Death of an English Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  What would my late husband say, I wondered, eight years after his passing? How would he feel if he knew that I hadn’t moved on in so long? Get on with life. Get on with love. Get on with it! I almost felt Miguel, his touch, the warmth of his hand on mine, but when I opened my eyes it was to find it was Virgil’s hand covering my own. I shivered; his hand felt the same as Miguel’s: broad, strong, warm.

  Virgil was standing over me, leaning down. “You’re tired, and I’m keeping you from bed,” he said, his voice husky, his dark eyes searching mine.

  In the impulse of the moment I reached up and cupped his cheek with my hand, scraping my thumb along his stubble-covered jaw. “No, I was daydreaming,” I said, still shaken by the clear sense I had that Miguel was pushing me, prodding me to stop this celibate widowhood mourning, like some modern Queen Victoria. “Please, Virgil, sit with me for another minute.”

  He sat back down. I turned in my chair and examined his face, the golden light from the flickering fire throwing his eyes into shadow. I didn’t know what to say, but I’d been careful too long, so I just let my mouth run.

  “I lost my mother and grandmother within six months of each other when I was just twenty-one,” I said. “It was awful. I wasn’t prepared when my grandmother died, but then my mother was diagnosed right after—she had left tests too long and ignored symptoms because she was worried about Grandma, though she didn’t tell me—and I had six months to be afraid, to worry, to watch her slip away from me day by day.”

  His lips were compressed into a hard line, and his jaw worked. The silence stretched as I struggled to keep my composure, not sure where my excess of emotion was suddenly coming from. “I know you looked after your mother when she was sick,” I said softly. “And I know how emotionally wrenching that can be. You watch them constantly, moment by moment, wondering, Is she doing better? Is she doing worse? Is this a good sign?”

  He nodded twice, a simple acknowledgment.

  “What people don’t tell you is, there is kind of a PTSD effect to looking after someone you love who is ill. You feel alone, overwhelmed, fearful, and . . . guilty. Guilty all the time. Guilty about looking after yourself. Guilty about enjoying a moment, or not thinking of something your loved one needs.”

  He was perfectly still, except for his Adam’s apple, as he swallowed hard.

  “I think men have a tougher time, in a way. Men aren’t supposed to admit that they feel overwhelmed, or sad, or afraid.” I was feeling my way, expressing my own experience, but also searching for his.

  “But my mother didn’t die,” he said, his tone abrupt.

  I nodded. “You were lucky, but you didn’t know that was going to be the outcome, right?”

  “No.” He sighed and moved restlessly, rolling his shoulders, easing the tension in them. “What are you trying to say, Merry?”

  I was tired, I realized, so tired. “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  He was silent for a moment—all of our conversations seemed to be punctuated by long silences—then said, his tone low, his delivery rushed, “One thing that happened while I was helping Mom through her illness was I met and married my wife. Real quick. Like, after three months of dating. Life felt so short, you know. Why wait? I figured.”

  “I understand that.” I glanced over at him then back at the fire. I needed to tread delicately here. “After Miguel died I think I went a little crazy for a year. I did dumb stuff, made stupid investments. I thought I was all right, you know? Moving ahead, making decisions. But really, I was in a bad place.” I could hear his breathing, ragged, hoarse.

  “I just wanted Mom to see I’d be okay,” he said. “She worried about me, about how I had stepped back from the FBI training I was supposed to enter. I wanted her to know, even if the worst happened—she was really sick; we didn’t know if she was going to make it for a long time—that I’d have a life, a family.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Virgil, for making decisions in the heat of the moment. You were doing the best you could.”

  He nodded, then got up suddenly. “Got to get going. If you think of anything, let me know.” He started toward the back hall.

  “Virgil, wait!” Just when I was getting the conversation around to the topic of his marriage, he up and headed out. Typical man.

  He paused and looked back, but he was antsy, I could see it. It was as if he was vibrating, he wanted to get out of the castle so badly. I couldn’t talk to him when he was like that.

  I got up, headed to the kitchen counter, and grabbed a plastic bag, loading it full of peanut butter and bacon muffins. “Take some muffins with you,” I said. “I always have too many.”

  After a sleepless night I got up with fresh determination to tackle the problem of who killed Cleta Sanson. His questions about lipstick haunted me. The lipstick smudge on her glasses could have been from the killer, but I didn’t know what color it was. Virgil had lab access. A laboratory could narrow down the exact shade and brand of a lipstick through chemical analysis, but he’d never tell me if he figured out to whom it belonged. That would take a while anyway.

  I fretted that I was harboring a killer in my home, as unlikely as it seemed to me that one of four elderly women could be the culprit. My grandmother once said that the mistake young folks most commonly make is to assume that old people have no emotion left, that it has all been drained away by time and trouble. Far from that, she said rage or pain can crystallize into a hatred so deep it obliterates everything else, leaving room only for that negative wash of abhorrence. Was that what had happened among the Legion of Horrible Ladies? Had hatred distilled into a rage so deep it ended in death?

