectly honest, I worry about the issue of so-called “bad blood”.’

  That’s when I dropped a carrot stick. ‘Bad blood?’ I said. ‘I can’t believe you, a doctor, just said that!’

  ‘I don’t mean it literally, hon, but since this convicted murderer is your half-brother, that makes him my son’s half-uncle. The jury is not completely out yet about what sort of emotional and mental tendencies can be inherited.’

  ‘Just shut up, Gabe,’ Cheryl said. ‘You know there’s no such thing as “bad blood”.’

  Even at that point I could see Ida swaying. The short woman had been headed back to the buffet for more noshes when our conversation had made her pause in her elfin tracks. Given that her weight distribution is skewed almost entirely to the top front of her frame, the odds were good that she would plotz face down on my hardwood floor. At least she wouldn’t leave any dents, unlike me, with my ice-pick of a nose.

  ‘Magdalena,’ she managed to croak. ‘Eez dis evil man really your brooder?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Then plotz Ida did. Fortunately for her, Tiny Hancock was sitting at the end of the table nearest to where she was standing, and he was able to reach out with a gargantuan arm and stop her fall. Perhaps the most distressing aspect of the moment was that his outstretched gargantuan hand made contact with Ida’s most downward-facing body part, which was by far her enormous bosom.

  This spontaneous action by Tiny elicited three quite unexpected responses: Ida regained consciousness and shrieked like a banshee on steroids; Tiny’s jealous wife Delphia joined in the din with her basso profundo voice; and the Babester began hollering at me for subjecting his poor mother to humiliation.

  I felt my face turn fifty shades of white. Nonetheless, I rushed over to support my teetering mother-in-law. Because Ida is so top-heavy, and has such tiny tootsies, standing her upright was like balancing a bowling pin on its head. Throughout the ordeal, her stubby arms whirled like hummingbird wings, and I was struck repeatedly about my head and shoulders.

  ‘Now how do you feel?’ Cheryl said to me.

  ‘Like a punching bag,’ I said.

  ‘I meant,’ Cheryl said, reprovingly, ‘do you feel proud of yourself?’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Agnes said. ‘You have no idea how much ts-ts – what’s that word, Mags?’

  ‘Tsuris?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one,’ Agnes said, continuing to address Cheryl. ‘Your mother did everything that she could to make my friend’s life miserable before you came to town, and even since then. Besides, Magdalena wasn’t the one who spilled the beans about her half-brother being a convicted murderer; it was your brother who did that. So you need to apologize to Magdalena.’

  ‘Ha! I’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘Nor should you,’ Delphia said. She turned to me. ‘Since your one-woman fan club stopped you from answering this woman’s question, I’m going to ask you the same question a second time. Miss Yoder, are you proud of yourself for causing an old woman so much distress?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but to be completely honest, I do feel rather satisfied.’

  Delphia snorted. ‘And here I thought you were supposed to be a good Christian woman.’

  ‘Oy vey,’ I said, and rolled my eyes so far back into my head I could see just how pitifully small my brain really was.

  ‘Enough!’ Cheryl said in a commanding tone. ‘Look, lady, you asked Magdalena how she felt about herself, and she gave you an honest answer. I am not a Christian, and I assume that you are, but I would think that a good Christian is supposed to be honest. That is exactly what Magdalena was. She was honest.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Tiny said.

  ‘Where, where?’ Agnes said and winked at me, for that used to be my line.

  ‘Why I never!’ Delphia said.

  ‘Then maybe you should,’ Agnes said, and smiled slyly.

  As for me, I was gobsmacked that Cheryl would do such a quick about-face and stick up for me, her mere sister-in-law. They say that blood is thicker than water, and although Cheryl and I weren’t ‘blood’ we were still family, so I guess that made our relationship thicker than water – perhaps akin to low-fat milk. Delphia, however, was a true outsider, and as objectionable as I was to Cheryl, it was heart-warming to know that in her mind I took precedence over my guest from the great state of Texas.

