The Crepes of Wrath (8 page)

Darlene Townsend smiled, a ring of raw white onion dangling from her teeth. She scooped it in with a flick of her tongue.

“I guess I’m still a growing girl.”

I frowned. The woman was already too tall for her own good.

“Be careful, dear. Remember what happened to the tower of Babel. The Lord doesn’t like it when folks poke their heads into Heaven uninvited.”

Darlene laughed. “You’re funny, Miss Yoder, you know that?”

“I’m a virtual laugh riot,” I said, and hobbled over to the phone. Gabe’s answering machine picked up on the sixth ring.

“It’s me,” I whispered, mindful of someone else in the room. “Something happened that you aren’t going to believe, and that’s why I didn’t show up on the ridge. Call me when you get in.”

The second I replaced the receiver in its cradle, the phone rang. I grabbed it.

“Gabe?”

“In your dreams.”

“Melvin! Melvin Stoltzfus!”

“That’s my name, Yoder, don’t wear it out. Look, there’s been another development.”

“You’re dropping out of the race?” I couldn’t disguise the hope in my voice. During my long walk home I’d come to the sobering conclusion that I, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder, was not going to save the world. So what if Melvin was an egotistical incompetent? Getting to the bottom of Lizzie’s death was his problem, not mine.

“No,” he snarled, “I’m not dropping out of the race. I called to tell you that there’s been a second murder.”

“Oh?” It may not have been my problem anymore, but it was definitely getting more interesting.

“She was hit by a car. There was a witness.”

“Who was hit by a car?” My volume must have risen because Darlene was looking at me.

“It happened this afternoon. About five-thirty. She was crossing North Elm when the car came barreling out of nowhere and mowed her down. Well, actually, the car only grazed her, but it sent her flying into that stop sign there at the corner of North Elm and Beechy. Her head busted wide open like a melon.”

“Whose head?” I shrieked. “What’s the victim’s name?”

“You should listen harder, Yoder. I already told you it was Thelma Hershberger.”

I gasped. My knees felt weak, and what with my sprained ankle and all, I desperately needed to sit. Unfortunately all the kitchen chairs were out of my reach. Not partial to pride, I slid to the floor. At least I wouldn’t collapse and bust my head open like a melon.

“Who witnessed it?” I was more in control now, and spoke softly.

“It was a phone tip. The caller wouldn’t say.”

“Man or woman?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Yoder. Thelma may not have been my type, but she was all woman.”

I let that pass. “What makes you think it was murder and not your standard hit-and-run.”

“The caller said Thelma tried to dodge, but the car veered in her direction.”

“I see. What about the car? Your anonymous caller get the make, color, and year?”

“Nada.”

“Nothing?”

“That’s what I said, Yoder.”

“Melvin,” I said tiredly, “I don’t have the energy to put up with your rudeness. My ankle hurts and—”

“Sorry, Yoder.”

I was too tired to jiggle a pinkie in my ear. I had to trust that it was working. If Melvin had indeed used his least favorite word, I’d be a fool not to jump on it.

“Apology accepted.”

“So does this mean you’re going to investigate that, too, for me? Because I’m in the middle of a campaign here, Yoder. I can’t have two unsolved mysteries on my hands.”

“I didn’t know bugs had hands.”

Melvin must have been desperate for my help. Although he swallowed loudly several times before speaking, his voice was remarkably calm.

“Can I count on you, Yoder?”

“You can count on me,” I promised, and then hung up before he could ask me to do his taxes and dirty laundry. Besides, I owed it to Thelma to track down her killer. She’d come to me for help and I’d let her down.

Ignoring Darlene’s scrutinizing gaze, I hauled myself to my feet, labored over to the sink, removed a plastic basin I store beneath it, and began to prepare my foot bath. In my mind there is nothing quite as comforting as soaking your tootsies—wounded or not—in a tub of warm Epsom salts.

“Oh, Miss Yoder, you needn’t do that. I signed up for the A.L.P.O. plan, remember?”

“Of course I remember, dear. I’m not planning to wash up after you, I’m planning to soak my foot.”

She looked away from her sandwich for the first time. “What happened?”

“It’s just a little sprain. I took an unexpected stroll.”

“If it’s a sprain, then you need to apply ice.”

“Is that so?” I continued to fill the basin. A lesson I have learned late in life is it’s possible to acknowledge advice without actually taking it.

“You’ll be sorry if you apply heat first. Trust me, Miss Yoder, I work with sports injuries all the time.”

“I’m sure you do.” I carried the basin over to the table, sat down, and plunged both feet into the warm soothing bath.
“Aaaaaah.”

“Well, it may feel good now, but the swelling won’t go away, and that’s what causes most of the pain.”

