Much Ado About Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  I told her what had happened, and how Gogi and I discovered Minnie dead. Lizzie is tough as nails about a lot of things, and death and dying is one of those things. Being a teenager, she probably thought that Minnie, in her sixties, was pretty much done with the fun part of life anyway.

  Not at all perturbed, she shrugged. But then her expression darkened. “Maybe Crystal did it. They hated each other!”

  Chapter Seven

  Emerald poked her head around the corner. “What’s going on? Lizzie, I got a call from your principal. He said your counselor sent you home for personal reasons. What does that mean?”

  She shrugged. “I was feeling cruddy. I’m better now. You working tonight?”

  Emerald looked wary. “Yes.” She waited.

  “Can I go to Golden Acres? It’s my afternoon to serve tea. Merry can take me.”

  “I don’t want you imposing on Merry,” she said, scowling.

  When Emerald scowls I can occasionally see a bit of Lizzie in her, though most of the time I see Lizzie’s aunt Binny in those scowls. “It’s not an imposition,” I said, hoping to defuse the tension.

  “Still, she can walk,” Emerald said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Wait here,” I said to Lizzie. She rolled her eyes at me. I strolled up to Emerald and took her arm, tugging her back around the brick building corner toward her shop. “Em, is anything wrong? Did I do anything to upset you?”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “You’re acting different.” I searched her face. “We’re friends, but you’d never know it by how you’re behaving.”

  She looked over her shoulder. Crystal had come out of the shop and was futzing around, edging closer, trying to listen, it looked like. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Okay. I’d have to try a different tack. “So, I don’t understand a lot about this Consciousness Calling stuff. What’s up with that?”

  She focused back on me and her stance relaxed, arms uncrossed. “There’s no way I can explain it all to you. You need to talk to Crystal. She’s the most amazing person!”

  Her face glowed with new energy, and she smiled; I was happy to see that at least. Emerald is a pretty woman: slim, dark-haired, lively. But not so long ago she had a lot of problems in her life, among them a rebellious teenager, a broken relationship with her mother, and a deep fracture between herself and Lizzie’s father. Just when she and Tom were working things out, he was murdered. We’d all seen her through some healing with her mother and Lizzie, and now it seemed that she was finding personal happiness. I only wanted the best for her after all that.

  “Do you do meetings, or what?”

  “We have classes,” she said. “It’s so inspiring. You have to visit one!” Then her face fell. “But I won’t be at the next few. I have to work.”

  “I heard you were back at the bar in Ridley Ridge. I thought you were getting into massage therapy so you wouldn’t have to work there anymore.”

  She stiffened. Maybe it sounded judgmental, even harsh; I hadn’t meant it to, but I was becoming aware of how close to us Crystal had gotten, edging down the sidewalk, and I became irritated. Couldn’t I talk to my friend without her hovering?

  She drifted over, put her arm over Em’s shoulder, and said, “Emerald and I are building something here, and only some people, those rare folks with the inner light, will understand.” Her voice was melodic, her tone patronizing. “You may not be ready for the message.”

  “The message?” I looked from Crystal to Emerald and back.

  “We’re all working toward the peaceful and prosperous life we deserve. Emerald deserves that more than anyone I know, and I’m going to help her get it.”

  The clear implication was, the rest of us didn’t care enough to see her happy. I burned inside; I’d given Emerald a job and a place to live, helping her leave her job at that ratty bar. There’s nothing wrong with tending bar or serving cocktails, but the place in Ridley Ridge was a hole, worse than most dive bars, and the job didn’t go well with a troubled rebellious teenager who needed her mom on evenings and weekends.

  However, Emerald glowed, her smile radiant, and she hugged Crystal. “See? You should come to a meeting, Merry! She’s the best.”

  “I’ll make it a priority,” I said, but I don’t think she got my sarcasm. “I’ll take Lizzie over to Golden Acres.” I returned to my teen friend, who had been sneaking peaks at us all talking from around the corner. “C’mon, kiddo. I’ll give you a lift.”

