Just Plain Pickled to Death (12 page)

It is a small cemetery, and despite their connections, my parents are having to share far closer quarters than they could possibly have shared in real life. Mama always chided me about walking across people’s graves, so I had to zigzag down the narrow, grassy aisles, and when I got there I was very careful not to put the stadium seat down on Mama’s turf. Papa, I knew, wouldn’t mind my legs stretched out above him.

“It’s like this,” I began. “You’ve really messed things up for me, you know. Of course you couldn’t help getting rear-ended by a milk tanker, but you didn’t have to die. I wouldn’t have died and left two helpless children to fend for themselves.

“All right, so I wasn’t exactly a child, but Susannah was. Not in years, maybe, but you know what I mean. How did you expect me to raise her by myself, when you two couldn’t even do the job right?”

I clamped my hand over my mouth. “I didn’t mean that, Mama. Please don’t start turning over in your grave like you always threatened.”

I waited a few minutes, and when there were no tremors I continued. “I’m supposed to get married Saturday. But Sarah’s murder—well, her discovery, at least—has ruined everything. Couldn’t you have stopped it? I mean, don’t you have any influence up there at all?”

My hand found my mouth again. It wasn’t the first time I’d come close to blasphemy. But that time back in my fifth grade Sunday school class when I referred to God as She, I was under the influence of a double dose of cold medicine. Still, I said a silent prayer before addressing Papa’s plot.

“You always said I was your special girl. You were supposed to give me away,” I wailed.

“And you,” I said to Mama’s matted mound, “were supposed to help me with the preparations. You know, the girl stuff. But where are you?” I wailed.

“Mum rig hah,” Mama said.

I jumped two feet in the air, which is quite a feat when one starts from a sitting position. It’s a wonder my heart didn’t burst out of my chest and go soaring over the edge of Stucky Ridge.

“Whad din minta scary ah,” Mama said calmly. Her poor diction I attributed to six feet of earth.

I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t move my legs off the top of Papa’s grave. Perhaps he had a hold on them.

“Ins onee mee, Magdalena.”

I heard my name clearly. Mama sounded closer as well.

“Yes, Mama, it’s me,” I said quickly. “Please don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry for what I said. It’s just that—”

Suddenly Mama was standing right beside me. But I hadn’t seen her actually come out of the grave, and unless she had access to a back door, something was clearly wrong. Besides, the apparition looked nothing like I remembered Mama.

Mama had a beaked nose and dark, flashing eyes. The ghost had a long, pointed nose and faded blue eyes. Frankly, the ghost was dressed in the same drab dresses Mama always wore—before she liberalized and discovered the joy of pants—but unlike Mama, the ghost had huge bosoms and tiny, childlike hands.

“Auntie Magdalena!” I cried. “I didn’t see you coming. You nearly scared me to death!”

Auntie Magdalena whimpered and mumbled a few phrases, and I discovered that by watching her lips closely I was able to follow along.

“I got bored with the picnic,” she mumbled. “All I ever hear is how Vonnie and Rudy bought this or went there, and which movies Lizzie and Manasses saw. And Leah—you’d think the world revolved around her cooking.”

“It is rather good,” I said carelessly.

Auntie Magdalena whimpered a few things it’s best not to repeat. “You’d think Elias and I didn’t even exist,” she added.

I thought that one over carefully. When you wear size eleven shoes, putting your foot in your mouth can be a mite uncomfortable.

“You don’t suppose it has to do with, uh—”

“Race?”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely not. When I first started dating Elias, my sisters couldn’t wait to put their hands on him. I mean that figuratively, of course.”

“Of course. Rebecca too, I suppose.”

Auntie Magdalena looked at me like I had just told her that not only was the moon made of cheese but it was a nice imported Gouda.

“Becca was not like the others at all.”

“A virtual saint, I suppose.” The sarcasm just slipped out.

“Give me a break,” Auntie Magdalena mumbled. “I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead—especially in a cemetery—but she was twice as bad as the others. Threw herself at anyone in pants. And in those days that meant men.”

