Just Plain Pickled to Death (20 page)

“My Bible,” I said seriously.

She nodded just as seriously. “Shall I carve out a little space and hide a knife in it?”

I patted her arm affectionately through the bars. “Thanks, but no thanks. You excited about your first day at work tomorrow?”

She shrugged, but I could tell by the sudden gleam in her eyes that she was immensely excited. Would wonders never cease! My slothful, slatternly sister was about to embark on an endeavor for which she could expect to receive legal remuneration. Our parents would be so proud.

“You’re not planning to smuggle Shnookums in with you?” I asked casually.

“Of course!”

“But Susannah, what if that pint-size canine falls into a can of paint? He could drown.”

She looked taken aback. “Why, I hadn’t thought of that, Mags. I suppose there is some risk, after all.”

“You’re damn tootin’, dear,” I said affectionately. I was growing prouder by the moment.

“So, in that case, I think you should keep him.”

Without another word, my sister turned in a swirl of shimmering silk and slipped out of the holding area. Andrea, who had forgotten to lock the door, darted after her in a panic. Perhaps she thought I had slipped Susannah a dangerous weapon.

In the meantime Shnookums, who had all the pet appeal of a rabid rat, began to howl piteously. I really couldn’t blame the mangy mutt. Susannah had hand-reared him on a doll’s bottle after his mother had refused to nurse him (I couldn’t blame her either!). Except for one time last year when a vicious man in Ohio came between them for several days, the two had been inseparable.

Anyway, much to my credit, I petted the pooch.

“It’s okay, my sweetsie-beastie, itsy-bitsy little Shnookums,” I cooed in my most Susannah-like voice.

The mangy mutt rewarded me by mashing his minuscule yet menacing molars down on my right index finger.

That did it. It had been too horrible and long of a day to be harassed by a hair ball.

“Get this straight, buster,” I shouted. “You keep that yap of yours shut or I’ll turn you into a dust mop. You got that?”

Shnookums blinked, but said nothing.

“I read you loud and clear,” my Pooky Bear said.

Chapter Twenty-two

“Hi Aaron!” I glanced around for someplace to hide, but the only hole available to crawl into was the lidless brown toilet.

“You’re quite a woman, you know?” If I had been brave enough to look, I would have seen that my Pooky Bear’s eyes were gleaming with admiration.

“I only punched Melvin. Zelda tripped—well, sort of.”

“And they say chivalry is dead! Imagine that, my very own hellcat to do battle for me. You’ll make one hell of a protective mother, Magdalena. Our kids will be the safest ones on the lane.”

“Our kids,” I wailed, “are going to be born in jail!”

Aaron laughed. “Then with these bars they’ll even have extra protection.”

I failed to see the humor in his comments and told him so. He pretended to be chastised but wouldn’t stop grinning.

“Look, you’ll be out of here first thing in the morning. Judge Wagler is the magistrate and—”

“Jacob Wagler?”

“You know him?”

“Unfortunately, quite well.”

“Oh, Mags,” my Pooky Bear sighed, “you didn’t hit him too, did you?”

“Worse than that. I made him eat dirt.”

“Figuratively, of course, but I’m sure—”

“No, literally. We were three years old at the time. Actually, he was already four. Anyway, we were playing in a sandbox—my sandbox—and he grabbed my shovel and wouldn’t give it back. So I pushed him down, sat on top of him, and fed him dirt.”

“You made him eat dirt?” Aaron’s voice echoed down the hall, and Andrea momentarily surfaced from a sea of anorexic women with breast implants.

“Aaron, what else was I supposed to do?” I wailed. “There were only two shovels, and he already had the other!”

I stole a quick glance at my fiance’s face, and that was when I noticed that his eyes were shining. They were just brimming over with love.

“I’ve waited a whole lifetime to find a woman like you, Mags,” he said. “I sure as hell am not going to let a repugnant runt like Melvin Stoltzfus delay our happiness by even one day.”

“You go, boy,” I said, borrowing one of Susannah’s favorite phrases.

“I’ll move heaven and earth if that’s what it takes,” my hero declared stoutly. “I’ll climb the highest mountain, I’ll—”

“Will you keep a mangy mutt overnight?” I scooped Shnookums off his bunk and thrust him through the bars.

It was the true test of my Pooky Bear’s love that he gingerly accepted the cowering cur and stuffed him into the vest pocket of his shirt.

