Muffin But Murder

by Victoria Hamilton

  Why had his arrival scared off Juniper?

  I paused briefly before going back to my friends and did a little happy dance as I experienced a tingling of relief; Cranston, or whoever he was, was not my cousin. I didn’t need a DNA test to tell me that now, not with the fishiness of Juniper’s fear of him. All along I had not really believed him, but something inside of me wanted family. However . . . Wynter Castle was mine, all mine, and Cranston was a con artist. There were still a whole lot of questions Cranston was going to have to answer, particularly about his acquaintance with Les Urquhart, but I definitely had a skip and a hop to my step as I returned to the parlor. Silence reigned. Everyone looked a little uncomfortable. Cranston was sitting where Juniper had been.

  I met Pish’s gaze and raised my brows. He nodded. We had partnered at euchre before, and he knew what that meant; I was going to try a little bit o’ the old bluff. “Juniper is so upset, Cranston . . . or whomever you are. She says you were good buddies with Les Urquhart. She’s weeping so hard right now that I can’t figure out all that she’s saying.”

  Cranston stood and faced me, dainty, ring-laden hand on his chest. “I am wounded to the heart. Let me just talk to the girl to explain to her why I was talking to those fellows. We were no more than acquaintances, I assure you.”

  Those fellows . . . not just Urquhart, then, but Davey, too. My stomach clenched. “You can tell me,” I said, as Pish, McGill, and Shilo all stood. “I’ll tell her. Who exactly are you, and what are you doing here?”

  He bridled. “If you don’t believe me, that I am Melvyn Wynter’s grandson, then you are impugning my grandmother’s deathbed confession! Any court in the land would—”

  “I think we’ll let the DNA talk,” Pish said, watching Cranston, who was puffing up like a toad, his face turning red.

  “Cranston, there are so many holes in your story, it could be used as a sieve, but I’m willing to let the DNA test do the talking,” I said calmly. “The test is in a few days, so let’s agree to disagree until then.”

  “You’ve humiliated me,” he said, and I swear that one big, fat tear rolled down his cheek. In a practiced, dramatic voice, he declaimed, “I’m leaving, and I will see you in court! You’ll be sorry, Merry Wynter!”

  He whirled and stormed out of the parlor. I followed, but he didn’t have anything more to say except, as he paused, trembling, at the door, “You have wounded me. I thought I had found family, but all I found was . . . heartbreak!”

  “And . . . scene,” I said, once he had exited.

  We all trooped back into the parlor, and I told everyone about Juniper’s skipping out on me and my surmises. “I can’t get over the fact that she was fine with us until she saw Cranston.”

  “Yeah. What the heck was that all about?” McGill said.

  “She looked like she’d seen a ghost,” Shilo said.

  “Pish, what’s your take on it?”

  “On what, Cranston? That fellow, whatever his name is, is a classic con man,” he said, sitting back in the wing chair and wrinkling his brow. “I’ve met a lot of them, and he has all the earmarks. I thought so from the beginning, but you never call a bluff until you have all the facts.”

  “Violent? Not violent?” I asked.

  Pish considered for a moment, then said, “I don’t see him doing more than disappearing into the mist; the bluster of suing was classic ‘con man caught in the act and bluffing until he can escape the situation.’” He paused and grimaced. “What I can’t figure out is his connection to Davey Hooper and Les Urquhart.”

  “You didn’t buy his claim of coincidence any more than I did,” I said. “But we don’t have a lot to go on, except Juniper saying she had seen him at the Party Stop. I guess we just don’t know enough.”

  “Let me ask around,” McGill said. “I know folks in Ridley Ridge, and maybe they’ve seen Cranston there. Too bad you don’t have any photos.”

  “His real name can’t be Cranston Higgins,” I said. “Maybe Virgil will have his real name by now, since they were looking into the background of everyone who was at the party.”

  “Why don’t you call Virgil tomorrow and meet him somewhere?” Shilo said, her open gaze all innocence. “You two can talk.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, refusing to “get” her subtext.

