Just Plain Pickled to Death Read online

  Besides the fact that she is half a foot taller than I, and a good hundred pounds heavier, the woman has no neck. Zilch. Her smallish head sits directly on quarterback shoulders. At least I could wear a necklace, if I so desired. Maybe not a five-strand pearl collar, like Princess Di, but something. Perhaps the good Lord was being kind when he neglected to give Auntie Leah a neck; as it is, she passes through two climate zones.

  “Aunt Leah! Come in,” I said graciously.

  The train hurtled into the lobby, nearly knocking me over. It was followed a few seconds later by the cutest little caboose.

  “Uncle Solomon?”

  I offered him my hand, which he took in both of his. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve seen corn kernels almost as long as his fingers. The man was also bald as a cue ball and barely taller than a cue stick. Like Uncle Rudy, he wore a suit and a tie. Clearly it was a marriage made in heaven. Mere mortals could never have gotten them together.

  “That’s just terrible about our little Sarah,” Auntie Leah boomed. “Do the police have any suspects?”

  I shook my head, carefully avoiding eye contact with Aaron. “After all, the trail is twenty years old.”

  Uncle Solomon rubbed a pudgy little hand over his shiny dome. “I read the most interesting thing in the paper recently,” he said. He spoke rapidly, as if he was afraid of being interrupted. “It happened in France. Someone found a body—a murder victim— in a cave high up in the Pyrenees. Apparently it was quite cold in the cave, and the body had been there for many years. It was perfectly preserved. The autopsy even revealed what the victim had eaten for breakfast and—”

  “Speaking of breakfast,” Auntie Leah bellowed, “what is for breakfast?”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Eggs and bacon would be nice,” Uncle Solomon muttered. “And cinnamon toast. I love cinnamon toast.”

  Auntie Leah scowled at her husband. “The motel we stayed at just offered Continental breakfasts. It’s no wonder the Europeans are so puny. English muffins and croissants—imagine that!”

  “I hadn’t thought about breakfast,” I said calmly. “I’m not really open for business, you know. But there’s some cereal boxes in the kitchen cupboard next to the refrigerator. You’re welcome to help yourselves.”

  “Cereal?” Leah barked. “You want us to eat cereal? Why, I never! In my day we served our company real meals—ham, bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, waffles, fried potatoes. You name it. I got up before dawn to put my best foot forward.”

  I glanced down at her feet. Thankfully, they were of normal size, and she wouldn’t be demanding my bed.

  “Be my guest, dear. The kitchen is that way. For your information, I like my eggs poached, and my bacon with a little play left in it. Before you start you might want to run upstairs to room six to see what Auntie Veronica and Uncle Rudy want.”

  “Veronica is here?”

  “You don’t think the Rolls-Royce is mine, do you, dear?” I could be persuaded to like this woman.

  “It’s a beautiful Rolls,” Uncle Solomon said agree-ably. “I’m particularly fond of the classic Phantom series—”

  “You mean she spent the night?” Auntie Leah bawled.

  “She snored like a hibernating bear. Kept me awake until the wee hours this morning.” Actually, the fact that Susannah hadn’t returned yet was what had done it, but I wasn’t about to confide in a stranger.

  “The nerve of that woman!”

  “You’re telling me!”

  “She always has to be first, you know. First to be born, first to—”

  “ ‘And the first shall be last,’ ” I said, quoting Scripture.

  “—move out of Hernia, first to buy a genuine ranch house, first to get a television. Whenever there’s a wedding or a funeral, that woman just has to be the first to get there. It’s like a convulsion or something.”

  “I think you mean ‘compulsion, dear,” I said kindly.

  “Whatever! Is there nothing that Veronica hasn’t done first?”

  “She has yet to cook a meal in my kitchen,” I said hopefully.

  “Well, I’ll soon fix that.”

  She chugged off, like a train on a trestle, trailing her reluctant caboose. Fortunately I had dusted the doorway lintels for cobwebs just the day before.

  I had decided to wait for my breakfast in the comfort of my bed and was headed back to my room when the front door slammed open. I turned to see my sister, Susannah, flow in. I mean that literally. It’s not that Susannah, is particularly graceful, mind you, it’s just that her usual attire is fifteen yards (give or take a foot) of frothy fabric.

