Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (2 page)

“Well, have a good day,” he said, fidgeting and yet resolutely not glancing behind him.

I chuckled. “You, too. Hope business gets better.” Pot dealing would explain how he was able to survive with such a dusty, dingy shop in a town like Ridley Ridge.

I drove away, out of town, down the highway, and took a detour back through Autumn Vale. As I tootled through town, I waved at Doc English, the old dude who had been a friend of my uncle’s from way back. Today the eccentric doctor was dressed in a camouflage jacket and pith helmet—for him that was just another clothing option in an endless line of weird outfits. I did not want to know where he got his array of headwear; in fact, I existed in blissful ignorance. It was one of the mysteries of life in Autumn Vale, a town considerably cheerier than Ridley Ridge, if just as weird in its own way

I was tempted to stop at Janice Grover’s store, Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles, to see if she had anything new, but there was no guarantee she would be there, since her Main Street shop full of junk was only the beginning of her horde. She rented a vast warehouse on the edge of town, where, among other things, she had garden furniture and statuary, some of which I had already bought for use at Wynter Castle. She also had some wrought iron stuff I was trying to figure out a use for. I had taken photos of it all and would decide in the next couple of days. I already had dibs on an oak casket for the main hall to present the proper Halloween feel. I was only borrowing the coffin and hoped I wouldn’t need it anytime soon. Though I didn’t want a traditional Halloween feel for the party, it
was
a masquerade ball, so the coffin was my nod to the season.

I drove back out of town, taking the ascending road up out of the valley that gave Autumn Vale its name. A car rocketed toward and then past me, and ahead I saw Virgil Grace just getting back into his police car. Virgil is the sheriff of Autumn Vale. I’m not exactly sure of his age, but I fear he’s a little younger than me, and despite my attraction to him—he is a good-looking man—I won’t be pursuing that particular relationship for a number of reasons.

I’m a widow of over seven years, but there will never be anyone for me after Miguel. Once you’ve been loved by a man like that, there is no use trying second best. I only had two years with my husband, who was a fashion photographer, but it was two years of a bond so close I still feel him with me. I went back to my maiden name after his death only because his mother, who never liked me anyway, asked me to. She blamed me for his death, even though I wasn’t with him on the day he was killed in a car accident on his way to a shoot.

I pulled up alongside Virgil’s car and rolled down my window. “Hey, who was that? Did you have them stopped?”

“Yeah, routine traffic stop. Some weird out-of-towner with frizzy bleached blonde hair and strange clothes. Told her to stop driving so fast on gravel roads if she’s not used to them. I was actually just coming from the castle—delivered some papers to Pish. The Feds are still roaming around AVCB and see fit to use me as their messenger.”

AVCB is what locals call Autumn Vale Community Bank; after the debacle with Dinah Hooper, Isadore Openshaw, and the mismanagement of Simon Grover, the Feds had swooped in to see if there was
just
negligence or actual malfeasance. Pish, a financier of some repute, was helping them with the aim of keeping the local bank open for the citizens of Autumn Vale. It was complicated and tedious, both things Pish relished.

“Fun for you,” I said, with sympathy. “So you stopped the girl for speeding. Weird place to be driving if you don’t know the area, don’t you think? A backwoods road like this?”

“She’s just passing through. I warned her about her speed and a brake light that wasn’t working and that was it.”

He eyed Shilo’s decrepit car, and I ignored his cocked eyebrow . . . it was a game we were both used to by now. It was cheaper to pay the tickets than fix the car and he knew it. Eventually we would come to an impasse where he wouldn’t ignore the problems with Shilo’s bucket, and when that time came, we’d have to do something.

“So, Virgil, are you coming to the party?” He had waffled a bit about it, but his mom, Gogi Grace, with whom I had become fast friends, was coming.

“Mom wants me to. I probably will. No dead bodies, right?” he said, eyes narrowed. “No Halloween crap like that?”

“It’s not that kind of a party,” I assured him, crossing my fingers because of the planned presence of the casket and a mannequin inside it. “We won’t be going with a graveyard theme or have a haunted house or anything.” Mostly, anyway.

“Okay. I’ll have to see if I’m busy that night.”

