I barely had time to replace the receiver in its cradle when the phone rang again.
“A deal is a deal,” I snapped. “The A.L.P.O. plan stays.”
“I beg your pardon?” a woman said in cultivated tones.
“Mrs. Hart?”
“Excuse me, I must have a wrong number. I’m trying to reach the PennDutch Inn.”
“You’ve reached it, dear. How may I help you?”
“My name is Samantha Burk, and I’m calling to reserve a room for next week.”
“Just a minute, dear, while I check to see if there’s an opening.” Trust me, that is not the same thing as lying. I did check—the fact that I already knew the answer is irrelevant. “Well, you’re in luck, dear. I do happen to have a room available. Will it be just you?”
“No. My husband, Dr. John Burk, will be with me. We would like to arrive Sunday evening if it is at all possible.”
“That would be fine. It’s always good to have a doctor at the inn. Saves on the extra expense of house calls.” I chuckled pleasantly.
“Oh, no, John’s not a medical doctor. John has a Ph.D. He’s a retired professor of history. He taught at Duquesne University for twenty-five years.”
“Oh, so you’re Pittsburghers?”
“Yes. I mean, we live in Oakmont, just outside the city.”
“Close enough, dear. There’s a wonderful bookstore there—Mystery Lovers Bookshop. Do you know it?”
“I practically live there. Mary Alice Gorman and Richard Goldman are two of my best friends.” Samantha enunciated every word.
“Are you a teacher, dear?”
She laughed pleasantly. “No, I’m afraid not—but I get that question all the time. I’m a retired musician. We have to be precise in our work.”
“What sort of musician?” I asked warily. I have had many pleasant encounters with the musically gifted, but it’s obvious that some of the newer rock groups failed to learn manners at their mamas’ knees. Take, for instance, Defeated Moles and Stink Cabbage. And now that you’ve got them, keep them far away from me. And as far as I am concerned, they aren’t even musicians.
“I am a concert pianist,” she said. “Actually, I should say former concert pianist. I give only two performances a year now—it’s arthritis, you know. It’s getting harder and harder to span an octave. Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a piano at the inn, would you? I try to practice four hours every day despite the pain.”
“Mix a tablespoon of pectin with a glass of red grape juice. Drink two of those a day, and it should help with the pain. There is no charge for this advice,” I said generously. “Now as to the piano—I don’t own one, but there’s a perfectly good piano just down the road at Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. I’m a member, so you can just say I sent you.”
“Is it a Steinway?”
“I’m not sure about that. I do know there’s a henway in one of the Sunday school rooms.”
She bit. “What’s a henway?”
“Oh, about three pounds.”
Much to her credit, the good woman laughed out loud. This was almost too good to be true. Guests who possess a sense of humor and are cultivated and refined are as scarce as a henway’s teeth. And her husband was a historian no less! Perhaps I should have solicited customers from Pittsburgh years ago. I mean, who needs the glamour of Hollywood and the power of Washington when there is culture to be found in one’s own backyard?
“I look forward to meeting you,” I said cheerily. I hadn’t felt that good in weeks.
“I look forward to meeting you as well. Oh”—her voice was suddenly an octave higher—“will there be other people staying at the inn?”
“Of course there’ll be other guests, but we’ll find plenty of time to chat. Be a dear, will you, and bring me a copy of Selma Eichler’s latest mystery, Murder Can Singe Your Old Flame. In fact, pick out several other mysteries at random. Just make sure they’re new releases, so I won’t have read them. Better yet, get Mary Alice to help you. She knows my taste.”
“I’d be happy to. Now”— she paused to delicately clear her throat—“you said there will be other guests there this week. What sort of people will they be?”
“What?” I jiggled my pinkie in my ear to clear out the wax. Perhaps I’d heard wrong. Prejudice seldom rears its ugly head at my inn, but when it does, it always comes as a complete surprise. Rest assured, I always send it packing.
“You know, our sort.”
“And what sort would that be? Because for your information, I just happen to be a lesbian African-American woman with a Spanish surname who practices the Jewish faith—oh, did I happen to mention I was physically and mentally challenged?”
“No, what I—”
“And fat!”
“I mean older people. Mature adults.”
“Oh?”
“My husband is a very nervous man, you see, and some, of these young people today—well, to put it bluntly, we prefer an older crowd.”
