Death of an English Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  Emerald gathered dishes in bus trays and toted them back to the kitchen. Juniper cleaned surfaces while I vacuumed. I was daydreaming while I did it. I dislike cleaning intensely and listening to music or dreaming of the mysteries of Virgil Grace’s fascinating physique was the only way I ever got through it. I was in the middle of the big room vacuuming under one of the round tables when the machine coughed, sputtered, and stopped.

  “Dang!” I grabbed the cord and yanked the plug out of the wall. You’re not supposed to do it that way, but I’m lazy. I turned the vacuum upside down, pulled some hair out of the roller brush, but didn’t see anything jamming it. I yelled to Juniper to plug me back in, started the machine up, and it worked. I went back to vacuuming.

  When Juniper and I were done, I wheeled the vacuum cleaner into the kitchen, where Emerald was washing dishes, and pulled the cup out of the machine to empty it. As I was letting the dust and grime fall into the garbage, I spotted what looked like a cigarette butt. I was certainly not going to dig through the trash for it . . . yuck! But I was sure that’s what it was. Since I empty the vacuum cup after every task, it had to have come from the dining room.

  “Juniper!” I yelled, glaring down into the trash. No answer. She was probably already working on the lipstick-stained napkins in the laundry room, which was in the basement by the wine cellar.

  “What’s wrong?” Emerald asked, her soapy hands poised just above the water.

  I caught a glimpse of the wee beasty down among the globs of hair and dust, a gold-papered filter. “Cigarette butt in the dining room. I caught Juniper smoking up in the attic. I won’t have smoking in the castle for about a million reasons. One of which is it might burn to a stony shell someday, and all of us in it! It must have been in her pocket or something and fell out while she served. I’ll have to talk to her about it.”

  “Go easy on her,” Emerald said, eyeing me, then going back to the dishes. “She really looks up to you.”

  I straightened. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Stuff she’s said when we’re working together.”

  “I didn’t think she talked. She’s pretty taciturn.”

  “You and Binny are the first people in her life who have really held up your end of the bargain.” Emerald hesitated, but then wiped her hands on a dishcloth and moved closer, leaning in slightly, hip against the counter. “I feel bad for the kid. Don’t tell her I told you, but I think she was abused at some point by her mom’s boyfriend, and her mom chose the guy over her. That’s why she was out of the house and that’s why Davey Hooper was such a big deal,” she said, about a guy who had hurt Juniper badly. “He gave her a little attention and made her feel like she’s worth something. She’s still pretty young.”

  I was struck that I didn’t know all that about her, even though she lived in my house. I’m kind of a live-and-let-live gal. I still didn’t know a lot about Shilo’s past, and I’d been her friend for over ten years. Some folks take longer to open up than others. I saw Shilo push people away when they became too intrusive and demanding. But maybe I needed to be a little pushier when it came to some people if I wanted to know why they were the way they were.

  Wow. Thinking on it now, that really went for a bunch of people I knew, even Pish. I had been surprised recently by revelations about things that had gone on with him since we’d been friends. One especially nasty incident was a legal tangle he had suffered through, and yet never said a word to me. I didn’t like people prying into my life, and I assumed the same went for them. I let people have their privacy. But was it really more that I was self-absorbed? I hoped that wasn’t it.

  Emerald was waiting for a reply, watching me closely.

  “I didn’t know. Okay, I’ll go easier on her.” That probably meant not yelling at her for dropping a butt in the dining room. “But I can’t have her smoking in the attic! She needs to go outside if she’s going to smoke.”

  “That’s fair. Glad I quit that awful habit. I hope I stay quit.”

  “It’ll stick this time, I know it will,” I reassured her.

  “Fingers crossed. My mentor at Consciousness Calling always says, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  “Really.” I’ll bet she said, Old habits die hard, too, but I didn’t mention it to Emerald.

  “And she says, Altitude is determined by attitude.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Her expression became fierce, her brunette ponytail swinging and her jaw firm. “You need to get with the program and get a healthy attitude if you want to be soaring up there with the eagles. When something rotten happens, I need to ask myself, what’s right about this that I’m not getting?”

