Muffin But Trouble

by Victoria Hamilton

  “Glynnis and her mom never got along,” Lizzie said. “They fought all the time.”

  I thought of my own teenage years, and how I fought with my mother, my poor grandmother in the middle of so many of our battles. “It doesn’t mean they didn’t love each other, Lizzie.”

  “I know,” she said gloomily. “I was thinking; Mrs. Johnson is probably extra sad because of that, you know, wishing she could get back all that time they fought.”

  Shilo and I both hugged her. It was so profoundly true.

  “And even worse that Glynnis was so close this whole time,” I said.

  “We have got to get Alcina out of there, with or without her mother!” Lizzie said through gritted teeth.

  I shared a worried look with Shilo. We both know what Lizzie is capable of, and I would not put a solo raid on the compound out of the question. “We don’t know if Glynnis’s death was caused by someone at the compound.”

  Lizzie gave me a look. “Right. And people say teenagers are naïve.” She sniffed in disgust. “It was probably that creepy old prophet fellow. I’ll bet Glynnis had all kinds of info on him.”

  “That’s wild speculation, kiddo,” I said, though it was an interesting notion. “What kind of girl was Glynnis? Like . . . smart? Dumb? Nosy? Quiet?”

  “I didn’t know her well,” Lizzie said. “She was in trouble, I know that. She had worked at the hospital part-time, but got canned when they caught her rifling through someone’s purse. And I think she was taking drugs.”

  “What’s up with that? I’m hearing about drugs more and more locally. I mean, I know it’s always been a problem, but . . . have you noticed an uptick in drug use?”

  Lizzie frowned and shrugged. “I guess. I mean, my last two years at school it just seemed there was more partying, and more drugs. The last couple of years there was a big end-of-school bash somewhere in the country, and kids kept getting wasted. One of Julian’s friends almost died.”

  “Well, that’s troubling. What would attract Glynnis to the Light and the Way, do you think, I mean, given her wanting to be a star?” How did you get from wanting to be in show biz to belonging to a religious cult that frowned on makeup?

  “I don’t know. Maybe Cecily would. I mean, they must have spent a lot of time together out there, right?”

  “Maybe. In any case, we can’t jump to conclusions. We can’t just decide it is the prophet to blame because we think he’s creepy.” Shilo looked hesitant for a moment. I caught the look. “Shilo, what is it? Do you know something?”

  She bit her lip, looking about ten years younger than her early thirty-something. “I . . .” She sighed and shook her head.

  “Honey, what is it?”

  She took a deep breath, and her cheeks colored. “I’ve been volunteering at the women’s shelter in Ridley Ridge. I heard they needed someone to paint their interior for free, and I was done with our house so . . .” She shrugged. “I took my paints and rags and went there to help.”

  Shilo has revealed an amazing hidden talent she didn’t even know she had; she has transformed her and Jack’s funky older house in Autumn Vale with hand-painted décor, including whole murals of butterflies and trees, vines, and in Autumn’s room trees full of monkeys swinging from limb to limb. Every single monkey has a different expression. It’s amazing.

  “I didn’t know you were doing that!” I watched her eyes; she was debating something. I thought of all the shelters I have ever visited—I did some volunteer work too when I lived in New York City, after Miguel died—and how privacy-obsessed they rightfully are. “Shilo, did you learn or hear something at the shelter?” She nodded but stayed silent. I took a deep breath. “You can’t say anything you heard there. I know that. But was it about the compound?”

  She nodded.

  “Was it about one of the men there?”

  She nodded again. “Or . . . kind of. I can’t . . . I can’t say any more.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I wish I could, but I can’t! They’d never trust me again.”

  “I know, honey,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders and squeezing.

  “What do you mean?” Lizzie yelped. “What if what she knows could solve Glynnis’s murder?”

  “What if she said something and it led to another woman getting killed?” I shot back.

  She shut her mouth and nodded.

