Grape Expectations Read online

  Grape Expectations

  An Amish Bed and Breakfast Mystery with Recipes

  Tamar Myers

  Copyright

  This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

  This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Grape Expectations

  Copyright © 2006 by Tamar Myers

  Ebook ISBN: 9781943772230

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  NYLA Publishing

  350 7th Avenue, Suite 2003, NY 10001, New York.

  http://www.nyliterary.com

  Praise for Tamar Myers’s Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries

  “A pinch of acerbity, a scoop of fun, and a pound of originality... a delicious treat.”—Carolyn Hart

  “A piquant brew, bubbling over with mystery and mirth. I loved every page of it.” —Dorothy Cannell

  “Rollicking suspense.”—The Washington Post

  “Feisty Mennonite innkeeper and talented sleuth Magdalena Yoder offers a mix of murder and mouthwatering recipes.”—Publishers Weekly

  “Snappy descriptions... humorous shenanigans.”—Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

  “A hoot. Guaranteed you’ll be laughing by the third paragraph.”—The Charleston Post and Courier (SC)

  “Think Mayberry R.F.D. with Mennonites Think Murder, She Wrote with a Pennsylvania Dutch accent. Instead of Jessica Fletcher, think Magdalena Yoder, a plain-dressing, blunt-speaking middle-aged innkeeper who frequently rescues the incompetent chief of police by solving his cases” —The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)

  “As sweet as a piece of brown-sugar pie... Magdalena is so likable.”—Booklist

  Dedication

  This book could not have been written without the inadvertent support of my three best friends. They are, in the order of helpfulness:

  Pagan, my basenji dog, who spends her days lying on a blue chair, in a sunny spot, in my office. She is my constant companion. My rock.

  Kasha, my Bengal cat, who has learned how to push the print button on my printer, and then jumps down to the tray to help the pages come out faster (although not always in great condition). He makes me laugh every day.

  Catrina the Great, my FI Jungle Cat hybrid, the newest addition to our family. Her majestic beauty (she is as large as our dog) reminds me that there is another world out there, a world beyond my imagination.

  Thank you, all.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to the Concord Grape Association for allowing me to use some of their recipes in this book. They may be contacted at the following address.

  Concord Grape Association 5575 Peachtree-Dunwoody Road Building G, Suite 500 Atlanta, GA 30342 404/252-3663

  E-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.concordgrape.org

  1

  Sturdy Christian underwear saved my life. I mean that literally. Once, in the concealing darkness of an abandoned mineshaft, I turned a brassiere into a slingshot, thereby enabling me to disable a giantess from New Jersey. On another occasion, my plain Protestant petticoat caught on a branch, preventing me from sailing over a cliff and thus becoming a buzzard buffet at the bottom. Sturdy Christian underwear, however, did not prevent my papa from doing the horizontal hootchy-kootchy with Odelphia Root. And if Odelphia had kept her sturdy Christian underwear where it belonged, she wouldn’t have conceived Zelda Root.

  It was Doc Shafor who knocked Papa off his pedestal with that bit of unsavory information, which could hardly be called news, given that it happened over forty years ago. At first I couldn’t believe my ears. Then I got angry—not at Papa, but at Doc. I was still railing at him three months later.

  “Doc, why tell me now? After all these years?”

  Doc put another piece of warm pie on my plate and topped it with a scoop of freshly churned ice cream. “Dig in, Magdalena.”

  “I don’t want more dessert. I want answers.”

  “I’ve given you answers. Now I’m giving you pie a la mode. Eat.”

  “Just one more time, Doc—please.”

  Doc sighed. “This is the last time then.”

  “Last time, I promise.”

  “I told you because Zelda is hurting. She could really use a sister.”

  “She’s hurting because the man she worships—the man who just so happens to be married to my real sister—is being tried for murder. And while Zelda may not be guilty of aiding and abetting our erstwhile Chief of Police, she certainly turned a blind eye his way.”

  “She’s still your sister. Your flesh and blood.”

  “Half sister. So just flesh—no blood.”

  “Why, Magdalena Portulaca Yoder, I must say I really am disappointed in you. I thought you were a bigger woman than that.”

  Doc Shafor is one of my oldest friends. Ever since my philandering papa and ill-tempered mama were killed in the Allegheny Tunnel, squished to death between a milk tanker and a truckload of state-of-the-art running shoes, the octogenarian has been my mentor. The fact that he finds me attractive in the romantic sense has so far been his problem, not mine.

  “I’m sorry if I disappoint you, Doc, but this is all very hard for me to process. Three months ago I walked into this house with one sibling, sat down to eat, and walked out with two. I’m not going to leave with a brother today, am I?”

  “Magdalena, sarcasm does not become you.”

  “I can’t help it. Besides, you haven’t told me yet how it is you know for sure that Zelda is my sister. And another thing. Did everyone in Hernia know except for me? And Susannah,” I added, referring to my full flesh and blood sister. “Does she know?”

  Doc chuckled. “If anyone else knew, do you think I’d be the one telling you? Magdalena, Hernia is to gossip what Milwaukee is to beer.”

