Hell Hath No Curry (25 page)

“Drustara Kurtz can support herself.”

“
The
Drustara Kurtz? The one who was on
Oprah
?”

“The very one. You know, she’s very attractive, and very single. You two probably have a lot in common.”

“Somehow I don’t think so. She writes scintillating prose, and I write books that put college freshmen to sleep.”

“We all need our sleep, dear, so don’t put yourself down.

Where are you from?”

That simple question took him aback. “What makes you think I’m not from here?”

“Your accent, for starters. For another, I was born and raised here, and know virtually everyone by name. Except for the tourists.”

“Yes, well, I was one of those. I’m originally from Iowa. Decided to drive across the country last summer, starting in New York, got as far as here, and never left.”

“Oy!”

“Is something wrong?”

“Just that my information links have been falling down on their jobs.”

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211

“Come again?”

“I used to know every bit of gossip—from how large Amos Graber’s wart had grown, to the number of lumps in the gravy Tina Blough served her mother-in-law. The answer, by the way, is twenty-one.”

Mr. Bigger laughed. “Well, I keep a low profile. We writers tend to be solitary.”

“Yes, but there is no excuse for me not hearing about someone as big—uh—as famous as you. I mean, you’re not that big.

Barbara Hostetler is taller than you, and could probably whip you with one massive hand tied behind her back, which of course she wouldn’t, and not just because she’s Amish, but because she’s one of the sweetest people in the world. And come to think of it, she’s from Iowa as well. Do you know her?”

“No. I used to know all the people in Iowa, but there’s been a flux of newcomers from Latin America. Is she Hispanic?”

“
Hostetler
Hispanic? You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“Weren’t you?”

“What?”

“When you asked if I knew her.”

“Oh, that.” I had not been joking, and I certainly had not been thinking. We Mennonites often know a number of coreligionists in other states, and when we meet folks from those states, we try to make connections to the people we know. We call this the Mennonite Name Game. Gabe says Jews do the same thing, except they call it Jewish Geography. But it was plain stupid to think that a nonethnic person such as Bob Bigger would know an Amish girl such as Barbara Hostetler simply because they both came from the same state, even a smallish one such as Iowa.

There are few things I hate worse than making a fool of myself. Both times it’s made me crabby. And although being crabby is something at which I excel, I have found that I need to apologize less if I keep my mug tightly shut until the crabs have all dissipated. As for Bob, his crimson complexion made it quite clear that 212

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he was profoundly embarrassed for having embarrassed yours truly. Thus it was that we sat in awkward silence until I stood up to the plate.

“If Olivia’s killer was as neat as you say, that pretty much eliminates one of the suspects on my list, but highlights another.”

“Unless the killer was only pretending to be neat so as to throw the police off his, or her, tracks.”

“Or the killer could be you, and you’re playing games with me.”

“That’s always a possibility.”

“You could be a neat person pretending to be a messy person who wants to create the impression of neatness as a decoy.”

“Neatly said, but at this point I would like to state, for the record, that I have never knowingly killed anyone, Olivia included.”

“Duly noted.” I moved to the door.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he said.

33

I grabbed the doorknob and turned. “What did you say?”

“You’re not getting away without giving me Drustara Kurtz’s phone number. She
is
single, isn’t she?”

Never let them see you sweat, someone once told me. I forget the context, but it was a futile thing to tell a middle-aged woman.

I took a plain white hanky out of my recently formed cleavage and dabbed my brow.

“Your thermostat must be stuck on high,” I said as I scribbled Drustara’s number on the back of a church bulletin. I handed him the information. “But please, don’t tell her I gave it to you. I’m not in the habit of matchmaking.”

“Sure, thanks. Do you have a key?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“For Olivia’s apartment. I saw the young sergeant lock it when he left, so if you don’t have a key, you’re welcome to use mine.”

“You have a key?”

“Is that so unusual? We are—or were—neighbors. I’m home all day, and she usually wasn’t. If she forgot to put the meat out to thaw, or thought she might have left the thermostat set too 214

Tamar Myers

high”—he had the nerve to chuckle—“she’d call, and I’d take care of whatever it was.”

