Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery)

by Hamilton, Victoria

“What were you doing down there?” I repeated.

  “This is where your uncle died, you know,” she said, pointing down the hill, her mousy hair fluttering out of a tight bun. “Now, you tell me why his car went off the road right there?”

  “It was early morning, still dark in November. He was an old man with bad sight. The road was icy—”

  “No it was not! It was not icy!” Her voice shook.

  “Okay,” I said, puzzled by her vehemence. “What are you trying to say?”

  She righted her bike and got on.

  “Wait! Don’t go yet,” I said, standing in front of her, both hands out in a “stop” gesture. I wasn’t going to let her put me off with her verbal surprise attack. “What are you implying? Why are you here? Were you looking for something down there?”

  “No,” she said, hopping off, wheeling the bike around me, and hopping back on—she was very agile for an older woman wearing a dress—and cycling down the hill, back toward the village.

  “What is going on?” I yelled after her. She picked up speed and disappeared around the bend of one of the switchbacks in the road. “This whole town is wacko,” I grumbled, moving over to where she had emerged. I looked down the hill and saw nothing but her path, and the broken saplings.

  “What do you think she meant, talking about it not being icy on the morning your uncle died?” Shilo came up beside me and stared down the hill.

  “Good question.” I thought about it. Someone—who was it?—had said that Melvyn was headed to Rochester that morning. But if he had been headed to Rochester or anywhere away from town, he would not have been on this winding road heading into Autumn Vale. Where was he going in town? And why? “I just don’t know.” We headed back to the castle.

  It rained heavily overnight and into the morning, but it finally began to clear midmorning. It was almost noon when I took a cup of coffee out to survey the property, before McGill and Lizzie arrived. In the distance I saw that spot of orange again, closer this time. And he wasn’t moving. I watched for a while but the animal still didn’t move.

  I’d seen the orange cat often enough since I’d been at the castle, but never for too long. He had come closer each time, but never close enough for me to go up to him. He usually melted back into the woods, as if he wanted me to follow him. If it really was Uncle Melvyn’s ginger cat, Becket, then he was one remarkable dude to live for ten months on his own. My friend joined me outside.

  “Shi, do you think that’s Becket?” I asked, pointing to the lump of orange. Suddenly it did move and it sat up, staring toward me. I handed my coffee cup to Shilo. “Just wait . . . don’t follow me. I’m going to try to get closer.” Over the next twenty minutes, I approached ever nearer to the cat, inching closer and closer. He looked like he was ready to bolt, but he didn’t.

  McGill roared up to the castle in his Smart car and screeched to a halt. Lizzie bolted out of the car, whirling and yelling—loud enough that even across the field I could hear her clearly—at McGill, “You’re an idiot, you know that?” She stomped into the castle.

  The cat streaked away, limping. Damn! There was probably something wrong with his paw or leg, and that was why it had stayed as I approached. I returned to the courtyard in front of the castle where Shilo and McGill were in conversation. “What the heck happened?” I said, now in a peeved mood.

  McGill shrugged. “I was just telling Shilo, I don’t have a clue. I was making conversation, and she suddenly howled like a banshee!”

  “What exactly did you say?” Shilo asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, McGill, you have to remember,” I pleaded.

  “He asked me if I was planning on taking photography in college,” Lizzie said. She had emerged from the castle and stood on the top step, arms crossed, a sullen look on her face.

  Shilo, McGill, and I exchanged puzzled looks. I piped up, “And that was a rotten thing to say because . . . ?”

  “Well, duh! I’m never going to be able to go to college. How will I? My grades suck, my grandma is old and poor, and my mom is a whore. It’s never going to happen!”

  That was a whole lot of trouble unloaded right there. But I picked the one thing I did know about. “Lizzie, hold on!” I said, hand out in a pacifying gesture. “You say your grades suck? How bad?”

  “Some Bs, more Cs. Why?”

