Tamar Myers - Butter Safe Than Sorry

“You’re darn tooting,” Melvin said. He was deadly serious.

“Well, Mr. Stoltzfus is a genius,” Tiny said. She was deadly serious as well.

“Where is Chicken Little when I need him?” I cried. “At least he was sane!”

“You see what I had to put up with all those years?” Melvin had the nerve to say. Then he prodded my shoulder with the pistol. “Now move it, Yoder. I want you to exit your dump of an inn just as calmly as you would under more normal circumstances. There is a white van waiting for us in the driveway. I want you to climb in the back. Don’t even think of running. If you do, I’ll shoot you from behind, and Tiny here will shoot you from in front. One of us is bound to hit a vital organ. Personally, I’m hoping that we don’t kill you right away; I’d like to see you suffer a good bit before you join our birth daddy and your adoptive parents in their mansions in the sky.”

I’m all for procrastinating-as well as fact-finding. “Tiny has a gun?”

Tiny reached between her enormous bosom and withdrew the largest handgun I had ever seen. She also removed a small hand mirror, which she laid on the table behind her, and two sandwiches.

“What the heck?” Melvin said. (He actually used a much stronger invective.)

“Don’t swear in my house,” I snapped.

“ Turkey or ham?” Tiny said, just as casually as if she was laying out a picnic.

“I prefer cheese,” I said. “A well-aged baby Swiss with weensy-teensy tiny holes. Oh dear, did I use your name in vain?”

“You were right, Melvin,” Tiny whined. “She’s every bit as sarcastic as you said she would be. But she’s not at all afraid.”

“Actually, I am,” I said. “I’m shivering in my brogans-can’t you tell? And you would be too, if you were trapped between a crazed chameleon and Tinkerbell.”

“Tinkerbell? Oh, Miss Yoder, you don’t realize how much that burns my bum! All my life I’ve been called that, and for something I can’t help. How would you like it if I called you Queen Kong or something like that?”

“Ha-ha, that’s a good one,” Melvin chortled.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” I said, “but words will forever hurt me.” I know those aren’t the real words, but they’re much more accurate. Besides, when folks are that familiar with a saying, they seldom listen to its recitation closely.

“Well, you just have to shut up, Miss Yoder,” Tiny said, “because I didn’t offer the sandwiches to you. Only Melvin gets lunch.”

“I don’t get to eat?”

“Oh no,” she said calmly. “What would be the point? You’re going to be dead within the hour; that’s barely enough time to get the digestive process started. To feed you now would be a waste of this planet’s precious resources.”

“Hmm,” I said, “that does make some sense. But you can’t get away with this-you know that, right? You fire that gun and someone is bound to hear it. Your husband, for instance.”

“Ha, that’s what you think. Tell her, Melvin.”

“Yes, tell me, Melykins.”

“I’m not your Melykins! Only your sister gets to call me that.”

“Sorry,” I said, “but you look so adorable in that outfit. All I want to do is to hug you.”

“You see, Tiny?” Melvin cried. “What did I tell you about her?”

Tiny’s clenched fist was barely larger than a brussels sprout. “For your information, Miss Smarty-pants, the others aren’t going to help you, because we’re all here together.”

Now that took the wind out of my sails. “Together?” I asked in a tiny voice. (To be sure, it was my own tiny voice, not hers.)

“Together,” they said in unison.

“Chew on that,” said Tiny triumphantly.

I did. A million years later, I had the courage to speak again.

“So in that case, dear, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t tell me how this brilliant plan of yours was supposed to work. First and foremost, are you supposed to be an organized crime gang, and secondly, why on earth would you return to the scene of the crime? Especially to the home of a witness?”

Melvin thrust his scrawny chest out like a bantam rooster out to impress a rival. No, wait-that was one animal metaphor too many. Suffice it to say, his hackles were hiked and his dander was raised.

“Of course, we’re an organized crime gang, Yoder. Haven’t you ever heard of the Mafia?”

“You’re Mafia?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Yoder. Of course, we’re not the Mafia-you have to be Danish or something to belong to that; we’re the Melfia.”

“Melfia,” Tiny said, in case I’d missed it. “Isn’t this man awesome?”

“Yoder,” Melvin said, “if you had half a brain, you’d know that a good criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.”

“Oy vey,” I said. “Elvina must have had two wombs; I can’t believe that we’re products of the same one.”

“You think you’re so smart, sis, don’t you? Well, you don’t deserve an answer, but I’ll tell you anyway. I had to see if there were loose ends that needed to be tied up-and there were. Like your kid, for one.”

“Don’t call me ‘sis,’ but do call him ‘nephew.’ He’s your nephew Jacob. And just out of a dead woman’s curiosity, why did you wait so long before you-Well, what I mean is that you could have gotten to your nephew right away.”

The bantam’s chest deflated just a tad. “I wanted to get to know him first. Is that so bad?”

“Stop listening to her, Melvin,” Tiny said. “She’s trying to make you feel guilty. To establish a human connection.”

“Would that were possible,” I said.

“Yeah, I read about that connection thing somewhere,” Melvin said. “I think it might have been in my Policing 101 textbook.”

“Remember, Melvin,” Tiny said, “that we’re a proud crime family-the Melfia-and you’re our godfather.”

I tried to stifle my nervous laugh, but it came out as a snort, and not as a human snort either. From out on Hertzler Road, I could hear an Amish horse neigh its lovesick response.

“Ahem,” I said against my better judgment, “the way a certain someone is dressed, wouldn’t that make him your god mother?”

Tiny stamped a doll-size foot. “Make her shut up, Melvin, so that we can eat.”

Now wait just one apple-picking minute! Why hadn’t I seen it before? Timms, Zambezi, Nyle-they were all names of important rivers, although in some cases the spelling was not the same as the actual body of water. And the mysterious Russian? Surimanda Baikal ? Wasn’t Baikal the name of the world’s deepest lake?

One may wonder how a mere Mennonite woman stuck in the hinterlands of southern Pennsylvania would have such a grasp of geography. I would be inclined to let one rudely wonder, were it not for the fact that this presumption sorely vexes me. In all modesty I summarily report that I am extremely well-read. I read primarily nonfiction books-books that feed my mind. I see little point in reading fiction, as it is all made-up. (I find comedic mysteries to be the least satisfying, as they rely too much on clever wordplay and not enough on plot.)

Now where was I? Oh yes, it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that all my guests had great water features for names. But now that I knew something very strange was going on, what was I to do? At the moment, nothing, of course, but in the future- Well, maybe I should not be so quick to despair. I had one small advantage in this cat-and-mouse game-unfair as it was, with seven cats and just one rat-er, mouse-I’d just figured out from their aliases that they were all in this together, and power always comes with knowledge.