Today Thousand Caves Retirement Village consists of the loneliest house on planet Earth. If I had an imagination-which, sadly, I don’t, or a sense of irony-I could probably envision a murder mystery being set in this strange landscape of seemingly bottomless pits and elfin tress. One could, theoretically of course, toss a body into one of these black gaping holes and it would never be found, because even a thousand and one detectives from Dalmatia, each with their own Dalmatian, would not be enough to scour each and every man-size opening in the porous limestone that underlies the thin layer of topsoil.
I’d been to Minerva’s house only once before, and that was many years prior, when she, uncharacteristically, hosted the Mennonite Ladies Sewing Circle. Perhaps I just spoke too harshly, but I also remember that everyone was surprised when Minerva volunteered to do so, and that virtually everyone in the group attended because we were all curious to see what living out there was like. But I, for one, was so “freaked-out”-as Susannah would say-by what I saw that when I got home that night I fell on my knees and thanked the Good Lord that I lived in a bustling community like Hernia.
After all, not a day goes by that I don’t hear the clip-clop of a horse pulling an Amish buggy-sometimes even twice or more a day-out on Hertzler Road, and once a family of Parisian tourists rapped on the kitchen door and demanded that I tell them how to get to Rio de Janeiro. (I told them that the most direct way was to continue on down Route 96 to Cumberland, Maryland, then head east until they caught I-95, which they should follow all the way to Miami. After that they should swim like mad until they got to the coast of Brazil, from whence they could get further directions.)
Now, where was I? Oh yes. I hadn’t been out to Thousand Caves Road for many years, but nothing seemed to have changed-at least not for the better. There was no sign of the two homes that had been started, and Minerva’s solitary house looked just as lonely and out of place as a petunia in an onion patch. Still, it was a very nice house, so Minerva’s finances must have been halfway decent.
The house was set close to the road, because there wouldn’t have been much point to a lawn in this earth-eating landscape. Even from a hundred yards away I could see the brightly colored bands of crime scene tape that crisscrossed the front door, forbidding entry to the curious-of which we have plenty hereabouts, I assure you. Anticipating that very thing, I’d brought along a pair of scissors and a roll of duct tape (I fear that one day this marvelous invention may be our only means of repairing the fractured world we live in). Before getting out of the car I checked to make sure that my cell phone was charged; it was. Then I hoofed it to the porch and snipped away.
The key I’d purloined from the chief’s desk drawer fit the front door perfectly. I’d been almost positive that it would. What I found odd was that it had now been eight days since Minerva’s death, and the chief had yet to mention anything about the envelope being tampered with, or that Miss Jay had left him with yet another puzzle to solve. Perhaps he really didn’t care if he solved it, and that was why he’d been so eager to fob it off on me, the untrained amateur. Curious, isn’t it, that fob should mean two very different things. Land O’ Goshen, there I go again, interrupting the narrative flow, which is something a real novelist would never do; thank heavens that I am merely an innkeeper with a phenomenal memory. (This is a fact, so it is by no means meant to be braggadocio.)
Even a house that has been shut up for only eight days takes on a musty odor, but Minerva’s house was as fresh as one might expect a house out in the wilds of weirdom to smell. I concluded, therefore, that someone, probably Chris, had been there recently, also looking for clues. And since jumping to conclusions is what I do best, I outdid myself that afternoon and got in a great deal of exercise.
Could it be, I reasoned, that the chief had been shown the key before it was sealed in the envelope, and that he’d agreed to fetch me the milk on the day of Minerva’s death because he knew I’d snoop around? Perhaps he still hadn’t mentioned it because his search of her house had revealed nothing that shed light on her case, and he was actually hoping that I would break and enter. Well, if the latter was true, I didn’t know of what use my piddly detecting abilities were going to be, because once I noticed that the house didn’t smell particularly bad, the second thing I noticed was that it was in total disarray.
Now, I’m not referring to your typical teenager it’s-my-room-why-can’t-I-keep-it-the-way-I-want? kind of disorder, or the slovenliness that I normally associate with my sister. I’m talking about the everything-dumped-out-on-tabletops-desks-or-floors kind of thoroughness that I’ve observed before, but only after the police have gotten through searching a place. Where was I to even begin looking? Perhaps I’d be just as well off checking to see if Minerva kept any unopened bottles of water or juice in her refrigerator, and then after gingerly lowering my still sore nether regions to the couch, flipping through the stack of photo albums on her coffee table. After all, they say that the camera doesn’t lie-it’s Photoshopping that fibs up a storm-and from my personal experience family albums can be a treasure trove of information: most of it embarrassing, of course.
I’ll spare you the descriptions of the ad nauseam snaps of the chubby baby Minerva, or the pudgy preadolescent, or the plump early adolescent, or the quite frankly fat high school student, or the alarmingly obese college woman, just as I’ll spare you descriptions of her parents, whom I remembered as not being very nice. And, most probably, no one really cares to know about the disturbingly large number of dogs Minerva owned during her middle school years alone, or that one of them was named “Minerva’s Revenge.” Ditto, I’m sure, regarding the fifty-seven photos-I counted them-that depicted Mimerva in her senior prom dress, although there was not one picture of a boy in that album.
Suffice it to say, there was a photo album dedicated to just about every topic one could imagine, and each was neatly labeled on the outside-all except for one. This last album was tucked into the middle of one of three stacks, but was in every other way unremarkable. As I began to flip through it I noticed that the photos displayed inside were also unlabeled, and that George Hooley’s hangdog face was one of the likenesses included.
“Chef Boyardee!” I exclaimed, invoking the name of my favorite childhood supper; Mama was not much of a cook.
I looked at the photo just before George’s. Lo and behold, there were Frankie Schwartzentruber and James Neufenbakker standing next to each other, and they had their arms wrapped around each other ’s waists. What was that, an April Fool’s joke? Whatever it was, it had been taken at least ten years earlier, which explained why I’d glossed over it so easily: James still had some hair and Frankie’s eyes had yet to be yanked up to forty-five-degree angles.
The very next photo was of the perpetually smirking Merle Waggler, and it was almost exactly four years old. I could date that photo because it had been taken for inclusion in the church directory. Norma Rae Fields had been in charge of selecting the backdrop that year, and her choice had been a boil pink and ear-wax orange chenille bedspread with half the nubs missing. Since our policy has always been that “she who does the work calls the shots,” the rest of us had naught but to grin and bear it (although some wag went so far as to whisper privately that she was half tempted to actually bare it, in order to distract from the hideous bedcover).
But the aforementioned three were not the only members of the Beechy Grove Mennonite Church Brotherhood I spotted in that unlabeled book. Separated by many other faces, several of whom I recognized, and some whom I didn’t, I happened upon an excellent photograph of the handsome Elias Whitmore, and immediately below this, a thumbnail-size likeness of the Zug twins. The former had also been taken with Norma Rae’s chenille monstrosity as a backdrop, but the snapshot of the twins was no doubt the product of some sort of camera gimmick and, given that they were both looking away, possibly even taken without their knowledge.