Mean and Shellfish Read online

  ‘Then please explain, dear,’ I said, praying for Christian charity. After all, how would it look if I upbraided my staff in front of paying guests who might yet be heathens, or Presbyterians? Or worse yet, Anglicans? What sort of example would I be showing them? Why, they might think that I was a full-time, intentional hypocrite, like some televangelists are, instead of the accidental, part-time hypocrite that I become when I am stressed out.

  ‘The man who always wants to speak to you alone,’ Rebecca said. The resentment in her voice was almost palpable to me. Rebecca had a wide mouth to accommodate her exceptionally large teeth, and she had a bizarre way of pulling back her lips after slowly enunciating each word. Her ears were unnaturally long and narrow – I am sure that the Good Lord had His reasons – but they added to her mulish appearance.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be right there,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Delphia said. ‘Not until we get a few things settled here first. For instance, we’re still waiting on a bellhop. I simply refuse to do without.’

  Rebecca smiled at Delphia. ‘When that man comes to see Miss Yoder this early in the morning, it can only mean one thing.’

  ‘Yee-haw!’ Tiny said, as he tossed an imagery lasso in my direction.

  ‘Rein it in, cowboy,’ I said. ‘That mysterious man is our Chief of Police, and as Mayor of the Village of Hernia, I am his boss. A visit from Chief Toy Graham this early in the morning means that someone has been—’

  ‘Murdered,’ said Rebecca. Only after having stolen my thunder did she see fit to bolt from the room.

  FIVE

  Toy and I retreated to the privacy of his cruiser with our steaming mugs of coffee and a dinner plate stacked high with Freni’s freshly baked cinnamon buns. I planned to enjoy two of them, and I knew that Toy would polish off the rest.

  I waited until Toy had devoured a bun and slurped his way through part of his coffee before speaking. Don’t get me wrong, Police Chief Toy, who hails originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, has impeccable manners, but he is a bachelor and needs fuel to run the gears inside his handsome head. I mean, one wouldn’t think of flipping on a light switch during a power outage, would one?

  ‘Lay it on me,’ I said. ‘Who, what, when, where, and why. All the details that should be included in a properly written piece of journalistic reporting, but seldom are anymore.’

  The dear boy – he is after all, only in his early thirties – smiled. ‘The world would be a better place if you were its mother, Magdalena.’

  I sighed. ‘I suppose you meant that as a compliment.’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. Why were some men so clueless? So what if I was mostly happily married, twenty years older than him, and yes, a mother? That still didn’t mean that I wanted him to fit me into the ‘mother’ slot.

  ‘Moving right along,’ he said, ‘the murder victims were a married couple: Gerald and Tanya Morris.’

  I gasped, spilling what was left of my coffee all over my fake Amish dress. The plastic-like fabric doesn’t breathe and is practically waterproof, so that it really didn’t matter. Nonetheless, it irritated me and drove me to swearing.

  ‘Bite-size custard tarts,’ I said.

  ‘Why, hush your dirty mouth,’ Toy said in his genuine Carolina accent. ‘Magdalena, by your reaction, I take it that you know this couple.’

  ‘I know of them. They were scheduled guests for this week, due to arrive at any moment. Surely you’ve heard of them as well. They’re the renowned sociologists who wrote that bestselling book, Brits with Buggies. You know, about the ten suburban London couples, all of them wealthy, upper class folks, who decided to leave the twenty-first century behind and join the Amish community.’

  ‘Yeah, I read that book. Those rich Londoners didn’t fare very well traveling back in time, did they?’

  ‘Sadly, no. One reason is because they didn’t approach it from a spiritual angle. They weren’t divorcing modernity because of its sinful influence; they were doing it for health and ecological reasons.’

  ‘Right,’ Toy said. ‘The authors called them “New Age hippies”.’

  ‘Then of course,’ I said, ‘as you now know from living up here in the village of Hernia for the last seven years, although the Amish are not a closed group, for all intents and purposes they may as well be. Everyone is related to everyone else, they speak their own dialect, and they shun baptized church members who disobey the Ordnung – the community rules as laid down by the elders.’