  I don’t drink alcoholic beverages, but I knew what he meant. Last year Kathy Baumgartner went to Bedford, our closest real city, to see a podiatrist about a bad case of toenail fungus. Tongues started wagging even before she left.

  By the time Kathy made it home—Bedford is all of twelve miles away—Kathy’s fungus had progressed to the point that she was no longer among us, and her tootsies were pushing up daisies in Walnut Grove Cemetery.

  “But Papa was such an upstanding man,” I said stubbornly.

  “Part of him was.”

  “You still haven’t told me how you found out.”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Not today, you haven’t.” To be honest, I was hoping that, in the umpteenth telling, the story would turn out to be a mite less horrid.

  Doc sighed. “He told me. They both did. You see, Magdalena, they came to me one night asking if I could help them with a certain problem. This wasn’t the first time a couple had come to me at night like that, and I knew right away what they wanted.”

  “An abortion?”

  “Exactly. I told them—”

  “You’re just a veterinarian, for crying out loud.”

  “That I am. But they didn’t know what else to do. I told them that even though I believed a woman had a right over her own body—therefore her own reproductive system—I believed a baby had a right over his, or her, own body as well. I know that’s fence-sitting, but that’s how I felt. I also told them that, my personal feelings a
side, I simply wasn’t qualified to perform such a procedure on anything smaller than a horse.”

  “So then what happened? Did Odelphia Root go off to stay with a distant relative until after the baby was born?”

  “Magdalena, as you know good and well, Odelphia was Mrs. Angus Root when the affair happened.”

  I stiffened as the now familiar stench of hellfire filled my nostrils. “Papa slept with a married woman.”

  “I’m afraid so. The irony is that Angus was shooting blanks, and he never would have been a father if your Papa hadn’t stepped up to the plate.”

  “Did Odelphia ever tell Angus who the father really was?”

  Doc shrugged and scooped the melting ice cream from my pie into his mouth. “If she did, it didn’t seem to matter to Angus. Believe me, I kept a close watch on that man, and all I ever saw was how kind he was to Zelda. The funny thing is, they even looked alike. Don’t you think so?”

  I nodded reluctantly. Angus and his assumed daughter were both built like plucked chickens. Skinny ankles, no waist, a meaty breast not delineated into bosoms—there was, in fact, an uncanny resemblance.

  “Doc, if Odelphia was doing the mattress mambo with Papa, a married man, and she was married as well, who’s to say the hooch wasn’t doing the horizontal hootchy-kootchy with half the men in Bedford County?”

  “I was waiting for you to ask that, Magdalena. To be honest, only a DNA test will prove conclusively who Zelda’s biological father is—rather, was.”

  I stabbed at my pie before Doc got his mitts on that too. “So, what is it you want from me? To make like Papa never cheated on poor unsuspecting Mama?”

  Doc roared with laughter, giving me back some of the ice cream in the process. “Now that’s a good one—your poor unsuspecting Mama! Magdalena, what universe are you living in? When I said that no one else knew, I wasn’t including your mama.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. Even a weight-lifting sheep couldn’t pull the wool over Mama’s eyes. If it happened in Hernia, Mama knew about it—sooner rather than later. If Mama had come to terms with this disturbing revelation, why couldn’t I? Zelda was six nuts short of bridge mix, but she wasn’t a bad person.

  “I’ll try to be nice to her,” I said.

  “You’ll do more than that,” Doc said. “You’ll succeed.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that.”

  “If I wasn’t sure of that, I wouldn’t have told you.”

  “Life keeps throwing me curveballs,” I wailed.

  “You could use a few curves, Magdalena.”

  Doc was right. Here I am, in my late forties, and I have yet to develop a figure. I can eat all I want and not put on a single pound. Yes, I am aware of the fact that virtually every other woman in America would be glad to have my problem. What problem? they might even ask. But when you’re pushing the half-century mark and lack ballast—both forward and aft—it isn’t funny. Just the other day a busybody from church, who fancies herself a wag, said: “You know, Magdalena, if you drank tomato juice and wore nothing but a zipper, you’d make a pretty decent thermometer.”

  I’ve always been teased. When I was growing up my parents didn’t believe in deodorant. If the Good Lord didn’t want us to stink, He wouldn’t have created armpits, they said. This philosophy works fine if everyone around you subscribes to it. But I went to a public high school, which included among its student body children of a more progressive society. It was only a matter of minutes before I was dubbed “Yoder with the Odor.” It was soon shortened to just Odor. When the “in” clique wanted to get away from me, their leader, Mary Jane Yocum, would say in a loud voice, “Come on, guys, let’s de-Odorize.”

  The really hard part was not being able to retaliate. You see, I am a Mennonite of Amish ancestry. My people have been pacifists for hundreds of years. We believe in turning the other cheek, even if that cheek is still sore from a previous assault. We love our neighbors as ourselves, although not all of us love ourselves very much. That would be too proud.