  I didn’t say a word. If Consciousness Calling was a cliché factory, then so be it, as long as my friend was happy.

  Chapter Nine

  A COUPLE OF hours later the remaining ladies, along with Pish and I, dined in the breakfast room, while Emerald, Lizzie, and Juniper ate in the kitchen. It was not an upstairs-downstairs-type division; it was their choice, and I didn’t blame the girls one bit for wanting to relax out of the presence of the senior ladies. Juniper headed up to her attic hideaway with a stack of books—she was making her way through Sherlock Holmes now—and I managed to remind her not to smoke up there without making it sound like a commandment, Thou shalt not–style. She rolled her eyes, but said okay. Emerald and Lizzie ascended to their adjoining suite of rooms, where Emerald was going to do some reading so she could help Lizzie with her homework.

  It was a subdued gathering in the breakfast room, though they all ate everything on their plates, then retreated to their rooms. Pish went back to his room to work on his book about the Autumn Vale banking scam, a follow-up to his first book on financial cons, which had done quite well.

  At long last I was alone, curled up in a chair by the fireplace in the kitchen, with Becket snoozing on a braided rag rug in front of it, the glow of the fire glinting off his orangey fur. When Pish suggested having his aunt and perhaps a couple of her closest friends come to stay, I hadn’t reckoned with how intrusive it would feel to have strangers arrive and settle in. The castle is so big I thought I would barely notice, but in truth it wasn’t so much having guests as having them all the time. I hadn’t realized how much I enjoyed having just Shilo and Pish living with me. I was not a natural innkeeper and would have to rethink my plans.

  I sipped some wine and sighed, seized by a sense of foreboding that I couldn’t shake off. Death had enfolded my castle in his sooty wings once again, but surely in its long history there had been many such deadly episodes? I rested my head back and closed my eyes. Wynter Castle had begun to seep into my bones, becoming a part of me by some weird osmosis. I had been content for years not knowing anything about my Wynter ancestors, but I now needed to figure out how I was a part of the family history. Where did I fit? I had read what was available but felt there was more, so much more, to learn.

  I opened my eyes and took another sip of wine. Cleta’s death, as sad as it was when anybody died, was just one of those things that could and did happen anywhere, anytime. It could just as easily have happened at home in her condo on the Upper West Side. Despite the tragedy, I still wondered what had made Cleta the way she was. She was wealthy and had a privileged upbringing. What had turned her into such a bitter sourpuss?

  One of the few people who could give me some answers heeded my psychic cry for information. Lush, wearing an encompassing housegown, pattered into the kitchen, approaching me on slipper-shod feet. “May I?” she asked, motioning to the other chair in front of the fire.

  “Of course. Can I get you some tea? Or wine?”

  “Wine would be lovely, dear. I don’t often indulge, but I feel I could use a tipple tonight.”

  I poured her a glass of merlot, and she settled in. Becket decided her lap looked comfy, so he stood up next to her, patted her lap with one paw an
d stared into her eyes. She invited him up by patting her lap in return and he jumped, turned once, and made himself into a circle with no end, thick tail covering his face.

  “I’m so sorry about Cleta,” I said, watching her closely. “I know you had been friends a long time.”

  Lush nodded and sighed. “You don’t make new friends at my age. Acquaintances, yes, but friends, no. These girls are all I have left, besides my darling nephew.”

  “I know you have no children, but did you never marry?”

  “Almost. Twice!”

  “What happened?”

  “The first fellow ran off and married someone else, and the second died before we could marry. He was a sweetheart, older than me but so good-looking in a Perry Como kind of way. I think that’s what drew us girls together: you know, no husbands, no children.”

  “Doesn’t Patsy Schwartz have children?”

  “She does, but they have their own lives, and a mother can’t depend on them all the time. Pattycakes is better than the other one. . . . I can’t even remember the other girl’s name. Having ungrateful children is worse than no children at all, I think.”

  I remembered something from our talk earlier, and said, “Speaking of Patsy, why did Barbara call her the toilet queen of Queens? Pish was going to fill me in but I forgot to ask.”

