The Death of Pie (7 page)

‘What the heck is going on?' I demanded. That particular ‘h' word is almost as bad as I can swear, and I hardly ever trot it out.

‘We're broke,' said the first brother.

‘And bored,' said the other.

‘Yeah. You see, we need spending money, and St. Agnes won't give us more until the first of next month, so Alvin here thought up a plan. We're pretending to be highway robbers. But the stupid plan isn't working.'

Alvin stuck his head and half of his naked, wrinkled torso through the window. Thank goodness Charles, the centaur, kept his distance.

‘We were going to hit you up for twenty-five dollars to let you pass,' Alvin said, ‘because you've always been nice to our little niece.'

‘Plus, Alvin's always had a thing for you,' Charles said.

‘Have not!' Alvin said.

‘Not that it matters much,' Charles continued, ‘because he hears voices, even when he's on his meds. Then again, I hear voices as well.'

‘Do you ever hear voices, Magdalena?' Alvin asked.

‘Hmm,' I said. ‘Do you mean like God whispering in my heart? That kind of thing?'

‘Could be. That's how mine started, what with God telling me how special I was, and that if I just had enough faith I could walk across the Monongahela River.'

‘It didn't work,' Charles said.

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I remember. Alvin tried to walk across the river three times – twice when it was in flood stage. The rescue squad had to be called each time, and it ended up costing the state hundreds of dollars. Alvin, you could have at least tried walking across a pond, or maybe just your bathtub. Any place where the water isn't moving.'

‘Duh,' Charles said.

‘Hey,' I said. ‘Play nice.'

‘Sorry, bro,' Charles said. ‘Hey, Magdalena, can we please hitch a ride back up the hill with you?'

Forsooth, I had to think about their request for a moment. They were, after all, buck naked, and I had just been handed the squad car. Didn't I have the right to enjoy it without all those sweaty man parts sticking to leather seats which I had yet the pleasure of sniffing? On the other hand, the brothers were officially elderly by social security standards (full eligibility begins at age sixty-six), and a steep hill lay between where we were and their house.

‘Hop in, boys,' I said at last, ‘but no talking, and positively no
shvitzing
.'

‘What is
shvitzing
?' chatty Charles said.

‘Stop,' I said, with mock sternness. ‘I said no talking!' I said it dramatically enough to let them know how annoyed I was at both of them, and at myself for being so accommodating as I continued, ‘
Shvitzing
is Yiddish for sweating. I learned it from my mother-in-law.'

‘A delightful woman,' Alvin said.

‘Too late about the warning,' Charles said. ‘Besides, it's not something that one can help.'

‘
Oy vey!
' I cried and thumped the steering wheel.

The startled brothers jumped so, of course, when they landed they left new puddles of perspiration on my newly acquired leather seats.

In the old days, or so I've heard, a man threw a pair of horse shoes out the kitchen door and where the farthest one landed, that's where he built a cottage for his parents. This was called the Grossdawddy house. The Amish, who never collect social security money from the government, still maintain the practice of having the grandparents living on the farm. In the case of Agnes and her brothers, a separate cottage meant keeping the old coots out from under her feet, as well as not having to live with the guilt stemming from committing them to a nursing home. Like many of our inbred kin, and perhaps a good many of the English aristocracy, they are eccentric, not dangerous – except, perhaps, to upholstery.

Although Agnes is my age, she does not have to work. The reason is that her family made a small fortune inventing nail polish for horses, and horn polish for the beef cattle on the western plains. Named Happy Hoofers and Happy Hookers respectively, they became instant hits with dilettante and celebrity ranchers. Happy Hookers, which comes in neon yellow, fuchsia and chartreuse, all but eliminated the need for branding, even before the invention of the microchip. Free to do as she pleases, it pleases Agnes to sit on her sofa eating biscuits and watching television, for crying out loud.

Television!
The Devil's mouthpiece, Mama called it, and she was right. Years ago there used to be one good show worth watching called
Greenacres
. It was about country living, and a pig, and a Hungarian immigrant with a charming accent – really good stuff. Today it is about fornication and violence, and violence while fornicating. Seriously, you wouldn't believe the TV programs that I've had to suffer through, and all of them on behalf of my church, Beechy Grove Mennonite. Some of our young people had been caught watching the tube in the homes of secular friends, and some poor adult had to volunteer to discover just how much worldly temptation they might have been exposed to.

