The Crepes of Wrath (14 page)

He looked back at me, his eyes now dancing with merriment. “Well, indeed. So why didn’t you call?”

“Because—well, because—” I grabbed the book off the coffee table. “
Where Jackals Sing.
That’s certainly an intriguing title. So it’s a good one, eh?”

“The best. But don’t try and change the subject.”

“Okay,” I wailed, “I was chicken too. And mad. I thought you didn’t care.”

He laughed. “So we’re a pair of chickens.”

“I guess so.”

“You want to try again?”

I blinked. “Try what?”

“This date thing. Our picnic.”

My heart pounded. It hadn’t beat that hard since the day I found Sarah Weaver in a barrel of sauerkraut—and she’d been dead twenty years.

“Sure,” I said through lips as dry as Mrs. Lehman’s coffee cakes.

“Tonight?”

“I can’t,” I said miserably. “I already have plans.”

Gabe’s beautiful brow creased with the merest suggestion of a frown. “My, aren’t we fickle.”

“It’s not a date,” I wailed. “I have to spy on a barn full of Amish teenagers.”

“Always ready with a joke, Magdalena. I don’t know how you do it.”

“I’m not joking!”

“What is this? Some sort of chaperone thing?”

I sighed. “Okay, if you must know, I’m investigating the death of Lizzie Mast.”

“Amish teenagers killed her? Rumor has it she died of an overdose of phencyclidine.”

“Rumor?” I said, startled.

“This is a small town, Magdalena. A
very
small town. Fewer people live here than on my block in Manhattan. Maybe even fewer than in my apartment building. Five minutes down at Yoder’s Corner Market or Miller’s Feed Store and you get enough information to fill the
Times
.”

I swallowed hard, praying that it wouldn’t be my lips to sink the ship, in the event that it sank. “But nothing about Amish teenagers, right?”

“Nothing about Amish teenagers and drugs. But this rumschpringe thing. That seems to be the main subject of conversation. It seems to be getting out of hand.”

“You know what that means?”

He nodded. “I have a good idea from the context in which it was used. My grandparents lived with us when I was a little boy, and they spoke only Yiddish. It’s remarkably similar to Pennsylvania Dutch. I can understand about three words out of four.”

That made me just a mite envious. My grandparents, with whom we lived, had spoken only Pennsylvania Dutch at home, but I had studiously ignored them—well, as much as I could. Granny Yoder had been impossible to ignore. Even after death she’s made a couple of appearances back at the PennDutch Inn, which wasn’t an inn in her time, but
her
domain. Anyway, after Granny died, our conversations were always in English, for my sake as well as Susannah’s. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve regretted losing that integral part of my heritage. I can still understand some “Dutch,” but apparently not as much as my Jewish doctor friend from New York City. Go figure, as he would say.

I sighed. “If my source can be trusted, rumschpringe
has definitely got out of hand. The kids are supposedly using drugs.”

“Moonshine? That kind of thing?”

I shook my head.

“Not phencyclidine!”

“
That
I don’t know. But apparently they were aphrodisiacs.”

He grinned broadly. “You don’t say? One doesn’t normally think of a bunch of teenagers needing sexual stimulants.”

“What?”

“You did say aphrodisiacs, didn’t you?”

“Psychedelics!” I wailed. “They were imagining themselves to be devils and such.”

“Ah, well, now that makes sense. So just what are you going to do, Magdalena? Peek through the barn slats and watch them freak out?”

“Something like that.”

“Then what? Are you going to arrest them?”

“I don’t have the authority,” I said. “But I will eventually report it to Melvin. In the meantime I’m going to try and find the connection between Lizzie’s death and these kids. Assuming what I’ve heard about these kids is true.”

“Who is your source, Magdalena?”

I hesitated for a few seconds. Why did I feel more comfortable confiding in George Hanson, a complete stranger, than in Gabe? It didn’t make a lick of sense.

“Joseph Mast,” I said reluctantly. “Lizzie’s widower.”

