I flung on my modest terry robe and staggered to the door. When I opened it, Joel Teitlebaum nearly knocked me over.
"There's a dead woman on the stairs!" he shouted. "Grannie Yoder?" I cried happily. Not that I was glad the old woman was haunting the place again, but I was relieved finally to have a confirmation of my sightings. Ever since the first time I saw
Grannie Yoder's ghost, Susannah has accused me of being as loony as a lake in Maine. The nerve of that girl!
"Whatever her name is, there's a dead woman on the stairs," repeated Joel. He was still very agitated, and his eyes looked as if they just might pop out of his face.
I grabbed one of his flailing arms. "Calm down, dear. It's only the ghost of my dear, departed grandma. She was far more dangerous in life, believe you me."
Joel wrenched his arm from my restraining grip. "This is not a ghost, Miss Yoder! This is a real live woman! Uh, I mean a real dead woman."
I must have flung Joel's spindly frame out of the way, because the next thing I knew I was at the bottom of our impossibly steep stairs. Sure enough, in a heap, not unlike a burlap bag of potatoes, lay the crumpled form of Miss Brown. Not even the
Chinese acrobats I'd seen at the circus in Somerset could assume a position like this. I leaned over for a closer look, but I didn't touch her. Mama had made us kiss Grannie Yoder after she was dead, and I'd had nightmares afterward for weeks.
"Are you sure she's dead?"
Joel nodded. "She's still slightly warm, but I can't find a pulse anywhere. Who the hell is she?"
I felt a stabbing pain run through my gut. Sheer terror, I'm sure. "One of my guests. She checked in early yesterday, and then I never saw her again."
"Better call the police," said Joel, who had calmed down significantly. "And, I suppose, an ambulance. Just to be on the safe side."
I called both. At the risk of making myself seem like I have a heart made out of dumplings, I will admit that at this point I was hoping not only that Miss Brown was dead, but that all her relatives were dead as well. What with those stairs being so steep,
I was clearly liable. To settle a suit of this magnitude, not only would I have to sell off the PennDutch, but Susannah and I would be indentured servants for the rest of our lives. Even that obnoxious little Shnookums would have to be pawed off for a few pennies. Come to think of it, even the darkest clouds have silver linings.
Jeff Myers is our Chief of Police, and as nice a man as you could hope to meet. We were in grade school together, and he was the one boy whom I didn't mind spitting paper wads at me. Of course he's married now. Anyway, he showed up in no time flat and handled everything as smoothly as Freni does her shoofly pie dough. In less than an hour he had Miss Brown shipped off to the county morgue, for she was indeed dead. And in that time he had managed to interview everyone in the inn, except for myself.
That he did over a cup of coffee in the kitchen.
"Mayas well," he said, when I offered it to him. 'We were planning to leave on vacation in three hours anyway. No use trying to hit the sack now. I'll just let Tammy do the driving."
"Where are you off to?" I asked. Tammy Myers, his wife, is a nice-enough woman, but dingier than a mailbox on a gravel road. They have three children, Sarah, David, and Dafna, who are almost grown. That the woman never misplaced them when they were infants is nothing short of a miracle. If his wife was going to do the driving while Jeff slept, somebody sane needed to know their destination.
"We're going to Niagara Falls," said Jeff, "then camping up in Canada for two weeks. I'll be leaving my assistant in charge."
"Keep her away from the edge," I advised sagely.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Now, Mags, about this Brown woman, you say you never saw her again after you showed her to her room? Until Mr.
Teitlebaum found her, I mean."
"That's right. I didn't see a sign of her. Of course, she wasn't easy to see, if you know what I mean."
"Uh-huh. Apparently none of the other guests saw or heard her either, at least not while she was alive. Neither did anyone hear a scream when she fell down the stairs, although one man, let's see," he briefly consulted his notes, "a Mr. Grizzle, said he thought he heard a thump. Of course, that might have been Mr. Teitlebaum pounding on your door."