“Till tomorrow, my love,” he said.

Let me make it perfectly clear here that it was Aaron who spoke, not Shnookums. That mangy, malodorous mutt just yelped piteously while Andrea, without looking up from her magazine, unlocked the hall door and let them out.

Think me strange, but I actually enjoyed my night in jail. Once I got it through my head that I was really stuck there, alone, it didn’t take me long to discover all the advantages solitary confinement has to offer.

For one thing, I had four beds to choose from, and I could rotate among them all night long if I so desired. Of course, at the PennDutch I have more than four beds, but the majority of them are perennially occupied by the rich and famous (present occupants excluded) who fill my coffers, and I’m not about to kick them out of bed when I want a change of mattress.

The real blessing, however, was the sudden and complete lack of responsibility I felt. If Susannah decided to drink and flirt her way up to Poughkeepsie, there was nothing I could do about it. Just as long as she didn’t end up sharing my cell that night, my dear little sister was none of my concern.

And, of course, neither were my guests. Let Freni quit, let Auntie Leah bellow in the kitchen, let Auntie Vonnie gripe. Auntie Lizzie could paint herself up as the whore of Babylon for all I cared, and if Auntie Magdalena whimpered herself into a frenzy, well, that was somebody else’s problem, wasn’t it? As for the uncles, who cared if they slept all night in the parlor—although it would be nice if Uncle Elias got on the ball and checked out the Millers’ barn.

It was even pleasant, in a weird sort of way, to be cut off from my Pooky Bear. I mean, he had said such sweet things during his visit, and since my cell didn’t have a phone, there was no chance he would make a late-night call. My tongue is the least reliable of my appendages, and has been known to double-cross me more than once. Much better to end the evening with my Pooky Bear’s eyes brimming with admiration than to struggle through a phone call during which I—the Lord only knows for what reason— might suddenly start talking about barium enemas and throbbing varicose veins. Not that such abrupt turns in conversation have necessarily happened, mind you, but it was a big relief to be freed from the risk.

I slept like a baby, which is to say I woke up every couple of hours. Finally, I forced myself to squat over the brown toilet, after which sleep stayed with me. In fact, I was enjoying the deepest sleep I’d had in years when Melvin Stoltzfus began banging on the door to my cell with a cluster of keys.

“Go away,” I moaned.

“Yoder, get up!”

I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “There’d better be a breakfast tray in your other hand, dear. This place has done wonders for my appetite.”

He unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped back. “Out.”

“Oh? It’s the shower first? Listen, Melvin, I washed my hair yesterday, and I’m quite content to wait and take a good soak when I get home.”

“Yoder, out!”

There was something odd about his voice, something that compelled me to look at him closely. I recoiled at the sight. Melvin Stoltzfus had a black eye. I mean a real shiner, the kind they tell you to put steak on, which is a real waste, because the steak would make you and your eye feel a whole lot better faster if you charbroiled it and ate it. Only in Melvin’s case, given the size of his ocular orbs, it was doubtful he could afford that much meat.

“Ooooh. Did I do that?” I asked gently.

Much to my surprise he laughed loudly. “Don’t be so full of yourself, Yoder. You hit me in the chest and I lost my balance. This I got later. Much later.”

“Aaron? If you’ve arrested Aaron—”

“I didn’t arrest your precious Aaron. Now come on, Yoder. You have some papers to sign.”

“I’m not signing anything until after my day in court. Which reminds me, Jacob Wagler is going to have to disqualify himself on account I once made him eat dirt.”

“There isn’t going to be any court hearing, Yoder. And as for Judge Wagler, he said he’d rather eat dirt again than touch you with a ten-foot pole.”

“What? You can’t just ship me off to the state pen without a trial! It’s unconstitutional, Melvin! Why, if your mother—” At the mention of his mother, Melvin seemed to wilt.

“Please, Yoder. Just come.”

“Why, Melvin Stoltzfus, what on earth is going on? Did your mother—? I mean, did Freni—?”

He nodded dejectedly, and I almost felt sorry for him. Only one woman in the world has more control over her children than my mother (God rest her soul, and Susannah excepted), and that’s Elvina Stoltzfus. Poor Melvin was born with a steel umbilical cord, and nothing he will ever do, including die, will sever it.