  This morning Susannah was wearing a lavender print chiffon that, if memory served me, was the same stuff she’d had on the day before. It also looked more than a little worse for wear, and I could only hope those were ketchup stains I saw settle into place.

  “Susannah!”

  “Oh, Mags, don’t you even think about starting in on me. I’ve had one hell of a rough night.”

  “We don’t swear in this house, do we, dear,” I reminded her gently.

  Susannah rolled her eyes so high that for a second only the whites could be seen. “A couple of pews and an offering plate and we could rename this joint Saint Magdalena’s Church. There is one with that name in Pittsburgh, you know.”

  “Is that where you were, dear? In Pittsburgh? Did you visit Mystery Lovers Bookshop?”

  Susannah doesn’t have a car, and she hadn’t taken mine, but I knew that was no obstacle. That girl gets around more places than the postal truck.

  “You think I went to Pittsburgh? I wish!” Susannah stamped a long, slender foot, and from deep within the settled swirls there came a faint bark.

  In case you haven’t heard, Susannah owns one of those rat-size dogs, and she carries it around in her bra (a gal has to put something in her bra, doesn’t she?). Shnookums is the beast’s name, and contrary to public opinion, I am not out to do the critter in. I mean only to stand my own ground, which is not easy to do in this case, even though the dog weighs only two pounds soaking wet. That’s because this cantankerous cur is fifty percent teeth, and fifty percent sphincter muscle. No matter from which direction you approach the mutt, you’re bound to lose.

  “Well, where did you go?”

  “Johnstown.”

  “Johnstown is nice. The incline railway is especially interesting. The steepest car-carrying one in the world, I believe.”

  “I didn’t ride the incline, Mags. I had a date.”

  I nodded to show that I understood, although I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Aaron and I had a wonderful date riding up and down the Johnstown incline.

  “Of course, only half of them showed up,” she added.

  “Only half your date showed up?” Thankfully I had more sense than to ask which half. In the old days it might have been a joke. But from what Susannah tells me about the TV talk shows she watches, this could well be a serious question.

  “Yeah,” she said disgustedly. “The pitcher was there, and so was the shortstop. The first and second basemen came late. The catcher didn’t stop by until almost the end, and I never did see the third baseman.” She stomped her foot again, and Shnookums howled on cue. “Or half the outfield, for that matter.”

  “You dated a softball team?”

  Her eyes rolled back until they challenged gravity. “Really, Mags, how dumb can you get? It was a baseball team.”

  I said a quick but fervent prayer of thanksgiving. I didn’t approve of my sister’s behavior, mind you, but I was overjoyed that she was her normal self again. I had been afraid that her abrupt brush with reality the day before might have altered her equilibrium. I realized, of course, that it was important for Susannah to seek professional help, but since she’d managed to avoid it for twenty years, what harm was one or two more weeks going to do?

  As soon as Aaron and I got back from our honeymoon I was going to see to it that Susannah got the help she needed. It might take both Aaron a
nd me, along with a team of horses, to do it, and undoubtedly Susannah would hate me for the rest of her life, but it had to be done. After my wedding!

  Chapter Four

  My Pooky Bear showed up just in time for breakfast, and it was immediately clear that all was forgiven. The humongous bouquet of freshly picked irises he thrust at me would have been proof enough.

  The kiss that followed scorched my lips to the gums. I will confide here that it was only our second kiss—we Mennonites tend to be chaste. I shudder to think what might have transpired had we been Presbyterians like Susannah.

  “I see that Auntie Leah has arrived,” he said jovially.

  “How can you tell?”

  “The New Jersey plates. My guess is that the next one to show up will be Auntie Lizzie. I know she lives in Pennsylvania—but it’s all back roads from Du Bois to here, and neither she nor Uncle Manasses will drive at night. Otherwise she would have been the first to arrive.”

  Aaron was absolutely right. I had just devoured my bacon—not quite enough play but still good—when the Du Bois duo danced in. I don’t mean that literally, since Aunt Lizzie Blough is a devout Mennonite, but still, she and Uncle Manasses are by far the most liberal members of our sect I have encountered. They almost look English!