  I put up with Mary Jane Yocum and her henchmen for most of my freshman year. Then came picture day. After attendance we were supposed to line up in the gymnasium and get photographed for the yearbook. I knew I was going to be right behind my tormentor and had prepared for the occasion. At the time I had a pet hamster, Willard, that was so sluggish he wouldn’t even use his wheel. Willard rode to school in my otherwise empty bra that day, and as we students stood obediently, if impatiently, in alphabetical order waiting to be photographed, Willard somehow found his way into Mary Jane’s beehive hairdo.

  Yes, it was a cruel thing to do to Willard, and I have since repented of my sin: Mary Jane’s shrieks caused the hapless hamster irreparable hearing loss. But as the beehive hairdo came undone, so did Mary Jane’s status as leader of the pack. Much to my surprise, there were many students at Hernia High who felt the same way I did. For a brief period of time I was a heroine. Mary Jane, on the other hand, was known as Hamster Hair for the rest of her high school career. Today, I am told, she runs a beauty salon in Lawton, Oklahoma.

  Not that it’s any of your business, but I now use deodorant on a daily basis. And while I may not be the most popular woman in town, I am by far its most distinguished. I say that in all-humility, a virtue of which I have an abundance. After my parents’ death I turned the family farm into a full-board inn. The PennDutch caters to the well-heeled: mostly Hollywood celebrities and millionaire congressmen, all of whom are eager to fill my coffers.

  The secret to my success is what I call the “squint when you travel” syndrome. Once on a trip to the wild and woolly state of Maryland (I carried my own provisions, of course), I realized that I was putting up with conditions I never would have tolerated back home in civilized Pennsylvania. Tourists, it seems, are quite willing to settle for less and pay more for it as long as they can view it as a cultural experience. The more abuse heaped on one and the higher the cost, the better. How else can one explain Paris as a travel destination?

  Back home I applied this same principle to my inn. Although I make my guests pay through the nose, they get the option of paying even more if they agree to clean their own rooms and help out with the farm chores. I call this feature ALPO—Amish Lifestyle Plan Option.

  At any rate, being a millionaire in a small town like Hernia (population 1,877, now that the Kreiders have had their baby) gives one certain rights and responsibilities. I’m the head of the town council because I pay the mayor’s salary, along with a stipend to the other council men and women.

  Oh, did I happen to mention that I am the mayor? This is a recent development that came upon us rather suddenly, when our Chief of Police, Melvin “the mantis” Stoltzfus, was arrested for murder, and his only deputy—the aforementioned Zelda—was sidelined for possible collusion and general incompetence. Our then mayor, Brenda Hirweiliger, resigned from her post, citing paparazzi harassment, but everyone knew she’d been dipping into the town till to get her tooth capped.

  I’d had three opponents in the mayoral race but won by a landslide—eighty-three percent of the forty-six votes cast. My first duty as mayor was to hire a new Chief of Police, which I did. Olivia Hornsby-Anderson was unanimously approved by the town council, as was her pick for deputy, a very handsome young man named Chris Ackerman.

  Despite a major and humiliating setback, Hernia, Pennsylvania, was back on its feet again—until the day the vineyard came to town.

  2

  The mayor’s office is a windowless cubbyhole behind the jail. It is so small a toad wouldn’t hibernate in it, although it is a popular spot for old flies to go when they die. The only ventilation is a ceiling fan with a broken blade; the illumination consists of a fluorescent shop light that can’t decide if it’s off or on. I’ve heard my workplace described as an Episcopalian’s version of Hell.

  In winter this so-called office is heated by a radiator that is stuck on high, so that one is forced to either leave the door open or bake like one of Freni’s cinnamon buns
. Thus, it was that I was thrashing my brains at my desk one morning, trying to make sense of the town’s astronomical water bill, when Agnes Mishler darkened the doorway. So completely did she cover the space that I thought the door had blown shut. “Magdalena, have you heard?”

  “I’ve heard plenty, dear. To what, specifically, are you referring?”

  “Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s what Hernia is going to turn into if we don’t put a stop to this.”

  “If you flee, remember not to look back.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Don’t you read your Bible?”

  “Of course I do. I’m a Mennonite too, you know. Just because I belong to the First Mennonite Church, and not Beechy Grove Mennonite like you, doesn’t mean I don’t read the Bible.”

  The First Mennonite Church is the most liberal branch of the Plain People in Hernia and its environs. The most conservative are the Old Order Amish, the ones seen riding horses and buggies. Then there are the Black Bumper Amish, who are allowed to drive black cars just as long as the chrome is painted black. I belong to a conservative branch of the Mennonite Church, the one to which the Good Lord would belong if He were living on earth today. I drive and use electricity but dress conservatively, like the Good Lord intended, and wear my braids neatly tucked beneath a white organza prayer cap. For the record, I do not consider myself better than anyone else in Hernia—even the Presbyterians.

  “Agnes, dear,” I said patiently, “when Lot’s wife fled Sodom and Gomorrah, she turned around to look at the burning cities, and God turned her into a pillar of salt. I was only thinking of your health. Aren’t you on a sodium-restricted diet?”