I was going to have to take a crash course in face reading. “You mean she flirted?”

“ ‘Flirted’ is the word you’d use when talking to a preacher. Flirted, ha! Becca was, uh—”

“Horny?” I know, it is a horrible word, but Susannah uses it, and frankly it seems to suit her. If Becca had been anything at all like Susannah, then everything Uncle Jonas had told me was suspect.

“That’s what she was, all right. It was shameful. And it didn’t stop after she was married, either. Poor Jonas, we always said.”

“Who’s we?”

“Everyone.”

“I see. What about Catherine, Aaron Senior’s wife?”

“What about her?”

“What was she like?”

“Catherine was my best friend, and as decent a woman as you could hope to find.”

I chewed on that for a while. The truth has as many versions as there are tongues, but surely Auntie Magdalena had seen through her friend. Even Aaron Senior had recognized his wife’s shortcomings.

“What do you think about Uncle Jonas?” I asked at last.

Auntie Magdalena bent over so her face was just inches from mine. Clearly she didn’t want me to miss a word.

“I think Jonas killed his wife, that’s what I think. And believe me, he had plenty of reason.”

With some difficulty Auntie Magdalena righted herself and without another whimper, or mumbled word, wound her way through the cemetery and out the rusted wrought iron gate. I was alone again, with no one but Mama and Papa, and the shells of my ancestors. I began to cry.

Uncle Jonas was sitting by himself on the front porch of the inn when I drove up. There were no other cars in the drive, so I assumed that the Beeftrust had found another memory lane to follow and that Aaron had gone home to his father. As for Susannah, odds were she was still in bed, although there was a good chance she had at least turned over since I’d left.

For some reason Uncle Jonas in the flesh intimidated me. Perhaps it was the staring eyes that he was noted for. Perhaps it was because he was so tidy. I had the feeling he measured the length of his cuticles before and after he did his nails. There wasn’t a hair on his head out of place, and not a nub of a whisker to be seen on his cheeks. The only other man I’d ever known to be so exacting in his neatness was my ninth grade algebra teacher, Mr. Rouck.

Mr. Rouck may have been neat, but he wasn’t nice. By the end of the first semester I was envying my Amish neighbors who didn’t have to go to school beyond the eighth grade. By the end of the year I was envying my Baptist friends who believed that at least some violence was justified by the Bible.

“Welcome to the PennDutch Inn,” I called out gaily. Forced cheer is one of my strong points.

“Hello.” I recalled the scratchy voice I’d heard on the phone. It was totally at odds with his appearance, but it made perfect sense. Mr. Rouck had had a voice that scratched glass.

I settled myself in a rocker next to his and cradled my purse in my lap.

“You have a good flight?”

He stared at me with eyes that were flat and gray, like pebbles plucked from a stream and allowed to dry.

“Cut out the small talk, please. I have decided to show the police Sarah’s diary, but on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“That Leah Troyer not be allowed to come to the funeral.”

I stifled a gasp with my purse, bruising my nose in the process. “Our Leah?”

“The very one. Leader of the Beeftrust.”

That was news to me. Leah had a loud voice, but she didn’t seem like the leading type. I would have pegged fashionable Lizzie or crabby old Veronica for that role. And, of course, Magdalena didn’t count.

“Well, I’m no expert on church policy,” I said carefully, “but I always thought funerals were open to the public.”

“There can be private burials,” he rasped. “For family members only.”

‘But Leah is family. Sarah was her niece.”

The flat eyes regarded me soberly, beneath eyebrows that had been precisely trimmed. “When one does what Leah did, then one is no longer family.”

I held my purse at the ready. “What did she do?”

“My little girl went to her aunt for help, and she refused.”

“You mean Sarah asked Leah for help? Something to do with her mother’s killer?”

He nodded. “It’s all there, in her diary.”

