On the Magdalena Scale of Horrors, waking up to a ringing phone in the middle of the night ranks just below sharing a bed with Susannah. The next step down is to have someone shake you out of a sound sleep.
“Stop it, Aaron! How many times is enough?”
“Miss Yoder!”
“Aaron, you don’t need to be so formal. After all—”
“Magdalena! Wake up! Please wake up. I have something important to tell you.”
It had all been a bad dream. There was no spouse stashed up in Minnesota. I wasn’t an adulteress after all. I could hold my head as high as anyone, and given the fact that I am five feet ten, I could even hold it higher than most folks. I threw my arms joyously around my Pooky Bear.
“Ach!”
I opened my eyes, only to find myself gazing into the terrified eyes of Jonathan Hostetler.
“Jonathan! What on earth are you doing?”
“Me?” he croaked.
I released Jonathan’s neck and scooted back under my covers. I may have been sleeping in two long-sleeved, ankle-length flannel nightgowns, but—and this is for your ears only—underneath them, I was as naked as a baby jaybird. Besides, the nightgowns I was wearing that morning were a provocative pink.
“Jonathan, what’s wrong? Is it Mose? Is your father worse?”
“Papa’s feeling better. A little bit. But my Rachel— ach, that can wait. It’s the man in the barn.”
“What man? And whose barn?”
“There’s an Englishman in your barn, Miss Yoder!” Jonathan is only a year or two younger than I, and we’ve known each other all our lives, but out of some weird deference to the fact that I employ his parents, he insists on calling me Miss Yoder—unless, of course, he’s absolutely desperate to get my attention.
“The barn is not off limits to guests, Jonathan. Well—to smokers, yes, but then again, the whole place is off limits to them.”
“Ach! This man isn’t smoking. It’s much worse than that.”
“That’s off limits too. Who is he, and who is the woman with him?”
“No woman, Miss Yoder. He’s by himself.”
“That’s even worse,” I cried, sitting back up, and thereby exposing some of my alluring flannel.
“Magdalena!” Jonathan was waving his long, knobby arms, like a conductor trying to flag down a through train.
“Well, spit it out, Jonathan, I don’t have all day.”
“I think the man is dead.”
“Dead?” As familiar as that word was becoming, it never failed to raise the short hairs on the back of my neck, and the down on my cheeks.
Jonathan nodded victoriously, his grim news finally delivered. “Yah, dead. Maybe very dead.”
“Very dead?” Now that was a new one.
“He was kicked in the head, I think. It is a terrible sight.” At the moment Jonathan wasn’t a very pretty sight either. His face was the color of an uncooked asparagus stem.
“I’ll call 911,” I said. “You go in the bathroom and throw up. Remember to lift the lid, dear. Then when you’re done, go back and get your mama.”
I made the call, and then reluctantly called Melvin Stoltzfus, our chief of police.
I found George Mitchell lying face down in Matilda’s stall, beside an overturned milk bucket. Matilda, bless her shy hide, was pressed against the far side of the enclosure stall, her head turned into the corner. Her long tasseled tail, which she twitches when she’s nervous, was thumping regularly against the wooden slats behind her.
“Mr. Mitchell,” I called softly.
There was no answer.
“Mr. Mitchell!”
I made the mistake of turning him over. The left side of the man’s face was depressed, like an angel food cake upon which a can of peas has been dropped. His left eye was either missing or had been altered to the point that it was no longer recognizable. There had been a great deal of blood, and bits of straw clung to thickening ooze.
There is no point in lying, so I will confess that I too threw up. But I had regained some, if not most, of my composure by the time the paramedics showed. I was perfectly rational and in charge of all my faculties a few minutes later when Melvin arrived on the scene.
The paramedics, God bless them one and all, pronounced George Mitchell dead. Melvin seemed to have no quarrel with that.
“Take him to the county morgue,” he directed. “I’ll get the necessary information from Miss Yoder here.”
Now, I’m not blaming the Bedford County paramedics for heeding an order from Hernia’s chief of police. They’re trained to save lives, not investigate suspicious deaths. It was Melvin who should have known better.
I couldn’t believe it when a pair of paramedics picked up poor George Mitchell’s inert body and plopped it on the stretcher like a sack of potatoes. They may as well have been unloading the produce truck at Pat’s I.G.A.
“Melvin, tell them to stop! Stop!” I shouted at the paramedics.
Perhaps I sound more authoritative than I give myself credit for sounding. At any rate, the men, who were at that moment reaching down to pick up the stretcher, seemed to freeze.
Melvin turned. Ironically, it was his left orb that finally fixed on me. “What the hell was that for, Yoder?”
There was no time to chide him for swearing. “This is a crime scene, you idiot. You can’t remove the body until you’ve made a thorough investigation.”
“Crime scene?” The aberrant issue of some ancient ancestor’s loins had the audacity to laugh. “You’ve been watching too much television, Yoder.”
