Batter Off Dead (19 page)

“They hate your guts?”

“You could have the decency to sound surprised. Besides, I’m not sure they all do, as I spoke to only one Zug twin.”

“Right, but unless we can figure out which one is which, I think we should treat them as one person. Nonetheless, what are your impressions of them?”

I waited while, off to my left, in the woods, a mourning dove sounded its plaintive coo. “I’ll start with George Hooley,” I said. “Did you know he was gay?”

Chief Ackerman put both hands on his hips in mock surprise. “Say it ain’t so!”

“Of course you did; everyone does. Still, somehow Minerva managed to blackmail him. At least that’s what he claims.”

The chief scribbled on his pad. “That’s serious stuff. Can you get proof?”

“I’ll try. But I don’t think George did it. Murdering someone requires a mind that is able to think outside the box, and George is stuck in a rut so deep he can hear Laotian voices at the bottom.”

“Not Mandarin?”

“George isn’t straight, remember? When he digs a hole, it doesn’t go down to China. As for James Neufenbakker, he may have been a Sunday school teacher—
my
Sunday school teacher—but that man’s got a temper worthy of a Bush.”

“Is that a straight euphemism?”

“No! I meant George Bush. Anyway, James—or Jimmy, as I call him—practically chased me off his porch. He also called Minerva a trollop.”

“Hmm, do you think that means he slept with her?”

“Chris, dear, is that what you call your—uh, paramours?”

“My what?”

“Lovers,” I said reluctantly, “but my, how I hate that word. It’s just so—well, so accepting of the whole notion of sex without the bondage of holy matrimony.”

The chief shook his impossibly handsome head. “First of all, I don’t call my lovers
trollops
—although I have called a few of them
sluts
. And second, while I believe you meant to say the holy
bonds
of matrimony, I think I prefer your slip of the tongue. And third, I was suggesting that Mr. Neufenbakker’s strong negative reaction might be a decoy to keep us from discovering an ongoing physical or emotional relationship with our victim. Such affairs are often hard to end satisfactorily, and sometimes one or both parties suffer deeply.”

“Dr. Chris Ackerman, I presume,” I said, unable to keep all my sarcasm at bay.

“Well, I did take freshman psychology at the junior college before I joined the police academy,” Chief Chris said proudly.

More power to him; better a half-wit than a dimwit, I always say. Still, we had a lot more ground to cover. I laid little Jacob over my shoulder and gently patted his back.

“Gwerrp.”

“Good boy.” I continued to pat lightly. “Frankie Schwartzentruber, however, really does have a reason to be upset with Minerva. That woman hit on her husband.”

“That old battle-ax is married?”

“
Was
is the operative word. Decades ago. Frankie has a long memory, but like they say, there is no statute of limitations on crimes of passion.”

“Who says that?”

I may have swallowed hard, but I didn’t look away. “Well,
somebody
has to start those sayings, so why can’t it be me?”

Young Chris smiled. “I figured as much. Go on.”

“There’s not much else to say. I tried to talk to Merle Waggler, and although he admitted he didn’t like Minerva, he and I—Look, the man’s an anti-Semite, and I kind of got into it with him.”

“You fought with him?”

“We argued. At school. But it was on behalf of Alison, who was being teased, so it was completely justified.”

“What about Elias Whitmore?”

“He’s a real hottie, isn’t he?”

“
Excuse
me?”

“You know, really cute. Good-looking. Isn’t that the lingo these days?”

“Magdalena, I’m a police officer, and you’re a married woman assisting me on the case. We can’t use language like that.” He glanced around as if to make sure that no one had heard us—except maybe for the mourning dove in the woods, and two sparrows hopping between the headstones twenty feet away.

“Sorry. I don’t know what came over me; it was like a hot flash of Presbyterianism. Anyway, that kid is so popular. His house is like an ashram or something—but Christian, of course. See that brown square there, poking above the trees on Buffalo Mountain? About an inch from the end?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“That’s his rooftop porch. You can see all the way to Maryland from there. Anyway, despite being a Christian guru, Elias really hated Minerva J. Jay. He blames her for his father’s death.”