  Gabe smiled, so I decided to cut my losses then and go for a walk. Perhaps it was too early to mourn the loss of Granny. I’d grown up with the sarcastic spectre and had never contemplated life without her. I hadn’t even considered if such a thing was possible. Perhaps she would show up on the morrow, just like the sun sometimes does in Pennsylvania (I’ve heard that it almost always does so in Southern California). In the meantime exercise, fresh air, and solitude were what I needed, so I headed out towards my patch of woods.

  After my parents died in that horrible accident, squashed as they were between two trucks in a tunnel, I sold off all of their dairy farm except for twenty-eight acres with the house and the barn. Seven of these acres are in pasture, and twenty are in woods. The house and surrounding lawns make up the twenty-eighth.

  To reach the woods, one must walk (or skip gaily) through the pasture (avoiding the cow pies if desired), where one is sure to encounter my pair of resident bovines. As I have mentioned before, one is a Jersey milk cow named Milchig, and the other an Angus beef calf named Fleischig. This particular afternoon found them on the far side of a small, spring-fed pond that sits approximately in the middle of the pasture.

  My intention was to head over to them to say ‘hello’ before my walk in the woods. With few exceptions, I find animals to be far less annoying than people. Perhaps I should never have sold off my father’s dairy herd and stayed out of the people-pleasing business. But I was just a young woman of twenty-two when my parents died, and when I dove head-first into the inn-keeping business just eight years later, I was a good deal more tolerant of everyone else’s shortcomings than I am now.

  I was halfway around the pond when I heard my name being called. In the Bible, there is the true story of Balaam’s ass speaking to him. By that, I mean his donkey, not his hindquarters. Because neither Fleischig nor Milchig had spoken to me, it was only natural that I assumed that the voice I heard out in my open field was the voice of the Lord. I’m sure you agree.

  ‘Here I am,’ I trilled. However, I didn’t stop walking. I’ve always fancied a late-afternoon stroll with the Lord, the two of us ambling across rolling green meadows that are punctuated by drifts of wildflowers. Perhaps a cow pasture dotted with clumps of manure doesn’t quite compare with the former, but one can’t always be too picky, can one?

  ‘I know where you are, Magdalena,’ the voice called to me. ‘Stand still and let me catch up.’

  Now that was a bit odd, even for God. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but just that so much of His ways are hard for us mere mortals to understand. Now, I’ve been accused of walking fast when I get a bee in my bonnet, both literally and figuratively, but surely I couldn’t outwalk the Goo
d Lord. So why did God need me to wait for Him to catch up?

  ‘If you like, Lord,’ I hollered through cupped hands at the sky, ‘why don’t you just zap me up to Heaven and we can do our chatting up there. I’m positive I’ll be sliding all over those slippery golden streets mentioned in the Book of Revelation. You can be sure I’ll be taking baby steps up there. But when we’re done talking, please zap me back down here again because I have to feed this ungrateful bunch supper, and I have more worrying to do about Alison. Worrying is one of the few talents that you gave me – not that I’m complaining, mind you. Sir.’

  The next vocalizations I heard were definitely not the Lord’s; they came from Chief of Police Toy Graham. They started out as a series of pants, and then pants alternating with guffaws. I had no idea that Toy had been following me, and I was not amused that he had been witness to my desire to have an actual, Old Testament-style religious experience. Just because I believe that every word in the Bible is literally true, does not make me foolish or ignorant. There are plenty of other things that I do, and believe, that qualify me for those labels.

  ‘Don’t even start with me,’ I said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘OK,’ Toy said. ‘Who am I to judge. But just so you know, I have an aunt in Melbourne, Australia who believes that Heaven is located straight up in the sky somewhere directly above her house.’