“I don’t watch television,” I hissed. There were never any corpses on Green Acres, so that didn’t count.
“Then you’ve been reading too many mystery stories in those girlie magazines of yours. There hasn’t been a crime committed unless”—his right eye fixed on Matilda—“unless it was your cow’s intent to kill the deceased.”
“What?”
“Which, come to think of it, just might be the case. She looks pretty guilty to me.”
The paramedics laughed nervously. But Melvin, I knew from experience, was dead serious.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Melvin! Matilda doesn’t have a murderous bone in her body.”
“Don’t be so sure. It’s happened before.” No doubt he was referring to the time a bull kicked him in the head.
“What are you going to do, Melvin? Throw Matilda in jail.”
Unfortunately, the paramedics laughed again. Melvin gave them his famous one-eyed glare.
“This isn’t funny, Yoder,” he said pointedly to me. “You remember what we had to do to Henry Kurtz’s rottweiler when it bit the Brubaker boy?”
I gasped. “You’re taking Matilda into the Bedford pound?”
“The pound doesn’t take cows. But Mishler’s slaughterhouse does.”
“What? You can’t kill an innocent cow!”
“She’s dangerous, Yoder. She could do it again.”
“She didn’t do it, you idiot! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Mr. Mitchell here was murdered, all right, but his killer was two-legged.”
In a rare moment of cooperation, both eyes settled on me. “Are you saying this man was murdered? I mean, really murdered.”
“Bingo!”
“And just what would you offer as evidence?”
“I don’t know. Melvin. That’s your department, isn’t it? I’m just saying that if you check Matilda’s hooves, you won’t find any blood.”
I immediately realized my gaffe. “Of course I’d be happy to check for you.”
Melvin’s silence spoke volumes.
I walked over to my cowering cow and spoke calmly to her. Cows, unlike horses, do not take kindly to having their feet inspected. No doubt it is a matter of balance for them.
“Matilda, dear, that mean little man over there wants to see your feet. Be a good girl now and don’t kick me.”
Although Matilda swatted me repeatedly with her tail, she didn’t kick me. But that’s as far as her cooperation went. I had to wrench that splayed foot off the floor. It was like lifting one of Aaron’s barbells.
“Nothing, see?”
“Now the other,” said Melvin, who was watching from a safe distance.
“He’s being unreasonable,” I cooed, “but just go along with it.”
But no matter how hard I tugged, I couldn’t get Matilda’s right rear foot off the floor.
“It’s no use,” I said, huffing and puffing.
“Maybe she’s got something to hide.”
I don’t for the life of me know why I allow that man to get under my skin. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. So, I guess it’s Mishler’s slaughterhouse after all. Too bad she’s such a bag of bones. Otherwise I’d say put me down for ten pounds of hamburger and a couple of nice sirloins.”
That really hiked my hackles. “Hold on, dear,” I whispered to Matilda. Then in a burst of righteous fury, I hiked her hock halfway up my hip.
The poor cow bellowed in outrage, but remained standing. From her neighboring stall, Betsey bellowed in sympathy.
“You see! No blood!”
Any other lawman would have apologized, both to Matilda and myself. But oh, no, not Melvin Stoltzfus.
“That still doesn’t prove she didn’t do it. Maybe she wiped her hoof on all this straw.”
One of the paramedics, a baby-faced man named Sean, cleared his throat. “Actually, sir, it’s not likely that the cow is responsible.”
At least one of Melvin’s eyes turned in the direction of the speaker. “What the hell are you talking about, boy?”
“Well, sir, when we were putting him on the stretcher I noticed a gash—or maybe a stab wound— on the back of his neck. I don’t think it’s likely that the cow kicked him in the face, turned him over, and then cut his neck.”
“And you waited until now to say that?” I screamed.
Melvin had to paddle fast to save face. “Okay, so maybe the damned cow didn’t do it. But she’s a witness. Yoder, you are forbidden to sell or otherwise remove that cow from these premises, until I have completed my investigation.”
“Would it be all right to trade her for a handful of beans?”
Someone other than myself giggled. That may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. I have never seen him so mad. He lit into me like a fox in a henhouse. When he was through ripping me to shreds, he turned his fury on the paramedics.
“You incompetent bunch of morons! Why the hell didn’t you point out that neck wound earlier? Is this what passes for professionalism these days? My eighty-year-old mother could do your job with blinders on and both hands tied behind her back!”
More words followed, most of which were unfit to repeat. Not all of them were mine, either. By the time he ran out of breath, Melvin had so thoroughly alienated the Bedford paramedics that they threatened to leave without the body, or—in the words of young Sean—“maybe two bodies.”
Had I not been a good Christian woman, I would have taken the empty milk bucket, put it over Melvin’s head, and drummed a rousing rendition of the “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.” Instead I chose to settle for “When the Saints Come Marching In.”