While I am experiencing this rare moment of compassion for my nemesis, I will go ahead and say that it is to Melvin’s credit that he is who he is. What I mean is, if Elvina Stoltzfus had had her way, Melvin would still be incapable of feeding himself, much less walking or talking. Those of us who observed Melvin’s relative maturation were astounded when he began to date (his brother Perry is reportedly still very fond of a sheep named Delilah). So, for all the grief that Melvin gives me, it could be worse, I suppose. After all, Elvina Stoltzfus would follow her precious son everywhere, I’m sure, if it were not for the ten-pound goiter attached to her neck, which she firmly refuses to have removed. Then again, that’s her business, isn’t it?

I successfully resisted my temptation to pat him compassionately. “Was it your mother who gave you the shiner, dear?”

“But it was really your fault, Magdalena.”

“How so?”

“You sicced Freni Hostetler on me.”

“I did no such thing, dear. I merely agreed that she should speak to your mother.”

He tried glaring, but it was obviously painful. “You knew that Freni and Mama are as close as two peas in a pod.”

“Black-eyed peas?”

“Very funny, Yoder. When Freni Hostetler got done bending Mama’s ear, Mama began twisting mine. And I mean that literally. ‘You let that poor little Magdalena go,’ she said. ‘You drop those charges at once. Don’t you know she’s getting married Saturday?’

“ ‘Like I care?’ I said. That’s when Mama threw her wooden darning egg at me.”

“Looks like child abuse to me,” I said sympathetically.

“She didn’t mean to hit me, you know! Mama would never mean to hurt her little Mellykins.”

I decided that Melvin was wounded enough. There was no need to bait him further. If I were half the woman my Aaron thought I was, I would have gathered Melvin Stoltzfus in my arms and rocked him like the baby Aaron so badly wanted. But I am only human, and although he may never realize it, my gift to him that day was that I shut my mouth when I did and kept it shut for as long as I did.

Without a peep I obediently signed a paper stating that I understood charges had been dropped and another one saying that I was leaving with the same worldly goods with which I had arrived.

“Sam Yoder has a special going on sirloin,” I said kindly, as I was taking my leave.

Melvin’s good eye rotated slowly in my direction. “Freni Hostetler will not always be around to protect you, Yoder. Someday—just you wait. Someday!”

“Well, ta-ta,” I said and started to skip to the door. And then I remembered something vitally important.

“About Jonas’s diary—”

“The one you stole?”

I let that pass. “Did you—ah—did you get a chance to search the inn?”

“You can bet your farm I did, Yoder, and with a fine-tooth comb.” He sounded much stronger now, much more in control of himself now that he had done his mother’s bidding.

“Well, did you find it?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

I sighed patiently. “Melvin, dear, if indeed I had taken it—which, I assure you, I didn’t—I would find out the second I got home, wouldn’t I? So, if I were the thief, I wouldn’t ask, would I? And anyway, if I were the thief—which I’m not—you would have a good reason to arrest me, even aside from our little altercation of last night. Right?”

He considered that for a moment. “You really should stay out of police business, Yoder. We’d all be much better off if you left things up to us professionals.”

I caught myself before I’d completed a full eye roll. “I’m sure you have a point, dear. However, I have a lot of stake in this particular case. You didn’t perhaps, search Jonas Weaver’s things, did you?”

Melvin curtailed his laugh when it began to some-how hurt his eye. “Why would Jonas Weaver steal his own daughter’s diary? He already had it, didn’t he?”

“He had it, all right. I know that, because I read it. But I’m the only one who read it. Maybe there’s something in there he suddenly decided he doesn’t want anyone to know. Maybe he decided not to cooperate after all. Then it would be just his word against mine.”

“So?”

“So, whose word would you believe? Jonas Weaver’s or mine?”

I had given Melvin a chance to be gracious, but it was obviously too much for him. “I’d believe Mr. Weaver,” he said without a second’s hesitation. “Anyway, you’re not making a lick of sense, Yoder. It was Jonas Weaver’s wife and daughter who were murdered. Why would he refuse to cooperate?”

“Maybe he did it!” I screamed. Trust me, as screams go, this one was fairly restrained, if not downright cultured. Aaron told me later that he did not hear it back at the inn.

Melvin laughed again until his eye made him quit, and then he told me to call Aaron and ask him to come pick me up. After that, despite the depth of emotion we had just shared, Melvin rudely showed me the door. He wisely avoided putting his hands on me this time, and I wisely kept mine dug deep into the pockets of my dress.