Free Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Crime by Tamar Myers

untied her apron and pulled it over her head, nearly knocking off her white prayer bonnet in the process. "I quit, Magdalena. These English are too unpredictable. A meal is ready when it is done cooking, not before."
     
     
"What are you cooking?"
     
     
"Roast beef and barbecued chicken. But the roast beef is still raw and Mose just now put the chicken on the grill."
     
     
I patted Freni reassuringly. "You don't have a problem after all. The English love their beef raw. They call it 'rare.' And as for the chicken, stick it close up under the broiler for a few minutes until it turns nice and black. Then tell them it's Cajun style."
     
     
Freni reluctantly did what I suggested and got her highest reviews ever. Even the rude Rip Oilman, who had previously criticized her cooking, said that it was the best meal he'd had in recent memory. Allowing for the fact that Rip's memory probably goes back only a matter of days, it was still a nice thing to say.
     
     
Of course, Freni really only cared what Art thought about the meal. She was, after all, more fond of him than ever. If Art had grown a beard, shaved off his mustache, and worn plain clothes, Freni would have undoubtedly adopted him. Meanwhile, Freni's real son, John, toiled meaningfully away on the family farm, less than a mile away as the crow flies, all but forgotten by his mother. And just because he had married Barbara Zook, a six-foot-tall, sturdy gal from one of the western Amish communities, who had the bad habit of speaking her own mind from time to time. Apparently, two unfettered tongues in the same family do not tranquility make.
     
     
I was the first of the cast to report to the barn. Although I am normally very conscientious and punctual, those were not my motives. I simply wanted to see the individual looks on the other cast members' faces when they entered the scene of the crime. My own, I'm sure, was a bit unusual.
     
     
Melvin had roped off the immediate area surrounding the post against which Don Manley had been forked, but it was visible from virtually any point on the lower level of the barn. The vast amount of blood the assistant director had spilled had, for the most part, soaked through the cracks of the barn floor, but there was one warped floorboard.that had caught some of the blood and held it, as if it were a shallow wooden bowl. The blood had congealed and evaporated to the point that the residue resembled something very close to good old-fashioned German blood-pudding sausage. The entire bloodstained area was swarming with flies. In the midday August heat, my once clean and tidy barn smelled like a slaughterhouse, which, of course, it was.
     
     
Anyway, I climbed up to the first level of the hayloft, where most of the mad-Amishman scenes were to be filmed. Already the crew had positioned cameras and huge lights mounted on rolling pedestals. What seemed like miles and miles of cable spread in all directions. It was as if a giant spider had spun her web throughout my barn. Fortunately it was August, and Bessie and Matilda, my two Holstein cows, could spend their days outside. Mose had even volunteered to milk them outside, which would probably work in Bessie's case, because she was a wanton, shameless bovine anyway. Matilda, however, was very shy about giving her milk, as befits a Mennonite cow.
     
     
I sat there on the edge of the loft with my feet dangling over, and contemplated what my greed had wrought. There I was, dressed in traditional Amish garb, about to play the mother of a mad, pitchfork-pitching Amishman, in the same barn that had been built by my own Amish ancestors-peaceful ones, all of them. Back in the French and Indian War days, my ancestors, the Jacob Hochstetler family, had submitted to massacre by the Delaware Indians rather than lift a finger in their own defense. Historically we were a peace-loving, plain people, and now here was I, desecrating everyone's memory, and for what? Money and a very slim chance at fame,