No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (27 page)
Read No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk Online
Authors: Tamar Myers
Tags: #Mystery, #Humour, #Detective and mystery stories, #Magdalena (Fictitious Character), #Cookery - Pennsylvania, #Fiction, #Mennonites, #Women Sleuths, #Mennonites - Fiction, #Magdalena (Fictitious Character) - Fiction, #Amatuer Sleuth, #Pennsylvania Dutch Country (Pa.), #Hotelkeepers - Fiction, #Crime Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Amish Recipes, #Yoder, #Hotelkeepers, #Pennsylvania, #Pennsylvania Dutch Country (Pa.) - Fiction, #recipes, #Pennsylvania - Fiction, #Amish Bed and Breakfast, #Cookbook, #Pennsylvania Dutch, #Cozy Mystery Series, #Amish Mystery, #Women detectives, #Amish Cookbook, #Amish Mystery Series, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Women Detectives - Pennsylvania - Fiction, #Cookery
Stayrook didn’t even know the words to “Kumbayah,” so I gave him a half-filled water glass and a greasy spoon and told him to tap out a rhythm. Any rhythm. He looked at me like a lost puppy, so I patted him on the head and told him to hop on his chair.
I hopped up on mine. “Velkommen to de Deutsche Kettle,” I said in my best fake German accent. “Dis morning vee haf—”
“Mama, who’s the weird lady in the black clothes?” an obnoxious urchin asked. Even Miss Progel, my high school gym teacher, didn’t have a voice that loud.
“Hush, Jamie. I think she’s Aymish.”
“Are they like witches?” The wicked boy made a face at me.
“No, dear. I think they’re very poor, though.” She handed her son a few coins. “Go ahead and give them to her.”
I glared at them. “Dis morning I veel be singing zee traditional songs of my people. Hit it,” I said to Stayrook.
He looked like a sheep who’d been asked an algebra question.
“Tap on your glass.”
The boy was in front of me then with his sticky handful of quarters. Since it is a sin to reject charity, I reached for the money. The boy, true to type, dropped all the coins at my feet except one. “Better fork it all over, buster, or you’ll find out firsthand why it is that chickens have no lips.” Please understand that it was the stress talking. I’m usually far more creative.
“Mama!” The little devil ran back to his mother.
At the same moment I saw the mean-looking woman in gray threading her way to me through the packed tables with Brunhild hot on her heels. Coming at me from a slightly different direction were the Farmersburg fiends. Marvin, ever the coward, was not wearing his uniform.
It was then or never.
“Oh give me a home,
Where the pacifists roam,
Where the Amish and Mennonites play.
Where seldom is heard—”
My pursuers were closing in too fast. It was time to switch songs.
“De Camptown races five miles long, dooda, dooda, Dial nine one one all morning long, oh dooda day. Dial nine one one, dial nine one one,
Some bad guys are after us with a gun,
Dial nine one one.”
The mean-looking lady in gray was the first to reach me. “Get off that chair right now!”
I obliged her. “Where’s the back exit?”
“Oh, no you don’t. Not so fast.” Brunhild had me by the arm.
“Ach! Ach!”
Stayrook was flailing around helplessly on his chair, clearly immobilized by genetics. Or was he? After all, his ancestors had only recently adopted the pacifist creed. Perhaps his repressed instincts could still be tapped. I am not one to advocate violence, mind you, but surely a display of fist cuffs would inspire someone to call for help.
“Punch out the big one, Stay. I’ll take care of the mean one.”
That’s all it took to undo just one generation of genetics. Not that Stayrook could bring himself to hit the woman, but he did the next-best thing. He leaped into the air like a cougar and landed on the giant bison’s back. I once saw a still-life display of the same scene at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.
The bison bellowed and bucked, but the brave cougar clung on tightly.
“Call the sheriff!” I screamed. “Somebody call the sheriff!”
“I am the sheriff!” Marvin had the audacity to pull a badge out of his coat pocket and wave it pompously at the patrons. “Everyone stand back now.”
“Eeeeeyah!”
My ninety-pound sister came sailing out of nowhere to land on Marvin’s back, and like a proper she-cat dug her claws into his scalp. Marvin moaned before collapsing, the first victim of the hunt.
The second victim to fall was Arnold Ledbetter. A well-placed whack across the kneecaps with an empty bottle was all one could expect from Danny Hem, given his condition, but he performed well. Although judging by the sounds Amie made as he went down, the acoustics in the Dutch Kettle left much to be desired. The mean-looking lady in gray was going to have to do some major remodeling if she expected me to come back and give a serious performance.
Fortunately, Stayrook was able to cling to the bison long enough for me to convince the owner, who really wasn’t as mean as she looked, that we were the real victims, and that the fellows on the floor were the felons. The sheriff was immediately summoned, and justice prevailed.
Of course, it was a tremendous relief to finally be safe and sound, but nothing could match the relief I felt when I saw Aaron Miller come through that door, just minutes after the sheriff. My Pooky Bear still loved me.
“Everyone knows that Amish farms produce the richest milk,” Freni said from the backseat.
“Flirting with pride, aren’t we, dear?” I chided gently.
“Pride, shmide, it’s true. That dairy was going out of business. It needed Amish milk. Imagine that! One of the largest dairies in the country, and it couldn’t exist without Amish milk.”
“It needed milk from local farms, but not necessarily Amish. It’s the soil and climate of Farmersburg County that make the local milk special, not the religion of the farmers.”