One of Gabe’s dark brows lifted. “You think ‘Mr. Noah’ could be telling the truth?”

“Mr. Noah?”

“That’s what they call him down at the feed store.”

That angered me. I’m a lifelong resident of Hernia, and I keep an ear to the ground, and sometimes to a glass pressed against a wall, and I hadn’t, until yesterday, known just how disturbed Joe Mast really was. How was it that some big-city outsider, who had only been in
town a few months, knew more about my town and my people than did I? It couldn’t have been just the language bit either. Gabe the Babe had to be the most inquisitive man this side of the Delaware.

“Joseph Mast,” I said emphatically, “is at times very coherent. In my professional opinion this lead needs following.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“The hell you say. I’m not going to let something potentially horrible happen to you. Kids on drugs can be extremely dangerous.”

I stood. “First of all, I’ll thank you not to swear in front of me. And second, I may be just a simple Mennonite woman from a nowhere town with a somewhat bizarre, if not inappropriate, name, but I have had a lot more experience dealing with criminal types than you.”

His grin looked mocking to me. “I bet you have. Look, I’m just trying to protect you.”

“Bet all you want, buster, but I don’t need your protection. And I’ll thank you to forget we ever had this conversation.”

“But Magdalena—”

I ignored him and walked resolutely toward the door. He jumped to his feet and followed me.

“What about the book? Don’t you want to borrow Ramat Sreym’s memoirs?”

“I have work to do.”

“Okay, so what about our picnic? I know tonight won’t do, but what about tomorrow evening?”

“Maybe,” I said over my shoulder, “or maybe not. I’ll tell Freni my answer, and then you run down to Miller’s Feed Store, or Yoder’s Corner Market, and see how long it takes you to get the scoop.”

“Magdalena, don’t be childish.”

I sailed out of there on the wings of pride. Unfortunately pride has rather flimsy wings, and, as the Bible warns us, is often accompanied by a nasty fall.

Filling

1 cup ricotta cheese

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

¹
⁄8 teaspoon salt

¹
⁄8 teaspoon pepper

Sauce

³
⁄4 teaspoon crushed oregano

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons flour

1 cup tomato sauce

Filling: Combine all ingredients and mix well. Spoon mixture onto crepes and fold into triangles. Place in a baking dish and top with the sauce. Fills 8 crepes.

Sauce: Combine butter and flour in a small saucepan, cooking and stirring until smooth, about 30 seconds. Add the tomato sauce and cook for 5 more minutes. Spoon over crepes, then broil until brown.

I didn’t fall until I got home, and for some inexplicable reason I tripped on the sill of the kitchen door. I may be tall and skinny, but that’s not the advantage you may think it is. I didn’t fall straight down, but shot forward like an arrow, my Yoder nose leading the way.

“Ach!” Freni squawked as I plowed headfirst into her soft middle.

I scrambled to my feet. “Sorry, dear. Are you all right?”

“For shame, Magdalena. You said this drinking was a onetime thing.”

“It was! I’m just clumsy.”

Freni stood on tiptoes and sniffed my breath anxiously. “Magdalena!”

“I didn’t drink anything,” I wailed.

“Yah, maybe. But I smell a man’s perfume.”

“You
do
?” I grabbed my collar and tried to smell it, but alas I smelled only myself. There was not a trace of Gabe. And why should there be? The man hadn’t even touched me.

But Freni was nodding. “You have been to see Dr. Rosen, yah?”

“Maybe. But so what if I have? You like him, and you know it.”

“Yah, that is so. But what would your mama say?”

“Mama?
What does she have to do with this? She’s been dead for twelve years, for crying out loud.”

Freni looked away, just as I thought I saw a tear glistening behind one lens. “She would remind you about the horse and the donkey, and not to tie them together.”

“I haven’t tied a horse and a donkey together in all my born days, and I’m not about to start now. But just for the record, did Mama tie animals together on a regular basis?”

“Ach, you make fun!”

“And you’re not making any sense, dear.”

