Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery)

by Hamilton, Victoria

  Her tears had dried, and skepticism was back in her eyes. “Right. Not likely.”

  I shook my head. “Just trying to make you feel better.” I stopped, and realized that was what someone had once tried to do for me, and it didn’t help a bit. The night my grandmother died, I was at a party. I knew she was in the hospital, but didn’t think it was anything serious, so I went out with my friends. I was doing shots while my grandmother lay dying in the hospital. An earnest, young nurse tried to make me feel better later, when I found out she’d died while I was getting drunk, but I saw right through her, like Lizzie saw through me.

  But this was not about my haunting guilt, my sense that I had let my beloved grandmother down, this was about Lizzie. And she had no guilt to feel, no reason to let it affect her beyond the human kindness that allows us to feel empathy for our fellow creatures. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, this was that person’s path in life. There is not a thing you can do about it. If you want to talk about it, I’m here.” She was tougher, in some ways, at fifteen than I had been at twenty-one, but I wouldn’t take that for granted. I vowed to myself that I’d check in with her often over the next few days. I wondered if the local police department had a victims’ services or social worker to deal with the traumatized.

  We drove on, and she indicated her grandmother’s home, which was a tiny bungalow on a narrow street that angled up toward the ridge above town. But when we approached, she suddenly said, “Why don’t you just drop me off? I’m fine.”

  “Lizzie, I’m going to speak to your grandmother. Number one, I want her to know about that poor soul we found in the woods, and that we’re taking care of it, and number two, I want to be sure it’s all right that you come out to the castle again.”

  She shook her head, tight-lipped, but I was not going to be swayed. She was very young, and even asking her to come out to the castle could be misconstrued. I should have checked with her grandmother before asking her to guide me through the woods. No one in Autumn Vale knew me from Eve. What was I thinking? I pulled into the driveway, where a beat-up Cadillac sat, parked on a crazy angle. Lizzie flung herself out of my car and stomped up the drive, with me following as quickly as I could. She disappeared around the side of the house, toward the back, but I was going to knock on the front door like a civilized human being. I heard the shouting before I even got up to the porch.

  “I don’t care what you say, Lizzie is my daughter and I can take her back any time I want.”

  “Not without CPS getting involved!”

  Lizzie’s mother and grandmother?

  “You don’t have a court order, Mama, so don’t try to fight me on this.”

  “You are not gonna take that child back to your house; not with all manner of things going on!”

  I hesitated, not sure what to do. I stared at the screen door and willed the arguing to stop, so I could knock.

  “What things? You don’t know a damn thing about me. You think you do, but you don’t. I don’t even drink anymore!”

  “Stop it, both of you!” That was Lizzie intervening.

  “Honey, I didn’t know you were home. Your mom and I are just . . . we’re talking about where you’re gonna live, and I told her you’re staying here until she can . . . until she gets herself straightened around.”

  “Listen to me,” Lizzie pleaded. “Both of you shut up for one minute!”

  But I didn’t want her to have to explain me. I knocked.

  “Now who the heck is that?” came the grandmother’s worried voice.

  When she came to the door, I introduced myself. She was a plump woman, probably in her sixties, with a worried round face much like her granddaughter’s, and faded blue eyes under a fringe of gray. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to come in and talk to you about Lizzie’s day.”

  Looking confused and uncertain, she stood back and let me in.

  Lizzie had disappeared. I entered the living room, a tidy enough space with a sagging couch and big-screen TV, on which a game show on mute played across the screen. A woman stood by the front window; so this was Lizzie’s mother. She was slim and attractive, with dark hair tied up in a ponytail, and she was wearing jeans and a jean jacket.

  I explained why I invited Lizzie out to the castle in the first place, and apologized, acknowledging that I should have asked her grandmother first. I then told them both what we had found together. “I’m so sorry,” I finished, wringing my hands. “I just wanted you to know that if she seems quiet or upset, she may need to talk to someone. That sight . . .” I shuddered. “It’s not something anyone should ever see.”

