Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery)

by Hamilton, Victoria

  I was taken back nine years to my wedding to Miguel, held at a lovely small “castle” much like this, only in Connecticut. I had descended stairs like those to the strains of “Clair de Lune,” and down the aisle to Miguel, where he stood, handsome and dark, before the reverend. As the pianist lingered gently over the last notes, we joined hands.

  Tears filled my eyes, and I was lost in time. Two years later, the same music played as his friends carried his casket from the church, and the mingled joy and sadness I feel when I hear it takes me back to that lovely, perfect wedding, and the hauntingly sad finale of our marriage. So much joy for two short years. I hugged myself, willing the tears to dry. Had this place ever held such beauty? Would anyone ever fondly say “Oh yes, the Wynter Castle! We had our wedding there.”

  It was possible. Chairs could be set up on either side of the stairway to form an aisle, and the officiant could stand with the beautiful, old, oak double-doors as a backdrop, under an archway of orange blossoms. Or . . . oh! A winter wedding, with a roaring fire in the fireplace that was along one wall, the enormous oak mantel decked in white orchids and crystal candlesticks, and the chairs facing it, instead of the doors. When I came out of my reverie, I had my hands clasped to my bosom, and was staring in rapt joy upward, where I saw, for the first time, the rose window above the winding staircase, as one beam of light blazed scarlet through it.

  “You see it, don’t you?” McGill said gently. “You see what this place could be.”

  I cleared my throat and asked, “How many rooms are there?”

  “Well, the main floor here has the kitchen in the back, a dining room, parlor, a library—it’s in the turret room—along the east side and a long ballroom along the west, with a breakfast room in the other turret room. Upstairs, there are twelve bedchambers, two with attached sitting rooms, and three more rooms that could be converted into bedrooms, including two neat ones in the turret rooms above the breakfast room and library. There are also two big rooms with a bathroom between them. Melvyn had new bathrooms put in the two suites, but that’s as far as he got.”

  “So that’s . . . how many?” I did a quick calculation. “Seventeen bedrooms in all?”

  “I guess so. Lots of small country inns have less.”

  I didn’t answer his suggestion; I had already thought it would make a lovely country inn, but it would need a lot of work, and it was more than I would or could do myself. “You knew my uncle, right?”

  He nodded. “I did. And I liked him. Don’t believe what Binny says. Melvyn didn’t kill her father. We don’t even know if the guy—meaning her pa, Rusty Turner—is dead. No one knows what he was up to.”

  “Why didn’t this place sell? Besides the giant gopher holes?”

  “No vision,” the realtor promptly said. “No one could see what you just did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re like Melvyn; you see the castle’s potential. Actually, probably more than him. He muddled along with this place for almost forty years but never got done.” He paused, staring at me in an odd, intense way. “I don’t know what was going on in your head a few minutes ago, but you saw how this place could be used.”

  I nodded. “As an inn, an event venue, for weddings, symposiums, retreats . . . so many possibilities!”

  “Exactly! There’s a place not too far from here, Beardslee Castle. You should see it. That’s what they’ve done—four-star dining, weddings, the whole bit—and it’s beautiful!”

  I looked up at the rose window, and the light increased as the sun climbed in the sky. Brilliant color played across the floor, a pinwheel of indigo, eggplant, rose and ochre, and tears prickled in my eyes again. I owned this place, owned it! But for all that I saw the hidden beauty and potential beneath the drab façade, I couldn’t keep it. Alone, just me in this vast behemoth? It was too much. My life was in New York, not in some backwater near the pea-size town of Autumn Vale. I needed to bring it up to scratch with whatever modest repairs I could afford, sell it, and get the heck out. “Is there anything wrong with this place besides neglect?” I asked.

  He shook his head, but I wasn’t convinced. “Let’s see the rest of it. If I stay, it’s only going to be to fix it up to sell, McGill.”

  “Of course,” he said. “What else?”

