Assault and Pepper Read online

  “It doesn’t matter. She needs to take care of her own family.”

  “Yah? So what am I supposed to do?”

  “For starters, you can unquit. Believe me, dear, I need you more than Barbara does. In fact, Lodema Schrock has asked me to look into the reverend’s death, and if it turns out to be murder—well, you know how time-consuming those cases can be. So here’s what I’m proposing. How about if I move in with Alison upstairs, and you and Mose take my room down here? Think of it as a vacation away from you-know-who.”

  “But I will still work here, yah?” Her tone made it clear that the mere thought of doing nothing was at least frightening, if not downright sinful. After all, idle hands are the Devil’s playground, and even plump little hands like Freni’s can get into a peck of trouble if not kept busy.

  “You’ll run the whole show, Freni. You’ll be the grand pooh-bah, the queen.”

  “What is this pooh-bah?”

  “Lord-High-Everything-Else. It’s from the opera Mikado. It means someone with an extremely important position.” Believe me, the only reason I know this word is because I keep a dictionary in the powder room for those days on which nature prefers to work slowly. Dictionaries, unlike magazines, can last for years without going out-of-date.

  Despite the thickness of her lenses, I could see Freni’s eyes glitter. We Mennonites and Amish have humility bred into our DNA. I, for one, am very proud of my humility. But we all have our thresholds, past which temptation becomes too strong to resist. My stumbling block was a sinfully red BMW. Now I am proud to say that I saw the error of my ways and traded it for a more humble vehicle. At any rate, I had no doubt but that Freni could manage her own ego. And anyway, she wasn’t my sister. But even if she was, I was certainly not her keeper.

  She took a few minutes to deliberate. “So maybe not the grand pooh-bah,” she finally said, “but the queen, yah?”

  “Then you’ll do it?”

  “Yah, I do it. But that means you must listen to me too, yah?”

  “Whatever,” I said, borrowing Alison’s favorite word.

  I fled to move my things before she had a chance to change her mind.

  Despite the late hour, I managed to collect Mose from the farm and ensconce the couple into my downstairs suite. Then I struggled up my impossibly steep stairs one last time to throw myself into a bed—quite frankly a pretty awful bed. I know I certainly wouldn’t pay the huge amount of money I charge for its use. At any rate, it seemed like no sooner did I hit the hay than I heard a loud rap on the door.

  “I’m not here!” I hollered.

  “Yoder, you’re an idiot, you know that?”

  It was my nemesis, Melvin Stoltzfus. He had a lot of nerve calling me an idiot. The man couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel. The only reason Hernia keeps him on as Chief of Police is that no one else wants the job.

  “Melvin, do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s almost nine o’clock, Yoder. And you’re the one who’s always telling me it’s a sin to sleep in so late.”

  “Yes, but nine in the evening, and nine in the morning—” I caught a glimpse of the cheap bedside clock. Heavens to Murgatroyd! It was 8:50 in the morning. Only Satan and unrepentant sinners slept that late. Well, at least according to Mama.

  My knucklehead brother-in-law rapped again. “Yoder, open up, or I’m going to break the door down.”

  Melvin is built like a praying mantis: huge knobby head, skinny neck, swollen torso, and arms and legs so spindly one must conclude they’re reinforced with rebar. He barely had the strength to open a door, much less break one down. Still, I knew from experience that he wasn’t going to leave until he’d gotten what he’d come for.

  I threw a heavy flannel robe on over my thick cotton pajamas, which in turn covered my sturdy Christian underwear. Then I crammed my size eleven tootsies into shaggy slippers shaped like bunnies. If eye candy was what he was after, he was going to leave hungrier than ever.

  “Yes?” I snapped as I flung the door open.

  Melvin recoiled. No doubt he was surprised at how quickly I’d made myself decent.

  “Yoder,” he said, catching his breath, “you look hideous.”

  “Thank you. I try my best. Now what is it that’s so important you have to disturb my beauty rest?”

