Mean and Shellfish Read online

  Agnes laughed. ‘You’re a hoot, Mags. Thanks for coming over and brightening up my day – ooh, I don’t mean that the double homicide is funny, just your ongoing travails with Gabe’s relatives.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad that I can amuse you, dear. But the whole point in my coming here was to let you, Madame Chairwoman, know what happened over at Sam’s, so that you can get ahead of any rumours that the celebration will be cancelled.

  ‘One thing to bear in mind is that if you get any calls from the press that aren’t related to the event, then just say “no comment”. But no matter how tight-lipped you and I are about these murders, word is going to get out anyway. So, do you want me to tell Ida Rosen that two corpses were discovered in the bin of the biggest sponsor of her parade? Or do you think that you should handle it, because you volunteered to oversee this annual charity production?’

  Agnes was no longer in a laughing mood. ‘That is so unfair,’ she said. ‘I took this project on out of the kindness of my heart, because I knew how much you despise your mother-in-law, and that if you had to sing her praises to the entire village when she was awarded Hernia Citizen of the Year, you would choke on your own tongue. If not that, you would stab her with the commemorative brooch the officiant has to pin on her.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ I huffed. ‘I don’t despise Ida; I merely dislike her intensely.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, Mags, because I just decided that I do despise the woman for the way that she’s treated you all these years. Therefore I have decided not to deliver the tragic news of the double homicide to your husband’s mother. I am also declining the opportunity to pin our village’s tacky little medal to her much-inflated chest.’

  ‘What?’ I bleated. ‘You can’t back out on me now!’

  Ever the good friend, Agnes reached over as far as her spherical body would allow, and patted the air, as her hand was still some inches from my arm. ‘Don’t worry, Mags, I’ll still be working on publicity, but I can’t be any part of further inflating her ego. Have you been keeping your ear to the ground lately?’

  Before European immigrants slaughtered millions of native bison almost to the brink of extinction, Native Americans, by pressing their ears to the ground, could hear the thunder created by the hooves of these immense herds when they were still many miles away. As for moi, whenever I press one of my big ears to the ground, all I pick up is dirt – both literally and figuratively.

  ‘No, dear,’ I said. ‘What’s the scuttlebutt now?’

  ‘Even though we have video proof that she stole the election – which we can’t share with anyone else, or else your marriage will be over – someone has to crown her queen of the festival. But she wants to see the title of “queen” be extended to include a full year, not just a weekend, so to that end she’s been campaigning for her cause at various churches and women’s clubs.’

  ‘Rough puff pastry!’ I cried, so outraged was I that my cussing knew no bounds. Oh, shame on me and my wayward tongue.

  ‘I’m surprised that you haven’t heard about this,’ Agnes said. I could tell that she was quite pleased with herself for getting the scoop on this bit of gossip.

  ‘Agnes, you know quite well that I have little use for those other de— Well, I won’t even say it, because that would be passing judgment.’

  ‘Denominations? I believe you just did pass judgment,’ Agnes said with a smirk.

  ‘It’s called discernment, dear, and there is a difference. But let’s not quibble over the odd word here and there. What we need is a plan to stop that egomaniacal woman. The next thing you know she’s going to demand that we furnish her with a crystal tiara that she can keep, instead of the cardboard crown which one of your uncles picked up at Burger King fifteen years ago.’

  ‘She already has.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Yes, way.’

  ‘O vey. When were you going to tell me about this?’

  ‘When you saw her wearing her crown jewels, like at her coronation – I mean installation. Mags, what can I say? If you were me, wouldn’t you want to put off facing the ire of someone like yourself for as long as possible?’

  ‘I suppose that’s true. But in this case, it’s my mother-in-law with whom I’m angry, not you.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, sometimes when you lose your temper there’s collateral damage.’

  ‘I never lose my temper!’ I said hotly. ‘Granted, there are times when I’ve expressed myself passionately, but that is a far cry from losing it.’

  ‘If you insist,’ Agnes said.

  ‘I most certainly do! At any rate, what do you suggest that we do now?’

