Gruel and Unusual Punishment Page 2

  Even though our town limits generously include a good deal of arable land, Amish comprise less than one fifth of our population. Their presence appears to be greater, however, because of their distinctive garb. Roughly half of us are Mennonites, which makes us the largest single group, although, to be totally honest, we are divided amongst several branches of this denomination, and don't always get along as well as the Good Lord intended. Methodists rank number two in sheer numbers, followed by United Presbyterians. Baptists are a distinct, if vocal, minority, but the smallest congregation is the First and Only True Church of the One and Only Living God of the Tabernacle of Supreme Holiness and Healing and Keeper of the Consecrated Righteousness of the Eternal Flame of Jehovah. Last I heard it had one member for each word in its title. Oddly, we have no Roman Catholics or Episcopalians, but last summer we finally got our first Jew. He, of course, does not constitute a congregation.

  In the older part of town the houses are mostly built of wood, many in the Victorian style. On the fringes, and in our one official suburb, one sees brick and vinyl ranch homes. My sinfully red BMW was the flashiest car in town, and the only reason I drove it was to tweak the noses of those folks who condemned me as a harlot for having inadvertently married a bigamist. But that's another story.

  After leaving Melvin to stare at the ceiling, I followed North Main almost to the edge of town, where it intersects with Meadow Lark Lane. I turned left into Zelda Root's driveway.

  She lives in a 1950s-style brick bungalow with green and white striped aluminum awnings over every window and door, and all badly in need of new paint. A lone silver maple towers over the back of the small house, and, with the exception of two ubiquitous Japanese yews on either side of the front entrance, is the only concession to landscaping. It was already the middle of June, but the weed-choked grass did not appear to have been cut once that year. Clearly Zelda had other priorities.

  The driveway was empty, and I didn't bother to peer through the dusty garage windows. Therefore it came as a bit of a surprise when the door swung open the second I rang the bell.

  She smiled warmly when she saw me. "Hey! Come on in!"

  I smiled back. It is hard not to like people who perpetually— well, how should I phrase this—kiss up to me. I know, some folks don't like groveling, but I'd rather deal with a groveler who knows her place than an alpha female who doesn't.

  Zelda suffers from the mistaken notion that I have it in my power to break up Susannah and Melvin's marriage and return the miserable mantis to her heaving, oversized bosom. Even if that were true, I would never do such a thing. I don't believe in divorce—not unless at least one of the parties has been unfaithful, and as far as I can determine, my baby sister and her irritating hubby have been as faithful to each other as Ruth and Billy Graham.

  "Hi, Zelda. I just stopped by to ask you a few questions. I hope this is a good time."

  "No time like the present," she said as she ushered me into the 1970s. "Have a seat."

  Instead of a proper couch, Zelda has six orange beanbag chairs arranged in a circle around a zebra-skin drum. This percussion instrument serves as a miniature coffee table, although there is very little room for coffee cups thanks to the largest lava lamp I'd ever seen. A brightly colored Mexican serape functions as an area rug, and completes this montage. The walls are decorated with large, beige macramé pieces that hang suspended, like giant spider webs. Since Zelda is not the most fastidious of housekeepers, real spider webs connect several of these monstrosities.

  I picked the least dusty beanbag chair and arranged my lanky frame in as modest a pose as possible. Even the most conservative Mennonite skirts were not designed for beanbag chairs. Zelda, on the other hand, was wearing a black T-shirt and black stretch pants, and she literally threw herself on the chair opposite me.

  "So what's up, Magdalena? Is this about Melvin?"

  "Well, indirectly. He—"

  "He's leaving Susannah, isn't he?" She hopped nimbly to her feet. "I knew it! I knew that marriage wouldn't last. No offense, Magdalena, but your sister doesn't have what it takes to please a man like Melvin."

  I was tempted to derail the conversation right there, but curiosity got the better of me. "What does it take?" I asked stupidly.

  "These!" She thrust out her chest, which, even clad in black as it was, appeared impossibly large.