At any rate, when Agnes opened her kitchen door that morning, her red, swollen eyes resembled a pair of Chinese lanterns. I gasped appropriately, although I wasn't shocked; Agnes is a world-class crier.

‘What happened, dear?' I said. ‘Were you using your night-vision goggles again looking for Martians? Isn't that risky, given that your uncles run around in the buff?'

Agnes sniffed and dabbed at the corner of each eye with a delicate flowered handkerchief. ‘Really, my dear,' she said in a BBC accent, ‘you haven't got a clue, have you?'

I prayed for strength enough to hold back my exasperation before sighing. It isn't my fault if some of my prayers go unanswered.

‘Actually, I do have a clue. It's just that silly show of yours about a daunting abbey.'

My land of Goshen, you would have thought that the poor dear had kissed a hornets' nest, so red did her face become. Fortunately, Agnes can't be both English and angry at the same time, so she ditched the fake accent.

‘
Downton Abbey
isn't just a silly show, Mags! That was a terribly insensitive remark to make at a time like this. No wait; you don't even know what I'm talking about, do you? Do
you
? And I bet that you wouldn't care if you did.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘I sort of feel like a sheep that has been asked a geometry question. Although in the spirit of full disclosure, I don't know very many sheep that have been asked such questions.'

My dearest friend did not seem to appreciate my effort to answer honestly in an amusing manner. More is the pity, if you ask me.

‘Matthew is dead!' she shouted. ‘D.E.A.D. – dead! He was killed when his car ran off the road and hit a tree. Now I'll never get married!'

‘
Excuse
me?'

‘Don't you see? Now I'll have to help Tom sort out the problems of the estate—'

I waved my gangly arms in front of her Chinese lantern eyes. ‘It isn't real!' I shouted back. ‘It's a
television show
. They are made-up people with invented lives.'

‘That may be, Mags, but it is a real castle; I read that in the
TV Guide
. And it is still occupied by a real Lord and Lady.'

That did it; that hiked my hackles. We plain people, we who are proud of our humility, we who sailed to the shores of the Thirteen Colonies in 1738, book no truck with inherited rank.

‘Aha!' I said, spotting an easy avenue in which to score. ‘We're not supposed to call anyone ‘Lord' except God or Jesus. If you don't believe it, then look it up in the
King James Bible
, which was written by the English themselves. Besides, the Our Father is also known as the Lord's Prayer, not the Earl's Prayer.'

My friend smiled. ‘Now you're being silly. You know that the English didn't write the Bible; English wasn't even a language when the Bible was written.'

I returned her smile. ‘Agnes, might I come in, dear? If you fix me a cup of tea and some ginger biscuits, I'll let you lay your hoary head upon my shoulder and have a proper cry.'

For the record, Agnes is one of those women who proudly claims her gray hair. It is her staunch belief that dyeing one's hair is the same thing as lying. That is, of course, unless the face that goes with the colored hair is as shrivelled as a prune. Agnes, however, is a ‘fluffy' woman, with a full, round face. In her own words: ‘Fat don't crack.'

It requires more to sustain that face than just ginger biscuits and tea. ‘I have a broken heart, Mags,' Agnes said. ‘It's either going to be lunch at the Sausage Barn or I'm taking to my bed with pumpkin pie and a can of whipped cream.'

‘Then its lunch,' I said, ‘but I'll have to call home first. Freni was making a big pot of stew but I'm sure that she'll understand.' I can always be coaxed to eat out in a restaurant, even if that means eating at the Sausage Barn, which is owned by my second-best friend /arch-nemesis, Wanda Hemphopple.

‘Sure, Freni will understand,' said Agnes as she practically pushed me off the kitchen steps and made a beeline for my car. ‘That woman always understands.'

But Agnes made it only halfway to the cruiser before she stopped dead in her tracks, causing a one-person pileup. Believe me, when one is as tall and spindly as a clothesline pole, with the musculature of a spaghetti strand (that is to say, none), it is possible to fold up rather easily on oneself.

