"In other words, I should solve the crime myself, just to keep Melvin off my back?"
Doc looked genuinely sorry for me. "Considering the alternative, I'd have to say yes."
"Life isn't fair!" I wailed.
"Of course not," said Doc. He looked around, as if trying to spot spies, and lowered his voice to an almost inaudible whisper. "So cheat a little bit."
-8-
Sometime during my brief absence from the inn, a plague of reporters had descended on my front lawn. Although they weren't eating my grass as locusts might have, they were damaging it all the same.
"Get off my grass," I said not unpleasantly at first. But reporters, like locusts, are not known for their acute hearing. Locusts don't even have ears, and as for reporters, the appendages they sport are for show. A reporter's ears might as well be made of latex.
"Get off my grass before I pitch you off," I said perhaps carelessly.
"Would that be with a pitchfork?" asked a particularly obnoxious-looking young woman. I hate pert and perky little women who are color-coordinated and flawlessly coiffed. And it's worse if they're young.
"No comment," I said, still living dangerously.
"Then perhaps you might care to comment on the deceased's mob connections."
"His what?"
"Oh, come now, you're not going to pretend you don't know anything about Don Manley's ties with the syndicate? He was scheduled to go before a New Jersey grand jury at the end of the month on money-laundering charges, something he presumably did to help payoff a huge debt that - "
"Arnold Hetrick from Far-Out magazine," interrupted a rather seedy-looking man. "Is it true, Miss Yoder, that you and Don Manley were lovers, and that you killed him because he was having an affair with DarIa Strutt on the side?"
"That's absolutely not true, Arnie," I said. I grabbed the unsuspecting pert reporter and put my arm around her shoulders. "It's we who are lovers." Then I gave her a quick smooch on the forehead and fled inside while the two of them were still in shock.
Susannah was furious when I got back to the inn. She got right in my face, as they say. "Some dude named Jumbo called for you four times! What do you think I am, Mags, your damned answering service?"
I smiled sweetly. "Swear at me again, Susannah, and it will be your last time."
"What is this, another murder threat?" my sister asked meanly, but she backed off.
"So, what did Jim want?"
"How should I know? Call him and talk to him yourself."
I did.
"Jumbo Jim's Fried Chicken and Seafood Palace," said the cheery voice.
"Hi, Jim, it's me, Magdalena."
"Doll!"
"Susannah said you called. Sorry I was out."
"No prob. We still on for this weekend?"
"That depends, Jim. There's been another murder out at my place, and our police chief thinks I'm a suspect."
"You guilty?"
"Not of murder, Jim."
"Then no prob, doll. Be at your place at six sharp on Saturday."
"Things are a little bit hectic here, Jim, what with the movie and the murder. Can we meet at Ed's Steak House in Bedford? It's right off.the turnpike, on old U.S. 220."
"Can do, doll. See you then." Jim hung up.
Okay, so Jim isn't big on words. Anyway, talk is cheap, as Grandma Yoder used to say. At least I had the makings of a man in my life, which was more than I could say for a long time. All right, so it was the first time, but we all have a first time. It's nothing to get proud about.
In Hernia, when someone dies, people take notice. Men shine their shoes and get out their ties, and the women bake a couple of pies for the postfuneral meal. Things must be different in Hollywood. Once Don's body was removed from my barn to the county morgue, Reels and Runs Productions proceeded with their business as if nothing had happened. The very morning after the murder, shooting resumed.
"There have been a few script revisions, folks," Steven stated as he passed around new copies to those of us with speaking parts.
I glanced anxiously at my copy. After a couple of seconds, I gave up glancing and sat down to read, as had virtually everyone else. The script fairies, or whoever they were, had been very busy overnight. Whereas the old script had been primarily about a berserk Amishman who strangled and then did unspeakable things to women in a bathtub, the new script called for the movie to be filmed almost exclusively in a barn. My barn. And instead of a mad Amishman drowning women, there was now a mad but grossly deformed Amishman living among the hay bales who was terrified of anyone entering his secret domain. A sort of The Hunchback of Yoder's Barn. Only this was no sweet, passive hunchback, but a mean-tempered fellow with a deadly aim when it came to throwing pitchforks. Of course, there might have been other elements to the story as well, but it was hard for me to see them. Although this new version lacked exploitive sex, it was still packed with violence-a distinctly un-Amish or Mennonite trait.
I wasn't the only one who was dissatisfied with the revision. "I won't do it, Art," said Rip Oilman through clenched teeth.
Art mumbled something that presumably Rip heard, but Rip still wasn't placated. "I won't playa grossly deformed hunchback. My fans want to see me as I am." He patted his chest. "You're going to have to get someone else for the part."
"Try Melvin Stoltzfus," I couldn't help saying "He's a natural."
Art ignored me and mumbled something else to Rip. I couldn't hear everything, but it had something to do with a contract.
"Then I'll buy myself out," said Rip. "I didn't want to come to this backwater location to begin with. The set is a dump, the food stinks, and you call that a motel we're staying in?"
"Right on," said DarIa rudely.
Art broke character and shuffled over to Rip. Grabbing him by the arm, he steered him over to the far corner of the room. Then both men mumbled for an interminable length of time. When they broke huddle, Rip was smiling, and Art, at least, looked pleased.
"Then I want more money too," whined DarIa. "I've been a star longer than Rip."
"Far longer," agreed Rip.
DarIa flashed him daggers. I'm sure she would have flashed him pitchforks if she could have done so.
Steven swiftly translated Art's latest mumbling. "Okay, folks, we're going to break now for an early lunch, and then afterward, we meet at the barn for a rehearsal of Scene Thirty-two, on page one hundred and forty. There's no dialogue in that scene, so it shouldn't give us any problems. Miss Strutt, Mr. Oilman, Miss Yoder, and the Biddle sisters, we'll be needing all of you."