  So . . . a woman had turned up at the shelter and said something about one of the men at the compound. That scared the hell out of me. Secretly I was with Lizzie, worried that staying silent would endanger the women and girls at the compound. I thought of Felice and Alcina under the thumb of that creep Barney, and I was even worried for Gordy . . . dumb, innocent Gordy, who trusted people to tell him the truth, and so could be swayed by anyone with an agenda. His lovely friend Nathan was a real gem.

  One thing was for sure: I needed to get to Alcina, at least, and make sure she was safe. I needed to see if I could convince Felice that Barney was evil, and to leave him. It helped to know that a woman had gotten away from the compound and escaped to a shelter, but it meant that a man there had likely treated her very badly indeed.

  Isadore had already started working there. Maybe now would be a good time to return to the compound, to make sure everyone was okay. Maybe with muffins for the kids. I’d think about it. As much as everyone was preaching to me about people’s self-determination and their right to make their own decisions, I was leaning toward meddling, given how many of our dear friends were there and potentially in danger.

  We spent some time looking over the pictures Lizzie had taken. I enlarged them on the screen, and we discovered a lot of information that I would be sharing with Virgil later. Even the shacks in back that had appeared abandoned were apparently inhabited. There were pictures of people going in and out of them, even the sagging dump furthest back from the encampment! It looked like Nathan was using that as his own little nest. I shuddered and shrugged him out of my mind, focusing instead on the groups of children and women. “Lizzie, did you meet any of these kids and women?” I said, idly making conversation as I examined faces, seeing if I recognized anyone.

  “Yeah. I was looking for Alcina, you know? So I talked to a lot of them.”

  “How did they seem?”

  “Okay, I guess. I mean, they were clean, and had food. There’s some kind of root cellar where they store stuff.”

  “A root cellar? I didn’t see that.”

  “Yeah, you access it from a door at the back of the red hut thingie . . . it’s underneath.”

  “Hmph. Who knew?” All kinds of hidey-holes in that place.

  “They don’t get candy, or anything. I gave one a package of Tic Tacs and you’d think it was gold, the way they all crowded around.”

  Lizzie’s camera is professional grade, and there were a few photos she had taken from an elevation. “How did you get these?”

  “They’ve got, like, this raised clothesline pole, with a platform built around it, and from there it’s easy to get on the roof of one of the huts. I took pictures all the way around.”

  “I see that.” I squinted. “Look, there in the distance . . .” I used my fingers to expand the photo. Because the resolution was so high, it didn’t get blurry. “There’s a small shack by that grove of trees. It looks like it’s about five hundred feet or so from the Quonset church. And there’s another flat-roofed hut, larger,” I said, pointing to it, “beyond that hill. It’s like a quarter mile away; you can barely see it for the trees. It kind of looks like it’s on the next road, in fact.” I frowned. The next road . . . was that Silver Creek Line, where Isadore had been told to go to work on the ledgers? “That looks like an antenna sprouting from the top, maybe a satellite antenna.”

  “One of the kids I talked to said the prophet seems to know everything that’s going on, even though he never leaves the compound. He, like, hides out for hours ‘meditating,’ and then comes out with a new revelation. Like, he’ll come out and say he had a revelation that the world
is evil ’cause he learned from God there was another school shooting, or a politician caught with his pants down.”

  “I’ve never heard cable news called God before. So, a news item.” I was jotting down notes, and I wrote myself a reminder to tell Virgil all of this, and also to get Zeke to look at the picture and see if he could tell me what it was. “More likely he spends all of his time hidden away smoking dope and watching Jersey Shore reruns.”

  “He’s old. He probably watches Beavis and Butt-Head,” Lizzie said.

  A woman in the photo caught my eye and I drew in my breath in one swift gasp. I enlarged the photo and focused on the face. Was it . . . ? It had to be. Leatrice Pugeot, aka Lynn Pugmire! It was my archnemesis, the supermodel who had hired me as her personal assistant, then fired me, then ruined my career and life when she accused me of the theft of a necklace she probably pawned to buy oxy.

