"Batter off Dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Myers Tamar)

2

“What?”

“The second you left, she sank to the floor like an imploding building.”

“Has anyone called 911?”

“Elmer Troyer did. He called both the dispatch center in Bedford, plus our very own chief of police.”

I craned my neck for a better look but could see only a sea of backs. Wide backs.

“What makes you think she’s dead? Does anyone here know CPR?”

“Karen Imhoff is a trauma nurse at Bedford County Memorial. She can’t find a pulse.”

“But I was gone only a minute,” I wailed.

Amygdaline consulted an enormous watch that somehow managed to look both officious and cheap at the same time. “You were gone six minutes and nineteen seconds.”

“I was? Oops, I forgot about detouring for a potty break on the way back, and wouldn’t you know there was a line, and of course I just had to get behind Thelma Neubrander, who went on, and on, and on, and-”

“Just like you?”

I sighed. “If the shoe fits, but it better be a size eleven, and with my feet as swollen as they are-”

“ Magdalena, quit stalling.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re blathering like on a drunken writer, whereas the Magdalena I thought I knew would take charge.”

“She would?”

“You bet your bottom dollar, and from what I understand, that’s rather a huge fortune.”

“Forsooth, although it still wouldn’t be enough to win if the Donald played trump.”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

“Nothing; it was just some card-playing humor-which I don’t do, mind you, except for rook and old maid, on account of real cards can lead to sin-”

“You’re stalling again,” she hissed. This time specks of her spittle peppered my face. They may have been minuscule, but I could feel them long after they’d landed.

Clearly, I had been goaded beyond human endurance. Perhaps, then, I can be forgiven for grabbing the lids of two empty metal serving trays and clanging them together like a pair of giant cymbals. That got everyone’s attention, including the man-child’s. The little fella kicked me so hard that I grunted in pain.

As a matter of fact, he kicked me twice. It was like he was using my abdominal wall as a place to push off from, so he could swim away to somewhere quiet and sane.

“Hey, take it easy,” I whispered. “I would never kick you. And just in case you’re looking for a way out, the portal’s not due to open for another two weeks. So as they say in New Joisey, fuggedaboutit.”

The murmuring of the crowd informed me that I was already losing their attention. I had to act fast.

“Stand back,” I roared. “That means everybody except for Karen Imhoff and the victim-uh, I mean Minerva J. Jay.”

My words were like a magic wand. Or perhaps it was the genuine faux-pewter trays; maybe they thought I’d box their ears with them. At any rate, the throng shrank back, forming a circle, into which yours truly stepped.

I knelt beside Karen, who was holding Minerva’s head in her lap. “Is she really dead?” I whispered.

The throng leaned in, as if bowing their heads for prayer. “Let’s just say that if I was at the hospital right now, I’d look for a doctor to call it.”

“In that case, since everyone’s already assumed a pious pose, let’s really pray. Who’d like to go first?” My words had the same apparent effect on them as spraying Raid does on a pile of roaches; they fanned out in all directions, although to be perfectly honest, very few flipped on their backs and kicked their legs in the air.

I could hear Karen sigh loudly. It sounded like relief.

“What’s that all about, dear?”

“I know this is going to sound awful, Miss Yoder, but I hate public, extemporaneous prayer: it’s the stilted prayer language that really sets my teeth on edge.”

“You mean like when folks use words like thee and thine?”

“Exactly. That’s King James English, not biblical English. There was no such language as English when the Bible was first written. But you know, what really sets my teeth on edge is just.”

“The word just? What’s wrong with that?”

“For some reason it gets inserted into every unscripted prayer. Listen for it, Miss Yoder; you won’t be able to miss it. Someone will get started praying, and the next thing you know, they’ll say something like ‘Lord, we just ask that you heal our sister Debra,’ or ‘Lord, we just ask that you give us the necessary wisdom to deal with this problem.’ What does that mean? And if you ask them why they’ve inserted the word just into their prayers, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. I guess they just don’t hear just anymore.”

“Well, I for one don’t do it!”