  I hesitated, then said, “You know, those applying for arts scholarships don’t always need great grades in academics. Art schools are more focused on performance. If you’re good—and I already know you’re a great photographer—they will primarily consider your portfolio of work when determining scholarships. And you’ve got time to think about it and plan.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Come on in, both of you, and have lunch before we get started.” I cast one look at the field, but Becket was gone. Now I was worried about him. If he had an injury and it got infected . . . well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  We had soup and muffins, my go-to meal for any occasion, and then McGill powered up the Bobcat—Virgil had cleared the way for him to use the excavator rather than trying to get another one—and moved across the open section of the property to the back edge of the field. He was starting with the farthest holes this time and moving back toward the castle. At least now I knew there would be no new holes. I chastised myself as soon as I thought that, but it was true.

  “Are you coming with Lizzie and me, Shi?” I asked.

  She bit her lip and cast her gaze out toward McGill. I was surprised. My friend was quirky and flighty. No man had ever been able to pin her down, but in this case, McGill didn’t even seem to be trying. He was smitten, clearly, but she was, too. I didn’t see the attraction, but she knew him much better than I did by now.

  “Decision time,” I prompted.

  “Nah, I’ll stay and do the dishes. You two go on.”

  We set out across the field, wading through the long grass that I hoped would soon be gone, the growl of the Bobcat fading as we got to the woods and moved past the damp, tall weeds along the edge. Lizzie hadn’t said a word for a half hour. I told her about my uncle’s cat, and my fear that he was hurt.

  “If you see him, tell me. I’m worried about him.” There appeared to be a couple of old paths through the woods—they branched out and zigzagged across each other—and Lizzie hesitated, frowning and bringing her camera up to her eye. Then she set off down one path. I doubted she knew where she was going, but I made a mental note of where we had come in, and followed.

  Some trees had tags, I was surprised to see, and some even had plaques down at their base, obscured through the years by plant material. I knelt and uncovered a few, as we went. The variety was astounding, with several different types of each species of tree. There wasn’t even just one kind of oak; according to the plaques, there was burr oak, black oak, English oak, and more. Who knew? But the arboretum, if that’s what this was, was badly overgrown; even I could tell that. And the trees had been planted too close together, it seemed to me, as if the planner hadn’t considered the size of the trees as they grew. There were dead trees that would need to be cut down and removed.

  After a half hour of walking and no talking, I finally asked, “Do you truly know where we’re going?”

  “Yeah.”

  We wandered for another twenty minutes though, before I finally had a sense that she was following a path she recognized. It had probably taken her time to get her bearings, because she would not have ever entered the woods from the castle grounds before. There was a path from the road, she said, and that is how she always got in. The forest thinned, more light from overhead leaking through the canopy. We came to a small clearing, and there, as she had said, was a wretched, moldy, nylon tarp half fallen over a thick, mossy log. A mildewed and broken tent was on the opposite side of a fire pit from the tarp. The fire pit—just a ring of rocks—held the remains of charcoaled logs, burned tins, and other refuse.

  I glanced over at her. “Do
kids from the high school come out here for parties?”

  “Do I look like the kind of girl who would be invited to a bush party, if there was one?” she said, sending me a withering glance.

  “I’m never going to be able to find my way here again,” I said, looking around, feeling the sense of isolation and quiet. “I was hoping to hire someone to clean up this crap, too, but I’d be afraid they’d get lost.”

  She wasn’t listening anymore, off in her own world of camera angles and light. I regarded her with interest, as she positioned herself low and snapped a photo of the moss-covered log, with the forest in the background. “You’re a long way from home. How did you get up here so many times to explore? You needed a ride up here today.”

  “I have a bike. It’s not that far.”

  “For a fifteen-year-old,” I said, then thought of Isadore. She had clearly made it up here by bike, too. I still couldn’t figure out why, and what she’d meant when she made such a point of the spot where Uncle Melvyn went off the road. “Is this the only encampment that you know about?”

