Just Plain Pickled to Death (11 page)

“I’m off duty,” he said, speaking to me from behind his desk.

“But you’re here.”

“So are you, Yoder, and you’re not on duty.”

“But this is your office, and you’re in.”

“And since this is my office, Yoder, I don’t have to explain my actions.”

“Who is on duty, then?”

“No one. Not until ten.”

“Come on, Melvin, this is very important.”

He rotated an eye to the clock on the wall. “Come back in an hour. We’ll talk then.”

“What will I do for an hour, Melvin? I don’t want to drive home and back.”

“Shop,” he said.

With that, Melvin propped his feet up on his desk, clasped his bony hands over the tiniest of potbellies, and was out like a light. I decided to take him at his word. I would be back in precisely an hour. At that time we would talk, even if it meant having to throw a pitcher of ice water in his face first.

Hernia has two stores: Yoder’s Corner Market and Miller’s Feed Store. The former is overpriced and understocked, and the latter caters to stock—livestock, that is.

I own two dairy cows, Matilda and Bessie. In the spring they need very little from the feed store, so I decided to while away my hour at Yoder’s Corner Market. But unless I chanced upon an exceptional bargain, I wouldn’t buy anything. Sam Yoder, the proprietor, is my father’s first cousin once removed, but I still have to pay full price. Even Sam’s seventy- three-year-old mother has to pay full price, and he lives with her!

Sam was the closest thing I had to a suitor in high school, and if it hadn’t been for my pining over Aaron and he over Dorothy Gillman (a Methodist!) we might have ended up life partners. I, of course, do not regret the way things turned out, but I don’t think the same thing can be said for Sam. To please Dorothy, Sam became a Methodist, but it has not been a happy marriage. What mixed marriage is? Dorothy is far too worldly to suit Sam, and loose with the change besides. I hear she once spent over a hundred dollars buying curtains at the Kmart in Bedford, when she could have made them herself! Sam almost divorced her over that, which would have been wrong but certainly understandable.

“Hi, Sam, what’s up?”

Sam glowered at me. “Your beefy relatives just swept through here like a herd of buffalo. Messed everything up and bought almost nothing. Claimed my prices were too high.”

“They are.”

“Well, they’re not going to find anything else to picnic on in Hernia.”

“Not unless they try the feed store.”

We both laughed. “Sam, how well do you remember Sarah Weaver?”

His face darkened again. “Jonas and Rebecca’s daughter?”

“The one. I suppose by now you’ve heard.”

“It’s all over town, Magdalena. A terrible way to die—drowning in a barrel of cider.”

“It was sauerkraut. And I don’t think she drowned. I think she was dead before she went in.”

“Still, what a tragic waste.”

I left that line alone. Sam is too closely related to have meant it in the morally correct way.

“Did you know her well, Sam?”

A dreamy look crept across his face. “No, not Sarah. Too young. But I remember her mother.”

“Oh?” I asked cautiously.

“Yeah, all the guys remember her. She was—uh—”

“Pretty?”

“Built like a brick shithouse.”

“Shame on you, Sam Yoder! A Methodist tongue!” I chided him gently. “So, she was easy on your eyes. What else do you remember?”

“She wore very short skirts and tight sweaters.”

“She was a Mennonite, Sam. I’m sure she did no such thing.”

“Ask any man our age. Mrs. Weaver was what you wished all your dates looked like.”

I would have slapped Sam, but dozens of generations of pacifist forebears have left their genetic imprint on me. Besides, I had just spotted a hickory- smoked ham that had been mispriced to my advantage. Sam does not have a scanner, and if I kept him distracted—in a non-combative way—the ham could be mine for a song.

“That’s very interesting,” I said pleasantly. “I mean, the Beeftrust are not exactly drop-dead gorgeous. And I mean that in the nicest way.”

“No argument there. But Mrs. Weaver wasn’t like the others. She was the youngest, I think. Kept herself in good shape. Could really turn heads.”

I let Sam ring up the twenty-dollar ham for two dollars. Then, not feeling the least bit guilty, I deposited a quarter in the charity box by the register. If I knew Sam, the two bits would never reach the big-eyed children with the sunken cheeks. As soon as I got home, however, I would mail them half of my eighteen-dollar profit.

“Well, from what I hear, her sister Lizzie was quite a looker too.”