  “You don’t like her, do you?” she said, trotting alongside of me and looking up, scanning my expression. “Finally, someone who hates Crystal as much as I do!” she hooted, fist pumping the air. “The big phony.”

  “Lizzie, I don’t even know the woman.” She quieted after that and we found my car. Once inside, I glanced over at Lizzie, who fastened the three-point seat belt—I had them installed by my mechanic when he revived the Caddy from its long slumber in the converted carriage house garage, replacing the lap belts it came with—and hugged her bag to her chest, her expression morose. “How is Alcina?” I asked, of Lizzie’s best friend, a free-spirited homeschooled girl a year or two younger than Lizzie. She was given to wearing old wedding dresses and constructing little gnome homes in my woods, which Lizzie then photographed.

  She shrugged. “I haven’t seen her lately. Mom is so busy she can’t give me a lift out to Alcina’s place, and anyway, Crystal has her convinced that Alcina’s parents are Wiccan antiestablishment weirdos.”

  I pulled away from the curb. “Wow, judgmental. First, what’s wrong with Wiccans? I’ve known a few, and like them a lot better than those who are scared of them. And second . . . I don’t think Alcina’s folks are Wiccan, are they? And third, I’d think that someone like Crystal would be careful about judging other people harshly. I mean, this whole CC stuff feels kind of woo-woo to me. I’d think she’d be more open and accepting.”

  Lizzie squished around, tugging at her shoulder belt. “I know, right?” she said, her pale face earnest. She swept back her mop of frizzy hair, exposing a blooming pimple on her forehead. “It feels like Mom doesn’t make her own decisions anymore, and I’m . . .” She fell silent, took a long, shaky breath, and said, “Merry, I’m scared.”

  “Why are you scared?”

  “I don’t wanna go back to living with Grandma. I mean, I love Grandma, and she’s okay, but I’d rather live with Mom. But we’ve been fighting a lot lately. She’s being weird about stuff.”

  Weird about stuff—what did that mean? It was too much to address all at once, but I’d help her through it. I remembered all too well how it felt to have conflict with your mother, like your whole world was unstable, untrustworthy. But right now, I had another question. I slowed and pulled up to the curb by Golden Acres, unbuckled, and turned to my young friend. “Lizzie, what did you mean that maybe Crystal is the one who killed Minnie? And that she hates her?”

  “Haven’t you heard about how Ms. Urquhart stormed a CC meeting one night?”

  “I heard something about it. Were you there?”

  “I was; Mom was working. But me, I have to make coffee and clean up afterward. It’s such crap.” She harrumphed and hugged her bag. “Crystal calls me a junior Consciousness Calling officer, as if I ever asked to freakin’ join her cult. It’s kid labor, that’s what it is.”

  I kept my patience and got back to the issue at hand. “So tell me more about all this . . . Where did Crystal Rouse come from?”

  It was like I had opened the floodgates on stuff Lizzie had been holding back for months. When Emerald first got involved with Crystal, the woman was living with a CC follower she had met at a franchise meeting in San Diego, Aimee someone or other. A franchise meeting—that gave me pause. So CC was right there with Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts? She apparently had a falling-out with Aimee about the time that Em
erald got seriously into CC.

  I digested what I’d learned. “I thought your mom was taking a massage therapy course. We all did. Gogi and I talked about it, that if she set up a massage spa she’d have lots of customers locally. So what is the massage table for?”

  Lizzie cast me a look. “You have got to come to a meeting. First they chant the contexts, then they do something called ‘calling inner consciousness.’ You have to lie down on the table and let people stand around you and poke at you while asking you to call up your deepest memories.”

  “Sounds horrendous. What is that supposed to do?”

  “Help you erase all your negative programming from when you were a kid—you know, let go of all the crap people put on you through your life. You’re supposed to be freed from it all and go forth without being weighed down by guilt.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad. We could all use some help to get rid of that stuff.”

  She glanced at me darkly. “Yeah, but the crud people say! It’s embarrassing. Crystal’s always in charge, and it’s like hypnotism, or something. She’s started doing private sessions for people who don’t want to do it in a meeting.”

