Much Ado About Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Stoddart got some more information for me,” Pish said, turning in his chair away from his laptop. “He says that the medical examiner who did the autopsy doesn’t believe the letter opener made the wound that killed her. He thinks there was another weapon.” He took some Brie on a water biscuit, carefully dressed it with cranberry preserves, and ate.

  “That’s important.” I pondered the possibility of two weapons, and perhaps two assailants.

  He nodded, brushing crumbs from his linen shirt. “And if there was another weapon that killed her, why use the letter opener at all?”

  “To implicate Roma. It was someone who had either witnessed the event here, or heard about it.”

  “Which doesn’t narrow things down at all,” he said. “Everyone in Autumn Vale has heard about it.”

  We sat gloomily sipping our tea and sharing the Brie. “Are you canceling the recording tomorrow with Zeke?”

  “Roma begged me not to. She’s terrified, but she needs this as a distraction.”

  “I’ve been listening in. Her voice is shaky. What’s up with that?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s been plaguing her for a while. She’s okay, and then suddenly her voice gets this quaver and she can’t control it. I had vocal doctors assess her before we left New York, and there’s nothing physically wrong with her voice.”

  “She’s fortunate to have a friend like you.” I thought about it for a long minute. “Maybe ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ isn’t the right song. Is there anything you can use that shakiness in?”

  “Anything worth singing must be sung with clarity and steadiness.” His look became thoughtful. “But you have given me something to think about. Perhaps another song. I’ll consider it.” He reached across his desk and took my hand, gazing into my eyes. “Do you know how much I missed you while you were gone? I hope you do. You are my muse, my darling, and I’m overjoyed you came home.”

  * * *

  Becket had bounced back to his full vigor, and at three in the morning he decided to start whining about going out. I pointed to the litter pan and threatened to shut him out of my room, which I finally had to do, shoving the litter box out my door into the hallway and him with it. There was enough room for him to roam in the castle without going out in the middle of the night.

  But as I made my way to the kitchen in the morning, yawning and stretching, he paced back and forth, walking down the butler’s pantry hall and back to me as his yowling got increasingly urgent and distracting. Finally, I’d had enough. There comes a point when a cat’s gotta do what a cat’s gotta do.

  I followed him to the back door, picked him up for a long hug, and set him down. “Now, you be back before sunset, buddy, please,” I said, wagging my finger at him while he stared up at me, waiting. “I know you’re a big boy and can take care of yourself, but I worry.” I opened the door and he scooted through, running by leaps and bounds toward the forest as if he had an urgent appointment.

  The men in my life: always running for the woods. If Virgil was chosen and headed to Quantico and then to wherever he was stationed—I had no doubt he’d be chosen, nor did I doubt he’d make it through the course—we would have a long-distance relationship. We should talk about that. I sighed, returned to the kitchen, and put the coffee on.

  I made breakfast, which featured, of course, muffins—chocolate walnut ones this time because I felt the oncoming need for chocolate. It was good to get back to baking and cooking after being gone so long, but I still didn’t feel entirely like I was at home; maybe there was too much up in the air. Roma appeared fragile and weary, but Pish was bubbling with excitement, leafing through some notes and sheet music. He had his laptop and had e-mailed a friend, who sent him some music to use for the day’s recording.

  “So what piece are you going to do?” I asked looking from my friend to Roma, who picked at her food and sighed a lot. I felt for her. It could not be easy to be a suspect and know that you had brought it on yourself.

  Pish shook his head. “It’s going to be a surprise. As soon as Zeke gets here we’ll close ourselves in the library, and I do not want to be disturbed. If the boys are going to mow today, could they start with the far field?”

  “I’ll make sure.” Since my primary goal of the day was to talk to Karl Mencken, I was not worried about that in the slightest, even if they got no mowing done at all.

  When Pish left the table to make a phone call in solitude, I watched Roma for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry this is happening to you, Roma.”

  She turned her tragic gaze to me. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve all this trouble.”

