Batter Off Dead (10 page)

“Magdalena!”

“Yes?”

“I said, ‘Get out of my office.’ ”

“Certainly. But you could have asked me nicely.”

“I did—several times, in fact.”

“My, aren’t we snippy!”

“Good day, Magdalena.” He actually pushed me over the threshold. “And as long you’ve got your list of suspects out, may I suggest that you put the Zug twins on top?” Although worded as a question, it was most definitely an order.

 

 

There was only one person in the entire world capable of ordering me around. At that moment he was a very short—just twenty inches—bald guy who pooped in his pants willy-nilly and burped with panache. Before I put the screws to anyone else, this little man was getting his midmorning feeding, and I was getting a load taken off my chest. I mean that literally.

Although my beautiful, semiauthentic, nineteenth-century Pennsylvania farmhouse sports a front porch replete with rocking chairs and a proper front door, I almost always enter through the kitchen in the rear. The kitchen is where one is sure to encounter my cook, and kinswoman, Freni Hostetler, and because of the warmth and pleasant atmosphere, this is where I’ve set up Little Jacob’s day bassinet.

However, I was to discover that upon this occasion the big love of my life was cradling the tiny love of my life tenderly in his arms. There is nothing sexier, in my opinion, than the sight of a man caring for an infant. I might have initiated the begetting process all over again, had I not still had a somewhat sore nether region from the act of spitting out a complete human a month earlier. Instead I extended warm greetings to everyone in the room, which also included Alison.

Upon hearing my voice Little Jacob let out a wail that could be heard as far as the Maryland state line. I must confess that my heart swelled with sinful pride at this confirmation that my son had inherited at least one of my traits, albeit perhaps not the most attractive. His cry was, of course, hunger motivated, so I flung my pocketbook on a corner stool and rushed over to perform the most motherly of deeds.

“Well,” the Babester grumbled, as his offspring latched on to me as tight as a leach, “I guess now I’m superfluous.”

“Nonsense, dear. As soon as he’s done he’ll fill his diaper. From what I’ve observed, changing nappies is something you do very well.”

“Gross,” Alison said. “Everything about this kid is gross: the way you feed him, the way he poops. This family ain’t nothing like it used to be, ya know? It’s Little Jacob this, Little Jacob that—it’s all about the stupid kid. If ya ask me—which nobody does anymore—I say send that brat back where he came from.”

“Alison!” the Babester said sharply.

“Alison!” I said in horror. The thought of Little Jacob returning the way he arrived was too awful to contemplate—especially now that he’d grown a bit.

Freni adores Alison and thinks of her as a granddaughter, but her Swiss-German genetics make it all but impossible for her to express physical affection. Instead of hugging the girl—and I’m sure Alison wouldn’t have enjoyed that either—Freni flapped her stout arms, which made her look like a black-and-white turkey trying in vain to achieve liftoff.

“Yah,” she said, “this family is very much changed. But now you have a baby brother.”

“So? What good is that? He can’t talk, and he don’t even listen when I talk to him. How am I s’posed to boss him around?”

“Yah, maybe now he is not so much fun. But someday he will be a very good friend to you. You must trust me, Alison; a brother—or a sister—is the best friend to have.”

“Yeah? Do you have brothers and sisters, Freni?”

“I had nine brothers and five sisters,” she said, her plump round face lit by the memories of bygone years.

“What d’ya mean ya
had
’em? Ya saying that ya ain’t got ’em no more?”

“Freni’s seventy-five,” I explained gently. “She’s also the youngest child in her family.”

“Oh, I get it; all the rest of them are dead.”

“Ach, not all!” Freni turned her attention to a pot of stew that was simmering on my institutional-size stove. “I still have one brother and two sisters. Each is a blessing. You will see.”

“Ha! I don’t even think so,” Alison said before stomping from the room in a prerequisite teenage snit.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “She seemed so excited at first. You would have thought
she
was the mother when we first brought Little Jacob home.”

My handsome husband, who’d relinquished his chair for me, stooped to plant a kiss on my forehead. “It’s a normal reaction, hon. First she had you all to herself, and then she had to share you with me, and now there’s him. How can she compete with a helpless baby?”