“Ach, that’s practically sacrilegious! And you a Mennonite yet. I would have expected such a comment from Susannah, but not you, Magdalena.”
“Leave me out of this, please.” Susannah, with Shnookums safely returned to her bosom, was acting alarmingly mellow. If she didn’t perk up by the time we got home, I was going to insist that she see a doctor.
“I suppose you think that Stayrook is innocent just because he’s Amish.”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Stayrook was greedy, that’s all there was to it, dear. He was the one who gave envelopes with LSD in the glue to Levi and Yost. Envelopes that perfectly matched the cooperative’s stationery.”
“Yah, but it was that Ledbetter fellow who gave Stayrook the envelopes. And it was Ledbetter who put the idea in Stayrook’s head about buying up all the farms.”
I was fit to be tied. Ledbetter was quite possibly the devil himself in upside-down glasses, but Stayrook was certainly no angel.
“What is this, blame-it-on-the-English day?”
“If the shoe fits,” Freni said smugly.
“No one forced Stayrook to do what he did, Freni. We are all responsible for our own choices.”
“Yah, and that English—what was his name? You know, Susannah’s boyfriend?”
Susannah groaned. “His name is Danny Hem, and he isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Yah, anyway, he chose to be drunk all the time, which is why Ledbetter was able to take over the business. A big business too, worth millions of dollars, they say.”
“Was, dear. Though maybe if Danny dries out the Amish will start supplying him again.”
“Ach, the English and their alcohol,” Freni said sanctimoniously.
“Ha! There you go again. The English this, the English that. Marvin Stoltzfus took a bribe to look the other way, which makes him just as guilty as Arnold Ledbetter. Maybe even more so, because Marvin was sworn to uphold the law.”
“So?”
“So, Marvin Stoltzfus shares enough of your genes to practically be your son. He even looks like you.”
“Why, I never!”
“If the shoe fits, dear. And one more thing, Freni. Stayrook knew that Arnold, not Danny, was harassing Elsie Bontrager. But he didn’t say anything, did he? He didn’t even say anything when Arnold got Elsie to sample some LSD in a slice of cheese, just so she would appear crazy. If that doesn’t make Stayrook guilty, then I don’t know what does! In my opinion the guilty parties should be strung up by their thumbs and pelted to death with cheese balls. And that includes Stayrook!”
“Ach du Heimer! How you talk. Your mama—”
“Leave Mama out of this!”
“Ladies, please,” Aaron said patiently.
To please my Pooky Bear I bit my tongue and pretended to be interested in the snow-covered hills of western Pennsylvania. In less than two hours I would be home, back at the PennDutch Inn, empress of my domain. I had a lot to be thankful for. Just hours before I had almost bought the farm, on a farm, and now I was seated next to the person I loved most in the whole wide world, with the two people I loved next sitting right behind. I could afford to be generous.
“I love you, Susannah,” I said impulsively.
“Huh?”
“I love you, dear.”
“Yeah, right. Same here.”
“I love you, Freni.”
“Ach!”
“Do you love me?”
“Ach!”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ ” I turned to Aaron, who was driving my car. “I love you, Aaron.”
Aaron carefully pulled the car over and parked it under a sign that read BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS.
“I love you too, Magdalena Portulaca Yoder. Will you marry me?” Without waiting for an answer, my emperor pulled me to him and kissed me hard and full on the mouth.
“Yuck, gross,” Susannah had the nerve to say.
Freni held her tongue, but I knew she was watching us with intense interest, no doubt thinking about her Mose.
Oh, for the record, I said, “Yes.”
Discover Tamar Myers
An Amish Bed and Breakfast Mystery with Recipes Series (PennDutch)
Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Crime
No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk
Between a Wok and a Hard Place
Belgian Congo Mystery Series
The Boy Who Stole the Leopard’s Spots
Den of Antiquity Series
Non-Series Books
Criminal Appetites
(anthology)
About the Author
Tamar Myers was born and raised in the Belgian Congo (now just the Congo). Her parents were missionaries to a tribe which, at that time, were known as headhunters and used human skulls for drinking cups. Because of her pale blue eyes, Tamar’s nickname was Ugly Eyes.
Her boarding school was two days away by truck, and sometimes it was necessary to wade through crocodile infested-waters to reach it. Other dangers she encountered as a child were cobras, deadly green mambas, and the voracious armies of driver ants that ate every animal (and human) that didn’t get out of their way.
At sixteen, Tamar's family settled in America, and she immediately underwent culture shock: she didn’t know how to dial a telephone, cross a street at a stoplight, or use a vending machine. She lucked out, however, by meeting her husband, Jeffrey, on her first day at an American high school. They literally bumped heads while he was leaving, and she entering, the Civics classroom.
In college Tamar began to submit novels for publication, but it took twenty-three years for her to get published. Persistence paid off, however, because Tamar is now the author of three ongoing mystery series: One is set in Amish Pennsylvania and features Magdalena Yoder, an Amish-Mennonite sleuth who runs a bed and breakfast inn; one, set in the Carolinas, centers around the adventures of Abigail Timberlake, who runs an antique and collectable store (the Den of Antiquity); and the third is set in the Africa of her youth, with its colorful, unique inhabitants.
Tamar now calls North Carolina home. She lives with her husband, a Basenji dog named Pagan, two rescue kitties: a very large Bengal named Nkashama, and an orange tabby cat who goes by the name of Dumpster Boy. Tamar enjoys gardening (she is a Master Gardner), bonsai, travel, painting and, of course, reading. She's currently working on her next Amish mystery.
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