  True, Auntie Veronica and Uncle Rudy are wealthy enough to put your average Episcopalian to shame, but from the neck up they look like Mennonites. Not that all Mennonites have big noses, mind you. What I mean is that Auntie Veronica does not wear makeup, and her jewelry is confined to that ten-carat monstrosity on her left ring finger. As for Uncle Rudy, although I had yet to see his teeth, undoubtedly they were the only place he wore gold. If you stuck the two of them in the right clothes and put them in a buggy, they could pass for Amish in the eyes of a tourist. Not so for the Du Bois duo.

  “Can you believe it? Platinum-blond hair?” I whispered to Susannah.

  “Cool,” my pseudo-pagan sister cooed.

  “And lipstick?”

  “But it’s pale,” Susannah sniffed, immediately relegating Aunt Lizzie to the ranks of minor apostates.

  “And pierced ears?” I almost shrieked.

  Actually, it was more amazing than appalling that the woman had ornaments dangling from her ears. They were, without a doubt, the smallest ears I’d ever seen on an adult human being. They were like tiny dried apricots, but of course not so orange. I checked her feet quickly; they were normal. Her hands, however, were not. She could have spanned an octave on a piano without even trying, two if she taxed herself at all.

  Uncle Manasses was as much of a Mennonite anomaly as his wife. He was wearing a suit and a tie, but his was a bolo tie, with a turquoise steer skull as the slide. Both his hair and his mustache owed their pigmentation to a drugstore bottle. These manifestations of the world’s influence were disconcerting, but it was the distinct outline of a cigarette pack in his pocket that was shocking.

  Sure, Susannah smokes, but she is ten years younger than I am and of a generation totally lost. Uncle Manasses is the age my father would have been had he not ended his life sandwiched between an Adidas truck and a milk tanker. Papa would sooner have danced naked with the Lennon Sisters than let one of the devil’s toothpicks touch his lips. It was clear to me that the Bloughs were borderline Presbyterians, and well on their way to becoming Episcopalians if someone didn’t turn them around.

  “Oh, that’s just so terrible about little Sarah,” Auntie Lizzie said to each of us, as she hugged us in turn.

  I could smell the world on Aaron’s auntie. It smelled like the perfume counter at J. C. Penney.

  “Yes, terrible,” Uncle Manasses murmured, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  Then again, poor Sarah had gone missing—and was presumed dead—twenty years before. It is hard to maintain grief that long, and unless you have a body in a barrel to jolt your memory, it is hard to recapture grief that is two decades old.

  “Well, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” Aunt Lizzie said, patting a stray platinum puff back into place.

  “Amen,” Uncle Manasses said. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a coffin nail.

  “I don’t allow smoking indoors,” I said calmly.

  Six pairs of eyes turned to stare at me. Susannah was the only one who snickered.

  “Well, you know what the surgeon general says. Smoking is not only hazardous to your health but also to mine.”

  “Magdalena, please,” Aaron begged, his voice barely a whisper.

  Uncle Manasses regarded me with the same detachment I am used to receiving from Matilda and Bessie, my milk cows.

  “A week of secondhand smoke isn’t going to hurt you at all. I’ve been smoking for fifty years, and I’m fit as a fiddle.”

  I smiled pleasantly. “That may be, dear, but you smell like an ashtray. You want to smoke, then go outside. This is my house.”

  “Honey, he’s my uncle.”

  It was the “H” word again, but I would not be swayed. “I don’t care if he’s the president of the United States. No one smokes in my house.”

  “You go, girl!”

  Six pairs of eyes, including mine, turned to Aunt Lizzie. No one snickered.

  Auntie Lizzie smoothed her perm, pleased with the attention.

  “I’ve been telling Manasses the same thing ever since we got married, only he won’t listen to me. But he has to listen to you.” She swatted at the air with a hand reminiscent of a tennis racket. “Sometimes the smoke gets so thick I could cut it with a knife. I’m glad that finally somebody else has the moxie to stand up to him.”

