So Faux, So Good Read online

  “What did it say?”

  “It said ‘Congratulations, Mr. Cox. Your pecans were the finest we’ve ever seen.’”

  “Give me a break,” I moaned. “Nobody is that stupid.”

  C. J. nodded vigorously. “Did I ever tell you about my Auntie Agnes?”

  “Please,” Wynnell begged. “No more Shelby stories until after breakfast.”

  I shook my head. “She’s stopped serving breakfast. The kitchen is closed.”

  “What do you mean the kitchen is closed?” Peggy hissed.

  “This isn’t a restaurant, dear,” I said. “And anyway, we can pick something up on the way to our new digs.”

  “Our new digs?”

  “That’s the good news, dear. Apparently there is some kind of golf tournament going on in the area and rooms are scarce, but Magdalena was able to get us a couple of rooms at the Motor Coach Motel in Bedford.”

  “So the bad news is we’ve been kicked out of here?”

  I hung my head in shame. “She pegged me for the impostor that I am.”

  C. J. shook her finger at me. “You were a pecan pretending to be a peach?”

  Wynnell, loyal friend that she is, patted my arm. “Well, you’ll always be a peach in my book, Abby, and frankly, I’m glad we’re moving out. This place is a dump, if you ask me.”

  I’m not claiming that Magdalena Yoder bugs her own room at the PennDutch, although I wouldn’t put it past her. I am merely suggesting that the woman has the hearing of an owl. When we said our thank-yous and good-byes Wynnell was treated to a glare that could have withered the peaches off a real peach tree at fifty paces. C. J. and Peggy were lucky to escape with frowns.

  As the others were loading up, Magdalena took me aside. “I’ve been doing some soul-searching Abby, and there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “You’re not a Mennonite woman after all, but an ex-Mafia hit man in a witness relocation plan?”

  She blinked. “Ach, you English say the strangest things. I just wanted to warn you to stay clear of the Teschel clan.”

  “So you do know them!”

  “Ach, like I said, not personally. But I’ve heard certain things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Alas, Magdalena’s lips were sealed tighter than a clam at low tide.

  The Motor Coach Motel made the PennDutch Inn seem like the Taj Mahal by comparison. Perhaps we should been tipped off by the fact that only the letter “r” remained in the word “Motor,” and the “c” was missing from “Coach.” Sensible folks would have kept right on driving.

  “I didn’t drive five hundred miles to stay in the Roach Motel,” Wynnell whined.

  I turned and flashed her a smile. Then I fished a folded paper out of my bottomless purse and handed it back.

  “Magdalena gave me this. It’s the inventory of an Amish estate sale that will be held this afternoon at two o’clock. She said hardly any tourists will be there—they’ll all be watching the tournament. She’s sure there’ll be lots of bargains. She’d go to the sale herself, but she has to drive into Pittsburgh to pick up a VIP customer.”

  Peggy turned off the ignition. “Who?”

  “She didn’t say, dear. Well—just that normally her guests have to make their own arrangements, but this was somebody really special.”

  “That’s all she said?”

  That was indeed all, but with Mama in a convent with nothing better to do than to pray for me, I could afford to embellish the truth a little, couldn’t I? Besides, lassitude had kicked in, and I was counting on the moral latitude to perk me up.

  “I forget his name,” I said. “But she said something about him frolicking naked with coyotes.”

  “Dances With Wolves? You mean Kevin Costner!”

  “You said it, dear.”

  “Never dance naked with wolves,” C. J. declared pompously. “My granddaddy did that. The next thing you know my Uncles Romulus and Remus were born. Of course granny—”

  “C. J.!” Wynnell said sharply.

  But the girl was on a roll. If I was going to escape the weird tale of her forbear and his lust for lupines, I had to act fast.

  “I’ll go check us in,” I said, and fled from the car like a rat from a burning corncrib.

  The motel’s office was darker than my ex-husband’s heart, and just as stifling. I was gasping for breath by the time I spotted the round bell with the PLEASE RING ME sign taped across it. I rang it. When there was no response after a reasonable period of time, I banged on it with my fist. Then again and again.