  We peeked into the ballroom first, but the place looked haunted, and I shivered. It had to be forty feet long, and a cold breeze shuddered out of it. Something over in the corner was shrouded in white; it looked like a pipe organ from some off-Broadway version of Phantom of the Opera. I slammed the door shut. The turret rooms were cool, but dusty and dark.

  The castle interior, aside from the flagstone floor and stone walls in the great hall, was warmed by a lot of wood: natural handrails supported by oak balusters winding up the staircase, wood floors in most of the rooms—some were herringbone patterned, others just straight hardwood with a patterned edge—and lots of natural wood paneling in the family rooms, like the dining room and parlor. It was also almost fully furnished with some lovely old pieces and some modern ugliness, especially in the rooms my uncle had used.

  Most of the furniture was tented in white sheets, like the ghosts of furnishings past, so what I noted here was only what I saw as I lifted the edges of the covers to peek. As we walked, and McGill talked about room dimensions and other boring details, I reflected on what little I knew of the Wynter side of my family. My father was the only son of Melvyn’s late younger brother. When my dad died, we were living in Tarrytown. We stayed there for a year afterward, then came on the infamous trip to Wynter Castle, and moved in with Grandma—my Mom’s mother—on the Lower East Side in New York.

  After that, I don’t remember my mother ever voluntarily mentioning my father’s side of the family, and I have never known why. Grandma and Mom died within six months of each other when I was twenty-one, and had already embarked on my short-lived modeling career. There was never any knowledge or sense that I was the heir to anything as amazing as Wynter Castle until Andrew Silvio, my uncle’s lawyer, found me and told me of my inheritance.

  I suppose that was one of the reasons why I didn’t even want to see the place at first. I felt afraid, but also like I would be dishonoring my mother’s memory by going to a place she would never talk about. You had to know my mother to understand. She was rock solid on her ideals. A true remnant of the sixties flower-child movement, she belonged to Amnesty International, Women for World Peace, and End Apartheid Now. She burned her bra and marched on Washington. She was there when they tore down the Berlin Wall. If she didn’t want to associate with Melvyn, there had to be a reason, and it likely had to do with her passionate idealism. Mom and I weren’t alike in many ways—I don’t have the guts to be that idealistic—but I admired her, even when her passion took her away from me and left me feeling alone.

  So there were many reasons I had just wanted to sell the castle and be done with it. But now that I was here, I was curious. Who was Melvyn Wynter? Why had he left the castle to me? Surely he didn’t owe me anything? And why, if he was going to leave me the castle, did he not try to find me earlier so I could ask him about my father’s life and their family and maybe find out what had really happened during that last visit with my mother?

  The flood of emotion was probably what I was hoping to avoid by not coming to Wynter Castle, but now that I was here, I’d have to deal with it.

  “So, are you staying?” McGill asked as we returned to the main floor.

  “I am.” Did I really have any options, now that I had given up my life in New York?

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t really know yet.” And I didn’t.

  Chapter Three

  IT WAS MIDMORNING, and the village had come to life, shrugging off the torpor of a lazy day at the end of summer, and beginning the bustle that would become the “back-to-work” attitude of September, once Labor Day weekend had passed. Even in Autumn Vale, there was a “back-to-school” rush, I guess, and I saw a mom t
ugging two kids into the general store, a tall, narrow building with poster-obscured windows. I parked at one end of the main street and walked down it, watched by a trio of old men sitting on a bench outside of Vale Variety, a convenience store.

  If I was going to stay for a while, I needed supplies: food, toiletries, cleaning products. McGill had assured me I could go to Rochester, about thirty-five or forty miles away, but there is nothing that gains you friends in a small town like spending your money there. That was true in Italy, France, Germany, and the good old US of A. I needed to scope out the town and learn a little about it, if I was going to figure out how best to sell Wynter Castle.

  I dawdled around town for a while, but the residents seemed to shy away from me. Oh, they watched me all right. I felt the blaze of scores of steady gazes as I sauntered by. I ambled past the one antique store that appeared to still be open for business, Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles, but the sign noted it had limited hours, on Friday and Saturday only. There was apparently a tiny Autumn Vale Public Library, accessed by a ramp and a side door off one of the alleys, but the hours were Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, noon to five. Autumn Vale Community Bank was an interesting little building, dark-red, shiny brick, situated right on a corner and with a curved face and doors set into the curved corner, but I didn’t feel like going in to the bank just yet.