  Thereafter, Auntie Lizzie and I became firm friends. But I’m afraid my standing up to Uncle Manasses put the strain back in my relationship with Aaron. Thanks to the aunties—and ultimately to Sarah in the kraut—the week preceding my wedding was not progressing as smoothly as I had planned.

  Auntie Lizzie and I were just finishing up the dishes—Auntie Leah can cook, but you’d think she’d never seen a sponge—when the last of the Beeftrust appeared.

  Auntie Magdalena arrived not with a bang but with a whimper. Who knows how long the woman had been standing there in the kitchen door, whimpering like a frightened puppy, before I turned and saw her.

  “Auntie Magdalena Fike?”

  “Yes. Who are you?”

  “Magdalena Yoder. Aaron’s fiancee.”

  The woman sighed a couple of times, whimpered something that I couldn’t understand but that sounded like “Please pass the cheese,” and then sighed again. Each time she sighed, the largest bosom I’d ever seen rose and fell like ocean waves after a storm. I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but a brassiere that size could hold a full-grown cocker spaniel—though nothing else, of course.

  “Is Uncle Elias here as well?” I asked pleasantly.

  At the mention of his name Uncle Elias stepped smartly forward. Like the other uncles he was on the short side and dressed in a suit and a tie, but unlike them he was a very handsome man. He was also very black.

  I confess that I was shocked, and even though she vigorously denies it, so was Susannah. The truth is, up until that moment, neither of us had ever seen a black Mennonite. Of course they exist—ours is not a closed denomination—but not in Hernia. I, for one, had never heard of a Hernia Mennonite marrying a black Mennonite.

  The truth is, I was speechless.

  “Did you get a chance to eat a proper breakfast?” Aunt Lizzie asked politely. Obviously she had seen Uncle Elias before.

  The Fikes had come the farthest. From what I understood, they had flown into Pittsburgh from St. Louis, where they now lived, and then rented a car. From what I already knew about Aaron’s aunties, nothing between the Pittsburgh airport and my Hernia would have sufficed for breakfast.

  “Disjoint my head, then you’re fired,” Auntie Magdalena whimpered.

  “Why, I never!” And I hadn’t.

  Uncle Elias smiled patiently. “What she said was, ‘Just point me to a bed, I’m dead tired.’”


  I pointed. But first I peeked at her feet to see if they could get her up the stairs without complaint. Except for the moss on her shoes they looked entirely normal. Apparently Auntie Magdalena was the exception to the Beeftrust rule. There was nothing about her that was in any way diminutive.

  “Stanks,” she whimpered after I’d shown them to their room and obligingly fluffed up the pillows.

  As I was reaching for the two-dollar tip, I noticed that she had the tiniest hands imaginable on someone that large. Mere child’s hands they were.

  Thanks to my inn’s popularity, the phone all but rings off the hook. I know, I should hire a full-time receptionist, but I refuse to, as long as Susannah is in residence. Freni Hostetler, who is in her seventies, does all the cooking, and I do everything else—except for the ALPO guests. Those folks elect to pay extra for the privilege of participating in the Amish Lifestyles Plan Option, and consequently they get to do their own laundry and maid service. Susannah, however, does nothing—at least nothing connected to running the inn. You would think that answering the phone wouldn’t be too strenuous for her nails, but unless her personal radar informs her that an incoming call is from a virile male, the phone can ring its bell to a nub and she’ll ignore it.

  “PennDutch Inn, but I’m closed for business this week,” I said crisply.

  There was a lot of static on the line, but I was able to piece together enough words to ascertain that a Middle Eastern potentate wanted to rent the entire inn for himself and his harem.

  “When?”

  “Starting tomorrow. For a week.”

  “Sorry, no can do.”

  I was in the act of hanging up when I heard an obscene amount of money being offered.

  “I beg your pardon? Would you mind saying that again?”

  The static cackled the same obscene figure—more than ten times what I would make by renting out the PennDutch at my regular rates.

  “Sorry, but a ragtag gathering of grotesque giantesses doth gyre and gimble in the wabe.”

  “Eh?”

  “What I mean is, I’ve already got a full house,” I said sadly.

  More static.