Batter Off Dead (27 page)

“Touché for the mixed cliché. What is Wanda doing now?”

“I offered her some coffee and a store-bought cinnamon roll, but she’s very agitated. She keeps pacing the kitchen. And every now and then she looks this way—into the living room. That’s why I’m having to whisper.”

“I’ll be right over,” I said. “Have your uncles entertain her, if you must, but whatever you do, keep her there.”

Although Agnes lives in the country, and on the opposite side of Hernia, thanks to some creative driving, I was there much quicker than one might think, if one were to go by the posted speed limits.

 

1. Combine the flour, wheat germ, sugar, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Sieve the baking soda into the flour mixture. Stir to blend.

2. In a separate bowl, whisk the 1¾ cups buttermilk with the butter and egg until blended. Add to the flour mixture and stir just until blended. If the batter thickens too much while standing, stir in a little more buttermilk, about 1 tablespoon at a time, to thin slightly.

3. Heat a large nonstick griddle or skillet over medium heat until hot enough to sizzle a drop of water. Brush on a thin film of vegetable oil, or spray with nonstick cooking spray. For each pancake, pour ¼ cup batter onto the griddle or into the skillet. Adjust the heat to medium-low. Cook until the tops are covered with small bubbles and the bottoms are lightly browned. Carefully turn and cook the other side until lightly browned. Repeat with the remaining batter.

4. Serve the pancakes warm with the warm topping.

 

MAKES ABOUT TWELVE 4-INCH PANCAKES.

 

Cinnamon Maple Topping:
Melt 1 tablespoon unsalted butter in a medium skillet over medium-low heat. Peel and cut 2 large peaches into thin wedges. Add the peaches to the butter and cook, stirring, to coat and heat through. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice and ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon. Stir to coat. Add ½ cup maple syrup, or more, to taste, and stir to blend. Gently heat. Do not boil.

Agnes Mishler would love to live in town, but she feels responsible for her two elderly uncles.
They
have to live in the country; after all, the Mishler brothers are nudists who spend a great deal of time outside playing badminton, horseshoes, and shuffleboard. Even on this relatively balmy late April morning, I could tell at a glance that neither man had converted to the Jewish faith since last I’d seen them.

I waved at the uncles as I zoomed past them, and then I abruptly squealed to a stop in front of Agnes’s back door. The uncles fled like a pair of wild albino chimpanzees, but Wanda and Agnes struggled to be the first to reach me. Wanda, being a good deal thinner—and meaner, I might add—made it through the kitchen door first.

“Don’t listen to a word she says, Magdalena. I don’t know anything about this case; I was just going on a hunch. Don’t you have a saying about that?”

“Hunching is not good for your back,” I said. “If you don’t believe me, just ask that fellow at Notre Dame.”

“Remind me to laugh, Magdalena. Honestly, I don’t know why people say you’re such a wit.”

“They do? Well, if so, they’re wrong by half.”

By then Agnes had squeezed through her own kitchen door and caught enough breath to speak. “Tell her everything, Wanda, just like you told me.”

When Wanda recoils, her beehive hairdo shoots like a launched rocket ship. “Nobody—and I mean
nobody
—tells Wanda Hemphopple what to do.”

“Fine, then I’ll tell her myself. You see, Magdalena, Wanda here has been having an affair with—”

“I was having a late cup of coffee after closing hours when Chief Ackerman happened to stop by.”

“What time was that?” I interjected.

“Three—maybe three thirty. Anyway, he looked really tired, and like he could use some coffee as well, so I let him in. That’s when he told me about Elias Whitmore and the steamroller.”

“Just like that? He’s a policeman, for crying out loud; he can’t be spilling the beans to civilians.”

“And what are you, Magdalena, an officer of the law?”

“There’s something dripping from your chin, Wanda. Here, let me give you a tissue.”

She actually reached for it, but Agnes intervened at the last second. “She’s being sarcastic as well. Ladies, we’re wasting precious time. Wanda, tell her what else happened so that we can get on with it.”

