The Crepes of Wrath (13 page)

“I don’t mean to brag,” I said, “but I
am
a damn good private detective—pardon my language.”

George’s brush paused in midstroke. “Really?”

“Oh yes. Our Chief of Police Melvin Stoltzfus is a total nincompoop. He once gave his favorite aunt a gallon of ice cream.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“He sent it by UPS. Anyway, Melvin needs my help more than a duck needs water.”

“Doesn’t he have a department?”

“This is a very small town, George. His department consists of Zelda Root, Assistant Chief of Police. Zelda is great at mediating domestic disputes, picking up dead animals and disposing of them—oh, and she hangs out at the high school whenever there’s a game. But just between you and me, Zelda couldn’t find her bosoms if it weren’t for her bra.” I giggled nervously, thinking maybe I’d overstepped the boundary of intimacy in a friendship as new as ours.

But George smiled and nodded. “I see. Well, what is it the Chief himself does?”

“Traffic tickets.”

“In a little town like this?”

“We get lots of tourists, and Melvin isn’t above ticketing Amish.”

“Whatever for?”

“Road apples.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The product of equine elimination,” I said, “if you prefer a more delicate phrase. There is a town ordinance requiring horses to wear a sort of diaper, but most of the Amish don’t comply—it’s just too much trouble.”

“Hmm. I always thought of them as being law abiding.”

“Well, they are. For the most part. One family actually upped and moved to Ontario, rather than break a law they felt was silly.”

“Road apples and lovers’ quarrels. It doesn’t sound like you get to exercise your detecting skills very often.”

“Oh, but I do. There have been more murders here than you might think. Kidnapping too. And now I’m working on a drug case.”

George put the brush back in water and folded his hands over the barest suggestion of a paunch. “You don’t say.”

“Actually it’s a murder slash drug case.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“I wish I was. The victim was a middle-aged Mennonite housewife. The coroner says she died of—”

He held up a hand. “Magdalena, should you be telling me all this?”

“Actually, I was hoping maybe you could help.”

“Me?”

I could tell that he was offended. “It has nothing to do with your race, or the fact that you come from a big city. I was hoping for your professional opinion.”

“As a psychiatrist?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “But I’m retired. You should be talking to my wife. For a fee.”

“Well!” It was my turn to be offended.

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist it. So, what is it you want to know?”

“How can you tell if someone is crazy—I mean, has parted company with reality.”

He chuckled. “Now that’s a good way of putting it. But you’re right, it is sometimes difficult to tell.”

“You and your wife seemed pretty certain that I was cra—uh, had parted, so to speak.”

George grimaced. “Touché. You did seem a bit stressed. At first. But it has since become quite clear that you function well within the parameters of what appears to be normal in this community. Although I still say a cat in one’s cleavage is pushing the envelope.”

I grinned. Little Freni had chosen that very moment to stretch, turn, and resettle herself in my right cup. I’m sure all that movement appeared odd when viewed from outside my dress.

“She’s only a little kitten. When she gets over two pounds, then out she goes. So anyway, how
can
you be sure someone has genuinely slipped over the line, or if they’re just faking it?”

He nodded. “Ah, your cook. Trust me on this one. Both Margaret and I—”

“I’m not talking about Freni,” I wailed. “I’m talking about him!”

“Who?”

“Him!”
I pointed to the man approaching us from the direction of Hertzler Road.

George removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and put his glasses back on. “I still don’t see anyone.”

“That’s because he’s wearing a camouflage suit and is crawling along on his belly.”

George repeated the ritual just to be polite. This time, however, he did see something. He stood for a better look.

“A fat little man with red hair?”

“Joseph Mast. And he’s not so much fat, as husky. He’s a carpenter by trade.”

“
Why
is he doing that?” Hernia was turning out to be a rich source of material, should George ever decide to publish a textbook on nut—I mean, parted-from-reality cases.

“He thinks he’s in Vietnam. No doubt he’s trying to avoid detection from the Viet Cong.”

“Is he a friend of yours?”

“He’s my prime suspect in the drug/murder case. My only suspect, in fact. Say, you don’t see a goat with him, do you?”

“You mean the one in the pink dress and high heels?”

“Very funny. But I’m warning you, if one does show up, just butt it on the head.”

“With what?”

“Your head, of course.”

George groaned, but mercifully kept any other comments to himself. We watched in silence as Joseph wiggled his way across the pasture toward us. He didn’t come in a straight line, but following the logic of his damaged—or supposedly damaged—mind, took advantage of grass clumps, almost infinitesimal changes in elevation, even old dried clumps of cow manure.

