Death of an English Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  “I got along with her all right, but she sure was peculiar. I was cleaning in her room once and she shooed me out. Said she had a little business to conduct.”

  “Business? With who?”

  “One of the other ladies, she said.”

  What kind of business would they have among them? Not one of them sold Avon or pot that I knew of. “Did you happen to see which lady it was she had business with?”

  “The only one who went into her room after I left was Mrs. Schwartz. I kinda hung out in the gallery shining up that brass pot of dried flowers, ’cause I wanted to finish Miss Sanson’s room. When Mrs. Schwartz came back out she was real mad and stomped off downstairs.”

  Interesting. We chatted for a while after, but I couldn’t get that out of my head; Patsy Schwartz had gone into Cleta’s room and come out angry after talking about “business.” I remembered what Barbara had said about all of them having secrets, and Pattycakes’ assertion that Cleta collected them, using them to intimidate the others. I knew Barbara’s secret, but I didn’t know Patsy’s, which her daughter had refused to reveal. Nor, for that matter, did I know Vanessa’s secret. I let Juniper go, but I gave her a hard hug first. I clamped my hands on her shoulders and stooped a little to look her in the eye. “Juniper, I never want you to think you don’t deserve the stuff folks do for you. You’re a good person, a valuable person, and I like you.”

  She wriggled out of my hold, her face getting red and her eyes tearing up, then she ducked her head and escaped.

  I did all the prep for dinner, put everything back in the fridge, then went upstairs to glare at one of the empty rooms that was in progress, wallpaper partially stripped, paint colors striped on the walls for me to choose. This life I had taken on seemed so strange. When I was married I worked some as a stylist but kept myself free for Miguel’s weird schedule. He liked me to travel with him, and I saw Austria, Spain, Germany, and the Caribbean. I enjoyed life as a newlywed right up to the day I got the phone call that ended it all, telling me Miguel had crashed his car on the way to a shoot.

  Then came eight years of slow progression from devastation to my current state, restless and uncertain about a love life. At Wynter Castle, I had opened a new chapter in the book of my life. Virgil Grace piqued my interest romantically; I felt the rush of attraction, the sense that this man was different from others, at least to me. I had been asked out a few times in the last eight years, but no one had appealed to me until Sheriff Virgil Grace. Shilo called him my own personal stud muffin.

  I just couldn’t face peeling more wallpaper, not with the mystery of who killed Cleta Sanson testing my patience and giving me a heartache and a headache. Death had once again laid its cold hand on my castle, my home. Maybe Cleta had earned her murder with the way she had lived, hoarding secrets like gold, using them as food like a vampire uses blood. But there was never a good reason to kill someone unless you or someone you loved were in imminent mortal danger.

  I descended, dusting as I went, the banister, the great hall table, heading toward the library, thinking about the photo that Lizzie had shown me. All my life I had been afraid to ask my mother much about my father and his family. The subject seemed to upset her. My few questions weren’t answered anyway; she didn’t like to talk about it, and I always thought there would be more time. There was enough tension between us that I hesitated to create more. When she got sick, it was already too late. All we had time for was to scramble to doctors, treatments, diagnoses, all grim, all too little too late. We were hurtling toward some abyss that I could only dimly sense, and then at twenty-one I was alone, adrift without family until Shilo, Pish, and Miguel entered my life.

  As I moved slowly toward the library I heard voices raised in an argument, which then hushed to harsh whispers. I approached stealthily, and peeked in. All I could see were two heads, Patsy’s fluffy one and one sporting Barbara’s thin dyed hair flat on her skull. Words and phrases floated out to me: secret, the past, money.

  “Stay out of it!” Barbara said more loudly, her tone harsh.

  Patsy said, her shrill voice clear, “I’ve kept quiet long enough. It’s time it came out!”

  “What on earth is going on?”

  I yelped and jumped, whirling. Vanessa stood behind me, a puzzled frown on her face. The two in the library had gone silent. “I was just . . . Barbara and Patsy were talking,” I murmured, “and it was . . . interesting.”