  Toy reached for another cinnamon bun. ‘I could never be Amish. I could never give up my eighty-four-inch flatscreen, 4HD TV.’

  ‘Good point, but put that bun down, dear, and tell me where Gerald and Tanya Morris met their Maker, and how?’

  Toy coloured and immediately threw the bun back on the plate, so impeccable are his manners. ‘Well, hold on for a bumpy ride, Magdalena, because the details are pretty gruesome.’

  ‘More gruesome than finding a pickled body in a sauerkraut barrel?’ I asked. ‘Or discovering a corpse that has been flattened by a steam roller? Because these eyes have seen just about everything.’

  The police chief shook his handsome head. ‘Ma’am, I keep forgetting about what an awesome life you must have lived.’

  ‘Lived? It’s not over yet!’

  ‘T-that’s not what I meant, Magdalena. I was merely trying to compliment you.’

  I graced him with an ambiguous sigh. ‘Facts, dear. Where, and how. For now. Then together we’ll try to figure out the motive.’

  ‘In your cousin Sam’s dumpster. The one behind his store. They were both shot with a small firearm and then she, having apparently survived that, was stabbed. But that’s for the coroner to determine.’

  ‘Hot water crust!’ I said. Gabe had recently coaxed me into watching The Great British Bake Off and for some inexplicable reason, terms that I heard on that show found their way to my lips when I was stressed. Gone were the days when my worst swear words were ‘ding, dang, and dong’.

  Toy smiled. ‘If you weren’t my boss, Magdalena, I’d chide you for being such a potty mouth. By the way, I love that show too.’

  I cringed. My reputation as a Conservative Mennonite woman was going to suffer if word got around that I watched television other than religious programming. Leave it to some envious and somewhat imaginative harpy to say that I lollygagged all day on a cushy divan whilst devouring chocolate bonbons.

  ‘More details, Toy!’ I said, hoping to distract the young police chief. ‘What time were the bodies discovered? And by whom?’

  Toy lunged for the cinnamon bun and took a bite before answering. ‘That’s more bad news: they were discovered by Monotone Mona when she was dumpster-diving early this morning. She says she waited awhile before she called me because of the shock.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Uh – which part?’

  ‘The dumpster – whatever.’

  ‘Dumpster-diving. Monotone Mona climbs into dumpsters outside of grocery stores on a regular basis to rescue foodstuffs that she believes to be still edible. Of course, we have only the one – Yoder’s Corner Market – but she also goes into Bedford and Somerset on a regular basis.’

  I was gobsmacked, rendered uncharacteristically speechless while Toy finished his bun.

  ‘That’s bizarre,’ I finally said. ‘That’s got to be one for the record books.’

  Toy wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Actually, no. People have been doing it for years. Some do it because they can’t afford to buy groceries, and others do it because they hate the idea of anything going to waste.’

  ‘Well, I guess I learn something new every day. Why do you think that Monotone Mona does it? I’ve never been inside her house, but she keeps it up – at least on the outside – and she’s never fallen behind on her village assessments as far as I can remember.’

  Toy started to reach for the last cinnamon bun, but after glancing down at his st
ill flat stomach, shrugged and gave me his full attention. ‘Her house is well-maintained inside as well, Magdalena. It’s actually furnished very nicely. I’m not an expert on antiques, but my mother knows a lot, and used to take me to shops, and auctions, all around Charlotte. In my opinion, Monotone Mona has some very nice pieces. She certainly has a lot of silver, and her electronics are all high-end.’

  ‘In other words,’ I ventured, ‘the fact that she is literally eating garbage might be a choice on her part?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘On a scale from one to ten, how upset did she seem to be when she made the call? And then later when you interviewed her?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Toy said. ‘With Monotone Mona everything she says comes out as the same flat droning note. She can put you to sleep just by saying hello. Magdalena, I’ve lived here in Hernia for eight years, not seven, and I still don’t know her name. Everyone just refers to her as Monotone Mona.’