"And not me?" asked Susannah on the verge of tears.
Steven smiled. "Of course you. We can't shoot any of Miss Strutt's scenes without you to block them in. You're a very important person."
Susannah elbowed me on the way to lunch. "Did you hear that, Mags? Steven said I'm a very important person."
Fortunately, before I could think of a suitable response, Freni ambushed me. "Psst! Magdalena!"
I stepped gratefully into the kitchen, which smelled wonderful, as it always does when Freni cooks. "What is it?"
There was panic in Freni's voice when she spoke. "This early lunch. They can't do that. It's not ready yet!"
"Just do the best you can, Freni. It's they who called an early lunch. It's not your fault."
My temperamental little kinswoman untied her apron and pulled it over her head, nearly knocking off her white prayer bonnet in the process. "I quit, Magdalena. These English are too unpredictable. A meal is ready when it is done cooking, not before."
"What are you cooking?"
"Roast beef and barbecued chicken. But the roast beef is still raw and Mose just now put the chicken on the grill."
I patted Freni reassuringly. "You don't have a problem after all. The English love their beef raw. They call it 'rare.' And as for the chicken, stick it close up under the broiler for a few minutes until it turns nice and black. Then tell them it's Cajun style."
Freni reluctantly did what I suggested and got her highest reviews ever. Even the rude Rip Oilman, who had previously criticized her cooking, said that it was the best meal he'd had in recent memory. Allowing for the fact that Rip's memory probably goes back only a matter of days, it was still a nice thing to say.
Of course, Freni really only cared what Art thought about the meal. She was, after all, more fond of him than ever. If Art had grown a beard, shaved off his mustache, and worn plain clothes, Freni would have undoubtedly adopted him. Meanwhile, Freni's real son, John, toiled meaningfully away on the family farm, less than a mile away as the crow flies, all but forgotten by his mother. And just because he had married Barbara Zook, a six-foot-tall, sturdy gal from one of the western Amish communities, who had the bad habit of speaking her own mind from time to time. Apparently, two unfettered tongues in the same family do not tranquility make.
I was the first of the cast to report to the barn. Although I am normally very conscientious and punctual, those were not my motives. I simply wanted to see the individual looks on the other cast members' faces when they entered the scene of the crime. My own, I'm sure, was a bit unusual.
Melvin had roped off the immediate area surrounding the post against which Don Manley had been forked, but it was visible from virtually any point on the lower level of the barn. The vast amount of blood the assistant director had spilled had, for the most part, soaked through the cracks of the barn floor, but there was one warped floorboard.that had caught some of the blood and held it, as if it were a shallow wooden bowl. The blood had congealed and evaporated to the point that the residue resembled something very close to good old-fashioned German blood-pudding sausage. The entire bloodstained area was swarming with flies. In the midday August heat, my once clean and tidy barn smelled like a slaughterhouse, which, of course, it was.
Anyway, I climbed up to the first level of the hayloft, where most of the mad-Amishman scenes were to be filmed. Already the crew had positioned cameras and huge lights mounted on rolling pedestals. What seemed like miles and miles of cable spread in all directions. It was as if a giant spider had spun her web throughout my barn. Fortunately it was August, and Bessie and Matilda, my two Holstein cows, could spend their days outside. Mose had even volunteered to milk them outside, which would probably work in Bessie's case, because she was a wanton, shameless bovine anyway. Matilda, however, was very shy about giving her milk, as befits a Mennonite cow.
I sat there on the edge of the loft with my feet dangling over, and contemplated what my greed had wrought. There I was, dressed in traditional Amish garb, about to play the mother of a mad, pitchfork-pitching Amishman, in the same barn that had been built by my own Amish ancestors-peaceful ones, all of them. Back in the French and Indian War days, my ancestors, the Jacob Hochstetler family, had submitted to massacre by the Delaware Indians rather than lift a finger in their own defense. Historically we were a peace-loving, plain people, and now here was I, desecrating everyone's memory, and for what? Money and a very slim chance at fame, or at least recognition. But it was a lot of money, enough to see Susannah and me well into our dotage, even if the PennDutch failed. And as for the fame, it is indeed a two-edged sword that only the best of us can resist plunging willfully into our own breasts. Clearly I did not number among the best of us.
But of course I didn't stop there. Like just about everyone else, I made up excuses to justify my choices. The movie would be made anyway, I reasoned. At least by allowing it to be filmed at the PennDutch, I could keep an eye on it and try to exercise my control. We were to be in the world, but not of it, Scripture told us, and I was simply making sure that I was in it. I can admit now that I was in it way over my head, but at the time my ability to rationalize was my most practiced skill. And anyway, the new script, while it called for violence and other behavior uncharacteristic of the Amish, was at least devoid of exploitive sex. You'll give me that much, won't you?
The first people to return from lunch were some of the crew members. I could tell they were unhappy that I was up in the loft, sitting among their equipment, but I was much older than they and dressed quite a bit differently, so they were too intimidated to say anything. At any rate, besides looking irritated when they saw me, none of them showed much of a reaction when they trooped into the barn. I certainly didn't see guilt written on their faces. And I know what guilt looks like - I do use a mirror, you know.
Of all the people that showed up on the set that day, only Susannah averted her eyes from the beam to which Don Manley had been pegged. But despite the fact that Susannah is my sister, I very much doubted that she was the killer. To stab someone, even through the abdomen, with a pitchfork as blunted as mine would take considerable strength - something Susannah just does not have. She may be tall like me, but she is rail-thin. And besides which, with all her swirling yardage, Susannah would most certainly have gotten blood on her, and she hadn't.
