Hell Hath No Curry (22 page)

“No. Aren’t those enough?”

“How about Drustara Kurtz?”

“Oh yes, I forgot! Hey, how did you know? Priscilla again?”

“I was driving by Cornelius’s house one day and saw them in a lingering parting kiss on the front porch.”

“Did you linger to watch?”

“No, but I could see them in the rearview mirror. They weren’t in any hurry to end it.”

“The way I see it, Doc, is that there are four women who might have been very angry—angry enough to kill—at the man for not having proposed to them, and a fiancée who might have been very angry that her boyfriend wasn’t faithful. So I’ve got motive, the means would be Elavil, and as for opportunity—they all had it. What I don’t have is an eyewitness. What else is missing?”

29

“A confession.”

“How do I get that? Beat it out of them? That was a joke, by the way.”

“Yes, but a rather titillating image popped up on my view screen.”

“If it involves me, erase it at once.”

“Done. Okay, here’s what I suggest: Throw a dinner party for these ladies.”

“Doc, they hate each other. They’re not going to show unless I neglect to mention who else is coming. As soon as they get to the inn and discover someone else is there they’ll turn around and go home.”

“No, they won’t. All these women felt, at some point, that they were
it,
the special woman in Cornelius’s life. They’re all going to want a chance to drive that point home to their rivals.”

“Go on.”

“During dinner, concentrate on one guest—other than Priscilla—and, in you’re usual loud, but not too unpleasant, voice, comment on how she must have been Cornelius’s true love. But make it sound confidential, as if you are speaking only to her.

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Trust me, there will be fireworks, and that’s when the guilty party is most likely to let down her guard and say something incriminating.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Doc, but how can I do that when I have an inn full of guests?”

“How many guests do you currently have?”

“Seven—well, nine, if you count the twin girls the woman from Mississippi is carrying. She’s going to name one Sweet and the other Tea. Doesn’t that stray beyond the borders of eccentric?”

“Would you be the pot or the kettle?”

“Doc!”

He winked. “Okay. Seven guests is no problem. Tell them you’ve arranged for them to have dinner with one of Hernia’s living legends, an expert on local history. Arrange for them to be driven out here, and I’ll fix them a dinner they’ll be telling their grandchildren about. Who knows, I might even become one of the official side trips you offer your guests.”

“Maybe. As long as you don’t hit on them.”

“Touché. But Magdalena, aren’t you forgetting something?”

“I was
about
to say thanks. Honest, I was.”

“It’s not that; it’s Chief Hornsby-Anderson.”

“You mean Hot Lips?”

Doc’s eyes danced. “Would you care to explain that?”

I filled Doc in on my shameful, albeit satisfying, sin of revenge. He laughed so hard that Old Blue started braying, which got me to braying, which in turn set off every dog on the south side of town.

“Shame on you, Magdalena,” Doc finally said. “That was such a childish prank. Lucky for me I’m in my second childhood. Are you sure you won’t reconsider dating yours truly? Think of all the fun we could have.”

“Don’t tempt me, dear. Anyway—getting back to business—

Her Chieftainship is not on my list of suspects.”

“Why not?”

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“For starters, I have a gut feeling that she is innocent.”

“I’ve always admired your gut.”

“Thanks. My second point is this: Unlike the others, the chief was only using Cornelius. She neither wanted, nor expected, anything but pure, unadulterated adultery.”

“Strictly speaking, since neither of them was married, it would be fornication.”

I shuddered. “Doc, please don’t say the F word. Now, where was I? Oh yes. My third point is that Chief need not have involved me at all in the investigation. She holds all the cards. She could have lied to the EMTs, and no one would know she was with Corny the moment he croaked—may he rest in piece. And she didn’t have to tell me he had a high concentration of Elavil in his system. If she was guilty, this whole thing could have been swept under the rug, written off as simply a heart attack. Everyone in town knew about his overtaxed ticker.”

“Your third point is well taken.”

I stood. Doc, ever the gentleman, stood as well.

“Magdalena, you sure you can’t stay for lunch? We could play rook—I know you don’t use face cards—or anything you like.”