  ‘Talk to Gabe,’ Agnes said softly. ‘Ida has already turned this year’s Billy Goat Gruff Festival into a farce, and you are going to hate every minute of it. However, with a little legal pharmaceutical help, courtesy of your husband, you might be able to coast through the weekend feeling slightly less agitated.’

  I stared at my dear friend for a long moment while the meaning of her words seeped slowly through my thick, but porous, skull. Then I clapped my cheeks in horror.

  ‘You mean tranquilizers, don’t you?’

  ‘Just for one or two days – that’s all. Not long enough to be addictive. Worst case scenario you’ll get sleepy, so don’t drive.’

  ‘Why, I never!’ I said. ‘I’ll have you know that I, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen, do not need drugs to help me deal with my obstreperous mother-in-law – not when I have the everlasting arms of the Lord to lean on.’

  Agnes popped out of her wicker chair just as fast as a beach ball released under water. ‘Well, I’m so sorry that you have to go now, Mags.’

  ‘But actually I don’t, dear,’ I said. ‘We’ve plenty of time for tea and those delightful little cakes that you make. What do you call them again?’

  ‘Oh, you mean my store-bought cupcakes?’ Agnes said drily. ‘The ones that I buy from your cousin’s corner grocery, and which you’ve described as tasting like sawdust?’

  ‘There’s no accounting for taste,’ I said, ‘is there, dear?’ Then off I skedaddled while I still had a friend.

  NINE

  Thankfully, the rest of that day passed without another major crisis. The Hancocks disappeared until dinner, presumably to sightsee and antique shop in the surrounding towns of Bedford and Somerset. No doubt their destination also included the shop owned by Gabe’s sister Cheryl, the retired psychiatrist from New York. Despite being a highly educated woman, she often has her head in the clouds. The cirrus clouds. How else can one explain Cheryl’s decision to name her antique store Amish Luxuries? As for Cousin Miriam, she decided that she couldn’t wait to spend time with her Aunt Ida, and off she went for the day. Even at dinner that night, everyone was well behaved.

  It wasn’t until the next day, which Agnes and I and two dozen volunteers spent putting together the finishing touches on the morrow’s festivities, that storm clouds began to gather. Literally. The weather was seasonably hot and the forecast was for thunderstorms that evening and the entire day of the festival. The humidity was so unbearable that I said a prayer thanking the Good Lord for the birth of Willis Carrier, inventor of the modern air-conditioner.

  When I got home, bone tired, I discovered that a storm of another kind had been brewing in my absence. Silly me – in order to work efficiently on the festival preparations, I’d turned off my phone. I wasn’t being irresponsible, mind you. My husband is a doctor, and quite capable of caring for the five-year-old fruit of his loins, plus, Rebecca was home. And it wasn’t like I was spending the day searching for rare marsupials in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, either; the village of Hernia is a mere four miles from the end of our driveway.

  It wasn’t until I was in my own driveway, and out of my car, that I remembered I’d turned off my phone. At that point the three urgent calls from Gabe (weren’t they always urgent?) were a moot point, given that I would be seeing him face-to-face in the time it took to call him back. I fully ex
pected to see a justifiably frustrated husband pacing the kitchen floor, or perhaps running his fingers through his still thick, dark hair. I was also bracing for a five-year-old boy to tackle me, while voicing loud complaints about boredom and hunger. Ditto for the Hancocks from Texas.

  I certainly was not prepared to find the kitchen deserted, save for a solitary woman, who was utterly alien in appearance, while at the same time as familiar to me as the back of my right hand. Like me, she was tall and reed-thin, although her features were regular and thus far more attractive than mine. Also, I pegged her at being about a dozen years younger than me. This woman’s hair was the same shade of mousey brown as mine, but she wore it in a buzz cut, whereas I wear mine in coiled braids, and it has never been cut, because the Bible states that a woman’s hair is her glory. Now I ask you, how can a buzz cut possibly glorify any woman?

