Tea with Jam and Dread (12 page)

‘Hussy,’ Granny Yoder hissed. ‘Only trollops wear lip rouge.’

‘You tell her, Granny,’ Toy said with a laugh.

‘Aha,’ I cried, ‘you
can
hear her!’

‘What?’ Toy said. ‘I didn’t hear your granny; I heard you threaten to wear lipstick to church. Your kind of Mennonite doesn’t wear “war paint,” as you have so often, charmingly described it.’

‘Give me a break,’ I said.

‘Puh-leeze,’ he said, ‘can we finally get back to discussing the matter of the corpse and the countess?’ With that he took one of my wrists in one of his impeccably manicured hands and steered me gently back into the dining room.

In my opinion, a man who grooms his fingernails without being coached is such a rarity that he should be given protected minority status. If he keeps his nostrils
and
his ears free of unsightly hair, he deserves public recognition. But woe to the man who dares to eat at any establishment, no matter how humble, in a sleeveless garment locally referred to as a ‘wife-beater’ T-shirt. ‘Armpit hair and
haricot vert
are not compatible,’ a winsome wag of the feminine persuasion once wrote.

Now where was I, besides feeling the pleasant warmth of that perfectly cared-for hand? Ah, yes, I was facing off with a very stubborn young man who couldn’t be honest with himself.

‘Cee-Cee is
not
a countess; she is simply a Lady – with a capital L, because she’s not always a lady, if you get my drift.’

‘Look,’ he said, just to prove my point about being stubborn, ‘if your granny really did hang around as a ghost, why don’t you have her communicate with Yoko-san directly and have her get the whole gruesome story from start to finish? Or more to the point, why is it that
you
can’t communicate with the remains of your Japanese guest and this Cee-Cee girl can?’

‘I’ll take your questions in order, dear. First of all, Granny doesn’t realize that she is dead. If she did, she’d be in Heaven with Grandpa. Now, I know that’s not good Christian theology—’

Toy let go of my wrist and planted his tight, round buttocks on the dining-room chair next to me. ‘Spare me the sermon, Magdalena. I’m crossing your granny out of the picture for good. But the English girl; that’s another story. That one’s hard to explain.’

I smiled wryly. ‘Impossible is more like it – unless the girl had a chance to peek at the official police report on Yoko-san’s disappearance.
That
report is stored in the files at your office.’

Toy is generally a mild-mannered man, but just then he pounded the table so hard that crumbs from the breakfast scones danced. ‘You better darn well be joking,’ he growled. ‘I keep my cabinets under lock and key and nobody else has access to their contents. Even my secretary has to ask for the key when she wants to file something away, and Darla Hipslinger has been with me for eighteen months.’

‘It was nineteen as of last Thursday,’ I said pleasantly, ‘but who is counting? Certainly not Darla. When I interviewed her for that job she thought that a year had just ten months in it. It was you who told her that she had the job before we’d had a chance to confer.’

‘That’s because she’d be working for me.’

‘But
I’d
be paying her salary. I’d also have to be assaulted by the sight of her gigantic bosoms bobbling about in her low-cut blouses every time I stepped foot into the police station, which, by the way, I also maintain.’

Some men emit an off-putting odour when they are angry, reminiscent of a polecat, but not Police Chief Toy. Warm gingerbread pudding with lemon sauce was as close as I could describe his scent, perhaps giving a literal interpretation to the expression ‘I could eat him with a spoon.’ Yes, I know, according to both Jesus and Jimmy Carter I have already committed adultery in my mind, but I had
not
intended to. I had not set out to lust after a man younger than my oldest set of sturdy Christian underwear. It just happened!

‘What’s come over you, Magdalena?’ Toy said curtly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You’re behaving strangely.’

‘Yam I – I mean,
am
I?’

‘Yes. If it wasn’t so preposterous, one might be tempted to think that you’re jealous of poor little Darla.’

When they say that the truth hurts, is that because it stings as if one’s face has been slapped? ‘
Excuse
me?’

‘Forgive me; like I said, it was an asinine thing to say. I mean, what would a gorgeous mature woman like you see in a dud like me?’

I tried responding but my tongue, which had become detached from its base, was roiling around in my mouth in a sea of foam like a giant eel and was threatening to strangle me. I tried swallowing this saliva-covered monster, but that only made things worse.

Toy appeared to observe me warily. ‘You’re not coming down with the flu, are you?’ he asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your eyes are hooded and your face is pale,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘If you’re going to get sick, please turn and face the other way; this is a freshly-laundered uniform.’

I gasped. ‘Why I never!’

‘These incidents can be hard to predict,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Why, once in Charlotte, at my Auntie Gayle’s house for Christmas dinner – or was it at Uncle Rob’s, when we were there for Easter brunch—’

‘Please spare me the nauseating details,’ I hissed. ‘Physically, I am quite all right.’