  Chapter Twelve

  I stared, squinted, enlarged, trying to be certain. “Shilo, look at this face!” I pointed. “Who is this?”

  “Oh. Oh!” she yelped, almost falling from her stool. “That’s Leatrice!”

  “You see it too? I’m not imagining it, then.” Holy crap. Holy freaking crap. I don’t know how to explain Leatrice: she was my boss, my torment, and my saving grace, as much as it didn’t feel like it at the time. In making so much trouble for me Leatrice had given me the greatest gift anyone ever could by forcing me to run away from New York City to my inherited property. She had kick-started this new life; until then I had been stuck in a tumultuous relationship with my lingering grief over my husband’s death, and the effort to make a life or career for myself in the wake of it. I was furious with her and grateful, a weird mix.

  But what was she doing at the religious compound of the Light and the Way? “I have to go out there. Now,” I muttered, slapping the counter with the palm of my hand.

  “Who is it? What are you talking about?” Lizzie asked.

  “That woman, the one I’ve zoomed in on . . .” I pointed her out; she was sitting on an upturned pail in front of one of the huts, hands to her head, looking frail and frightened. “I know her. She’s an addict, and usually unwell. She’s not safe there. I have to get her out.”

  “I’m coming with you. I gotta find Alcina.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out, common sense taking over. “First, I have to call Virgil.”

  He didn’t pick up. I started pacing and worrying, my footsteps echoing in the cavernous kitchen as the three of us tried to figure out how best to extricate a woman from that place. I didn’t know if she would come with me. What would I do if she refused, or put up a fuss? Was I even right to charge in there to rescue her?

  I made some calls to old New York friends. No one had seen Lynn in months. Finally I got my old friend Zee on the line. Zee is one of my last remaining contacts in the fashion world and knew Lynn well.

  “Have you heard anything about Leatrice Pugeot?” I asked after the initial pleasantries.

  “Aw, honey, don’t tell me! She’s dead, right? I figured it was just a matter of time.”

  “Not if the woman I saw is her.” I briefly described Lynn’s situation.

  “Hmmm. Last I heard she was telling anyone who would listen that she was going upstate to stay with you.”

  “What?” I yelped.

  “She said that you two had this big reunion when you were in town, and you were gonna come work for her again.”

  “Not true! None of it.”

  “She said she was going to stay at your castle—”

  “Who told her about my castle?” I squawked.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said with a warm chuckle. “You know what I think of Leatrice. I love her to death, and she was a hell of a model back in the day, but she is the last person I would trust with anything, even information. And I know how she burned you. I’d never tell her where you live. But honey, the woman does read—even if it’s at a third-grade level—and there was that write-up in Downtown about you and Pish.”

  Downtown was a New York City magazine, and there had been a long-read piece about the castle and our plans for it. “And she said I had invited her out here?”

  “She did.”

  “But I didn’t!”

  “I thought it was unlikely, but Pishy has a big heart and I thought he might’ve gotten to you . . . you know how he loves a stray.”

  Pish. Pish! Well, he had invited a ghost-hunting show to come and film at the castle without me knowing about it. And his wacky Auntie Lush, and her crew of demonic old ladies. How much more likely was it that he had invited our old friend, down-on-her-luck Leatrice, aka Lynn? “Maybe you’re right. I gotta go, Zee.”

  “Don’t be too hard on him!” she said with another chuckle.

  I smiled. “Let’s have lunch and catch up next time I’m in the city.”

  Pish wandered down and into the kitchen. Shilo bit her lip, and Lizzie’s eyes widened. But I wasn’t going to yell. I turned and gave him a hard stare. “Pish, have you seen Lynn Pugmire lately?” My voice was controlled but full of tension.

  He stared at me puzzled, in the act of filling the kettle. “No, dear heart, I haven’t seen her for years. You know I’d tell you if I had.”

  I nodded, relieved. That is what I’d already concluded. Pish is on my side. Always. He wouldn’t have invited her to the castle.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Shilo, show him the picture. Pish, tell me what you think.”