  “That was very naughty of Barbara. She knows how sensitive Patsy is. Her family was involved with two industries, beer brewing and a factory that produced ceramic toilets for the hotel industry. Barbara and Cleta used to gang up on her and call her the toilet queen of Queens. That is where the factory was until it burned down many years ago.”

  “I’m amazed you stayed friends with Cleta and even Barbara all these years.”

  Lush was silent for a while, then said, “When we were young, in our thirties, we had so much else going on in our lives that we only saw one another once a week, and we felt safe with one another. We’d drink some wine, gossip, tell tales, share secrets. It got to be a habit, I suppose. In later years we lost husbands, and were no longer so involved in charity organizing, going out every weekend to benefits and museum openings and festivals; that’s when we really turned to one another.”

  “And turned on one another, like wolves, at least in Cleta’s case. Why was she so cruel? And why did you all put up with it?”

  “Cleta was always the same, but at one time we had so many acquaintances and were busy! I suppose it diluted her cruelty, or at least it was so often focused on others that we laughed about it. She was always witty.” She paused, sipped her wine, and let Becket adjust on her lap.

  “When you cook a spicy sauce down, it concentrates the flavor until sometimes it gets so salty and bitter that it’s unpalatable,” I said, watching her.

  For some reason wine brought with it, for Lush, clarity; wisdom in the wine, unlike most folks. She nodded. “With fewer and fewer friends, Cleta’s insults and wit became concentrated on just us. And yes, it could be bitter and unpalatable.”

  “So why was she like that?”

  Lush cocked her head to one side and petted Becket, who purred and stretched. “I’m not sure anyone ever knew, dear. She never, to my knowledge, suffered any horrible tragedies except . . . her parents died when she was very young and she was raised by her grandparents, very starchy and upper-crust. She spent her whole youth in boarding schools. She once told me that when her parents died, they were just never spoken of again, as if they’d never existed.”

  “So maybe it was a way to deal with the pain.” I could understand that. When Miguel was taken from me just two years into our marriage, anger almost swallowed me whole, and I felt the taint of bitterness begin to eat at my heart. I’m not sure why I turned away from it—my beloved friends Pish and Shilo helped—but I suppose I could have easily become like Cleta. Or . . . no, I don’t think I would have. It seemed with Cleta, we would never really know how she’d become the woman I’d met, and what did it matter now?

  But the living still had information they could share about another puzzling aspect of the Legion. “No one seems to have actually liked Cleta. Why did you invite her to come here?” I had asked all of them this question before in different forms, but each insisted that she wasn’t the one who’d told Cleta, and yet each also confessed to talking to her about it, since the woman already knew. It was a sticking point for me, though I wasn’t sure why.

  “What could I do? She already knew about it, so when she confronted me . . .” She sighed and Becket grumbled in annoyance at her movement. “I know I’m a pushover. I’m so sorry, Merry.”

  “I know the old saying about not speaking ill of the dead, but she was just an awful human being. I can’t count the number of times she’s been rude to people here in the castle and in Autumn Vale. And what she said to Hannah . . .” I couldn’t even speak of it.

  Her voice quavering, Lush said, “She just announced that she was coming with us. What was I to say?”

  “You could have said, I’ll have to talk to Merry, or Let’s see what Merry has to say.”

  “It never occurred to me,” Lush said, her eyes swimming with tears. “It would have implied she wasn’t as welcome as the others.”

  It’s impossible to be angry with Lush, she is such a sweetie, so I refrained from saying that she should have asked me about every single one of them, not just Cleta. It was water under the bridge. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry, honey . . . please don’t cry. I could have said no; that part was up to me.”

  Pish strolled into the kitchen just then. “You two having a cozy chat?” He put on the kettle for tea, then perched on the coffee table in front of the chairs, with his back to the fire. “You mustn’t feel badly about Cleta, Merry,” he said, taking my hand and squeezing it. “Her health was not good. This would have happened no matter where she was.”