  I got a cup of coffee and padded down to the library before anyone else was up, pulled out my laptop, logged on to my e-mail, and downloaded the photos Lizzie had sent to me. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for: a glance, a moment, an absence, a presence. Something. Anything!

  Becket had followed me and leaped up onto the desk, sitting up with his tail wrapped around his toes, patiently waiting for me to head to the kitchen for breakfast. His breakfast. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes, buddy boy,” I said. I previewed the photos so they filled my laptop screen and found something interesting: when I looked closely it seemed to me that Patsy Schwartz had a card under the table, evidence that perhaps Janice was right, she was cheating. They had been, against my rules, playing for money. Just small change, but some people, even the wealthy (especially the wealthy), can’t bear to lose money.

  There were several photos where Barbara Beakman was missing from the room, and several more where Isadore was gone. Isadore. Why had she left for what appeared to be an extended period of time? I wished I could talk to her, but she shied away from me. Cleta had been dreadful toward her, but I didn’t think Isadore would smother the woman, or anyone, yet . . . how much did I not know?

  Lizzie left the castle at that point but took a few photos from the outside looking in through the big arched windows along the dining room. She was experimenting, I figured, because some were using a flash, and others weren’t. The flash photos caught her reflection, disjointed and jumbled in the diamond-paned windows. But there was something else in the reflection, something on the lane near the woods.

  I increased the magnification on the photo. Because she had sent me the pictures at full dpi, I could zoom in very close. What I saw made me mutter some obscenities under my breath and reach for the phone.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I CALLED VIRGIL and talked to him. He brought up the photos on his computer and agreed with what I thought I saw: a little U.S. postal truck parked in the lane near the turn where the forest stopped. Minnie Urquhart. I would never have thought of her, but there was one thing I knew, she loathed me enough that it wasn’t too far a reach for me to imagine her murdering one of my troublesome guests to get me in hot water. She seemed to have a sick obsession with making my life miserable. But a
lso, Cleta had a run-in with Minnie at the post office. Who knew how deeply Minnie had actually been offended?

  “Virgil, there’s something else I forgot to tell you. When I was vacuuming after the party I scooped up a cigarette butt, and I think it had a gold filter.”

  “Where was it?”

  “I think it was under Barbara’s table. I tossed it, so I can’t give it to you.”

  He thanked me, and we hung up. I remembered something else and called Hannah before she left the house for one of her sessions at Golden Acres or the local grade school, where she often took picture books for one-on-one time with some of the kids who were struggling with literacy. She chirped a hello, and I paused, trying to think how to frame my question.

  “Just spit it out, Merry. You know better than to think you have to soft-sell things to me.”

  She was right; her resiliency and toughness had been tested through dozens of operations in her youth. “I’m hesitating because it concerns someone you like very much. Hannah, Isadore was gone for quite a while the day of the tea. Do you know where she went? She and Cleta had such a bad relationship; I’d hate anyone to think she was involved.”

  “Well, silly, that’s easy. You could have found out where Isadore was simply by asking Zeke.”

  “Zeke?”

  “Isadore finds it too much to be with so many people for long. She went outside and helped Zeke in the garden.”

  I heaved a deep sigh of relief. “Could you just call Virgil and tell him that? And have Zeke tell Virgil, too, just to confirm? I was worried for nothing.”

  “You didn’t really think poor Isadore capable of murder, did you?”

  “No, I really didn’t. My fear was that without an explanation for her absence, Virgil would have to question her. I think she’s a little afraid of him.”

  Hannah said, “Aw, Merry, you’re such a sweetheart! You like Isadore, too, don’t you?”

  “I guess I do. I wish she’d talk to me. She seems . . . intimidated by me.”

  “You’re a very imposing woman, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Me?” I yelped. I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it, then brought it up to my ear again. “Imposing?”

  “You’re so confident and strong.”

  I felt my cheeks redden. “You’re kind to say so, but I’m just a gal doing the best she can.”

  Hannah chuckled. “Sure you are. And I’m just a mild-mannered librarian, not Robin to your Batman. I wish there were a girl equivalent. Maybe Gabrielle to your Xena, Warrior Princess?”

  I laughed.

  “I’ll call Virgil right away,” she said.

  Emerald and I served the ladies their breakfast, after which Gogi had volunteered to come pick them up in her new van and take them to Buffalo for a day of shopping and lunch. Gordy was driving, of course, and Elwood Fitzhugh was accompanying them, always the gentlemanly escort. Pish caught a lift with them to Buffalo, where Stoddart Harkner was going to pick him up and take him to his country house. They were coming back to stay at the castle later in the day, but I confess, I relished the notion of having my home virtually to myself.

  Shilo came out to help while I baked. As she scooted off with a pail and brush to do the stairs and great hall, Juniper came to the kitchen to handle the breakfast dishes.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, casting a glance at her sideways as I mixed the bran muffin batter. “Emerald had to go to Lizzie’s school this morning, but she’ll be back before noon.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said with a shrug. She was silent after that, squirting detergent in the deep sink and filling it with dishes.