“Ah, but you do: I’ve heard you. Virtually every born-again Christian does it.”

“But not me,” I wailed. “You’re putting a word into my mouth that doesn’t belong there.”

“Excuse me, Miss Yoder, the crowd is edging closer again, so are we going to pray or not?”

With considerable effort, I managed to get to my feet. “I’m still looking for a volunteer to pray,” I said. “And you can’t use the word just. Anyone who does use it gets to make a one-hundred-dollar donation to the new roof fund. So think of it as a chance to give, folks.”

The crowd murmured loudly as they scattered to the far corners of the fellowship hall-well, except for the blessed Karen Imhoff and the stubborn Amygdaline Schrock. At any rate, that left only the four of us, and since I was the wealthiest and, some say, the orneriest, I decided to give my own challenge a try. Alas, whether by intention or not, I failed miserably; all that matters is that the brotherhood had a thousand more clams in their coffers when I was through addressing the Almighty to mark the occasion of Minerva J. Jay’s passing.

Hernia’s only law enforcement officer arrived just seconds after my resounding amen, and I immediately filled him in. Police Chief Chris Ackerman is only in his midtwenties and so good-looking that women have been known to commit minor crimes just so they could have the pleasure of being thrown into his jail overnight. Jaywalking, loitering, even solicitation citations initially went through the roof. Gradually, however, as the people of Hernia learned that the Good Lord, in His wisdom, had chosen Chris to bat for the other team, this much-needed source of income dried up.

Once, believe it or not, in more prosperous times, we had a two-person police department, and on occasion even that was not enough. At first glance Hernia may not seem like a den of iniquity, but the Devil is just as hard at work here as he is anywhere else. Thank heaven, then, that murder follows me around like odor follows a troop of prepubescent boys, because over the years it has allowed me to become well steeped in the workings of the criminal mind. I say this without hubris. Indeed, I get very little credit-certainly no monetary reward-for solving the brutal deaths of others, and I am often subjected to great danger.

Why, then, one might legitimately ask, do I involve myself in such a dangerous pastime? Do I experience the same satisfaction one might feel if they’ve taken on the task of solving a particularly complicated puzzle? Absolutely not; the solutions to some murders are absurdly simple. Do I feel especially brave when I’m confronting a killer who has a gun digging into my well-formed ribs? Frankly, with my shapely knees knocking so hard, it’s difficult to tell. Once I even soiled-uh, well, never you mind. But I will confess that another time I foiled a madman by jumping down into the pit of our six-seater outhouse.

“Miss Yoder!” Young Chris shook me with a good deal of force. “Miss Yoder, you’re not going to faint again, are you?”

When you wake up and smell the coffee, you can only hope it’s something better than what we serve at Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. “I’m as fine as frog hair, dear. I was lost in thought; it’s still pretty much virgin territory.”

“I was saying that we should go back to my office and talk.”

“Talk? About what? I told you everything.”

“Yes, but that was off the record, and in the presence of Miss Schrock.”

“Why, I never!” Amygdaline was panting with rage. “Listen here, young man, I pay your salary, just as much as Magdalena does, so I have the same right to be privy to this conversation as does she.”

“But you don’t,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Amygdarling, this is just a guesstimate, mind you, but I’m pretty sure that I pay at least ten times more in taxes than you do, which is neither here nor there, since I am Chief Ackerman’s boss, as well as his sidekick, although at this stage of the game, I’m not the one doing most of the kicking.”

“Chief! Did you hear what Magdalena called me?”

No doubt Chris’s laugh was an attempt to smooth things over. “Amygdarling?”

“But I’m not her darling! The woman gives me the creeps. She’s a self-admitted adulteress, you know.”

“Inadvertent,” I hissed.

“Hey, no fair; you can’t hiss without an S.”

“So?”

The chief of police grabbed my arm and steered me up the front steps, into the foyer, and then out to his cruiser. “Hernia is nothing like the quiet little Mennonite town I imagined it would be,” he said, “and you are nothing like the typical Mennonite woman, are you?”

“Heaven help us if that were so, dear.”