Wanda sighed like a teenager when asked to clean up her room. “Okay, just don’t be so pushy. Anyway, it didn’t exactly happen just like that. Maybe I fudged just a little. But he did come in for coffee, and he was asking questions, like had I seen anything unusual drive by, on account of the Sausage Barn sits right on the main road into Hernia. And I said that as a matter of fact, I had. When I was locking up the garbage cans after closing—you gotta do that, or else the raccoons will get in—I heard kind of a roar, and I looked up, and there was this flatbed with a steamroller on it, just flying by.”

“Did you get a good look at the driver?”

“Only a glimpse. He was wearing a hat—like a baseball cap. And he was real short. Or maybe he was slumping. So even if he’d been driving slowly, there wouldn’t have been anything to see.”

“What time was this? I need to know
exactly
.”

“Sometime between eleven thirty and twelve.”

“And then after you told the Chief what you saw, he told you about Elias?”

“Not right away. First he had a good cry in booth eight. Then I served him a piece of cinnamon apple pie à la mode, and then he told me about Mr. Whitmore. He said it would be on the news anyway the next day, so what was the point of holding back? Nice boy, that chief. If I was ten years younger—no, make that fifteen—”

“You’re married, Wanda, and Chris bats for a different team. Besides, aren’t you having an affair?”

“Oh, right, my affair with Mr. Sudoku. Unlike Miss Fecund at forty-eight, here, I’m already going through menopause, and I’m only forty-seven. A lot of nights I have trouble sleeping, so I sit up and amuse myself with Sudoku. I’ve gotten really hooked.”

“You’re seeing a Japanese gentleman?”

“Why, Magdalena, you sound almost jealous.”

“Curious, that’s all. Where did you meet this gentleman?”

Wanda and Agnes both laughed. I could tell that it was at my expense, so I decided to laugh along with them. In fact, I may have outdone them, because not only did I get several dogs to howl, but the Bontragers’ donkey began to bray.

“That ass has always had a thing for me,” I said.

“He’s probably smarter than you,” Wanda said. “Sudoku isn’t a person; it’s a type of puzzle. Sort of like a crossword, but with numbers.”

“Oh,
that
,” I said. “I’ve seen those books for sale at Pat’s IGA. Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Ladies,”
Agnes hissed, “let’s get back to Mr. Whitmore’s murder.”

“Indeed,” I said. “But frankly, Agnes, I fail to see why you called me over. I already knew that a steamroller was involved, and since Wanda couldn’t identify the driver of the flatbed . . .” I let my voice trail off.

“The driver was a woman,” Wanda snarled.

“Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere; my ellipse was eclipsed by an assertion! On what do you base that, Wanda?”

“Because what I didn’t tell you was that I barely made it to the garbage cans in time. There was a family of raccoons crossing the road, single file, just as that flatbed roared by. They were all in the opposite lane by then, except for the last little cub. Whoever was driving that flatbed swerved just the tiniest bit, to keep from hitting it. A woman would have done that.”

Agnes gasped. “Wanda, now I’m surprised. That’s very sexist of you. Are you saying a man
would
have hit the cub?”

“No, I’m only saying that a woman would
not
have hit it. We’re nurturers. Why, even Magdalena has a maternal side.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Do you really believe that a woman, on her way to squash a man with a steamroller, would swerve to avoid hitting a raccoon?”

“It was a baby. It was cute. And it’s called compartmentalization, Miss Smarty Pants. Besides, she screamed something out the window as well. It was a woman’s voice, so there!”

“Agnes,” I said, “aren’t there times when you just want to take Wanda and shake some sense into her?”

“Boy, I’ll say. Wanda, did you recognize the voice?”

“No. Don’t you think I would have told you that?”

And then just like that, I had all the pieces to the puzzle. “Ladies—and naked gents hovering in the distance—I must bid adieu, for duty calls.”

“What?” Wanda said. “You know I don’t speak Spanish.”

Despite her size, Agnes could move with lightning speed, and she managed to grab my arm before I could hoof it back to my car. “Not so fast, Magdalena. You’re on to something, and we demand to know to what.”

