Batter Off Dead (22 page)

“She’s always been this way,” James Neufenbakker said. “Ever since she was a little girl. I used to say that if there was one child in Hernia who was going to end up on the wrong side of the law, it would be Magdalena.”

“Is it any wonder she can’t keep a man?” Wanda wondered aloud.

Suddenly I felt sick, and I had yet to eat a single bite of the three basic Mennonite food groups: fat, sugar, and starch.
“What?”

“Oh, come on,” Wanda said, and pointed a badly maintained fingernail at my minuscule, but arguably beating heart. “Everyone in Hernia knows that Dr. Rosen walked out on you this morning, except for Widow Hastings, who is deaf and dumb—and by that I mean literally less intelligent than a hunk of salt pork.”

When no one objected, I stamped a size eleven down as hard as I could without permanently injuring myself. Having done it many times before, I seem to know just how far to go.

“That was so mean! If I had said that, you folks would be all over me like grease on one of Wanda’s menus.”

“That’s because we know you’re mean-spirited, Magdalena,” Frankie said. “Wanda, on the other hand, doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”

“Yes, she does,” the Zug wife said. “What else would you call that Dieter’s Surprise?”

“They’re only tourists,” Frankie hissed.

“Yes, but they could have been Canadians.”

Elias Whitmore sprang to his feet, and in the process knocked his chair backward to the floor. His rage made him more than handsome; it made him downright sexy—of course, in a Christian, older-married-lady, younger-unmarried-youth-leader, not-adulterous sort of way.

“And
that
would have made it all right?” he shouted.

“Simmer down, young fella,” James snapped.

“Don’t you tell me what to do,” Elias shouted, still caught up in his righteous rage. “I organized this intervention so that we could talk some sense into Magdalena, but I almost didn’t invite you. Do you know why? Because you can be a rude old coot, that’s why.”

My ears burned with indignation. “An intervention? Is that what this is supposed to be? For
what
? I have no addictions except for hot chocolate and ladyfingers.”

“It’s to stop you from picking on the brotherhood volunteers,” Frankie said.

But Elias wasn’t through with his tirade. Turning to George Hooley, he began wagging his finger, à la Bill Clinton.

“You, sir,” he said, “are no longer going to be my banker. I have to trust
my
banker.”

Merle Waggler snickered.

“Which brings me to you, Merle. I put up with you only because we’re commanded to love one another. If it was a personality contest, Magdalena would win hands down every time.”

I patted my bun, flattered to the hilt, as a strange stirring swept through my . . .

“Loins,” Wanda said, apropos the prospect of a dwindling profit. “I have several nice pork loins slow roasting in the kitchen; it doesn’t have to be breakfast.”

“Stuff your pork loins, Wanda,” Elias said. “Maybe I’ll come back for dinner.” Then he stomped out, no doubt ruing his decision to join forces with Frankie Iscariot Schwartzentruber and the not-so-merry band from the brotherhood.

“Just so you people know,” I said, “I’ve already spoken privately to each and every one of you, and each of you has what would appear to be ample motive to have done away with the quite ample Minerva.”

“That’s an out-and-out lie,” one of the Zug twins said. “You spoke to my brother, not me.”

“And I didn’t tell you anything,” the other one said.

“But it’s not fair! You have no business looking so much alike. What are you going to do, pray tell, if one of you makes it to the Pearly Gates, and the other twin ends up at the opposite place—”

“St. Louis International Airport, Concourse A?” the Zug wife asked.

“Something like that,” I said, “only not quite as bad, from what I hear. Anyway, what if your destinations are switched? At least one of you is going to have to do some mighty fast talking.”

“Oh, they’re not that hard to tell apart,” the Zug wife said. “
Trust
me.”

The twin closest to her sat bolt upright, like he’d just plonked his patooty on a tack. “What is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Once just for fun—never mind, darling. Perhaps this isn’t the right time and place, eh?”

“The Concourse A it isn’t!” the Zug twin shouted. With that he clambered to his feet and stumbled from the room, blinded as he was by tears. A few stunned seconds later he was followed by his cuckolded brother and the intentionally adulterous woman from Manitoba.

