Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery)

by Victoria Hamilton

  McGill and Pish approached, and Jack put his arm over his new fiancée’s shoulders. “Now we just have to set a date and plan the wedding!” he said.

  “When do you want to get married?” Shilo looked up at him, her eyes shining.

  “Soon as possible,” McGill said fervently, tightening his grip. “You name the time and place and I’ll be there with bells on.”

  “Christmas. At the castle!” she said, and then met my gaze. “If that’s okay with you, Merry. Just our friends and that’s all.”

  Could we do a wedding in just over a month and a half? We sure could try! I nodded, smiling at the joy it gave her.

  “And now, on with the treasure hunt,” McGill said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. “I have a bottle of wine in the car for later, to celebrate whatever we find.”

  “Even if we don’t find a thing, we’ll have something to celebrate!” I said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  BECKET CAME CRASHING toward us through the woods and I jumped, then we heard bickering voices. “Who the heck could that be?” I asked, then hollered, “Hello!”

  Lizzie and Alcina clambered through the bush . . . or rather, Lizzie clambered and Alcina hopped and skipped through the brush. Lizzie looked cross, her dark frizzy hair escaping from a ponytail and flying in wisps around her red face. That’s a perpetual expression with Lizzie, so I wasn’t concerned. Alcina seemed serene as always, her long, silky blonde hair falling in waves over her shoulders and a ratty camo jacket covering a chiffon dress that looked like a fifties vintage party dress. She wasn’t wearing wings, for once. She bounced over to Shilo. Those two were kindred spirits, and it didn’t surprise me when the child grabbed Shilo’s hand to drag her off somewhere to see something. Shilo would tell us what it was when she got back. Alcina rarely spoke—to us, at least.

  “What are you guys doing in the woods?” I asked.

  “Alcina said we had to come out here early to see what the freakin’ frost faeries left,” she griped. “A half hour on a bicycle, freezing my butt off, just to see frost. I thought she meant something special!”

  “I suppose to her it is special. I’ll bet you got some great photos,” I said.

  “Well, of course I did,” she said in that teenage tone that meant “duh.” “What are you all doing here?” Lizzie’s gaze took all of us in, lingering on the book and shovel. She eyed Pish’s camera and nodded, looking down at her own. Hers was better, I surmised from her satisfied look. I had originally wondered where she’d gotten it, almost afraid to find out, but now knew it had been a gift from Tom Turner, her father, before he was murdered. He had told her to keep it a secret, and she said she’d thought he might have been a perv, but she’d taken the camera anyway.

  Though we’ll never know for sure, Binny figured Tom had wanted to give his daughter a gift, but because he hadn’t yet worked things out with her mother, and hadn’t acknowledged his paternity, he didn’t want to tell her why he was giving her such a costly item. I think it became doubly valuable to Lizzie when she learned it was the only gift her father would ever be able to give her. It had given purpose and a goal in life to a kid who was going through a rough patch. How had he known to give her a camera? It made me wish I had known him apart from our very brief confrontation before his death, because his gift had been a stroke of genius.

  I heard a squeal of delight off in the woods, and would have bet that Shilo had told Alcina about her engagement. “We’re following my weird old uncle’s treasure trail,” I answered my young friend.

  Lizzie’s eyes lit up, gleaming with greed at the word treasure. “What have you found? What did he leave? Was it gold? Jewels? Can I have some?”

  “We haven’t found anything yet, and we won’t unless we get a move on. The weather looks dicey.” I had been noticing the change in light for a half hour now, as a frosty brilliant morning turned gloomy above us. In the depths of the woods, you can’t see much of the sky, but I was beginning to appreciate how the shifts in light revealed all you needed to know.

  We moved on, with Alcina and Shilo bouncing around us like puppies at an off-leash park. The trees fascinated me as we followed my uncle’s quirky path. Who knew there were so many species of oak and maple, sycamore, birch, ash, and beech? I’d always loved walking in Central Park in the different seasons, watching the changes taking place, but now I wondered about all those trees . . . what were they? Pish was right; I would need to contact someone to come and tell me more about my forest and how to take care of it.