  On the other hand, Susannah, like myself, suffers from MDS— mammary deficiency syndrome. Susannah is so flat, she carries her little dog Shnookums in her bra just to keep the garment from riding up on her. But Melvin has always been crazy about Susannah. As far as I know, her breasts, or the lack thereof, have never been an issue.

  "It has nothing to do with Susannah," I said. "It has to do with Clarence Webber."

  "Oh, him." Zelda threw herself back down on the bright orange bag. "What about him?"

  "Melvin just got a call from the coroner. The autopsy report is in. Apparently Mr. Webber died from an overdose of arsenic."

  Zelda popped up again and virtually leaped across the room. In the process she knocked the lava lamp to the floor, but didn't seem to mind. Her mission was to comfort me.

  "I'm so sorry." She threw her stubby arms around me, nearly smothering me in the process.

  I struggled free. "There's no reason to be sorry for me, dear. I sold him my car, delivered a few meals, but it's not like we were close."

  "Magdalena, you don't need to pretend with me. I know you came here to confess. But before you say anything else, I should advise you of your rights. You have the right to remain silent, and every word—"

  "Don't be an idiot," I cried, my Christian charity having worn thin. "I didn't kill Clarence Webber. I am, however, working on the case."

  A frown creased her spackled forehead. As a matter of fact, a little piece of the makeup actually chipped off and landed on the black shirt. There are those in town who believe Jimmy Hoffa may be hiding behind that mask, but I'm not one of them.

  "Melvin asked you to?" Her voice was suddenly an octave higher.

  "Yes. I understand that there's been a parade of visitors through the jail—"

  Zelda waved a plump little hand. Her nails were painted as black as the coal that riddles our mountains.

  "Not what you'd call a parade, Magdalena. Just four people, that's all."

  "Do you have the list here, or is it back at the office?"

  "No list," she said defensively, "but I can tell you exactly who they were."

  I scrabbled in my pocketbook until I found last Sunday's church bulletin and the much-bitten remains of a pen. Incidentally, those were not my teeth marks on the pen. The culprit was Shnookums, Susannah's pitiful petite pooch, who enjoys a good romp in a purse as much as he does in a bra.

  "Okay, dear, shoot."

  3

  Zelda flicked the bit of makeup on to the floor. "Well, first there was Emma Kauffman."

  "Which one?" That was a solid Mennonite and Amish name. I knew of at least six Emma Kauffmans in the area.

  "The artist. You know, the one who lives up on Buffalo Mountain."

  "Ah, that one."

  "She brought Mr. Webber a bag of cookies. Of course I had to confiscate them."

  "Why? Was there a weapon in the bag?"

  "No, but there were raisins."

  "What's wrong with raisins?"

  "They're dried grapes, Magdalena. They can be fermented and turned into wine. The last thing we need is a drunken riot in Hernia jail."

  "A lone prisoner can hardly riot, dear."

  She sniffed. "Maybe. Just to be on the safe side I plucked out all the raisins before handing the cookies over. Some were embedded too deep and the cookies crumbled. I'm afraid Mr. Webber ended up getting only half a bag."

  I smiled patiently. "Who else stopped by?"

  "Agnes Schlabach. She's the piano teacher over in Bedford who was written up in last week's issue of The Broad Top Bulletin. You know, in the Meet Your Neighbor s
ection."

  "The woman with thirty-two cats?"

  "That's her. She brought Mr. Webber a little flute."

  "A flute?"

  "Yeah, you know, the musical instrument."

  "Did you confiscate that as well?"

  She threw herself yet a third time into the much-abused chair. "Why would I do that?"

  "Well, if it was made of metal—"

  "It was wood."

  It was becoming apparent that I had to tread carefully if I wanted Zelda to salivate every time she saw me. It was time to throw her a bone.

  "Susannah and Melvin had a little spat last week," I said wickedly. "Something about her spending habits."

  Zelda beamed, her eyes gleaming like coals from behind that Kabuki mask. "Do tell!"

  "Maybe later, dear. First, tell me about visitors number three and four."

  "Ah!"

  "Work before play," I said, dangling that Mennonite motto like a carrot. Zelda, a nominal Methodist, needed a big sister to instruct her.