“That must be a California thing. We in Hernia don’t generally lock our doors, and if we do, we simply leave the key under the mat, or above the door.”

“Isn’t that asking for trouble? A stranger could walk in at any time and walk off with everything.”

“Ah, but that’s just it; except for tourists, there aren’t any strangers in Hernia—at least not until recently. We’re like one big family, and you don’t steal from family.”

“You know, that’s one of the things I like so much about this town.” He sighed, and I could smell coffee on his breath. “That’s also the thing I
don’t
like about this town.”

“Too clannish for you?”

He took the key from a hook by the door and dropped it into my hand. “Clannish is an understatement. Hernia makes any town in Iowa feel like London, or Paris, by comparison.”

“Well, now you’ve got a phone number of an available woman you can pursue, and if that doesn’t work out, I’ll give you my sister’s number. But you’ll have to wait until she gets divorced. Her husband is a convicted murderer, which is neither here nor there, but explains why he’s there, and not here.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I’m here, but not always there, or so some would have me believe.”

“I mean, are you available for dating? I see you’re not wearing a ring. I also see a band of white skin on your ring finger.”

I looked at my finger and feigned surprise. “Why I’ll be dippty-doodled! How on earth did that get there? Excuse me, dear, while I dash off to solve yet another riddle.”

Writers are a nosy sort. For them, everything is fodder for the grist mill that eventually churns out plots and characters. I’d sooner be stuck in an elevator with a hungry anaconda than with a writer of HELL HATH NO CURRY

215

fiction. If a snake devoured me I would at least, eventually, return to the earth as fertilizer and soon become dust. The writer, on the other hand, would twist my life like a pretzel before committing it to the page, where it would sit for all eternity in the basement of the Library of Congress.

I knew without a doubt that Mr. Bigger was going to be watching through his keyhole, so I went downstairs, got in my car, and drove to the end of the block. After spending a good five minutes jotting down notes and squeezing out a blackhead, I hoofed it back to the apartment and crept up the stairs like a leopard on the prowl. Olivia’s lock, thank heavens, opened soundlessly, as did her front door. I was in.

Despite my deeply held religious beliefs, I still found it spooky to be in a dead woman’s apartment, especially a woman who had been murdered just hours ago. I know, put your faith in the Lord, and He’ll take care of you. But will He take care of me like He took care of the twenty-some survivors of a recent plane crash that made national news, or like He took care of the two hundred
dead
passengers? And will He take care of me like He took care of the family of five who survived a tornado by seeking refuge in their basement, or like He took care of the family of eight who perished when their house disintegrated around them? And don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of ghosts so much as I find them annoying. Both Mama and Grandma Yoder have interfered in my life post-corpus, so to speak.

Of course I started with the bathroom. Frankly, I was a bit disappointed with what I saw. I’d always thought Californians placed a high value on atmosphere, such as scented candles, flow-ery soaps, and the like, but the chief’s throne room, the bathtub excepted, would have met with the approval of even the most dour of my acquaintances, myself included. The walls were beige, the towels soft, but brown; even the toilet paper said more about function than aesthetics.

With one hand covering my eyes, I drew the shower curtain 216

Tamar Myers

back slowly. I must have peeked through my fingers a dozen times until it dawned on my overloaded brain that there was nothing to see. The tub was a lot cleaner than the ones back at my inn. If the chief hadn’t been cooling her heels in the county morgue, I would have made it a point to ask her which brands of cleaning products she used.

Mine is only an amateur eye, but it doesn’t take long to search a mostly empty apartment. Nothing struck me as particularly out of the ordinary, except for the chief’s eating habits. Californians, in my experience, tend to be grazers. That is to say, they devour an inordinate amount of uncooked greenery. I know this because my guests sometimes request various edible leaves and roots, the names for which either I’ve never heard before, or else I’ve heard used for things other than food. Once, in an effort to keep a conversation going with a Hollywood starlet, I asked her how the shopping was on Radicchio Drive. Without batting a false eyelash she told me about an upscale Japanese store where she’d just purchased a fabulous crouton for her guest bedroom. At any rate, the chief’s larder contained nothing but boxes of cereal and frozen TV entrées and, of course, Freni’s fabulous curry. In my opinion, aside from her affair with Cornelius Weaver, the chief lived a very lonely existence.