  After the long, busy day, I slept like a log or a baby or a dead man, whichever phrase you prefer to mean deep and dreamless sleep. I awoke early, made muffins, both savory and sweet, brownies, and lemon squares, and headed into town. The mechanic had promised to get my new/old car to me within the next few days, and I looked forward to having wheels of my own. In my situation, it had become a necessity. Jezebel was fixed up for the moment, but Hayes had said to treat her nicely, so I spoke sweetly to her and hoped I made it into town and back home without too much trouble.

  I had called the police once again, told them I had information for Virgil, and gave them my schedule. Muffins and squares to the Vale Variety and Lunch, then on to Golden Acres. I went to the back door and had a chat with the cook, who was now my good friend. I then wound my way past Gogi’s office—she wasn’t there—and to the front desk, where Mrs. Dotty Levitz was kicking up a fuss, as she sometimes did. The crafty lady, who suffers dementia but is nobody’s fool, was tossing her array of small stuffed animals willy-nilly out of her walker basket and heading for the door. She had done this before as a distraction to try to get away, certain she had to meet her mother somewhere. This time the receptionist was smiling because she’d had the foresight to lock the door already when she saw Dotty heading in her direction.

  Hannah, I could hear from the buzz of voices and conversation in the lounge, was there for one of her bi-weekly visits. She brought books and her sunny personality to Golden Acres. Her eyes lit up when I entered, and she gestured me over.

  “Merry, I have such news! I did research, using the maiden name of your great uncle’s girlfriend. Remember you told me Doc said she still had family in the area? Well, guess who our Yolanda-also-known-as-Violet is related to?” Her big gray eyes sparkled.

  “You’ve got me there.”

  “She had a sister, remember? The sister’s name was Dorothea, or Dorothy, but she is now known as . . . Dotty!”

  Dotty? I gasped. “Is her married name Dotty Levitz?”

  “Exactly!”

  Interesting, but disappointing in a way. Dotty couldn’t remember what she’d had for lunch, much less anything else. Gogi came looking for me. She had helped Hannah with the investigation, and she confirmed the finding.

  “That won’t help, then,” I said. It probably didn’t matter at this point, given that I now thought Cranston was a con man, but I still wanted to have proof to throw in his face.

  “On the contrary,” Gogi said. “I think Dotty has something to tell you that you’ll be interested to hear. She remembers very well the events of that summer, better than what happened yesterday, if you read between the lines.” She led the elderly lady into the lounge and sat her down, and with some prompting, got the story out of her.

  It took a little time, so I will give a synopsis: Violet, who’d hated her name, Yolanda, as much as Dotty had disliked Dorothea, had gone out with Melvyn Wynter through high school, but when he enlisted, they had a big argument. He went off to boot camp, and she felt she was free to do what she wanted. So Violet got herself a boyfriend who was older, classifed 4-F, and had a good job. She married him in secret, then had a big going away party just so Melvyn would read about it.

  Dotty looked from side to side, and then at Doc, who sat over in the corner listening in as he played a game of chess with Hubert Dread. “She was a jealous, horrible sister, though, and I’ll tell you why: poor Violet couldn’t have a baby, no matter how she tried.” Dotty laughed out loud, her eyes twinkling with seventy-year-old mischief. “I had three, and she didn’t have a one! Poor old Violet.”
/>   I looked over to Gogi. “Are you sure this is true?”

  Gogi nodded, petting Dotty’s spotted arthritic hand gently. “Oh yes, I’m sure she’s right. In fact, I looked into it and found out that Violet is still alive and well and living at Camelot Corners Nursing Home in a small hamlet just outside of Batavia, so for any number of reasons she can’t be Cranston’s late grandmother. She never did have children, and she is still alive and relatively well.”

  I nodded and sighed. If I hadn’t already been sure, this would have driven a stake in Cranston’s claims, but this was the confirmation I needed. A slow burn of anger was sparked in my gut. How dare he put me through this . . . and for what?

