I said my good nights and had just started down the hall when something occurred to me. I turned back. Both young people were just as I had left them. “Say,” I said hesitantly, “isn’t it a little odd that with all the commotion, Ms. Parker doesn’t seem to have awakened?”
“Not at all,” answered Linda. She sounded just a wee bit smug. “She usually takes a ‘chill pill.’ ”
“A what?”
“A tranquilizer,” translated Joel. He looked to Linda for confirmation.
She nodded. “Jeanette, I mean Ms. Parker, has a chronic back problem. It’s exacerbated by stress. A Xanax now and then relaxes her and helps her get to sleep.”
“I see,” I said, but of course I didn’t. I generally disapprove of any kind of medication. Oh, not on religious grounds, I assure you. It’s just that Granny Yoder was a hypochondriac. At one time I counted thirty-seven different bottles of pills and vitamins in her medicine chest. If the old lady had simply let nature take its course, she might have left the planet years earlier and spared us all a lot of grief.
I was coming out of Linda’s room when I noticed that the fire escape door at the end of the new wing, right next to Miss Brown’s room, was slightly ajar. My first thought was that the reclusive Miss Brown had slipped out for a breath of fresh night air. After all, moths are most active at night. But then I noticed a thin trail of sunflower seeds and concluded that young Joel was the insomniac I’d suspected him to be. I made a mental note to talk to him in the morning. If Crazy Maynard got in and showed young Linda what he showed me, she might scream for days.
On the way back to my bedroom, I tripped and nearly tumbled down the impossibly steep stairs. I was thinking about Susannah, and how Ms. Parker had nothing on me when it came to stress and back pain. So it wasn’t until I’d crawled back into bed that I remembered two other people hadn’t turned out in response to Linda’s arachnophobic screams.
Chapter 9
Hardly more than an hour had passed when I was partially awakened by a loud pounding noise.
“Be still, my heart,” I murmured, and turned over to go back to sleep. It wasn’t my fault, and therefore not a sin, that I had been dreaming about the not-unattractive Billy Dee Grizzle.
The pounding persisted, and eventually it became clear to my sleep-deprived brain that someone was hanging on the door and shouting. In my dreams, Billy Dee had only grunted.
I flung on my modest terry robe and staggered to the door. When I opened it, Joel Teitlebaum nearly knocked me over.
“There’s a dead woman on the stairs!” he shouted.
“Grannie Yoder?” I cried happily. Not that I was glad the old woman was haunting the place again, but I was relieved finally to have a confirmation of my sightings. Ever since the first time I saw Grannie Yoder’s ghost, Susannah has accused me of being as loony as a lake in Maine. The nerve of that girl!
“Whatever her name is, there’s a dead woman on the stairs,” repeated Joel. He was still very agitated, and his eyes looked as if they just might pop out of his face.
I grabbed one of his flailing arms. “Calm down, dear. It’s only the ghost of my dear, departed grandma. She was far more dangerous in life, believe you me.”
Joel wrenched his arm from my restraining grip. “This is not a ghost, Miss Yoder! This is a real live woman! Uh, I mean a real dead woman.”
I must have flung Joel’s spindly frame out of the way, because the next thing I knew I was at the bottom of our impossibly steep stairs. Sure enough, in a heap, not unlike a burlap bag of potatoes, lay the crumpled form of Miss Brown. Not even the Chinese acrobats I’d seen at the circus in Somerset could assume a position like this. I leaned over for a closer look, but I didn’t touch her. Mama had made us kiss Grannie Yoder after she was dead, and I’d had nightmares afterward for weeks.
“Are you sure she’s dead?”
Joel nodded. “She’s still slightly warm, but I can’t find a pulse anywhere. Who the hell is she?”
I felt a stabbing pain run through my gut. Sheer terror, I’m sure. “One of my guests. She checked in early yesterday, and then I never saw her again.”
“Better call the police,” said Joel, who had calmed down significantly. “And, I suppose, an ambulance. Just to be on the safe side.”
I called both. At the risk of making myself seem like I have a heart made out of dumplings, I will admit that at this point I was hoping not only that Miss Brown was dead, but that all her relatives were dead as well. What with those stairs being so steep, I was clearly liable. To settle a suit of this magnitude, not only would I have to sell off the PennDutch, but Susannah and I would be indentured servants for the rest of our lives. Even that obnoxious little Shnookums would have to be pawed off for a few pennies. Come to think of it, even the darkest clouds have silver linings.