  She watched me, a look of concern on her face, but I wasn’t about to elaborate. I strolled into the library. Vanessa followed, on her way to read the newspaper. Patsy and Barbara sat on the leather sofa in uncomfortable silence. Barbara had claimed not to have any secrets other than her husband’s death and her supposed role in it. I had pretty much taken her at her word, she seemed so open about it, laughing off any suggestion she was involved. But it appeared she had a secret that Patsy was threatening to expose. How to get Patsy alone?

  I chatted with the ladies as Vanessa sat down in her favorite chair near the empty fireplace with the paper. But Barbara, with a sharp look at Patsy, got up and shuffled off, saying she was going to write a letter. I tidied a stack of magazines on the table in front of the sofa, and said to Patsy, “Pattycakes and I had such a nice chat yesterday as she was making the chocolate cake. She’s headed into town this morning, I understand. Hope she enjoys Autumn Vale.”

  Patsy seemed distracted but, with a fleeting smile, said, “She stopped on her way through yesterday, and told me she likes it very much. It reminds her of home.”

  “Home? Haven’t you always lived in New York City?”

  Patsy shifted. “Pattycakes often went to stay with her grandparents, my husband’s folks, just north of here; that’s her oma and opa that she speaks of. They had a farm near Palmyra.”

  I had been through Palmyra on my way to Rochester once. “How did you end up married to a farmer?” I asked, knowing her history of wealth and privilege, as homely as the source of their wealth—toilets and beer—was.

  “He was my second cousin; same last name, but I didn’t know him as a child. We met in college. I was never the brightest girl. I ended up going to Clemson, in South Carolina. My husband was taking the agricultural course, while I was there for business. My father thought I should at least know a little, though my brothers were going to run the brewery.”

  “So you met and married a farmer?”

  She shrugged. “He attended college for agriculture but ended up working for Daddy after we married, and went on to improve cultivation for the brewery with a new type of hops. He was smart, brave, a good husband and father . . . He was wonderful.”

  Her voice softened as she spoke of her late husband, and her eyes were alight. I felt a kinship with her. I knew she had lost her husband many years before, the result of a cardiac embolism when he was just fifty-three, and had never married again. I put my hand over hers. “I know how hard it is to lose someone you love.”

  She smiled and said, “His mother was living with us at the time. After he died I went a little crazy. But I did have some fun. I donated money to Clemson, and they named a research grant after my husband. I built a house in the Hamptons, furnished it, traveled with Pattycakes and her sister around the world; along with learning from her oma, that’s how she got to know so much about baking. And I collected!”

  “What do you collect?”

  “Everything,” she said, with a short laugh. “Anything pretty. Art, porcelain, silver, jewelry, sculpture.”

  Vanessa looked up from her paper. “Enough to fill three houses.”

  “You’re one to talk! You did the same, Vanessa, now, don’t say you didn’t. You spent like a drunken sailor.” She trembled in indignation and stood, patting down her pants and pinching the crease.

  I shot Vanessa a look of annoyance, but of course she didn’t know I was trying to pry secrets out of Patsy; served me right for doing it in front of a
witness. I couldn’t get Juniper’s revelation out of my mind, that Patsy had gone into Cleta’s room to do some “business” and why she had apparently, according to Lizzie, snuck in there during the tea party. As Patsy left the library I followed her. “Why don’t you come to the kitchen for a cup of tea?”

  She looked at me uncertainly. “Why?” she asked.

  I was stuck for an answer. I had pretty much left the ladies to their own devices since they had arrived except for meals, the scheduled teas, cards, and the occasional day trip. I was their hostess, not their babysitter, I reasoned. “Just because,” I replied, keeping my tone light. “I’d like a cup of tea and wondered if you’d like one, too.”

  She followed me to the kitchen. I made a pot of Irish Breakfast, knowing that was her particular favorite, hot, strong, and black, and sat her down in one of the wing chairs. “You look like you could use this,” I said, handing her a mug and sitting down in the other wing chair. I watched her for a moment, and then, tired of tiptoeing around the topic, said, “I couldn’t help but overhear you and Barbara talking before I came into the library. You said something about having kept quiet long enough, and now it was going to come out. What did you mean?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her eyes were pale, with small pupils like pinholes. Unlike her daughter, who must favor the paternal side of her family, everything about Patsy was small, from her head to her bones to her tiny mouth, coated in a generous layer of her favorite coral lipstick. “I was just talking. It didn’t mean anything. Or nothing important, anyway. I was . . .” She thought for a moment, her eyes going blank.