I say
intentionally
here, because one must always take care to differentiate between an inadvertent adulteress from Hernia and a wanton bed hopper from a thriving metropolis as large as Winnipeg. Yes, I had the wool pulled over my eyes by Aaron Miller, but the Zug wife, no doubt, pulled a colorfast, hypoallergenic poly-wool blend over two sets of Zug peepers and thus deserved every minute she’d spent in the St. Louis International Airport.

“Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming,” Frankie said as soon as the coast was clear.

Wanda, true to form, was busy taking notes on her order pad. “Leave it to Magdalena to clear out a room,” she mumbled.

I glanced around in mock surprise. “And yet I still hear voices. Unless someone tells me right now what you guys hoped to accomplish by this ambush, I’m going to continue swinging my wrecking ball until not a single one of you remains standing. Wanda, in your case, that would apply to the Ruti Tooti Faux-Fruiti Pineapple Upside-down Muffin recipe you swiped from Freni.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Start with one package of blueberry muffins from Pat’s IGA—”

George Hooley slipped an expensive-looking pen from the breast pocket of his three-piece gray suit and was writing every word down on his paper napkin.

“Stop!” Wanda cried.

She lunged at me, no doubt hoping to clamp a spidery hand across my lovely, loquacious lips (I say that with all modesty). Unfortunately for her, I sidestepped her charge, sending her sprawling headlong into Merle Waggler ’s chair. One would think that a man of Merle’s girth would have been able to anchor said chair and remain in a sitting position, but apparently he was like my favorite candy bar—“fluffy, not stuffy.”

It happened so fast that I barely had time to enjoy it, even in retrospect. The sight of Wanda and Merle tangled in a melee of waving arms and legs and a wobbling beehive was nothing short of a balm for my aching heart. Of course I repented of this sin, but to be absolutely honest, I did so a bit later in the day. After all, schadenfreude, like a cup of good homemade cocoa (served with ladyfingers for dipping), is to be savored.

Predictably, Wanda was beyond livid and would have called the sheriff, had I not threatened to reveal more of the recipe. As for Merle, his pants somehow split in the fracas, revealing a bit more than he’d intended, such as that some men wear neither briefs nor boxer shorts. As a result I got a bird’s-eye view of what one might describe—if one were using a vegetable metaphor—as two tiny peas and a baby carrot. Even Little Jacob, it seemed, was better equipped than the smirking, smart-mouthed Merle.

I tried to avert my gaze, but it was like trying not to notice the huge booger half out of your minister ’s nose when he greets you on Sunday morning. (At least I only stared at Reverend Amstutz; it was Mama who unintentionally called him Reverend Booger to his face, and then refused to go to church for the next six weeks because she was so embarrassed.) At any rate, Merle’s full disclosure sent him fleeing from the room as soon as he assessed the situation, which wasn’t soon enough for anyone else.

“Well, that certainly explains his Napoleon complex,” Frankie declared as the door swung shut behind her compatriot.

“That does it, Magdalena,” James Neufenbakker said as he struggled to his feet. “You absolutely humiliated that man. Shame on you; you are a disgrace to the Mennonite community. I am going to start a petition asking to have you removed as head deaconess.”

“
What?
You can’t do that!”

“Watch me.” He began shuffling for the door.

“But I didn’t do anything except dodge a menopausal missile; the pants split on their own accord.”

“You pushed me,” Wanda huffed. She’d dropped her order pad and pencil so that both hands could be free to shore up the Hemphopple tower of pestilence.

Had I come alone, I could have risked the prospect of her beehive actually collapsing. But I had Little Jacob’s health to consider. Twenty years of unwashed hair threatened to be every bit as lethal as Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

“Toodleoo, dears,” I said as I scooped up my precious in his car seat.

“You can’t leave now!” Frankie screeched.

I scurried to the door, but I had to wait until James shuffled through before I could plant one foot firmly outside. “Frankie, I only invited the Zug wives here for lunch. As far as I am concerned, the rest of you are all interlopers and, as such, have interfered in a semiofficial investigation. Believe me, this is all going down in my report.”

