Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth by Tamar Myers Page A

see," she added, "poor Joel could get bitten by that horrible thing and die?"
     
     
I smiled kindly. "Absolutely not. That little spider couldn't even kill a fly. I've been bitten by them oodles of times. Of course it hurts, but all that happens is that you get a little lump that goes away in a couple of hours. Joel will be just fine."
     
     
As if on cue, Joel popped back into the room with my slipper in hand. "All's well that ends well," he said, perhaps a little out of breath.
     
     
"Thanks, Joel."
     
     
"No problem, Miss Yoder."
     
     
"Yeah, thanks, Joel." Linda seemed to be breathing normally again.
     
     
I figured it was a good time for me to leave. "Well, good night, then."
     
     
"Good night, Miss Yoder. I'll stay with her for a while."
     
     
Linda smiled appreciatively up at Joel. Perhaps I had been wrong about some of my early assumptions. "When you assume," Papa used to say, "you make an ass out of u and me."
     
     
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.
     
     
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,