Batter Off Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

the lip of the desk, lowered myself into place.
    The first drawer I perused contained nothing but old files. Since the majority of them mentioned me, they would have made good rainy-day reading, but I wisely skipped over them. The second drawer contained a variety of things: a pair of jumper cables; a box half full of Snickers bars; a grip builder; a black compact umbrella with a wayward spoke; and a large padded manila envelope, clasp side up. I pulled out the envelope and laid it on the desk, clasp side down. After that, I can’t remember if I thanked the Lord first and gasped second, or the other way around.
    In large, looping feminine script, written with black marker, were the following words: To Chief Chris Ackerman, from Minerva J. Jay—Please Open In The Event Of My Death . The fact that every word was capitalized could at least eliminate the possibility that Miss Jay had ever been a copy editor. The envelope, by the way, was sealed shut, as well as closed with the clasp.
    I bolted to the window. The door to Sam Yoder ’s Corner Market was still closed, and there was no sign of Chris. What to do, what to do? Then I had a flash of inspiration, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, could only have been heaven-sent. If steaming an envelope open worked for Agatha Christie’s sleuths, why couldn’t it work for me—a real-life woman of the cloak-and-shoot-dagger looks? With trembling fingers I turned the kettle back on high and, whilst my heart pounded at a dangerously high rate, held the envelope over the steam it soon generated.
    Now, I don’t know much about the dame herself, but it’s my guess that most of her tea came to her by the way of servants, and that if she ever did really steam open envelopes, they weren’t the sturdy manila kind. Nevertheless, after a good deal of puckering—both the envelope and my brow—I got the dang thing open. But wouldn’t you know it, at the same instant I heard a sound that ranks up there with one of the ten most annoying sounds in the world, my wailing included.
    “Fear not, Little Jacob,” I said. “It’s just your cousin Sam, laughing—although frankly, it sounds more like a donkey in heat braying for a mate.”
    My son’s response was to wallop me in the ribs. No doubt he was punishing me for my crude reference to an ass desirous of sex; he was, after all, very much a minor and had every right to be upset. What a smart lad he was already turning out to be. Perhaps I should reconsider his name; Einstein Yoder-Rosen seemed a trifle pretentious, and I’ve never especially cared for Albert. But seeing as how he was the child of my dotage, and Sarah in the Bible had named the child of her old age Isaac, and Sir Isaac Newton was undoubtedly very bright . . .
    Sam brayed again, sending Little Jacob into paroxysms of calisthenics. Finally the gravity of the situation permeated my thick skull; if I could hear Sam, then the door to Sam Yoder’s Corner Market had to be open, which meant that at any minute the door to the police station would open, and the young, albeit handsome, whippersnapper from the Golden State would find me spying on him. I had to act fast.
    The first thing I did was dump the contents of the padded envelope into my sensible, Mennonite-size purse (if I can’t carry last Sunday’s church bulletin in it without having to fold it, the bag is too small). All that fell out was a key. That’s it —just a key. A house key at that.
    Now, although it is neither here nor there, it is my assertion that every middle-class American is in possession of at least one key, the function of which escapes him or her. I had just such a key on my ring. It was supposed to be the key to the back door of my house, even though it didn’t fit any of my doors.
    Yet I was almost positive I was given this key by the builder himself, after the PennDutch was restored following the tornado that leveled it and left me lying facedown in a cow patty. But one thing I did know for sure: it