Unfortunately, Melvin didn’t cooperate with my drum session—in fact, he threatened to call it assault. Matilda, unhappy with all the commotion in her stall, began milling around and accidentally stepped on Melvin’s toe. Had it not been for the timely arrival of Freni, I would have ended up in the hoosegow, along with my Holstein.
Fortunately, Freni is not only a distant relative of Melvin’s, she is his sainted mother’s best friend. In less time than it takes to knead a pound of dough, Freni had the body in the ambulance, and Melvin out of the barn. Of course Melvin had to investigate the crime scene first, but there really was nothing else to see, and Matilda refused to answer direct questions. Before he left, Melvin declared Matilda’s stall off-limits to anyone except himself, but thanks to Freni’s intervention, he graciously allowed me to move Matilda.
I milked the witness in Betsey’s stall while my cousin tried to calm me down.
“Ach, never mind him. He’s a silly man. Everyone knows his bite is worse than his teeth.”
There was no point in correcting her. “This barn is cursed,” I wailed.
Freni flapped her arms, and then folded them across her stomach. For a second I thought she wanted to hug me.
“Ach, there is not such thing as a curse.”
“Two murders, Freni! That one with the pitchfork last year, and now this! This barn is over a hundred years old, and before I came to own it, how many murders were there?”
To my surprise, Freni was nodding her head. “It’s the English. Always so violent. It’s not my place to say so, Magdalena, but maybe you should give up on this inn idea.”
I was aghast. “And do what?”
“Become a missionary to Zaire. Or is it the Congo now?”
“And Susannah? Who will take care of her?”
Freni wagged a stubby finger at me. “There you go again, always trying to control other people’s lives. Susannah is a grown woman now. She is responsible for herself.”
“But aren’t I supposed to be my sister’s keeper?”
“Yah, but sometimes it is better to keep loved ones at an arm’s length.”
“But I don’t want to give up the inn,” I wailed. “It’s my life. I enjoy meeting all the people that come to stay here. It’s only every now and then that I get a really bad apple, and there have only been two murders, after all.”
“Three,” Freni said. “Remember the woman who was pushed down the stairs?”
“So? Only three, then. Pick up any mystery book–one that’s part of a series—the death rate can be far higher than three.”
Although I do not watch television on principle, my principles do not prevent me from reading, and Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, is one of my favorite out-of-town destinations. Freni, however, reads only the Holy Bible, Reader’s Digest, and The Budget, a weekly publication that chronicles Amish and Mennonite news from around the country.
“Maybe, but you would make a good missionary, Magdalena. That skinny head of yours would look good in a helmet, and you wouldn’t have to worry about cannibals wanting to eat you.”
“Thanks, but I’m not sure they have cannibals these days.”
“So? The lions won’t want to eat you, either. Or the leopards. Even those big mosquitoes that carry malaria and sleeping sickness will leave you alone. And the snakes—a python will take one look at you, and say, ‘Not worth the trouble. Too many bones.’ ”
“Freni!”
“But skinny is good, Magdalena. You won’t get so hot in that tropical sun. Just remember to stay out of the sun as much as possible.”
“I know. I don’t want to get skin cancer.”
“Yah, that too. But Agnes Brontrager from over by Somerset went to Africa for three years as a missionary, and when she came back she looked just like a prune.”
“With or without a pit?”
“Ach, make fun, Magdalena. But I’m just trying to help you look on the bright side and give you a few tips.”
“Is that it?”
“Yah. Agnes had to shake out her shoes every morning before putting them on.”
“Is that a missionary ritual?”
“Ach, no! Scorpions! They crawl in the shoes at night. And never sleep with your mouth open, Magdalena. Agnes almost choked on a cockroach the size of a baby robin.”
Suddenly it occurred to me what Freni was doing. “I love you,” I cried, and despite four centuries of breeding to the contrary, I threw my bony arms around her, gave her a bear hug, and hoisted her into the air like a sack of potatoes.
“Ach!” Freni squawked, her short arms flailing. “Put me down.”
I dropped her. “You’re so clever, dear. You know exactly how to put things in perspective. So what’s a couple of corpses compared to scorpions in my shoes?”
Freni shook her head. “Ach, you are a strange one.”
“Me? You’re the one who entered a contest so you could get rid of your daughter-in-law.”
Freni frowned. “Do you suppose that now the contest will be canceled?”
“My, how you talk! A man died here sometime this morning! But speaking of your daughter-in-law, how is she? Jonathan said she had the flu. And how is Mose?”
My cousin swallowed back her disappointment. “Mose is better, but still a little shaky. Barbara—ach, what do the English say? A woose!”
“You mean a wuss?”
“Yah, a woose. She wants Jonathan to drive her to the doctor in Bedford. For the flu, yet!”
“Just pitiful,” I said and burrowed my head into Matilda’s warm side. I couldn’t help but smile. It was comforting to know that some things never change.