No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (6 page)

“Yost Yoder had a lot of friends.”

“And family,” Susannah said.

The bishop seemed to notice her for the first time. “Yes, the Yoders are a large family.” He stared at my sister’s outfit. “You aren’t a Yoder, are you?”

Susannah laughed with forced gaiety. “Me? No, I’m an Entwhistle.”

The man filling in the grave paused for a moment and stared at Susannah. In a far corner of the cemetery a crow cawed.

“Funny,” said the bishop, “but you have the Yoder nose.”

Susannah’s next attempt at laughing reminded me of Mad Elmo’s mule. When I was a little girl in Hernia, Elmo and his mule used to go door to door selling rags. Elmo sold the rags; the mule didn’t. Mama always used to buy two or three rags (which she later burned), and I was allowed to give the mule a sugar cube. Each time, before I gave the mule his cube, I would tell him to laugh, and he would oblige me by throwing back his head and braying. Susannah hadn’t even been born then, but somehow she had perfected the mule’s laugh.

“Hyawwwww! No, this is an Entwhistle nose! A Presbyterian nose. Hyawwwww!”

The crow cawed again.

Bishop Kreider stepped back to avoid the spittle. “Wouldn’t surprise me if there was Dutch in you somewhere, though. You look very familiar to me.”

“Presbyterian back to Adam,” Susannah said, as the crow cawed a third time.

It was time for me to step forward. “Susannah! There you are!”

My sister blanched. “Margaret, what a coincidence! Fancy meeting you here.”

I refused to play her game. “Not such a coincidence, dear—we came together in my car. You were supposed to save that parking spot, remember?”

Susannah disentangled herself from the Englisher and pulled me rudely off to the side. “How dare you, Mags! Don’t you know who that is?”

“Looks like an Amish bishop, an Amish grave filler, and an Englisher to me,” I said.

“The Englisher is Danny Hem! The Danny Hem.”

“Oh, that Danny Hem. I think I saw his picture once in the post office.”

Susannah paled again. “Did you really?”

“No, but should I have?”

Susannah stamped a long, narrow foot. It might have been impatience, but then again, clog sandals on a freezing day, even a sunny one, are probably not that comfortable. “Of course not! Danny Hem is not a criminal. He’s a rock star.”

“He is?” What did I know? In another life I had been briefly but madly in love with Mark Dinning, after hearing “Teen Angel” on my friend Cheryl’s radio. When I tuned our family radio to the station that played his songs, Mama almost had a heart attack. You would have thought I had invited the devil into our house. Even though I was already in the fifth grade by then, Mama washed my mouth out with soap, which struck me as terribly unfair. It was Mark who had crooned the blasphemous words, not me.

“Oh Mags, you are so provincial,” Susannah said. She didn’t dare roll her eyes outdoors at that temperature, for fear they would freeze in an unflattering position. “Danny Hem and the Vibrators were at the top of the charts for eleven weeks in 1984.”

“You don’t say.”

“Of course, Danny isn’t still with the band. For your information, he owns some cheese factory here in Farmersburg. Daisy Duck Dairies, or something like that.”

“That’s Daisy bell Dairies, dear. Now, what I want to know is, how come you didn’t save that spot for me?”

Susannah sighed at my stupidity. “Get real, Mags. Would you have saved some dumb spot for me if Aaron Miller had come along in his silver Mercedes?”

“Aaron drives a Pontiac Grand Am, dear.”

“That’s not the point. Anyway, do we have to talk about this now? Danny is taking me out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Zanesville. Moo goo gai pan is his favorite food. Then this afternoon we’re driving in to Columbus for a concert. Rock, of course. Danny still has connections and we’re getting front-row seats. We won’t be back until late, unless it snows there too.” She giggled. “So don’t wait up, Mags.”

“So what do I say to the Troyers?” I asked, but my words encountered only air. By the time I turned around Susannah had redraped herself around the cheese magnate’s neck and was hustling him off to his car. She had no intention of introducing me.

Almost as if on cue, the brawny man with the shovel left as well, leaving me alone with just the bishop and the judgmental crow.

I introduced myself correctly to the bishop before the crow cawed even once.

“I knew your papa when he was a boy,” said the ancient man with his boyish voice. “That was your sister who just left, wasn’t it?”

I nodded shamefully.

“The Yoder nose is not the mark of Cain, you know.”

