Read Online No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk by Tamar Myers - Free Book Online Page A

in a streambed. Tall, gaunt trees stood sentinel above dense underbrush. The only lights to be seen were those in the sky, and the place felt wild and forlorn. It was hard to believe I was still in Ohio.
    “This is where the young folks come to court,” Stayrook said matter-of-factly.
    I recoiled in shock. For all their strictness, my Amish relatives were surprisingly relaxed when it came to the latitude they allowed their teenagers. Not that their teenagers would do the same things you’re thinking of, but still, it was a lot more than my Mennonite parents would have tolerated. I tried unsuccessfully to conjure up images of black buggies filled with amorous Amish teens, boldly holding hands. It was too much for my blood.
    “Here?” I asked weakly.
    “Yah.” Stayrook grinned. He had straight white teeth, or at least that’s what they looked like in the dark. “But don’t worry, they won’t be here tonight. Because of the funeral.”
    That relaxed me a little. I certainly wasn’t up to a hijacking and a passionate display of manual interdigitation. Not on the same night. “So, tell me all you know about my cousin’s death,” I said. I felt a need to be in charge again.
    Stayrook glanced about, as if even there, beyond the pale of civilization, danger might be lurking. “Magdalena, you were right. I do know something more about the deaths of Yost Yoder and Levi Mast.”
    “Yes?”
    “They were not accidents.”
    “You don’t say.” Sarcasm is an art form, and Susannah, my tutor, is one of the masters.
    Stayrook shifted nervously. “You must give me your word that my name will not be brought up in connection with this matter.”
    “You have my word,” I said solemnly. From one of the gaunt trees an owl hooted.
    Stayrook took a deep breath. “Yost, Levi, and I all used to supply milk to Daisybell Dairies. So did our fathers. In fact, most of us in Farmersburg County were connected to this dairy in one way or another. Those of us who didn’t supply milk worked in the factory.”
    “The place that makes the fancy cheese.”
    “Yah, but that was back when Mr. Craycraft was in charge. Wesley P. Craycraft III, who founded the dairy. He was an Englisher, of course, but like the salt of the earth. He cared about the cheese, and he cared about his workers too.”
    “Go on.”
    “Then Mr. Craycraft died, and his nephew from West Virginia came up and took over. Things were never the same.”
    “How so?”
    “Mr. Hem—Danny, he wanted us to call him— started taking shortcuts. Shortcuts that he thought would save him money.”
    “What kind of shortcuts?”
    I could feel Stayrook’s gaze boring into me. He must have thought I was stupid. “You ever make cheese, Magdalena?”
    “Yes.” That wasn’t a lie. Once, after Mama died, Susannah and I tried to make cottage cheese by pouring sour milk into a sock and then hanging it up to drip.
    “A good Swiss has to age, you know.”
    “Of course.” Our cottage cheese had started out plenty aged, if you ask me.
    “Mr. Hem didn’t think so. He wanted to cut the aging time from six months to three. Then he cut it back to two. Imagine that!” Stayrook laughed, and the owl hooted along with him. “Two months is not Swiss. Not Farmersburg Swiss!”
    “Certainly not,” I agreed. Come to think of it, that sour milk might have been in our fridge for two months before we tried to make cheese out of it. After our parents’ deaths, before Freni bustled her way into our lives, I sort of lost track of things.
    “So, it was false advertising, you see. Mr. Hem was selling this nothing cheese as Farmersburg, and in the beginning he made a lot of money. Without an aging period, he could produce a lot more cheese in the same amount of time.”
    “Couldn’t the public tell the difference?” Once as an economy measure at the PennDutch, I tried serving my guests instant coffee, instead of the real McCoy. That I survived that mistake is due only to the fact that I know a