Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Crime by Tamar Myers

It was open about eighteen inches, which surprised me. Normally, either Mose or I close it at night. But with the camera, light, and sound equipment it now contained, we did more than close it. I specifically remembered Mose telling me that he had locked the door with a padlock at Art's request. The padlock was missing.
     
     
I have always been a confronter, rushing headlong into difficult situations. I hate being held hostage by my own fear, preferring to act rashly than wait in agony. So, acting rashly, I slipped into the barn and felt for the light switch. Back in the days when my people were Amish, there had been no light in the barn, but my grandparents had joined the Mennonite church and were allowed electricity. It was Grandpa Yoder who had wired the barn, and he'd done a bang-up job. Then Papa improved on it by replacing Grand- pa's incandescent bulbs with fluorescent fixtures. When I flipped the switch just inside the door, the barn was flooded in light, from the pigeon-filled rafters to the bloodstained floor.
     
     
It was at that instant of revelation that I caught my glimpse of someone, or something, slipping out through the small side door that locks only from the inside. Foolishly, I called out and ran to investigate. But there was nothing revealing for me to see. On that side of the barn the woods creep up close, and who or whatever I'd seen, had presumably been swallowed up by them.
     
     
"You should have called me first," said Melvin both before and after a futile hike in the woods to look for clues.
     
     
"I'm sorry, Melvin. I acted without thinking. I bet you'd have done the same thing if you were me." I meant it as a sort of compliment.
     
     
Melvin's left eye began to wander in its orbit. "I hardly think so. What you did was to interfere with police business. And it could have gotten you killed, Yoder."
     
     
I looked away from Melvin so as to avoid the temptation to be critical. He can't help it if he looks like a praying mantis and has the intelligence of a moth. It is unchristian of me to dislike him so.
     
     
"Melvin, isn't there any way you can get fingerprints from the doors?"
     
     
"Ever hear of gloves, Yoder?"
     
     
"There's a pair I keep for milking in the cowshed," I said cruelly.
     
     
"Very funny, Yoder. I don't suppose it occurred to you that the trespasser was wearing gloves when he handled the doors."
     
     
"Or she."
     
     
"What?"
     
     
"I mean that the trespasser, as you call it, might well have been a woman."
     
     
Melvin laughed, either that or a cicada sounded its mating call. "A woman! You're a barrel of laughs, Yoder. Not that it's occurred to you, but the trespasser and the perpetrator may well be one and the same. And no woman, Yoder, despite your fancy women's lib, could pin a man to a beam with a pitchfork."
     
     
It was my turn to laugh, and this time with relief. "I guess that leaves me out of it. I'm no longer your suspecto numero uno, then, am I?"
     
     
Melvin's left eye scanned my face, while his right one seemed to be studying my shoes. "Have you gone mad, Yoder?"
     
     
"I've been close, but so far not nearly as close as you. Why?"
     
     
"Because you most certainly are still my suspecto numero uno. But with an accomplice, of course."
     
     
"A what?"
     
     
"An accomplice. Come on, Yoder. Even Lee Harvey Oswald didn't assassinate Kennedy by himself. The question is, who is your co-conspirator?"
     
     
Had I been handed a pitchfork just then, I might well have made a gelding out of Melvin. "For your information, Melvin Stoltzfus, there is a word for people who see plots and conspiracies everywhere. The word is paranoid. Read my lips, Melvin, I do not have a co-conspirator."
     
     
"Ah-ha! So you admit that you killed Don Manley by yourself."
     
     
"I admit no such thing. I couldn't have killed him by myself, remember? I'm just a woman."
     
     
"Exactly," Melvin agreed. "I've been trying to tell you that all along. No woman, even you,