“Certainly not,” I agreed. “Cain’s nose was much smaller.”

Bishop Kreider smiled. “Of course, Yost Yoder was some sort of cousin of yours. You knew him well?”

“Never met him.” I looked down at the freshly filled grave. “And I hope it’s a long time before we meet.”

“Yes, all in God’s time. Now it’s time we head back to the Yoder farm for the meal. They’ll be waiting.” I saw him tremble, and I realized suddenly that he must be freezing. If I hadn’t seen the lone buggy still parked nearby, I would have offered him a ride in my car.

“Bishop Kreider,” I said as we walked, “did you happen to see Annie Stutzman—Mrs. Samuel Stutzman—this morning? She was my father’s cousin. She promised to meet me here.”

“Ach,” the bishop said. “I was supposed to give you a message. Annie has come down with a cold and couldn’t make it. She said she hopes you have a pleasant trip back to Hernia.”

“I see.” Of course, I didn’t. Perhaps the bishop had confused my Annie with one of the others. No close kin of mine would let a common virus prevent her from attending one of the biggest social events of the year.

“Well, we’d better be getting back to the house,” the bishop said, picking up his pace. “They’ll be waiting on me to say grace.”

“Yes, of course.” I walked faster. “Bishop, do you think Stayrook Gerber will be there?”

“Yah, I think so. Do you have business with him?”

I had to swallow hard before any words could come out. I am not accustomed to lying to bishops. Of course, depending on your interpretation, I wasn’t really lying. I did have business to conduct with Stayrook, it just had nothing to do with farming. And even then, you’ll have to concede that my motives were pure.

“Yes, it is important that I speak to him,” I said.

“In that case, you might have spoken to him a few minutes ago. That was him who just left.”

I looked closer at the bishop. Behind the parchment skin of old age, and camouflaged by the boyish voice, there was a shrewd and wary mind. For some reason it pleased me that an Amish man could be so cagey.

I didn’t expect to run into the gal from Goshen at the funeral meal. If she had possessed any class she would have hung out in her motel room and watched whatever it is Susannah watches on daytime TV. I realize that most of those programs would make even the whore of Babylon blush, but Harriet obviously didn’t have any morals or she wouldn’t have hired herself out as a motorcar-driving mercenary for Mennonite money.

Harriet was certainly glad to see me. “There you are, dear! Honestly, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. These folks”—she dropped her voice a decibel or two—“might be the salt of the earth, but they are B-O-R-I-N-G.”

“This is a funeral, Harriet,” I reminded her.

“Not like any of the funerals I’ve ever been to. Now, an Irish wake, that’s what I call a good time. Sometimes they go on for days. Are you Irish, Magdalena?”

“Not by a long shot, dear.”

“You sure? Magdalena sounds Irish to me.”

“I’m sure.”

“Ah, Jewish. Of course, the nose.”

Had I not been both a lady and a pacifist, I would have punched Harriet’s nose. Many of my regular customers at the PennDutch are Jewish, some even my friends. Their noses come in all shapes and sizes, but the one thing they all have in common is that they don’t stick them into other people’s business.

“For your information, my last name is Yoder,” I said. “I am a Mennonite. These boring people here”—I waved at the crowd—“are my family.”

“Well,” humphed Harriet, “I should have known as much. After all, you don’t have a sense of humor.”

I shrugged. “Or else you’re simply not funny, dear.” I went off to look for Stayrook Gerber.

I found Stayrook in the mudroom talking about the coagulative property of rennet with several other men. He looked as if he’d been expecting me.

“Stayrook Gerber?”

“Yah.”

“I’m Magdalena Yoder, from Hernia, Pennsylvania. Yost was a cousin of mine.”

“Yah, I know who you are.”

That didn’t surprise me. What did surprise, and please, me was that the other men regrouped and turned their backs on us so that we would have some privacy. Of course, they didn’t leave us alone on the mud porch; that would have been unseemly, and neither of us would have wanted that. If any of them eavesdropped, that was simply the risk I took. It was my conversation, after all.

“Mr. Gerber—”

“Stayrook, please.”

“And please call me Magdalena. Stayrook, I don’t know exactly where to begin, or how to say this, except to come right out and state that I don’t think my cousin accidentally drowned in that milk tank. Nor do I think that Levi Mast fell from his silo.”

Stayrook’s big face remained placid, but I saw his eyes widen in the shadow of his hat brim. “Why are you telling me this, Magdalena?”