  I knew right then that she was going to lie.

  “I was just saying I wasn’t going to keep it a secret any longer; I’m the one who told Cleta about coming to Autumn Vale. It was all my fault that she came with us.”

  And that was all she would say. We drank our tea, and she hustled off upstairs.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THAT AFTERNOON I went for a long walk alone except for Becket, my faithful walking companion. I made a decision: whatever happened, I was not going to have the ladies stay longer than another month. I’d work it out somehow. Surely Patsy could find somewhere to perch until the sublet on her condo was done. Why a woman of that wealth needed to sublet her place I did not know, but she was an odd mixture of parsimony and lavish spending. She talked about buying boatloads of porcelain and antiques, and yet thinned out her Lancôme cosmetics with water, according to Emerald, who had found her doing it while cleaning her room one day.

  Vanessa and Barbara could just go back to their homes, and Lauda . . . I didn’t give a crap what she did or where she went. I had tried to befriend her, but the woman was just unpleasant. Lush was a different matter; I didn’t know if she’d want to stay with her friends gone, but she could if she wished. Pish loved having her around, and so did I. I returned reinvigorated and determined to start the very next day on getting my home back.

  Dinner was quiet, and dessert was just homemade banana pudding and whipped cream layered in parfait cups. There seemed to be friction. Lauda didn’t like Pattycakes being there, I thought. To heck with her. Lauda was living in the castle on sufferance until the end of the month or we figured out who killed her aunt, one or the other.

  Emerald and Lizzie did the dinner dishes for me, which I appreciated. I retired to my cruddy bedroom and fell asleep with Becket on the bed beside me.

  In the middle of the night I heard a commotion and slipped from my bed, padding out to the hallway with Becket trailing me, blinking in the harsh light as I flicked on the pendant chandelier in the gallery outside my room. A scream echoed in the gallery. I hustled toward the staircase and found Pattycakes shrieking and moaning over her mother’s body, which was awkwardly heaped on the stairs about halfway down. Patsy Schwartz lay still as death, but as I hopped down the steps, followed by Pish and the others, I could see an unsteady rise and fall of her narrow chest.

  “Patty, don’t move your mother!” I cried out as the woman slid her arm under her mother’s shoulders. “We don’t know what’s happened, or if her back or neck are hurt.” She slowly removed her arm as I descended, hunkered down beside them, and tried to calm Pattycakes, who moaned and rocked, hands outstretched, held over her mother as if she was a faith healer. “We can’t touch her until we know how she’s hurt. I don’t see any blood. She must have fallen.”

  Pish was already on his cellphone talking to a 911 operator, saying we had a fall victim at Wynter Castle. The ambulance dispatched from a station between Autumn Vale and Ridley Ridge, so it would be ten minutes or more. I slowed my breathing, glancing around, memorizing everything. Patsy was unconscious, one bare arm already swollen and bruised, one cheek also purpling. My chest clutched in fear; was this a trip and fall, or was there something else afoot? I looked up at the faces above me along the gallery railing: Vanessa, Lush, Barbara, and Lauda.

  It could have been just a fall, but I doubted it. I would bet that one of these people had pushed her, but which one?

  A half hour later we were all, in various states of pajamas, housecoats, and in Lizzie’s case shorts and a tee, in the kitchen. Virgil was in the great hall with some of his deputies, and one, the young woman I had already met, was sitting at the end of the table, watching over us. I made cocoa. Only cocoa had the power to soothe, especially after witnessing poor Pattycakes’ wretched keening over her mother, who remained unconscious even as she was loaded on a backboard into the ambulance.