  And there I went again, thinking about the place as if I was going to be able to keep it.

  We trudged on, and the forest began to thin somewhat as we crested a hill. It was as if Melvyn’s tree trail had been designed to show all the beauties of Wynter Woods, as I thought of it. There were open marshy areas where wetland trees thrived, and occasional ponds around which wildlife proliferated. There were high hilly mounds and a windswept open vista or two that looked across a pine forest and down to the valley in which Autumn Vale was nestled.

  I had not yet explored so much of the woods; it was a revelation and a lesson. The woods may not have been perfectly planned—and indeed there were quite a few dead or dying trees as well as some that were completely down—but still, it was glorious. My uncle had done well in planting the woods, and he had done magnificently in planning his little journey.

  “This is the last tree in the list,” I said. “Nyssa sylvatica.”

  Pish examined the book. “Ah, here it is. It is commonly known as the black tupelo, tupelo, or black gum. It likes a wetland area.”

  I looked down the hillock to a marshy area and saw a tree standing alone. I scaled down, slipping and sliding on wet leaves, and rooted around at the base—a lot of the trees had identifying markers at the base of the trunk—and uncovered a metal tag. “‘Nyssa sylvatica: black tupelo’,” I read. “Here it is.”

  We all looked at each other, and McGill said, “Well, no time like the present, right?” He looked up at the lowering sky, now visible because of the space in the canopy. “Gonna rain soon.”

  He dug, and we helped as much as we could by clearing sticks and leaves away, but mostly just watched him work. If Melvyn had buried something, it would likely be on the side where the tag was, so that’s where McGill started. It wasn’t long before he hit something with a hollow thunk. Alcina skipped and Lizzie let out a woosh of sound. Pish grabbed my hand and I held my breath.

  McGill reached down and rooted around and yanked on something. He dug some more, then grabbed and pulled and fell backward in a great shower of dirt and leaves. We all crowded around. As Jack got back up, I wiped off the item; it was an old leather satchel. I was trembling with excitement and cold as a pelting rain started, the pitter-patter on the layer of dead leaves like tiny feet on patio stones.

  I looked up. “Let’s wait to open this until we get back to the castle,” I said.

  I was grateful that Lizzie, who knew the woods a lot better than any of us, was there. She led us back to the actual path, and we sped through the woods in the cold rain shower. McGill took Shilo’s newly repaired car to pick up the girls’ bikes out on the highway, making us swear to wait until he got back before we opened the satchel.

  It was the least I could do, since he had done all the actual digging, but it was difficult looking at it sitting there, mysteriously full of something. So we got busy, hauling some more comfortable chairs into the kitchen near the fireplace. Pish laid a fire and lit it while I made some double-chocolate muffins, coffee, tea, and cocoa.

  Finally, we all gathered together with the filthy satchel on newspapers on a low table in front of us. Lizzie had already photographed it from every possible angle: with the fire as a backdrop, from above, and close up. With trembling hands I worked at the latch, a shot of WD-40 squirted on it helping immeasurably. I had discovered, in my crash course in Care and Handling o
f an Old Castle, that WD-40 fixed everything from squeaky hinges to locks that wouldn’t work.

  I opened the satchel and found a black plastic bag securely wrapped in brittle duct tape. It was like unwrapping a mummy. I carefully slit the plastic and pulled it open. Inside was a crumbling pile of documents.

  “What are they? Gold certificates?” Lizzie asked.

  How she would know such things exist, I could not tell you. “I don’t know what they are yet,” I said, unfolding the documents. I examined them, Pish reading over my shoulder. When I had finished one, I looked up at him, and he shook his head. He looked as sad as I felt. I sighed and slumped down.

  “What is it? What are they?” Shilo asked.

  “They’re stock certificates,” I said.

  “How much are they worth?” McGill asked.