I’m sure it was only my imagination, but the backs of the other men seemed to stiffen, and there was a brief pause in their conversation. I waited until someone spoke again.

“Someone brought you to my attention,” I whispered.

He took a big step backward and nodded almost imperceptibly at me. I obediently closed the gap.

“I am a married man with four children,” he said softly. “It is foolish of me to even talk about this.”

“Silence won’t keep you safe,” I said. I know now that it was a pompous thing for me to say. Who did I have to lose? Susannah? She would probably dance for joy at my funeral, because then the PennDutch would be hers. As for Aaron, if that man cared half as much as I hoped he did, he would have long ago bought a diamond ring and popped it on my finger. Rings can be sized up beyond eight, you know.

Stayrook closed his eyes briefly, a habit I’ve noticed that many people, especially men, engage in just before they lie.

“Whoever told you to talk to me was barking up the wrong tree. I certainly have no reason to share your suspicions.”

I stared hard at him. Gave him the evil eye, as Susannah would say. “Two of your friends have just been murdered, and you want to bury your head in the sand? This isn’t turning the other cheek, Stayrook. It’s cowardice.”

The eyes shifted. They didn’t roll exactly, but it was close enough. I would have to check my family tree for Gerbers.

“Stayrook, if you have any idea who was behind these murders, you have a moral obligation to help put them behind bars. You should call the police right now. I’ll even call them for you.”

The big face began to harden. It was like watching a pond freeze over. His lips moved stiffly. “ ‘Vengeance is mine, thus saith the Lord.’ ”

I have seldom been angrier. Two deaths, a widow with children, a bereaved fiance, and yet Stayrook’s principles prevented him from involving himself with the law of men, with English law. God would avenge the two deaths, in his own time, if not in ours.

“Look, you said before that you shouldn’t even be talking to me because you have a wife and four children. Well, let me tell you something, Stayrook. You may not have all of them much longer, or they may not have you, if you don’t talk to me. Obviously it’s common knowledge that you know what’s going on. I mean, someone directed me to you, right? And if the community knows that you know, don’t you think the killer knows as well?”

I let that sink in for a moment, while I revamped my strategy. I should have known better than to mention the police, a last-ditch resort for the Amish. Stayrook might still talk, but only if I could convince him that he wouldn’t have to be directly involved.

“I run an inn in Hernia,” I said calmly. “Last year there was a murder there, and it involved Englishers. The police couldn’t solve the murder, but I was able to get the murderer to confess and turn herself in. She hasn’t killed anyone since.” Okay, so I left out some important details, but I wasn’t lying. And in this case, the end certainly justified my means.

Stayrook’s eyes were as big as my mama’s prize-winning dahlias. “A woman did the killing?”

I waved a hand impatiently. “It happens all the time. We are capable of anything, you know. That wasn’t my point. The point is that I have experience in these matters, and might be able to help you. Unless of course, you don’t want my help and would prefer the police. At any rate, if you don’t do anything about it, then I’m just going to have to call the police anyway. Yost was your friend, but he was my cousin, and I don’t have to follow your ways.”

Stayrook stared at me. The pond had frozen solid. Under any other circumstances I would have considered it terribly rude. Much to my credit, if I must say so myself, I gazed calmly back at him. His nose was no tiny tater; it was in fact a typical Yoder nose, hidden by the open expanse of a huge face. Perhaps the eye-rolling was a Yoder thing after all, and had nothing to do with Gerber blood.

At last the frozen face thawed enough for the lips to move, but not enough for them to make sounds. Fortunately I had enough experience watching Susannah read to decipher the movements. “I’ll talk to you later,” they formed.

I nodded. Having run an inn for several years, I was well aware that walls have ears. In the case of a mudroom packed with men, there were more ears per square foot than in an acre of hybrid corn. Stayrook would talk to me later, I was sure of that. In the meantime I needed to find Freni and give her the news from home.

I found Freni in the kitchen slicing pies and cakes. The woman never went beyond the eighth grade, and any fractions she may have learned in school have undoubtedly been forgotten, but nobody east of the Mississippi can match Freni when it comes to dividing a dessert into even portions. Her eye-knife coordination is truly a wonder, and when I found her she was surrounded by a cluster of admiring women. Of course, being Amish, they were careful not to praise her, lest she become proud, but I could see the admiration shining in their eyes.