  I could not rid myself of the feeling that this was more than just a fall. She had been keeping secrets. As I looked over at Barbara I wondered, was she the culprit? I had heard Patsy saying to Barbara that she was not going to keep quiet any longer. Had that hastened what was intended to be a fall to her death? Or was this simply what it appeared to be, a fall by an elderly lady in the dark?

  Vanessa glanced between Barbara and Lauda. “I wonder if she’s going to be okay?” she said, her voice trembling.

  Lush sniffed and blew her nose. “I hope so. P-poor Patsy! Poor Pattycakes!” She frowned, the remnants of her nightly face cream gathered in her wrinkles. “What was Patsy doing up in the middle of the night? Maybe she wanted some tea, or something to eat, or . . .”

  Silence fell as Virgil came into the kitchen with Juniper held by the elbow. My young employee looked sleepy and frightened.

  “What’s going on? Sheriff won’t say.”

  I gave Virgil a look and approached, taking Juniper’s arm. “Didn’t you hear the commotion?”

  “Are you kidding? I don’t hear anything up there in the attic.”

  I suppose with the door at the bottom of the stairs closed she might not. The day the ladies had complained about the noise in the attic it had been directly above their rooms and the attic door had been left open, sending the echoes down. I filled her in with just the bare bones and gave her a cup of cocoa, then retreated to the fireplace to huddle and think while Pish chatted softly, consoling his aunt and her friends. My stomach was in turmoil and I pushed away the cocoa. Patsy was my guest; I felt responsible for what had happened to her. I wasn’t going to sit idly and let this go. I glanced back at the group in the kitchen.

  Vanessa looked worried and afraid. Barbara seemed withdrawn, as if she was shut down, unable to process what had happened. Lauda glanced from one to the other and back, her prominent eyes wide and startled. Lush, with her nephew’s arm around her plump shoulders, wept softly against his chest. I was done dilly-dallying, as my grandmother called it when I vacillated about something. We were going to figure this out.

  I let Virgil do his job. Eventually he said my guests could go back to their rooms. I sent them upstairs so they could try to get a little more sleep. Emerald decided that Lizzie was going to stay with her grandmother in town for a few days until things had “settled down,” as she put it, while Lizzie rolled her eyes and made gagging motions behind he
r. I didn’t blame Em, but it brought home how important it was to figure out the mystery as quickly as possible.

  Pish and I sat talking in the kitchen, and I told him all I had learned and heard in the last few days. I added in what I surmised and thought—everything, in short, that I had considered.

  “It’s impossible for me to imagine any one of my aunt’s friends doing anything so dastardly.” His eyes were haunted, and he reached out for my hand and squeezed. “Go talk to Virgil. Tell him what you’ve told me. Make him let you help. He’s a stubborn man, but in dealing with this kind of murder—elderly women in a tight environment—he needs the help of someone on the inside.”

  When Em came back from taking Lizzie to her mother’s, she told me she’d cook and serve breakfast once the ladies were up. Just focus, she said, and I knew what she meant; find out who did this awful thing.

  I sidled into the great hall, where Virgil was waiting for a deputy to finish packing up his photo equipment. I signaled for him to follow me and led him to the parlor. Tense with worry, I grabbed his forearms and muttered, “Virgil, we need to figure this out. It can’t go on like this.”

  He nodded, watching my face. “I know. But we need to eliminate other possibilities first. I’m treating it like a crime scene, but it could have been just a fall. Where was Becket when this happened?”

  “He was with me in my room with the door closed,” I said. She did not trip over my cat. “When did it happen, anyway? I don’t know yet if she was lying there awhile, or if it happened just before I heard Pattycakes scream.”

  “I had one of my deputies question Ms. Schwartz about her mother and the timeline of finding her,” he said. “She said that she wasn’t sleeping very well, so heard her mother get up. She assumed Mrs. Schwartz had just gotten up to go to the bathroom, but when Patsy didn’t come back after a few minutes, her daughter got up to investigate. Her mother wasn’t in the bathroom. She thought her mom might have gone downstairs and decided to join her if she was having something to drink. Mrs. Schwartz had been very worried and uncertain earlier, her daughter said, and seemed agitated. She exited their room and headed downstairs, which was when she found Patsy and started screaming.”