  Gogi touched Dotty’s wispy hair, and the woman put her head down on the nursing home owner’s shoulder. “I guess the sisters lost track of each other,” Gogi gently said. “Dotty’s son is so pleased that he’s going to take his mother there so they can visit. He told me he remembers his aunt Vi from the old days, but she dropped out of sight in the seventies. I guess the two sisters didn’t get along very well and stopped talking to each other. He is so grateful, you have no idea. And to think, if it hadn’t been for a con man, the two sisters might never have gotten back together.”

  Hannah spoke up. “He planned it well, I must say. Cranston must have used public records, old newspapers, and whatever else he could find.”

  “Why did he target me in the first place?” I asked.

  Hannah scrunched up her little face. “I don’t know. I wonder if, when Andrew Silvio posted for heirs when he was doing the Wynter estate stuff, that Cranston caught wind of it and planned his con?”

  “But that was ages ago. Why wait so long?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it took that long to figure everything out? I don’t know how con artists work. I think he must have used photos of himself with his real grandma, and maybe even an old photo of his grandmother for the locket. He would have bought the locket at an antique store and had it engraved with the name and sentiment he wanted.”

  It still didn’t solve who Cranston was, but he and I were going to have a talk, and then I was going to turn him over to Virgil. I looked over at Doc, who nodded and dropped a wink at me as he took Hubert’s bishop.

  I was getting ready to leave when who should arrive but Virgil Grace himself, looking handsome and spiffy in his uniform. He kissed his mother on the cheek and then turned his gaze to me. My heart skipped a beat. I wondered: would Miguel like this man who was so completely different than he? I had been going to go to the sheriff’s office anyway, and in anticipation of meeting up with Virgil I had dressed with care. Not that I don’t always, but today I wore a challis skirt and soft smocked tunic in autumn colors with cowboy boots and a scarf. I had a heavy sweater coat on.

  “Hey, Merry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked me up and down. “I got your message last night about Juniper Jones and passed on the information to Baxter in Ridley Ridge. We think she’s driving Binny’s car, which was parked behind the bakery. Binny said she’d loaned her the car while the girl worked for her. She hasn’t shown up again, has she?”

  “No, but I have a lot more to tell you. I may want to press charges against the guy posing as Cranston Higgins, and I was wondering if you’d come up with any information about him. Could we talk privately?”

  “We can talk here,” he said.

  I was flummoxed, I don’t mind saying it, because I was convinced in that moment that he did not want to spend time alone with me. What the heck was wrong with him? I glanced over at Gogi, but though she was smiling, her eyes were wrinkled with concern. Hannah smiled up at me, oblivious to the undercurrents. “I have a lot to talk about, and I don’t want to do it here,” I insisted.

  “Okay, all right. Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

  I wanted to tell him just to get lost. I wanted to sling back: I don’t want to twist your arm, dumbass, but I held my temper and said, “Let’s walk, Sheriff.”

  After saying affectionate good-byes to Gogi and Hannah, I strode ahead of him out of Golden Acres to the street. I hadn’t had a chance to explore the town too much at this point, but from the highway above I had noticed a little park, and I wanted to see it. Let him follow me.

  I walked, not letting myself be concerned that he was seeing me from an unflattering angle, and made my way down to the corner, turned left, then down to another short street, another left, and into a small pocket park of the type that had delighted me in New York. I entered through a wrought iron gate over which were the words Come and Partake of Nature.

  I stopped and took in a deep breath, and the rhythm of my walk slowed. I love parks, and this one was a gem, enclosed by lovely old wrought iron fencing and with a meandering gravel path through it. I wondered if my grandfather had courted my grandmother here, those many years ago. I knew so little; I didn’t even know if my grandmother was a local girl or if Murgatroyd, my grandfather, had met her somewhere else. As I followed the path past big trees—some of which I now recognized, thanks to my uncle’s arboretum—I pondered all the mysteries of my life. If my father hadn’t died when I was so young, would everything have been different? Would I ever have moved to New York City? Would I have even gone down the same career path, or ever met Miguel?