“Sorry, Doc, gotta run. Say, you wouldn’t mind if I took some of those biscuits with me, would you?”

“You going to Maryland?”

“No, just back into town to chat with Hernia’s number one source of gossip, and listening to gossip always makes me hungry.”

“Hmm, Agnes Mishler doesn’t exactly live in town.”

“Right, so guess again.”

“The blacksmith shop?”

“Nope.”

“Aha! My number one rival.”

“He isn’t your rival, Doc, because neither of you are in the running. Besides, he’s my first cousin.”

“You could marry him in South Carolina.”

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“Could, but wouldn’t. Besides, he’s married. Now, may I please have some of that thick-cut marmalade, and some real butter to go?”

I wouldn’t marry Sam Yoder if he was the last man alive, and Big Bertha was broken,
and
my Maytag out of order. That’s because Sam is more like an ill-behaved brother than a cousin. We’re the same age and, because Hernia is such a small town, consequently we were in the same class from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Because we were seated alphabetically, Samuel Nevin Yoder occupied the desk directly behind mine. During those twelve years he cut my hair, dipped my braids in his inkwell, put gum in my bun, put a live toad in my paper bag lunch, sat on my paper bag lunch, put a dead toad in my desk, and made all manner of crude noises, some of which were accompanied by noxious odors. That said, and despite these years of torture, I felt a twinge of sadness when Sam married Dorothy. She wasn’t even a Mennonite, for crying out loud.

Yoder’s Corner Market stays in business only because most folks won’t eat the animal feed available at Miller’s Feed Store.

Even Freni, from time to time, sends me into town to pick up a bottle of genuine imitation vanilla extract, or some other ingredient she didn’t anticipate needing when she made her weekly trek into Bedford. This particular morning everyone in the community appeared to have been prepared, because Sam’s usually packed parking lot was as empty as Aaron Miller’s heart the day he stopped cleaving to me and clove to his first wife—in a manner of speaking.

The market has an irritating buzzer that sounds whenever the front door is opened. “Howdy,” Sam said as he stuffed a magazine somewhere beneath the white apron he wears whenever he’s on duty, which is most of the time. “If it isn’t my favorite customer.”

“Reading another girlie magazine?” I asked pleasantly.

Except for the white hairs that festooned the lobes, Sam’s 188

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ears turned bright pink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Magdalena.”

“Be careful, Sam. You already have the formidable Yoder nose.

Keep lying like that, and you’ll be able to turn the pages without using your hands.”

His ears went from pink to red. “You won’t tell Dorothy, will you?”

I crossed my toes within the privacy of my brogans. “Not if you cooperate with me.”

“Cooperate how?”

“I want to know all the gossip there is to know in regards to Cornelius Weaver’s death.”

“Is that all? My gossip is free—always has been. You know that.” He paused to rub his nose. “Wait a minute. Magdalena, are you thinking what I’ve been thinking?”

“I very much doubt it.”

“Not that. What I mean is, do you think that the death of Cornelius Weaver was not entirely due to natural means?”

“It has crossed my mind. That’s why I need to know everything you’ve heard about the late lothario and his between-the-sheets shenanigans. But please, clean it up a little.”

“Well, as you undoubtedly know, he and our hot police chief were in flagrante delicto when he checked out. He slept with more women than a flea in a sorority house, but apparently Olivia Hornsby-Anderson knew some California tricks that drove him so wild, his poor heart couldn’t stand it another second.”

“Ha to the tricks part. I’m sure she’s just another pretty face, but his time was up. What else you got?”

“Word has it that she’s pregnant and plans to take a leave of absence and fly off somewhere secret to have the baby, then give it up for adoption, and then come back here like nothing’s happened.”

“Ha to that too. Who said that?”

“Gloria Reiger, I think.”

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“No wonder. Gloria has sixteen children, and the way her husband Caleb’s been eyeing her, number seventeen will start to show before too long. Anyhoo, Gloria wants everyone to be pregnant. You know what they say about misery loving company.”

Sam shook his head. “Those Amish, haven’t they ever heard of birth control?”

“The more hands, the merrier—at least when it comes to doing farm chores. Anything else?”

“You’re not going to believe it, so what’s the point?”