  In our clothing choices we differed almost as much. I dress modestly, in a manner that Bible-believing Christians everywhere would do well to emulate, but the woman in my kitchen was dressed in skimpy attire more in keeping with that of a slovenly slattern – not that I’m judging, mind you. Her white shorts were filthy, as was her mustard-coloured tank top. In retrospect, I’m surprised that I even noticed all the stains on her clothing, given the copious amount of ‘ink’ that covered her body. ‘Ink’, by the way, is what our young people call tattoos. Perhaps this is their clever way of getting around the fact that in Leviticus 19:28, tattoos are unequivocally forbidden by God.

  I had not spotted an additional vehicle parked anywhere near the inn, so surmised that the stranger might be a hitchhiker, or maybe a charity case who’d requested a ride to my door. Given that I am a wealthy, and with all due modesty, benevolent woman, my doorstep is often the dropping-off point for the chronically insolvent. As long as my first impressions of the stranger were things that one of my dresses and a straw hat could rectify, I could afford to be fairly tolerant of her. But when she reached into the pocket of her grungy shorts and pulled out a cigarette and lighter, I practically tackled her.

  ‘There is no smoking in this establishment,’ I barked.

  ‘Well, fine then. I’ll take it outside.’

  ‘You do that, missy,’ I said. I couldn’t believe the woman’s impertinence. ‘Just so you know, dear, “outside” is entirely off my property – all twenty-two acres of pasture and woods.’

  ‘Oh, Mags, you haven’t changed a bit!’ the woman said, and then proceeded to laugh so hard that she would have collapsed on the floor in a fit of hysteria, if it hadn’t been for my kitchen island. This she managed to grab with both hands, including the one clutching that noxious cancer-causing stick.

  ‘This can’t be,’ I squeaked. Fortunately the intruder was laughing so uproariously she probably couldn’t have heard an elephant trumpet. This gave me time to rehearse my responses, so that by the time she’d wound down enough to focus, I was able to do so as well.

  ‘Susannah Yoder Entwhistle Stoltzfus,’ I said, my voice barely quavering, ‘have you broken out of prison yet again?’

  My sister started to howl once more, but I cut it short by wagging my index finger. And scowling. Now that I’ve begun my sixth decade, I’ve developed a crease across the bridge of my nose that is astonishingly deep. I live half in fear that Little Jacob, mischievous little boy that he is, might get it into his head to plant corn kernels in it one day while I nap. Normal sweat from my brow would be enough to germinate these seeds, and then soon I’d have corn stalks bobbing about in front of my eyes, impeding my vision. Although this might not be a very likely scenario, one must at least concede that a woman with an imagination as active as mine has a very difficult row to hoe, as we say out here in the country.

  At long last my sister was able to hoist herself up on a kitchen stool. ‘No, silly. I didn’t break out this time; I’ve been paroled.’

  I remained standing, knowing as I did that her stay would be short. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, dear. It was only five years ago that you broke out of prison and helped that murderous husband of yours escape from Hernia dressed as a nun – and this after he tried to kill me.’

  ‘Oh, Mags, why is it that you can only remember negative stuff? Can’t you at least compliment his ankles?’

  ‘What?’ I said incredulously.

  ‘Surely you noticed how slim and white his ankles were, peeking out from beneath that long brown habit? They were like the ankles of a teenage girl.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Besides, it was your whackadoodle mother-in-law who supplied the habit and the bus.’

  ‘Don’t remind me,’ I said. ‘That doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t understand how a person who aided and abetted a convicted murderer gets out of the slammer in five years.’

  ‘Overcrowding,’ Susannah said. ‘It’s as simple as that. Yeah, I may have a lot of ink – I saw you judging me – but when push comes to shove, who do you think gets paroled, the nice-spoken Mennonite woman whose family has been in this country for almost three hundred years, or the woman who walked up from Honduras and entered the country without a visa?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘first off, we’re not going to talk politics, and secondly, you haven’t been a Mennonite since you were a teenager, and that was so long ago that even God doesn’t remember it.’ Then I slapped my mouth gently for having taken the Lord’s name in vain.

  Susannah grinned. ‘Still feisty, eh? So, am I bunking with you, sis?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, from what I understand, your Dearly Beloved took off with my darling nephew in order to stash Fi-Fi in the bosom of his precious mama until the situation could be – uh – successfully resolved, seeing as how I am an ex-con.’