“Is that it? No need to worry, dear, not unless your husband is bothered by the sound of clacking dentures. They’re all World War II veterans and their wives.”
“Well—”
“I hope you understand that silence doesn’t come cheap,” I said, presenting her with the last potential obstacle.
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem Ms.—?”
“Yoder,” I said, and then gave her a figure even higher than the one I’d quoted the veterans.
“That sounds fine. Do you take credit cards?”
“Yes. Oh, did I mention the Amish Lifestyle Option plan? For a mere fifty dollars extra you get to play Amish and clean your own room. Do your own laundry as well.”
“How charming! Put us down for that too.”
I took her credit card number, and then bid her adieu before I could yield to temptation. There’s a charming little stone bridge in Hernia that has theoretically changed hands several times in recent years. Rumors abound that I may have something to do with this.
I couldn’t contain myself; I just had to tell Freni. Five—no, make that ten—paying guests, and all within the space of ten minutes. And Freni said no one in their right mind would pay that kind of money to stay in a reconstructed inn!
Freni Hostetler is my cousin. We are not first cousins, but we share eight sets of ancestors seven generations back. By my reckoning that makes us closer than first cousins—possibly even half sisters—although Freni is thirty years older than I, a contemporary of my parents. The truth is my people are so intermarried that not only am I my own cousin, but I constitute a full-fledged family reunion. Throw in a sandwich, and I’m a family picnic.
I slipped on a blue long-sleeved dress that comes well below the knee, stockings, and a pair of sensible shoes. My undergarments are none of your business. My toilette consisted of using the device of the same name—I do not waste my money on makeup—and gathering my shoulder-length hair into a nice, conservative bun, over which I pinned a white organza prayer cap. The thermometer on my windowsill registered in the mid-fifties so I decided against a sweater. The two-mile hike to Freni’s house traverses a rather steep hill, and I eschew sweating. Perhaps that’s why I was never very good in—well, never mind. A brisk walk would keep me warm enough.
The path between my house and Freni’s is the same path our common ancestor, Jacob Hochstetler, was forced to follow after he was taken captive by the Delaware Indians in 1750. Of course, at that time it was already an old hunting path, and it was woods the whole way. The woods have now shrunk to a mere ribbon that crowns the crest of the hill, the remainder being com fields. Still it is a joy to walk along this path, listen to birdsong, and above all, escape the telephone.
Freni doesn’t have to worry about distancing herself from a phone. As an Amish woman she doesn’t own a telephone. Her house doesn’t have electricity. When Freni and her husband, Mose—also a cousin of sorts—travel, they hitch their horse, Sadie, to a buggy. The most complicated piece of machinery Freni owns is her sewing machine with its foot-powered treadle, upon which she sews herself garments even more conservative than the ones I wear.
By the time I reached the Hostetler house, the day had warmed considerably, and I was just beginning to break into that dreaded sweat. Several more days of this weather and the tulip buds would open. I fervently hoped that Freni had a nice pitcher of lemonade waiting in her gasoline-powered refrigerator.
I knocked several times on the unpainted kitchen door, but there was no answer. I turned the knob, and the door opened. Freni was standing by the kitchen sink, her broad back to me.
“Freni,” I called loudly. I once made the unfortunate mistake of surprising my cousin, who is a mite hard of hearing, and got a broom in my face. And this from a pacifist!
My cousin turned. “Ach, Magdalena, come in.”
“Freni Hostetler, whatever are you doing?” In her right arm she cradled three five-pound bags of flour. In her left arm, precariously balanced between her ample bosom and stubby little hand were three pint-sized mason jars filled with water.
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m practicing, of course!”
“Practicing what? Did you get a job in a bakery?”
She glared at me through wire-rimmed glasses. “The babies! I’m pretending to feed the babies. Barbara’s not going to have enough milk for triplets, you know. Ach, I don’t think she’ll even have enough for one. She’s even flatter than you, Magdalena. Why, that woman is as flat as Kansas.”
“How would you know? Have you ever been to Kansas?”
“No, but Barbara told me.”
Barbara Kauffman Hostetler is Freni’s formerly despised, but now tolerated daughter-in-law. For twenty years Barbara, who hails from Kansas, has been unworthy of Freni’s son Jonathan. Then something came unstuck in Barbara’s plumbing and the woman bloomed. There were three buds at last count, and blossom time was four months away.