‘And emotionally?’

‘What is
that
supposed to mean?’ There are times when I am sure that my words are capable of slicing through a block of aged, extra sharp Irish cheddar. However, it is rarely my intention to be downright mean. When I was nine years old I purposely leaked India ink from my fountain pen on to Norma Harmon’s pink party dress. Granted, this was not a nice thing to do, as my sore bottom reminded me for the next few days. Then again, Norma had unwisely chosen to wear that dress to school just to taunt me, so I wasn’t entirely at fault. Anyway, what got me dancing with the Devil cheek to cheek that day was that Norma Harmon had invited every girl in my class to her house after school, except for me. The reason for my exclusion, relayed to me by my mother, was that my feet smelled. Anyway, that’s as mean as I ever got.

‘Magdalena, you are not superwoman,’ Toy said, interrupting my reverie. ‘You don’t have to keep pretending that you are.’ He reached across the table and scooped my twitching hands up in his. ‘You’re a hard woman to read; perhaps I was way out of line before. If so, I apologize. No, I
do
apologize. Of course, you’re just stressed out by the corpse on the roof of your elevator car. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Like, duh, right?’

Like duh?
Alas, poor Yoko-san, what would William Shakespeare think of his language now? Who knows? He might well embrace it, given that he had a penchant for inventing new words himself.

‘Right,’ I said to Toy, just to prove that I was hip and not in need of a hip replacement.

With his strong, masculine but well-manicured hands still holding mine, he began to muse out loud. ‘What we need now is some sort of game plan. Right?’

‘Right, again.’

‘Magdalena, you hired me; you know that you got me up here on the cheap because I graduated at the bottom of my class.’

‘Shh,’ I said. ‘The walls have ears. Besides, we agreed never to speak of that again.’

‘Yes, but you know that I don’t think good under pressure.’

‘Well.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You don’t think
well
under pressure.
Good
is incorrect usage.’

‘You see? I can’t speak well under pressure, either.’

‘Not to worry, dear; I am not the grammar police.’ I pulled my hands somewhat reluctantly from the warmth of his. Truth be told, for me there are few pleasures which can trump that of a full-scale murder investigation. ‘This is what we’ll do,’ I said. ‘You just follow my lead and in no time at all we’ll solve the case of the corpse on my elevator car roof.’

‘F
irst,’ I said, ‘we need to asc
ertain whether or not Yoko-san’s death was murder or an accident.’

Unlike yours truly, Toy is ‘married’ to electronic gadgetry. Nonetheless, when it comes to investigating crimes he prefers to jot information down by hand in pocket-size notebooks using ballpoint pens. He said this practice comes from years of watching television shows about private investigators.

‘Agreed,’ Toy said as he scribbled away at the tiny tablet. ‘And we can’t rule out suicide, either.’

‘
What?
I’m not trying to be argumentative, Toy, but who in their right mind would squeeze apart the elevator doors on the upper level, lie atop the roof, and then wait for someone to ride the elevator up and hopefully squish them against the ceiling?’

Toy’s eyes scanned me calmly. Kindly. Even lovingly – in the good friend sort of way.

‘Magdalena, who in their right mind commits suicide?’

‘Touché, Toy,’ I said. ‘So, how do we proceed from here?’

Toy raked one of his impeccably groomed hands through a head of thick brown hair. ‘If this was one of those cosy mystery novels that you ladies are so fond of reading, I would suggest that we begin with a cup of tea – perhaps even a pot – while we rehash the facts and wait for an epiphany.’

‘I beg your pardon, dear. What makes you think that
I
read those dreadful mystery novels?’ I rolled my eyes in mock dismay. ‘I read only nonfiction books; why read fiction, I say? After all, fiction is all made up.’

Even when he grimaces, Toy is devilishly handsome. ‘Somehow I think you’re not kidding. Well, anyway, here’s what we do: we divide the work even-steven. First I’m going to call in a forensics coroner from Harrisburg. I’m thinking of Dorothy Stillbladder. She’s said to be the best the state has to offer. What are your thoughts?’

‘I think that she is a brave woman not to have changed her name,’ I said.

‘She did,’ Toy said. ‘That’s her married name. It used to be Jones. But trust me – she is the best at what she does. She’s the one who found a pinkie bone in a landfill and correctly identified it as belonging to a left-handed, bisexual, female, vegetarian, octogenarian, Mennonite pole-dancer who was six foot nine inches tall, raised parakeets and was allergic to wool, kale and broccoli.’

‘No way!’

Toy smiled coyly. ‘That’s all true, except for the Mennonite part; she was actually Methodist. Anyway, I also plan to interrogate the other guests who were staying here at the inn the weekend of Miss Yoko-san’s demise.’

