Muffin But Trouble
With plans for a new performing arts center at Wynter Castle taking up all her time, baker Merry Wynter has been all but unaware of the fringe group compound near her small town—until a street preacher accosts her with taunts of doom and damnation. Worried that some of her close friends may have been lured in by the group and its charismatic leader, Merry begins digging into the ministry—and soon suspects they may have ties to the recent death of a young woman and the disappearance of many others.
With her rebellious teen friend Lizzie at her side, Merry steps in to confront the eerily submissive community and its misguided members, skeptical of their supposed spiritual leanings. When another young woman vanishes and Merry realizes the lives of people close to her are at stake, she will stop at nothing to uncover the group’s sinister secrets before the murderous ministry can strike again . . .
Title Page
Copyright
Muffin But Trouble
Victoria Hamilton
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
www.beyondthepagepub.com
Copyright © 2019 by Donna Lea Simpson.
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs.
ISBN: 978-1-950461-16-5
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Contents
Cast of Characters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Recipes
Books by Victoria Hamilton
About the Author
Cast of Characters
Merry Muffin Mystery Series
Merry Grace Wynter: newish owner of a real American castle and muffin baker extraordinaire!
Virgil Grace: Her husband, former sheriff of Autumn Vale and now a private investigator.
Gogi Grace: Virgil’s mom and the owner of Golden Acres Retirement Residence.
Lizzie Proctor: Merry’s teen friend.
Alcina Eklund: Lizzie’s best buddy.
Felice Eklund: Alcina’s mother.
Pish Lincoln: Merry’s best male friend and partner in a new venture.
Shilo Dinnegan McGill: Merry’s best female friend, now married and with a baby.
Doc English: Irascible senior who is Merry’s living link to her past.
Gordy Shute: Autumn Vale resident and local conspiracy theorist.
Hubert Dread: Resident of Golden Acres and teller of tall tales; Gordy Shute’s great-uncle.
Hannah Moore: Autumn Vale librarian.
Zeke: Gordy Shute’s best friend and Hannah’s boyfriend.
Dewayne Lester: Virgil’s PI partner and old friend.
Patricia Lester: Dewayne’s newish wife and cake baker extraordinaire.
Sheriff Urquhart: Autumn Vale sheriff.
ADA Elisandre Trujillo: Local Assistant District Attorney and new girlfriend of Urquhart.
Janice Grover: Merry’s eccentric opera-loving Autumn Vale friend.
Reverend John Maitland: Autumn Vale Methodist Church.
Marciela Maitland: Reverend Maitland’s wife and church coordinator.
Muffin But Trouble
Arden Voorhees, aka the prophet: The Light and the Way Ministry head.
Mother Esther: the prophet’s wife.
Barney: Ardent member of the Light and the Way Ministry.
Nathan Garrison: The Light and the Way Ministry member.
Mariah: “Sister-wife” of Barney.
Cecily Smith: Missing girl, a friend of Lizzie’s.
Peaches: Gordy’s “girlfriend.”
Bob Taggart: Local trucker.
Mack: Local trucker.
Anokhi Auretius: Composer.
Sebastienne Marbaugh: Anokhi’s daughter.
Grant Marbaugh: Sebastienne’s husband.
Millicent, aka Phyllis Urquhart: Waitress in Ridley Ridge coffee shop, known as Millicent because she wore her predecessor’s uniform.
Millicent; aka Cara Urquhart: Former waitress in Ridley Ridge coffee shop.
Liliana Bartholomew: Lexington Opera Company soprano.
Blaq Mojo, aka George Alan Bartholomew: Liliana’s famous rapper son.
Leatrice Pugeot/Lynn Pugmire: Model and Merry’s former boss in New York City.
Chapter One
“Jezebel!”
“Who, me?” I asked, pointing to my chest like I was playing a weirdly personal game of charades. I was the only female around at that moment except for an elderly woman pushing a rolling walker down the sidewalk along the line of mostly abandoned brick and boarded-up glass storefronts.
“Yes, you. Jezebel!” This time he—the shouter—pointed his finger at me, I suppose so there could be no further cause for confusion. “Harlot!” he yelped, wide-eyed and with a hint of a smile still tilting his lips upward at the corners. The elderly woman using the walker stopped and glared at the fellow. I shrugged my shoulders when I caught her eye. It was confusing.
Nothing like being called names on a Monday in mid-October in downtown Ridley Ridge. And the fellow who shouted at me had seemed such a pleasant dude at first, smiling and nodding, despite the sandwich-board sign he wore as he marched up and down the walk. He held another sign, a placard he hoisted high and proud announcing that all of Ridley Ridge was bound for Hell, its inhabitants the spawn of Satin (perhaps being born of a silkworm?), and were condemmed (yes, spelled that way) to etermity (those ns and ms will confuse you every time) in a lake of fire.