  “It’s about Reverend Schrock. Aren’t you at least going to invite me in?”

  I stepped aside. There wasn’t any place for him to sit except the bed. I don’t believe in coddling my guests with luxuries like chairs. Better to get them downstairs in the dining room, I say, where I have a quilting loom all set up for their bored fingers. A surprising number of them are deft with a needle, and I am usually able to sell their handiwork for a tidy sum. Every now and then some novice will make stitches that resemble the footprints of a drunken chicken, but I sneak in at night and replace them with tight little stitches of my own.

  Melvin surveyed my rumpled bed with one eye, while his other seemed to be ogling the bunny on my right tootsy. “What’s the thread count, Yoder?”

  “Say what?”

  “Susannah and I sleep on four-hundred-thread-count sheets. These look more like burlap bags.”

  “Cut to the chase, Melvin, or else march your bony carapace back to your car and drive yourself home to those four-hundred- count sheets, pick a nice strong one, and then hang yourself with it.” I know—those words should never have come out of the mouth of a Christian. But I had awakened on the sinful side of the morning, and there is only so much Stoltzfus one can take on an empty stomach. For the record, I immediately whispered a prayer asking for forgiveness.

  Melvin sat on the corner of the bed nearest the door. “Touchy this morning, are we?”

  “Spill it.”

  “I thought you might like to know that the lab called already with a preliminary report on the cause of death. I’d asked them to do a rush on it, you see. Fellow there by the name of Neubrander owed me a favor, on account of back in junior college, I held his head out of the toilet for him when he puked—”

  “Peanut butter.”

  “No, beer, stupid. Whoever heard of drinking peanut butter?”

  “I meant in the chili. Reverend Schrock died from an allergic reaction, didn’t he?”

  In a rare moment of coordination, Melvin managed to get both eyes to focus on me. “How did you know that?”

  “Lodema told me about his allergy.”

  Surely Melvin holds the world record for staring, at least with one of his eyes. I was beginning to believe in the heresy of teleportation—perhaps the real Melvin was happily munching aphids on a rosebush somewhere—when he finally responded.

  “Yoder, I want you to be the first to hear the news.”

  “What news?” Could my sister possibly be pregnant? If so, would her baby be human, or insect, maybe even a hybrid, thereby violating the laws of nature and incurring the wrath of God? Or—and this really gave me chills—what if the big news was that he was planning to divorce her? As much as I dislike the man, I have no doubt that Susannah loves him dearly.

  “Yoder, I quit.”

  “Quit what?” For all his annoying habits, Melvin neither smokes nor drinks. And he certainly isn’t overweight.

  “My job, that’s what.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “As Chief of Police?”

  “No, idiot, as a male stripper over in Bedford.”

  Melvin loves the power that comes with his job. It’s what gives him confidence, as undeserved as it may be. His pigeon chest was a sparrow chest until he pinned on that badge. This could only mean that he was telling the truth about being a stripper, because he would never quit the force.

  “Does your mama know?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous—of course she does. It’s always been a source of pride for her. She especially loves to see me work.”

  I tried to imagine Elvina Stoltzfus at the Bigger
Chigger, or wherever it is male insects strut their stuff. I am happy to report that even my imagination doesn’t stretch that far.

  “Do you at least wear a G-string?”

  “Yoder, you’re a fool. Why would I wear a G-string under my uniform?”

  The sudden rush of blood to my cheeks made me top-heavy and I needed to sit down, but I sure wasn’t going to share my bed with Melvin, not after having made such an embarrassing boo-boo. The twit might think this nitwit was coming on to him.

  “You’re resigning as Chief of Police?”

  “Are we talking in circles, Yoder?”

  “No, and you can’t quit! And besides, you have to give notice.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I told the mayor first thing this morning, and now I’m telling you, seeing as how you’re on the town council—although how that ever happened, I’ll never know.”

  That was only a minor insult, by Stoltzfus standards, so I let it pass. “If you think for one minute that I’m going to support you and my sister, well, think again.”