  “Hold your horses, lady. I’m right here, for crying out loud.”

  I peered through the gloom. Sure enough, a little man, not much taller than I, was hobbling slowly towards me. He was as bald as a mushroom, and when he got closer I could see that he didn’t have any visible hair—no eyebrows, not even a single eyelash. His smooth visage had the pallor of prepackaged mushrooms that were a few days past their expiration date. The musty odor he exuded, however, reminded me of artichoke dip made with Parmesan cheese.

  I smiled warmly. “Hi, my name is Abigail Timberlake and—”

  “We don’t have any vacancies.”

  “But surely you must. A Ms. Yoder called and reserved two rooms in my name.”

  “Just a minute.” Mushroom Man turned on a small lamp that was shaped like a belly dancer, with a switch for her navel, and a shade for her veil. “I’ll have to check my ledger.”

  “She called just this morning,” I said, trying to be helpful.

  Mushroom Man ignored me and opened a giant tome that had ragged pages the color of saffron. Then he licked a pale finger and began slowly tracing it down the columns of names. Each time he came to the end of a page he sighed, and then flipped the page with so much vigor I thought it would rip from its binding. I might have been impressed at the theatricality of his performance, had I not noticed the dates on the upper right corners. The earlier entries were over three years old.

  “Ah, here it is,” he said. His hairless finger had paused on a mostly blank page. The entry above mine was dated the week before.

  “Wonderful,” I said. “You have us down for two rooms, right? Two beds in each room?”

  His forehead composed itself into a browless frown. “She didn’t say nothing about that. All’s I can do is give you’nz two rooms with kings. What with the tournament and all.”

  I breathed a brief prayer of thanksgiving that Peggy didn’t snore, scream, or grope in her sleep. If at all possible, 1 would bunk with her.

  “That will do.”

  He leaned forward, his mouth partly open. The smell of artichoke dip was stronger.

  I took a step back. “Yes?” I asked politely.

  “You don’t have any children or pets along, do you? ’Cause I don’t allow those.”

  I chuckled. “You flatter me, sir. Do I look young enough to have a child with me?”

  He slammed the ledger shut, and a dust cloud rose and temporarily veiled the belly dancer. We both sneezed.

  “Rooms thirteen and fourteen,” he said. “I don’t have cable, so don’t even ask. You’nz will find a pop machine down by the Exxon station on the corner. But no bringing back food. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir. Do the rooms have phones?”

  He gave me a pained look. “Rooms fifteen and nine then. But you’nz will have to leave a twenty-five-dollar deposit against long-distance charges.”

  I nodded.

  “That’s a twenty-five-dollar deposit per room.”

  I resisted my temptation to argue, but asked to see the rooms. Mushroom Man grumbled, but handed me the keys. Perhaps the Pennsylvania sunshine was too much for him. At any rate, it was just as well that he stayed behind, because Dmitri was stretched out in the rear window of Peggy’s town car having a solar bath.

  We took the rooms. A cursory inspection had failed to uncover any roaches, the reddish-brown stains on one of the sinks were, we concluded, caused by rusty pipes, and both phones
produced dial tones if held upside down. As for the footprints on the ceiling of Room #15—well, what is life without a little mystery?

  At the last minute I backed out of the trip to the Amish estate sale. I’ve had a lot of practice in my time with headaches, both real and imagined. On rare occasions I have even been a headache. At any rate, and at the risk of sounding vain, my headache-faking skills are unsurpassed, and I had the gals thoroughly bamboozled.

  “Then I won’t go either,” Peggy said. “Someone needs to stay behind and keep an eye out on you.”

  “Then who will drive, dear? You won’t let anyone else touch your car.”

  “We’ll all stay,” Wynnell said. “One for all, and all for one, right?”

  “Ah,” C. J. said, “I really wanted to go to this auction. I’ve been looking at this inventory sheet Ms. Yoder gave Abby and there is some really neat stuff.”

  “C. J.!” Wynnell said sharply.

  I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Please,” I moaned. “What I need is a nice long nap, not three nannies hovering over me.”