I may have called Ridley Ridge the center of hell, true—at times it does appear to be the cesspit of western New York State, with trash blowing along the street and doggie doo just waiting to be stepped in—but some of its inhabitants are lovely people and don’t deserve such a heated fate. Others do, but that is sad, and I try not to reflect on sad things on lovely October mornings.
“Jezebel!” he said again, as if I had failed to hear the first time, or the second time.
I was glad to see the woman with the walker hustle away. This was not going in a good direction. I cocked my head
and looked the fellow in the eye, shifting my purse up higher on my shoulder. “Now, you don’t even know me.” I opened my plastic container and held it out, temptingly, wafting the fragrance of home-baked goodies his way. “Maybe you’re hungry. Or constipated. Have a bran muffin; it’ll solve both problems.”
“God has told me; you’re going to hell,” he said pleasantly, nodding earnestly. “You are abusing God’s grace on earth. You’re a made-up, pant-wearing Jezebel!”
Pant-wearing? Well, yes, I was wearing a pair of pinstripe Lane Bryant body-hugging slacks, with a tunic top and moto jacket. But women had been free to wear pants for decades now; how nineteen fifties of him to disapprove. And makeup . . . ? I don’t leave home without it. How very odd to have verbal brimstone rained down upon me by such a seemingly mild-mannered dude. I pushed my hair out of my eyes—the fall breeze was stiffening—and observed him.
He was tall and maybe in his late thirties, clean-shaven, short-haired with just a scar marring his receding hairline, wearing a blue golf shirt with a local golf course logo under the sandwich board, chino pants and a newsboy-style hat set far back on his head. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a lifetime of reading cartoons with brimstone types wearing long robes, sandals and Methuselah beards was the problem. I’ll confess to feeling such dissonance that I thought I was hearing sirens in my head, like a brain wave, until the whoop of a police car pulling up to the curb and letting the siren blare in one brief blast told me it was real.
A female police officer, short but looking like she could bench press me and the kooky doomsayer, got out of the car, gave the zealot a look of disgust, and turned to me. “Ma’am, is he bothering you?”
I closed and tucked my plastic tote of muffins under my arm. “He did call me a jezebel, but that’s about it. Oh, and harlot! He did call me a harlot. Sticks and stones and all that.” I smiled. “And he didn’t want a muffin. I already asked.”
“Darn.” She seemed disappointed. Perhaps she would have liked it better if he’d hauled off and belted me. Tucking a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear, she shrugged. “Well, if he lays a hand on you, or threatens you in any way, tell us.” She turned to the street preacher, read his sign, and said, “Barney, I told you to lay off the crap. Now, why don’t you take your illiterate sign, go back to your encampment and leave all of us be?”
“You, Miss Police Officer, are the worst of all among the lost women of Ridley Ridge,” he said, waggling his finger at her, a smile plastered on his face. I could see now that he wore a cheery Hi. My Name Is Barney. Ask me about Salvation badge on his sandwich board, like someone marketing pricey herbal diet aids. Only he was apparently selling eternal afterlife, not just lengthy life on earth. “Usurping a man’s rightful place and wearing pants; disgusting,” he said to the cop, leering at her square, trim frame in neatly pressed khaki.
“All the better to agitate righteous types like you, Barney,” she said with a wry smile. “You should see me at the disco on a Friday night, dressed in sequins, waggling my tatas and bootie.”
He grimaced. I grinned.
“You should leave now, or I’ll cite you for loitering,” she said. She looked up and down the sloping street. A few cars passed, and one honked a horn. She raised her hand in acknowledgment. A man came out of the liquor store across the street and hustled away, clutching a paper bag under his arm; she watched him for a moment, then turned back to the fellow. “I’ve told you before to stop harassing folks. I won’t be so nice next time.”
“It’s against nature and God’s plan,” Barney said, as if she had not spoken. “Wearing pants . . .” A woman and child walked past. He rested his sign in the crook of his elbow, smiled at the little girl, took a wrapped candy out of his pocket and gave it to her, along with a pamphlet. The mother snatched the candy away and threw it on the ground with the pamphlet, earning a glowering sneer from the proselytizer. He turned back to the cop and said, “My wife will never do that, wear pants, get a job. She knows her place, to provide for me whatever I so desire.”
He was trying to anger her; I could see it in his eyes. He was spoiling for a fight. I wondered . . . did he really believe the crap he was spewing, or was it just a way to be contrary? When she didn’t respond, he went on, his tone conversational, smile still firmly in place: “I can’t believe they gave you a gun. What would happen if you were having your monthly troubles? You might shoot someone for looking at you wrong. That gun should be in the hands of your husband so he can keep you in line.”
“I’ll tell my husband that when we go out for target practice this weekend and I beat him on bull’s-eyes. He’ll laugh his ass off. Now go on . . . go,” she said sternly. “Beat it! Out of town. I have a badge and a gun; I’m not afraid to use either.”
