“Look,” I said, “in the past I’ve been more than happy to use my not inconsiderable brainpower-and I say that with all humility-as well as my above-average people skills-ditto on the humble thing-to solve most, if not all, of Hernia’s baffling crimes. But, as my sister is wont to say, that was then, and this is now. Then I had just myself to consider-well, and sometimes a hunky man-but now I have a little man to consider, one that is totally dependent on me. Forgive me, therefore, if I don’t feel like putting my life in jeopardy once again.”
“Harrumph.”
“You can’t say that, dear. Nobody says harrumph in real life, and most especially not a man your age.”
“What am I supposed to do, then? Swear?”
“You’ve got a point, but I’m still not going to do it.”
Defeated, he hung his handsome blond head. “Well, I guess this means I’m going to have to go with Plan B.”
“I guess it does-wait one Mennonite minute. What is Plan B?”
“Sheriff Hughes said that since we’re understaffed so bad, and he’s actually got a surplus of rookies this year, I could have one of them. On loan, you know. Just for this case. The kid grew up in Hernia and knows everyone in town, and we wouldn’t have to pay him on account of-”
I couldn’t believe my ears, which, by the way, were flapping like those of an elephant about to charge. “Do you perchance mean Percival Prendergast the Third?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Nix on the knave,” I cried. “The boy is a charlatan! He wasn’t raised in Hernia; he only spent his last two years of high school here because the coach was tired of having a losing football team. Yes, he may have been a football star, but he roomed and boarded with a family of transplants who moved here from Chicago. He’s as much of a Hernian as Oprah Winfrey-who, by the way, would have made an excellent vice president.”
“Harrumph again. Let’s face it, Miss Yoder, when it comes to local knowledge, you have no equal.”
I hung my head as the rules of modesty dictated, mock or otherwise. “Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly-”
“But more important, when it comes to sleuthing, it’s like you’re a natural-born prodigy or something.”
“Chris, dear, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck.”
“Huh?”
“What I mean is that flattery won’t get you anywhere. I’ve made up my mind, and the answer is no.”
“Yeah, I got that. But I’m just saying that not one of those detectives on TV could compete with you. If you were, like, in my Methods of Detecting class back in California, you would have wiped the floor with the rest of the cadets. The instructor too.”
“Really?”
“Like the time you solved that livestock-mutilation case and proved to Silas Marner that it wasn’t aliens killing his sheep-that was brilliant. Even the sheriff said so.”
“He did, didn’t he?”
“The sheriff really respects you, Magdalena. And that’s the thing: the entire community of Hernia respects you.”
“They do?”
“You ought to hear what they say behind your back. ‘There goes the smartest and best-informed woman in town.’ Why do you think you got elected mayor?”
“Because I’m rich and pay a lot of the town’s bills.”
“Yeah, but is Donald Trump mayor of New York City?”
Do you see what flattery can do? To my knowledge, the Donald has never run for public office, and Mayor Bloomberg, who is the mayor, is super-rich, but young Chris had managed to pull the wool over my eyes like a backward burnoose.
“Hernians elected me because they respect me?” I asked.
Chief Ackerman’s beautifully coiffed blond hair fell into his eyes as he nodded vigorously. “Uniquely qualified: that’s you. Nobody else could possibly interview the seven people who volunteered in the kitchen that day and get the same excellent results. But”-he shrugged as he forced back what might well have been a bogus tear-“since you’re not going to do it, I guess that’s just not going to happen the way it should.”
It must have been the Devil standing next to me that caused what happened next. My mouth opened of its own volition and the words just poured out like water from a suddenly unplugged gutter.
“Hold your horses, young man! Don’t you dare tell me what I’m not going to do, because I am going to investigate this case, and that’s that. Case settled.” I slapped my hands against each other to drive the point home. “However, this investigation is going to have to wait a couple of weeks until I can at least walk like a normal human being, and sit down without the aid of a doughnut ring. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am, but-”
“There’s no need to worry your pretty head, Chris; the killer isn’t going anywhere. His-or her-objective was to get rid of Minerva, and now, as our erstwhile president infamously said, ‘mission accomplished.’ ”
“Oh, Miss Yoder, I can’t thank you enough. Like I said-”
“No offense, dear, but put a zip on the lips.”
Do you see what the Devil made me say? And that was mild compared to what was to come.
9
Shame on me. I put on my gumshoes that very afternoon. I’d just fed the little one, and even though I was still so sore I had to sit on a foam doughnut, and had all the energy of a teenager come six o’clock Monday morning, mentally I was itching to get back in the game.
My reentry strategy was simple. Minerva lives-well, she lived-in a remodeled farmhouse about eight miles south of Hernia on Thousand Caves Road. She bought the house in the late 1980s, and I remember the event well, because she made a big flap about it. She was pursuing a life as a real estate agent at the time and was promoting the Thousand Caves area as the new retirement utopia for the fresh-air crowd. There were woods to roam, streams in which to trout fish, a lake with paddleboats, and, of course, spelunking in the myriad caves and sinkholes that gave the region its name. Lots could be had in one- to three-acre sizes and for a fraction of what one would pay anywhere else.
What Minerva didn’t tell the retirees is that the 183 acres that comprised Thousand Caves Retirement Village had been purchased from a struggling Amish farmer, who couldn’t make a go of it because that particular patch of Pennsylvania was so riddled with caves and sinkholes that the surface of cleared land resembled Swiss cheese. Even if he could manage to get his horse and plow to safely turn over a field, come a heavy rain, half the crop would disappear underground.
Then there too was the matter of her sales brochure. The photos were taken somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and depicted towering Douglas firs, and a sparkling lake with water so blue that one couldn’t help but think of Aaron Miller’s eyes (the man whom I believed I was married to, and who is the scum beneath the slime beneath the sludge beneath the ooze beneath the mud at the bottom of the pond, and I am not bitter, thank you very much). In reality, it was a pockmarked landscape studded with miniature trees, and the so-called lake was a man-made brown puddle that kept disappearing into an underlying cavern.
And although the farmhouse that Minerva bought had been built on a solid chunk of land, the same could not be said for the other potential lots. Of the dozen lots sold, only two were viable as home sites. Minerva had advertised that county utilities were available, but she didn’t say when, and didn’t say where. When the two brave couples who had bought into Minerva’s grand scheme learned that she had her own generator and pumped her water from an underground stream, they sued and won the right to back out of their contracts.