“But she doesn’t need to compete!”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know that—not on an emotional level. Listen, I’ve had some cross-training in basic psychology. Why don’t I talk to her and see if I can’t get her to understand that she’s still every bit as much a part of this family as she was before?”

“Would you?” My heart swelled with love.

“Of course.”

“A good man,” Freni muttered. “Never mind what they say.”

“Ach!”

It was too late. With Little Jacob as firmly attached as a nit, there was nothing to stop me from leaping to my feet and cornering her over the stew pot.

“What did you mean by that?”

My stout little cook didn’t even have the nerve to turn and face me. “What is this
that
of which you speak?”

“Freni,” I said sternly, “dissembling is lying just as much as telling an out-and-out falsehood.”

“Hon,” Gabe said, his tone pleading, “leave her alone. She can’t help what anyone else says.”

“Yah,” Freni said, sneaking a peek at me through the corner of her right eye, “this is very true, because I do not even know this Mr. Dis Embling.”

I sighed. No matter how long he lived in our community, my Sweet Baboo would always be an outsider. Hernians were graded like diamonds; not by clarity and color, but by the year in which their ancestors first set foot on our sacred soil. Not to brag, but my ancestor Jacob Hochstetler (indeed, I share him with most Amish and many Mennonites in Hernia) passed through the area in 1750 as a captive of a Delaware Indian raiding party. That unfortunate fact makes me a triple-A, gem-quality Hernian of impeccable credentials. It wasn’t until 1820 that the village was founded, but again my ancestors were represented.

The third-tier cutoff date is usually given as 1860, the fourth is 1900, and the last, which barely counts for anything, is 1946. After World War II the book on new arrivals was closed; marriage to a triple-A gem did nothing to change an immigrant’s status. As one local wag described it, “Putting a cubic zirconia and a diamond in the same ring doesn’t make the CZ a diamond.” To be sure, though, the gentlefolk of Hernia will never mention this distinction to your face, for with the exception of the occasional cold-blooded killer, they shy away from confrontation.

“Okay,” I finally said, “subject dropped. But I need to have a serious discussion with the both of you.”

“Ach!” Somehow Freni managed to squeeze out from between me and the stove. It must have been instinct that propelled her to Gabe’s side. He might not be blood, but he was the only other possible ally in the room.

My dearly beloved was on his feet, a look of genuine concern written all over his classically handsome features. “What is it, hon?”

“Sit back down, dear, because you’re not going to like what I’m about to say.”

But there would be no sitting for the man who had cared enough about me to finally sever his mother’s apron strings, and a full month before our son was born too. Although it had been a grizzly operation, the only victim appeared to be Ida. She now lived alone in what was formerly Gabe’s house, across from us on Hertzler Road. In the intervening weeks my husband seemed to have transferred most, if not all, of his concern onto me. Yes, it did get a little wearing to have him follow me around like a puppy all day, but a good Magdalena would just shut her mouth and count her blessings. At least I didn’t have to assume all of Ida’s former duties, such as cut his meat for him at dinner—well, not unless it was exceptionally tough.

“How did his checkup go?” he demanded. “Tell me everything the doctor said; don’t leave anything out. I knew I should have driven you. It’s only been a month; it’s far too early for you to be driving yourself. I don’t even know how you even could be sitting now.”

“Month, shmonth,” I said. “In Africa the women give birth in the fields, and then go right back to work.”

Freni shook her head. “That is too soon. We Amish women wait at least one day before we help the men to bale the hay.”

“You’re kidding,” Gabe said. “
Aren’t
you?”

“She
is
kidding,” I said. “Plus she composed a rhyming couplet. The next thing we’ll hear from her is the pitter-patter of iambic pentameter.”

“Ach,” Freni squawked. “How you talk! I am too old for such a thing to happen.”

Gabe smiled. “As for the African women thing, that sounds more like missionary lore than fact. But back to you, Magdalena; what did the doctor say? How did Little Jacob’s one-month checkup go? How are you doing?”

“Uh—you see, that’s why you should be sitting down, dear. I didn’t
exactly
go to the doctor, except for maybe sort of.”

Gabe stared. “What does
didn’t exactly
mean, exactly?”

“She did not go at all,” Freni said, crossing her stubby arms in front of her ample bosom, “because the appointment is in two days.”

“Magdalena, is that true?”