  ‘Her name is Mona Boyer,’ I said. ‘You know, I should be ashamed of myself for having used that pejorative adjective earlier, no matter how apt. Mona’s life story informs her current behaviour, just like everyone else’s does, except that undoubtedly hers is more dramatic. You see, when she was about nine, her family was returning from a trip to visit family up near Erie and their station wagon slid off a country road during a blizzard. It ploughed over an embankment, into a deep snow drift, where it subsequently got buried under more snow. That was during one of our coldest winters on record. At any rate, it took six weeks for anyone to discover the wreck and by that time Mona’s parents, three sisters, and two brothers were long dead.

  ‘One of the back windows was open a crack, so authorities surmised that Mona ate snow to survive. No one had the heart to ask her what, if anything, she ate – although it was pretty obvious. Anyway, she didn’t speak at all for almost a year. She was placed with her aunt and uncle here in Hernia, who lived in the same house that Mona lives in now. They were childless, and her aunt home-schooled her.’

  ‘Holy guacamole!’ Toy said. ‘I wish I’d known all that before I interviewed her. It just goes to show you that you never know what’s under the hood of another human being.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘but would you have tried a different approach? Knowing what you know now? I can’t imagine you being any kinder.’

  ‘One can always be kinder,’ Toy said. ‘Hey, Magdalena, I’ve gotta get back to the crime scene, which is still active. I just wanted to fill you in personally. And you may wish to follow me back into town. Your cousin, Sam, is practically having a meltdown.’

  SIX

  Sam Yoder is more than just a cousin. He is a first cousin, a double second cousin – who knows what else? Given the intersecting bloodlines of the Amish and Mennonites of Amish descent, I wouldn’t be totally shocked if Sam turned out to be my father, brother, and an uncle, all at the same time. (Only one of those would be mildly surprisingly, given that Sam and I are roughly the same age.)

  The disconcerting thing is that Samuel Nivens Yoder has always harboured the hots for me. Through thick and thin (I’ve always been thin, whereas his wife Dorothy weighs well over four hundred pounds), Samuel has striven mightily to breech my sturdy Christian underwear. I refuse to yield an inch. So relentless are his attempts to know me in the biblical sense, that I am convinced that the only time that Sam will cease in his efforts are when he is dead, or else during the Rapture, when he is too preoccupied ascending into Heaven to think adulterous thoughts.

  Imagine my state of mind when I discovered Sam sitting in a puddle of tears on his storeroom floor behind the grocery. When he looked up and saw me, he began to audibly sob. At that point I felt as awkward as a Brit in a lift with a chatty stranger. To hug, or not to hug, that was the question. Given Sam’s lifelong obsession with me, and what lies beyond my sturdy Christian underwear, a mere act of compassion could easily be misconstrued. On the other hand, I was blood kin, as well as a neighbour, and supposedly a good Christian. Surely I might be able to get away with a couple of swift pats on the back.

  I leaned over the stricken man. ‘There, there,’ I said, patting briskly as if I was burping a baby. A very hot baby.

  ‘Where, where?’ Sam responded.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘How can you joke at a time like this? You’re in the middle of bawling your eyes out.’

  ‘Quite true,’ Sam said as he rubbed his eyes. ‘But that’s the same response that you always give when someone drags out that meaningless platitude “there, there”. Isn’t it? I figured what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’

  ‘Or if we were Brits,’ I said, ‘the word would be “sauce”.’

  ‘Magdalena, you are a saucy, sassy woman, and a good friend. Thank you for trying to take my mind off things, even for a second.’

  ‘Did it work? At least a trifle?’

  ‘Do you mean just a small amount? Or are you speaking British again, and referencing a dessert? I can certainly go for the latter. It has booze in it, you know. Sherry, usually.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that,’ I said, ‘and you better not know about the booze from personal experience.’

  That made Sam smile. ‘My favourite teetotaller of a cousin. I’ll never convince you that Jesus drank wine.’

