Between a Wok and a Hard Place Read online

  He smiled, and for the first time I noticed that he had three gold crowns. Until then, I didn’t even know he had teeth.

  “I don’t mean you need to go shirtless, as well. I just want you to try wearing one. You’ll love it, you’ll see. By the end of the week you’ll swear by them. Who knows,” he shrugged dramatically, “you might even allow me to stock some literature about my invention in the information rack in the front office.”

  I shrugged, albeit less dramatically. “Who knows.”

  But I knew. I might consent to wear one of his braces, if it meant his participation in ALPO, not to mention shut him up, but I was never going to mix his sorry little pamphlets in with those of area attractions. Melissa Frances, curator of the Pennsylvania Living Museum of Newts and Salamanders would never forgive me if she found out. Neither would Horace Schnicklegruber, organizer of the Bedford County World’s Smallest Pumpkin Festival.

  Susannah, much to my surprise, took the termination of her new job in stride. Actually, she took it lying down, on the job. I mean that literally. She was still sacked out atop a pile of dirty shirts when I found her. I’m sure no one else even noticed her, thanks to the fifteen feet of flowing fabric she was wearing that day. They just happened to match some of my sheets.

  My sister yawned. “Easy come, easy go,” she said. “But fired from two jobs in the same day, that has to be some kind of a record.”

  I patted her shoulder. “You weren’t fired, dear. I just don’t need you to strip beds and wash sheets.”

  She yawned again. “I wasn’t going to wash the sheets. I was just going to switch them around. You know, take the blues from that room, and put them on the bed in there, and takes those pink ones and put them where the blue ones were. It’s energy efficient, don’t you think?”

  I complimented her on her ingenuity. “Perhaps some of the guests might prefer clean linens,” I said gently. “You could show them how to use the washing machine.”

  “Okay.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears, and decided to test them. “I know they could use a few tips on vacuuming and dusting. Why don’t you demonstrate for them?”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  Something was seriously wrong with my dear sister. Lethargy I could expect, but never cooperation. Where was the true Susannah, the slovenly, slatternly slut I loved so much?

  I threw myself down on the pile of soiled linens and clasped her to my meager bosom. “What’s wrong?” I wailed.

  She didn’t even have the will to struggle from my embrace. “Nothing.”

  “Before, in the kitchen with Freni, you had more gumption,” I said.

  “That was then, this is now.”

  I clasped her tighter. Suddenly it dawned on me that the little rat dog she carries in her bra had yet to yelp. In fact, I hadn’t heard as much as a snarl.

  I released Susannah. “Where’s Shnookums?”

  She barely shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “What?” Since getting that minuscule mutt six years ago, my sister has never let him out of her sight. She even showers with him, stashing him under a glass cake server to keep him dry. One of the worst days of my life was when she took such a long shower that poor Shnookums ran out of air. Because Susannah was so hysterical, it fell on me to give the carnivorous cur mutt mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  “He’s around here someplace,” she mumbled. Her eyes closed and she began to snore softly.

  I shook her. “Susannah!”

  There was no response.

  Of course I was scared. Susannah is, by her own admission, a party animal. I’m not saying the Presbyterians are to blame, but the one she married did like a beer or two on the weekends, and I’m sure it was him who first introduced her to sin in a bottle. Yet despite her life of devil-may-care debauchery, my baby sister was not into illegal substances. Or was she?

  There have been many times I wanted to slap Susannah’s face, but this time, when I finally had a legitimate reason, I had to force myself to do it.

  “What?” she moaned.

  “Susannah! Are you on something? If you are, don’t be afraid to tell me. I won’t be mad, I promise.”

  No response. I’d give it one more try, and then call 911.

  “Susannah! What are you on?”

  “A pile of dirty sheets.”

  “That does it! I’m calling for help.”

  One eye opened halfway. “Don’t be silly, Mags. I’m not on anything. I’m just depressed. Now, go away.”