He presided over a very small police force of three other full-time and two part-time officers that patrolled a large township, so he wasn’t being coy; even in his off hours he was on duty. Still, his caginess was annoying. His radio crackled to life, and he responded, then waved and headed off toward town.

“Don’t do me any favors, buddy,” I muttered. It was strange; the very first time I’d met him he had outright flirted with me, but ever since he had kept his distance. But I wasn’t bothered by that, not one little bit.

Okay, maybe a little.

I drove on, rounding a bend in the road that was closed in on either side by pine forests. I then passed the stake that demarcated the beginning of my property, where it met the road. At first I had needed that indication to know where I was, but now I noticed the subtle change in trees; Wynter Castle had a wonderful forest that was actually a fifty-year-old arboretum planned and planted by my uncle. I turned into the lane that wound through the forest, then came out into the open and caught my first sight of Wynter Castle. It never failed to take my breath away, and with the improvements I had made, in a good way.

It’s a real castle, built in the early nineteenth century by my mill-baron ancestor. The stone was quarried locally, a mellow cream, gold-and-gray granite that picked up the sun’s rays and looked warm and inviting even on a chilly October day. There were three vehicles already there, and I groaned. It wasn’t Jack McGill’s Smart car with the Autumn Vale Realty sign on the side, nor the mower tractor that indicated that Zeke and Gordy, two local lads I hired to do exterior maintenance, were working that caused me to groan. It was the rented car parked haphazardly that told me Cranston Higgins was on-site.

Chapter Two

C
RANSTON
H
IGGINS
. H
E
was a nice enough guy in his way, well mannered and jovial. Obliging, even. But he was not only trying to horn in on my inheritance, claiming he was the long-lost grandson of my uncle Melvyn, but he was constantly, cheerfully
in my way
. Some people manage to be quietly helpful, but Cranston wouldn’t have known
quietly
if it had slapped him across the cheek and called him daddy. He wanted to help, he said, but all I heard when he said that was that he wanted to keep his eye on the prize, to be sure we got top dollar for “our” inheritance. I was doing my best to keep it all in perspective until I figured out what to do about him.

I spotted Cranston directing Zeke and Gordy. Wynter Castle is big enough, but not Highclere or Windsor Castle huge. It’s a more manageable American-sized castle, thank goodness, and has an amazing gothic arched window directly above the huge double oak doors that illuminates the great entrance hall. Ivy had grown up over the years and obscured the light, and the window was filthy. I had asked Zeke and Gordy to clear away the ivy while leaving the vines not directly on the window alone; the ivy added character to the castle and possibly hid other problems that might be revealed if the plant matter was torn away. They were then supposed to clean the glass. I hoped the ivy removal and glass cleaning would not only flood the great hall with light, but also illuminate the rose window that’s on the opposite wall over the double staircase. The rose window is amazing, a gorgeous rose-and-blue stained glass masterpiece.

Zeke and Gordy, up on matching twenty-foot ladders I had borrowed from Turner Construction, knew what to do . . . I hoped. They had assured me they did. I had even written out the instructions to be absolutely clear:
Tear ivy from window
only
, then clean window!
That was clear, right? I certainly didn’t need Cranston giving them conflicting directions. Heaven knows they could make up enough conflicting instructions between them to hopelessly confuse the matter. Cranston was trying to get them to pull
all
of the ivy down; he wanted it “clean and tidy,” he yelped up at the pair. Zeke, bless his heart, was arguing that I had been very specific, even while Gordy began to obey.

“No! Leave it alone,” I hollered at Gordy as I stormed across the parking area, some of my bagged goodies in my arms. “Cranston, as much as I know you’re trying to help, please don’t!”

All three men gazed at me with wide, unblinking stares. I am accustomed to that. I am normally a soft-spoken woman, and that lulls people into thinking I’m a pushover. I’m not. Gordy and Zeke went back to the task at hand, which, since they had finished removing the ivy covering the window, was now to wash said window with long-handled squeegees. Cranston, my round-faced, doughy possible cousin, just stood regarding me much as he might a pretty puppy that had bitten his hand, leaving him with a gash long enough to need stitches.

“Well, okay, Merry,” Cranston said with a disappointed frown. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his corduroy sports jacket. “If you think the ivy is okay, then we can leave it in place for now. But I heard that ivy has little roots that get into mortar and could make our castle crumble eventually.”