Finally Joseph got close enough to risk speaking in a loud whisper. “Magdalena, you all right?”

“I’m fine, dear.”

“Who is that with you?”

“Colonel Sanders.”

“V.C. ?” His eyes behind the round rimless lenses were dull, and he seemed to be looking right past me. Or maybe just inside his head.

“AC/DC,” I said and winked at George.

“It isn’t funny,” George said sternly, albeit in a whisper. “Mental illness is not a laughing matter.”

I blushed with shame. “Sorry. Joe,” I said in a normal speaking voice, “this is one of the guests at my inn. He’s a—”

“My name is George Hanson.” George stuck his hand out, but poor Joseph remained prone.

“How are Amanda and Benedict?” I asked. I wasn’t mocking him, just trying to be friendly.

That triggered something. The lights came on in Joe’s head and he stood. Bits of grass and cow dung clung to his clothing, perfecting the camouflage.

“They’re fine. Benedict can’t stop saying your name.”

“Is he still being rude?”

“He’s only a parrot, Magdalena. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

“Yeah, right.” I reintroduced George, but taking a cue from him, did not divulge his profession. “So what brings you out to see me?” I asked when the pleasantries were done.

Joe rolled his eyes a quarter turn, indicating George.

“A walk?” I said brightly. “You want to take a walk?”

Joe looked around desperately. “Where?”

George touched me lightly on the shoulder. “I could use a walk,” he said. “Been painting too long.”

“You sure?”

“Call of nature. You think it would be all right to leave my stuff here?”

“We don’t lock our doors in Hernia, dear.”

Joe waited until George was presumably out of earshot. “My Lizzie died from an overdose of Angel Dust.”

“Yes, I know that. Melvin told me.”

“There’s your connection.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Keim boys.”

“Oh Joe, please not that again.”

“They use drugs.”

“Really?” I could only hope that the sarcasm dripping from that word wouldn’t stain my shoes.

He nodded. “I followed them last night. They met up with a bunch of other kids—maybe twenty in all. They were smoking and drinking pretty heavily, and then about an hour after that someone brought out a little brown bag, and they got into the really hard stuff.”

“Angel Dust?”

He shrugged. “I only smoked weed in Nam. I don’t know what all they were doing, but it wasted a couple of them.”

“Killed them?” I asked in alarm. He was remarkably convincing.

“No, not that kind of wasted. I mean really strung-out. You know,
high
.”

“Oh. How could you tell?” I have often suspected that guests at my inn—particularly the Hollywood crowd—were on something besides aspirin, but had no way of confirming my suspicions. Susannah only drinks, and usually has the good sense to stay well away when she does.

“Well, they started acting crazy.” He didn’t seem at all embarrassed by the word.

“Please elaborate, dear.”

“One of them thought he was the devil. He was jumping around trying to catch the others. Then one girl said she was you and—”

“She most certainly did not!”

“But she did. Magdalena Yoder is what she said. Of course there are other Magdalena Yoders in the county, so maybe she meant someone else.”

“You bet your bippy.”

“Anyway, this really scared some of the other kids and they left. But the girl who said she was—uh, Magdalena, and the boy who said he was Satan, they hung around. So did the oldest Keim boy. You know, the dark one. Then the other boy and girl got all quiet, like they were asleep or something, and the Keim boy tried to wake them up, but had a real hard time of it. Finally, he got them on their feet and they all left. That’s when I left too. Well, a few minutes later, of course, so they wouldn’t see me.”

“Of course.” I prayed for a charitable tongue, but feeling no difference in my mouth, decided to take my chances. “And where did this all happen, Joe? Out among the haystacks?”

He gave me a pitying look. “Of course not. It happened in a barn.”

I sighed. “Benjamin and Catherine might turn a blind eye now and then, but they’re not ostriches.”

“Actually, Magdalena, ostriches don’t bury their heads in the sand. You see, their heads are very small in proportion to their bodies, and when they peck at the ground to eat, or turn their eggs, it only appears as if their heads are buried.”

“Thanks for the nature lesson, dear. But you know what I mean. It is preposterous to think the elder Keims wouldn’t stop such a thing from going on in their barn.”

“Oh, it wasn’t their barn.”

“Then whose was it?”

“Nobody’s.”

“Figures.”

“But it used to be the Berkey barn. You know, out there where Create-A-Dream is selling those estates?”

I gasped. “Not a half mile away from where that English couple, the Hamptons, have carved out their little kingdom?”

“You know them?”

“We’ve met. Joe, do you think the Hamptons are involved?”

His thick shoulders twitched. “Who knows? They weren’t there, of course, or I would have mentioned it.”

