"Where do you keep the dish towels?" asked Lydia merrily. She had changed out of her ball gown and into a casual, pink cashmere sweater and natural linen slacks.
I opened a drawer and took out a stack of neatly folded towels. "I may have to charge you extra for the privilege," I said, only half-seriously.
"Slumming it, are we?" asked Delbert James, appearing in the doorway. He too had changed, or at least shed the tie and coat.
Lydia seemed to light up like a well-trimmed wick touched to flame. "I was hoping it was going to be just us girls," she practically cooed. It was embarrassingly obvious she was hoping anything but that.
I swallowed my surprise for the third time and handed them each a towel. "Stack the dried dishes on that counter. I'll put them away myself. But you can hang the pots on those pegs over there."
"Aye, aye, Captain," said Delbert. Without the tie, or maybe it was without the Congressman, he was a different person altogether.
"I suppose this is a first for both of you," I teased. Well, maybe probed.
Delbert chuckled. "Not for me. Not by a long shot. I put myself through Northwestern washing dishes. Four years of journalism paid for with dishpan hands."
"You're a journalist by training?"
"Speech writer, actually."
"That's very interesting. My sister, Susannah, has always wanted to be a writer. But fiction, not speeches."
"Is there a difference?" asked Lydia.
We all laughed. "What exactly does a Congressman's aide do?" I asked.
"Besides speech writing," said Delbert, "just about everything. On this trip, I even act as gun-bearer."
"So only the Congressman hunts?"
"I hunt," said Lydia. There seemed to be pride in her voice. "Daddy took me with him on safari in Africa when I was just a little girl. Of course, that was back in the old days, before we gave much thought to conservation." She paused and gave me a slightly challenging look. "Deer hunting in Pennsylvania is a different story altogether."
"Of course," I agreed. I did understand. There are many more deer in the state now than there were when the first white settlers showed up. Every year over a thousand deer are killed by cars on our county's highways alone. Not that I could ever kill one intentionally myself, although I have had the urge from time to time when I find them in my garden.
"Lydia, I mean, Mrs. Ream, is a first-class shot," said Delbert. He lowered his voice. "She can outs hoot the Congressman any day."
Lydia laughed and flicked Delbert playfully with her towel. I looked discreetly away. I generally try to ignore my guests' shenanigans, which doesn't mean, of course, that I approve of them. It's just that I have all I can handle in Susannah. "I aim to bag the biggest buck around," she said, imitating Billy Dee's accent.
"Does it bother you that we have A.P.E.S. staying at the inn?" I asked. It was more of a warning than a question. I genuinely liked Lydia and didn't want to see her tackled by the likes of Jeanette Parker.
"What?"
"She means," said Delbert, solemnly folding his dish towel, "that Billy Dee and the rest all belong to an organization called the Animal Parity Endowment Society. They're philosophically and morally opposed to the taking of any animal's life. They are especially against hunting for sport."
Lydia's face suddenly lost its animation. Where just a moment before, she had appeared relaxed and surprisingly youthful, now it was as if she had just donned a mask of well-bred inscrutability. It did not suit her nearly as well. "I see," she said. Even her diction had changed. "And how long have you known this, Delbert?"
Delbert cleared his throat before answering. "The Congressman and I both recognized Ms. Parker and Ms. McMahon when we entered the dining room night. Both of them have been up on the Hill a number of times lobbying for their cause."
"And the other two? Mr. Grizzle and the sculptor from Philadelphia?"
"Garrett," he looked at me, "I mean, the Congressman, suspected they might be part of the organization as well. That's why he asked those questions about hunting at supper. A quick call afterward confirmed it. Mr. Grizzle has been a member for three years. Mr. Teitlebaum, the sculptor, for almost seven. They're all here together, and as far as we know they intend to disrupt our plans for tomorrow."
"You knew about this?" asked Lydia. The question was directed to me, and sounded stingingly like an accusation.
The most valuable lesson I ever learned from Papa was to stick up for myself with confidence. Especially if I had done nothing wrong. We Mennonites may be pacifists, but we're not pushovers. "Everyone has to use the six-seater," Papa used to say,
"and it all ends up in the same big hole." The six-seater was our outhouse, and most of our family's quality-time was spent around that one big hole. Of course, we now have indoor plumbing, along with telephones in every room. Incidentally, our six-seater is still the biggest outhouse in the county.
"I most certainly did not know about this. Not when I booked this week's reservations. It wasn't until Billy Dee arrived, and he was the last one, I might add, that I found out. He told me himself."
Lydia's mask was still tightly in place. "And how long were you going to keep this information to yourself? Until after the reporters got involved and you got yourself some more coverage for the inn?"
That raised even my pacifist hackles. The Penn- Dutch does not need any additional coverage. Certainly not coverage of confrontation over controversial cases. "And just how long were your husband and his aide going to keep their discovery from you? I am, after all, the one who clued you in, not them."
The mask slipped a trifle. "I'm sorry, Miss Yoder. I apologize. You do have a point."
Never miss out on an opportunity to kick a dead horse; it is, after all, a form of exercise. I was tempted to tell Lydia there already was a reporter on the premises, and I had yet to spill one solitary bean of information to her. Wisely, though, I concluded that rubbing Lydia's nose in my discretion would be more trouble than it was worth. Instead, I decided to accept her apology.
People hate it when you forgive them. "I forgive you," I said.
