"And the other two? Mr. Grizzle and the sculptor from Philadelphia?”
“Garrett,” he looked at me, “I mean, the Congressman, suspected they might be part of the organization as well. That’s why he asked those questions about hunting at supper. A quick call afterward confirmed it. Mr. Grizzle has been a member for three years. Mr. Teitlebaum, the sculptor, for almost seven. They’re all here together, and as far as we know they intend to disrupt our plans for tomorrow.”
“You knew about this?” asked Lydia. The question was directed to me, and sounded stingingly like an accusation.
The most valuable lesson I ever learned from Papa was to stick up for myself with confidence. Especially if I had done nothing wrong. We Mennonites may be pacifists, but we’re not pushovers. “Everyone has to use the six-seater,” Papa used to say, “and it all ends up in the same big hole.” The six-seater was our outhouse, and most of our family’s quality-time was spent around that one big hole. Of course, we now have indoor plumbing, along with telephones in every room. Incidentally, our six-seater is still the biggest outhouse in the county.
“I most certainly did not know about this. Not when I booked this week’s reservations. It wasn’t until Billy Dee arrived, and he was the last one, I might add, that I found out. He told me himself.”
Lydia’s mask was still tightly in place. “And how long were you going to keep this information to yourself? Until after the reporters got involved and you got yourself some more coverage for the inn?”
That raised even my pacifist hackles. The Penn- Dutch does not need any additional coverage. Certainly not coverage of confrontation over controversial causes. “And just how long were your husband and his aide going to keep their discovery from you? I am, after all, the one who clued you in, not them.”
The mask slipped a trifle. “I’m sorry, Miss Yoder. I apologize. You do have a point.”
Never miss out on an opportunity to kick a dead horse; it is, after all, a form of exercise. I was tempted to tell Lydia there already was a reporter on the premises, and I had yet to spill one solitary bean of information to her. Wisely, though, I concluded that rubbing Lydia’s nose in my discretion would be more trouble than it was worth. Instead, I decided to accept her apology. People hate it when you forgive them.
“I forgive you,” I said.
Lydia’s face assumed the color of one of Freni’s pickled beets. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some matters to take care of.” She carefully put down her dish towel, and then, with the regal bearing of a queen, departed my humble kitchen. Delbert immediately chased after her, like a faithful dog. Of course he was of a breed much larger and quieter than Shnookums’s.
I finished up the dishes by myself. The hot water was as therapeutic as ever. When I pulled the plug and watched the last of the water swirling down the drain, I imagined my troubles were the food particles caught up in the vortex. Starting with Jeanette Parker, and ending up with Lydia Johns Ream, the whole shebang of them, Susannah and her mutt included, swirled out of sight, and temporarily out of mind. Very temporarily. I was still wiping out the sink when the Congressman himself paid me a visit.
“Miss Yoder!”
I whirled, clutching my wet towel defensively to my bosom. Not since Crazy Maynard Miller exposed himself at my window one night have I felt so frightened. Or so guilty.
“Yes!”
The Congressman had been standing right behind me, and when I turned, he nearly poked me in the eye with his righteously extended forefinger. Seeing him so close, I yelped involuntarily. Unfortunately there was no room for me to back up. I flattened my buttocks against the still-warm sink.
“Miss Yoder,” he said through clenched teeth, “I am a patient man. A tolerant man. But I will not have people meddling in my business. Is that clear?”
I felt like I had when Mr. Lichty, my sixth-grade teacher, caught me doodling during long division. Although Garrett Ream and I were approximately the same age, the fact that he was a United States Congressman, an Episcopalian at that, and I a mere Mennonite innkeeper, made me feel about as equal to him as Shnookums must have felt to me. “Yes, sir. I understand,” I said. But of course I didn’t. What I said to his wife was my business, not his.
"It’s bad enough that you booked those people during my hunting trip. But you had no right to scare Mrs. Ream with unnecessary information.”
“I didn’t mean to scare her. Just inform her.”
“To what purpose?”
“To keep her from having to tangle with Jeanette Parker. It hasn’t happened here yet, but I’ve read accounts of animal rights activists hassling hunters in other counties.”