It was amazing, but I totally believed Joe now. Which is not to say that I didn’t still think he had problems. But then again, don’t we all?

“Okay, Joe, so Elam Keim and some of his cronies are doing drugs in an old abandoned barn.” I smiled kindly. “How does this relate to Lizzie?”

It was a definite shrug this time. “I don’t know. But it’s got to somehow. Next-door neighbor kids taking drugs, and that’s how Lizzie dies. You know, she never even had as much as a sip of wine her entire life.”

“Temperance is not all it’s cracked up to be,” I wailed.

“What?”

“Never mind, dear. Do you think those kids will be back there tonight?”

“Don’t know. That would be your job to find out, right?”

“Right.”

He looked around, suddenly nervous. “Well, got to go.”

“So soon? And we were just getting along. Can’t you stay long enough to get better acquainted with George when he gets back from his potty break?”

Joe’s response was to drop to his belly and begin the long, slow process of scuttling back across the cow pasture. He never looked back.

* * *

George was obviously not in any hurry to get back. I sat in his chair, in the shade of the willow, waiting patiently to talk to him about Joe. Then I waited impatiently. Finally boredom forced me to pick up one of his brushes, squeeze a bit of brown pigment from a half-rolled tube, and paint the outline of a third turtle on the log. Then, still bored, I took another brush and hid my name in green among the cattails.

By then it was time to boogie on out of there, so I skipped across the remaining pasture to Gabe’s. While skipping may sound like an odd choice of locomotion for a woman in her middle years, it is nonetheless a very good form of aerobic exercise. When I knocked on Gabriel Rosen’s front door, I was breathing rather hard.

“Calm yourself,” he said with a grin. “I know I have that effect on women, but I thought it was lost on you.”

I choked back my gut response. What wasn’t lost on me was the fact that Gabe was wearing only cutoff denim shorts.
Short
shorts that displayed strong, well-toned thighs. I had never seen his naked torso before—well, not during waking moments—and was, to put it frankly, pleased at what I saw. He was muscular, without being bulky, and he had a patch of dark hair in the middle of his golden chest that ran like a funnel down to his waistband. As far as I could see, he had no more hair on his back than did I.

“Anything wrong, Magdalena?”

“Nothing,” I squeaked.

“Come in.” He ushered me in, and as I squeezed past him, his smell made me every bit as heady as the Hamptons’ champagne. It was times like that when I wished I were a Roman Catholic. Without someone to confess my lust to, guilt was going to stay with me a long, long time.

“Have a seat,” he said. He didn’t seem at all upset with me for standing him up the previous evening. Maybe he had a very generous, forgiving spirit, or maybe he just didn’t care.

I sat on one end of a buttery soft, black leather couch. Gabe sat on the other.

“So what have you been up to?” I asked.

He picked up a book, which had been lying face-down, spine bent, on the heavy wood coffee table in front of us. “I’ve been reading this most fascinating memoir by a woman named Ramat Sreym, which I bought, by the way, at Yoder’s Corner Market. Anyway, Ramat’s parents were missionaries to the Belgian Congo, one of the most remote places on the face of the earth. She was also a well-known mystery writer, but it took her years to find a publisher willing to publish this book.”

“Why?”

He shrugged and his chest muscles rippled. “Who knows? The publishing industry doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Ramat’s memoirs are every bit as riveting as
Angela’s Ashes
. In the end she had to resort to asking her fans to write her mystery publisher and request the memoirs. Of course she couldn’t do this directly, so she made a veiled reference to it in one of her books.” He put the book back on the table. “So, what have you been up to?”

“Me? Well, you know, business as usual.”

He nodded. “So how did your errand go last night?”

“What?” I prayed that he had selective amnesia. If my prayer was answered, he wouldn’t remember the hours spent awaiting for me atop Stucky Ridge.

“You were in a hurry to get someplace yesterday afternoon. Everything go all right?”

“I’m sorry,” I wailed. “I tried to get there, I really did. But who knew I would have three flat tires in an Amish driveway?”

He put up a quieting hand. “Look, I’m not blaming you. In fact, I should be blaming myself.
You
should be blaming me.”

“Whatever for?”

His warm brown eyes left my face and focused on
Miss Sreym’s book jacket. “Well, because I was a no-show myself.”

“What?”

He grinned and ran long fingers through thick black hair. “I got kind of caught up in the book
I’m
writing. It was the final scene, you know, where everything gets tied up neatly in a little package. Anyway, when I looked at the clock, it was already a quarter past eight. I know I should have called, Magdalena, but I was just too chicken.”

“Well!” I said with righteous indignation.