‘No can do,’ I said, only half listening. I was trying to wrap my head around that image of a six-foot-and-nine-inch Methodist pole dancer who raised parakeets. Not that I ever wanted to dance around a pole, or with a Pole, but I have always wanted to raise parakeets! Budgies, the Australians call them. Cute little things they are – and so non-judgemental.

‘Earth to Magdalena,’ Toy said.

‘Not again,’ I wailed. ‘Why does everyone always say that?’

‘Because you always look so spaced out. You’re not on anything, are you, Magdalena?’

‘On anything? Like what?’

‘Like drugs. Marijuana, for instance.’

Now
that
hiked my hackles so high that I had to stand up in order to keep them company. ‘I am high on the Lord!’ I snapped.

‘Whoa there, I’m just covering all my bases.’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I can tell you right now that you won’t get anywhere trying to interview the other guests who were here the same week that Yoko-san was.’

Toy frowned, causing me to feel a sinful urge to reach across the table with a long, spindly arm and smooth his troubled brow. ‘Don’t you be saddling me with
your
limitations,’ he said archly. ‘I’m a trained interrogator; you’re an innkeeper. Hmm, I doubt if you’ve even trained for that sort of work.’

I brushed some scone crumbs into my hand before rising and then pointed with my chin towards the front door. ‘Well, good luck interviewing the dead. You’ll find Scott and Lois Robinson in Evergreen Cemetery in Covington, Kentucky. They were killed in an automobile accident. They were on their way back home from holiday when their brakes failed.’

Toy considered this new information for a minute. ‘So, were they, and Yoko-san, the only guests that you had that week? Don’t you rent out six rooms?’

‘“Six en-suites for the spiritually mature who find they are ready to take on the inequities of life,”’ I said, quoting from my welcome pamphlet, for which I charge a measly ten dollars (I’ve been thinking of raising the price to fifteen). ‘But to answer your question, yes, there were just the three of them. The others, a party of four from Toronto, cancelled at the last minute because one of them heard an anti-Canadian joke on late-night television. Tell me, Toy, as one who regularly indulges in worldly entertainment, are these anti-Canadian jokes a common occurrence?’

‘Eh!’ Toy scoffed. ‘They’re not
anti
-Canadian jokes by any means! We love our Canuck neighbours; some of us down in the Carolinas love them even more than we love you Yankees.’

‘Why, I never!’

‘Those jokes are all told in good fun, kind of like you’d rib a favourite cousin who was maybe a little—’

‘You better stop while you’re ahead, dear.’

‘Advice taken.’ Toy glanced at the functioning replica of a genuine grandfather clock in the far corner of the dining room. ‘When will the Sisters of Apathy be finished with their shimmying and shaking?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Pretty soon, I reckon. They’re getting long in the tooth – and I mean that literally, in some cases.’

‘Well then, we – I mean,
I
– better hurry up and come to a decision about what to do. Uh – hmm – you know—’

I wasn’t born yesterday; I’m pretty sure of that, because I remember yesterday, and I can’t remember being born. I have, however, been on the earth long enough to recognize the sounds of a man desperately pleading for help. The Bible exhorts us to love our neighbours as ourselves; therefore, I was obliged to lend the floundering, flustered and fledging chief a helping hand – an
un-
manicured one to be sure, but nonetheless one which was quite shapely. Can I help it, however, if the solution that I was about to share may have involved some methods that a person with more rigid ethics – say a perfect person – might find objectionable? After all, I am but a sinful creature. However, and this is speaking plainly, if I might, I have yet to stoop to the standards of many an elected politician.

‘Get behind me, Satan!’ I cried. ‘What a wicked, wicked thought thou dost tempt me with!’

‘Oh, Magdalena,’ Toy said, sounding immediately relieved, ‘you are a strange bird but you never fail to come through for me. The Devil, indeed! You make Him sound like a
real
person.’

‘He
is
a real person, and not to be toyed with, Toy, you Henry VIII heretic. Now, if you suspend your rational thinking – all that intellectual Episcopal, Anglican, twenty-first century, scientific Motherbo-jumbo and just listen to me for a minute, you might learn something.’

‘I’m suspended with both ears cocked,’ Toy said insouciantly, not to mention nonsensically.

‘Hammurabi had a code,’ I said.

‘Say what?’

‘
Oy!
’ I said, borrowing from my mother-in-law’s lexicon. ‘And to think that a simple Mennonite woman, like me, would be better schooled in history than a worldly lad from a city the size of Charlotte.’

The perfect symmetry of Toy’s features was ruined by a scowl. ‘No lectures, please. Besides, I’ve had lots of colds – everyone has – big deal.’

‘Not that kind of code! Think Morse Code.’

Toy scratched his handsome head and appeared to think; at least that was a start.

‘Listen,’ I whispered, on the off-off chance that my guardian angel had momentarily tuned out, ‘I can’t come right out and lie. That’s one of the Big Ten. But on the other hand, we’ve been given tacit permission to lie by people supposedly far more important than us.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Toy said.