  ‘Get out of town and back!’ I cried. ‘That’s fascinating; I’ve been puzzling over that same question all my life. I mean, when the Rapture happens, we Christians can’t take off in all directions, given that there’s a billion of us worldwide. Some of us are bound to get lost in space – wait a minute! You’re mocking me, aren’t you?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Toy said. ‘You never fail to charm me, Magdalena.’

  ‘Really?’ My high-pitched squeak sent a family of field mice scampering back to their burrow.

  ‘Really, but that’s not why I want to talk to you. We tried to trace the sewage truck, but still no hits. Now about that snake: apparently you were lied to this morning by a Miss Viola Taylor. Reverend Splitfrock did not leave town with his flock. He was actually inside Miss Taylor’s house at the time, possibly even in her bed.’

  ‘No way! I mean, how do you know?’

  ‘His wife was inside the parsonage when you stopped by earlier; she just didn’t want to get involved. That is until after she saw Miss Viola Taylor run out and talk to you. She waited a while and called me. She said she’d been watching her husband sneak in and out of Miss Taylor’s house for the last three weeks, but this is the first time that he’s done it in broad daylight. She finally worked up the nerve to call him on it and threatened him with a nasty divorce. It turns out that Reverend Splitfrock was rather surprised by that. He’d reckoned that as head of the church he could get away with just about anything.’

  ‘As it says in the Book of Numbers 32:23: “Be sure your sins will find you out”.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Toy said agreeably, ‘whatever that means.’

  ‘It means that sooner or later you’re going to get caught,’ I said, ‘and that there will be consequences.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Toy said. ‘Then you’re going to like this. About an hour after Mrs Splitfrock laid into her husband, one of the church deacons called the reverend to report that the church with sixty-six names had been broken into during the night and burgled. Can you guess what was taken?’

  ‘Collection plate money?’ I said. It was a solid guess.

  ‘Come on, Magdalena, you can do better than that. Use your imagination.’

  ‘Seven cherry pies and an albino giraffe?’ I said wearily.

  Toy laughed. ‘You’re warmer this time, even though they are not warm-blooded. The answer is a rather large terrarium containing a dozen rattlesnakes.’

  ‘Get out of town and back!’

  ‘Magdalena, where did you learn to talk like that? No other Mennonite I know uses those expressions.’

  ‘I’m not like any other Mennonite.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ Toy said. ‘I didn’t mean that to sound bad. Anyway, the reverend called me, and he asked me to help him find his missing snakes, so I told him the approximate location of at least one of them. Or what I assumed was one of them.’

  ‘What was his reaction?’ I said.

  ‘He was surprised that it appeared that just a single snake had been set loose. He would have expected the vandals to dump out the contents of the entire terrarium and then run, leaving the ground crawling with the serpents. He didn’t think that a sane person would be brave enough to reach into the glass tank to extract a single snake by hand.’ Toy chuckled. ‘That’s a bit ironic, don’t you think?’

  ‘Now, now, we mustn’t judge,’ I said. ‘To paraphrase an old Quaker saying: everyone’s looney but thee and me, and sometimes I wonder about thee.’ (But mostly me, I added under my breath.)

  ‘Besides,’ I continued, ‘what made Reverend Splitfrock think that it was vandals, and not run-of-the-mill thieves who swiped the slimy serpents?’

  ‘You’ve obviously never held a snake, Magdalena; they are not slimy. Anyway, when you mentioned the collection plates a minute ago, you were sort of on the right track. These people don’t believe in banks, so they keep the weekly offerings in a locked wooden box in the pastor’s office until disbursements are needed. Virtually all the members know where it is. Magdalena, I know that you’ve had a really rotten day—’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘But if I were to string together a theory now, I’d have to say, and forgive me for saying this, but it’s clear that some person, or persons, has gone to a lot of trouble to ruin this day in particular for you in particular, including murdering two of your intended guests. We’re not talking about a random killer here – I reckon they know you, Mags. Someone who wishes you harm …’

  I batted at a fly as I stood and digested what Toy had said. That stupid fly kept trying to land at the corners of my mouth. Few things are more disgusting than flies when one is standing in a cow pasture. At last my brain sorted it all out, connected all the dots, and formed a very detailed but horrifying picture.

