Batter Off Dead (21 page)

“Harrumph. And just when I thought we were getting to be friends.”

“I thought so too. Tell me, Wanda, what have I done to offend you now? And just so you know, I fully intended to retrieve that sausage link that I dropped down your beehive at the pancake breakfast, but then Minerva keeled over dead and—”

“You
what
?” Wanda doubled over at the waist and shook her head vigorously. Out of the volcanic cone of a hairdo fell a fork, a book of matches, three toothpicks, and a button, but no sausage link.

“I was just kidding, dear. Really, Wanda, you might want to shampoo that thing occasionally. Aren’t you afraid of rats?”

“Magdalena, how could you? And after what you did to me in high school.” Then I really did drop a wiener down her do, and it stayed there until it got ripe enough to draw attention to itself.

“I was mere kid then, a child of seventeen. Besides, I’ve apologized a million times. Now, may we skip to the part where you effusively admire my baby, whom you haven’t seen since his little—um—thing was ritually made even smaller.”

Wanda flipped the perilous pile of filthy hair back into a skyward position and glanced at the cutest baby ever to render a human body practically in twain. Little Jacob was wide awake and even smiled at the restaurateur—then again, he may have been merely passing gas beneath the privacy of his blanket. Either way, the effect was the same.

“As I live and breathe, Magdalena, this
is
the cutest baby I have ever seen! He looks exactly like his father.”

“Thanks.”

“I was being sincere, by the way—on both counts. Say, what’s the deal with the Sisters of Appetite?”

“You mean Sisters of Apathy,” I said.

“I meant what I said. If you think Minerva ate a lot, these ladies would have given her a run for her money—except that would be
your
money, given that Susannah said lunch was on you.”

“They were
here
?”

Wanda is a keen practitioner of schadenfreude. She nodded happily, causing the tower of vermin atop her head to teeter perilously.

“You bet your bippy,” she said.

“When?”

“They left not more then five minutes ago. What a strange bunch. One of them sounded just like your mother-in-law.”

“It was; Ida Rosen is now Sister Disaster.”

“Wow. But hey, wouldn’t that make her your sister-in-law as well?”

“Probably. Now, if you’ll excuse me, dear, my dogs are barking, so I’d like to sit down.”

“Dogs? I don’t allow animals in here, Magdalena! Not even that rat of Susannah’s—or Mother Disturbed, or whatever it is she calls herself.”

“It’s just an expression; it means my feet hurt.”

“Okay, okay, you don’t need to be so grouchy.”

“I’m not being grouchy,” I may have snapped. Honestly, nothing makes me crabbier than being accused of being irritable in the first place. It’s unfair, and I hate injustice, plain and simple. It’s not a character fault and I don’t need to apologize for the fact that I sometimes have the right to be annoyed.

“I put youse in the Oak Dining Room on account of there’s so many of youse,” Wanda said, and without a trace of sarcasm.

With Little Jacob’s carrier slung over one arm I trotted along behind the hostess with the mostest—hairdo, that is. The Sausage Barn has two special meeting rooms, the Oak and the Sycamore, and I’ve eaten in both plenty of times, but never by myself. Oh well, as long as I got fed, who cared.

 

 

I have been blessed with healthy gums and strong enamel. Were that not the case, my dentures would surely have cracked when my jawbone hit the floor. As it was, my chin took quite a beating and I had to set Little Jacob on the nearest table while I stooped to pick up that errant part of my anatomy.

“Well I’ll be dippety-doodled and hornswaggled,” I eventually gasped.

“What did she say?” the Zug wife demanded. “Is that American?”

“It’s Magdalena trying to speak southern,” Frankie snarled. “We don’t all speak that way, including the southerners.”

I stared at my entire list of suspects. Even the smug mug of Alison’s math teacher, Merle Waggler, was represented. What had he done, called in sick? And at the taxpayer ’s expense! Perhaps it really
was
time to look for his replacement.

But if one cannot help being taken by surprise now and then, it is best to keep an arsenal of snappy rejoinders ever at one’s disposal. I pulled just such a zinger from my verbal quiver and took aim at the handsome Elias Whitmore.