  Well, you threatened to kill a woman with a letter opener and then she died . . . after being stabbed with your letter opener. I didn’t say it, but I sure thought it. “I still can’t figure out how the killer got the letter opener. What exactly happened the day you threatened her?”

  “I’d had enough. After Minnie’s insults I went upstairs and fumed, then just . . . I saw red. I had been humiliated, and I was not going to take it. I picked up the closest thing, which was the letter opener—it sat on a little stand on my desk—and when I heard them all talking in the hall I came down the steps, and I guess . . . I guess I said I wanted to kill her. I don’t remember that. I flew at her in a fury.”

  “And what happened to the letter opener?”

  “That’s what Agent Esposito asked me. I don’t know.”

  “What did you do with it right then and there?”

  She shrugged with a hopeless look. “I don’t remember.”

  “Think, Roma, think back. Put yourself there, in that moment. What were you wearing that day?”

  “I had on a red sleeveless silk blouse with a pair of white palazzo pants.”

  “Did the police take those clothes away?”

  She nodded, her expression aggrieved. “And they’re my favorite pants. Irreplaceable!”

  Pish had described what happened. “So you tore down the stairs and flew at Minnie,” I said. “What happened then?”

  “I guess I slashed at her with the letter opener.”

  This was very important. “Roma, did you make contact with her at all? Do you remember?”

  “I don’t think so. I cut myself on something.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “There was blood on my hand. I must have!”

  It was safe to assume, I thought, that she actually did manage to pierce Minnie’s skin with the letter opener; the blood on Roma’s hand was Minnie’s, not her own, and would have gotten on her clothes that way. In fact, the scab I saw Minnie picking at in the post office when I first got back could have been that healing cut. I would bet the FBI knew that was possible, which explained why they had not charged Roma, nor did they insist on holding her in the face of protestation.

  But now the letter opener . . . “You’ve had the scuffle with Minnie and there is much excitement. Then you’re separated. Everyone mills around for a moment, then goes home. Did you take the letter opener back upstairs? Drop it? Throw it? Give it to someone?”

  Pish came back in and clapped, rubbing his hands together. “Zeke and the boys have arrived. Time to get down to business.”

  I put my hand up, not breaking my gaze from the opera singer. “Roma, concentrate!”

  She stared off into space, wrinkling her nose. “I think I set it down, maybe on that round table in the middle of the great hall. There was a lot of commotion.”

  And that was all I got, but it was enough. Roma and Pish scurried off to the library and I let Zeke in so he could join them to see to the recording.

  Roma’s misty recollection made one theory possible. Doc told me about Minnie and her penchant for collecting “trophies” from her spats. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that Minnie Urquhart, pleased with the response she had elicited from the emotional soprano, grabbed the decorative letter open
er and took it with her. She likely kept it somewhere, her home or the post office, where anyone could have seen it. She may even have bragged about it.

  I called and left a lengthy message for Agent Esposito about what I had learned, my theory for Minnie’s blood on Roma’s clothes, and what I had heard from Doc about Minnie’s “trophies.” Then I headed outside, where Gordy was already backing the riding mower I had purchased secondhand out of the garage. The other guy was standing with his hands in his cargo shorts pockets, looking sulky.

  “You must be Karl!” I said, approaching and holding out my hand. “I’m Merry Wynter. Thanks for helping us out today. Normally Zeke would be doing this with Gordy, but he’s tied up with the sound engineering.”

  He didn’t shake my hand.

  “Huh. I could do that, no problem,” he said, scruffing his weedy beard, then tugging at his earlobe, stretching the flesh tunnels. “I know everything there is to know about sound equipment. I’m in a band, you know,” he continued. “I’m probably better than Zeke.”

  I was taken aback and examined him. I was offering paid work, and he was sulking about it? “I rather thought, since you’re staying with Zeke and Gordy, that you’d want to help.”

  He shrugged, watching Gordy fill the tank from a gas can kept in the garage, and picked at his acne. “Whatever.”