  ‘Come on, let’s go back to the house,’ I said quietly. ‘On the way there, I’ll tell you who killed the couple that Monotone Mona discovered in Sam Yoder’s dumpster bin, and why their killer is torturing me. I have it all figured out now.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Toy grabbed my arm. ‘Who? Who murdered that couple who were scheduled to be your guests?’

  ‘Someone who hates me more than anyone else?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Magdalena,’ Toy said. ‘Did you just hear yourself? How sad that there is even one person that hates you.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but when you’ve solved as many crimes as I have, and been responsible for those folks doing time in prison, then it is inevitable that some of them will hate you – even want you dead.’

  ‘So who is it now?’ he asked. ‘Because I know for a fact that Wanda Hemphopple is still locked up. She’s not even eligible for parole for another ten years.’

  ‘It’s Melvin Stoltzfus.’

  ‘Our Melvin Stoltzfus? Hernia’s ex-chief of police? That scrawny little ninety-pound weakling with the bobbly head and the googly eyes?’

  ‘Tch, tch, it’s not nice to judge someone on their physical appearance. You’re a better man that. However, you’ve described him perfectly, except that I would have added that he looks like a praying mantis. But those are all things that could be disguised by a magenta jumpsuit with the collar turned up, and a duck mask.’

  Toy’s hands are slightly smaller than mine, a fact which annoys me, but they are much quicker. He managed to catch that pesky fly on the wing and throw it with enough force on the surface of the pond that it broke the tension of the water. A second later a sunfish gulped it down.

  I offered Toy some hand sanitizer from a small bottle that I keep in my skirt pocket, but he refused. ‘Nah, I’ll just wash
back at your house. I don’t mean to cast shade on your theory from the get-go, but bear in mind that Cheryl saw two people in disguise operating the sewage truck hose.’

  Then I told Toy that the Hancocks had seen the same magenta ducks in my woods, and that Delphia had stumbled into a twelve-inch-deep trough lined with bamboo kabob skewers. Also, the tiny lady with the big mouth was threatening to sue me for grave bodily injury.

  ‘Was she injured?’ Toy asked.

  ‘My doctor husband wrapped a cloth bandage twice around her shin just to cover a small scratch. Trust me, a child-size Band-Aid would have sufficed, but Gabe went overboard in order to give us a moment’s peace.’

  ‘Good for him. But like I said before, we’re dealing with two quacks – pardon the pun – people in the magenta jumpsuits wearing the duck masks.’

  ‘Yes, but Toy, don’t you remember Melvinism and the Church of Melvin?’

  Toy shook his head and laughed. ‘I wasn’t here for that, but I’ve for sure heard about it. Folks here really took him that seriously? That they worshipped him?’

  ‘An egomaniacal man will do anything to be adored,’ I said. ‘My loser half-brother wrote the Gospel of Melvin, which is the most sacrilegious book that you can imagine. Allow me to quote just the very first verse: “Every word in this book has been divinely inspired, and thou dost know that they are true because they art contained therein.”’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘You see?’ I said. ‘You can’t use a claim within a manuscript to prove its veracity.’

  ‘But don’t you do that?’ Toy said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You believe that the Bible is true because it says that it is true. Am I right?’

  ‘That’s different, because God wrote the Bible!’

  ‘Magdalena—’

  ‘And don’t confuse me with facts,’ I said. ‘What I wanted to say before was that, for some strange reason, which I will never figure out, Melvin Stoltzfus is so stupid that he once sent ice cream by mail to his aunt in Florida. Yet somehow he was still able to attract a huge cult following with his made-up religion. Who just makes up a religion, I ask you? Who can claim to have found a book buried in a field, and then have over a hundred – make that two hundred – people believe him? It’s bizarre!