“The Bible,” Freni said, and thumped the kitchen table like a preacher with tiny fists. “It’s in there.”

“What is?” I asked with the patience of Job.

Freni recited a passage of scripture in High German, the language in which she reads her Bible.

“That’s Greek to me,” I said facetiously.

“But this tying of the animals—to pull the plow—they must be the same.”

Then it dawned on me. She was referring, of course, to the passage in 2 Corinthians in which Paul exhorts his fellow Christians not to be yoked together with unbelievers. The verse says nothing about horses or donkeys, but Freni had been unable to translate “yoke” into English. Of course this hadn’t stopped her from trying to interfere in my personal life.

“Not to worry, Freni dear. Gabe and I are nowhere near getting tied together like a horse and donkey. Neither of us has mentioned marriage. In fact, we haven’t even been on a single real date. We’re just friends.”

Freni breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the corner of her eye with her apron. If you ask me, she didn’t deserve to be let off the hook that easily.

“You sound just like Lodema Schrock,” I said wickedly. “The two of you been putting your heads together lately?”

“Ach!”

“Now there’s a matched set. The question is, are you both horses, or are you both asses?”

Before a shocked Freni could respond, the door to the dining room swung open and in flitted Gingko Murray. The waif was wearing a yellow sundress scalloped with white lace, and her long dark hair had been woven into a single braid that was studded with dandelions. Her tiny feet were clad in white plastic sandals and there were more dandelions tucked in the various slots. I suppose the picture the pixie created might be considered attractive by some, but I was annoyed.

“If you’ll excuse me, dear, I’m having a private conversation.”

“This is important, Miss Yoder.”

“But so are good manners, dear. Now go back out and try knocking.”

She flounced impatiently to the door, and the second it stopped swinging, she knocked.

“Who is it?” I called pleasantly.

“It’s me.”

“Me who?”

“You know. Gingko.”

“I’m busy, Miss Biloba. You’ll have to try me later.”

“Later when? And the name’s Murray, not Biloba. Gingko Murray.”

“Right. Uh, I think I still have a few minutes available Thursday afternoon. How about between four and four-eleven? That suit you, Ginger?”

She pushed her way back in again. “Now who’s being rude?” she demanded.

I slapped a hand to my breast in mock astonishment. “Well, certainly not me.”

Freni nodded. “Yah, but you are, Magdalena. So maybe you won’t listen to your mama, or to me, but what would your friend Gabe say if he knew you were rude to the English?”

“I am anything but rude.” I grabbed one of Gingko’s slender wrists. “You want to talk? We’ll talk.” I pulled
her to the door. “And just to show you that I am a generous and considerate hostess”—I grabbed a wicker basket from the counter beside the door—“I’m going to let you help me gather eggs.”

Gingko’s eyes widened to the size of omelets. “Really?”

“Really.”

She trotted eagerly behind me to the hen house.

“That one,” I said, pointing to my favorite hen, “is Pertelote. No one touches her eggs but me. But that big one there”—I indicated a Rhode Island red—” is Mandy. You get to collect her egg.”

Gingko grinned. “Awesome. How do I do it?”

“It’s really quite simple. You lift her with one hand, and take the eggs with the other.”

“Does Mandy bite?”

“Hens don’t bite, dear, they peck. Now go on.”

Gingko was a stubborn girl. “Does Mandy peck?”

Alas. Lying then would have been every bit as much a sin as King David sending Uriah out to battle so he could sleep with Bathsheba. Not that I had designs on sleeping with Mandy, mind you, but you get my point. Despite her pretty looks, Mandy is as mean as a junkyard dog and would just as soon peck you as eat. For weeks I’d been threatening to send her to the stew pot. In fact, the last couple of days I hadn’t even bothered to collect from her.

“All hens peck, dear,” I said peevishly.

Perhaps Gingko didn’t hear me. She glided over to the row of wooden nesting boxes and began cooing in her high-pitched childlike voice.

“They’re not pigeons, dear.”

“
Oooooo.
You’re just the sweetest little thing.”

