The Death of Pie (25 page)

‘Wow. That was certainly quite a bit of due respect, Chief Toy.'

‘The question is, Miss Yoder, is it deserved? I'm not referring to your obvious attraction to me, either. I realize that a woman of your age might still have certain needs; my granny used to chase the old geezers around the Sunset Assisted Living facility back home in Charlotte. But she was like a fox kit in a henhouse; I don't know what she would have done if she'd ever caught one. You, however, come across as a woman of the world.'

‘I
do
?' Take it from me; some flat-chested women will take flattery wherever they can get it.

‘Yes, ma'am,' Toy said. ‘You have that certain
je ne sais quoi
about you.'

‘
C'est vrais?
' I asked.

‘You certainly do, plus I've heard the story – many times, in fact – about you being Hernia's first official adulteress.'

Instead of screaming, I followed Gabriel's advice and grinned. ‘Yes, and although the plaque I received was awesome, I thought I deserved a loving cup.'

Toy tried not to smile. ‘You see, Miss Yoder, it is quips like that, and your quick mind altogether, which make it so hard for me to perform my job.'

‘I understand, dear. From now on, I'll give you wide berth – just not a place in
my
berth. Oops, there I go again. There seems to be no stopping me.' I chuckled, and not unpleasantly either.

‘Would prison help?' Toy said, sounding quite serious to me.

‘I beg your pardon?' I said.

‘Miss Yoder, I think that you said it exactly: there is no stopping you.
You
were the one who murdered Ramat Sreym, weren't you?'

‘
What?
I'm sorry, Toy, but given all the pheromones wafting about this room like sparks when the coals have been stirred – hey, you're serious, aren't you?'

‘I'm as serious as a bucketful of snakes.'

‘My, but you Southerners are a colorful lot. Look here, young man, you are way off base. You're out of line too. I am the
one
person in this one-horse town – well, actually we have quite a few horses in our village, given our Amish population – but nonetheless, I am Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen. I don't commit murder; it's one of the Big Ten, for crying out loud!'

Toy had the temerity to snort. ‘Adultery is adultery, inadvertent or otherwise. You don't get the privilege of renaming things just because you're fabulously rich, married to a handsome doctor and think that you own the village.'

Tears of frustration began to force their way up and out of ducts that weren't supposed to be used in public. We Mennonites and Amish are known as the ‘gentle people.' At some point in our genetic history an ancestor with a tart tongue attached himself, or herself, to the family tree, and this explains the anomaly which is me. One thing none of us ever does is cry in public. This has led some anthropologists to speculate that we may be, in fact, British.

‘Crocodile tears will get you nowhere with me, Miss Yoder,' Toy said cruelly. ‘I don't have enough evidence just yet, but when I get it I intend to treat you just like every other Tom, Dick and Larry under the law.'

‘That's Harry,' I said. ‘I believe Larry was one of the Three Stooges.'

He flushed. ‘You
see
? You just can't help yourself. And since when does a good traditional Mennonite woman like you know the names of those goofballs?' He held up a hand, palm facing me. ‘Spare me the details. For now, until I uncover further evidence, I don't want you travelling any further than back to your inn. I also want you to turn over the keys to the police cruiser.'

I gasped so hard that even the curtains were sucked into motion. This is only a mild overstatement, mind you. I made the curtains myself out of the cheapest material I could find, which happened to be a sheer, polyester material with a wide weave. Over the ensuing decades the police station curtains have decomposed to the point that they exist now almost more as a memory than a physical presence.

‘
What?
' I said to Toy when I could finally speak.

‘You heard me, Miss Yoder,' Toy said. ‘Turn over the keys.
Now
.' He imperiously thrust forth a manicured hand that put my ragged nails to shame.

‘Hold your horses, dear,' I said. ‘How am I supposed to get home? Not to mention, what about my beloved urchin who is currently gorging herself on candy at yon Yoder's Corner Market? Do you expect us to hoof it home and perhaps get run over by a horse with four hooves? What if we were to be mugged by a mad Mennonite? You can't expect everyone to behave decently to others, you know.'

Toy laughed sardonically. ‘Tell me about it, Miss Yoder. After all, it is you whom I suspect of murder.'