“Yeah,” Wanda said. “After what you put us through last time, we have a right to know.”

“More than that,” Agnes said, gripping my arm even tighter, “we have a right to come along.”

“And what exactly do you mean?” I said.

“We were your Ethel Mertzes in your last shenanigans: when you hoisted your mother-in-law onto a cow and sent it crashing off through the woods. You put our lives on the line that night—chasing down an armed couple—but I must say, it was the single most thrilling thing that ever happened to me.”

“Who is Ethel Mertz?” I asked, and quite reasonably, I may add. My parents, Old Order Mennonites both, never watched a single television program in their lives. I, however, have yielded to temptation and viewed a few of the older comedies, the one referenced among them. I must say, however, that the finest show ever produced was
Green Acres
.

“Uh, Magdalena,” Wanda grunted, “you’re helplessly conservative. There’s no sin in watching old TV shows such as
I Love Lucy
.”

“That wouldn’t be Luci
fer
, would it?”

“She’s trying to stall,” Agnes said. “If she can succeed in making you blow your stack, then maybe you won’t want to come with her.”

“Ha! In that case she’s out of luck. I bought that book
The Impatient Person’s Guide to Meditation
back when it made the
New York Times
bestseller list, and I read most of it. I can become very tranquil if I set my mind to it.”

“Then for the love of scrapple,” Agnes panted, “set your mind to it now.”

“Ohmmmmmmmm.”

Life’s many twists and turns are supposed to be what keeps it interesting, but a
peaceful
Wanda? Now, that takes the cake! This I had to see.

“Okay,” I said, “but I can’t guarantee your safety, and you have to do exactly as I order.”

“Listen here, Magdalena. I don’t take orders!”

“Yes, she does.” Agnes let go of my arm and enclosed Wanda in her bulk. “Say it again, Wanda. Ohmmmmmmmm.”

Wanda’s eyes narrowed but she complied, and so we three musketless dears set off to catch a killer.

 

 

Just as I thought, there was a cab with an attached flatbed trailer parked in the turnaround in front of Minerva J. Jay’s house. Not being the total fool that some folks think I am, as soon as I caught a glimpse of this, I backed up for a good quarter of a mile.

“What gives?” Wanda demanded. “Are you losing your nerve?”

“No, dear, although you seem to have lost your
ohm
niscience.”

“They were two-minute exercises, Magdalena, and there were only three in the book. It took us a lot longer than that to get all the way out here. Where
are
we, by the way?”

“Thousand Caves Retirement Village,” Agnes said. “I brought my uncles out here to look at plots. Minerva assured them that there would be a nudist section, but they chickened out. You see, Uncle Remus is afraid of gaping holes.”

“That’s nice, dear. Okay, everyone out.”

“Out?”
They both sounded terrified.

“We can’t sneak up on them in a car, ladies, can we?”

“No,” Agnes said, “but we can call the sheriff.”

“We can tell him that there’s a flatbed truck out here, so what? You don’t see a steamroller, do you? We need to get close enough to get some hard evidence. Besides, you can’t get cell phone reception here; I’ve tried once before.”

“Do you have a gun?” Wanda said.

“No! I’m a proper Mennonite, for goodness’ sake, not a liberal one, like you.” Oops, perhaps I had gone too far. Wanda belongs to the First Mennonite Church, not Beechy Grove, and they are indeed a different breed, but they are still ostensibly pacifist.

“Magdalena has her keen mind,” Agnes said loyally.

“Ha,” Wanda snorted. “If she’s so smart, then why did she marry a bigamist?”

I took a deep breath and composed what I believed to be a beatific smile. “Wanda, dear, if you’re afraid, then by all means remain in the car. Just don’t play the radio, because we can’t come back to a dead battery. If you get really bored, there’s last year’s
Farmer’s Almanac
under the passenger-side front seat. Be sure to lock the doors, of course, and whatever you do, don’t open the door if you hear something scraping against it. They say that the tourist from Harrisburg died of a heart attack, but what the paper didn’t mention was the hook that was found hanging from the door handle.” I flashed her my beatific smile again.