  The “all you’ll find at Wynter Castle is death” comment made to me by Binny the Baker echoed in my brain. Did she honestly think my uncle had killed her father? But you know, a woman who loved teapots that much couldn’t be all bad. I stopped in front of her shop, noting the customers coming out with paper bags full of the most incredible-smelling focaccia. I was hungry! Okay, so I would buy bread and try to make a fresh start with Binny. If her dad was missing and presumed dead, I felt for her. It was hard losing a parent at any age and in any way.

  I entered, and waited my turn. Every woman in there was watching me, as long as they thought I wasn’t looking at them. Gossip, McGill said, about old Mel Wynter’s niece’s arrival, had gotten around. That’s what had brought him out to the castle; someone saw me talking to Virgil Grace and called Binny Turner, found out who I was, and then called the realtor.

  I turned and looked around the shop, noting that opposite the shelves of teapots was a wall of photos. There was one of Binny and an older man, both dressed in camouflage, and holding guns. There was another of the same old man and a blonde, middle-aged woman, again, both in camo and both holding guns. Sheesh . . . was Autumn Vale the kind of place where everyone hunted? I’m no hunter, except for great bargains on shoes, but I was going to stay out of the whole judging-someone-based-on-their-pastimes thing. That had been one of my mother’s failings. Instead, I sidled up to the glass case and said, “Everything looks wonderful!”

  Binny served every single person in the bakery, then turned and looked at me. “Can I help you? Again?”

  She hadn’t helped me the first time, but I was not going to point that out to her. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot, Ms. Turner,” I said in a conciliatory tone. “I’m Merry Wynter, Melvyn Wynter’s niece. I was sorry to hear that your father is missing. I know how hard it is to be in that kind of pain.”

  She froze, and glared at a spot above my head, but didn’t answer. The bell above the door tinkled, a sign that someone else was entering. Not the time to pursue this. “Uh, well, I’d like a half dozen of the panini, a few ciabatta, and one of those marvelous focaccia, please,” I said.

  The baker silently put the food in a couple of paper bags, took the money, gave change, then turned to the other customer, an older woman who stood looking over the items in the glass case. There were biscotti and pfeffernüsse on the top shelf, and an assortment of sweets, buns, and breads on the others, all exotic and beautiful.

  “Binny, I know we’ve had this argument before,” the customer said, looking at the glass case and sighing, deeply. “But I simply don’t understand why you won’t make muffins and cookies. This is Autumn Vale, not New York City, you know.”

  “Mrs. Grace, how are the folks around here ever going to refine their palate if I let them buy muffins and cookies instead of croissants and biscotti?” the baker said, wiping her hands on a wet cloth. “I didn’t study under Alfred Bannerman just to come home and make cookies, like some small-town housewife. I’m not forcing anyone to come in here, you know.”

  I smiled, appreciating her tough-mindedness. She was prickly, but at least she knew what she wanted to do.

  The woman sighed again and closed her eyes, briefly. “Binny, dear, I’m grateful for all you’ve done for Golden Acres—the day-old bread, all the freebies—but my oldsters want muffins. The other day I asked Doc English if he wanted focaccia, and he said he ought to wash my mouth out with soap.”

  I snorted in surprised laughter, and the woman glanced back at me with a smile, but continued talking to Binny Turner.

  “I want them to eat well. I’ve tried sourcing muffins and cookies out of town, but all I get are stale, cardboard imitations, and they won’t eat them. I want good, nutritious, fresh, homey food that eighty-and ninety-year-olds will enjoy, and I would like to buy local, if I can.”

  The baker’s face was stony, and she replied, politely enough, but with finality, “I don’t have time or resources enough to do everything, Mrs. G.”

  “I appreciate that, Binny. I’ll take a half dozen of the cannoli.”