I smiled pleasantly and pointed to her sandwich. “You wouldn’t mind making me a smaller version of that, would you? Something about one third the size will do.”

“No, of course not.”

“Thanks. But wash your hands first, dear. Better yet, after you’re done washing, put a couple of those zipper bags over your hands.”

She gave me the oddest look, but followed my instructions and put together a fairly decent repast in no time at all. Meanwhile I soaked, and although it may not have helped the sprain any, it did wonders for my morale. Therefore, I barely minded when she began talking sports.

“Did you watch the Women’s International Basketball Championship this year, Miss Yoder?”

“It wasn’t held in Hernia, dear.”

“I meant on TV.”

“I don’t watch television.”

“Never?”

“Well,” I swallowed guiltily, “I used to watch reruns of
Green Acres
on my sister’s set, but they took that off
the air about a year ago. Since then I haven’t found anything worth watching.”

“Good one!”

I struggled with a bite of salami. I buy the kind with casings, not only because it is more economical, but because it is made locally by one of our Amish, and exceptionally good. At any rate, Darlene had forgotten to remove the skin.

“Miss Yoder, do you know the names of the girls’ basketball coaches at any of Hernia’s high schools?”

I finally got the casing out. It was like flossing with a piece of pig gut.

“We have only one high school, dear, and it doesn’t have a girls’ coach. Miss Betty Quiring is the girls’ physical education teacher, if that’s any help.”

“Quiring?”

I spelled the name for her. “But mind your Ps and Qs around her. She likes to pull ears.”

“You mean she makes things up?”

“No, I meant that literally. The woman has a thumb and forefinger like a vise. When a girl misbehaves, or even just doesn’t pay attention, Miss Quiring will pull her ears.” I patted my left ear. “She only had to do that to me once.”

“She was your gym teacher?”

I patted my bun, which has yet to see a single gray hair. “Thank you, dear, but I’m not that young. Miss Quiring pulled my ear last Sunday in church.”

Darlene giggled. “Do you have her phone number?”

Her request reminded me painfully of Gabe. “Yes, I’ll give it to you in just a minute. But first, do you know if there were any calls for me, say in the last hour or so?”

She shook her head. “The others ate earlier, and then went out to play horseshoes. Then I think they took a walk. Funny, but they have this instant friend thing going—even the weird one from California. At any rate, I’ve been inside the whole time and haven’t heard the phone ring.”

“Thanks, dear.” I wrote down Betty Quiring’s number, without referring to a directory.

“Oh, you know it by heart?”

“I’ve had occasion to call her in the past. But it wasn’t me who made all those prank phone calls between two and three in the morning. Well, not
all
of them, at any rate.” What can I say, my conscience got the better of me.

“Like I said before, Miss Yoder, you’re a real hoot.”

I stood. My soaking water had gone stone cold.

“Well, I’m turning in for the night,” I said.

“So early?”

“I like to read. Mysteries mostly. You might want to try Selma Eichler, Mignon Ballard, and Carolyn Hart. Anyway, breakfast is at eight sharp, but since you’re participating in A.L.P.O., I’ll expect you to report at seven-thirty to set the table.”

“No problem.”

I dried my feet on a dishtowel, spread it carefully across the dish drainer to dry, and toddled off to bed. I will admit now that it was a stupid thing to do. What sort of mother—and an innkeeper is just that—goes to bed when her children are still out and about? And what sort of lover—for that’s how I hoped to think of myself—would fall asleep before she’s had a chance to clear up a big misunderstanding?

Magdalena Yoder, that’s who.

I slept like a teenager, rather than a baby. True, I’m as barren as the Gobi Desert and will never see a baby of my own, but from what I hear, they wake up frequently, requiring attention at both ends. But I’ve been a teenager, and my sister Susannah was one for almost thirty years. I know from personal experience that teenagers can sleep like hibernating bears, and that’s just how I slept.

It wasn’t my alarm that woke me from such a sound sleep, but Freni. She was shaking me, hard and persistently, which added to my confusion.

“Not now,” I moaned, “I have a headache.”

“Ach! Magdalena, how you talk!”

I struggled to a sitting position, scraping enough crust from my eyes to make a small pie. “What is it? Is the inn on fire?”

“No fire,” Freni said, still shaking me. “The English are revolting.”

I yawned. “
Tsk, tsk,
dear, you really shouldn’t be so judgmental.”

“Yah, maybe, but now is not the time for sermons. The English are revolting.”

“Well, okay, if you insist on a little disparagement
before breakfast, that Gingko gal and her actor boyfriend are definitely Hollywood weird, that pudgy pair of carnivores have bizarre eating habits, and—uh—oh, that basketball coach is too tall. Only the African-American couple seem normal.”

“Magdalena, get your grip on yourself. I mean this literally. They are revolting downstairs.”