“Try me.”

“First you have to make a bet.”

“I’m still a Mennonite, Sam—unlike some people I know. We don’t make bets.”

He didn’t even blink. “This is a friendly bet. No money involved. If you believe there’s even a ghost of chance that what I have to say
might
be true, you have to pay up.”

“Sam, give it a rest. For the one zillionth time, I’m not going to kiss you. We’re kissing cousins only in name. Besides, I had garlic sausage over at Doc’s.”

“I can tell.”

“You can?”

“Don’t worry, I find it rather invigorating. Now, about the bet, I stand here on my feet all day, and by closing time I can hardly walk. Dorothy refuses to give me a foot rub—she thinks feet are gross, along with several other body parts—and I could really,
really
use one. So if you lose the bet, off come my shoes and socks.”

“And if I win?”

“First of all, this bet hinges entirely on you being honest. But since I know you would rather snip off your own tongue with pruning shears than let even one false word pass your perfectly shaped lips, I trust you. I just wanted you to know that.”

“Oy veys meer,”
I moaned. Surely Sam was being facetious.

He had to know that I was capable of taking the art of lying to new heights, maybe even having it recognized as an Olympic 190

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sport. I’m not proud of this, mind you, but I will not deny that it does give me some sense of satisfaction to know that when I have fudged on the truth, I have done it convincingly, to the best of my ability. Besides, I have never lied in order to deliberately hurt someone, and, as stated earlier, I have never borne false testimony against a neighbor in court. But if, on the off chance, Sam wasn’t being facetious, his words of trust, if I really believed them, would make me feel so guilty, I might be tempted to drown myself in a bowl of chicken soup, knaidlach bobbing against my forehead.

“I’d like an answer now, not tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay, don’t rush me already. Tell me what I’d win.”

“A free shopping spree in this glorious establishment.”

I sighed. “Same rules as last time I won a free spree?”

“Same rules: only one buggy load, and nothing from the specialty shelf.”

“That means the jar of caviar will be here for another twenty years. It expired at the turn of the century.”

“It’s here for ambience, along with the pimentos and artichoke hearts. Now, what’s your answer?”

“My answer is yes. Now, what’s the gossip pertaining to Cornelius’s unfortunate demise?”

Sam leaned over the counter so that my garlic breath was inches from his face. “I was dusting the specialty shelf, as a matter of fact, when two Amish women came in. I couldn’t see them at first, but I recognized one as Drustara Kurtz’s mother, Esther—

you know how raspy she sounds. Anyway, she was trying to whisper but was obviously very upset about something, so they were loud whispers. I thought about coughing or shuffling my feet, but frankly I was just too curious.”

“A man after my own heart—oops, don’t read anything into that. Pick right up where you left off.”

That didn’t stop Sam from leering at me. “Esther was talking HELL HATH NO CURRY

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about all the pain the Nameless One had given her. She meant Drustara, of course.”

“Of course. It must be incredibly hard to lose a child, even if it is just to the world.”

“Are you going to keep interrupting me—no, don’t answer.

As I was about to say, the second voice belonged to Anna Schu-macher, who, as we all know, sounds like a canary on steroids.

Anna wanted to know if the wedding was still on, and if so, did Esther want to come to her house and help her bake pies for the Sunday meeting, on account of it might take her mind off things.

Then Esther said that no, the wedding was off, thank you, God, and now she had an even bigger worry.”

“Whose wedding?” I hollered.

Sam finally recoiled from the residue of Doc’s sausages. “Give me a chance, will you? Do you want to hear it word for word, or not?”

“Not. Just give me a summary with all the pertinent facts.”

“Impertinence is more like it.”

“
What
did you say? Remember, it’s up to me to decide if the information is worth giving you a foot rub.”

“You see what you do, Magdalena? You get a man’s blood going. There’s never a dull moment with you. My Dorothy, on the other hand, puts me to sleep. Sometimes we put each other to sleep. Once we both fell asleep doing you-know-what.”

“Not another word, or I’m going to have to poke out my mind’s eye.”

“So anyhow, the wedding was supposed to be between Drustara and Cornelius. Did you know that he was the reason she stopped being Amish?”