"Probably. And what about Joel Teitlebaum? What was he doing up, anyway? I mean, he seems like a nice kid and all, but shouldn't he have a bedtime?" Mama had made me go to bed by nine every night until the day she died.
Chief of Police Myers glanced at his notes again. "Mr. Teitlebaum claims to have been in your parlor, deeply engrossed in one of your books. Something about Amish rabbis I think. Anyway, according to him, after that spider incident with young Linda
McMahon, he couldn't get back to sleep, so he went back down to the parlor. He heard a thump also, but no scream. He said he read another paragraph or two of that damned book - oh, sorry, Mags - before he got up to investigate."
"Maybe she was too drunk to scream," I suggested hopefully. If it was a drunk who fell down your stairs, even though they were impossibly steep, didn't that absolve you of at least some of the liability?
"Maybe," said Chief Myers, "but personally I don't think that's the case. Drunks seldom hurt themselves when they fall. All that booze makes them too flexible. Read about this guy out in San Francisco who fell seventeen stories down an empty elevator shaft. Dead drunk, of course. Hardly got hurt at all."
Suddenly I remembered why I didn't like Jeff so much. He had an annoying habit of always letting logic get in the way.
'Well, okay, what if she wasn't drunk then, and somebody pushed her. Then it still wouldn't be my fault, would it?"
Chief Myers's sinfully blue eyes danced in amusement. "You would rather it was murder than face a lawsuit?"
I tried to swallow a huge lump that had somehow lodged in my throat. Perhaps Freni's dumplings weren't as fluffy as I had always believed. "Murder? Who said anything about murder?"
Jeff Myers chuckled. "Ah, you mean it might have been only a friendly sort of push?"
It was time to retreat, and fast. A verdict of murder, it seemed then, would be just as ruinous to the inn as a lawsuit.
"Maybe she fell while sleepwalking, or maybe she decided to come downstairs without turning the hall light on first."
"Maybe," said the Chief. "Then again, maybe not. I think your murder theory has its points."
"My theory?" You see how things always get twisted around, then put back on me? "And what points are those?"
The Chief yawned. "I shouldn't be telling you any of this stuff, but what the hell. This Miss Brown took a pretty bad fall, but it wasn't the fall that put those marks on her face."
"What marks?" I hadn't seen any marks. Then again, I hadn't looked at her face all that closely. It might have been Yasir
Arafat lying there, for all I really knew.
"Marks," said the Chief tiredly. "Kind of like bruises. Fresh bruises that haven't had a chance to darken. Sort of in a fingerprint pattern."
I swallowed another one of Freni's dumplings. "She might have had those marks before she even checked in," I pointed out hastily. "She might have been covering them up with makeup and then taken it off when she went to bed. Most women take off their makeup at night you know." At least I assumed they did. I never wore any makeup and as for Susannah, if she took off her makeup at this point her face might shatter.
"Maybe, maybe, maybe," said the Chief. He yawned again, in spite of my coffee. "But whatever the reason for those marks, we're not going to find out tonight. Nor are we going to find out why or how she fell. We're just going to have to wait out the coroner's report. In the meantime, I'm having that room sealed off. Might still be a clue or two in there we'll need if this turns out to be foul play. Now, I've got a couple of big pike up in Canada with my name on them, so I'm outta here. Don't worry, Mags, my
Assistant Chief is as good as they come." He stood up and stretched-a most immodest act on his part. "If there is any sort of legal trouble, you can always give Alvin a call."
"Not as long as Chip and Dale are around," I said. Alvin Hostetler, another distant cousin, must have attended law school somewhere on the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. His nickname around these parts is Jaws, and it was his mother who bestowed it on him after he took her to court to sue for back allowance. He was eighteen at the time. The case was thrown out of court, of course, but it gives you an idea of Alvin's character. I would sooner dance naked on Hernia's main street than do business with a shark like that. Still, if it did come down to losing the PennDutch, I might have to give in to rubbing fins with Alvin.