  “You must have been shocked when you heard about Minnie being murdered.”

  “Crazy!”

  “Too bad you had such a nasty fight with her the night before.”

  His stance changed, and he stilled for a long moment, casting a glance my way. Then he cracked his knuckles, starting with his pinkie fingers and working through each one.

  “I’m sure the FBI agent has asked you about that. What was the fight about, anyway?”

  He grimaced, his mouth twisted. “Nothin’ much. I used her car without her permission.”

  “That doesn’t seem to be a huge deal,” I said, to encourage him.

  “I know, right?” He turned to me, his narrow face holding an eager expression. “So I used some gas, took off for a while, right? But you’d think I’d, like, killed someone or something.”

  He didn’t seem to consider his words in light of Minnie’s death, which meant he didn’t consider much of anything he said, probably.

  “It turned into a pretty big argument?”

  His eyes widened. Did he see the danger? “Nah, not so big.”

  Big enough that he left or got kicked out. I didn’t want to push too hard yet, so I didn’t say it. “How do you get along with Brianna and Logan? I understand Minnie treated you all like family.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He looked glum, shoved his hands back in his pockets and watched as Gordy finished filling the machine and returned the gas can to the garage. Gordy came back out with a wheelbarrow full of tools. “Brianna was her favorite, probably because she’s a girl. I liked Brianna at first, but she didn’t help me much when Minnie and I got into it. She should keep her effin’ nose out of stuff that doesn’t concern her.” His tone was dark, his expression furious.

  “So you got kicked out after the argument that night. Or did you leave on your own? I’ve heard both versions.”

  He flicked an uncertain glance my way, his blue eyes narrowed. “Whatever. The effin’ FBI have been breathing down my neck, and now you?” He shouted to Gordy, “Hey, we getting this done, or what?” He strode toward the other guy, suddenly eager to work. They had a brief discussion.

  I approached, picking my way though the weeds. “Gordy, can you fellows start at the far end while Zeke and Pish are recording Roma? He’s worried the heavy machinery sound will vibrate through the castle walls.”

  “Sure, no problem, Merry,” Gordy said.

  “Karl and I were discussing the night he arrived at your place. You told me he said he had stormed out of Minnie’s place after an argument, right?”

  “That’s right,” Gordy said, sweeping his thin hair out of his eyes. “That’s what he said.”

  I turned to Karl. He looked trapped. “So did you storm out? Or were you kicked out? Brianna said you were kicked out.”

  He shrugged again, his favorite answer. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t, honest. We were both mad. Maybe I said, I’m leaving, and she said, Get out, at the same moment.”

  That was actually quite possibly the answer to the conflicting stories. The two fellows headed off to the far field, where they would mow and trim the worst of the brush at the edge, working their way back toward the castle. I was definitely going to find out if the car he had used that had started the argument, Minnie’s vehicle, was intact or damaged, and if it had been moved from behind the post office, where I’d last seen it. If he’d killed her and heard I was snooping around, and if he had an extra set of keys, perhaps he’d taken the car, followed me, and tried to run me off the road. It seemed unlikely, but it was possible.

  I returned to the kitchen and was doing the breakfast dishes when I got a call from Hannah, who had spoken with Brianna. “How did it go?” I asked. “Did you find anything out?”

  “I guess,” she said, sounding uncertain. “She’s really broken up about Minnie dying. She lost her mom years ago, and Minnie treated her like a daughter.”

  I didn’t have the impression she was broken up about it when we spoke, but I was a stranger. She was more likely to show her true feelings to Hannah, a friend. “Did she say what it was like living with Minnie and the two guys?”

  “She told me Karl was nice to her at first, but he got bent out of shape when she started dating Logan. And he got worse when Minnie showed a preference for Brianna and Logan.”

  “Did she tell you what happened the night Karl was kicked out?” I wondered if her story would stay consistent.

  “She said Minnie was angry with Karl and they had a big fight. She said she and Logan stayed out of it.”