  I staggered around in search of a kitchen stool of my own for support. ‘You saw Gabe? He saw you? He recognized you?’

  Susannah chortled. ‘Gabe recognized me immediately. No offense, Mags, but your hubby’s a bit weird. He doesn’t have a clue who those Texans are, except that their name is Hancock and that they’re super rich, yet he is willing to let my nephew sleep in the same house with them. Then I show up, and off he runs with my little nephew before I can get acquainted. Like I’m a piece of dirt.’

  ‘If it walks like a duck, dear,’ I said, not too unkindly. ‘What about his cousin, Miriam, and her detestable dingo?’

  ‘Good news on both counts. Miriam’s in her room – no, your room – watching Gabe’s massive TV. She’s mesmerized by its size, so I don’t think you’ll be seeing much of her.’

  ‘That’s one bit of good news,’ I said. ‘What’s the other?’

  ‘That the dingo has turned out to be a Chihuahua mix and Miriam was only teasing you with the dingo story.’

  ‘No way, Jose!’

  My sister squealed with delight. ‘Ooh, Mags, it gets me positively goose-pimply to see you all worked up like this again!’

  ‘I’m glad to oblige you, sister dear. Just you wait and see what lies in store for Miriam.’

  Susannah rubbed her hands together excitedly. ‘Go Mags!’

  ‘Yeah – hey, wait a minute. How is it that Little Jacob was able to take Miriam’s mutt, Fi-Fi, with him to Ida’s house, if that pitiful pooch suffers from separation anxiety?’

  ‘Uh, what’s that?’ Susannah said.

  ‘Pretty much what it says: that the dog and Miriam are so closely bonded that the dog becomes overly anxious when they are apart. In some cases the animal will chew up its bedding, chew on itself, or maybe howl constantly. In other words, they show signs of extreme distress.’

  ‘Hmm, good point, Mags. I guess that was all just made up too. What kind of woman would try and torment her hostess with a cock-and-bull story about a fake dingo?’

  ‘One who shares genetic material with my mother-in-law, Ida Rosen? Say, Susannah, where are Freni and Rebecca? Were they here when you arrived? And how did you get here?’

  Susannah cackled, as did a few hens out back in response. Perhaps they thought she was ta
lking to them, or even a competitor laying an egg.

  ‘What a silly question. I hitchhiked, of course.’ She rotated her bony pelvis a few times. ‘I’ve still got it, you know. As for Freni, our dear second cousin, once-removed, she took one look at me, and started praying. She thinks I’m the Whore of Babylon, you know.’

  ‘Well,’ I said with a sigh, ‘she loves me. If Melvin Stoltzfus had been successful, I’d be pushing up daises right now, and you’d have been responsible for helping him getting away with my murder. Speaking of whom, where is Melvin?’

  My sister sighed dramatically. ‘How am I supposed to know? I’ve been locked in the slammer for five years. It’s not like I’ve communicated with him after the second time he tried to off you and got away. For all I know, he’s down in Florida, living in Key West, and taking tourists deep-sea fishing on his charter boat. Anyway, I told him I never want to see him again if I live to be a thousand!’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me once that Melvin gets seasick in a bathtub?’

  Susannah scowled. ‘That’s only when I steal his rubber ducky and we splash around too much.’

  ‘TMI!’ I cried.

  ‘Oh, Mags, you’re such a prude. I swear, you’re turning into a carbon copy of Freni.’

  ‘Freni didn’t sit by idly while someone tried to kill her sister, and then help that someone – her husband – escape.’

  ‘If Freni is such an awesome woman, shouldn’t she forgive me? I mean, doesn’t the Bible say that one is supposed to forgive like a zillion times?’

  ‘Cut Freni a break, will you?’ I snapped. ‘She practically raised you after Mama and Papa died in the Allegheny Tunnel, squished between a truck carrying milk and another carrying state-of-the-art running shoes. Let me guess, Rebecca volunteered to drive her home.’

  ‘Yup. Now, there’s an interesting woman.’

  ‘How so?’ I asked.