  "If you insist." She sighed. "Dorcas Yutzy stopped by a couple of times. Stayed longer than the rest."

  "Was she too bearing gifts?"

  Zelda shrugged. "You know Dorcas. I just waved her right on through."

  I knew Dorcas all right. She's the girls' gym teacher at Hernia High. I know all the teachers, because I'm on the school board. And no, I don't have any children. But I am the town's wealthiest citizen, and therefore entitled to some privileges.

  I'd have waved Dorcas through as well. The woman is a chatterbox. Perhaps it's because she spends her days with sweating teenagers and her evenings with an aged mother who is stone deaf, but if you as much as make eye contact with the gym teacher—fortunately not a casual occurrence, since she wears bottle-thick glasses—she latches on to you like a leech. As much as I hate to say it about any woman, this particular one needs to marry. Unfortunately, there are few prospects in Hernia for a myopic six-foot-five-inch woman with widely spaced teeth, not unlike those of a jack-o'-lantern, and who wears her mousy brown hair pulled back with pink barrettes, making her look for all the world like an overgrown twelve-year-old.

  "So, who's the fourth?" I asked.

  Zelda made a face, thereby dotting her black T-shirt with a shower of dried makeup. "The so-called Reverend Richard Nixon."

  "Surely that wasn't his minister!" Reverend Richard Nixon (his real name, I kid you not) is the pastor of that church out by the Interstate, the one with thirty-two words in its name.

  "Who knows? Whenever I saw him coming I ducked into the restroom. He talks as much as Dorcas, only it's all about religion."

  I nodded knowingly. The Good Lord created Sundays for long boring sermons. Folks who drone on and on about their faith during the week are not being considerate. There's nothing wrong with sharing the gospel, don't misunderstand me. It's just that one should share it by example or, at the very least, by brief snippets. No one was ever saved while asleep.

  "I don't suppose you happened to notice if he brought anything with him."

  She shook her head. "No, wait—his Bible. I'm sure he brought that. You never see him anywhere without that."

  "Right. One last question. Did any of these visitors come during mealtime?"

  All the makeup in the world couldn't hide the expression on Zelda's face. She swallowed hard, precipitating a few more fissures in her furrowed facade.

  "How was I supposed to know someone would try to kill

  Clarence Webber? In the three years I've been on the force, we've only ever had three other prisoners. And that's counting Famey Kimloch and his Saturday-night drinking sprees. We always let him out the next morning, but he never wants anything to eat. That leaves just Susannah and you."

  "Don't even go there!" I wailed.

  Susannah was twenty-three at the time of our parents' tragic death, but that was only her chronological age. Thanks to Papa, who had doted on her as if she were the only living child in the world, her emotional age was more like sixteen. Papa's demise, rather than thrusting my sister into adulthood, knocked a few more years off her maturity level. In the ten years since that awful day, I've been trying to get my sister out of her teens, so to speak.

  But how does one go about raising a twenty-three-year-old woman? You can't spank her—believe me, I've tried. And you can't ground her and send her to her room. The last time I tried that Susannah sneaked out the window, stole my car keys—and car, of course—and headed for Alaska. There was a surplus of men up there, she'd heard, and reckoned that there were at least a few she had yet to sleep with.

  Although I didn't press charges that time, my sister has had so many run-ins with the law that the Hernia jail has been decorated to suit her taste. After all, that is where she and Melvin Stoltzfus fell in love.

  My brief incarceration was a matter of principle, and I will not go into details here. All you need to know is that I am not the criminal type, and have never consciously broken the law—okay, so I sometimes have a heavy foot. Let he who has never had a speeding ticket be the one to cast the first stone.

  "So you see," Zelda said, "I don't have a lot of experience with prisoners. It isn't my fault. When Susannah was locked up, it was always Melvin who fed her, and believe you me, he kept any visitors away. At any hour. And of course I never had to worry about Melvin poisoning your sister." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But sometimes I wish he had."

  "I heard that!"

  Zelda popped to her feet again. She has the strongest leg muscles of any woman I've ever known. No doubt about it, if there was an Olympic event for beanbag chair emergence, Hernia's woman in blue would have a gold medal to suspend from her stupendous bosom.

