Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Crime by Tamar Myers Page A

Magdalena, is strong enough to drive a pitchfork through a man's gut and pin him to a beam."
     
     
"Would that we were," I said dangerously. "What?"
     
     
"Nothing. Except that you're barking up the wrong tree, Melvin. In fact, you're not even in the right woods. And as for your statement that the murderer could not possibly have been a woman, you're full of - " I didn't finish my sentence, but kicked discreetly at a pile of pigeon droppings.
     
     
"And anyway," said Melvin as if he hadn't heard a thing I'd just said, "it's a fact that most women murder their victims through less violent means. You know, poison and such."
     
     
"Lizzie Borden took an ax," I reminded him.
     
     
"That theory has been challenged," he said smugly.
     
     
I started to rack my brain for another example of female brutality, and then, realizing how absurd it all was, stifled a laugh of my own. There was nothing to gain by convincing Melvin that the trespasser had been a woman, and there was quite possibly something to lose from it. In the convoluted paths of Melvin's mind, such a suggestion might well come home to rest at my feet. That the trespasser had been a woman I was becoming increasingly sure, although I could not pinpoint anything specific I had seen to back up my hunch. A hunch was all it was at the time, but a woman's hunch, as Grandma used to say, is worth two facts from a man.
     
     
I was in one scene that morning. It was the one where DarIa Strutt, having first fallen in love with the mad Amishman, Yost Yoder, and 'then been betrayed by that love, is tied to a beam and forked through the middle. I played Yost Yoder's mother, Anna, who lives in a world of denial and cannot admit her son's condition. So, you see, it wasn't as bad as the original script, where Freddy the mad Amishman rapes women in the bathtub and then cuts their throats, but still, it was enough to keep Mama turning in her grave.
     
     
I had exactly eighteen words to say: "Ah, my darling son, what have you done now? But perhaps it isn't as bad as it seems." I practiced saying them over and over, making them come out slightly different each time.
     
     
"Imagine Meryl Streep saying them," Susannah suggested.
     
     
Unfortunately I have never been to a movie. However, I had played the part of Pocahontas in the eighth grade, so that's what I based my delivery on for the camera.
     
     
"Cut!" snapped Steven. We were still in rehearsal, and the cameras weren't even rolling.
     
     
"Shall I start over fresh?" I asked cooperatively.
     
     
Steven smirked. "Two sticks of dynamite and a bulldozer couldn't give you a fresh enough start, Yoder."
     
     
I prayed for patience. "I mean, do you want me to start over at the beginning of my lines."
     
     
Steven stared at me.
     
     
"Well, should I start over again, or not?"
     
     
Steven steadfastly refused to answer. I think he was willing me to shrink to near nothing in size and fall between the cracks in the barn floor. Clearly it was time for me to take my destiny in my own two hands, which are, after all, quite lovely. So I repeated my lines one more time, but this time I said them as I, Magdalena Yoder, would say them - if I were the mother of a mad Amishman who had just pinned his paramour to a barn beam.
     
     
"Brava!" someone shouted. "Brava!" I nearly fainted when I discovered it was Art Lapata.
     
     
"So you do have a voice," I said when he took me aside.
     
     
Art smiled. "Yes, but I hate to waste it on riffraff."
     
     
"Ah, so I've been suddenly elevated from riffraff to something else. What might that be? Scum?"
     
     
Art chuckled warmly. "I've had my eye on you the whole time, Miss Yoder. I immediately noticed a certain presence."
     
     
"It's all right to say tall. Five ten, as a matter of fact. And if you're asking, the weather up here is just fine. Maybe even a degree or two cooler than down there, where you are."
     
     
"And fire too," said Art.
     
     
"You can't fire me - I quit!" If