Read The Hand that Rocks the Ladle Online

Authors: Tamar Myers

Tags: #Amish, #Cozy, #Mystery, #Pennsylvania, #recipes, #Women Sleuths

The Hand that Rocks the Ladle (2 page)

BOOK: The Hand that Rocks the Ladle
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“Which one is which?” I asked gamely.

The women, incidentally, appeared to be in their late fifties, early sixties. But given the English reputation for youthful, dewy complexions, and the fact that both were overweight, they might well have been a lot older.

“I’m Edwina, the eldest,” one of the plump, pink-cheeked sisters said.

“I’m Daphne, the youngest,” the other said.

“Fat lot of good that does,” I wailed, and then mentally slapped myself for having used the F word in front of them.

“I’ve got the beauty mark here. See?” Edwina, I think, pushed a lock of graying hair away from her convex forehead. A microscopic mole greeted my myopic eyes.

“She’s far too proud of that thing if you ask me,” her sister said.

I smiled pleasantly. “Then maybe she should display it.”

“All right.” Edwina fished a rubber band (what the folks in Pittsburgh call a gum band) out of her purse, and pulled her shoulder-length hair back into a short, but revealing ponytail.

What a difference a hairstyle makes. The two peas in a pod were now more like a bean and a pea. Sure, their bone structure remained the same, but now Daphne’s individual personality was on display along with her beauty mark.

“Ah, that’s much better,” I said. “Now, if I recall correctly, you wrote to the Pennsylvania Tourist Bureau for accommodations in Amish country, and they sent you two a brochure. Have you two made up your minds yet about the A.L.P.O plan?”

“We definitely want it,” Edwina said. “We wish to absorb as much American culture as possible.”

“We’re thinking of retiring here,” Daphne explained. “Oh?”

“Of course that won’t be for another thirty years, but it never hurts to plan ahead.”

“At least thirty years,” Edwina said.

I glanced down at the registration form. Call me nosy if you will, but I ask for more information than do other hostelries. At any rate, the twins were only twenty-nine. They both worked as machinists, making industrial-size bobbins for textile factories. Much to my surprise, I felt sorry for them.

“The brochure contained several misprints,” I said. While lying is a sin, I’m quite sure some lies are not as bad as others. “You see, the brochure stated that guests would have to pay an extra twenty dollars a day for the privilege of cleaning their own rooms. What I meant to say is that I would deduct twenty dollars.”

Edwina cleared her throat. “Is that twenty dollars off per day?”

“Yes,” I heard these lips say.

Two sets of identical green eyes sparkled. Daphne actually clapped her hands.

“What lovely news,” she said. “Now we shall be able to see more of your wonderful country.”

“Is it far to Disney World?” Edwina asked. She had pulled a pocket atlas from a purse and was thumbing through it. I saw Idaho and New Mexico flip by.

I knew that the women had flown directly from London to Pittsburgh, where they’d rented a car. It takes me two hours to get to the Pittsburgh International Airport from Hernia, and I’ve been accused of having heavy feet—not lead feet, mind, just heavy feet. It seems to go with size eleven.

“Did you think it was far from Pittsburgh?” I asked. They nodded vigorously in tandem, as if sharing only one short neck. “I remarked to Daphne that it was like driving halfway across England.”

“Farther," Daphne said. “Is Pennsylvania the largest state?”

I smiled. “I’ve heard rumors that Texas is larger. As for Disney World, it’s fifteen times farther than Pittsburgh. You may want to fly.”

The sisters looked crestfallen. “I’m afraid we can’t afford to,” Edwina said quietly.

I skirted the counter once again and studied their shoes. Both pairs were sturdy leather, well polished, but obviously very old.

“Okay, you can have the room at half price and I’ll help you look for a supersaver.”

They looked blank.

“A cheap flight,” I said.

Daphne brushed a stray wisp away from her beauty mark. “Are the hotels at Disney World expensive?”

I gave them a pitying look. “Okay, scratch the

A.L.P.O. I won't charge you anything while you’re here.”

They gasped simultaneously.

“You mean we can stay for free?” Edwina said.

I grimaced. “Please, dear, nothing in this world is ever really free. To the contrary. You will set and clear tables, wash dishes, and muck out the barn.”

“The barn?" they chorused.

I nodded. “I have a seventy-three-year-old pregnant Amish man doing it as we speak, but he really isn’t up to the task.”

