Just Plain Pickled to Death (24 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

Delores lives on the kind of street Norman Rockwell liked to paint. Granted, hers is a rooming house, but the rest of the homes are single-family abodes, many of them decked out in genuine Victorian gingerbread. Huge maples line both sides of the street, and in just about every other yard stands a majestic Colorado blue spruce. Wherever enough sunlight gets through, someone has scratched out a flower bed. It is a street of shady solitude, where the only discordant sound is the occasional whine of electric hedge shears.

It was precisely 1:16 when I parked my car. I am positive of the time because I purposely looked at my watch. Being late to a funeral—or a memorial service—is almost as bad as wearing red. If the dead can make it there on time, why can’t the mourners?

Of course I wasn’t dumb enough to park right in front of Delores’s rooming house. I might not know everyone in Hernia, but it’s a sure bet everyone knows me. On the off-chance that some disgruntled soul would recognize my car and pop in to settle an old score during my tete-a-tete, I parked all the way on the other side of the block. It took me six minutes to walk to Delores’s, and I will confess that I was slightly out of breath when I rang the bell.

Although Delores’s car was in her driveway, she didn’t answer. I know for a fact that the woman, on account of her hearing problem, has lights in strategic rooms that come on whenever her doorbell is activated. I also know that she is as stubborn as a knot in a wet shoelace and is quite capable of just ignoring the world when it suits her to do so. Undoubtedly she was somewhere inside, peeking through the curtains and having herself a good laugh at my expense. It was also quite possible that Jonas was there as well and the two of them were busily engaged in doing the hootchie-cootchie—as Susannah so crudely puts it.

There was nothing left for me to do but to try the front door. It was locked. Ditto for the back door. But as they say, the third time is the charm—the side door that opens onto the breezeway and the garage was not locked. I slipped in quietly. Let me assure you that the purpose of my stealth at that point was to catch Jonas alone if possible. If I had been up to nefarious purposes I certainly would not have rung the doorbell.

A short flight of steps led up from the side door to the back hall, and I had just mounted the last one when the lights went out. I’m not talking about the hall light either, but the light in my head. It was as if someone had flipped a switch or pulled a chain. One minute I could see relatively fine (Delores is a tightwad and uses low-wattage bulbs); the next thing I knew, everything was as black as sin.

When the light in my head came on again, it brought a rush of intense pain. I can only describe it as hitting your head hard up against a wall while suffering a migraine and listening to rap music full blast on a boom box. And I’ll throw in an off-key opera singer, a couple of mating cats, and some fingernails scraping across a chalkboard just to make sure I haven’t understated the discomfort. If I could have gotten up and walked away from my head at that moment, I would have. Unfortunately, it was still firmly connected to my body.

For the first few minutes after the lights came on, there was no picture. Just sound. Gradually I got a fuzzy picture, then some double images, and finally what might pass for normal vision, except that every movement I observed was somehow connected to sound. The reverse seemed to be true as well.

“Magdalena, are you all right?”

The lights flickered on and off with every word, but I recognized Diane Lefcourt. She was sitting across from me in a chair. She appeared to be tied to it. I was likewise sitting, but at the moment I couldn’t feel anything but my head. I may have been tied as well.

“No, I am not all right!” Each word was like hitting myself on the head with a hammer.

“Just sit real still then and keep your eyes closed.”

Given my condition, that was easier done than said, and so I did it. I closed my eyes and sat there, willing the pain to go away. I have been told that I am a woman of strong character, but the truth is, it’s my constitution that is remarkable. It is all in my genes. If Mama and Papa hadn’t met an untimely end between the milk tanker and the shoe truck, chances are they would have survived well into their nineties. Neither of them ever had the patience to be sick, and I seem to have followed in their footsteps.

Perhaps five minutes had passed when I opened my eyes again. I felt much better. I could see quite clearly now, and the rap music and screeching soprano had been replaced by nothing more than a slight buzzing in my ears and a world-class headache.