  “I can understand that. People may be embarrassed by what they say, right?”

  “Yeah, but why let some ding-dong like Crystal into all your intimate secrets? She laughs about it with Mom.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Emerald.”

  “Mom goes along with it because Crystal says it’s okay. Crystal says they’re just friends blowing off steam.” She snorted and rolled her eyes.

  The one thing I had always appreciated about Lizzie was her stubborn independence, her lack of need for approval. It caused her endless trouble, but would save her in the long run. “So what happened between Crystal and Minnie?”

  She gnawed her fingernail, talking between bites. “Brianna is one of Minnie’s boarders, right?”

  “I’ve heard about her and the others. Hannah told me.”

  “Brianna has been coming to CC meetings, and Minnie didn’t like it. She came to one herself, and sat in the back muttering and staring. When Crystal started doing a calling on Brianna, Minnie got all red in the face and tried to haul Brianna off the table. A big fight erupted. Everyone there ganged up on Minnie, and she left in a huff.”

  “Brianna stayed?”

  “Yeah. She was crying and Crystal took her into another room and made her sit and talked to her about it for a half hour while everyone else sat around looking at each other. Dopes didn’t even talk. Didn’t want to upset Crystal.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Week ago or so. Maybe two weeks. Since then Brianna has started to look for somewhere else to live, I guess. Crystal wanted her to move in with us, but for once Mom put her foot down because Brianna would have had to share a room with one of us, and guess who that would’ve been? Mom said no and Crystal backed down.”

  I was silent for a long minute, staring out the window. I was sure the FBI would hear all about Crystal and Minnie’s confrontation and wondered what they’d make of it. I fretted, too, remembering what Mabel had told me about Em’s confrontation with Minnie—“bopping her on the nose”—and what Esposito would make about that. Silly, I know; Emerald did not kill Minnie, I was sure. “Look, Lizzie, if the FBI wants to talk to you, tell them everything you’ve told me.”

  Her eyes widened. “Do you think they will?” she asked. “That would be so seriously cool. I could tell all those jerks at school that I was wanted for murder and they’d leave me alone.”

  “Couple more years, kiddo, and then you can go to college for photography.” We got out of the car and headed up the drive toward Golden Acres.

  “CC wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t insist on making everything so stupid, like you could solve anything with a calling and a smile and spouting some dumbass saying. You can do anything you want, just want anything. Make the world better by putting on a smile.” Lizzie made a rude noise. “Life isn’t like that. You can’t wish your problems away, or Crystal would disappear.”

  I found Doc in the living area, so I stayed for tea. We chatted, and naturally spent some time talking about my morning experience. He took my hand and we sat like that for a while, his long, bony fingers interwoven with mine. “I’ve known Minnie ever since she moved here from Ridley Ridge,” he said. “At first she worked part-time at the post office, but when the old fart who ran it died, she stepped into the job full-time.”

  I glanced over at him, sensing some sadness. “You know, she gave me a hard time almost from the beginning, and she’s always bad-mouthing Gogi.”

  “Don’t mind me; seems a shame, a kid like that getting murdered,”

  Only a ninety-something would consider sixty-something Minnie a “kid.”

  “Some people are born like that. She was a funny sort, liked to collect trophies from her conflicts, kinda like war trophies.” He snorted, chuckling as he continued, “One time she and Hubert went at it when he told her he’d been abducted by UFOs, and she said he was full of it. Course, we all know Hubert is full of it, but Minnie didn’t seem to get that he was joshin’ her. Anyway, a while later I went into the post office for something, and there was Hubert’s toupee, hangin’ from a clothes peg . . . looked like a scalp. Gave me a start, lemme tell ya.”

  Lizzie served us tea, and then played checkers with Hubert Dread over in the corner. Dread is a funny guy, and most of what he says is tongue-in-cheek. Unfortunately, Gordy is his nephew and believes the old guy’s tales word for word. I blame Hubert for being the genesis of Gordy’s conspiracy theory nonsense.