  Believe it or not, I could relate to that. In school I was always good in English, and for as long as I could remember, fostered a secret desire to be a writer. In high school I won an award for making the highest overall grade in my creative writing class. I even got a short story, “Good Girl,” published in Ladies’ Home Journal. So, when I got that scholarship to Northwestern, why did my parents insist that I attend Bedford Community College instead?

  At any rate, my freshman year of college I was so depressed I felt like I was walking around under water. I had the weight of the universe on my shoulders, including all the solar systems yet to be discovered. I didn’t want to be an English teacher at Hernia High! That was their vision for me; it had nothing to do with my goals, my plans for living happily ever after.

  I don’t recall what lifted me out of that deep funk—it certainly was no one thing. Time was perhaps the chief factor, and just maybe the fact that Harvey Plank, with the curly blond hair, was my lab partner for Biology 101. Harvey and I didn’t actually ever date, but he made me laugh, and sometimes I would catch him looking at me, and not through the microscope.

  “Get up, Susannah,” I said in a firm voice. “We need to find you a man.”

  I couldn’t believe I had said that, and neither could 153 Amish Mennonite forebears, Mama among them, who simultaneously turned over in their graves. Although there was nothing in the paper about it the next day, I know for a fact that the Hernia area experienced a small earthquake. Even Freni said the glasses in the kitchen rattled.

  Susannah, however, went back to sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Isaac Mast was a harder nut to crack than Annie Kauffman. I found him in the ban shoeing a horse. The man had a reputation for being the best at this task in the county, which was no surprise. When I was a little girl, Papa would take our mare Sadie (my Mennonite family had both a horse and a car in those days) to Isaac’s papa, Enos, to be shoed. Isaac grew up watching his papa at work, and playing with the children of his father’s customers.

  I was always afraid the nails Enos pounded into Sadie’s feet would hurt her. Each time we went, Papa had to explain again that a horse’s hoof is like a very thick toenail, and has no nerve endings. Like a toenail, a hoof is always growing, and Mr. Mast would file and shape the hoof before fitting a shoe to it.

  Somewhere around the fourth grade I stopped being concerned about Sadie and started noticing Isaac. The boy went to a private Amish school, but I could tell he was about my age. He had the blondest hair, eyebrows, and lashes I’d ever seen. His blue eyes were so pale I could see the faint tracery of pink veins webbing across his corneas. We had a boy at my school with his coloring whom we called Whitey.

  Isaac and I got along just fine. After the shoeings, while our fathers, who were some sort of distant cousins, chatted, Isaac and I would play. He was the oldest of five siblings, and most of our play consisted of chasing his siblings away so we could play in peace. Once Isaac and I found a nest of mewling kittens stashed in a niche between some hay bales in the loft of his barn. When the kittens were old enough, I got to choose one and take it home with me. I named it Isaac. But he was never, as Susannah claimed later, my boyfriend.

  “Pretty day,” I said, as I entered the barn.

  Isaac glanced up from his work. “Magdalena.”

  “You have a minute?”

  “Nei,” he said. “Jacob Stucky will be returning soon for his horse.”

  “This will only take a minute. And we
can talk while you work.”

  “Talk.”

  “Well, you see—okay, Isaac, I’m not going to beat around the bush. A couple of Amish boys may have gotten into trouble last night in Hernia.”

  “Yah? What does this have to do with me?”

  “Was your Enos out last night?” I wanted to add the words “and acting like a teenage hooligan,” but of course I am much too polite.

  “My Enos did not go to town last night.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yah. There was a volleyball game over at the Troyer place. Enos and his brother went to that.”

  “Yes, but I mean late last night. This morning, really. Would you ask him if he did?”

  Isaac regarded me with eyes that had faded to the color of water. Perhaps they saw me seeing through him.

  “Enos is a good boy, Magdalena. He has his fun, but he is not wild like some.”

  “You mean the Kauffman boy?”

  “Ach, Magdalena, I will not mention names.”

  “Suit yourself. But Enos could be in trouble.”

  He put the horse’s foot down, and patted her affectionately on the rump. The mare snorted her appreciation.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Before I could answer, my pager went off. I am ashamed to say that my bladder almost did, too. The horse, however, had less control than I.