“How’s the BUM business, dear?”

“Now, I recognize filthy American innuendo when I hear it,” the Zug wife said.

“Actually, dear,” an unidentified Zug twin said, “it stands for Beiler’s Udder Massage, and it’s a cream that you rub on a cow to keep the milking machine from chafing.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Might I assume that you are to be paired with the wife who just spoke?”

“You might,” said the other twin, “on account of my wife just ran off with your sister and her traveling circus.”

“Indeed? I must say, that bus has engendered a good deal of fuss.”

“That’s not even remotely funny,” my former Sunday school teacher, the ailing James Neufenbakker, said. “Magdalena, your sister is a pagan.”

“As is the runaway Zug spouse, dear.”

“She has a name,” her husband said hotly. “It’s Annabelle.”

“Why, even that name has pagan undertones, given that it was the name of the tragic character in Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Annabelle Lee.’ ”

“I’ve always liked that poem,” George Hooley said.

“Aren’t these short hours, even for a banker?” I asked. Without waiting for a reply, I returned to the woman from Winnipeg. “For your information, dear, Edgar Allan Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin.
That
makes him a certified heathen in my book.”

“Ha,” scoffed Merle Waggler, “that just goes to show what little you know; a pagan and a heathen are hardly the same thing.”

“You tell her, Merle,” said Frankie Schwartzentruber. “Honestly, Magdalena, sometimes you’re just too big for your bloomers.”

“Why does everyone have to pick on me?” I whined.

“Stop that as well,” Frankie snapped. “I like you better with a backbone.”

“Let her dangle,” Merle said. “It serves her right.”

“You see? Besides, spineless people don’t dangle; they slump.”

“People,
please
,” the handsome Elias said, “can we just get this over with?”

“Yes, let’s,” I said. “Wait just one greasy, sugar-coated, Sausage Barn minute! Get
what
over with?”

“Well,” said Wanda, bursting into the room, “are we ready to order?”

“Absolutely,” George said. He pursed his lips several times like a goldfish kissing its reflection on the side of its bowl. “But first, what exactly is the Dieter’s Surprise?”

Wanda chuckled uneasily. “Oh, that. Ya see, I had me one too many of those big-city tourists in here, with their highfalutin ways.”

“Is
that
an American word?”

“To the apple core,” I said. “So what surprise do you spring on them, Wanda?”

“Fried ice and doughnut holes.”

“But that’s nothing but water and air,” the Zug wife cried.

Wanda nodded proudly. “But that’s nothing. Magdalena charges her guests extra for the privilege of doing chores.”

“You don’t!”

“They should both be ashamed of themselves,” the handsome Elias Whitmore said, “and just so you know, neither of those practices is indicative of the way most Americans conduct business.”

“Some of us weren’t born with silver spoons in our mouths,” Wanda said.

The young man colored. “Just so you know, I may have inherited BUM from my family, but the BUM Wrap is my own creation. ‘For the udder bag that’s soft and pliable overnight,’ ” he sang, keeping time on the table with the blunt end of one of Wanda’s forks, which, by the way, was anything
but
silver.

“That’s a catchy tune,” Merle said. “Are there more lyrics?”

“What?”

“I think that’s sarcasm, dear,” I said. Then again, I couldn’t be sure.

Wanda pulled a stubby pencil—by the looks of it swiped from a miniature golf course—from the base of her beehive. “Okay, folks, enough chitter-chattering. I have a new fry cook today who’s just itching for some splattering. There, you see, I’m a poet
and
I know it.”

“Forget it, Wanda,” James Neufenbakker wheezed as he laid his menu on the table. “There’s not a one of us going to order until we’ve set Magdalena straight.”

 

Grated carrots, sesame seeds, and ground ginger give these small pancakes their distinctively Asian taste. They are perfect finger food with drinks before dinner or served as a side dish with grilled soy-marinated seafood or chicken. Once the ingredients are prepared, the pancakes go together and fry up very quickly. For the full flavor treatment, make sure to serve them with the Thai Dipping Sauce.