That slimy smile, worse than any sneer, wedged on his unpleasantly moist mouth, he nodded, then waved to a fellow nearby, who was stapling the pamphlets to telephone poles, and trotted over to him. They bent together, whispering. I squinted, thinking I recognized the guy who had joined him, but he turned away before I could get a good look. They hustled away together, quickening into a gallop as a van with the words “The Message is with Us—Follow Us to Salivation!” painted on the side pulled up to the curb.
Driving the van was an older man wearing a head wrap from which thick tendrils of long graying hair fluttered in the breeze. A woman slid open the side van door and beckoned to the two men; she was wearing a long dress down to her ankles and a kerchief over silver-threaded dark hair. The driver glanced at the police officer, then his glance slid away. His lip was curled like an inept Elvis impersonator, as if he had gotten downwind of a dead skunk.
Barney tossed his placard inside, then hoisted the sandwich board off of him and handed it in to the woman in the van. He climbed in after it, as did the other fellow.
“What’s his problem?” I asked, about the guy who had called me a jezebel.
“Barney? Me,” the officer said, turning to me after the van sped off. “And you, and the whole of our sex who don’t conform to ankle-length dresses, long hair and modestly downturned gazes. We are to procreate, work for our master, and nothing more. That is the mission of the Light and the Way Ministry.”
“They’re a church in town?”
“Nah. It’s a cult of sorts. Or so I think. They have a twenty-acre patch of land about halfway between Ridley Ridge and Autumn Vale. Been there two years, give or take.”
“How have I not heard of them before now?”
“They started out quiet, but they’re getting bolder. Barney started this crap downtown after we chased him out of the bus station a couple of months ago. He used to harass folks there, especially arrivals, so we kicked him out. But he says the public sidewalk is free for all to use.”
“Being shouted at and told I’m a jezebel is not a pleasant experience. It doesn’t particularly bother me, but I can see that some women would find it . . . unsettling. Maybe even threatening.”
“I wish we could get them to stay on their own little patch of land. Apparently at first they had a place in town, then a house on some farmland, and now a full-on encampment: huts, tents, lean-tos. I’ve driven past it. Their leader—or whatever you want to call him, their guru, or oracle or prophet, that guy driving the van—is a local, and so are some of the followers. But they’ve been gathering converts from all over, from what I understand. I wasn’t here when it started. They got caught up in some movement a few years back.”
Her speech was staccato, punctuated by her shifting gaze as she noticed everything: every pedestrian, every car, every flick of a curtain along the quiet streetscape. “For a while after they moved out of Ridley Ridge they were content to stay in their little campground, only coming into town for supplies. We wrote them off as survivalist kooks at first—you know, preppers—but their numbers have increased enough that we’re starting to take notice.”
“What can you do, though?”
“Sheriff Baxter is assembling a task force. The ATF
are interested.”
“ATF? Why them?”
“Well, I’ll guarantee you it isn’t the A, and it isn’t the T.”
Firearms. I shivered. I don’t like guns. I’ve calmed down some about weapons, because my husband, Virgil, being a former cop, is very good with guns and practices regularly. He has a locked gun case in our house that I try to ignore. But I was born and raised a city girl, and guns still make me uneasy. “Do you truly think they’ve got guns?”
She shrugged, looking unconvinced. “Maybe. Sheriff Baxter is concerned they’re stockpiling an arsenal.”
“Based on what?”
Her face shuttered and she touched her holstered gun, resting her hand on it. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that, ma’am.”
“Oh well,” I said, walking away with a cheerful wave. “Nothing to do with me!”
Right then I should have known; nothing good comes of being cheerful in Ridley Ridge. Saying it was none of my business was like a cosmic taunt, a dare to the universe to come mess with me. I continued about my business, taking the muffins I make and sell to the local coffee shop, the only living storefront in a dead zone of four other closed businesses. It’s an old-fashioned place, clean enough but worn and tired-looking, like most of the inhabitants of Ridley Ridge. The arborite tables are scarred, the vinyl chairs split and spilling fibrous stuffing, and the tile floor stained and worn through to the subfloor in spots. Every once in a while a bit of black or white tile will work loose and skitter around like a hockey puck for a few weeks before someone notices and sweeps it up.
I said hello to the latest in a long line of waitresses at the coffee shop, announced my business, and sat down at the row of stools at the counter. She yelled back to the manager that I was there with muffins, then sat back down on her stool by the cash register to stare at her phone. She wasn’t busy; there were two guys in the café, both eating breakfast. Quite a contrast to the coffee shop in my town, Autumn Vale, where this time of the morning there would be several lively groups slurping coffee, eating muffins and arguing over politics, religion, and some long-dead controversy over the Brotherhood of the Falcon fraternal order hall outside of town. “Have you met that fellow, Barney, the guy who marches around up and down the street with religious signs?” I asked.
Muffin But Trouble Page 1
