Batter Off Dead (18 page)

2. Heat a large nonstick griddle or skillet over medium heat until hot enough to sizzle a drop of water. Brush with a thin film of vegetable oil, or spray with nonstick cooking spray. For each pancake, pour a scant ¼ cup batter onto the griddle or into the skillet. Adjust the heat to medium-low. Cook until the tops are covered with small bubbles and the bottoms are lightly browned. Carefully turn and lightly brown the other side. These cook quickly. Repeat with the remaining batter.

3. Serve with confectioners’ sugar, accompanied by sliced fruit or warm maple syrup.

 

MAKES ABOUT TWELVE 3-INCH PANCAKES.

I agreed to meet Chief Ackerman in Settlers’ Cemetery atop Stucky Ridge. This is where Mama and Papa are buried, along with their forebears, and where I plan to have my weary bones laid to rest someday as well. As the name suggests, this graveyard contains the remains of Hernia’s original European founders. It is reserved for their descendents only and, of course, their spouses.

The fact that I’m adopted doesn’t change my status one whit vis-à-vis burial rights, because the Stoltzfuses, my biological parents, were also both descended from founders. Besides, although both families are currently Mennonite, both arrived in this country as Amish in the early 1700s. As a result, our bloodlines are so intertwined that if I skin my knee, it is my cousin who moans in pain.

Stucky Ridge is the highest point in Bedford County, even higher than Buffalo Mountain. Fortunately, not all of the land was dedicated to the dead. In addition to the cemetery, there is a picnic area overlooking Lovers’ Leap, and a patch of woods where oversexed teenagers come to grope each other on Saturday nights.

I almost lost my life when Melvin the Maniac Mantis, who, it turned out, was a full sibling, as well as my brother-in-law, pushed me over the edge of Lovers’ Leap. Thank heaven for my sturdy Christian underwear, which caught on a tree branch and kept me from plunging to my death. Had I been wearing a thong, I’d have taken up residence next to Mama and Papa long before Little Jacob could be born.

And speaking of the little fella, since I’d never taken him up there, and it was turning out to be a nice warm afternoon, I decided to introduce him to some of the Yoder clan. I started with Granny Yoder’s headstone.

“Here’s your great-grandson, Little Jacob,” I said, minding my manners. (Forty years ago in Miss Entz’s citizenship class I learned that one must always introduce the lady first, especially if she’s older.)

“And this is your great-granny Yoder,” I said. “You may have seen her standing imperiously on the stairs back at the inn. As my friend Abigail Timberlake Washburn from Charleston says, Granny Yoder is an Apparition American. Of course, we people of faith are not supposed to believe in such nonsense, and most of us don’t, but that’s because most of us haven’t come face-to-face with any incontrovertible evidence. I’m telling you, though, once you encounter an Apparition American, it’s all over but the whimpering.”

Little Jacob whimpered.

“Please forgive him,” I said to Granny Yoder’s headstone. “He’s awfully young. And you must admit you are a bit scary, what with that lemon-sucking scowl and those three eight-inch hairs growing from the mole on your left cheek. Really, Granny, even I am—I mean
would
be—scared of you if I was his age.”

“Magdalena.”

I jumped clear out of my brogans when the hand, as light as a biscuit, rested on my shoulder. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Little Jacob wailed.

“Shi—ta—ke mushrooms!” Chief Ackerman exclaimed, his face every bit as white as Granny’s the last time I saw her in the flesh.

The three of us gasped, panted, and hollered for several minutes. Finally the chief and I settled down on a stone bench facing Buffalo Mountain. I asked him if it was okay to nurse Little Jacob for a bit, as that was the quickest way to shut him up.

“Fine by me,” he said. “I’m from California, remember? Besides, my mom nursed me a lot longer than most other mothers nurse their babies. I think it’s a beautiful thing.”

I turned away until Little Jacob was covered with a light cotton blanket. Then, before we got down to police business, I just had to ask one personal question.

“How long is a
lot
longer?”

“Let’s put it this way: she stopped the day I said, ‘I like the pink bra better.’ ”

I shuddered. “Well, I stop the day he bites. Okay, young Chris, what is so urgent? And tell me, why so secretive that we can’t discuss it in your office?”