Rhode Island reds are not little. If they got any larger, you could saddle them, and only a hungry fox would find them cute. But Mandy didn’t seem to mind Gingko’s silly observation. She sat there just as calmly as could be.

“Maybe she’s dead,” I said hopefully. While I
certainly wouldn’t eat a hen that had expired from natural causes, for the chubby carnivores, Keith and Honey Bunch, she might be just the ticket.

“Don’t be rude, Miss Yoder, she can hear you.”

“So?”

“You’ll hurt her feelings.”

“She’s a chicken, for crying out loud! She doesn’t have feelings.”

Gingko gasped softly. “Every living creature has feelings.”

“Some feelings! Chickens are cannibals, you know. We ate her mother, Elizabeth, Sunday before last, and when we threw the viscera into the chicken yard, Mandy ate more than her share.”

“You
ate
Mandy’s mother?”

“She was a mite tough, but we stewed her for dumplings.”

Gingko had turned the color of chicken droppings and she was shaking like an aspen. “It just so happens that Mandy and I were friends in a past life.”

“
You
were a chicken?”

“Of course not. I was Cleopatra and Mandy was Ahmontut, my wine taster.”

“So how did she end up as chicken?”

“Ahmontut was a
he,
not a she. Miss Yoder, do you want to hear this story or not?”

“Do tell.” My eyes were rolling like pinwheels in a stiff breeze.

I gathered while Gingko gabbed. “Well,” she said and, to my utter amazement, actually picked up mean old Mandy and cradled her in alabaster arms, “Ahmontut sold me out to that horrible brother of mine, and was about to let me be poisoned, when there was a mix-up of wines, thanks to an addled old slave, and Ahmontut drank from the wrong cup.” She sighed as she gently fingered Mandy’s comb. “I’ve had five lives since then, but this is Ahmontut’s first reincarnation. Anyway, he—I mean she—is very sorry about what happened.”

“Certainly one of us is.” I tried not to yawn. Hen houses are not the most hygienic of environments, and I didn’t want a mite-infested feather floating into my gaping maw.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“It is not my place to pass judgment, dear. Now grab those three eggs while you have a chance. I’ve already collected from ten hens, and you have yet to get a single egg in your basket.”

“Miss Yoder, please reconsider. Mandy really wants to hatch some chicks. She’s convinced that being a good mother is the only way she can work herself up to the next level.”

“No offense, Miss Biloba, but that’s utter nonsense.”

“Please, Miss Yoder. Mandy promises to be good from now on. She’ll never peck at you again, if you let her raise this one batch.”

“That’s clutch, dear.”

“Please.”

I sighed. “Okay. I’ve been needing some new young layers anyway—although normally Pertelote gets the honors. But if she pecks at me even once after this, she’s fricassee.”

Gingko murmured something into Mandy’s ear hole—chickens don’t have external ears, by the way—and then turned her face to me and smiled. “You’ve got a deal, Miss Yoder.”

I collected the last egg from Abigail, a hen with very little personality. Surely in her past life she had been nothing more than a mushroom.

“Okay, dear, we’re all done here. Put the hen back, and let’s get going.”

“Don’t you want to hear what it is I wanted to speak to you about?”

Frankly, I had quite forgotten what I was doing in a chicken coop in the middle of the day. Egg gathering is something I generally do in the evening.

“I’m all ears, dear,” I said, and chuckled.

Gingko put Mandy gently back into the next box and straightened. She spoke to me as she brushed chicken poop from her cheerful yellow skirt.

“I had another vision involving you.”

“Did it have to do with my next life? I want to come back as Prince William’s oldest daughter. I want to be the Queen of England in my own right.” I was, of course, just pulling her leg. I don’t believe in reincarnation. We are born once, saved once, and that’s all there is to it. If that were not the case, things could get mighty confusing for the Almighty. What would happen at the rapture, for instance, if I was a rooster? Then who would get my mansion in the sky?

“It had to do with this life, Miss Yoder. Actually it had to do with your death.”