"God," Jim groaned. "I didn't really expect that to happen."
"Well, neither did I, dear, but - what do you mean, you didn't expect that to happen?"
Perhaps my voice was a little too loud, or my tone too strident but before Jim could answer, Nurse Dudley poked her head in the door.
"Everything all right?"
I slapped on my bonnet and glasses. "Yah."
Nurse Dudley gave me the fish eye.
I nudged Jim. "We're just fine," he called.
"Oh." But Nurse Dudley didn't budge. She was a few watts brighter than Lauren Brightwell, and no doubt she found it odd for an Amish woman to be visiting an out-of-town executive.
"Tell her we're praying," I whispered.
"We're praying," Jim said.
"Praying? How nice - say, you look awfully familiar."
"Ach, we all look alike," I said, trying to sound like Barbara Hostetler.
"Come to think of it, you even sound like someone I know."
"Shush," I said, putting a bony finger to my lips. "The prayer isn't over."
I grabbed Jim's hand, closed my eyes, and cast about for something to say in Pennsylvania Dutch. Alas, I know very little.
Although my parents were Mennonites, Mama's parents were Amish, as were Papa's grandparents. Both my parents were fluent in Pennsylvania Dutch and sometimes spoke it to each other, but I couldn't be bothered to learn something so quaint. Not when my friends at school were more modern, with-it Mennonites, or in one case, heaven forbid, a Methodist. I don't pretend to think fast on my feet, so at least give me credit for coming up with something.
"Eens, zwee, drei, vier, fimf, sex, siwwe, acht, nein, zehe."
Counting can sound like praying if one varies the cadence and emphasizes every third or fourth word.
"Amen," Jim said loudly.
"Wait a minute," Nurse Dudley said, taking a step inside the door.
My ticker was thumping like a flat tire on asphalt.
"My Brutus could use a prayer or two. I found him dead on his side of the bed this morning, all stiff and cold, and I haven't been able to get that picture out of mind."
"You have my sympathy," Jim said, and extended his hand.
Nurse Dudley ignored the gesture. "It was awful, believe me. Brutus and I had been together almost eighteen years."
Poor Nurse Dudley. It just goes to show you how one shouldn't judge. Who even knew the old battle-ax was married" But Brutus Dudley, what a name!
"But still you came to work," Jim said, shaking his head. `Now that's what I call dedication to one's calling."
"Yes, well, a calling is a calling, but a snake is a snake."
"Ach, that's no way to talk about a husband," I said on Barbara's behalf. Aaron might have deserved that epithet, but Jonathan was the salt of the earth.
"Husband? Brutus was not my husband! He was much more than that."
"Ach!" Just because I was an inadvertent adulteress does not mean I believe in unsanctified hanky-panky.
"Your lover?" Apparently Jim played by a different set of rules.
"My lover? Like I said, Brutus was a snake. A Burmese python."
"Ach!" Then my curiosity got the best of me. "what was he doing in your bed/ how did he die?"
After all, Nurse Dudley is no small woman. It was quite possible she rolled over on Brutus, and squashed him flat as a pancake. Shnookums is not the first little mutt to hitch a ride in Susannah's bra.
"Who knows how he died? And what does it matter?" Nurse Dudley grabbed my hand. "Now pray for me," she ordered.
I silently prayed for a prayer, and getting no answer, gave her the numbers eleven through twenty. That sounded so convincing, I repeated the number in reverse order.
"Zwansich, neinahe, achtzeh, siwwezeh, sechzeh, fuffseh, vazeh, dreizeh, swelf, elf."
"Amen!" Jim intoned.
"Amen." Nurse Dudley smiled. "You know, I fell better already."
"Haufa mischt," I said. Horse manure.
"thank you," Nurse Dudley said, and released my hand. "I know who it is you remind me of now."
I recklessly decided to take the bull by the horns. "Magdalena Yoder? Because she's my cousin, you see - "
"Heavens no, you're much prettier than her. Barbara Kauffman - yes, that's it. Mrs. Kauffman was a patient of mine last year. Do you know her?"
How stupid of me to forget that Barbara had had an emergency appendectomy. When she came home from the hospital she raved about how kind the nurses were, one in particular.
"Never heard of her," I said.
"Well, if you ever run into her, say `hello,' " Nurse Dudley said, and strode from the room.
The second the hem of her white skirt disappeared around the door, I turned on Jim. "Out with it, buster! What do you mean you didn't expect that to happen. What is that?"
"George's murder, of course. I set it up."
-19-
"What do you mean, you `set it up/? You arranged to have George Mitchell killed?"
Jim squirmed like a worm about to be impaled on a fishhook. "Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first."
"Oh, no, you don't. Out with it. Are you some kind of Mafia hit man?"
For some reason that was worth a laugh. "Nothing like that, Miss Yoder. I'm just plain old Jim Anderson. What you see is what you get."
"You have yet to deny that you arranged to have that nice man killed."
He laughed again. "Nice? George? If I was locked in a room with George, Saddam Hussein, and a snake, and had a gun with just two bullets, do you know what I would do?"
"So that's how Brutus died!"
"Huh? No, what I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't hesitate to shoot George Mitchell twice."
"You wouldn't!"
"Not actually, of course. But the man certainly deserved it. I gave that man the best twenty years of my corporate life, and do you know what I have to show for it?"
"A position as a highly paid executive at East Coast Delicacies?"