  “Ach!” Isaac deftly dodged the deluge. “What was that?”

  “It’s my beeper. It’s an electronic gizmo, one of the new English inventions to make life miserable.”

  A good Amish man, Isaac was not about to join me in a little English-bashing. I, who have one size ten foot firmly planted in the world, while the other is still stuck in tradition, would do well to follow his example.

  “Were mailboxes hit again?” Isaac asked.

  “It’s much more serious than that. There was an accident; a woman is dead.”

  I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for Isaac to get any paler, but he did. Dressed in white, against a background of snow, he would have faded away altogether.

  “What kind of accident?”

  “A buggy accident. Someone hit the woman and drove off.”

  “An English woman?”

  “In a manner of speaking. So, what do you know about this?”

  “Enos has said nothing about this.” He turned his back and picked up another hoof.

  “Of course Enos would say nothing,” I snapped. “It’s just like the army and gays.”

  That had Isaac’s attention. He put the hoof down, and the horse snorted again. She wanted the manicure done as soon as possible.

  “You do not make sense, Magdalena. Are you saying Enos is—” He could not bring himself to say the word “gay.”

  “I’m not talking about his sexuality, Isaac. I’m talking about the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy you have. If I had a teenage son, I’d want to know what he was up to.”

  “It is easier not to know, Magdalena.”

  “Except for now. There is a dead woman, Isaac, and Enos may have been involved.”

  “Ach! Enos would never kill a woman.”

  “I believe that. But I need to talk to him about last night.”

  “Why you, Magdalena? Are you a policeman now?”

  “No, but I’m helping Melvin Stoltzfus investigate the incident. You heard about Melvin’s accident, didn’t you?”

  “Yah.” Isaac’s mouth twitched, and I knew he was trying to repress a grin.

  “May I speak with Enos?”

  He froze.

  “Or would you prefer that Melvin talked to him?”

  Isaac blinked. There still wasn’t a trace of color in his lashes.

  “Enos is visiting his cousins.”

  “Where?”

  “Ohio.”

  I sat down on a wooden stool intended for Isaac. From that perspective a horse looked preposterous, all bulging belly suspended above narrow ankles. It was a wonder they could even walk, much less gallop at speeds exceeding twenty-five miles per hour.

  “We were friends once,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d ever lie to me.”

  “Ach, Magdalena! I am the boy’s father. I cannot say any more.”

  Maybe if I gave a little, so would he. Melvin would blow a gasket if he found out I wasn’t playing my cards close to my chest. Well, it was a risk I would have to take. And anyway, as long as he had that cast on his leg, I could outrun him.

  “This woman was run over by a buggy, Isaac. But she was already dead when that happened. We just want to question the driver of the buggy for clues. Maybe he saw something that will help with our investigation.”

  “My Enos is a good boy,” he said doggedly.

  I had to admire his loyalty. Papa would have been like that. Mama might have been a different story. When she smelled the cigarette smoke Harriet Schlabach blew on my new sweater one day after school, Mama thought the world was coming to an end. I barely escaped being branded the Whore of Babylon and cast out into the Wilderness of Sin. Because of something I didn’t even do, I had to memorize thirty-six Bible verses, all of them having to do with smoke, none of them to do with cigarettes.

  While I may share several bloodlines with Melvin, the obvious does finally manage to percolate through my callused cranium. This was one nut I wasn’t going to crack. As much as I might want it, Isaac Mast was not about to throw himself, sobbing, into my arms.

  “Well, it looks like justice may not prevail after all,” I said bitterly.

  “The way of the Lord is not just,” he said, quoting from the Book of Ezekiel.

  Had I known my Bible better at the time, I would have realized he was quoting the verse out of context. I turned to march from the barn indignantly (an action I’ve perfected over the years) when my glance fell upon a buggy wheel with a bent rim.

  “What is that?” I asked, pointing to my discovery.

  “Ach, just a wheel,” Isaac said.

  It would behoove men of that complexion to turn away when they lie. Caught in his second lie, Isaac’s face turned the color of Freni’s pickled beets. Remembering the boy Isaac, my playmate from the hayloft, I almost felt sorry for him.