Sam made the same face Susannah makes when she tastes Freni’s homemade liverwurst. “I don’t know much about her. She was older. Grown-up-looking, you know.”

“Did you and your drooling cronies ever make a pass at Sarah’s mother?”

He blanched white as bleached cake flour. “Naw, I mean, we were just kids, and she was a grown-up too. She just didn’t look like the rest. Besides, her husband wouldn’t stand for it.”

“Oh?” For talkers like Sam, an arched eyebrow and a rounded mouth are all they need for fuel.

“That man was downright weird. Real quiet all the time. Too quiet. Like a snake, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded, the “oh” and the arch still in place.

“He used to come into this store a lot when it was my daddy’s. I’d see him then. He gave me the heebie-jeebies. He was always staring at you, with eyes that never blinked. Like I said, he reminded me of a snake.”

A customer came in then. Norah Hall is the nosiest woman this side of the Delaware. She also has it in for me. Something about it being my fault her pudgy prepubescent daughter didn’t get to be a movie star that time a Hollywood company rented my inn for a few weeks. At any rate, Norah was sure to peek into my bag, see the mispriced ham, and squeal on me. Sam then would ban me from his store for life, depriving me of one of my few pleasures, and the big-eyed waifs would go hungry.

“That is such a flattering color on you,” I said to Norah and fled. Always compliment your enemies before fleeing. It throws them off track every time.

Melvin was still asleep when I returned. I didn’t have a pitcher of ice water at my disposal, but it was a simple matter to push his feet off the desk. The silly man jumped up and saluted me.

“Sir! Private Melvin Stoltzfus reporting to duty, sir!”

“At ease, private,” I said kindly.

He rubbed his giant orbs with both fists. “That isn’t funny, Magdalena. I worked Zelda’s shift last night—she’s sick. That was the first chance I had to close my eyes since yesterday morning. I guess I fell asleep and was dreaming. You know, I could arrest you for breaking and entering. And assaulting a police officer.”

“No, you couldn’t.”

“Want to bet?”

I opened my pocketbook and whipped out a little pink book with a gold clasp. “You’d lose, dear.”

His eyes took turns inspecting the pink book. “What’s that?”

“Susannah’s diary. The unabridged version.”

He sat down again as abruptly as if he’d been pushed.

“What is it you want, Yoder?”

“Your official cooperation.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

“The diary is pink, dear. Inside, however, it’s red hot.”

He tried bluffing, a mistake for male mantises. The female gets them every time.

“So? Sex is the national pastime. Nobody’s going to care.”

“The taxpayers will care.”

He turned whiter than Cousin Sam had. “Get to the point, Yoder.”

Allow me to assure you that I had not even skimmed Susannah’s diary, much less read it. I knew that she kept the book under a pair of black lace panties in her left bottom dresser drawer, but I had no idea where she kept the key. However, on more than one occasion, Susannah has let slip references to things that Melvin did, or places that he took her to, that he had no business doing in a city-owned car.

“Like I said, I simply want your cooperation, Melvin.”

“Details, then, please.” He said it almost politely.

I pulled up a chair that had been wasting its time in a comer. “I know where there’s proof that Rebecca Weaver—Sarah’s mother—was killed. Proof that Sarah saw it happen and her life was in danger when she disappeared.”

“Where is this proof?”

“In a diary.”

His mouth opened and closed, and he began madly mashing his mandibles. “This is ridiculous,” he said at last. “I may have had the hots for Sarah’s mother—all the boys did—but I never told Susannah that. And I certainly didn’t kill Mrs. Weaver.”

Dawn came slowly to my aging brain, but it brought a smile with it. “I’m not talking about you, or this diary at the moment. I’m talking about another diary. One that belonged to our victim herself.”

“I’m not in it?” He sounded almost disappointed.

“I’m sure you are,” I said kindly. “But I’m also sure you are not the one she saw kill her mother,” I added soothingly.

But was I? Jonas wouldn’t tell me who the killer was over the phone. But of course it couldn’t have been Melvin. The man was as irritating as a mosquito up your ear, but he wasn’t a killer. There wasn’t a violent bone in his body—or was there?

Susannah had said once that he slapped her. There is never an excuse for hitting a woman—or any human being—but that’s only a fine and dandy theory when Susannah’s in the picture. Susannah’s talent for lying aside, that woman could provoke Mother Teresa into picking up an Uzi and spraying a roomful of sleeping babies. Melvin may have slapped Susannah, but even if he had, the man wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. I would stake my inn on that.