‘Aack!' I squawked.

‘What the heck is that?' Agnes said.

‘What does it look like, dear?' I said, rubbing my nose while at the same time trying to push it back to its original spot on my face.

‘I can see that it is Hernia's one police cruiser,' Agnes snapped, ‘but what on earth are you doing with it?'

‘Ah, that,' I said. ‘Well, you see, our illustrious author's death has now officially been ruled a murder, and—'

‘Wait,' Agnes said, ‘let me guess: Toy, the boy, feels that his status as an outsider will be a disadvantage for him in solving the case. You, on the other hand, have roots in this community that go back to the time when Moses gurgled in the bulrushes, not to mention that your size twelve gumshoes have gum all over their soles from prior cases that you've successfully cracked. Am I right, or what?'

I snorted irritably, despite my normally cheerful demeanour. ‘You are irreverent, wrong, and right – in that order. I wear a size eleven shoe.'

Agnes was unapologetic. ‘Ha, I'm mostly right! So now I'll guess something else: I'm on your list of suspects, aren't I?'

‘How did you know?' I said. But it was a silly question.

‘Hmm, let me see,' Agnes said as she slipped into the front passenger seat unbidden. ‘The meanest writer in America publishes a book in which she makes a ton of cutting remarks about me being fat, my loser personality and my crazy naked uncles, then the book becomes a huge bestseller, and then she has the audacity to come back to the scene of the crime to strut her stuff under the guise of judging our pie festival. Who wouldn't kill her, if they were me? Oh, I know that you wouldn't, because you're close to perfect, but I'm not! And besides, since you showed up driving the cruiser, and offering to let me lay my “hoary” head upon your shoulder despite the fact you have, like, major touch issues – well, there you have it.'

‘Harrumph,' I said. ‘Now let me call Freni and tell her that we'll be going to the Sausage Barn for lunch.'

‘No need to call her, Mags. Like I said, she won't mind.'

Who was Agnes trying to kid? Freni is about as fond of change as a cat is of swimming lessons. Nevertheless, I managed to reach Freni on my car phone.

‘Ach! What am I supposed to do with enough stew for ten people?'

‘What were you going to do with it anyway?' I said calmly. ‘One less person won't make that big a difference.'

‘Yah, maybe,' Freni said, ‘but that Agnes Miller can eat enough for six people. I tell you what, Magdalena, you bring Agnes home with you for supper and that will fix our problem.'

‘I heard that!' Agnes shrieked. For a woman who hovers around the half-century mark, Agnes can emit sounds almost as deafening, and every bit as annoying, as a five-year-old girl on a playground.

‘Ach,' said Freni, ‘it is the smoke alarm. I must go.'

‘It's Agnes; you just tripped her offense alarm.'

‘Now is not the time for riddles, Magdalena,' Freni said with surprising sternness. The woman who had practically raised me almost never raises her voice to Yours Truly.

‘I'm speaking on the car phone, dear,' I said. ‘Agnes heard you call her “fat.”'

‘But I did not call her fat; I inferred it.'

‘That's right, Magdalena,' Agnes said. ‘She only inferred it. You are the one who just now called me fat.'

‘
Oy vey!
' I cried. ‘I can't win for losing.'

‘
Ach du Leiber!
' Freni said. ‘You are driving me up the walls.'

‘I believe that would be just one wall, dear,' I said.

‘No,' Freni said, without missing a beat. ‘Already it has been two walls, Magdalena, and it is not yet noon.'

‘Surely you jest,' I said.

‘Now it is three walls.'

‘You go, girl,' said Agnes, speaking directly into the built-in microphone above my windshield visor.

‘Agnes,' I hissed, ‘stay out of this.' Incidentally, one must always hiss using an ‘S' sound. Some fancy-schmancy novelists actually try to get away without following this rule.

I've always maintained that a healthy Amish woman, or a Mennonite woman of Amish descent, can induce just as much guilt in her charges as any Jewish or Catholic mother. Well, I was wrong on that score. The former are way, way better at it.