  Virgil caught up with me. He took my arm, saying, “Why don’t we sit for a moment?”

  We found a park bench, and I told him about Cranston, why we thought he was a fraud, and what Juniper had told us about seeing him at the Party Stop, as well as her admission that Les Urquhart was one of the unknowns at the costume party, and that it sounded like he was the Sweeney Todd. I worried at Cranston’s link to the whole affair; could he possibly be connected to Les Urquhart and Davey Hooper? Was that the key to the whole mess and the timing of the con? How was that possible?

  “What I can’t understand is: what did he expect to get from it?” I mused, staring up at a big old bur oak. “He stopped asking for a payout after the first few days and seemed content to wait to do the DNA test I needed before sharing the estate with him. But he wasn’t related to me. What, then, is the con?”

  “Wait a sec,” Virgil said, and took out his phone. He walked a ways away and spoke to someone for a few minutes. He made a second call, then came back. “I have a few ideas on that, so I’ve put in a call to an acquaintance on another police force. I’ll know more shortly. Can I ask you: have you spoken to everyone you invited to your party since that night?”

  “No, not at all. I’ve tried to get ahold of some of them, but I’m not getting answers and haven’t had time to follow up properly. I’ve been kind of distracted about things.” I glanced at him; he had a hawklike profile, with dark brows that sloped down over his brown eyes when he was deep in thought, as he was now. He sat back on the bench and put his arm over the back behind me. I was a little cold and wanted to cuddle up to him, but I figured that would send him running for the hills. I longed to ask him about his ex-wife, the daughter of the Ridley Ridge sheriff, but now was not the time.

  “I have to think he’s connected to Hooper,” he said. “We now know that Hooper received a message from his mother through someone who visited someone else in jail. It’s possible that this was how he met Zoey Channer, since she was at the same jail for a very brief period while being transferred.”

  “You mean maybe Dinah sent a message to Davey via Zoey when she got out?” He nodded. So the rumored jail-cell friendship was between Dinah and Zoey, and that’s how Zoey had met Davey. “What did Zoey do that had her in the same jail as Dinah?”

  “Drug offense. She’s wanted right now on a parole violation, so she’ll be returned to custody as soon as she gets out of the hospital.”

  “She’s still in the hospital? Was she that badly hurt?”

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s Baxter for you. As you know, Percy Channer headed to Ridley Ridge General—he’s been there raising a sti
nk nonstop about his precious daughter and how badly she was hurt because a homicide suspect from Autumn Vale was on the loose. Baxter is eating it up, blaming it all on me, and letting her stay at the hospital so she can consult a plastic surgeon that Channer flew in. Something about the gash in her leg needing special care.”

  Again, there was a subtext about the tension between him and the Ridley Ridge sheriff because of Baxter’s daughter and the divorce. As I had already decided, though, this was not the time to follow up on my questions about Virgil’s ex-wife, so I turned my mind back to the conundrum of how Cranston, Hooper, Les, Juniper, and Zoey were all connected, and who had done Hooper in. “So, is it feasible that it wasn’t Cranston at all who came up with the con? That Hooper used information from his mother plus a little research to construct it?”

  “Good thinking,” Virgil said. “Given the skill sets of the folks we’re talking about, that’s logical. Dinah probably figured there was more money there than anyone was acknowledging.”

  “Even though there’s not. She was after my great uncle’s rumored millions. If only she knew that the secret hidden money my uncle constructed a grand puzzle and search for turned out to be a satchel of worthless stock certificates from long-gone South African mining companies. But . . . okay, I’m trying to figure this out. Dinah set her son up to try to con me into giving them money—through Cranston, whoever he is—thinking I would pay up to get him to just go away?”

  “Makes sense. Davey looked so much like Dinty that we would have recognized him right away—like I did recognize his body—so they needed someone else to play the part of the Wynter heir. I have a report of Hooper spotted at the library in Ridley Ridge and an Internet café in Batavia, and we think he accessed the same information Hannah has discovered about the woman Melvyn was connected to in his youth.”