Both sets of green eyes blinked.

“It’s a long story, dears. Say, can either of you milk a cow?”

They grinned. “Our granddad has a farm in Devonshire.”

“Well, I just happen to have two cows who need milking on a twice daily basis. Their names are Matilda and Bessie.”

“Super,” Edwina said. “Daphne here makes the best Devonshire cream—although it wouldn’t be proper Devonshire cream here, would it? Still, if clotted cream is what you’re after, Daphne is your woman.”

Daphne beamed.

“What is clotted cream?” I had the coarseness to ask.

“Ah, that’s what rises to the top when you scald milk. It’s thicker, sweeter, and richer than whipped cream, and is delicious atop scones with jam.” She pronounced scones to rhyme with johns.

“Do you make scones as well?” I asked, drooling only slightly.

Daphne shook her head. “Edwina is the baker. Scones, tarts, you name it.”

“I’d be happy to bake some for you, if Daphne will make her cream.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Daphne said. “We could have a proper cream tea.”

I hustled the twins up to their rooms before I got really carried away and offered them a salary.

I am not easily shocked, having played hostess to half of Hollywood during my inn’s heyday. Trust me, there are those in that crowd who know no shame. One ingénue even bragged to me about breaking all ten of the commandments at once—only not in my inn, thank heavens. Still, before she checked out, I inspected her room for corpses and counted my best flatware. At any rate, I wasn’t so much shocked, but appalled, by my next two guests.

She was tall and thin, approximately my age, but unlike me as brown as a hickory nut. Her color was related to her minority status which, incidentally, had nothing to do with race, but everything to do with a leisurely life in the sun. Vivian Mays was what my mama would have called “stinking rich.” It was a wonder she could even hold her head up, given the size and weight of the gold chains she wore draped around her neck.

He was also well tanned, although dark eyebrows and dark roots betrayed the pale blond hair on his head. He too wore jewelry, most notably an earring. Alas, it wasn’t a simple gold hoop, which I wouldn’t have found too objectionable, but a pearl that dangled from a little platinum chain. Oh, well, kids these days.

From what I hear, it’s the rare parent who can exercise control.

“You didn’t say you were bringing your son with you,” I said through gritted teeth. I had two more guest rooms available, but hadn’t bothered to make them up.

“He isn’t my son,” she said through capped, but gritted teeth.

I raised an eyebrow. “Your grandson?”

“My
husband!"

I stared at the boy. He couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. And she—add ten years for sun exposure, take off ten for plastic surgery—she had to be my age.

“You’re putting me on!”

“I most certainly am not. It says so right there on that form you just made us fill out.”

I stared at the form. The boy was just barely twenty, and she was nine days older than I! I had to prop myself against the counter for support.

“But you didn’t say you were married when you called and made reservations,” I wailed. “In fact, you said you were a widow.”

Vivian looked at my ring finger, and then smiled like the cat who had licked the clotted cream dish. “I am—was a widow. And I didn’t say anything about Sandy because I didn’t know him then.”

“But that was less than a month ago!”

“I guess I’m just a lucky woman. I mean, what else can I say?”

Fortunately Freni came running into the room, her stubby arms flailing like the blades of a broken windmill. “Help! Help!”

“Freni, what is it? You see your reflection in aluminum foil again?”

“Ach, no! It’s Mose!”

My heart did a flip-flop. “He wasn’t up on the barn roof again, was he?”

“Ach no, it’s much more serious than that. His water broke.”

 

Chapter Three

 

"You mean he peed in his pants, don’t you?” I avoided looking at the rich woman and her child groom.

“Yah, but you know what that means, Magdalena?”

“It means you need to take him home and get his clothes changed.”

“Ach, so dense! It means that my Barbara has gone into labor.”

“Your daughter-in-law," I said for the benefit of our audience, “lives on your farm which is more than a mile away. You don’t have a phone, and anyway, my phone didn’t ring. How do you know Barbara’s in labor? What did she do, send up smoke signals?” Freni rolled her eyes. “A mother knows these things.”

My cheeks burned. I am not a mother, nor will I ever be. I had a sham marriage to a bigamist that lasted exactly one month, and although he created enough opportunities to populate a small third world nation, I did not conceive. Of course I know now that it was the Good Lord's doing, and that Aaron Miller was the devil incarnate and utterly unfit to be a father. But let’s face it, even if I were to marry tomorrow, I doubt I would ever hear the pitter-patter of tiny human feet. The minute hand on my biological clock has stopped ticking. As for adoption, the agency I approached told me in no uncertain terms that there had to be “at least one stable adult in the household.”