  While they finished their transaction, I examined the rows of teapots—I loved one cheeky teapot shaped like a roly-poly baker—then followed the woman out. “Excuse me,” I said. “I couldn’t help but overhear you in there.”

  The woman turned to me with a frank expression of interest. “You’re Melvyn’s niece, aren’t you? The one who inherited the castle.”

  “I am.”

  “My son told me about you.”

  “Your son?”

  “Virgil Grace, the sheriff. I’m Gogi Grace.”

  I shook her outthrust hand. “Of course! I had a feeling I recognized your last name. Well, anyway, I wanted to say, if you have a kitchen at the old folks’ home, muffins ought to be super easy to make. They’re so simple even I can’t foul them up. It’s pretty much the only pastry I can make—well, that and cookies—but with older folks, try something standard, like banana-bran, or apple spice.”

  Mrs. Grace raised her perfectly trimmed eyebrows. “Do I look like I cook?”

  I looked her over, biting my lip, from the silver-tipped mane of perfectly coiffed curls to the toes of her bone-colored Ferragamo pumps. “No, you look like you just walked out of Saks.”

  “So do you,” the woman said, eyeing me up and down. “We have a cook, but she’s got all she can handle with three squares a day.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re not at all what I expected,” Mrs. Grace said, pointing to my top. “Anna Scholz, am I right? Fall 2013 show?” she asked, about the print tunic I wore.

  My eyebrows rose. She was dead-on. I had changed into the Scholz print tunic and DKNY jeans for the trip back into town. My generous wages with Leatrice had allowed me to purchase designer clothes, discounted appropriately, of course. I am what Shilo calls “plush-size,” but plus-size does not mean unfashionable anymore. “Good eye. Do I pass muster? Despite what Sheriff Grace probably said?” Yes, I was fishing for information, and maybe a compliment.

  “How do you know what he said? Besides, he only noticed . . . ah . . . one aspect of your figure,” the woman said, with a wicked twinkle in her brilliant blue eyes. “My son is a man.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Anyway, you were talking about muffins. I don’t cook and my hired cook doesn’t have time; can you make me some to try? Say . . . two dozen?”

  “Two . . . what?” A few morning walkers, two women and three kids, bustled past, their beady eyes staring us down until they parted like a wave around us. One woman even looked back. I wondered what the conversation would be at the local watering hole. Did Autumn V
ale even have a local watering hole? I shifted my gaze back to Mrs. Gogi Grace, who waited, a polite smile on her carefully made-up face. “So let me get this straight; you want me to make two dozen muffins for your seniors.”

  “That would be wonderful!” she cried, touching my arm with a practiced club-lady grip. “Thanks, darling, for offering. The oldsters will love them, I’m sure! I’ll be in touch. I’ll come out to the castle tomorrow, shall I?’

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You are staying at the castle, correct?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then I’ll come out tomorrow . . . oh, say in the early afternoon. I’ll pick up the muffins and you can give me a tour. I’m dying to see the place!” She sailed off down the sidewalk, waggling her fingers in the air behind her.

  I stared down the street as some of the locals watched. Binny was in the bakery window, too, and I thought, uh-oh. If she overheard Gogi Grace asking me to bake for her . . . but there was an amused smile on the woman’s face. I smiled back, and Binny chuckled, then moved farther into the dim reaches of the bakery. Why did I have a feeling I wasn’t the first person to be manipulated by Mrs. Grace, when it came to taking care of her “oldsters,” as she called them?

  I could have ignored her manipulation. I wasn’t afraid to. But it struck me that Mrs. Grace would be a valuable ally in the clannish town of Autumn Vale. She was the only person who had talked to me with any openness, besides McGill. She probably had a lot of connections in town. And she might even have answers about my uncle and Wynter Castle.

  I finished up my shopping in the general store, buying way more than I had intended. Of course I tried to make a friend of the clerk, but she was polite and that was it. As I left, lugging several bags of stuff, I saw the clerk reach for the phone, and wondered if my complete shopping spree would be dissected over coffee among the locals. I wasn’t sure what they would make of muffin tins and maxi pads, but they could have at it.