  "Well, it's the truth! Magdalena, you know Melvin and I belong together. Susannah can have any man she pleases—heaven knows she already has—so why does she want Melvin?"

  "Why do you?" I asked calmly. If Zelda could answer that question to my satisfaction, she belonged on a mountaintop, dispensing bits of wisdom to ardent truth-seekers.

  "Because he's so cute!"

  "Gag me with a spoon, dear!" That is not a typical Mennonite expression, but the by-product of trying to rear a Presbyterian.

  My ejaculation didn't seem to faze Zelda. "You don't like Melvin—in fact you hate him. So—"

  "I hate no one!" Well, I try not to, at any rate. The Bible commands us to love our neighbors as well as we love ourselves. Having tried mightily to love Melvin over the years—and failed miserably—my new strategy is to try to love myself a little less. If I can get really good at that, then maybe things will even out a little bit.

  Black nails flashed as Zelda waved away my protest. "It would be in your own best interest to help me snag Melvin. Then maybe Susannah would grow up a bit. Who knows, she might decide to go back to college. She might even marry a Mennonite."

  "Get behind me, Satan!" I cried.

  "Just some thoughts," Zelda said. Her wicked smile was making a shambles of her face.

  I struggled to my feet. It was time for me to go, before I changed my name to Judas. Or would that be Judy? Judy Yoder had a nice sound to it. And oh, what a relief it would be to bust up the marriage before the two could spawn! A swarm of mini-mantises was the last thing Hernia needed.

  "So far," I said, trying to keep my mind busy, "the suspect list in- eludes Emma Kauffman, our reclusive local artist, Agnes Schlabach, the piano teacher from Bedford, and Dorcas Yutzy. One might even add Reverend Nixon to the list—if one were cynical enough to believe a man of the cloth could actually commit murder."

  "There's still another suspect."

  "There is?"

  Zelda nodded. "Rachel Blank."

  "Our illustrious mayor?"

  "Yup. Of course she stops by a lot. Then again, Melvin basically works for her."

  That had to stick in Melvin's craw. Rachel Blank is a beautiful, impeccably groomed woman, who looks like she could anchor any of the morning television
news shows—not that I watch TV, mind you. In fact, Rachel's previous job, before winning her landslide victory as mayor, was to work as the weather girl at a Philadelphia station.

  But until she went away to college, no one in Hernia would have pegged Rachel for success. Shy to the point of muteness, and as plain as unvarnished pine, the little Blank girl lived up to the family name. Melvin, who was one of Rachel's classmates, taunted her mercilessly, as did virtually every other kid. Thank heavens I was a good ten years older, or I might have done the same.

  What exactly happened at that fancy girls' college in the East to transform a Mennonite farm girl into a poised pseudo-celebrity is anybody's guess. But happen, something did. When Rachel finally returned to her roots, the citizens of Hernia rolled out the red carpet. They even had the existing mayor declare her birthday Rachel Blank Day. Frankly, I thought all the hoopla a bit too much, but then who am I to complain? I'm just a hardworking innkeeper, who has always contributed to my community, and who is still a Mennonite in good standing (Rachel became an agnostic at that fancy-shmancy school).

  However, it seems that being mayor was not enough for our Rachel Blank. The day we all learned that Congressman Whipple had been found dead in a Mrs. Nora Maynard's bed—all the way up in Pittsburgh—our new mayor threw her little pillbox hat into the ring. Melvin, who is always a day late and a dollar short, didn't file his intention until a week later. Never mind that our mumbling mantis maintains it was always his plan to run for political office.

  I would have thought it illegal for a mayor and her police chief to both run for the same congressional seat, but it isn't. And while it has to irk Melvin no end that his boss is by far the more popular candidate, I derive very little pleasure from the situation. At least Melvin has paid his dues, by staying put all these years. What I mean is, anybody can run off and become famous. But you try living in Hernia from the day you're born until the miserable day you die. Enough said—well, except for one last thing. I am not, as some have suggested, envious of our glamour gal mayor.