‘Ach, does that ever get my dander up!'

‘Like they say: the truth hurts,' he said smugly.

‘I meant your sardonic laugh, you – you – juvenile. You make me so frustrated that I could just scream.' I screamed then to illustrate my point, as the lad is a bit thick in the head.

A faithful Christian should not believe in luck. However, permit me just this once to say that good fortune did indeed smile on me then. I had yet to reach my high note when the door to the police station opened, and in swept Toy's next big distraction.

‘U
nhand her, you cad!' Sam's face was red from the exertion of running across the street. His brow was dripping sweat.

‘But I haven't handed her,' Toy said. ‘See!' He spread his pretty petite paws beneath my kissing cousin's nose for close inspection.

‘Then why is she screaming bloody murder?' Sam demanded between gulps of air.

‘Could it be that she's guilty of murder?' Toy said diabolically. ‘I've been given to understand that this one is given to fits of what could be described as high drama.'

‘That's not so,' I said.

‘Oh, isn't it?' Toy said. ‘Weren't you assigned a two-line role in your senior class play,
Who Cares About Ernestine?
but instead of saying your lines you launched into a fifteen-minute soliloquy that you wrote. It was something totally extraneous about the pain and trauma involved in the dehorning of cattle and the declawing of cats. Didn't this result in the entire production being shut down?'

‘Who told you that?' I wailed.

‘There she goes again,' Toy said, his smirk practically cutting his head in twain. ‘She sounds just like an emergency vehicle, doesn't she, Sam?'

‘You shut your trap, son, or I'll shut it for you,' Sam said. Sam started out as a peacenik, a pacifist Mennonite, but after doing the mattress mambo with a bona-fide Methodist for thirty years, there's not a soul in Hernia who's surprised that his views on fisticuffs have changed.

Toy shut his yap so tight that it looked like his face was going to pop.

‘Good,' Sam said. ‘Now, would someone care to explain what this is all about?' He looked at me. ‘In a normal speaking voice, if you can.'

‘I'd be glad to explain,' I said. ‘This nincompoop from North Carolina wants to arrest me for the murder of Ramat Sreym.'

‘What the Hades?' Sam hollered. ‘Are you out of your mind, Chief? Have you what little sense God gave you? Magdalena is our most upstanding citizen!'

‘She's a chameleon,' Toy smirked, showing his true colors at last. ‘She has everyone in this town thinking that she is a saint, just because she's Miss Moneybags. Well, I'm telling you now that she's not a saint; she's a cold-blooded murderess.'

‘I'm not a sexist, dear,' I hissed. ‘That would be murder
er
.'

‘You see?' Toy said triumphantly. ‘She admits it!'

‘I did no such thing,' I wailed. ‘I merely instructed you in how to be politically correct – you of all people!'

‘Toy, you idiot,' Sam said loyally, ‘whatever put that dang-blasted idea in your head anyway? Magdalena has trouble killing flies; what on earth makes you think that she killed that so-called novelist from who-knows-where?'

Toy licked his symmetrical and really quite lovely pink lips. How terribly ironic that the Good Lord saw fit to house such ignorance in such an attractive package.

‘Sam, you run a grocery store. Surely from the moment that book hit the stands you must have heard talk about the hatchet job it did to Hernia.'

Sam grunted. ‘Some.'

‘Did you read it yourself?' Toy said.

‘Parts of it.'

‘Did you find them disparaging?' Toy said, sounding almost kind.

‘My wife was deeply hurt,' Sam said. ‘If this was the UK, we'd sue for libel. In the United States, just about anything goes – except for nudity. It's a shame, really, when you think about it. Freedom of the press versus bare breasts, I'm telling you, Toy—'

‘Stop it!' I said. ‘Sam, if you want bare bosoms so bad, either be sweet to Dorothy or drive into Bedford and buy a copy of
Playboy
. As for you, Toy, in a mere fifty-one more years I'll be a century old, so please hurry up with your assumptions, assertions, allegations, or whatever else you have swirling about in that adorable little head of yours – no sexual harassment intended.'