We rocked in silence for a while. He was undoubtedly grieving; I was sorting things out. I needed Uncle Jonas’s cooperation, but I couldn’t promise to keep Leah away from the funeral, no matter what was in that diary. On the other hand, it was his daughter’s funeral, and it really was up to him who should or should not attend. Besides, in this case the chicken definitely came before the egg. After we showed the diary to chicken Melvin, what was to stop me from going back on my word about Leah? Assuming, of course, that by that time I didn’t agree with Uncle Jonas.

“Okay, you show the diary to the police, and I’ll tell Leah she can’t come to the funeral.”

“No deal. You tell her first, and then we see about the police.”

“You tell her yourself. It’s your daughter’s funeral.”

He stared at me. If he had been Mr. Rouck, I could have expected my algebra grade to go down a letter.

“Look,” I said, “the important thing is that we catch Sarah’s killer, right? Punishing Leah is a secondary issue.”

“Leah is my daughter’s killer,” he said quietly. His voice was remarkably clear.

Chapter Fourteen

“What? You can’t be serious!”

He slowly pulled a small red book from underneath his rocker cushion. “It’s in here. It’s all in the diary.”

“Let me see.” I reached for it automatically.

He tucked the book back under the cushion. “I’ve decided not to show it to you.”

“What?”

“I’ve decided that this police friend of yours is the only one who needs to see it. It’s better for my daughter’s memory that way.”

I hadn’t counted on that. I hadn’t for a second considered the possibility that Melvin would see the diary, and I wouldn’t. That was like letting a monkey loose in a secret munitions factory. Privacy might be preserved, but the whole place was liable to blow up.

“Uh—Chief Stoltzfus is really swamped at the moment. At times like this he appreciates my helping him out. Why don’t I read the diary for him—only the pertinent parts, of course—and summarize it?”

“Bull,” he rasped. Such a crude word from such an immaculate man.

“Look, Mr. Weaver”—calling him “Uncle Jonas” seemed too intimate—”whether you believe me or not, I’m on your side. Your daughter was my sister’s best friend. Susannah has been deeply affected by this, and frankly, so have I. I’m supposed to get married on Saturday, and I’ll be damned if I’ll have a murder investigation hanging over our heads to screw things up.”

This time his stare was less belligerent. “Your mother ever hear you talk like that?”

“No, and she never will. My mother’s dead. You’d know that if you’d bothered to keep in touch with folks here.”

He glanced around, as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. “I’d forgotten how nice it is here. How peaceful. And real.”

“Real?”

“Back home—I mean, in Florida—nothing is as it seems. The folks there aren’t from there, even the trees and flowers they grow are from someplace else. And the land—you dig down two feet and there isn’t any dirt at all, just limestone. They say that if the polar ice cap melts just a foot, there won’t be any Florida at all. All the pink plastic flamingos will be washed away by the waves. No more shuffleboard courts, either.”

“Is that so?” It was comforting to know that my Pennsylvania mountain valley had its particular advantages.

He nodded. “Maybe I’ll stay a while. Know of any rooms to rent in the area?”

“Is the pope Catholic?”

He actually smiled. “I’m afraid your place would be out of my league, Miss Yoder. I was thinking more like a rooming house in town.”

“Delores Brown sometimes has rooms to rent. She’s a Methodist, though, so her rooms don’t have a theme. And she’s nosier than a roomful of reporters. Still, I hear she’s reasonable.”

The truth be known, Delores can hardly give her rooms away. I should feel sorry for the woman, because before the PennDutch hit it big, she was the only game in town. But face it—folks don’t want just a place to sleep anymore, they want entertainment. If they’re real discriminating, that entertainment is atmosphere with an attitude.

“She in the book?” he asked.

“Yes. But the poor dear’s hard of hearing and almost never answers her phone. If you want, I’ll drive over there this afternoon and ask her.”

“Thank you.”

He closed his eyes for a minute, and I thought maybe he had gone to sleep. Mennonite uncles are capable of falling into deep, coma-like sleep in less time than it takes to clear the dinner table. Therefore it took me by surprise when he reached behind him to get the diary and then held it out to me.