  Lizzie’s mother had seemed pensive until now, but there were tears standing in her eyes by the time I finished. She had her arms folded over her chest, and she was chewing on her fingernail. I suspected that she had recently quit smoking, or was trying to refrain, since I’d seen other ex-smokers nervously biting their fingernails. She turned away and stared out the front window. “Poor Lizzie,” she said, a catch in her voice. “Mama, I want her to come home with me.”

  “Why? So you can leave her alone while you go off to do whatever it is you do?”

  “I work, Mama, I work!” She sobbed, and headed for the door. “She’s fifteen, not five . . . she can stay alone sometimes.” Shaking her head, she cried, “It’s no good; I don’t know what to do anymore. I just don’t . . .” She flung the door open and stomped out onto the tiny, cement porch, then stood staring at the Caddy, which was blocked in by my rental. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the sky was still a leaden gray.

  “You can have your daughter back when you stop working at that awful place,” the older woman yelled after her.

  “I’d better move my car,” I said, and headed to the door.

  “You’re never going to understand what I’ve been through!” the younger woman hollered back at her mother from outside.

  “You’d better not say that again, Emerald Marie Proctor, because I understand more than you’ll ever know.”

  I stopped stock-still on the bottom step and stared at Lizzie’s mom. “Your name is Emerald?” I asked stupidly.

  “Yeah. Why?” she growled at me. “You going to move your car or what? I need to get out of here and get ready for work.”

  But I couldn’t move. Emerald was Lizzie’s mother, and Emerald was the woman over whom Junior and Tom Turner had fought. There could not be two women named Emerald in or near Autumn Vale, could there? She was agitated, I could tell, but I needed to ask her a couple of questions. “Hey, I was just wondering . . . I know you and Lizzie are having a tough time right now—”

  She snorted. “Yeah, a tough time because my own mother is turning her against me!”

  I remembered Lizzie’s remark about her mother being a whore. Emerald might be right. My mind was working a mile a minute, and I thought a shot in the dark may be required. “It must be difficult, especially with . . . especially since Tom Turner died recently.”

  She whirled to face me, her expression one of terror. “What are you saying?”

  “You and he were . . . you had a relationship, right?”

  She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. She jangled her keys in her hand, and said, “Yeah, a long time ago. Then I took off. I just came back to Autumn Vale a year or so ago. Thought I’d reconnect with my mother! Ha! Then Tom started coming around again, and he got to wondering . . .” She trailed off and shook her head, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “He got to wondering if he was Lizzie’s father, is that right?” I said it softly, but she nodded. “Was he?” She nodded again. “But you haven’t told Lizzie.”

  She shook her head, and choked back a sob. “What’s the point now?”

  “What were he and Junior Bradley fighting over at the bar you work at that involved you?”

  “Nothing!”

  “But I heard . . .” I paused, remembering what Zeke had said. “Someone in town told me that Junior told Tom to keep his hands off you.”

&nbs
p; She frowned and shook her head. “Where do people get that garbage? That never happened. The fight was not about me at all. Look, I can’t do this right now. I have got to go. Move it or lose it, lady!” She got in her car, slammed the door, and gunned the motor. When I hustled to pull out, she screeched down the drive, backing up as skillfully as a NASCAR driver, and took off out of town, perhaps toward the bar at Ridley Ridge to work.

  I decided to check on Lizzie, but when I went up to the door, I could see her sitting on the sofa with her grandmother, who had her arms around her grandchild. It was a complicated situation, and I didn’t think I could help, at least not today.

  Instead, I headed back into the heart of Autumn Vale and Crazy Lady Antiques, parking along the side street that intersected with Abenaki behind a dirt bike that was taking up an on-street parking spot. Janice was in her shop and answered the door when I knocked. I told her my need for serving coffee to the masses, and she located a big box of oddly assorted mugs, most with funny and/or inappropriate sayings, and I carried them outside and around to the side street, with her following me. She threw in a box of odd plates and serving pieces she obviously wanted to get rid of. I asked, “You knew the Turners, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did Tom ever get married?”