  Though I use my good china for dinner, I use Corelle dishes for everyday use, a pretty muted pattern that stands up well to repeated washing and can even go into the dishwasher in a pinch. She washed and set the dishes on a drainboard, then began to dry them as I filled the last muffin cups and popped them into the oven. I grabbed a tea towel and dried, too.

  “Juniper, you and Miss Sanson got along okay, right?”

  She shrugged and nodded.

  “Did you ever notice how she was with the other ladies? Any special incidents stand out?” I let that go and waited. Juniper takes her own time, and pushing her makes her mute, I had learned in the month or so that she had been living and working at the castle.

  After a few minutes, she said, “She liked making fun of them all.” She glanced at me. “And everyone.”

  “By that you mean me?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t care about that. What did she say about the others?”

  “Called Miss Lincoln a twittery old hag.”

  “How could she say that about darling Lush?”

  Juniper paused, dish in hand, and frowned. “I felt like she was testing lines, you know? Like a comedian or something. She’d say something to me, and then I’d hear her say it later to the others, the same way or slightly different.”

  “Ah!” I said, understanding dawning. Insults and put-downs were Cleta’s performance art, both a way of getting attention, negative though it was, and of expressing how witty she could be. I should have gotten that sooner, since I’ve met more than one person like that in my life. “Did you ever see her with a lot of money?”

  Juniper cast me a squinty look.

  “No, Juniper, I didn’t mean . . . I wasn’t asking you about money in her room. I just heard that she withdrew a lot out of the bank, and I wondered if she tried to . . . I don’t know . . .” I trailed off in confusion, not sure how to continue.

  She shook her head and shrugged. We finished putting the dishes away, and I took the muffins out of the oven, then started another batch. She scoured the sink while I tried not to be nauseated by the powerful cleaning scent. Ammonia makes me dizzy. She finished up and fished a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, then headed for the back door.

  “Juniper, wait!” I called out.

  She poked her head back around the corner and stared at me.

  “Do you ever . . . I mean, you never smoke in the guests’ rooms, right?”

  She sighed dramatically and gave me a look. Honestly, I don’t know why I hired her, except that she is a cleaning demon. But the attitude! If I wanted to deal with that much sass I would have had a kid.

  “Just answer, please?”

  “Of course not. Jeez, do you think I’m a moron?” She stomped down the hall and out the back door.

  Shilo left just as Emerald came home from her school meeting with Lizzie’s counselor. By the way she threw her slouch bag down on a chair and crashed around getting a coffee mug, I knew something was wrong.

  “Okay, what’s up?”

  Her face twisted in anger, she slumped down on a stool by the long table and took a gulp of coffee. “I’m so mad! You’d think they’d be glad that Lizzie is finally finding a way to fit in at school, but no, they act like my daughter is some kind of . . . sociopath or something!”

  “Slow down, Em. What are you talking about?”

  Rolling her eyes, she said, “Sorry. I guess I kind of launched into the middle of a conversation. But I’m so mad!” she explained.

  I was horrified by what she told me. Lizzie, dear child, had taken pictures of the main floor bathroom and showed them around school as photos of a murder scene, explaining where the body was. Of course it was just photos of a clean bathroom, but still. Argh! You’d think she’d know better. It actually only came to light because a couple of girls complained to their art teacher, saying that she was “creeping them out” and frightening them.

  That was just too much. “Oh, please!” I cried, in response to that. “Frightening them? With a photo of a clean bathroom? Those kids have probably seen every Paranormal Activity film. Twice! Sounds like her nemeses, those girls who were giving her a hard time last fall.” When I thought about it, though
, I didn’t like the idea, I had to admit. I glanced over at Em, trying to think of a way to say it, but she had more.

  “Problem is, now the school thinks the castle is an ‘unwholesome atmosphere for an impressionable girl,’ and is questioning my parenting.”

  “What was their answer?”

  She chewed her lip. “They left it up in the air. I think if Lizzie lies low they’ll forget about it. But what are the chances she’ll lie low?”

  “Slim to none. Let’s talk to Lizzie about it when she gets home. Sometimes I think we underestimate her. She’s got an excellent head on her shoulders, and she knows she needs to survive high school so she can go on to study photography at college.”

  Emerald nodded in agreement.

  “Once you finish your course and get a job or start a business, you’ll probably want to move out anyway, right?”

  She nodded and heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s the plan. You’re such a rock, Merry,” she said, jumping to her feet and hugging me hard, then releasing, so I rocked back and almost lost my balance. “Speaking of . . . I was downtown yesterday and saw that storefront, the empty one just down from the bank? I had this, like, vision!” She splayed her hands out in the air and said, “I saw the sign: Emerald Visions Healing Massage Therapy. Once I get my facilitator papers from Consciousness Calling, I can begin giving lessons, too, in conscious reflex patterning,” she said.

  “What is that?”

  She babbled out a long explanation, but she spoke so fast I only got part of it. It seemed that Consciousness Calling had a special course she could take, and once she was done with it and had passed all the exams, she could begin giving lessons in what they called reflex patterning, some kind of special reflex massage. It was supposed to release healing energy into the body and soul by touching the right spots on somebody’s body.