  “Were you able to work in a question about what she and Logan were doing the morning Minnie was murdered?” Brianna said that she was getting ready for work when she heard, but I wondered what she would tell Hannah.

  “Well, uh . . .”

  “Hannah?”

  “I can’t say,” she whispered. “There are other people here!”

  “I’m assuming she didn’t say they were out killing Minnie.”

  “Of course not.”

  What would two twenty-something young people be doing once their landlady was out of the house and they were alone that Hannah didn’t feel she could say aloud in . . . Oh! I bit my lip, fighting a grin. “Did she tell you that she and Logan were, uh, fooling around? Getting frisky?”

  She giggled. “She said it was so rare they were alone, so they did that, and then she jumped in the shower, and that’s when the police came.” Her tone sobered. “She said she felt awful when she figured what she was doing while Minnie was being killed.”

  That shone a new light on her alibi. When Brianna told me she was in the shower when the police came the first thing I thought of was, the killer would need to clean up after the bloodbath that poor Minnie had suffered. But her explanation to Hannah sounded legit, though who would know other than her and Logan? “You went to school with the young woman who works for Andrew Silvio, right?”

  “Chrissie, his secretary,” she said. “She’s one of my best friends. She comes in to the library all the time for those lives-of-the-rich-and-famous novels, like Jackie Collins and even old ones, like Judith Krantz and Harold Robbins.”

  Chrissie had helped us with information once, last year, but it was minor stuff. “Is she up for a little skulduggery?”

  Hannah paused a beat, then softly said, “Merry, I don’t think I can ask her to do any digging in Mr. Silvio’s files. I wouldn’t want to get her in trouble. It’s a good job, and they’re hard to find.”

  “Fair enough. Actually, I have one question,
something that will be a matter of public record soon anyway. How about, if she’s up for it, fine, but if she’s the slightest bit uncomfortable, drop it?”

  “I’m guessing it’s something to do with Minnie’s will, since you said it will be public record soon.”

  “Exactly. Who inherits her house and any money? I actually may already know the answer. Deputy Urquhart says he and his brother do. He ought to know, but I heard she was in to talk to the lawyer about her will before she died. There is something else, though: I don’t know if Chrissie can help us, but Minnie was having her house evaluated lately, and said she wanted to fix it up to make it worth something. Why?”

  “You know, Minnie wasn’t well liked,” Hannah said. “But she did have a couple of friends, and I happen to know one who comes into the library all the time. She’s kind of mean, and she talks about everyone behind their backs, but she probably knows more about what Minnie was up to than anyone else. I could call her.”

  I had qualms. “Hannah, maybe that’s not a good idea.”

  “Tell you what,” she murmured softly. “If I can think of a reason, I’ll call her. If not, I won’t. Either way, I’ll talk to you later. I have to go.”

  I threw the ingredients for a hearty stew into the slow cooker, hoping it wasn’t too hot outside for that. I longed for cooler weather, for fall to truly arrive. At dinner I was going to feed, besides Pish, Roma, and myself, the three young men, and their appetites were sure to be heartier than ours.

  While I did that I made some notes, then made a call to San Diego, worldwide headquarters for Consciousness Calling. I had a fascinating conversation with a peppy West Coast type, and gave her information that was appreciated. I was set to be the spoiler in Emerald’s big plans for wealth, which I would feel bad about if her plan had any shot in hell of coming true. Sometimes being a good friend means making difficult decisions, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves for comfort when we do something of which we’re not quite sure.

  I also made platters of sandwiches and pickles, and a couple of big pitchers of iced tea, sticking it all in the huge commercial fridge. I left a note telling them all to help themselves. I could no longer wait to find out what was wrong with Shilo. She would, one way or another, tell me what was up. Garbed in town-worthy shorts and a sleeveless tunic top, I grabbed my keys and purse and left the castle. I shaded my eyes and looked off into the distance; Gordy and Karl were working, making slow but steady progress. It was going to take more than one day to whip the property back into shape.