  She frowned, looking around. “I saw another one once, but I’ve never been able to find it again. It’s not in a clearing like this is. It’s in an evergreen part of the woods. And it looked like someone was using it. Creepy. I didn’t stick around.”

  “I’ve got Gordy and Zeke coming out to mow my property, and I was hoping they could clean up this campsite, too, but I’m afraid they’d get lost.” She snickered, and I cast her a look. “Hey, be nice.”

  “I’m sorry, but those two couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag.”

  I tried to hide my own smile. “So judgmental,” I murmured. “Would you show them where it is, if I get them to do it?”

  She shrugged but said, “Sure.” She eyed me, then added, “You know, I could help them, too, if you’re paying.”

  “You’d do that kind of work?” I was surprised; it’s not my kind of thing, clearing brush and trash, but Lizzie was, in many ways, tougher than I.

  “It’s better than scrubbing floors. Grandma and I have an agreement: I do all the outside work, and I don’t have to clean inside.”

  “You’d be willing to show Gordy and Zeke the way here and help them clean up?”

  She paused and eyed me. I got the same feeling I did when a salesman had his sights on me. I knew the question she was going to ask before she even spoke.

  “What’s it worth?”

  I had to admire her sense of timing. In the dense isolation of the woods, I was more sure than ever that she was the only one who would be able to guide the intrepid duo this far. “Look, if you can find the other encampment, too, it’ll be worth a lot more. You find me that other encampment, and guide and help Gordy and Zeke, and I’ll . . .” I eyed her as she fiddled with her camera. “I’ll buy you a new gadget for your camera. How would you like a panoramic lens?”

  Her eyes widened. “And a macro zoom?”

  “You’re pushing it, kiddo, but maybe.”

  She got down to business right away. “Look, we need to go back soon, right? On our way, I’ll try to find the other encampment.”

  I was glad I had worn a pair of my oldest jeans, as well as hiking shoes borrowed from Shilo’s wardrobe. The girl had the same shoe size as me, luckily—the only size we have ever shared—and never traveled without an abundance of footwear. I followed Lizzie, weaving through the woods and stepping over fallen trees. It was exhausting, and I knew I was going to ache the next day, but Lizzie never seemed to tire. Oh, for the stamina of fifteen.

  A couple of times, I thought I heard a motorcycle engine. Were we near the highway? Or was someone trespassing in the woods, zooming around on the trails? It would be tempting, I supposed for a dirt-bike rider. Lizzie stopped a couple of times and cocked her head. I took the opportunity each time to catch my breath and look around, finally tuning in to what I had missed until now: birdsong. A harsh screech, discordant and echoing, trilled to me. The bird alit on a low branch, watching us with an unnerving stare. It was a blue jay, and it was curious about our incursion into his territory. The next time we stopped the blue jay was there again. Was it the same one, and was it following us?

  Lizzie paused, looked around and nodded. “I know where we are, now. I’ve only been this way a couple of times, but I think we’re almost there.”

  Close to us was the sound of water, and soon we stepped over a trickling stream that bubbled and chuckled along a winding trail. I stopped and cupped some of the water in my hand. It was frigid cold and clear, and tasted clean when I sipped it from the cup of my hand. My fabulous woodswoman skills told me it was springwater. My spirits lifted. I could not believe that this was my land!

  Lizzie led me up a path that was even more treacherous because it was on a slope. She scrambled ahead of me, and I heard her cry, “Aha!”

  I scaled the last bit, huffing and puffing, and looked down over a crude encampment with another half-collapsed tent. The fire pit was like the other one, a simple ring of rocks. Lizzie took photos, as she had of the other encampment, searching for unusual angles and zooming in on things, while I looked around.

  Finally, I sat down on a log near the fire pit and picked up a stick, while Lizzie wandered, taking close-ups of the tent. I was about to tell her we ought to get going, when I heard an involuntary exclamation from her and turned to find her backing away from the tent, her expression blank, her whole body trembling.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, standing. She just pointed.