Frankie had lived too long to be intimidated. “What we’re trying to tell you, you dunderhead, is that you’re barking up the wrong tree. Yes, we may all have our reasons for not having liked Minerva J. Jay, but why limit your investigation to the members of the brotherhood?”

I was flummoxed. “What in tarnation is a dunderhead?”

“It means you’re a dunce. And according to
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
, it’s been an English word since 1625.”

One has to admire a woman with a head for facts, no matter how annoying she is. “Frankie, even a dunce like
moi
has to conclude that it had to be an inside job; no one else had access to the batter.”

“Yes, they did.”

“
Excuse
me?”

“Who was it who objected to putting port-a-johns in the north corner of the parking lot?”

“But renting them would have eaten into our profits.”

“So instead we let people come through the kitchen on their way to the restroom.”

“Only if they
really
had to go. Those were the strict instructions I gave you.”

“Little children always wait until the last minute, so they always have to
really
go. As for adults drinking coffee, and those with incontinence issues—”

“Okay, I get the picture. But surely they were shepherded right through without any dawdling.”

“You were there, Magdalena, serving pancakes out front. You saw how many people there were. That breakfast was a much bigger success this year than any of us had anticipated. And if you thought it was busy on your end, you should have spent more time in the kitchen. If someone had to walk through to get to the restroom, we didn’t have time to stop what we were doing and escort them.”

I nodded reluctantly. We’d actually made a killing on breakfast, no pun intended. The mixes were generic and had been about to expire, so I was able to pick them up for a song at Pat’s IGA in Bedford. I mean that literally. When I saw the dates on the boxes, I took them up to Pat and began to sing the opening aria by Aida from the opera by that name (it is something the Babester has forced me to listen to after you-know-what). At any rate, my singing voice has been compared to a cross between nails on a chalkboard and a basset hound in heat. Pat gave me not only three cartons of pancake mix, but as much generic syrup as I wanted as well.

“You see,” George said—reminding me that he was present—“Minerva’s killer could have been
anybody
. It could even have been the Baptist minister. He was there that morning, and he once called her the Whore of Babylon.”

“He did? When?”

George’s eyes darted from side to side, as if checking for spies that might have sneaked soundlessly into the room during that split second when our attention was diverted to Merle and his cloven britches. “I shouldn’t be saying this, so consider it confidential, please. All of you, please. Reverend Brimstone is one of my clients—I mean, my
bank’s
clients. At any rate, we were talking once about people we know in Hernia, and Minerva’s name came up. Has anybody checked to see if Reverend Brimstone is still in town?”

“He was at Little Jacob’s bris,” I said. “I felt obligated to invite him since he’s one of the town’s leaders, being a clergyman and all.”

“He’s definitely still around,” Frankie said. “I ran into his wife at Sam Yoder’s Corner Market over the weekend. Did you know that they actually buy those canned snails that Sam sells? Escar
guts
I think they’re called.”

“Close enough, dear.”

“Besides, if the Brimstones had left town, we’d have heard plenty. Those Baptists are not a quiet bunch.”

“Wow,” I said. Wanda seemed to have her tower of terror under control now, so I stepped back into the room—but just for a second. “I guess that does change things a bit. Rest assured I will expand my investigation commensurate with the information I have gleaned from this most productive, but hardly digestible, lunch. Perhaps next time we will actually eat.”

That said, it was time to make like a stocking in a briar patch. And run I did, for I had just experienced an epiphany of sorts.

I was starving by then, and Freni had taken off for the rest of the day, so what was a nursing mother to do? Perhaps drive the two miles up to the turnpike and hit the plethora of fast-food restaurants that have brought splashes of bold color and bright lights to our otherwise boring landscape of farms, forests, and small towns? While a triple cheeseburger and a large chocolate shake were rather tempting, it was doubtful the young staff at any of these establishments would be willing, or able, to deliver wise counsel along with my meal. Therefore, a home-cooked meal and the ear of an old coot were definitely worth the ten-mile drive to the far side of Hernia.