“Wouldn’t it be safer to feed just one of the babies at a time?”
Freni muttered something in Pennsylvania Dutch that sounded like “What would you know about feeding babies, you who is forever doomed to be as barren as the Gobi Desert?” Fortunately, my grasp of the dialect is minimal, and I chose to interpret it as something else entirely.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve always like this shade of blue on me.”
Dark eyes rolled behind thick lenses. “So, would you like to hold little Freni?”
“That’s a bag of flour, dear. In fact, they’re all three bags of flour. Now, do you want to hear my good news or not?”
“Yah,” Freni said, “slap me.”
“That’s ‘hit’ me, dear, and slang doesn’t become you. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe what happened! I just got two calls, and now the inn is booked solid for next week—well, five rooms at any rate. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Freni shrugged, and the mason jars clanked ominously. “I need you back at work.”
My kinswoman is the only cook the PennDutch Inn has ever had. Her meals are really quite tasty, despite the fact she relies heavily on the three favorite Amish food groups—sugar, starch, and grease.
Freni frowned. “I quit, remember?”
“Freni, you’ve quit more times than Cher’s had surgery. Besides, think of the brand-new buggies my bucks can buy your babies.”
She sighed, which meant I had made my first breach in her defenses.
“Please, pretty please,” I begged. “It’ll make the time go by faster until they’re born.”
“Movie stars?” Freni asked with studied casualness.
“Maybe,” I said just as casually.
“Mel?”
“Mel who?” I knew exactly who she meant, but I was afraid now to tell her the truth.
“Mel Gibson! The one with the skirt.”
As a plain person, one who is supposed to live in the world, but not be of it, Freni is ostensibly unaware that star-worship exists. In real life, because she is my cook—well, most of the time—the woman sees more stars than an astronomer. She dotes on Denzel Washington and fawns over Ben Affleck, but Mel is the apple of her eye. I’m sure Freni would give her life for the man—maybe even one of her unborn triplet grandchildren.
I swallowed hard. “So, maybe it’s not movie stars this time.”
“Ach, not him! I’m seventy-eight years old, Magdalena. I’m too old to be chased around the Inn again. And all those Secret Service men just looking the other way!”
“You’re seventy-five, dear.” Freni is the only woman I know who pads her age—perhaps in a misguided attempt to gain respect. “And it’s not him, anyway. It’s a reunion of World War II vets.”
There was the sound of breaking glass and splashing water, followed by the thud of five pounds of flour on a wooden floor. Freni and I stared mutely at the remains of one of her faux grandchildren and its breakfast. She was the first to find her voice.
“Ach du leiber! Now see what you’ve done?”
“I think we have the beginnings of a giant pie crust, dear.”
“That”—she pointed to the floor, thereby putting the remaining two faux babies in jeopardy—“is my little Mose.”
“Mose shmoze,” I said, my patience wearing thin. “I need you back at work.”
Freni shook her head. “For shame, Magdalena, and you call yourself a pacifist. Your mama would roll over in her grave if she knew there were soldiers sleeping in her house.”
“Leave Mama out of this,” I snapped. “Besides, it’s not her house now. It’s been totally rebuilt, so it’s all mine. And anyway, they’re not soldiers now—they’re old men.” I graciously refrained from adding “like you.”
“Tch, tch, tch.”
“Don’t you tch, tch me, dear. Someone had to fight the Nazis. If these brave men hadn’t, those little grandbabies of yours would be goose-stepping around Hernia shouting ‘Seig Heil’.”
“Ach,” Freni squawked, and another faux baby hit the floor. She fumbled with the two mason jars for a few seconds but it was a lost cause.
“Oops. Looks like you could use a little more practice, dear.”
“Out!” Freni screamed. “Get out of my house this minute.”
“So you’ll come back to work? Because they’re not all going to be vets, you see. Their wives are coming too, and then there is the concert pianist from Pittsburgh and her historian husband. They—”
“Yah, yah,” Freni said, pushing me with one hand, her other stubby arm gripping the last bag of flour. “I’ll come, if you go.”
I was out of there like an atheist from a revival meeting. Like the atheist, I should have stayed long enough to see the error of my ways.