  “You know where to find me,” I said. “And now I have a scripture verse for you. ‘The truth will set you free.’ ”

  I made a detour past the scene of the crime on my way to the police station. Melvin was sitting behind his desk, facing the door. His eyes were open, but he was so still he may have been asleep. If he had been waiting patiently immobile for his next victim to enter the tiny office, he was out of luck. I wasn’t in the mood to be pounced on.

  “Yoder! It’s about time. I beeped you twenty minutes ago.”

  I yawned. “It takes fifteen minutes to get from Isaac Mast’s barn to here. Plus which, I had business to attend to.”

  Melvin’s left eye fixed on my bosom. Since I am not blessed in that department—”carpenter’s dream” they called me in high school—I chose to interpret Melvin’s action as unintentional. Alas, most of what he does is.

  “What kind of business?”

  “None of your business,” I said calmly. I was not about to discuss my necessary visit to the Masts’ outhouse. The Masts, incidentally, should be thoroughly ashamed of the facility. It is only a two-seater, and in such bad repair, I risked life and limb just to make myself beeper-proof. And it wasn’t even clean. There was simply no excuse for that.

  It is gone now, burned to the ground by a crazed Presbyterian minister’s wife, but we Yoders used to have the finest outhouse in the county. Ours was a six-seater, built by Great-grandpa Yoder for his sixteen kids. Its heaviest usage was before my time, but nonetheless, in my day that place sparkled. Folks used to come from as far away as Lancaster to admire it. “You are what you eat,” the saying goes. We Yoders chose to take that saying one step further.

  It was a fluke that both of Melvin’s eyes met mine. “Damn you, Yoder—”

  “That does it, Melvin. I refuse to s
tand here and listen to your profanity. Does your mother know you talk like this? Because if she doesn’t, I’d be happy to clue her in.”

  It was a safe bet (not that I bet, mind you) that Melvin’s mother did not know her son had a sewer mouth. Elvina Stoltzfus was a good Christian woman, a pillar of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. Zelda Root may be the heavenly body around which Melvin’s heart orbits, but his mother exerts a stronger gravitational pull. If that were not the case, Melvin and Zelda would be married, and Zelda would be the Mrs. Stoltzfus who trims Melvin’s toenails on a monthly basis.

  Melvin’s mandibles masticated madly, but in the end he minded his manners.

  “Did you learn anything from Isaac Mast?”

  “He definitely knows something, but of course his lips are sealed. My guess, though, is that his son Enos was driving the buggy. It may be coincidental, but there was a wheel with a bent rim in his barn.”

  “You talk to anyone else?”

  I told him about my visit to Annie Kauffman.

  “I never did trust that woman,” he said. “In high school she let me copy from her chemistry exam, but she purposefully wrote down the wrong answers!”

  “That was a different Annie Kauffman, dear. This Annie Kauffman is Amish, remember? She’s never been to high school.”

  There are, in fact, eight Annie Kauffmans that I knew of in Bedford and neighboring Somerset counties. There are probably a good deal more, since the name Kauffman is more common in that area than Smith.

  “All the same,” Melvin muttered, “a Kauffman is a Kauffman.”

  I wisely refrained from pointing out that if you prick a Stoltzfus, a Kauffman is sure to bleed.

  “What about you?” I asked. “You were going to interview the people on North Main and Elm streets. Did you?”

  “Of course I did, Yoder. I’m a professional.”

  “And?”

  He treated me to a monocular glare. “No one heard or saw a thing. The world has already gone to hell in a hand basket, if you ask me. No one wants to get involved anymore. Everyone claimed to be sleeping.”

  “It was the middle of the night, Melvin. They probably were sleeping.”

  Unless they were Aaron. Mama hadn’t warned me that even God-fearing men were capable of experiencing certain urges at inappropriate times. After forty-six years of having a bed to myself, I found it unsettling to turn over and not only come face to face with a wide-eyed Pooky Bear, but to discover Pooky Bear Jr. standing at attention.