“Where is this diary?” Melvin demanded. “It’s police business, and I want you to hand it over immediately.”

I smiled patiently. “It’s on its way here from the Pittsburgh airport, dear. But, like I said, I want your cooperation.”

He stared at me with both eyes, quite a feat of cooperation in itself. “Details, Yoder.”

“The diary belongs to Sarah’s father now. Jonas Weaver. As you surely know, diaries can contain some very personal information, and this one does. Information that has nothing to do with the case. It—”

“It’s up to me to decide that, isn’t it?” he snapped.

I held up Susannah’s plastic-bound secrets. “Ah, ah, ah! No, you don’t. That’s why I brought up the subject of this little gem. It’s very important to Jonas that we read only the parts that pertain to the murder.”

“We?”

“You and I, of course. Who else is going to keep an eye on you?”

“The hell you say, Yoder. If Mr. Weaver wants to sit beside me and turn the pages, that’s all right, but you’re not going to be anywhere around. The last thing I need is for you to get some crazy ideas from what’s in there and then nm off and try to play hero.”

“Moi?”

But it was no use trying to act innocent. Melvin knew from experience that I am not one to sit idly by while the police take their own sweet time with things.

“Let me put it this way, Yoder. If you get in my way at all, I’m going to arrest you for obstructing a police officer in the pursuit of his duty.”

It sounded like a bogus charge, but it didn’t matter. As long as Melvin did the job we paid him to do, then I would stand back, and gladly. I had a million things still to do for the wedding, and none of them had anything to do with solving twenty-year-old murders.

“Pursue your duty, then.” Before I left his office, I waved the pink diary at him one more time for good measure.

Chapter Thirteen

I drove up to Stucky Ridge without a picnic lunch. Most people do. The crest of Stucky Ridge is the highest point for miles around, and while it offers wonderful picnic views, most of its visitors are teenagers who park along the rim and do everything but look at the scenery. They, of course, come at night.

Stucky Ridge is what we in the East often call a mountain, but what folks in the West might call a wrinkle, or a hill at most. According to geologists, Stucky Ridge was once at the bottom of a primeval swamp, and as a consequence was blessed with a collection of swamp creatures which somehow got compressed and turned into coal. Clarence Stucky, who owned most of the ridge, strip-mined the coal and then turned the denuded mountain over to the town of Hernia for use as a city park. That was thirty years ago, and thanks to the valiant efforts of the Greater Hernia Plant and Pick It Garden Club, the scars left by the strip mining have been concealed, if not healed.

The north end of the ridge, however, was never mined. Since the days of the first white settlers it has been continuously inhabited by Amish and Mennonites other than the Stucky family, and Clarence was unable to strip the coal out from under them. The current residents may be confined by a wrought iron fence and their view obscured by a copse, but they aren’t about to move. The official name for this little community is the Settlers’ Cemetery, and that’s where my parents are buried.

According to a document filed at city hall and on record in Harrisburg, the descendants of Hernia’s first settlers may be interred on Stucky Ridge in perpetuity. Five male Stucky ancestors signed this document, and there it is, in black and white for all current-day Stuckys to see. Now that the entire ridge has been deeded over to the city it is no longer a problem, but I can remember the day when Amish buggies and Mennonite cars encircled the cemetery to keep Clarence’s bulldozers from coming any closer.

At any rate, both Mama and Papa are descended from Hernia’s earliest settlers, in so many ways it would make your head spin to try and keep them all straight. Suffice it to say that Papa’s main connection was his great-great-great-great-great grandfather Christian Yoder, and Mama’s her great-great-great- great-great grandfather Joseph Hochstetler. Those are the names that appear first on the official document. But since no pioneer could have done it without his wife (certainly not produced descendants), I feel it is only right to mention that Christian’s wife was Barbara Hooley and Joseph’s wife was Anna Blank.

At the top of the ridge the gravel road splits, with the right fork turning off to the parking areas and picnic tables. As I continued on toward Settlers’ Cemetery, I could see among the parked cars the ones driven up by the Beeftrust. The hostess in me felt a sudden urge to stop and inquire politely about their lunch, but I repressed it. They were big girls, after all, quite capable of fending for themselves. I was the one who needed help.