At any rate, don’t believe for a minute that Freni had me stumped. I still would have thought of some pithy rejoinder had not her son Jonathan Hostetler come flapping through the front door, a giant version of his mother.

“Ach!” he squawked. “Come quick! My Barbara is broken and her water is having triplets!”

Freni gave me an “I told you so” look. “You will drive us to the hospital, yah?”

“Yah, yah,” I said irritably. “Where is the mother to be?”

Jonathan’s eyes were wild. “Outside in my buggy. Come, we have no time to talk.”

Vivian the vamp and her sex slave Sandy had been watching the proceedings mutely. Thank the Good Lord for that. But all the commotion had attracted that delightful Mennonite couple, Donald and Gloria Rediger.

“Miss Yoder,” Gloria said kindly, “is there anything we can do?”

“Yes! Call the hospital and tell them we’re coming. Then call Dr. Pierce’s office—his practice is in Bedford. The numbers are posted by the kitchen phone.”

“Anything else?”

I slapped my forehead with the palm of my right hand. “There’s a wet Amish man in the barn. Get him some dry clothes and bring him to the hospital. It’s just south of town. You take Hertzler Road to Main Street and—oh, never mind, he knows the way.”

“We’ll take care of him,” Donald said, and not even knowing which direction the barn was, they rushed off to help.

“Here is your room key!” I slapped a six-inch piece of wood with an attached key into Vivian’s manicured hand. “That’s a new bed in Room Five. You break it, you buy it.”

I turned my attention to my kinsfolk. “I’ll move my car around to the front. Freni, get a plastic tablecloth to spread in the backseat. Jonathan, unhitch your horse and get ready to transfer Barbara.” And then, just for fun, I hollered up my impossibly steep stairs. “Somebody boil water!”

 

Thank heavens Hernia finally has its own hospital. A town our size would never be able to support one if it wasn’t for the hundreds of Amish and Mennonite families who prefer to avoid the streets of Babylon—I mean Bedford. Granted, ours is a very small facility, more suited to emergency care than anything else, but it is handy. Fortunately I had yet to use it, but I had heard only good things about it.

We arrived at the hospital in the nick of time. Just a few minutes later and baby number one would have been born in the backseat of my BMW, and not on the gurney. As it was, I was going to have to get my car detailed at the earliest possible opportunity.

At any rate, a young orderly named Gordon helped Jonathan and me transfer Barbara to the gurney, and then we took off running for the front door. Just as we passed the admissions counter a giant hand reached down and grabbed me by the collar of my navy blue dress. For one panicky second I thought God was calling me up yonder. I am ready, by the way, so don’t get me wrong; it’s just that my underwear had holes in them.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Although the voice was female, I knew it wasn’t God because of the Pittsburgh accent.

I turned my head the best I could. “Nurse Dudley?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

In the meantime Jonathan and Freni had disappeared along with the gurney through a set of swinging double doors.

“Unhand me at once!”

The bruiser practically threw me across the small waiting room. “Get out of my hospital, Magdalena Yoder.”

I gasped. “This is not your hospital! You work at Bedford Community Hospital along with the evil Dr. Luther.”

Nurse Dudley, a behemoth of a woman with a neck as big around as a dinner plate, smiled. “This is my hospital now. I’m the R.N. supervisor.”

I must have blanched. I certainly felt weak in the knees.

“What’s the matter, Magdalena? Don’t you read the papers?”

No doubt by now you’ve assumed that Nurse Dudley and I have had our run-ins before. If that’s the case, you are absolutely right. The woman is—how can I put this the most Christian way possible? The woman is a cretin. She has the IQ of concrete and the personality of a cobra.

“Of course I read the papers!” I cried. I do. I read Ann Landers, the comics page, and if I have time, the editorial page.

“Then you’d know that not only am I the head nurse, but the evil Dr. Luther—as you put it—is the chief of staff.”

My head spun. The only thing that kept me from fainting was my fear that the diabolical duo would do something horrible to me while I was out. Like amputate my larynx.

BOOK: The Hand that Rocks the Ladle
13.56Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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