I looked around the room. We were in a small back bedroom on the second floor. No, make that a tiny bedroom on the third floor, front side, up under the eaves. Through the one small window I could see the top levels of the maples that lined the street. The cubicle was furnished with a double bed, which took up most of the room, and a chair. I was sitting sideways on the bed, which had no headboard, and my hands were tied behind me. My feet, which were also tied together, stuck straight out in front of me. There was a rope around my waist, and behind me I could feel the sharp, cold metal ribs of an old-fashioned steam radiator. It was a good thing it was summer and the heat wasn’t on.

Diane sat on a chair facing the bed. It had four legs, but one of them was much shorter than the other, and the slightest movement caused her to tip forward. Fortunately her center of gravity was well to the back of the chair, so she was in no danger of falling over. But the near constant jarring of that short leg against the floor, and her pitiful yelps and gasps were most annoying. She was undoubtedly responsible for some of the sounds I had heard in my altered state.

“What on earth are you doing here?” I was finally able to ask, with only minimal pain.

She rocked forward, gasping needlessly. “I came to see Jonas, which is undoubtedly what you did.”

I nodded, which was stupid of me and very painful. “How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know. I left right after lunch, so I guess I arrived about twenty minutes before you did.”

“It took me a good bit more than twenty minutes to wash the dishes and change my dress, dear,” I said, perhaps a bit crossly.

“Well, okay, then,” she snapped. “I stopped off at a store. I had some shopping to do.”

“In Hernia?”

“Miller’s Feed Store. Look Magdalena, you and I both came here for the same reason, right? So let’s stop playing games and lay our cards on the table. How were you planning to do him in?”

“What?”

“I thought of shooting him, but I don’t have a gun, and that waiting period is just ridiculous, if you ask me. Of course I couldn’t poison him, not unless I had him over to dinner, and the Sisters of the Broken Heart would never allow that. Not even a male pheromone is allowed past that gate. So I took a cue from you.”

“What?”

“You know, at lunch you were stabbing at that clump of ice in your glass, and I got to thinking, what better way than an ice pick? I mean, it is summer, and everyone has an ice pick, right? I could stab Jonas with the pick—a couple of times if I needed to—wash it off good, and throw it along the roadside on my way home. They could never trace something that common back to me. So, I made a quick detour to Miller’s Feed Store and—”

“Feed stores carry ice picks?”

She laughed and the chair rocked precariously. “Industrial-strength ice picks. One jab would have done it. Right in the eyeball.”

I shuddered, which didn’t do my headache any good. “That’s horrible. I can’t believe you were going to do that.”

“And you, Little Miss Perfect? What were you going to do? From what I heard, you got caught with a tape recorder and a butcher knife. What were you going to do, carve him up and record his screams?”

I couldn’t believe that even a fake nun would talk like that. It had to be the influence of television. The devil in a box, Mama used to call it.

“It was a paring knife, not a butcher knife. And it was for self-defense purposes only.”

“I thought you Mennonites were pacifists,” she said cruelly.

“But I’m supposed to get married on Saturday,” I wailed. “I can’t afford to get killed!”

The cubicle door opened. “What the hell—so, I see you’re awake.”

“Uncle Rudy! Am I ever glad to see you! You wouldn’t believe—”

“Shut up.” Uncle Rudy waved a small handgun in my general direction.

“Yes,” I whispered, “I should keep it down. We don’t want Uncle Jonas to know you’re here. How did you find us?”

Diane Lefcourt brayed like a banshee. It took me a moment to recognize that it was laughter.

“Shut up, bitch!” Uncle Rudy growled.

It was a good thing I was sitting, because I would have hit the floor for sure. As it was, the shock gave me a permanent gray streak along my left temple. Fortunately it is a very narrow streak and I am able to blend it in with the rest of my hair.

“Uncle Rudy!” I gasped.