  “Nothing,” Pish said, sadly. “Not even the paper they’re printed on.”

  “What? Why?” Lizzie asked. She examined my face with a skeptical frown and narrowed eyes. “What do you mean they aren’t worth anything?”

  I flipped through the rest, and it confirmed Pish and my pessimism. “They’re investment bonds from the early nineteen seventies for South African companies, most of them small steel manufacturing and mining,” I said.

  “Ah,” McGill said. He understood immediately.

  Pish, McGill, and I explained about apartheid, the horrible system of segregation in South Africa. I knew a lot about it because of my mother’s involvement in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s. “Divestment—in other words, selling off investments in South African companies—was meant by other nations to pressure South Africa, to isolate it until the government repealed apartheid. As a result, some companies went belly-up,” I concluded. “And we’re pretty sure that these are investments in those companies.”

  “I recognize some of them,” Pish said. “I gave seminars on ethical investment in the eighties and nineties. I used some of these companies as examples of where not to invest. Both from an ethical standpoint and from a risk standpoint, they were not good investments. Just at a glance, if they all have similar face value, I’d estimate that these were probably worth in the neighborhood of between two or three hundred thousand dollars when they were bought.”

  Jack whistled through his teeth. “That’s some ritzy neighborhood.”

  Alcina giggled, but everyone else was somber.

  “I think I’m beginning to understand why my mother and Melvyn did not get along,” I said. “She would have been horrified if she had known about his investments. Rightly so. Conditions for black African workers under apartheid were appalling, which is one of the reasons university students across our country rallied to force their schools to divest from companies like these.”

  Pish got his laptop and did a little research, and confirmed our suspicions. There was not a single stock certificate in the bunch worth a dime.

  I decided I couldn’t mourn money I never had and never would. Despite our differences, I was still my mother’s daughter, and the idea of the profit Melvyn intended to make on the broken backs of poverty-stricken African workers made me ill. I was glad they were worthless, happy those companies had gone bust.

  “Who’s hungry for lunch?” I asked, and got a show of hands. Everyone was, even Alcina.

  I made lunch, and we ate in the breakfast room I had used just the day before for lunch with Elwood. As we finished, I decided I needed to draw Alcina out a little. She seemed silent and uncommunicative with any adult but Shilo. I rarely saw her face, since it was shielded by a curtain of silky hair. “So, Alcina, how are your lessons coming along? Do you study, or just . . . uh, read and . . . um, learn?”

  She lifted her head and stared at me for a long moment, her beautiful blue eyes wide and her head cocked. I felt like she was deciding if she should talk to me or not. “I explore,” she answered in her lilting voice. “My mother says if you keep your eyes and ears open, you can learn as much as from any book ever written.”

  I am a passionate advocate of books and didn’t agree, but I needed to keep an open mind. Even from the little I had seen, it was clear that the child was already a gifted artist, and I believed the world needed to nurture artists. “What have you learned lately from keeping your ears and eyes open?”

  She kept her gaze fixed on mine and said, “At your party, the dead cowboy was with the fat vampire, and the fat vampire said to him that he better get his chaps out to the terrace if he didn’t want to get okay corralled. I didn’t know what that meant so I asked my mom, and she told me about the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. I read a book about it, but I don’t think it happened the way they said. My mother says all written history is . . .”

  She paused, searching for the right word, then said, “Suspect. She said suspect. I don’t know what she meant by that. She says, ‘History is a bunch of stories written by the winners.’” She paused, tilted her head to one side, and swiped her silky hair behind one ear in a Shiloesque movement. “Later I heard the cowboy died. So was he shot? Is that what the vampire meant by ‘okay corralled’?”

  I was bewildered by Alcina’s sudden stream of verbiage, and I noticed that Lizzie looked just as surprised. “Wait . . . fat vampire?” I said, finally catching the one important part. This was independent corroboration of what Virgil had told me about a stocky Dracula and his argument with Hooper. “Did any of the rest of you notice a fat vampire?” I asked my friends. Not one of them had. “Are you sure of what you saw and heard, Alcina?” I asked. She was such a dreamy child, and I wondered if she had made the story up.

