Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth by Tamar Myers Page B

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.
     
     
Jeff Myers is our Chief of Police, and as nice a man as you could hope to meet. We were in grade school together, and he was the one boy whom I didn't mind spitting paper wads at me. Of course he's married now. Anyway, he showed up in no time flat and handled everything as smoothly as Freni does her shoofly pie dough. In less than an hour he had Miss Brown shipped off to the county morgue, for she was indeed dead. And in that time he had managed to interview everyone in the inn, except for myself.
     
     
That he did over a cup of coffee in the kitchen.
     
     
"Mayas well," he said, when I offered it to him. 'We were planning to leave on vacation in three hours anyway. No use trying to hit the sack now. I'll just let Tammy do the driving."
     
     
"Where are you off to?" I asked. Tammy Myers, his wife, is a nice-enough woman, but dingier than a mailbox on a gravel road. They have three children, Sarah, David, and Dafna, who are almost grown. That the woman never misplaced them when they were infants is nothing short of a miracle. If his wife was going to do the driving while Jeff slept, somebody sane needed to know their destination.
     
     
"We're going to Niagara Falls," said Jeff, "then camping up in Canada for two weeks. I'll be leaving my assistant in charge."
     
     
"Keep her away from the edge," I advised sagely.
     
     
"What?"
     
     
"Nothing."
     
     
"Now, Mags, about this Brown woman, you say you never saw her again after you showed her to her room? Until Mr.
     
     
Teitlebaum found her, I mean."
     
     
"That's right. I didn't see a sign of her. Of course, she wasn't easy to see, if you know what I mean."
     
     
"Uh-huh. Apparently none of the other guests saw or heard her either, at least not while she was alive. Neither did anyone hear a scream when she fell down the stairs, although one man, let's see," he briefly consulted his notes, "a Mr. Grizzle, said he thought he heard a thump. Of course, that might have been Mr.