"Yes, dear, but technically it's not your kitchen."
"Ach!" Freni squawked. A stranger might have thought she'd been struck by an assassin's bullet.
"Why don't you sit, dear?" I pointed to the chair.
She waved a stubby hand rapidly in front of her chest. "I knew it would come to this someday, Magdalena. Like Daniel in the Bible, I saw the handwriting on the wall."
"If any of these guests have been marking on my walls, East Coast Delicacies is going to pay for it!" I was as steamed as a bowl of Chinese rice. You'd be shocked at what the rich and famous can do to a room - no telling what the hoi polloi are capable of doing.
"Ach!" Freni gasped, both hands flapping now. "I'm not really talking about your walls, it's just a metamorphosis."
I scratched my head until it hit me like one of Mama's angel food cakes - with a thud. "Ah, a metaphor! What did you see coming, Fren?"
"Don't you play dumb with me, Magdalena. When you were a little girl. I used to baby-sit for you. I've diapered you. I know everything there is to know about you. You can't fool me. I know you're going to hire one of these English cooks. Well, I may be an old horse, but you're not going to be the one to put me out to pasture, I quit!"
"Freni! Stop -"
Arms still flailing, she barged for the door. I practically had to tackle her to stop her. In the process, more of my body - clothes, mind you - came into contact with hers than it has with anyone except for Aaron. And possibly Mama.
"I'm not firing you," I puffed, "and I'm certainly not hiring an English cook. This is the PennDutch Inn, for crying out loud. My guest expect hearty Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, not decorative little snippets to tempt the appetite."
Freni's eyes bored into mine. "Really?"
"Yes, really."
"then what is this policy business?"
"I just - well - you see, some of the contestants might prefer it if you left them alone when they're cooking their entries."
"Then why didn't' you just say so?" Freni said, gave me a pitying look, and strode from the room, head held high.
-23-
I prudently decided to talk to Art Strump before I talked to Marge. Perhaps Art, as another southern cook, had had his recipes pilfered as well. Fortunately, Art was the third of Melvin's victims to be interviewed and released, so I didn't have to wait.
We literally bumped heads, he going in the front door, I going out.
Since I do not swear, I had to content myself with a gaggle of grunts, groans, and gasps. Art, on the other hand, said a few things that would have made a sailor blush. Since he was technically outside my house, I decided to go easy on the man. And anyway, my head is undoubtedly harder than his.
"Well, it was your fault, dear," I said as kindly as I could. "After all, I opened the door. You should have known someone was coming out. This isn't one of those automatic jobs like at Pat's I.G.A."
Art made a reference to copulating feces.
"Hold it right there, buster. Either you can the toilet talk, or it's back into the cold with you."
"sorry, ma'am," he mumbled. He was holding his head with both hands. "It hurts like the dickens. Your chin's like a rock."
"That was my nose, dear, and it's more like a needle. But don't just stand there, unless you want to pay to heat the great outdoors."
He staggered in and I steered him by his coat sleeve to a warm spot by the fire.
"I thought we might have a little chat," I said pleasantly.
He had taken off his gloves and was gingerly fingering his forehead. He is, after all, a goof three inches shorter than I.
"What do you want to talk about?"
I smiled. "Well, for starters, how did the interrogation go?"
"No offense, ma'am, but y'all's police chief is - uh - "
"Nuttier than an oak in October?"
"Yes, ma'am. As my mama would say, that boy is two eggs shy of an omelet."
"Well, at least he didn't arrest you. He has been known to arrest innocent people before."
"Ma'am?"
"Oh, yes. It's happened a couple of times. Of course each time I had to step in and get the accused off the hook. I'm getting pretty good at it now. Some people say I have a sixth sense. I wouldn't know about that, but if someone looks me straight in the eye, I can usually tell if they're lying or not." I leaned forward and stared into his dark brown eyes. "You didn't have anything against George Mitchell, did you?"
To my relief, he didn't squirm. "No, ma'am, I never met the man before this contest started. He seemed like a nice enough man though, if you ask me."
It was time to bait him. "Nice? He was always laughing at people behind their backs."
He said nothing.
"In fact, he snickered so much, I think they named a candy bar after him."
He regarded me calmly, as mute as a turnip.
I shook my head. "It's awful what happened to him, but frankly, I wasn't surprised. Some of the things he did were unconscionable."
Zip, zero, zilch, nada. Even a Mennonite woman in bed is more responsive than Art Strump.
"Know when to hold them, and know when to fold them," a country-western singer said to me on his last visit to the PennDutch. Clearly, it was time to fold.
"Well, enough about George Mitchell. I really wanted to talk about Marge Benedict. Did you know that one of her jobs is to collect original recipes for East Coast Delicacies?"
"Isn't that what this contest is all about?"
"No, I don't mean just one recipe for some big new campaign. I mean lots of recipes, over the years. Like the ones they used for the Smoky Mountain Memories line of frozen dinners."
His broad nose wrinkled. "Ugh. I don't eat frozen dinners."
"Still, that's pretty exciting, right?"
"If you say so, ma'am."
Another dead end. It was time to turn this chassis on a dime.
"Where's that sweet little Carlie?" I asked brightly.
"She's still in town, ma'am."
I shook my head in sympathy. "Poor child. Melvin will grill her like a cheese sandwich. Maybe I should go down there and run interference."
Something in him flickered.