‘Forsooth, ’tis true. Presidents, heads of state, politicians, car salesmen, religious leaders, fiction writers – they lie all the time. I, however, refuse to do so. Nay, I much prefer the word “prevarication,” seeing as how it is not to be found in my well-thumbed copy of the King James Bible.’

‘But it means the same thing as lie, right?’ Toy said.

‘Let’s not be picky, dear,’ I said, my voice unconsciously rising. ‘Now about my code, pay attention: as your mayor, I am not going to give you instructions that might brush up against county or state law. But as the owner of a horse and two cows, they each have their own
what
in the barn?’

‘Poop.’

‘
Excuse
me?’

Toy flushed. ‘Well, they
are
live animals, aren’t they?’

‘The word is
stall
.’

‘Stall?’ Toy said.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Leave poor Yoko-san right where she is for the meantime. Trust me, she’s in no hurry to go anywhere and no one is expecting her anytime soon.’

‘But what about the fur inners?’ Toy said.

‘Huh?’

‘
Fur
inners,’ said Toy, much louder this time and with some irritation.

Then it clicked. Fur innards! The clean-shaven young man was caught up in that zombie, werewolf, vampire trash craze that was ruining our young people’s minds. This rubbish was tearing them from their Bibles and the teachings of their churches, and setting them on a slippery path of occultism which would eventually funnel them straight into Hell.

I shook my head. ‘Oh, not you too, Toy! Please tell me that our very own Chief of Police has not stooped so low as to watch zombie movies and that television program that I hear so much about called
The Walking Head
.’

Toy shook his head in turn. ‘For your information, it’s called
The Walking Dead
and it’s fabulous. Magdalena, forgive me for saying this to you – my elder, my mayor, my employer, and my friend: with a mind as narrow as yours it’s a wonder that there is room enough on your face for two eyes. While I do indeed watch many zombie movies and TV shows, I fail to see what my viewing habits have to do with this investigation.’

‘Then what’s all this nonsense about furry guts?’ I wailed. Perhaps what I really did was howl, because from somewhere in the woods behind the house a coyote responded.

Toy’s reaction was priceless. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

‘Well, duh,’ he said, ‘I forgot to speak Pennsylvanian there for a moment. The word I meant to say is
foreigners
. You know, as in your English guests.’

‘Ah, foreigners,’ I said. ‘Well, I would never have guessed it because the context does not apply. The English are never foreigners, you see, because they are – well,
English
. They are the nexus of the universe by Divine Ordinance – or so I’ve been told. Granted, it’s a hard concept to grasp unless you are English, or at least a member of the United Kingdom.’

‘Actually, it’s not,’ Toy said. ‘My mother’s family is originally from Charleston, South Carolina.’

‘Oh,’ I said excitedly. ‘Does she know Abigail Timberlake?’

‘
What?
Who?’

‘Never mind, go ahead with
your
diversion.’

‘The point of my diversion is that in Charleston there are folks who see no need to travel because they are
already
there. In other words, Charleston is all that anyone should ever desire.’

‘Hmm,’ I said, ‘I shall cogitate on your analogy. In the meantime, let us return to the corpse in my shaft – not to be too coarse about it. I was hoping that we could agree upon a course of action that would be predicated on the status quo, which would give us both plenty of time to do our jobs. I’ll do my best to keep the Brits here voluntarily but if they want to leave you must find a way to detain them so that we have time to investigate how Cee-Cee got her information on Yoko-san.’

Toy scratched his handsome head, and for a fleeting moment I had head envy. Down, girl, I told myself. Back off.

‘Why didn’t you just say all this from the beginning?’ Toy said.

‘Well, duh,’ I said, ‘I guess I forgot to speak pseudo-legalese. I mean, aren’t you supposed to report all deaths to the state? And isn’t a coroner supposed to examine the remains? I was just hoping that we could
stall
things a bit and give ourselves more time before the big boys come in and mess up the crime site.’

‘
O ye of little faith
,’ the lapsed Episcopalian, not-quite-an-Anglican said, throwing scripture at me with all the alacrity of a Born-Again Mennonite. ‘Sorry to burst your bubble, Magdalena, but in this booming metropolis called Hernia, which lacks even one traffic light, your police department – that is to say,
me
– has complete autonomy.
I
decide when, and what, needs reporting. And as far as a coroner goes, at this point, all we need to do is to confirm that the subject of my report is dead.’

Toy can be most annoying at times, and so as not to let me forget, he cupped his hands to his mouth. ‘Hello,’ he called. ‘Hello? Is there a doctor in this house?’

At that very instant, the front door opened with a slam that almost brought the rafters down upon my head. When I saw who the intruder was, I wished that the roof had indeed crashed down upon me, rendering me senseless among the rubble.