“All right, second question first, and the answer is: Sam.”

“Smarmy pseudo-cousin Sam from Sam Yoder’s Corner Market, the one who mid-husbanded this bundle of joy?”

“That’s the one. Magdalena, you are aware of how much he likes to gossip, aren’t you?”

“Was Menno Simons Mennonite?”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, that was sort of a trick question, since Mennonites are the followers of Menno Simons, and he couldn’t very well be a follower of himself. Anyway, of course I’m aware of Sam’s wagging tongue. That’s the only reason I go in there: to get the scoop.”

“Well, Sam already knows about your—uh—visits, let’s say, to the Brotherhood volunteers on pancake day, including your front porch chat with the Big Guy Himself this morning.”

“
What?
The Zug twin already ratted me out?”

“I must say, Magdalena, that your vocabulary is not what I expected of a Mennonite housewife before I moved to Hernia.”

“Nor should it be after you leave, because I am iconoclastic, a classic icon, if you will—not that I’m bragging, mind you. We have an old saying here: ‘Scratch your arm at Sam’s store, and you’ll be dead by the time you get home.’ ”

“Meaning?”

“That even before cell phones were invented, gossip had a way of traveling faster here than a race car, and that the stories were invariably blown to almost unrecognizable proportions if they came by way of Sam’s.”

“Is he malicious?”

“Bored. And horny—oops, pardon my Bulgarian.”

“Your Bulgarian?”

“Why should the French get all the credit for talking dirty? There have to be at least some Bulgarians who are vulgarians, not to be confused with the Vulgar Latin, of course.”

“Or with the very rude Cuban I dated two years ago. At any rate, Magdalena, it has crossed my mind that—well, this is going to sound paranoid, I’m sure—that your telephone might be bugged.”

It felt like ice water was being poured down the back of my dress. “Is that why you asked me to meet you here?”

He nodded. “It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. But I was already up here, and I’ve been watching carefully. We
are
alone.”

“Where are you parked?”

“Where else?”

“Ah, the woods. If only those woods could speak—on second thought, I’d have to cover my ears and run away.”

The chief laughed. “How do you think I feel on Saturday nights, playing nanny to a bunch of repressed kids who are finally out of their parents’ sight? You could cut the pheromones up here with a knife.”

“Back to my phone. Why do you think it might be bugged? Does it show up on some kind of machine?”

“No, I’ve got to admit that it’s just a hunch. But you’re a veritable clearinghouse of information, Magdalena. I know that if
I
was going to commit a crime of this magnitude in Hernia, I’d tap your phone.”

The chills down my spine were gone. “Well, I don’t feel that. Maybe it’s
your
phone that’s bugged. Have you checked? I mean taken it apart completely, etcetera? That’s such a handy word, isn’t it?”

As he shook his head, he colored considerably. “I did a quick sweep. Frankly, Magdalena, I’m overworked. That’s another thing I need to talk to you about: we need at least two more officers in the department. I can’t work twenty-four seven.”

“But we’re an itsy-bitsy traditional community, for crying out loud. Besides the Saturday-night crowd up here, what else do you have on your plate?”

The young whippersnapper had the temerity to laugh. “Good one! Let’s see. This morning Patricia Maron poured bleach on Margaret Cornwall’s mint patch, so it wouldn’t spread like it did last year and contaminate her phlox bed. I thought one or both were going to have heart attacks, they were so mad.”

“Patty’s a Baptist from Punxsutawney and Marge is a Methodist from Scranton.”

“That explains it?”

“Uh—maybe not entirely. And yes, I know, Nixon was a Quaker, but you know what I mean.”

“Not exactly. Anyway, yesterday Delphina Wilder thought she had an intruder in her basement, and she did, but it turned out to be a possum.”

“Delphina is from suburban New Jersey and has Lutheran forebears.”

“Magdalena, you sound disturbingly prejudiced.”