  “Don’t need your money, Yoder. I already got me a new job. I start in two weeks.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Making staples, that’s what.”

  I must confess that making staples is one profession I’d never given much thought to. But someone has to make them, and why not Melvin? Just as long as he didn’t get bored doing it and go bonkers. I could see the headlines already: hernia man goes BERSERK, TERRORIZES COWORKERS WITH STAPLE GUN.

  “Melvin, dear,” I said, ever the practical one, “who’s going to investigate Reverend Schrock’s death?”

  “That’s why I’m here, Yoder.”

  “Oh no, you don’t. You’re not dumping this into my lap. I’d be happy to help, but I’m not flying solo on this one.”

  “You gotta, Yoder, because I’m going fishing.”

  “Say what?”

  “I got me two weeks of vacation time saved up, and I mean to use it.”

  “But you can’t!”

  “What are you and the mayor going to do, fire me?” He moved his mandibles silently, but I knew he was chuckling inside.

  If it were not for the three hundred years of pacifist inbreeding that was my heritage, I would have smacked the smirk off Stoltzfus’s face. Instead, I only pretended to swing at him. Unfortunately, my arms are long and gangly, and my hands the size of Delaware at low tide. Those factors, along with my still engorged cheeks, caused me not only to lurch forward onto the bed, but to somehow become tangled up with Melvin. I guess it should have come as no surprise that the demented mantis should take that as an advance on my part.

  At any rate, that’s when the second uninvited visitor appeared at my door.

  3

  “Ach!” Freni squawked.

  “It isn’t what you think!” I wailed.

  “A sin, Magdalena, that’s what it is.”

  I struggled to free myself from my brother-in-law’s bony embrace. “I lost my balance, that’s all.”

  “Yah, that is what they all say. Sarah Burkholder lost her balance thirteen times, and now she and Enoch have more mouths than they can feed. Ach, it is such a shame.”

  “That’s not what Melvin and I were doing! Tell her, Melvin.”

  “Okay, if you insist. You see, Freni, I was just sitting here, on the edge of the bed, minding my own business, when Magdalena—”

  “Forgot to give you your monthly stipend,” I growled.

  Melvin’s limbs immediately found their own space. If it weren’t for the allowance I dole out on a regular basis, my sister and her husband would be living under a bridge, pretending to be trolls and charging folks for safe passage. They both know which side their brand-name bread is buttered on, and whose hand it is that does the spreading.

  “We were just talking,” Melvin said quickly. “Police business.”

  Freni grunted, which meant she wasn’t committing herself to believing, but neither would she disbelieve. “So now you go back to police work, and leave us alone, yah? I need to speak to Magdalena.”

  Melvin skedaddled without another word. Freni and his mother were as dose as two plaits in a bun. It has been rumored that Elvina still spanks her forty-year-old son, and if this is true, I have no doubt Freni would gladly fill in for her.

  “What do you want to talk about?” I asked nervously. It has been years since Freni’s spanked me, but the last time she did, it made quite an impression on yours truly.

  “Magdalena, you said I was in charge of the inn this week, yah?”

  “Yah—I mean, yes.”

  “So then I can fry scrapple for breakfast, yah?”

  “Yes. But you have to make something different for the vegetarians.”

  Her glasses were caked with grease and corn meal, so I couldn’t see her eyes, but her silence spoke volumes.

  “Well, did you?”

  “But the scrapple has corn in it, yah? And corn is a vegetable.”

  “Freni, you expect others to respect your beliefs, so in turn you need to respect theirs.”

  “But some of the English are so strict.”

  “That would be the pot calling the kettle black, dear.”

  “Ach,” she squawked again, and fled before reason had a chance to contaminate her thinking.

  I started my investigation with the most obvious suspect: our church’s treasurer. Little Samson was given his name at birth, but nonetheless has managed to live up to it. Although just five feet five, he is built like an ox. His father, Big Samson, was six feet five, and his mother, Delilah (I kid you not), at least six feet. Throw in the fact that Little Samson is a redhead, and both his parents were brunet, and one might figure in a milkman somewhere.