His face had turned into a smooth, hard mask. I could no longer recognize the meek little uncle who slept his days away on my parlor settee.

“Goddamn you, Magdalena.”

Sometimes I’m as slow as molasses during a January cold snap. “But I thought you were Uncle Jonas. I mean, I thought Uncle Jonas did this to me—conked me on the head and tied me up. Where is Uncle Jonas? And Delores?”

He snorted. “Trussed up like turkeys one floor below you. Just like you two.”

“And you’re a pig, Rudy,” Diane said defiantly.

“I said shut up, bitch!” Uncle Rudy turned and waved the pistol menacingly in front of her face.

The braying stopped. “Make me!”

There was the sound of metal hitting flesh. A dull thunk, not unlike when Freni tenderizes flank steak with a stainless-steel mallet. Diane slumped silently in her chair.

I screamed. I would like to say that I did it to draw attention away from Diane, but the truth is I was horrified. I have never been struck, much less with a pistol. Then again, given the size of my headache, perhaps I had been.

“You,” I said through gritted teeth, “you killed Auntie Rebecca and Sarah?”

He turned toward me, waving the bloody pistol. For a second I thought I would be next. But Uncle Rudy has short arms, and I was sitting across the bed. It soon became clear to both of us that he wouldn’t be able to strike me in the face—not without climbing across the bed. Call me a fool, but I didn’t think he had it in him to shoot me head on. Not with me staring him in the eye. Bashing skulls seemed to be his MO.

“Why?” I cried. “Just tell me why. They were your relatives, for Pete’s sake!”

“Goddamn you, Magdalena, why couldn’t you mind your own business?”

“Sarah turned up in a wedding present!” I screamed. “She is my business.”

He was sweating profusely, and with his free hand ripped his tie loose. “Sarah wasn’t supposed to be involved. She saw something she shouldn’t have. I couldn’t help it. I had to silence her.”

“By bashing her skull and stuffing her in a barrel of kraut?”

He wiped his forehead on a sleeve. “I would have buried her, but I didn’t have time. Lucky for me the Millers had a bumper crop of cabbage that year and their root cellar was packed with barrels.”

“But you killed her!” I was getting hoarse.

“It was her mother’s fault,” he whined. “She had a religious conversion and needed to cleanse her conscience. She was threatening to tell our little secret. She wanted to get it out in the open, have a full church confession. That sort of thing. And after all those years!”

“You’re talking about Sarah being your daughter, aren’t you?” Suddenly it all made sense.

The slits opened just wide enough for me to see that his eyes were indeed brown. “You know?”

“I do now. Up until now I only knew that Jonas wasn’t Sarah’s biological father. But I never suspected that her real father was one of her so-called uncles. Thanks for filling in the blanks.”

“You’re a real smart-ass, Yoder, you know that? Always sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong. Well, I’ll soon take care of that. You like roast turkey, Yoder?”

“If it’s the self-basting kind, and not too dry.” I took a deep breath and shifted my brain into high gear. “Look, I came here hoping I could work something out with Uncle Jonas. Something legal. Maybe I could help you find a legal out. You know, if you turn yourself in, they might go easier on you.”

“And her?” He jabbed a stubby thumb back at Diane. “What’s her game?”

I shrugged as much as my ropes let me.

“Extortion, that’s what!”

“But she—” Fortunately I stopped myself. Vengeance or extortion, it didn’t matter right then.

“What?” he snarled.

“I was only going to say that I find it almost impossible to believe that a man could kill his own daughter. How could you, Uncle Rudy?”

“Shut up!”

There was a desperation in his voice that made me think the devil might have a conscience after all. “Well? She was your own flesh and blood, for Pete’s sake.”

“I told you, she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. She had to go. It was her or me.”

“But why did you have to kill Auntie Rebecca in the first place? Would it have been so bad if she had told? Not that I approve, of course, but people have affairs all the time.”