Tamar Myers - Batter off Dead

I patted my bun, flattered to the hilt, as a strange stirring swept through my…

“Loins,” Wanda said, apropos the prospect of a dwindling profit. “I have several nice pork loins slow roasting in the kitchen; it doesn’t have to be breakfast.”

“Stuff your pork loins, Wanda,” Elias said. “Maybe I’ll come back for dinner.” Then he stomped out, no doubt ruing his decision to join forces with Frankie Iscariot Schwartzentruber and the not-so-merry band from the brotherhood.

“Just so you people know,” I said, “I’ve already spoken privately to each and every one of you, and each of you has what would appear to be ample motive to have done away with the quite ample Minerva.”

“That’s an out-and-out lie,” one of the Zug twins said. “You spoke to my brother, not me.”

“And I didn’t tell you anything,” the other one said.

“But it’s not fair! You have no business looking so much alike. What are you going to do, pray tell, if one of you makes it to the Pearly Gates, and the other twin ends up at the opposite place-”

“ St. Louis International Airport, Concourse A?” the Zug wife asked.

“Something like that,” I said, “only not quite as bad, from what I hear. Anyway, what if your destinations are switched? At least one of you is going to have to do some mighty fast talking.”

“Oh, they’re not that hard to tell apart,” the Zug wife said. “Trust me.”

The twin closest to her sat bolt upright, like he’d just plonked his patooty on a tack. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Once just for fun-never mind, darling. Perhaps this isn’t the right time and place, eh?”

“The Concourse A it isn’t!” the Zug twin shouted. With that he clambered to his feet and stumbled from the room, blinded as he was by tears. A few stunned seconds later he was followed by his cuckolded brother and the intentionally adulterous woman from Manitoba.

I say intentionally here, because one must always take care to differentiate between an inadvertent adulteress from Hernia and a wanton bed hopper from a thriving metropolis as large as Winnipeg. Yes, I had the wool pulled over my eyes by Aaron Miller, but the Zug wife, no doubt, pulled a colorfast, hypoallergenic poly-wool blend over two sets of Zug peepers and thus deserved every minute she’d spent in the St. Louis International Airport.

“Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming,” Frankie said as soon as the coast was clear.

Wanda, true to form, was busy taking notes on her order pad. “Leave it to Magdalena to clear out a room,” she mumbled.

I glanced around in mock surprise. “And yet I still hear voices. Unless someone tells me right now what you guys hoped to accomplish by this ambush, I’m going to continue swinging my wrecking ball until not a single one of you remains standing. Wanda, in your case, that would apply to the Ruti Tooti Faux-Fruiti Pineapple Upside-down Muffin recipe you swiped from Freni.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Start with one package of blueberry muffins from Pat’s IGA-”

George Hooley slipped an expensive-looking pen from the breast pocket of his three-piece gray suit and was writing every word down on his paper napkin.

“Stop!” Wanda cried.

She lunged at me, no doubt hoping to clamp a spidery hand across my lovely, loquacious lips (I say that with all modesty). Unfortunately for her, I sidestepped her charge, sending her sprawling headlong into Merle Waggler ’s chair. One would think that a man of Merle’s girth would have been able to anchor said chair and remain in a sitting position, but apparently he was like my favorite candy bar-“fluffy, not stuffy.”

It happened so fast that I barely had time to enjoy it, even in retrospect. The sight of Wanda and Merle tangled in a melee of waving arms and legs and a wobbling beehive was nothing short of a balm for my aching heart. Of course I repented of this sin, but to be absolutely honest, I did so a bit later in the day. After all, schadenfreude, like a cup of good homemade cocoa (served with ladyfingers for dipping), is to be savored.

Predictably, Wanda was beyond livid and would have called the sheriff, had I not threatened to reveal more of the recipe. As for Merle, his pants somehow split in the fracas, revealing a bit more than he’d intended, such as that some men wear neither briefs nor boxer shorts. As a result I got a bird’s-eye view of what one might describe-if one were using a vegetable metaphor-as two tiny peas and a baby carrot. Even Little Jacob, it seemed, was better equipped than the smirking, smart-mouthed Merle.

I tried to avert my gaze, but it was like trying not to notice the huge booger half out of your minister ’s nose when he greets you on Sunday morning. (At least I only stared at Reverend Amstutz; it was Mama who unintentionally called him Reverend Booger to his face, and then refused to go to church for the next six weeks because she was so embarrassed.) At any rate, Merle’s full disclosure sent him fleeing from the room as soon as he assessed the situation, which wasn’t soon enough for anyone else.

“Well, that certainly explains his Napoleon complex,” Frankie declared as the door swung shut behind her compatriot.

“That does it, Magdalena,” James Neufenbakker said as he struggled to his feet. “You absolutely humiliated that man. Shame on you; you are a disgrace to the Mennonite community. I am going to start a petition asking to have you removed as head deaconess.”

“What? You can’t do that!”

“Watch me.” He began shuffling for the door.

“But I didn’t do anything except dodge a menopausal missile; the pants split on their own accord.”

“You pushed me,” Wanda huffed. She’d dropped her order pad and pencil so that both hands could be free to shore up the Hemphopple tower of pestilence.

Had I come alone, I could have risked the prospect of her beehive actually collapsing. But I had Little Jacob’s health to consider. Twenty years of unwashed hair threatened to be every bit as lethal as Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

“Toodleoo, dears,” I said as I scooped up my precious in his car seat.

“You can’t leave now!” Frankie screeched.

I scurried to the door, but I had to wait until James shuffled through before I could plant one foot firmly outside. “Frankie, I only invited the Zug wives here for lunch. As far as I am concerned, the rest of you are all interlopers and, as such, have interfered in a semiofficial investigation. Believe me, this is all going down in my report.”

Frankie had lived too long to be intimidated. “What we’re trying to tell you, you dunderhead, is that you’re barking up the wrong tree. Yes, we may all have our reasons for not having liked Minerva J. Jay, but why limit your investigation to the members of the brotherhood?”

I was flummoxed. “What in tarnation is a dunderhead?”

“It means you’re a dunce. And according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, it’s been an English word since 1625.”

One has to admire a woman with a head for facts, no matter how annoying she is. “Frankie, even a dunce like moi has to conclude that it had to be an inside job; no one else had access to the batter.”

“Yes, they did.”

“Excuse me?”

“Who was it who objected to putting port-a-johns in the north corner of the parking lot?”

“But renting them would have eaten into our profits.”

“So instead we let people come through the kitchen on their way to the restroom.”

“Only if they really had to go. Those were the strict instructions I gave you.”

“Little children always wait until the last minute, so they always have to really go. As for adults drinking coffee, and those with incontinence issues-”