  “Thank you, Pish,” I replied, squeezing back and releasing. No need to say I didn’t feel bad at all. “How am I going to deal with all her stuff, and who will take her body?”

  I just had to ask, right? Sometimes the universe has a hilarious sense of humor, and if you’re catching a tone of sarcasm . . . well, I meant that. At that very moment there was a thud-thud-thud that echoed through the whole main floor of the castle, someone employing the knocker on the big oak double doors. I got up and strode quickly out of the kitchen, through the great hall and to the front door. I swung it open expecting Virgil. Instead I was faced with a stocky, frizzy-haired troublemaker named Lauda Sanson Nastase.

  “Where should I put my bags?” she asked.

  Chapter Ten

  SHE HAD TWO battered suitcases, a 1960s powder-blue train case, and a guitar case on the flagstone terrace around her. I remembered them from her brief visit on the day she arrived, except for the guitar case—where did she get that? I heard a car roar off down the lane. A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky and a flash of lightning turned dark night into a photo shoot, the outline of the spiky pine tree forest in backlit relief. The Queen of the Night had arrived in polyester stretch pants and a Windbreaker.

  “I have to pee,” she said, pushing past me into the great hall, somehow dragging all of her cases in with her. “Where is my aunt’s room? I’d like to get settled in.”

  I turned to stare and was gaping like a landed fish when Pish arrived to save the day and toss her out. Or not.

  “Lauda! What are you doing here?”

  She peered into the gloom. “Oh. It’s you.” She looked back to me and squinted, swiping her hair out of her face. “So Auntie Cleta is dead. I figured, what is the point of me paying for an expensive place in town when her room is paid up for the month? I’m the one who’s going to have to clean up her stuff anyway.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” I protested. “Her friends are here.”

  “You’re going to make a bunch of eighty-year-old women pack up her stuff? What
kind of woman are you?”

  Hadn’t I just been bemoaning the fact that I didn’t know what I was going to do with Cleta’s stuff? And here was her niece, her only relative, offering to do it. I was willing to forgive her histrionics at the luncheon. If my aunt disappeared from New York, I might fear she’d been kidnapped, too. She seemed to care for Cleta more than the woman had deserved.

  “Besides,” she said, bridling, double chin up in a pugnacious manner. “I’m executrix of the will and her sole heir, so it will all be mine to deal with anyway. You can check with the lawyer; it’s Swan Associates in Manhattan. I’d like to get an organized start. Who knows how someone else would handle it all?”

  Something pinged in my mind when she said will, but I was driven by a need to make a quick decision, and I’d think about that later. Lush, who had followed her nephew, cleared her throat and moved restlessly, wringing her hands.

  “I haven’t cleaned the room yet,” I said.

  “I can do that. I’m not afraid of hard work. If you’d seen how Aunt Cleta drove me, you’d know that.”

  I hesitated, but it was getting late. Lightning flashed again and the heavens opened with a torrent of rain that gushed from the sky as thunder rumbled and crashed. I pushed the door closed and leaned back against it. I briefly considered Cleta’s assertion that Lauda was trying to kill her, but I hadn’t heard a thing that made me believe her, and it seemed to me that it was just the kind of thing Cleta would say to self-dramatize. One episode of food poisoning and someone shoving her from behind in Manhattan traffic didn’t make me a believer. Besides, nature and her heart condition had taken care of Cleta, no murder needed.

  Ultimately, expedience compelled my decision. “Pish, can you help me take Lauda’s luggage upstairs?”

  We headed up, with Lauda toting the heaviest of her bags, Pish the next heaviest, and me with her guitar and train case. Lush twittered behind, chattering about something; I couldn’t understand one word in twenty. Lauda was certainly strong for a woman of her age and build, on the fluffy end of the weight spectrum. She hoisted the heavy bag like a mule, over her shoulder. Once up the stairs I led the way around the gallery to Cleta’s turret room at the far end. “If you’ll wait, I’ll get Juniper to make up the room with fresh sheets and clean the bathroom,” I said, as I opened the door and let her pass me. I put down her guitar and train cases and shoved them into the room with my foot.