There was nothing else for me to do at the Narrows but take some photographs and try to lift some fingerprints. It was Olivia Hornsby-Anderson herself who taught me the art of fingerprint lifting, and the irony of it was not lost on me. When I was through with my police work, I said a silent prayer. We Mennonites do not pray for the souls of the dead, believing, as we do, that their fates have already been sealed. My prayer was for insight on how to proceed next, the wisdom to use my insight to its best advantage, and the strength to deal with whatever else my investigation turned up. I suppose I could have just asked God to solve the case for me, but experience has taught me that the Good Lord prefers that I travel the difficult route.

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I learned to pray at my mama’s knee, and she at her mama’s.

They were long-winded women, so their prayers never stuck to just one subject. Having asked the Good Lord’s help with the murder cases, I prayed that He would heal the gash that Gabe had inflicted on my heart, I beseeched Him to make Alison more interested in her schoolwork, I thanked Him for my good health, as well as Freni’s, and finally I asked Him to motivate Herman Lichty to see a good dermatologist about the ever-changing mole on his forehead.

Having got my spiritual ducks in a row, I locked the door to Olivia’s apartment securely behind me. You can be sure I pocketed the key.

My guests were thrilled to be invited to Doc’s house for dinner.

My suspects were far less enthusiastic about dining at Chez Magdalena. It wasn’t until I thought to bribe them with a door prize that
might
include a luxury vacation that they all agreed to come.

Given the sensitive nature of the evening’s true purpose, I gave Freni the night off. My pseudo-stepdaughter adores the woman, so I sent Alison home with her. As for the meal, there is nothing wrong with Chef Boyardee from a box. Besides, I intended to add some of my own toppings.

It was no surprise to me that Caroline Sha, the one who lived the farthest from my house, was the first to arrive. Counterculture people are, in my experience, either extremely polite or rudely indifferent to common courtesies. Caroline, a student of the East, would rather be early than show disrespect by arriving even a minute late. I watched through a lace curtain as she hurried up the walk and then slipped off her shoes before ringing the doorbell. While I very much appreciated her promptness, at the same time I couldn’t help but find it slightly annoying.

I opened the door just a crack so that I would be heard. “No, thank ya,” I called in my best Maryland accent, “we already done give once this year.”

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“Magdalena? Is that you?”

“Put away that gun, Homer, ’tain’t nothing but a woman in a blue and white bedsheet.”

“Magdalena, that
is
you, and for your information, most Marylanders speak better English than you. Shame on you for making fun of an entire state and perpetuating a stereotype.”

I flung the door open. “How can it be perpetuating a stereotype when you’re the only one to hear me, and you’re not likely to pass it on?”

“That doesn’t matter. Words have power and should never be spoken without intent. Those mean-spirited comments of yours are now woven into the fabric of the universe forever.”

I pulled her in so that the chilly night air wouldn’t be part of my heating bill. “Have you been watching
Oprah
again?”

“The woman is a saint, and I won’t have you mocking her.”

“Very well. I would ask you for your coat, but you’re wearing only a sheet. Come to think of it, you ought to be wearing a comforter or a duvet over it, not a coat.”

“It’s a
sari,
and you know it.”

“Sorry.”

The doorbell rang again, and because I was standing right next to the chimes, I nearly jumped out of my brogans. “Ding, dang, dong,” I said. “Oops, sorry again. I really need to work on my swearing.”

“That’s not swearing, Magdalena.”

“Yes, it is. Those might not be swear words, but the intent was there.”

“You’re weird.”

“
I’m
weird? I’m not the one who lives in a paper house—”