Lydia's face assumed the color of one of Freni's pickled beets. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some matters to take care of." She carefully put down her dish towel, and then, with the regal bearing of a queen, departed my humble kitchen. Delbert immediately I chased after her, like a faithful dog. Of course he was I of a breed much larger and quieter than Shnookums's.
I finished up the dishes by myself. The hot water was as therapeutic as ever. When I pulled the plug and watched the last of the water swirling down the drain, I imagined my troubles were the food particles caught up in the vortex. Starting with Jeanette
Parker, and ending up with Lydia Johns Ream, the whole shebang; of them, Susannah and her mutt included, swirled out of sight, and temporarily out of mind. Very temporarily. I was still wiping out the sink when the Congressman himself paid me a visit.
"Miss Yoder!" I whirled, clutching my wet towel defensively to my bosom. Not since Crazy Maynard Miller exposed him- self at my window one night have I felt so frightened. Or so guilty.
"Yes!" The Congressman had been standing right behind me, and when I turned, he nearly poked me in the eye with his righteously extended forefinger. Seeing him so close, I yelped involuntarily. Unfortunately there was no room for me to back up. I flattened my buttocks against the still-warm sink.
"Miss Yoder," he said through clenched teeth, "I am a patient man. A tolerant man. But I will not have people meddling in my business. Is that clear?"
I felt like I had when Mr. Lichty, my sixth-grade teacher, caught me doodling during long division. Although Garrett Ream and I were approximately the same age, the fact that he was a United States Congressman, an Episcopalian at that, and I a mere
Mennonite innkeeper, made me feel about as equal to him as Shnookums must have felt to me. "Yes, sir. I understand," I said.
But of course I didn't. What I said to his wife was my business, not his.
"It's bad enough that you booked those people during my hunting trip. But you had no right to scare Mrs. Ream with unnecessary information."
"I didn't mean to scare her. Just inform her."
"To what purpose?"
"To keep her from having to tangle with Jeanette Parker. It hasn't happened here yet, but I've read accounts of animal rights activists hassling hunters in other counties."
"I can take care of my own wife, thank you. And Ms. Parker."
"Well, excuuuuse me for caring," I said. It was the exact tone Susannah uses when she means anything but. I guess I'd had enough. Garrett Ream might have been a Congressman, but he had to use the six-seater just as often as the rest of us.
He backed away slightly, but I kept my fanny pressed up against the sink.
"Well, this wasn't the only thing I came down here to talk about," he said. He was decidedly less belligerent, so, in addition to onion on his breath, I could smell a favor coming on.
I said nothing. It was the first sense of power I'd felt all evening.
"You see," he hastened to explain, "in order for us to avoid any kind of confrontation with this group, we need to leave the hotel very early."
"That makes sense. Provided they don't follow you." I was sorely tempted to tell him that there was a reporter sacked out upstairs.
"You won't tell, will you?" It was more of an order than a question.
"I'm not the fool you take me for." He smiled in an apparent attempt to smooth things over. "You are far from anybody's fool, Miss Yoder. If I had you on my staff, I'm sure the team would get a lot more done."
I didn't smile back. "I'm not looking for a job, Congressman. What is it exactly that you want?"
He sighed, a fake-sounding sigh of defeat, and ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair. "Just breakfast. An early breakfast-say fiveish, and box lunches for the three of us. And feel free to use meat." Then he laughed at his own little joke.
"Bacon and eggs for five at three - I mean, three at five. And ham and lettuce sandwiches to go. Anything else?"
"That you not tell my wife we had this little conversation."
"As you wish." He left abruptly, without even as much as a thank you. As I watched him go, I realized that Congressman
Garrett Ream no longer seemed so handsome as when he had checked in. His features may have been regular, maybe even classical in shape, but he was ugly just the same.
"Please close the door!" I called after him. Of course he didn't. Wearily I started to make and pack the lunches he'd requested. As tired as I was, I'd be even more tired at five in the morning. That I knew.
7
I stuck my head in the dining room before going off to bed. Guests are forever leaving lights on. A recent survey, conducted by yours truly, revealed that people use eight and a half times more electricity and water when staying at places other than their own homes. It is no coincidence, for example, that most of New York City's blackouts occur in the summertime, when the city is full of tourists.
Anyway, I stuck more than just my head into the dining room. At first I couldn't believe what I saw. There, sewing contentedly away on the stretched quilt, were Linda McMahon and Billy Dee Grizzle. It was like finding a cat and a mouse gnawing away at the same piece of cheese.
I approached them quietly, not stealthily. At five feet ten, and one hundred and fifty pounds, I am too big- boned to do anything stealthily. Still, I got close enough to discern Linda's soft, almost girlish voice.
"Of course I love her, Billy Dee. But that doesn't mean I approve. Blackmail is blackmail. And besides, you can only push someone so far."
"She's pushed a lot of people too far, Linda. Someday someone's going to put a stop to it."
Linda looked up from her sewing with what appeared to be concern. "She apologized to you, Billy Dee. Publicly, even.
Remember?"
Billy Dee chuckled, but it wasn't a happy sound. "Yes, she did apologize. After I 'found the light.' "
"But you did find the light. I mean, you did change. So now you can understand why she took the position she did, can't you?"
"Yeah, I guess, Linda. But it ain't her blackmailing that's bothering me now. We've got our own little problem to take care of."
Linda beat the stretched fabric of the quilt with both fists. "But it isn't a problem, Billy Dee. We've been over this a million times. I want to keep it!"
At that point I stubbed my right big toe on a chair, and since both the chair and I made a lot of noise, my presence was immediately evident. I covered the best I could.