“But I was very close to the doctor’s office,” I said. “I went to the bank.”

“Bank? What for?”

“To put the screws to George Hooley; he’s a member of my church.”

“I repeat my question:
What for?
”

“To investigate the privates,” Freni said, in the ultimate act of betrayal.

“I am not a private investigator, merely an undeputized post-partum woman in charge of a postmortem event.”

“Mag-da-leen-a!”
When Gabe does his ventriloquist bit, spitting my name out without moving his lips, it’s time to get to the point.

“Remember Minerva J. Jay, the woman who died while eating pancakes at my church?”

Gabe cocked his head. To tell the truth, he looked maddeningly handsome.

“Hmm,” he said. “Wasn’t that the day my wife gave birth on the floor of Sam Yoder’s Filthy Corner Market?”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, dear, sarcasm really
does
become you. But yes, that was the day, and even though the paper said that Miss Jay died of undisclosed circumstances, they were disclosed to me, and—”

“You’re working on another murder case?”

“But the suspects are all Mennonites, so they can’t be so bad.”

“Huafa mischt,”
Freni muttered.

“What?” Frankly, I couldn’t believe my ears.

“You heard her,” Gabe roared. “Horse manure! They may all be Mennonites, but one of them is a killer. Am I right?”

“Agreed. But the weapon of choice was pharmaceuticals. Just as long as I don’t ingest anything during my investigation, I shall be as fine as frogs’ hair.” By the way, I owe that colorful description to my southern friend Abigail Timberlake.

“This one is meshugah,” Freni said in a louder voice.
Meshugah
means
crazy
in Yiddish, not Amish. Unfortunately my kinswoman learned this word from my mother-in-law, who usually applies it to me.

“Et tu Brute,” I said, deeply hurt.

“Ach, such a terrible thing you say!” She blinked behind her grease-and-flour-covered spectacles. “What
did
you say?”

“That you’re a traitor, Freni. I thought you were my friend.”

“Yah, but this I do for your good.”

“And you, Gabriel Jerome Rosen,” I said through clenched teeth, “are being totally unfair to me. All I am doing is helping out a young man who is totally overwhelmed and, frankly, unprepared to be the sole police officer in this community.”

“But you’re the mayor; you hired him. Don’t get me wrong, Mags, I think he’s a nice young man, but every time you help him you’re putting your life on the line. And now you have more than just yourself and me to think of; you’ve got our little man here. Do you honestly want our son to grow up without a mother?”

There are times when arguing with the Babester is like trying to stop global warming by scattering a tray of ice cubes on the lawn. “I’m already committed to this case,” I said. “But just as soon as I’ve—we’ve—arrested a suspect, I’m turning in my nonexistent badge and hanging up my metaphorical spurs.”

“What does this mean?” Freni demanded.

“It means she’s feeling guilty,” the Babester said. “This is her last case.”

Freni nodded, an action that caused her entire body to shake. “Yah, we shall see.”

“So what will you do about the baby?” Gabe said. “Express your milk?”

I’d heard somewhere that breast pumps were not entirely comfortable, that they were not unlike the electric milk pumps Mose uses on my two dairy cows, Matilda Two and Prairie Queen. Perhaps they didn’t hurt at all. I didn’t care, because I wasn’t about to find out. The times I’d spent with Little Jacob at my breast had been the most fulfilling hours of my life, bar none.

“I’m taking him with me,” I said.

“The Hades you are,” Gabe said. Of course he didn’t use the Greek word.

“I know that you’re his father and that you’re concerned,” I said, “but I’m the one who carried him for almost nine months inside me and then had to expel him through my pelvic region without an epidural. For now, my vote trumps yours.”

“Yah,” Freni said, and nodded even more vigorously than before.

 

 

Yes, it was unfair of me to play the birth card—on second thought, no, it wasn’t. Like I’d said, I wasn’t taking him to a play date with Eliot Ness; I was merely going to question upstanding members of my church. Believe me, I would never, ever intentionally use my son for nefarious purposes, but as long as he was along for the ride, would it be so bad if the oochy-goochy-goo factor kept the pharmaceutical killer a little off guard? I think not. (Please bear in mind that I’m the head deaconess in my church; ergo, my opinions should count for something.)