  That’s all it took. Well—that and allowing them to lead me to the bed, remove my shoes, and close the moldy drapes. They wanted to tuck me in under the covers, but I refused on the grounds that the air conditioner was thermostatically challenged. It was all I could bear just to have Dmitri lying on my chest. When they were satisfied that they had done their best to insure my recovery, they bounced off with glee, images of Amish bargains dancing in their heads.

  As soon as Peggy’s car cleared the Exxon station I turned the telephone upside down and called all the car rental agencies listed in the Bedford telephone directory. They snickered politely when I inquired about renting a car. Thanks to the tournament, only one had any vehicles left on the lot, and that turned out to be a pink stretch limo.

  It was not a hopeless situation, however, because I had noticed a pale yellow car parked behind the motel office that looked like just the sort of car Mushroom Man would drive. Although he was just as difficult to deal with the second time, Mushroom Man knew the value of a dollar, and after I had parted with a few more of those I was the not-so-proud driver of a yellow 1978 Mercury Comet. My new wheels were only slightly less conspicuous than the pink stretch limo, but they were cheaper, and easier to drive on the mountainous roads of central Pennsylvania.

  At the risk of making myself sound like a cruel mother, I will confess that before leaving the motel room for the last time, I shut Dmitri up in the closet. This time, however, he had his litter pan, a full dish of food, and plenty of water. He also had a nice thick bed made out of a folded blanket.

  “You be quiet,” I warned him. “If the Mushroom Man finds you, he’ll skin you alive. He eats kitties for supper.”

  Dmitri purred contentedly.

  Yoder’s Corner Market was the only place in Hernia that had a public phone, and it was tucked back between a cooler full of head cheese and fresh pig’s feet, and a tower built out of fifty-pound sacks of unbleached flour. A hand-lettered sign taped above the phone informed me that the directory was available upon request at the checkout counter.

  Sam Yoder, the proprietor, struck me as a very pleasant man. I took him to be about my own age. He was neatly dressed in khaki slacks, a blue-and-white pinstripe shirt with a button-down collar, and a navy blue tie. His most distinguishing feature was his nose, which was identical to Magdalena’s.

  He caught me stealing a peek at his remarkable proboscis. “It’s the Yoder nose,” he said.

  I blushed, embarrassed to be caught noticing something so personal. “Are you related to Magdalena Yoder?”

  He chuckled. “Which one? There are three Magdalena Yoders in Hernia, five in the county altogether.”

  “Oh, my. Well, the one who owns the PennDutch Inn.”

  “Actually, I’m related to all of them in some way or another. Virtually all Yoders are descended from a pair of brothers who came to this country in the early seventeen hundreds, but the Magdalena Yoder of which you speak is my first cousin.”

  I asked to use the phone book. Sam Yoder made an exhaustive search for the book, but came up empty-handed. He shrugged.

  “There really is a Hernia phone book—of course it’s not much thicker than a comic book—but I have this high-school girl who comes in three afternoons a week. Sometimes things grow legs when she’s around, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. Lots of things in the Den of Antiquity grew legs, but they were always more valuable than a telephone book.

  “Who are you trying to look up?”

  Like I said, he seemed pleasant, the kind of person you just know you can trust. Call it a gut instinct if you will.

  “A family by the name of Teschel,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  A cloud passed over Sam’s face. “You related?”

  “A very distant cousin,” I mumbled. All right, so it was getting easier to lie. But I promised myself that I would adhere rigidly to the truth once I got back to the Carolinas.

  “So, you’re here for the funeral.”

  “Yes, the funeral.”

  Silly me, I hadn’t thought about the funeral taking place in Pennsylvania. Billy Ray had died along a North Carolina highway, in bits and pieces. I had just assumed they would bury him there. Maybe in Elkin, the town nearest the accident. I certainly hadn’t come prepared to attend a funeral, not that day at any rate. I was wearing a pink and white gingham sundress and white, open-toed sandals.

  “Well, it’s the cemetery you’re looking for then, isn’t it? Just keep going down Main Street until you hit Woodlawn Avenue. Make a left, and its only about half a mile. You can’t miss it. It’s Hernia’s only public cemetery.”