  She nodded but wouldn’t elaborate, saying that was it. I met Pish’s gaze, and he nodded, then bustled off. I thought he was probably going to phone Virgil to give him the corroborating information and relate what Alcina had indicated about Channer telling Hooper he wanted to talk to him out on the terrace, because that fit with what we suspected about Percy Channer. How had he avoided me so successfully? “No, he wasn’t shot,” I said. “What time would this have been?”

  She shrugged.

  “Was it late in the evening or early? Was there anyone else around? Did anyone say anything to the fat vampire?” I watched her face. What had been bothering me for some time was that whoever killed Hooper should have had blood on him. How had that escaped notice? “Did you see him again later?”

  Alcina shrugged again, and I could feel her withdrawing.

  “Shilo?” I pleaded, and nodded toward the girl.

  “Aly,” Shilo said, and the girl looked up at her. “Why did you notice the vampire and the cowboy?”

  It was not the question I would have asked, but I held my tongue.

  Alcina shrugged again. “It was funny, this little fat, sweaty vampire and the tall, skinny cowboy. It was like . . . a cartoon.”

  “Did you notice anything else about the vampire?” I asked.

  She shrugged and shook her head.

  Lizzie watched me, then her gaze flicked over to Alcina. “Why didn’t you tell me that stuff, Aly?” she asked, her feelings hurt.

  “Let her answer me,” I said to Lizzie.

  But Alcina was done. She jumped up, smiled at us all briefly—a look like sunshine—then said, “I’ll race you home, Lizzie.”

  It had stopped raining and, though it was cold, the sun was shining. I followed them outside hoping to get more info, but after offering me an apologetic shrug, Lizzie took off after Alcina. I stood on the terrace, watching them cycle down the sloping drive and disappear around the curve. Maybe Virgil could get something more from Alcina. It left me wondering about the timing. Who among my friends and acquaintances had seen Channer and Hooper arguing and told Virgil about it? Was that inside or out on the terrace? If it was late, then Channer just might be the murderer.

  I reentered the castle. Pish said he was going back to work on his book, but after our morning expedition, I was at a loss for
what to do.

  “Why don’t we go up to the attic? You have to see it, Merry,” Shilo said, looping her arm through mine.

  I thought about it for a second as McGill joined us in the great hall. There were a thousand things I ought to have been doing. I should have been following up on the sighting of the vampire who I thought might have been Channer. I should have gotten back to work peeling wallpaper off the frieze in the turret room. But I didn’t want to do anything. My heart and mind felt overburdened with worry for Pish, about Cranston, and over the fate of Wynter Castle.

  Virgil had warned me that some of the townsfolk were worried about what was going to happen to the castle and property when I sold. I was beginning to worry about that, too. Who would appreciate Wynter Castle more than I would? That was probably not the right frame of mind to go up and look through a century of Wynter family memorabilia. Even after two months it was still a shock to me that I had such a deep and storied family history.

  But I needed something to distract me, and I was suddenly curious. “Okay. Let’s do it!”

  The stairway to the attic was behind a narrow door tucked away in a corner of the gallery hallway. I followed Shilo and McGill up there, and we turned on the lights that hung from the rafters. It was a revelation, not at all like other attics I had known. It was huge and spacious, with high ceilings and windows that let light in even through dust. “Wow,” I breathed, coughing a little from the dust. “This is amazing, like an entire third floor! McGill, there’s even room up here for more guest suites, if a buyer was interested.”

  He simply nodded, but he looked troubled.

  I paced the length, then explored the groupings of furniture shoved to the side. There were at least two entire sets of Eastlake bedroom furniture, the design along the top of one headboard reminding me of eyelet lace, as well as a couple more complete sets of Victorian furnishings. The dressers were heavy as heck, as I found when I tried to move one. McGill came to my aid, and we turned one around so I could have a look at it.