Toy looked me straight in my watery blue-grey eyes. ‘She thought you were ridiculous, and she made you come off as a gangly, bigfooted creature that smelled like a polecat. She described your personality as that of a badger that had been run over by a team of track stars wearing cleats.'

‘Ouch,' I said, surprised to hear Toy quote the appraisal of myself I'd seen fit to share with Ramat during her stay at the inn. It was the God's honest truth. Besides, everybody knows about my big feet. I'd presumed that's why I wasn't on his list in the first place. ‘I must admit that having someone you never liked say such positive things about one is— Well, I think that I shall endeavour to remember her more kindly from now on.'

‘You're kidding,' Toy said. ‘The old cow thought that you were crazy! Bonkers!'

‘Aren't we all, dear?' I said.

‘Speak for yourself, Magdalena,' he said. ‘Anyway, just because I'm a Southerner, doesn't mean that I'm stupid. I've never once thought that you're as crazy as you let on to be. I come from Charlotte, the epicenter of eccentrics, remember? I can spot a real nut job, someone just enjoying life, and every shade in-between. And you, Miss Yoder, fall into a special category – the very same one employed by used car salesmen – that of having an exaggerated personality for the sake of business.'

I clutched my chest. ‘Why I never!'

‘You see?' Toy shrieked at Sam. ‘That's just like her. When she gets into trouble, she deflects.'

‘But it was a genuine deflect,' I said, ‘unlike my genuflects, which are no good at all. I can't tell a genuflect from a curtsey. What if the Palace were to invite me to lunch? What would I do then?'

‘You
see
?' Suddenly there were veins popping out all over Toy's temples. ‘She's doing it again.'

‘OK,' I said. ‘Calm down. You're going to burst something and I don't want to be held responsible. So whatever you have to say, now is your chance. Spit it out.'

‘You thought you could boost your business by murdering the writer, Ramat Sreym –
in cold blood—
' The last three words were spoken in what, to Toy, was supposed to be a posh English English accent. Instead, of course – given that he was an American and not Prince Charles – he sounded as if he was speaking whilst sucking on a frozen binky.

‘Huh?' I was temporarily at a loss for words.

‘You heard me,' Toy said. ‘You are a cold-blooded killer.'

‘Toy, I have more money than—'

‘He doesn't need to know,' Sam said to me. He faced Toy like a silver-back gorilla, albeit a miniature one. ‘Stand down,' Sam said to Toy. It was shocking to hear the extent to which television had corrupted my dear cousin's manner of speaking. And yes, the blame lay with his Methodist wife, Dorothy.

Toy's face suddenly resembled a peeled tomato. ‘You're interfering with the law here, Sam. I could have you arrested as well.'

Sam is a compact man: lean, leathery – even his ears are no bigger than pepperoni slices. But when the former pacifist juts out his jaw, tenses his muscles and his stare turns colder than ice, you'd swear he was Vladimir Putin. He once looked an ornery horse square in the eyes, causing it to bolt and run as far as Maryland. I was very tired after that.

‘Fire him, Magdalena,' Sam said.

‘
What?
'

‘
What?
'

Toy and I both responded with squeaks which, I am, told broke crystal in some of Hernia's finer homes.

‘You,' Sam said, pointing at me, ‘are still the mayor, Magdalena, right?'

‘You're darn tootin' right I am,' I said. ‘Pardon my French.'

‘Which means,' Sam said, ‘that you have the power to hire and fire the Chief of Police. Am I right?'

‘Indeed, I do. I hired this very lad and funded his move as well.'

‘Then fire his ass,' Sam said. ‘Pardon
my
French.'

‘Hold it right there!' Toy said. ‘All this “pardon my French” is terribly disrespectful to the French. What have they ever done to us, besides giving us Gerard Depardieu?'

There was no time to waste. I certainly wasn't about to discuss the merits of French politicians.

‘You're fired,' I said. ‘Gather your stuff,
tout suite
, and skedaddle from this suite.'

‘You can't do that,' Toy said.

‘I just did,' I said. ‘Listen while I do it again: you are fired.'

‘
Brava
,' Sam said, and began hooting and clapping like a crazed English – which, in case you've forgotten, has nothing to do with an
English
English person.