  The truth is that my Jewish husband had already convinced me of that fact. As for what Sam puts in his mouth – well, that’s none of my business, is it? Because as Gabe told me once, in Sam’s store as a matter of fact: ‘It’s not your zoo, and they’re not your monkeys.’ Gabe was referring to some scantily clad tourists whom I wanted to lecture, but hey, my need to control the behaviour of others is something that even I cannot deny with a straight face.

  ‘Jesus also drank water,’ I reminded Sam. ‘It says so in John, chapter four, verse nine.’ Sam had begun life as a good Mennonite and then defected when he married that wild Methodist gal, Dorothy. What harm was there in drilling a biblical reference into his head now and then, before he forgot his upbringing altogether?

  ‘You’re feeding a monkey,’ Sam said.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I overheard what Gabe told you that day; I know what that expression means. I’m not your child.’

  ‘Uh, you’re absolutely right,’ I said. ‘May I sit down?’

  He gestured to the floor in front of him. ‘Sure.’

  ‘On a chair, dear.’

  Sam groaned as he stood, and then led me into his cramped office. Along the walls, stacked floor to ceiling, were boxes of candy and cookies. Sam’s desk had been pulled into the middle of the claustrophobic room, and we sat on either side of it on metal folding chairs. Sam has been proud of his ability to keep overhead costs to a minimum.

  With his head down, and his thumb pushing hard against the bridge of his nose, he began to speak in a low voice. ‘I should have listened to Toy and not looked in the dumpster bin. What I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life. I’ll never be unable to stop seeing those two bodies. Especially that horribly mutilated woman. I don’t know how you do it, Magdalena.’

  ‘I don’t mutilate women, Sam.’

  He glanced up. ‘No more jokes, OK? When word of this gets out –which it will – it could mean the end of my business.’

  ‘You’re talking crazy,’ I said. ‘Why on earth would that happen?’

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ Sam said, close to tears again, ‘because who in their right mind is going to want to shop at Yoder’s Corner Market, knowing full well that two people were murdered out in back? Heck, it may as well have been me who really killed them.’

  ‘Now you are talking crazy. You started working here for the previous owner when you were a teenager. Some of these people have been your customers for over thirty years. Others have known you their entire lives. No one is going to think that you murdered those two folks in the dumpster bin.

  ‘Besides, take it from me, Queen Ghoul of the PennDutch, when the folks over in Bedford hear abou
t this tragedy – which they will, in time for the evening paper – they will flock to this store like pigeons to a bag of spilled popcorn.’

  Sam sniffed and straightened. ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘I guarantee it,’ I said.

  ‘But what about Billy Goat Gruff Festival and the parade?’ he said.

  ‘What about it?’

  Sam waved his freckled arms in all directions. ‘Just look at all of this mountain of candy and cookies: they’re special orders from the village parents to toss at the children in the parade when they “baa” like goats. What parent is going to trust picking up a candy order from a maniac who allegedly committed a double homicide? I mean, is there even going to be a parade now?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, dear,’ I said. ‘No one wants to disappoint the children. And you forget, we don’t have an age limit on who gets to be a goat for a day. Last year we had some pretty old goats. Weren’t there at least fifty folks from Deer Tick Assisted Living Facility all the way over in Monroeville?’

  Sam smiled. ‘You’re right. That’s why I advised some folks to add soft candy to their orders. Anyone who totters breathlessly along behind their walker, while trying to bleat like a billy goat, should not worry about getting his, or her dentures broken—’

  The door to Sam’s office was pushed open by the first eighteen inches of Sheriff Stodgewiggle’s beer belly. Quite a bit more of his midriff followed, as well as jowls that resembled a large, jellied ham. Above the latter rode three quivering chins. Toy entered the room as soon as he could squeeze past this imposing edifice.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ Chief Toy said. ‘It wasn’t me who called the sheriff.’

  Sam looked at me inquiringly.

  ‘Nor was it me,’ I said. ‘You know how I feel about this man. After the way he treated me the last time someone died at my inn, I’d sooner have a root canal without novocaine than be in the same room with him.’