I translated Freni’s English into American Standard. “Oh! You mean they’re rioting?”

“Yah. The carnations say there is not enough meat for breakfast, and the hippie wants wheat germs for her cereal. Then they argue with each other about meat and cancer and”—Freni blushed—“hormones.”

“Oh, dear, and they were getting along together famously last night.”

“Yah, famous! They argue about that too. The Hollywood man says he is famous, and the black lady says she has never heard of him. Then he says all cyclists are crazy, and that makes the black man mad too, and the tall one tells them all to shut up.”

“She did?”

“Yah, but then the hippie calls the tall one a dike, and soon they are throwing food.”

“What?”
I flung back the covers, burying Freni.

“Ach!” The poor woman floundered about, turning my quilt into a huffing, puffing creature.

I snatched my chenille robe from my bedside chair while my cousin extricated herself. “They’ll pay for any damages,” I roared and charged from the room.

Thank heavens Freni had exaggerated. The only food flung was one biscuit, which Archibald Murray admitted having tossed at Darlene Townsend, who was sitting opposite.

“Shame, shame, shame,” I said, pounding my fist on the table with each word. “Shame on all of you.” Fortunately, the table is solid oak, built by my ancestor Jacob “The Strong,” and has withstood generations of Yoder families.
It, and Grandma Yoder’s bed, were the only two pieces of furniture to survive a tornado last year.

“She started it,” Dr. George Hanson said.

I glared at him down the considerable length of my nose. “And you call yourself a cyclist—I mean, a psychiatrist! You are all adults, and I expect you to act as such.”

“You tell them, Miss Yoder.” Pretty boy Archibald was grinning beneath his sunglasses. His teeth were so white, I would need a pair of shades of my own in order to glare at him.

“Be quiet, all of you!” I pounded so hard, the salt and pepper shakers danced. Fortunately, it was not a sin for them.

My guests grumbled into silence, like the children in my Sunday School class.

I pounded the table one more time for good measure. “Now listen up, folks. This is a respectable inn, not a den of iniquity. There won’t be any arguing at this table, and the only shouting will come from me. The same thing goes for name calling. Anyone who can’t follow these few simple rules of common decency is welcome to pack their bags and leave.”

“Then we’re out of here,” Dr. George Hanson said.

I smiled at the distinguished man. “Fine. But along with the application you submitted, was an agreement explaining that due to my booking system, and the excessive demand for my services, there will be no refunds. Under any circumstances.”

“Except death,” Freni said.

I smiled at the stout woman at my elbow. She had managed to extricate herself from the quilt, and although her organza indoor bonnet was askew, she looked none the worse for her ordeal.

“Yes,” I agreed, “except for death. And none of you look particularly dead.”

Like the kids in my Sunday School class, the group grumbled some more, but when they were certain I
wasn’t going to budge, and that they had better make the best of things, or else have a rotten time, they settled down. Freni calmed down too and, bless her soul, bent over backward to satisfy their culinary needs. She rustled up some stale All-Bran, which she pulverized under a rolling pin and offered to Gingko as a wheat germ substitute. Finding enough breakfast meat to satisfy the Bunches was a bigger problem, until I remembered the scrapple Lodema Shrock gave Aaron and I for a wedding present a year ago, and which was still in the freezer.

Scrapple, for you English, is a mixture of corn meal and bits of meat you would feel guilty feeding your cat. And not because they are choice cuts, mind you, but odds and ends a crow wouldn’t pick off the highway. Lodema has never asked for the pan back, which leads me to conclude she was given the delicacy for her wedding some twenty years earlier, and even then, it may have been secondhand.

At any rate, Freni fried the stuff until it was a crisp golden brown, and quite frankly, it smelled almost edible, if not quite delicious. The carnivores were happy to ignore the corn component, and even one or two of the more normal guests ventured a bite. As I’ve said before, there is no limit to the indignities a person is willing to suffer, as long as one can justify them as a cultural experience.

Peace may have been restored, although not for long. I have a very pleasant-sounding doorbell—it usually means coins for my coffer—but I am not inclined to answer it in my bathrobe. True, I was already holding court in my chenille, but my subjects were strictly B-List, if you know what I mean.
I
had certainly never heard of Archibald Murray before. Now Pierce Brosnan is another story. The last time he was here—

I shook myself out of my reverie. “Freni, would you be a dear and see who that is?”

Freni mumbled something in Pennsylvania Dutch but
trotted off obediently, perhaps even hopefully. Although she has never seen a movie, she has cooked for more stars than Wolfgang Puck, and in her book there is no finer gentleman than Mel Gibson. She claims to be inspired by his commitment to God and family, but just between you and I, there is a bit of lusting that goes on beneath that bonnet of hers as well. Finding Mel at my door would really make Freni’s day.