I smiled evenly, trying to ignore his use of
we
and
our
in the context of the castle, and said, “When it falls down around our ears in a couple hundred years, I’ll be sure to let you say, ‘I told you so’
as much as you want.”

As we watched the boys work, he began a long story about his past life in Buffalo with his beloved Granny Violet. Whenever Cranston started to drone, I drifted off.

I was of two minds regarding Cranston Higgins’s claim to being a Wynter by birth, if not by name. Skepticism comes naturally to me, so my first thought was:
Con artist, grifter, fake!
I was
not
going to be taken, and I was a little tired of being
told
I must not be taken in by the well-meaning folks around me. My theory is, if you are suspicious of someone, it’s wise to be kind and lovely to them so they’ll be lulled into a false sense of confidence and expose themselves at some point. It also gives you time to do some background checks. From what I had discovered so far, Cranston Higgins had indeed lived in Buffalo for most of his life, attended the schools he said he had attended, and lived where he said he had lived.

Cranston had never once asked me outright for money, just for a portion of the estate if he could prove his claim. I was keeping things polite and pleasant while we sorted it out. Melvyn, my great uncle, had apparently had a sweetheart named Violet round about 1940. He would have been in his late teens, fresh out of high school, when he enlisted in the army in ’42, after Pearl Harbor. When he headed off to basic training, there was apparently some kind of rift between them, and though she was pregnant, she never told him. She married some other fellow and moved away, but years later, just before she passed on, she told her grandson about his Wynter heritage and the castle his biological grandfather lived in.

He had a few photos of him with his granny as he grew up and in later years, but the one thing he had that connected him to the Wynter estate was an old gold-colored locket with her picture in it as a young woman. It was engraved
Forever Yours, Mel
.

I wouldn’t even be giving him the time of day except that Doc English, one of the few old enough to remember the old days and a great friend of my Uncle Melvyn, agreed that Melvyn had been going with a girl named Violet and that she married a fellow and moved away very soon after he and my uncle left for the war. So the tale
could
be true. If she had been pregnant with Melvyn’s baby but they argued and broke it off, she may have felt she had no recourse but to marry a nice 4-F fellow and raise the baby as his, rather than endure the shame of being an unwed mother in 1942.

Andrew Silvio, the estate lawyer, said he had never heard of another descendant. We could just let Cranston take us to court, the lawyer told me, but he warned that if that happened, the fight would be long and I might end up with nothing in the end even if I won, because legal fees could eat up the estate. He urged me to offer the guy a settlement to walk away. But in my gut I believed that if Melvyn had known he had a grandson, he might have handed the whole estate over to his closer male heir. Cranston just wanted half, which he said was only fair.

However, I wasn’t going to just hand half the estate over to him. I needed some ironclad proof. I asked Cranston if he was willing to do DNA testing, and he agreed. That took me aback. If he was a grifter, wouldn’t he kick up a fuss, knowing the DNA wouldn’t match? Silvio didn’t want me to do the DNA test. What if it came back positive? Then I would
definitely
be in for a court battle, because despite what he said right now, Cranston
might
sue for the whole estate, and he’d have a case. Melvyn’s stated wish—everyone in town knew about it—was to keep the castle in the family. My expressed intent to sell could be used against me, though I would argue the same would go for Cranston.

It was complicated. If Cranston and I were related, we’d be second cousins, or something like that. I didn’t have any relatives that I knew of, since I was an only child and both my parents were gone. It would have been kind of cool to have a cousin, but on the other hand, I could go from being owner of the estate to maybe visiting there occasionally. And the trouble with
that
was, I was beginning to like Autumn Vale and its inhabitants.

So we hadn’t done the DNA test yet, but I was leaning toward it. If Cranston ended up with the whole shebang, then that was how it was meant to be, and I’d find a way to make a fresh start. Maybe I’d move to California and become a stylist to the stars, I thought, in my more flippant moods. I just didn’t know which way I wanted to handle it yet.

It was possible that the decision would be yanked out of my hands, though, because Cranston was starting to insist. That made me lean toward the idea that, true or not, he at least believed he was the grandson of Melvyn Wynter. Silvio
still
thought I should just offer the guy a settlement. If he had any doubts about his granny’s story,
he might take it, since at least he’d walk away with something. But exactly what could a muffin-baking former stylist and one-time assistant to a diva model who was as broke as a dollar-store watch offer as compensation? I had no real money. My only asset was the castle, which would not be liquid until it was sold.