Chief Myers bid me a sleepy good night. Before I went back to bed I searched our spidery cellar for the bottle of brandy I knew was hidden there. "For snake-bite," Papa told me once. We have very few poisonous snakes in Pennsylvania, but Papa, who was outdoors a lot, always believed in being prepared. Once or twice a month, unbeknownst to anyone but me, Papa would force himself to go down into the cellar and practice sipping that horrible-tasting brandy, so that if the time ever came when he was bitten by a snake, he'd be able to drink enough to withstand the pain. I found Papa's bottle, or one of its descendants, and, after brushing the cobwebs off, tried a swig myself. Of course it tasted awful. But I braved it out, like Papa, and after a couple more swigs I adjusted to the taste. I felt much more inclined to sleep after that.
I am usually a light sleeper, but even I didn't awaken when the alarm went off at five. Shnookums must have, however, because when I did awaken fifteen minutes later, there he was, lying on my chest, just inches from my face.
"Get that damned dog off me!" I yelled. I know, you probably count that as swearing, but it wasn't. It was simply a statement of fact.
Susannah remained immobile, like a hog in a mud wallow on a hot day.
"Get it off!" I yelled again. Just so you know, I can yell at that dog all I want, and it won't even blink a beady little rat's eye, but if I so much as touch it with my little finger, I have Cujo to contend with.
"Susannah Elizabeth Yoder Entwhistle!"
Still no response from Susannah. The mutt, however, inched up my chest until its tiny mouth filled with little rodent teeth was close enough for me to feel its breath on my face. Except for Papa, no male had ever been so intimate. But it was one thing for Papa to kiss me on the cheek, but quite another for two pounds of hair to insinuate themselves into my space.
Recklessly I poked the critter with my right forefinger. Not viciously, you understand, but just enough to prod him off.
Instantly, all thirty-two ounces of ill-tempered shag sprang to life, and I had a snarling, scrabbling, snapping Shnookums on my hands. Literally. The mangy little mongoose managed to mangle my forefinger in his minuscule mouth, and then, just to be spiteful, piddled on my palm.
That did it! I scooped up the mutt, despite my dam- aged digits, and tossed him totally off the bed. I'm positive that the fling did not inflict any permanent injury, but to hear the mutt's side of it, you would have thought I'd tried to kill him. He yipped and yapped in that pitiful way wounded canines have of expressing their pain, but in this case the dog out and out lied.
Of course the fact that her dog was only crying wolf was lost on Susannah. At the first pitiful yip she sat bolt upright in bed, like Lazarus reviving from the dead. By his second yip she was wide awake and ready to do battle to protect her offspring. "What have you done to him?" she roared at me. Then she turned to her precious pet and her voice dripped sugar, like a lollipop suspended from a heat lamp. "Oooh, is Mommy's itsy-bitsy shnoogy Shnookums okay? Yes? Is we'ums okay?"
I got up and dressed quickly. I'll say this much for Susannah. She has the ability to make getting up at five in the morning on a cold, autumn day preferable to remaining in my warm comfortable bed. There has got to be talent there somewhere.
Needless to say, I was not in a chipper mood as I clumped about the kitchen getting breakfast for the Ream party. I made no effort to keep down the racket. That the pots and pans seemed to hurl themselves at the stove, and that my bedroom, with
Susannah gone back to sleep in it, was right next door were, however, coincidental.
I had just plopped the platter of eggs and bacon on the table when the Reams showed up. On the dot, just like I knew they'd be. People of their ilk are as tight with their time as they are with their money.
"Uhmm, it smells delicious," said Lydia, who led the way. She was dressed in brand-new designer jeans, a new red flannel shirt, never-before-worn lace-up boots, and a new billed cap that sported a political saying. She looked about as much like the hunters I knew as Freni did.
"Coffee with muscle is in the big pot, decaf in the little, and there's hot water in case anyone wants tea," I said perfunctorily.