  “Nope. That boy could never settle on one girl. My Jackson is about the same age—Jack moved to New York for school and never came back—and he said that Tom was serious about some girl in high school, but she broke up with him and broke his heart.”

  Was that Emerald, I wondered? “What do you know about Junior Bradley?”

  “Never trusted that boy. He cheated my boy Booker out of some money once.” She cocked her head as I shoved the box of mugs in the backseat of the car, and turned to take the box of serving pieces from her. “Are you trying to figure out poor Tom’s murder?” she asked. “Better leave that up to the cops.”

  I straightened. “It happened right outside my door, Janice. I’m unnerved. I want it solved. Is that so strange?” I wasn’t about to talk about the dead stranger in the woods, not before we knew who it was.

  “Virgil Grace is a good investigator, Merry. Leave it alone.”

  “I would think you would subscribe to that old adage, Janice, that no woman who ever got anything done did so by listening to people telling her not to do things.”

  She chuckled and patted my shoulder. “But in this case, there’s danger afoot. And you’ve got enough to do sorting out your family estate without getting involved in murder.”

  It was good advice that I wouldn’t be taking. The bakery was still open, so I stopped in and bought up her stock of end-of-the-day rolls and sweets. I don’t know why I was bulking up my store of coffee mugs and treats as if I expected a horde, but from the number of cars that had been at the castle when I left, I wanted to be prepared. Anything I didn’t use I could toss in the commercial freezer.

  I saw through Binny’s sullen facade now that we were friends, and I was dreadfully worried about the body in the woods. Odds were it was her father, and who would break the news if it was? I’d have to be there for her, if it proved to be true. Losing her brother had been tough, but if the body in the woods was Rusty, it was going to be doubly hard on her. On the other hand, she now had a niece she had not known about before. But none of that news was the kind of thing I could pass on at the moment, so I kept my mouth shut.

  I pondered the whole mess as I drove back to the castle. Should I be leaving well enough alone, as Janice suggested? Virgil Grace was investigating Tom’s murder, and he knew the town and its people better than I, but I couldn’t just forget about it. As I had said to Janice, it happened right outside of my door, and the killer was still out there.

  When I returned, the investigation was in full swing, with a state police command center vehicle now parked in my weedy drive. The clouds had cleared enough that a ray of sunlight peeped through. I called McGill over to collect the box of mugs, and commandeered Shilo to help with the bags of treats. I carried the smaller box of plates and serving pieces; together, we hauled them to the kitchen, and Shilo and I washed and dried all the dusty mugs, setting them out on trays on the long kitchen table.

  The afternoon sun was lowering in the sky by the time we were done, and I strolled over to where Virgil was talking seriously with a woman in state police khakis. When she cast a glance at me and strode away, I approached the sheriff. He looked worried and tired and none too pleased to see me. Couldn’t blame him. On the other hand, it wasn’t my fault the body was in my woods.

  “We’ve made a big urn of coffee, and I have some muffins and other things for folks to eat. If you would like to spread the word, everyone is welcome.”

  He eyed me and nodded. “Okay. That’s real nice of you.”

  “But?”

  “Look, I know you’ve been asking questions in town. Stop. Now.”

  I watched his eyes, trying to decide what to say. “Maybe you’ll answer a couple of questions for me; then I won’t have to ask other people.”

  He sighed and looked skyward. I’d swear there was a hint of a smile on his lips. He looked down at me, his expression softening. “You can ask, anyway.”

  Which of all the jumbled thoughts and questions in my head were most important? Maybe if I was a real investigator, those things would fall into order. First things first. I took a deep breath. “Is that body in the tent Rusty Turner?”

  “It’s male, that’s about all we know.”

  “So it’s possible. Is there anyone else local it could be?”

  “No one has been reported missing.”

  “Oh.” But I squinted up at him, realizing he hadn’t really answered my question and wasn’t going to. The state police female deputy strolled toward us. Darn. I had a lot more questions.

  “Sheriff Grace, we need you for a few minutes,” she said.