  I strode over to the tent and looked in. Then I turned around and raced to the edge of the woods to throw up. I still contend that is any sane woman’s reaction to finding a very, very dead body.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I’M ASHAMED TO say that I did not hold it together as well as Lizzie did. That fifteen-year-old girl led me out of the woods and back to the castle, where I babbled to McGill and Shilo about the awful scene we had discovered. McGill called Virgil, and before long the cops were at the castle yet again, this time in the bright light of day. Fortunately, Lizzie, her face white, her lips compressed, assured them she was able to guide them back to the scene—I would have had no clue how to find the encampment again—but I made McGill go with them, so he could make sure she was all right.

  My story this time, as related to a sheriff’s deputy, was brief, because the body had been there awhile before we arrived on the scene. We found it, that was all. I paced after that, then went to the kitchen to make a big pot of coffee. Shilo and I had discovered a commercial coffee urn in one of the closets in our perambulations of the castle, and it was about to come in handy. I made several dozen mini muffins, too, with the mini-muffin tins I had bought the day before, and heaped them in a basket and set them on the kitchen table. I set out as many coffee cups as I could find, then called Janice Grover at Crazy Lady Antiques to see if she had a box of old mugs I could buy or borrow. Unfortunately, all I got was an answering machine. It was just make-work anyways, something to keep my mind busy as it shied away from the terrible sight I had seen in that tent.

  Who was the dead body in the tent? Had he or she died alone, or been killed?

  I paced along the flagstone terrace of the castle, as Shilo tried to make me feel better by avoiding the topic. A cold breeze swept up the lane, tossing the tops of the trees, and clouds began to scud along the vaulted blue, closing the scene in with ominous darkness, very Hollywood horror movie like. All we needed was a crypt, a coffin, and thunder to make it complete. But through it all, as I paced, Shilo talked about McGill, Ridley Ridge, and then McGill some more.

  I whirled and gazed steadily at her. “Do you think that body is . . . could it be Rusty Turner?” Had he gone no farther than the woods near the castle and died of a heart attack or stroke? Or had old Uncle Melvyn murdered him and left his body there to rot? Given the conflict between them, it was a legitimate concern.

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Shilo pointed out.

  Finally McGill and Li
zzie emerged from the woods as a light rain began to spit down. I hopped down off the terrace and raced to them, hugging Lizzie. She rocked back on her heels and stared up at me, a question in her eyes. What the question was, I couldn’t say. “Are you okay, Lizzie?” I asked, staring down at her. “You don’t need to be strong, or anything, just tell me how you feel.”

  “She was great,” McGill said, one hand on her shoulder. “She led Virgil and his boys right to the spot, and told them what she found and how, and pointed out where you had thrown up. We stayed a few minutes, and then I asked Virge if it was okay if we came back here.”

  She shrugged, more to get McGill’s hand off her shoulder than anything else, I thought.

  “Do you want to go home?” I asked. Her face looked a little pinched and white, and she nodded. “I’ll drive you.” I turned to Shilo. “Can you tell the sheriff where I’ve gone, if he asks?”

  She nodded yes, her arm through McGill’s, her head on his shoulder.

  I retrieved my keys—I had already changed my clothes, so I was fit to meet a grandmother—and pointed out my rental car. “You’ll have to guide me,” I said, sliding in to the driver’s seat as she settled in on the passenger’s side.

  She didn’t answer. I glanced over as I started down the long, curved drive. Tears were rolling down her pale cheeks. I let her silently cry, concentrating on driving in the brief shower, until we reached the turn-off to her grandmother’s home, which was on the outskirts of Autumn Vale. “Are you going to be okay?” I asked, glancing over at her.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” She sniffed. “It was just . . . when I thought about someone dying all alone in that tent, just lying there . . . it was awful. Do you think he was old or young? Did he suffer?”

  I pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the road and turned to face her. “It’s one of those things that we might never know. It’s a terrible tragedy, but it’s just as possible the person died in their sleep, and didn’t even feel a thing.” I didn’t think so, but there was no point in saying that to Lizzie.