  We chatted about Spain. Doc had been there once in the fifties and never forgot it. He had even gone to a bullfight, though he said it left him sick and changed his mind about blood sports in general. We were silent for a minute. I was thinking about leaving—I needed to get home and figure out what to do about Roma—but Doc had something else to say.

  “Ya know, I noticed something while you were gone,” Doc said.

  “Mhm?” I said, sipping my almost-cold tea.

  “Got a theory: I think some folks are catalysts. Like in chemistry, the active ingredient, you know, that speeds up reactions. You’re a human catalyst.”

  I looked over at him, squinting in puzzlement. “What do you mean?” Doc’s conversation occasionally wanders into the abstruse, for lack of a better word, and often borders on the metaphysical.

  “When you came to Autumn Vale you sped up the pace of things; things that mighta happened anyway happened faster. Now, I get why you went to Spain, and why you stayed so long, even if others don’t.” He glanced over at me, his eyes large and blurred behind his smudgy glasses. “But when you left, there was a void, a vacuum. Nature don’t like a vacuum, you know. Other folks stepped in to become the catalysts. Only you were a good catalyst, helping folks, like me, and Hannah and Lizzie over there. That girl sure missed you something awful.”

  This was why he confined most of his conversations about life to Pish, who understood him. “What do you mean? Who exactly became the catalyst while I was gone?”

  “I’d say that Crystal woman and her horse manure. Look at who she’s affected: Emerald, Lizzie, Minnie, that kid Brianna. The only ones in your circle unaffected are Gogi and Hannah. And me.”

  “Well, and Shilo.”

  “Nope. Not even Shilo was free of the crap. Used to be Shilo and Em palled around, but now with that Crystal woman takin’ over, Em don’t have time no more for Shilo or anyone else.”

  Even her own daughter. Lizzie was missing spending time with Emerald now that her mom had gone back to bartending at night. “It’s a good theory, Doc, but I can’t believe I’m a catalyst, good or bad.” I stood, bent over, and planted a kiss on his balding head. I grabbed his glasses, cleaned them on the edge of my shirt, and planted them back on his beaky, spotted nose. He blinked once and nodded.
“I have to get back to the castle,” I said. “I desperately need some normal. I think I’ll bake some muffins.”

  I drove home trying not to think about what I had experienced. With others around I had been able to put out of my mind the blood, the terror, and the sight of Minnie’s open, dead eyes, but alone the horror came back. I had only ever seen one facet of the postal employee’s personality, the unreasoning harridan who disliked me almost from the day I arrived. But there had been more to her, and maybe if I’d tried a little harder . . .

  That was an unprofitable line of thought. I pulled up the lane and sat for a moment, staring at my castle. The midday heat shimmered in the air as I got out. The castle always looks a bit lonely to me, like it’s lacking context. The open area around it is fairly flat, though there are anomalies I didn’t notice at first when I was overwhelmed by my inheritance, outbuildings and groves of trees dotting the landscape. But something else was needed.

  Somehow, some way, I had to keep my castle. It was mine, and had burrowed its way into my heart, the closest thing I had had to a home since Miguel died. But how to keep it? And how to transform it from a lonely outpost into a part of its surroundings? If two hundred years of owners hadn’t managed to accomplish that, I wasn’t sure I could do any better. My uncle had been planning to build a community around it, but his desperate plan to construct and sell modern condos and homes left me cold. Wynter Castle deserved much more.

  I listened to the high whine of a cicada in a tree. There was so much I needed to do. Life tumbled in on me, all the stuff that Minnie would never be able to experience. I vowed not to waste another year of my life mourning what I lost, avoiding what I was afraid to do. When asking myself what I really wanted, I knew. Long-term, I wanted to live in Wynter Castle and be with my friends in Autumn Vale for the rest of my life. But in the short term I wanted to find out what was bothering Shilo, help her find the peace that seemed to be eluding her, and see if Virgil Grace was still as interested in me as I knew he was before I left.