I came back down to earth with a thud, aware that the bags were starting to get heavy and Cranston showed no sign of stopping. He was talking about the great Buffalo, New York, snowstorm of 1977, when he had been just a little guy. “I bounced out of the house and straight into a drift so high it came up to my eyebrows!”

I sighed, shifting the bags. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Cranston, I am loaded down and there’s more in the car. You can stand there and talk, or you can give me a hand.” I trudged into the castle and attempted to slam the door, but no dice. Heavy doors like the double oak ones that lead into the great hall do not slam; they swing majestically shut. I took a deep breath and sighed, letting it out gradually. The great hall always had a calming effect on me.

Gordy and Zeke’s work had already made a difference, because for the first time I could see into the corners of the enormous space, and the rose window opposite the big window over the doors was lit up nicely to show the gold and royal blue panes that offset the crimson and greens of the floral pattern. And now I could actually see the fabulous curved and carved ceiling, with its ornate gold-painted plaster curlicues, the broad border painted with a rosy sunset sky with puffy clouds illuminated by a setting sun. The big, dusty tapestries were more visible, too, with their scenes of stag hunting, fruit sellers in marketplaces, and ladies sitting in gardens being wooed by medieval knights. Gorgeous. I smiled as I set the bags down and moved to the center of the great hall, under the majestic chandelier, letting the peace of the big space fill me, edging out the irritation Cranston had incited.

How had this happened to me? Just ten or so months ago I was doing my best to keep tyrannical model Leatrice Peugot happy. I had been a struggling stylist a couple of years before when she decided I was her savior. She offered me an insane wage, so I grabbed it like a large-mouth bass snapping at a wormy hook and soon found out that being her assistant meant active duty as her flogging girl, scapegoat, gofer, and everything in between, as well as taking over a starring role in the Leatrice Peugot drama
The Reason Everything Goes Wrong in My Life
. I dealt with it all as best I could for a while, muffin baking being my only outlet and link to sanity.

When Leatrice started stealing and scarfing them down in private, she gained a couple of ounces, which threatened her career as professional stick woman. It was my fault she kept filching them, apparently, and she was horribly angry. Angry Leatrice was volatile, like nitroglycerin in a room full of sugar-hyped toddlers. On rocking horses. With pellet guns. I took a lot of abuse before I figured out she was filching my muffins. I could handle her accusations that I was undermining her out of jealousy, but once she accused me of stealing a valuable necklace that had been loaned to her by Tiffany, I knew I had to leave. The police did not arrest me, but they filed a report in which I was named prominently. I don’t think
anyone
took it; I think she either lost it or pawned it.

I was in the middle of all of that when Andrew Silvio called me and told me the news; I was heir to the Wynter Estate, castle and all. It seems odd now, looking back, that I put off coming to Autumn Vale for so long, but I was desperate to right things in my life. I thought that meant staying in the city and dealing with my multitude of problems, among them suspicion from the police, Leatrice’s backstabbing, having no job, dwindling resources, and an industry poisoned against me by gossip and innuendo. I enlisted the help of Jack McGill, Autumn Vale’s only real estate agent, to put the castle on the market.

It didn’t sell, and finally I gave up trying to clear my name and deal with the crapstorm that was the web of lies Leatrice had woven. I left New York in the middle of the night with my worldly belongings in a rented sedan, leaving what didn’t fit in a storage unit in Manhattan, one that I had since cleared. Now everything I owned was around me in the castle, and it felt good.

Many of my problems had magically vanished the moment I left New York City. Industry gossip and Leatrice’s backstabbing became moot points once I was no longer confronted by former friends and allies at every event or club. I held fast to the knowledge that gossip dies and everyone would eventually move on to some new scandal.

“Merry, you home?” came a bright shout.

I smiled. I had
left
NYC alone, but I wasn’t on my own for long. In fact, my best friend, a model named Shilo Dinnegan—whose shout now welcomed me back to the castle—had followed, arriving just hours after me. Then, before long, my other best friend, dapper retired financier-to-the-stars Pish Lincoln, had arrived, anxious to see the castle for himself. Both were now staying at the castle with me.