  “I had a couple of more questions,” I said. “Can we talk later?”

  He nodded, then walked away with the deputy.

  McGill knew all of the Autumn Vale deputies and even some of the state police officers, and he was introducing Shilo around to them. I should probably join them, I thought, but remembered I had not yet checked off one more thing on my list. I went inside, grabbed the cordless phone, and curled up in one of the cozy chairs Shilo and I had hauled in to the kitchen by the fireplace. I dialed a number from memory, a sudden, desperate need to hear one voice making my movements hasty.

  “Hello?” came that familiar, dear, warm voice on the phone.

  I burst into tears.

  Chapter Twenty

  “WHO IS THIS? What’s wrong?”

  I hadn’t expected to react like I did, and I could hear the panic in my dear friend’s voice. “Pish, it’s all right, it’s me!” I burbled, my tone thick and strange.

  “Who . . . Merry? Is that you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you okay? Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you for a week! The stupid phone company keeps saying your line is disconnected. Then I tried your cell phone, but it kept going to voice mail or saying you were unavailable. I tried calling Shilo, but she’s gone, too. I thought an alien had kidnapped you both. Or one of her gypsy relatives. Are you okay, sweetie?”

  I took a deep breath, put my head back and closed my eyes, bathing in the flood of his concern. “Yes, Pish, I’m fine. You know the castle I inherited? Well, that’s where I am. I gave up my apartment in the city and moved here.”

  “And you didn’t tell me? How could you? Oh, Merry, I thought we were better friends than that!” He always spoke in italics, and in person the emphasis was exaggerated by fluttering hands. All designed to disarm and disorient, I believe, because his laser-focus, blue-eyed gaze is enough to alarm the unwary.

  Pish is one of the sweetest people I have ever met, but his goodness is enhanced by a tart sense of humor and well-developed regard for the ridiculous. He’d adore Autumn Vale. What the good people of this town would think of him,
I didn’t know. I could picture him in his beautiful Central Park West condo, which he shared with his querulous, elderly mother. He’d be sitting in front of a fireplace as I was, on a cool, September evening, but there would be a crackling fire in his; he’d be drinking cognac and reading Faulkner, or quaffing brandy and chuckling over Tennessee Williams, or sipping pinot noir and leafing through Escoffier. I could hear a recording of Domingo’s version of “Nessun Dorma” in the background, the rich voice rolling through the airwaves.

  I sighed. “Darling, it is because I love you that I couldn’t tell you I was moving out of New York. It would have broken my heart to see you upset. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  “What about Shilo? Do you know where she is?”

  “I called her the morning I arrived, and she took it as an invitation, so she tootled up here in that dreadful vehicle she calls a car.” There was silence for a long moment, and I knew his feelings were hurt that I had called her and not him.

  “That is just like our darling scatterbrain,” he said, his tone dry. “I suppose I’ll have to forgive you, though I’ll hold a grudge for a while and make you suffer.”

  “I miss you,” I said, realizing how true that was. I met Pish through Miguel. He was my husband’s financial advisor, a wise decision that had left me a wealthyish widow, which I reversed with my own stupidity. However, my bad-decision days were over. I was not one of those sad folk who stagger from awful situation to awful situation. “I wish you were here right now.”

  “Describe the castle, darling. I have been dying to hear about it ever since you inherited it! The real estate listing did it no justice, I’ll bet,” he said.

  He, dear man, had advised me right away to go see my inheritance, but I was in the middle of the Leatrice drama at that point, and couldn’t leave New York. That was my excuse, anyway. I was just stunned by the development and afraid of what I’d find. I told Pish all about the castle, and my multitude of troubles, from Tom Turner’s murder up to and including the body in the tent in the arboretum. As I talked, police officers and professionals came and went, grabbing mugs of coffee and handfuls of muffins and treats from the baskets of Binny’s Bakery items. I waited until the kitchen was empty of others, then finally said, “Pish, I called you to check in, and I’m sorry you’ve been worried, but I also have some questions.”