  I was sure it wasn’t my imagination. Pleasant Sam was no longer quite as pleasant. The name Teschel had not struck a happy chord with him. I cast about for something to say. I would probably never see Sam Yoder again, but it was somehow important that he not think ill of me.

  “You see, I’m really a very distant cousin. I haven’t been in touch with the family for years.”

  “Go on,” he said. “The procession passed by here an hour ago. You don’t want to miss one of the happiest events in Hernia’s history.”

  12

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Sam turned and fiddled with a display of breath mints. “Sorry about that. I was out of line.”

  I waited quietly. It has been my experience that nothing draws words out of angry people quite like silence, and the once-pleasant Sam was obviously very angry.

  “Of course you’re not a close relative. You said so yourself. And anyway, the truth’s the truth.”

  “That it is.”

  He faced me again. “You don’t even look like a Teschel. That’s kind of funny, because they all look the same.”

  “Kind of like you Yoders?”

  “Yeah. Only the Teschels remind me of catfish.”

  “I shave my whiskers daily.”

  He smiled. “I meant slippery.”

  “Oily? Wet?”

  “No, it’s not how they look so much as it is how they look at you. It’s like they have slippery souls. You can see it in their eyes.”

  I took a deep breath. “I have a confession to make—”

  The door to Yoder’s Corner Market opened and two women entered. By their dress I judged them to be Amish, or else very conservative Mennonite women. They looked almost identical enough to be twins, but my guess was that they were mother and daughter. Both women nodded when they saw Sam, but they didn’t even pause in the flow of their conversation.

  “—and she’s not supposed to cook anything salty on account of his gall bladder.”

  “Are you sure it’s his gall bladder? I thought low-salt diets were for hypertension.”

  “Maybe that’s it then. Anyway, I told her to talk to you—”

  “Nice meeting you, Mr. Yoder,” I said, and slipped out the door.

  Sam was right. As long as
I turned left on Woodlawn Avenue, I couldn’t miss the cemetery. What Sam had neglected to tell me was that Woodlawn Avenue dead-ended into the cemetery which, in fact, was called Woodlawn Cemetery. Wrought-iron letters about three feet high and suspended by a wrought-iron arch, which was in turn supported by two stone pillars, identified the place clearly.

  My problem was locating the funeral itself. Woodlawn certainly lived up to its name, a multitude of mature maples and oaks dotting a vast grassy lawn. It looked more like a park than a burial place. A coarser person than I might even joke that you couldn’t see the headstones for the trees.

  Much to my relief there appeared to be only one road, which split just inside the gate and looped through the cemetery. A sign directed me to keep to the right, so that’s what I did. But I didn’t see any mourners, and I certainly didn’t see any cars.

  Lord knows I’ve been known to overlook important things before—like Buford’s scales and fangs—so I took a second circuit, and that’s when I noticed the single woman sitting on a metal folding chair in the shade of a red maple. If it hadn’t been for the distinctive color of the tree which attracted my eye, I never would have spotted her.

  I parked along the side of the drive and picked my way through a maze of stones. Some were small and hugged the ground, but others were true monuments, marble play houses with stained-glass doors, and topped with chiseled cherubs, or angels armed with swords. The dates on these varied markers spanned almost two hundred years, but they were mixed as thoroughly as a good set of Scrabble tiles. The rich and the poor of Hernia, the young and the old, Woodlawn Cemetery was where they all came together in the end.

  The woman saw me coming. She never looked directly at me, but I could feel her monitoring my progress. She straightened, recrossed her legs at the ankles, and folded her hands in her lap. The corners of her mouth prepared themselves for a welcoming smile.

  She was older than I, but younger than Mama. I guessed her to be in her mid-sixties, of medium height, perhaps a bit on the heavy side. Unlike Mama, she wore no makeup. Not even a trace of old lipstick. Although her gray hair was worn in a tight, carefree perm, it did little to flatter her full cheeks—jowls, a less charitable person might call them. Her shirtwaist dress was two shades lighter than black, and I had the impression it had become faded through frequent washings. Her sensible shoes were black, but made out of plastic, as was the valise-size purse parked by her chair. A single strand of small pearls was her only adornment, and they were all but lost against her pale skin.