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

little town, and quite a place you have here, dear. You get a lot of tourists?”
    Between the lines I meant that Farmersburg was about as far off the beaten track as one could get, her restaurant was more than adequate, and did outside troublemakers show up with any regularity?
    Pauline slid into the red vinyl seat across from me. “May I, hon? Most of my Joes are home-grown, but we get a few cameras now and then, usually in the summer. The tourist you’re talking about is from West Virginia.”
    “West Virginia?”
    Pauline nodded, and her beehive hairdo tilted precariously. Fortunately it was stanchioned with enough bobby pins to secure the Empire State Building in gale-force winds. “Big tipper, but a slow eater, if you know what I mean.”
    I did. “So he’s here for a while,” I said. “What’s his game?”
    Pauline tapped the creamer in front of me. “A little squeeze from the cow, but he’s squeezing more than that if you ask me.”
    Not one to decline an invitation, I asked, “Who’s in the juicer, dear?”
    “The Aymish.”
    I gritted my teeth, but held my tongue. Clearly Pauline had once been a tourist herself.
    “Do tell, dear.”
    Pauline glanced furtively around, as if trying to spot eavesdroppers. To be really thorough she might have tried jabbing her hair with a fork. An entire CB unit could have been hidden in that hill.
    “The Amish supply me with most of my basics. You have bacon with that?” She pointed at my plate, which had been scraped so clean that even a forensic dietician would have been at a loss to recreate my meal.
    “Two orders of bacon,” I said proudly. The experts won’t agree, but in my opinion fat is where it’s at. Better a short, fat-filled life than a long dotage filled with iceberg lettuce. “Let us pray” is all I need of that vegetable.
    Pauline snapped her gum extra loud in appreciation. “Good for you, girl. Anyway, what I was saying is I’ve been buying from those people on a regular basis, so I’ve gotten to know some of them pretty well. Not that you can ever really get inside their heads, on account of they’re so different and all. Sort of like the Japanese, I guess. You know what I mean?”
    “What an interesting observation,” I said kindly. Professional courtesy prevented me from rolling my eyes even a quarter of a turn.
    “Yeah. Anyway, things used to be different before old man Craycraft died. Over at Daisybell Dairies. He was their biggest customer. And not just milk, either. I understand that a lot of them worked at the plant.”
    “Yes?”
    And then she did pick up a fork—fortunately a clean one—and jabbed at the base of the hive. The tines clinked melodically against the metal hairpins. Either that or she was harboring some real bees.
    “New dandruff shampoo,” she said by way of explanation. “Not as effective as my regular brand. Now, where was I?”
    “You were telling me about Daisybell Dairies. How things have changed there.”
    “Yeah, that’s right. You see, when Craycraft died, his nephew came up from West Virginia to run the place. He’s the tourist I was telling you about.”
    “I see.”
    “Yeah, well, a lot of us wish he had stayed home. The Amish feel that way too. You can tell. Something tells me they weren’t given a fair shake over there at the factory, and then there was that business about the girl.”
    “Oh?” I tried to sound mildly curious.
    Pauline gave the hive a final hard jab. If any bees had been in residence, they were certainly dead now. “From what I hear, our tourist, Danny Hem, put the moves on this Amish girl he had working for him.”
    She paused for dramatic effect, and I obligingly looked shocked. I was shocked, of course, but somehow, when hearing about it for the second time, it didn’t quite ring true.
    “Go on,” I said.
    “Well, no sooner did that happen than all the Amish working at the factory quit, and his milk suppliers—all of them Amish—quit their deliveries. Last I heard