  Little Samson’s last name is Livengood, but folks invariably use his nickname. He is Hernia’s only farrier, and because so many Amish live in the area, Little Samson is always busy. Still, he finds time to attend every PTA meeting, and since his election to the school board, his attendance has been perfect.

  There were three buggies in the parking lot of Little Samson’s smithy, their owners waiting patiently to have their horses shod. The men were not surprised to see me.

  “Ach,” said Jonas Speicher, “the Mennonite preacher’s murder.”

  The other two men, whom I didn’t know, nodded. Apparently my reputation as a pseudo-sleuth preceded me, as did rumors of a murder that had yet to be confirmed.

  “Gut marriye,” I said, and breezed past them.

  The inside of the smithy smelled like burned fingernails—not an odor to which I am accustomed, mind you. Little Samson had his back turned to me, a horse’s hoof propped against a muscular thigh. I waited until he was through driving in the nail before I spoke. To his credit, he turned slowly and regarded me calmly.

  “I’ve been expecting you, Magdalena.”

  “You have?”

  “Well, I’m the most logical place to start, aren’t I? That’s what I would do if I was in your shoes.”

  “You’d step right out of my shoes, dear.” I wasn’t being unkind, merely stating a fact.

  “So I would. Speaking of shoes, Magdalena, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have two more shoes to go on this one, and eight hooves waiting for me outside. Do you mind if we get started?”

  “Perhaps you’d like to ask the questions yourself.”

  He didn’t even spare a second to smile at my audacity. “Certainly. I’m the treasurer at Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. Your hypothesis is that I stole from the congregation, that the reverend got wise to it, and that I murdered him at the chili supper to cover my tracks. Am I correct?”

  For the record, Little Samson got a perfect score on his SATs. Since only God is supposed to be perfect, showing off like this smacks of arrogance, if you ask me. I might have gotten a much higher score if I’d tried harder. Now what was I about to say? Oh yes, a lot of Amish, and to a lesser extent Mennonites, have brilliant minds that they hi
de under bushels, to use a biblical metaphor. Little Samson is a Mennonite, and could have gotten a scholarship to an Ivy League school. Instead, he chose to follow in his father’s footsteps, insuring that our horses’ footsteps rang out loud and clear on our county’s highways and byways.

  “Yes, you are correct, but—”

  “I have seven children, Magdalena. Do you think I would risk prison for twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Twenty thousand dollars? Is that how much is missing?”

  “That was just an example. I didn’t say anything was missing.”

  “Don’t scare me like that, Little Samson. You’ll turn my hair white, and I much prefer the mousy brown shade the Good Lord gave me. And just the same, you should check the books—to make sure nothing is missing.”

  “Do you have other suspects on your list, Magdalena?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I suggest you interrogate them, before the trail gets any colder.”

  “Well, now, that’s up to me to decide, isn’t it? I’m the one conducting this investigation.”

  “Yes, but harassing me is a waste of both your time and mine, because I have an alibi.”

  “You do?”

  “Certainly. Do you recall seeing my seven youngsters at the supper last night?”

  “Come to think of it, it was remarkably quiet. Nobody put gum in my hair. No chairs were knocked over. There wasn’t any shrieking—except for when Lydia Bontrager thought she found a tooth in her chili. No, I don’t remember seeing the little brats—I mean, darlings.”

  “That’s because we were at my mother-in-law’s house over in Somerset. It was her birthday. We didn’t get back until almost ten o’clock. If you like, I’ll give you my mother-in-law’s telephone number. You can call her, see what time we left.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Somerset was less than an hour away, and Reverend Schrock departed for his heavenly home at six thirty sharp. Little Samson was off the hook.

  I thanked him for his time, given grudgingly though it was, bade a cheery farewell to the Amish men in the parking lot, and made tracks for my next victim.