But it wasn’t Mel who rang the bell. When Freni returned just seconds later, her arms were flapping like those of a grouse trying to decoy a fox away from its intended victim. I prayed that the fox trailing her would be Gabe the Babe. When I saw who the fox was, I prayed mightily that the prey would somehow get away.

Alas, many of my prayers seem to go unanswered. “Good morning, Lodema,” I said pleasantly.

“Harumph!”

“My but that’s a pretty dress you have on.” The Good Lord doesn’t mind a flat-out lie in the interest of peace.

“Don’t try and sweet-talk me, Magdalena. I want to know what you were doing up in that buggy with Jacob Troyer.”

“Ah yes, that was you who nearly wrapped a Buick around the Kreiders’ mailbox. You really should keep your eyes on the road, dear.”

“Maybe you should heed your own words. You were staring at that man like there was no tomorrow.”

“Ach!” Freni squawked. “Magdalena!”

“I’m innocent,” I wailed. “I was just hitching a ride home from Benjamin and Catherine Keim’s place.”

Lodema pushed horn-rim glasses back up her slippery beak of a nose. “That’s a likely story,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why would you be out at the Keims’ farm?”

“That’s none of your business, dear.”

Lodema smirked. “Both Benjamin Keim and Jacob Troyer are married. Not that it makes a difference to
some
people.”

Freni frowned. She has always been like a second mother to me, although a good deal shorter and not quite as critical as my first.

“Magdalena’s sins should stay in her past,” she said archly.

“Thank you, Freni.” I looked triumphantly around the table, but the cocked ears of my guests indicated they would be happy to hear a litany of my sins, past, present, and future. Mindful that happy guests tip well, and ever generous to a fault, I was about to indulge the group with a few details of some of my more minor wrongdoings, perhaps even share my plans for a few future indiscretions—small ones, of course—but Lodema beat me to the punch.

“This,” she said, pointing to me, “is your perfect example of a fallen woman.”

I gasped. That was going too far, even for Lodema.

The gang, however, was nodding eagerly. Too eagerly. It was time to set them straight on something.

“ ‘For
all
have sinned,’ ” I said, quoting the third chapter of Romans, verse three, “ ‘and fallen short of the glory of God.’ ”

“True,” Lodema conceded, “but we don’t all flaunt our sins like you do.”

“Just what am I flaunting now?”

“As if you don’t know.”

“I don’t. So either enlighten me, or skeedaddle.”

It was Lodema’s turn to gasp. “Well!”

“A well is a deep hole in the ground. Watch that you don’t fall into it on your way out.”

Somebody—one of the carnivores, I think—chuckled. Lodema was not amused.

“This woman needs no encouragement,” she said, wagging her right index finger at the table. With her left index finger she pushed her specs back into place. “The next thing we know she’ll be dating a certain Dr. Gabriel Rosen.”

“I will not!”

She turned her narrow face to me. “But it’s only a matter of time, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, he’s single, and so am I.”

“He’s Jewish.”

“So what?”

“He’s not of our faith.”

“Well, maybe not yet. Besides, Jesus was Jewish.”

“He most certainly was not!”

“Of course he was. Read your Bible sometime and see.”

“Jesus was a Christian,” Lodema said with all the authority of a pastor’s wife.

“I suppose you think he was a Mennonite too.”

That gave her pause. “Well, maybe not a Mennonite, but a Baptist, like his cousin John.”

“Perhaps. Or maybe he was a Catholic,” I said, just to bait the bear.

“He definitely wasn’t a Catholic! You won’t find
that
word in the Bible.”

I smiled. “You might want to go straight home, dear, and mend your sleeves.”

“My sleeves?”

“You wear your prejudices on your elbows, don’t you? They’ve worn right through your sleeves.”

“You’re one to talk! Everyone knows you can’t stand Presbyterians.”

“That’s not so,” I wailed. “I just don’t like them married to my sister.”

“We’re Presbyterians,” the Doctors Hanson said in unison.

I nodded. “You see? I have nothing against Presbyterians in general. I’m sure a few of them will even make it into Heaven.”

“And the Amish?” Freni asked anxiously.

“Definitely.”

“I’m an Episcopalian,” Darlene Townsend volunteered.

“You stand a chance.”

“I’m a Buddhist,” Gingko said.

“One can always hope,” I said kindly, “although it’s never too late to convert.” I turned to Lodema. “Now if you’ll excuse us, the door is that way.”

Lodema must have suction cups on the bottom of her shoes. Even after I got out of my chair and gave her a gentle push, she didn’t budge.

“You seem awfully anxious to get rid of me, Magdalena. What is it you’re trying to hide?”

“Nothing—not that it’s any of your business. It just so happens I have a busy morning planned.”