"That's a laugh and a half. A flunky, is more like it."
I took off my bonnet, which was stifling, and the glasses, which were hurting the bridge of my nose. "But you are an executive, and you get to travel around and hold exciting contests - "
"That's a flunky's job, damn it. A kid's job. I should be back at headquarters making executive decisions. Actually running the show. God knows George wasn't qualified."
"Don't speak of the dead that way," I said sternly. "And George Mitchell was qualified. E.D.C. turned a handsome profit last year. I've been following it in the Wall Street Journal."
"Ha! Last year was a fluke, George inherited the company from his father, you know. He could have turned it into something really big, like General Foods or Procter and Gamble. But thanks to his leadership, it's gone from a second rate to third rate. How many people in Middle America have ever heard of East Coast Delicacies?"
I shrugged.
"That's my point. It could have been a household name by now."
I took a cautious step back. There was a lot of anger emanating from this man, and over what? Someone else's company? That didn't make a lick of sense. Jim Anderson definitely had a screw or two loose. No, make that a bucket. He should have been admitted to a meta-working shop, not a hospital.
"You don't kill somebody just because they won't turn their business over to you," I said in a soothing voice.
"What about if he takes your wife?"
"Well - "
"and then dumps her - really dumps her - throws her out on the trash heap. And then that ex-wife of yours - the only woman you've ever really loved -turns to drugs for comfort. Drugs that George gave her. Then before you know it, she's someone you don't even recognize. Is that reason enough to kill somebody?"
"George Mitchell did that? To your wife?"
His eyes fixed on a water spot on the ceiling. "Marcy and I met in high school, for chrissakes. We dated all through college - got married the week after graduation. Had three kids together. Then George took a group of us executives and our spouses on a junket to St. Thomas. A motivational seminar, he called it."
"That sounds pretty generous to me."
"Oh, yeah, real generous. Lots of boring sessions we were forced to attend, only George didn't attend any of them himself, you see. While I was stuck inside some hotel meeting room, George took Marcy out on a catamaran. Somehow George managed to have the mast break, and they were stuck overnight on a deserted little island. Just them, the mosquitoes, and enough heroin to keep New York high for a week. Next thing I knew Macy was filing for a divorce.
He paused, still looking at the spot on the ceiling. There were tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Then what?" I asked gently. "Did she marry George?"
"That was the plan. She moved out - left me and the kids just like that. But three weeks later George had picked up with a new woman. By then my Marcy was hooked. She's been in and out of rehabs since then, but can't seem to shake that monkey off her back. The last time I saw her, she looked like a walking skeleton. Still, she was trying to turn tricks."
I must have given him a blank look.
"She became a prostitute, Miss Yoder. That's how she supports her drug habit."
"I'm so sorry."
He finally looked at me. "So, that's not reason enough to want George dead?"
I should have kept my big mouth shut. "To want him dead, yes, but - "
"You're a religious woman, Miss Yoder. Doesn't the Bible say that wanting someone dead is the same as killing them?"
"Words to that affect, yes."
"So, since I was already guilty of wanting him dead, why not go just one teensy step further and grant my own wish?"
"That's not the same," I wailed in frustration. "Just because we feel strongly doesn't mean we have to act on those negative emotions. That Scripture passage does not give us license to commit actual murder."
Believe me, I know how hard it is sometimes to keep from doing what one wants. The Good Lord knows I wanted to strangle Aaron after he finally confessed his horrible secret, but I did nothing worse than offer to pack my Pooky Bear's clothes. It was the devil that made me rub poison ivy in all eight pairs of his underpants.
"Well, I did take that teensy step -but then again, I didn't kill the man."
but then again, I didn't kill the man."
"You make as much sense as Braille instructions on an ATM machine at a drive-through window. Either you did, or you didn't, kill George Mitchell. It wasn't a halfway job. I saw his dead body."
"Ah, those words are music to my ears. I told you I set up his death; however, I didn't do the actual deed."
"But you paid someone to - "
"now you're jumping to conclusions," he said with a smug smile.
Jumping to conclusions and dodging criticism are the backbone of my exercise program. I spread my hands, palms up.
"Well, excuuuse me."
"I didn't pay anyone to kill George Mitchell. I simply gathered together a bunch of people who had their own reasons to kill him."
"Come again?"
Jim smiled broadly. "Every single one of those contestants back at your inn had it in for the bastard."
I gasped. "Not Freni Hostetler!"
"You're absolutely right, not her. But I needed a nice quiet, out-of-the-way place where the ingredients of my stew - so to speak - could work their magic."
"Their evil magic! And I still find it hard to believe. Gladys Dolby wouldn't step on an ant if you paid her, and as for Alma Cornwater - "
"Never judge a cookbook by its covers."
I stared at him.
"What?" he said. "Surely you don't still suspect me. Perhaps it's escaped you, but I'm in a hospital. I have more alibis than you can shake a thermometer at."
"Do you know who the killer is?"
He had the temerity to chuckle. "That's the beauty of it. I haven't the slightest idea. It could be anyone of four people, or even a combination of those four. And you know what the best part is? I couldn't even be sure that old George would actually get bumped off. And so soon in the game! I would have settled for major trouble - a lawsuit, or a first-class scandal. Speaking of which, that's another reason I picked the PennDutch Inn."
"What?"
"Thanks to your inn's reputation as a vacation spot for the rich and famous, you have almost as many reporters sniffing around there as they do down at the White House."