 

1. Toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over low heat, stirring until golden, about 2 minutes.

2. Combine the carrots, scallions, ginger, and garlic in a large bowl; stir to blend. Add the cracker meal, eggs, sesame seeds, and salt; stir to blend.

3. Heat ½ inch oil in a medium skillet until hot enough to sizzle a crust of bread. Add the batter by rounded tablespoons and fry, turning once, until browned on both sides. Repeat with the remaining batter.

4. Serve warm with Thai Dipping Sauce.

 

YIELD: MAKES ABOUT 20 BITE-SIZE PANCAKES.

 

Thai Dipping Sauce:
Combine ¼ cup soy sauce, ¼ cup fish sauce, ¼ cup fresh lime juice, ¼ cup hot water, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 tablespoons thinly sliced hot chili pepper, and 1 minced garlic clove in a small bowl. Serve at room temperature.

Why was I
not
surprised? Not that they should gang up on me—that was to be expected—but at the folly of humankind in general. What fools those mortals be that try to hold out against Wanda’s cooking. Throw in my stubbornness, and it’s about as effective as trying to instill moral values in a lost generation by burning one tube top at a time. After all, six of their number were male, three of whom were under forty and had the metabolism of tapeworms.

“We can eat, or you folks can lecture me,” I said, looking at Wanda. “
Or
, if you’re really clever, you can lecture me
while
you eat. I recommend the cheese omelet with extra-sharp cheddar, a rasher of bacon—now, that’s a funny word, isn’t it—hash browns, toast with marmalade, a stack of hotcakes, but forget the fruit plate. Wanda’s idea of fresh fruit means that she drained syrup from the can this morning.
Extra fresh
means that it was packed in light syrup.”

“How’s the oatmeal?” the Zug wife asked.

Frankie Schwartzentruber, who, despite her fearsome visage, is really a kind Christian woman, howled with laughter.

Even George Hooley, who could have gotten a job injecting citric acid into lemons, forced a grin.

“It’s an urban legend,” Wanda said. “Don’t listen to them.”

“Wanda’s right,” I said. “The story about her oatmeal being used to plaster the inside of the Allegheny Tunnel is simply not true, and I ought to know. Now, let’s get down to business: which one of you killed Minerva J. Jay? Who amongst you had the strongest motive?”

After that it was harder to get rid of Wanda than it was to get rid of head lice in a fifth-grade classroom. The promise of all the money in the world couldn’t begin to compare with the amount and quality of gossip she hoped to pass on to her customers. You could almost see the woman grow roots that cracked right through the linoleum-covered cement floor, eventually connecting her to a mighty banyan tree on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

Frankie Schwartzentruber was the first quisling in the bunch. “Elias Whitmore did it;
he’s
the one with the strongest motive.”

“What?”
Elias demanded. “She’s crazy!”

I pretended to glower over horn-rimmed reading glasses. Dismissive looks are always more effective when delivered over black plastic frames, don’t you agree?

“Elias is right, dear,” I said. “Your statement does put your sanity in doubt.”

“And why is that?” Frankie said passionately. “Everyone knows how much he detested Minerva.”

“Yes,” I said calmly, “but you all hated her. What I meant is that it’s highly improbable that anyone, especially a woman of your dotage, would just come right out and call Elias handsome to his face. One might think such a thing, but one doesn’t say it.”

“What on earth are you blathering about, Magdalena? I said no such thing!
You
, however, just did.”

“Oops. Perhaps my internal dialogue could use a wee bit of editing.”

“Minerva tried to blackmail me,” George said, taking me quite by surprise.

I nodded encouragingly. “Go on, dear.”

“She accused me of having an affair with my secretary.”

“I confessed, of course. That’s the only thing an honorable man can do when confronted with the evidence. You can expect me to be making a public confession at church this Sunday, Magdalena.”

“Was the secretary named Steve?”

“Magdalena, that’s just cruel,” the Zug twins said in unison.

“But George told me—”