  Shilo did so, turning the tablet for him to see and repeating my close-up action of the woman in question. He, too, did the gasp. He looked up and met my gaze, searching my eyes. “Is that . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. But if it is—”

  “We have to save her,” he said.

  “I know.”

  • • •

  I had called Virgil again, and this time he picked up. Prophet Voorhees had been briefly detained, as had Barney and a couple other of the men; not Gordy, apparently. But the civil rights lawyer Grant Marbaugh had ordered up argued that the two men had been denied their basic rights and had been illegally detained and held. There was insufficient evidence to hold them on anything, even given Glynnis’s connection to the compound. As much as I hated to admit it, I agreed. Baxter’s raid on the compound, unjustified by any actual incriminating evidence supplied by the ATF, seemed oddly rushed and without basis.

  So Voorhees and Barney were being released any moment, though Baxter was not rushing to comply. The civil rights lawyer was threatening a lawsuit. Virgil suspected that the lawyer would meet with the two men after they were released to see if they wanted to file charges, in which case they would likely hang out in Ridley Ridge for at least an hour or two, more if they decided to file charges against the sheriff and his department. Why was I asking about them?

  I told him that I had seen a woman in a photo of the encampment who I thought might be Lynn. He knew exactly who I meant, of course, because I have bitched and moaned about her enough in the last three years. I sent him all of Lizzie’s photos of the encampment while I told him about Zee’s info, that last anyone heard, Lynn was heading for my castle. Even with everything that had gone down between us, I couldn’t leave her there. She was emotionally and physically as fragile as a cracked eggshell. I didn’t say to Virgil that there may be more than one rescue of a friend if we found Alcina, though taking her without Felice’s consent would be illegal at the very least.

  I was going in, I told him.

  He freaked . . . I mean, freaked! I was not going in, he said, panic in his tone.

  I got all stiff and snippy. I am too old to be told what to do by any man, woman or child. I could not leave Lynn there; that’s all there was to it. I was a private citizen, and I was not going in alone. The worst that could happen on the Light and the Way Ministry compound was that I would be evicted for trespassing. If I could find Felice and get her to invite me to stick around, it wouldn’t even be that.

  Virgil, in
telligent husband that he is, amended his previous statement. I was not going in there without him; he and Dewayne, his PI partner, would meet us there. I was relieved, I have to say, though my by-the-book ex-cop husband might not like what I was prepared to do.

  I rushed around the kitchen and pantry, and then, armed with muffins and staples like powdered milk and soup—food items gave us an excuse to talk to the women, and for being there—Lizzie, Shilo, Pish and I headed out. Pish insisted on going along. If we found Lynn, it might require both of us to deal with her. It depended on whether she was clean or not. In the photo her expression was cloudy, hands on her head, fingers thrust into her unruly hair, her gaze focused on the distance. That could either mean she was sad or stoned.

  Somehow, in my time at the compound, I had missed her.

  We all piled into Pish’s capacious car. I drove. I drove fast. But even so, as we turned onto Marker Road a big semi blew past me, laying on the horn and throwing up gravel onto Pish’s pristine vehicle. I restrained myself from giving him the finger.

  Virgil was, of course, as good as his word. He and Dewayne Lester, a stocky, balding fellow who was Virgil’s shooting instructor at police college many years before, and a cop of many years before retiring and forming his own PI business, stood talking, awaiting us. I parked and we got out of the car, Virgil’s thick brow quirking when he saw how many of us there were. It looked like a parade, not a rescue mission, he said.

  We all greeted each other tensely. Shilo looked nervous. I watched her for a moment. “Shilo, maybe you should stay with the cars and be our lookout?”

  But she saw right through that. “No way. Who knows which one of us Lynn will listen to? I was a model, and she was a model; I can talk to her. You and Lizzie have other . . . uh . . . problems.” Thankfully she did not mention Alcina.

  I nodded and turned to Virgil. He looked tired and grim. I put my arms around his waist and he did the same around mine, looking into my eyes.