Chris rubbed his hands together. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Maybe. Elias’s father was a drunk who tried to walk the straight and narrow path a number of times—at least to hear him tell it—but each time, Minerva pushed him off. Supposedly she thought she could get her hands on his fortune easier that way. Oh, and Elias volunteered the fact that Minerva was poisoned. You didn’t mention that to him, did you?”

“Absolutely not. Very interesting. What about the Zug twins?”

“I have failed,” I wailed.

“Your wailing is really getting to be annoying—if I may say so.”

“You may, but now I’m annoyed. It’s not like I go through a verb-selection process when I emote and then come up empty-handed. Wailing happens to be my signature vocalization.”

“The
Zugs
,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, all right. Those Zugs! Rather, I should say
that
Zug! He weaseled out of my grilling by appealing to my vanity.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking the easy way out, so long as it’s effective.”

“Whose side are you on anyway?”

“Uh—yours, of course. Although I guess strictly speaking I’m on the side of Lady Justice. Hmm, interesting that she’s a lady, isn’t it?” He rubbed his face with hands that were better tended to than mine will ever be. “Hey, speaking of ladies, we may not be able to tell the twins apart, but their wives look nothing alike. Why don’t you try talking to them? Maybe invite them over to tea?”

“Tea? I’m not Agatha Christie, for Pete’s sake; this isn’t an English cozy. Besides, I hardly know them.”

“Don’t they go to your church?”

“That’s the thing. The Zug twins are Mennonite by birth and joined Beechy Grove as soon as they moved here from Canada, but, like me, they are unequally yoked.”

“I don’t get it. Is that some kind of egg thing?”

I reined in my smile. The chief is a lapsed atheist, a man raised without faith, but he is now at least open to exploring the options. Still, when one is talking to him it is easy to forget that biblical references, which pepper everyday speech in Hernia, are as foreign to him as tofu is to Amish cooking.

“It’s what happens when you hitch an ox and a donkey to the same plow. Take the Babester and me: he’s the bull and I’m the ass, and spiritually speaking it’s not a good match. The Zug twins also married outside the Mennonite fold. One is a Pentecostal—I think—and attends the church with thirty-two words in its name, and the other is a nothing. At any rate, neither of them ever shows up at Beechy Grove for services, although they do come for potlucks and anything that basically involves food.”

“So you have met them.”

I sighed. “Okay, I’ll invite them to lunch at the Sausage Barn and put the screws to them there.”

“When?”

“I’ll call this evening, but I can’t guarantee I’ll even be able to get through. The man who invented caller ID—and it had to be a man—will have his own special place in you-know-where.”

“Why don’t you slip a note under their door on your way home this afternoon, suggesting lunch tomorrow? Say, noon at the Barn?”

“Noon,” I snapped. Let’s face it, it’s hard to be pleasant when someone half your age is micromanaging your avocation.

Yes, a retired husband can be a big help, and so can a mother-in-law. Ditto for a daughter and a housekeeping cousin. But only yours truly was equipped to feed a growing boy in the middle of the night, after which said boy refused to go back to sleep. As a result,
I
got as much sleep as a polygamist on a ten-minute honeymoon.

The next morning I was dead on my feet, and right after a six a.m. feeding (Little Jacob promptly fell asleep), I went straight back to bed, an act that is just as much a sin in my culture as the aforementioned polygamy.

Just once before I die I would like to spend an entire day lolly-gagging about on the sofa eating chocolate bonbons. I might even watch a television show. I’ve heard that
Oprah
and
The View
are both worth seeing, but since I’ll have only this one day in which to commit the second-worst sin, that of sloth, I should probably do some consulting first. Maybe even look at a few clips from the shows before I decide. You can be sure, however, that I will
not
be watching
Ellen
, as I’m already in enough trouble with the Good Lord without adding dancing, the worst of all sins, to my litany.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, after a couple of hours I woke up, groggy and grainy eyed, because the little one was crying to be changed.

“Gabe,” I called sweetly.