“
Moi?
I assure you that’s simply not so. But just look around you, dear. In the old days, as far as the eyes could see, this was Amish and Mennonite territory. The Plain People, we called ourselves. Now most of the Mennonites have gone fancy—except for Beechy Grove—and the Amish are beginning to sell their farms to outsiders because they can get cheaper land, and more of it, down south. I’m just saying that there is something to be said for having a homogeneous population.”

“I once dated a brilliant gay man, but to be absolutely frank, I prefer them more on the dumb side. Anyway, my point is that there is a whole lot more to this job than one person can handle. Were I to—uh—not sign up for another year, you’d be hard put to replace me.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

The poor man is without guile, so he looked me straight in the eyes. “I’m sorry. It is. What else can I say?”

“Okay already, get those calf eyes off me before I cave in and double your salary as well.”

“As well as a deputy?”

“Just the deputy. Now, look away, ding-dang it.”

“I can’t, because I’m giving you
the look
.”

“Forsooth, dear, that’s what I’m objecting to—although it’s getting a mite tiresome trying to get the point across.”

The chief rolled his expressive peepers up before training them off my beady little pair. “I forget that you don’t watch TV. That means you haven’t seen
the look
Larry David dishes out on
Curb Your Enthusiasm
.”

I checked the nursing blanket and saw that my modesty was still intact. One other possibility sprang to mind.

“I don’t have any boogers hanging out, do I?”

“No—do I? See, Magdalena? You always get me off track. I’m giving you
the look
because of the key you swiped from my desk. And don’t even try to deny it, because that will just waste both of our time, and I have to go talk some sense into old Tom Arnold before he shoots Connie Betz’s dog. And here I thought you were supposed to be a peaceful people.”

“Tom is Church of God, originally from Akron, and you have to admit that Connie’s dog makes an incredible amount of racket every day at sundown. So, how did you know it was me who borrowed that key?”

Chris sucked air through his flawless teeth in a gesture of genuine concern. “You’re going to hate this.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.
I
am a native Hernian, a Mennonite born and bred, although not bred to a Mennonite, as I am not a cow or any other sort of animal.”

“When I went over to Sam’s to get the cream for your tea, I found him staring at you through a pair of binoculars.”

I leaped to my feet with so much force that my suckling babe—if I may use such a provocative term—was dislodged. As a result, Little Jacob went from being an unobtrusive third party to the center of attention. Come to think of it, the ensuing din might have been my saving grace, because I actually called Sam a doo-doo head—maybe even several times. Never in my life have I sunk to such a low level of vitriolic verbiage. Potty Mouth should have been my middle name, not Portulaca.

It took a good ten minutes to calm everyone down, and some of us were still less calm than others. “Just wait until I get my hands around his scrawny neck,” I said through gritted teeth.

“I thought you were a pacifist,” Chief Chris Ackerman said.

“Indeed I am, but these are extenuating circumstances, are they not?”

“So you get to pick and choose? Honestly, Magdalena, you sound just like everyone else; I’m really disappointed.”

“But I’m only human!” I don’t mean to be immodest, but my cry of distress rang out over the surrounding valleys of the southern Alleghenies like the rumble of approaching thunder.

“Be careful, Magdalena; that eerie sound you’re making might wake the dead.”

“Then, boy, are we in for a lot of trouble. It might surprise you to learn that not everyone buried here—those that knew me, I mean—found me to be as delightful as you originally did.” I emitted more distressing sounds for good measure.

“Oh, all right, I’ll give you what you want: I still find you delightful. Compared to most Hernians, you’re a breath of fresh air.”

“Thank you. Now tell me, why aren’t you angry that I took the key?”

“Because I trust your instincts, Miss Yoder. I figured that if you thought it was important enough to swipe, then it must have been. By the way, I have to say that it was very clever of you to spontaneously substitute one of your own keys for the one Minerva left me. As you might have guessed, I didn’t discover the switch until I got all the way out there to the Land of the Weird and Godforsaken Sinkholes. In order to gain access to Miss Jay’s house, I had to get both a court order and a locksmith, and they were a waste of time and money; you won’t find anything useful to the investigation there.”

“Perhaps this breath of fresh air will see things through fresh eyes.”

“Like I said; you’re delightful.”

I sighed heavily. “Alas and alack, our seven suspects don’t share your sentiments.”