"What's the matter, dear? Is there any way I can help?" You'll have to trust me on this one, but I've been told before that I have a voice that could calm the Bosporus Straits.
Art glanced around the room, his eyes lingering on the two doorways. "Carlie is seeing a lawyer."
"Did you say `a lawyer'?"
"Yes, ma'am. You know, an attorney."
"Who?"
He grinned. "A Mr. Stackrumple."
I clapped my hands against the sides of my head. "Ach!"
"Pretty funny name, isn't it?"
"Funny name, maybe, but the man's a shark. He'll eat Carlie for lunch. If she wanted to confess, she should come to see me. Now - "
He waved his hands in a desperate attempt to stop me. "She's not confessing to anything, ma'am, except that Mr. Mitchell was her father."
"He what?"
At that very instant Freni came flapping into the room, as silently as a barn owl.
"I need to see you now," she screeched for the second time.
"Tough turkeys, dear," I said, exercising commendable patience. "I'm in the middle of a very important conversation."
"Magdalena Portulacca Yoder! You come with me this very minute or I'll - " She raised a hand hip-high, as if to give me a swat on the behind. Although pacifists, Amish, like we Mennonites, do not consider a swat on the bottom to be violent. That is, most of us don't'. as the unfortunate recipient of a good number of those nonviolent acts (most of which Susannah deserved, if anyone) I beg to differ. Hitting - especially when done out of anger - is no way to teach peaceful coexistence. On the other hand, we two pacifist denominations have one of the lowest, if not the lowest, murder rates in the country.
"Hey, y'all, I'm out of here." Art stood up, and holding his hands up, as if he were taken hostage, backed out of the room.
"Now see what you did," I hissed at Freni. "That man just dropped a bombshell on me."
"Ach!" she squawked, her beady eyes darting around the room.
"Not a real bomb! It's an English figure of speech. It means - never mind. What is so all-fired important that you have to barge in here and interrupt our conversation? Do you realize just how rude that must seem?"
"Rude shmude," she snapped. "What's the matter with Barbara?"
"Barbara?"
"Ach, is there an echo in here?" Freni has picked up one too many of Susannah's annoying phrases.
"That does it. If you're going to be rude too... "
I meant to stride righteously from the room, but Freni's nails dug into my arm. They were every bit as sharp as claws, and reminded me of the time Rahab the cat climbed up my skirt.
"Let go!"
"Not until you tell me what the doctor said."
"What doctors?" Honestly, I had already put Barbara's good news out of my mind. Besides, since Freni does not have a telephone in her house, there was no way she could have called her daughter-in-law. The last Freni heard, Jonathan was going to use the family buggy to drive his wife to Bedford.
"You told me to back off the supervising," she said accusingly, "so I went out front to gather black walnuts. You said I could take as many as I wanted."
"Yes, so?" I tapped my right clodhopper. Unless Freni got right to the point, she could add me to her bucket of nuts.
"So, Elizabeth Mast drove by, and said she'd stopped in to see how Mose and Barbara were doing."
"And?" Tap, tap, tap.
"Mose is up and moving around, but that Barbara!"
My pulse put the Indy 500 to shame. "Is something wrong with Barbara/"
"Ach, isn't there always. Elizabeth said the silly girl was jumping around - dancing, she said - and singing!"
"Good for her!"
"But she's supposed to be sick. What kind of sick is that?"
I shrugged.
"Ach, you should know, Magdalena. Elizabeth said Barbara told her you took her to the doctor. That's all Barbara would tell Elizabeth. Nothing else. Is that true?"
"I suppose it is, dear. I don't think Elizabeth lies."
Although she keeps them short, Freni's nails are capable of drawing blood. "You know what I mean, Magdalena. Did you take Barbara to the doctor?"
"Suppose I did?"
"Well, what is it? Is it that mad cow disease Mose was reading about in the Budget?"
I stifled a laugh. "I hardly think so."
Then the most extraordinary thing happened. For only the second time in my life I saw tears well up in Freni's eyes. The first time that happened was at my parents' funeral. Even that had surprised me. But to cry because of a little good-natured verbal sparring? Surely not the same Freni Hostetler who could wring a chicken's neck and gut it, all without flinching.
"Freni! What is it?"
"Ach, as if you don't know! You have always taken Barbara's side against me, Magdalena. And you, my own flesh and blood!"
"I have not," I cried indignantly. For me justice is not only blind, she is often deaf. She is seldom, however, mute.
"Yah, you have," Freni wailed, and then chocked me with a full-blown sob.
"What? When?"
"That very first day Barbara stepped off the train in Pittsburgh, you said she was beautiful."
"I did not. I simply said how nice it was for Jonathan that his new wife wasn't vertically challenged. But what if I did say she was beautiful, how does that hurt you?"
"Ach, there you go again, pretending you don't know. Everything is Barbara this, Barbara that - only you don't know what that woman has done to me!"
I grabbed Freni. I wanted to shake her by those sloped shoulders until her eyes fell out. This was all about Jonathan, of course. The apron strings that attached Freni to her son were forged out of steel. No, make that industrial diamonds. Weren't they supposed to be the hardest substance in the world? Well, there was only one thing in the world that could cut, or at least loosen, those unnatural bonds.
"I'll tell you what she's done! She's gotten herself pregnant. She's about to make you a grandma!"
Freni fainted.
I screamed.
"You didn't need to give her mouth-to-mouth," I said crossly to Art.