After I’d added several decibels and tone changes, my dearly beloved finally appeared in the bedroom door. “Hon, can you make this quick? The Yankees are playing the Red Sox.”

I glanced at the bedside clock. “It’s only ten in the morning.”

“Yeah, I know, but since you don’t allow TVs in the house, I’m watching it on my cell phone from a disk I downloaded. The game was actually yesterday.”

“That’s nice, dear. Your son—that’s the infant in the crib next to me—needs changing today. Would you be a darling and do it this time?”

“Poopy or pee?”

Poopy?
Gabriel Rosen is a medical doctor, for crying out loud. A cardiologist and well-known surgeon.

“Number two, I think. Does it matter?”

“Ah, hon, you know I can’t handle the stink of really messy diapers; it’s just not in me.”

“This is your son,” I growled, “the fruit of your loins, flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood, and
poop of your poop
. So put on your big-boy pants and deal with it.” I smiled sweetly to soften my words.

Without another word, Gabe picked up his son, but he held him at arm’s length during the entire changing process. “There, you happy now?” he said when he was done.

I didn’t know if he was speaking to me or Little Jacob, so I murmured soft obscenities. “Ding, dang, dong, ding.”

“What was that, Magdalena?”

To be truthful, my response would have been a lie. Fortunately, I was stopped by the presence of a nun standing in my bedroom door.

“Susannah?” I asked through my veil of grogginess.

“I’m Mother Dispirited, remember?”

I pulled myself to a sitting position. “Oh, right. And I’m Sister Disturbed; I’m disturbed that you’re still going through with this apathy thing.”

Susannah shrugged. “Really, Mags, you’re not supposed to care. Anyway, I’m here to say good-bye to my favorite nephew.”

“You have only one, dear.”

“He’s still my favorite. And Sister Disaster has come to say good-bye to her son.”

“What? But there aren’t any men here.”

“Thanks,” Gabe said drily as he handed Little Jacob to his sister-in-law.

Susannah, who adores her nephew almost as much as she does the loathsome cur that nestles in her Maidenform, took my baby with the utmost delight. It would embarrass me to no end to repeat the gaga-doo-doo baby talk she inflicted on the boy when she wasn’t attempting to smother him to death with kisses. Meanwhile, my question went unanswered.

“Can I take him out to show him to the sisters?” she finally asked.

“Yes, but you have to promise first that you won’t kidnap him and turn him into a monk—or a monkette—or whatever the word is for a tiny male person of your unorthodox persuasion.”

“How about mon
key
?” Susannah said, and then skipped off giggling with my life’s one achievement in her arms.

 

 

It was only when Susannah was gone that Gabe and I noticed the very stout nun standing just inside our bedroom door, to the left and in front of the closet. This sister was so short, and had such an enormous chest, that her habit made her body look square. As for her face—let me say with all Christian charity that with her hair pulled back and tucked under her wimple, she might well have passed for a geriatric gorilla. A lemon-sucking geriatric gorilla.

So alarmed was I that I leaped from the bed and into Gabe’s arms. “These are private quarters,” I eventually managed to gasp. Gabe, of course, had said nothing.

“
Nu?
So I come to say good-bye to my son. Do you mind?”

I did a double take. Then a triple.

“Ida? Is that
you
?”

“Don’t be silly, hon,” my darling said. “This woman’s a nun.”

“My name is Sister Disaster,” the homely woman in the religious garb said.

“Ida,” I said, “it
is
you, and you
can’t
be a nun, because you’re Jewish!”

“Ma?”
I’d told Gabe the night before about Susannah and the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy, but he’d been pretty uninterested in the whole thing. “Sounds just like your sister,” he’d said. Apparently now that the wimple was on a different head, it was another story.

“I think we need to talk,” I said calmly. “Gabe, dear, hoist her up on the bed, so we can at least be eye to collarbone with her.”

Although he doesn’t think well under duress, the Babester can sometimes take direction. Thank heaven he did now. With Ida jammed between the two of us, and three feet off the ground (mine is the SUV of king-size beds), I felt that we had at least some control in what was otherwise a totally insane situation.