Free No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk by Tamar Myers Page A

glanced at the luminescent hands of my watch. “It is four thirty-five in the morning! You should be ashamed of yourself!”
    “For what?” she asked sleepily.
    Then for the first time I remembered who it was Susannah had been out with. It was the murderer himself, Danny Hem. Even if it wasn’t him who pushed Levi from the silo, or held Yost under as he drowned in milk, it was him who had ordered their deaths. I was positive of that. My baby sister, whom I was supposed to protect now that Mama and Papa were gone, and who surely couldn’t look out for herself, was dating a cold-blooded murderer. Mama must be spinning in her grave so fast that the people in Tokyo undoubtedly were feeling the vibrations and expecting a tidal wave.
    “Susannah, you can’t—” I stopped. What my baby sister didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. At least not yet. But her relationship with Danny Hem could help lead to justice for the Amish community of Farmersburg, whether they wanted that justice or not. Foolishly I kept my big mouth shut.
     

Chapter Twelve
    The next morning I passed on the sardine omelettes and left the house while Susannah was still sawing logs. However, that’s not saying much. Once, shortly after she graduated from high school, my sister slept for thirty-six hours straight. Aaron tells me that she was probably drunk and none of us knew it at the time, but I don’t think that had to be the case. Susannah slept so much when she was a baby that Mama, who was going through the change of life and was easily distracted, forgot to feed her for an entire day. Of course, she hadn’t checked Susannah’s diaper either, and wouldn’t you know, at the end of the day it was still dry. One thing for sure, my sister has a world-class bladder.
    Outside it was just beginning to get light and promised to be another cold but clear day. Over in the mountains of Pennsylvania, according to my car radio, eight more inches of snow had fallen overnight, and six more were forecast. It was as if Hernia were in another part of the country altogether, instead of just two hundred miles away. It seemed bizarre to be driving on flat, clear roads when back home everyone was snowed in. I said a quick prayer for Aaron, Doc, and Mose, who were undoubtedly cooped up with restless guests and numerous complaints.
    Farmersburg is easily twice the size of Hernia, but it certainly is no Pittsburgh. Even Somerset and Bedford dwarf it. That was fine with me. I am not a fan of big-city driving, and Farmersburg was just my cup of tea. For a real cup of tea I stopped at Pauline’s Pancake House, right where U.S. Route 62 comes into it from the west. Frankly, I didn’t expect much from Pauline, but after eating with the Troyers, it couldn’t help but be a pleasant surprise. The pancakes were light and fluffy, the butter real, and the syrup warm. That the syrup was only two percent real maple didn’t matter to me. Mama gave us only corn syrup when we were growing up; the maple she saved for when we had company, and to this day I can’t imagine eating the real thing unless the table is decked out in its finest and I am in my Sunday best.
    Pauline, the proprietress, was a plateful herself. I could hear her gum snapping from three tables away. There is something palpable, perhaps a pheromone, that proprietresses emit, and that others of their ilk pick right up on. Whatever it is, Pauline made a beeline for me.
    “Hey, hon, where you from?”
    Since I could read between the lines, I cut straight to the chase. “The PennDutch Inn, Hernia, Pennsylvania, and I’m only here for a few days.”
    Pauline’s smile of relief was so wide that her gum fell out, but with a practiced hand she caught it and popped it back in her mouth, without missing a beat. “Then welcome to town, honey. It’s always good to see a visiting face.”
    Between the lines that meant she could relax now that she knew I wasn’t competition moving in on her territory.
    “This is a charming