Killer Confections8 Delectable Mysteries(504)

“Well, don’t you worry none anyhow, ma’am,” said Billy Dee kindly. “Like I said, I’ll keep an eye on things and see that they don’t get outta hand.”

I put Miss Brown out of my mind and took Billy Dee’s word, and his credit card, and then showed him to his room. Despite the fact that he was a little rough around the edges, he was really a very pleasant man. Although he laughed a lot, he was always polite, which of course goes a long way to making up for such frivolous behavior. But don’t get me wrong. I was not interested in Billy Dee as a man. I’m sure he wasn’t even a Mennonite. Besides which, I really don’t have time for such considerations, not with the inn to run, and Susannah to look out for. Those days are comfortably behind me.

After I dropped Billy Dee off at his room, I stopped by the kitchen to see how Freni was doing. “How’s dinner coming along?” I asked cheerfully.

Freni was busy greasing loaf pans for the bread she was making, but she took time out of her busy schedule to glare at me. “I put dill seed in the bread dough. Does that make it whole grain or vegetable?”

I ignored her logic. “Another meat-eater just checked in,” I said encouragingly.

“So, what’s the score now?”

“Meat-eaters four, veggies three.”

“And I grated some cheese into the dumpling batter, so you’ve got another fruit now,” she said matter-of- factly. Clearly the woman was trying to be helpful.

“Where’s Mose?” I asked. Usually at this time of day he could be found in the kitchen giving his wife a hand.

“Milking.”

“Still?” With just two cows now, the afternoon milking should have been done over an hour ago.

Freni slathered grease into another loaf pan. “He’s not doing the milking. One of the guests is.”

“Which one?”

Freni shrugged. “All the English look alike to me.” To Freni and Mose, anyone not Amish, or distinctly Mennonite, was an outsider, an “English” person. Even Susannah was English, now that she wore makeup and sleeveless dresses.

“Is the guest male or female?”

Freni gave me a look that, if harnessed, could have shriveled a bushel of apricots on a rainy day. “This is my Mose we are talking about, Magdalena. You watch your tongue. The guest was a very tall man. Skinny, like a clothesline pole.”

“Ah, Joel Teitlebaum.”

“A nice man,” she added with surprising generosity.

Just then I noticed that the shortening Freni was using to grease the loaf pans was not vegetable shortening but lard she had rendered herself. "That’s not vegetable!” I cried.

“It isn’t meat,” she retorted.

“But it comes from a pig!” Vegetarianism and cholesterol issues aside, I doubted Mr. Teitlebaum would have been thrilled if he knew its source.

“Grease is grease,” said Freni stubbornly. “What matters is that the bread doesn’t stick.”

“What matters,” I said tersely, “is that we are honest with our guests. Not to mention with ourselves.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Would you like to do the cooking yourself?” Freni always asked me that question three seconds before she threatened to quit.

“You’re a superb cook!” I said and fled from the room with one second to go.

If I had been thinking clearly, not rattled by the conflux of hunters and A.P.E.S., I would have dashed into Hernia and picked up some fresh vegetables at the supermarket. Then I would have made a huge salad and everyone would have been satisfied. The English love their iceberg lettuce. It seems almost to have a pacifying effect on them.

Personally, I’m not much on eating raw green leaves. The fact that you have to put stuff on it in order to make it palatable seems absurd to me. Why not just down the stuff straight from the bottle and leave the leaves to the rabbits! But this is only my opinion. And if I had been less opinionated, and more accommodating, there might not have been a corpse clutching Mama’s dresden plate quilt.





Chapter 4





The new dining room occupies the entire bottom portion of the new wing. It is actually much more than a dining room. In one corner there is a half-finished quilt stretched across a sturdy oak frame. Guests are invited to try their hand applying a few neat stitches. Of course, if their needlework is lousy, Freni or I will rip out the stitches within moments of their checking out. I do, after all, sell the quilts in some of the trendiest gift shops along the East Coast.

If quilting’s not their thing, guests can always try spinning or weaving in the other back corner of the vast room. Neither Freni nor I knows anything about either of these two pursuits, although some of the guests appear to be rather proficient at it. One two-week guest spun and wove a very attractive scarf, which I in turn sold for fifty dollars at our own little gift shop by the front desk.