Much Ado About Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  I chose my words carefully. “I don’t know another man in the world who more deserves to do exactly what he wants than you, Virgil. I know you’ll make it.” I let my fingers thread through his dark, mussed hair, and stared up into his dark eyes. Something changed in his gaze, softened. I was about to kiss him when the big oak door opened and Roma joined us. We leaped apart like guilty teenagers, me stumbling backward to my feet.

  “Why, it’s the sheriff,” Roma said, eyes wide, as Virgil stood. She sashayed over and touched his arm. “I wish you were in charge of this awful murder investigation.” She rubbed her hand up and down his bicep, which, I have to admit, is one of my favorite things to do.

  He cast me a beseeching look, but I shrugged. She was not my pet project. I watched and waited; Miguel and I had a huge fight when Roma did this same act, almost exactly ten years ago. Miguel played along, flirted back, and told me after that she had annoyed him. I said he didn’t look annoyed, and we got into an argument. I was childish, yes, but he had been dismissive of my concerns.

  Virgil shrugged away from her hand, irritation marring his handsome face. She stopped and looked puzzled.

  “I have to go, Merry,” he said, circling her to get to me. He took my hands, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “It means a lot to me to have your support. On the other thing . . . I’ll try to keep you in the loop of what’s happening if Esposito will tell me anything.”

  We shared a too-brief kiss, and he strode to his sheriff’s department vehicle, got in, and skidded off down the lane. I turned to talk to Roma, but the door closed behind her.

  * * *

  Esposito came back the next morning with the warrant, and Roma was forced to allow them into her room. Before retiring the prior night, Pish had confided to me that Roma had told him that the letter opener was likely hers. There was one missing, one piece of an antique pair that rested on a decorative stand with a matching magnifying glass. She didn’t know how it had gone missing, or when. I kept my own counsel; it still seemed entirely possible that she had executed Minnie in hot blood, but I didn’t feel enough fear to kick her out. I did, however, lock my room overnight.

  Roma consulted with a lawyer but decided, against his advice, to give the FBI the rest of the set, since she didn’t want it in her room. Knowing what someone had done with the letter opener gave her the creeps, she said.

  Esposito took me aside in the kitchen. “Where do you keep your car keys, Ms. Wynter?”

  I saw what he was getting at. Soon I would have to decide to whom I owed loyalty. “In my purse beside my bed.”

  “Is there any way Ms. Toscano could have accessed them and used your car yesterday morning?”

  “No.”

  “What about Mr. Lincoln’s car?”

  “You’ll have to ask him.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  “Agent Esposito, as much as I don’t like Roma, I also don’t believe that she crept into Autumn Vale and murdered Minnie with no one noticing.”

  Esposito watched my eyes. “Reason?”

  I paused for a moment as I wiped the counter and hung the damp cloth on the towel holder. “That woman has never done anything in her life without an audience. When she threatened the LOC director, it was in front of the orchestra and chorus.” I wasn’t giving away any secrets; he knew all about her legal troubles in New York. “When she threatened Minnie, the scene was timed for precisely the moment when folks were gathered in the great hall. She must have an audience, and every indication I’ve had is that her threats, as graphic as they sound, aren’t serious.”

  He was thoughtful, and my perception of him began to shift subtly, as he didn’t speak immediately. Finally, he said, “Sounds like a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder, but that doesn’t preclude violence.”

  “However, I still believe that her need to act her life out on a stage of some sort would mean she’d want a witness.”

  “I’ll take your expert psychological assessment into consideration,” he said. “In my opinion, other needs could supersede her desire for an audience.”

  I had been considering telling Esposito about Pish’s car tick-tick-ticking as it cooled, but held off. He appeared willing to pin the crime on Roma, and though I couldn’t blame him for coming to that conclusion, my real reticence had to do with Pish. It was his car, after all.

  “Was Pish Lincoln absent from the castle during the early morning hours, to your knowledge?”

  “No, of course not. Why would he be?”

  He watched me for a moment, then said, “Deputy Urquhart of the local sheriff’s department—the decedent’s nephew—has given us a list of those who had recent run-ins with Minnie Urquhart. Your friend was one of them. He apparently stormed into the post office and had a shouting match with her over what he suspected were anomalies with his mail. He accused her of stealing magazines.”

  “You actually think Pish would kill someone over missing magazines?”

  “Ms. Wynter, I’ve known of people shot to death over a cold cup of coffee.”

  Chapter Nine

  Overnight a shift had occurred in the weather pattern, as often happens in upstate New York. The heat and mugginess of the previous day had fled. The air felt crisper, a welcome breeze tossing the tops of the trees in my forest. Wearing pants tucked into walking boots—you don’t risk ticks in the long grass and brush, not with the danger of Lyme disease—I was determined to search the woods looking for Becket. He was coming home. I had a pocketful of treats, and I wasn’t afraid to use them.

  I had dreamed of Virgil, and thoughts of him lingered—his touch, his kiss, the closeness I craved and didn’t know how to initiate. I’m not a shy woman, but he is a different man from any I’ve ever been with, somewhat insular, guarded, quiet, calm, strong. He’s not exactly open, but neither is he entirely closed off.

  What would happen between us if he made it into the FBI? Would we miss our chance? I couldn’t let myself think about that.

  As I walked toward the woods, I thought instead about the crime, and how the death of someone I didn’t like at all and barely knew could still shift my world in the small-town interdynamics of Autumn Vale. Minnie Urquhart was a part of that world, and I guess I had never stopped to wonder why she was as she was, or what else was going on in her life. We’re all like passengers in little pods; sometimes it’s hard to put ourselves in other people’s pods. All we experience is how they impact us, not the other way around. Doc’s theory of me as a catalyst was troubling and too philosophical a point to me.

  Looking at it from another way, I could frame it differently. Autumn Vale had been stable for years before I arrived. Deaths left holes in the personality array of the community, yes, but they were expected from time to time. I, however, was an unknown quantity and had thrust myself into so many people’s lives so quickly I had made waves, the ripples of which were felt through the community. If that was being a catalyst, I guessed I had to cop to that.

  The woods were before me. An uneasy rustle tossed the treetops, and some dark clouds crept across the sky with a rumble of thunder. A year ago these woods had seemed foreign to a gal more used to the urban jungle. Now I knew that the trees in these woods had been planted many decades ago by my grandfather and great-uncle as an arboretum. I could even name some of them.

  I approached the first, the big tree that stood out from the edge of the forest like a marker to the path, a bur oak. Touching the bark, vertical ridges like rivers running up the tree, I stared into the darkness and took a deep breath, inhaling the nutty scent of leaves and needles. Then I forged into the forest.

  “Becket, where are you buddy? Come home; I miss you. Be-cket!” I called, stretching out the syllables into two notes. I rattled his treat container, an old humbug candy tin of my great-uncle’s that I had found in his desk. It was what he’d used for the cat; I knew that because of the crumbled remnant
s of kitty treats in it.

  I had a weird déjà vu moment. A year before I had seen the orange cat on the edge of the woods and gone looking when people told me it might be Becket, my late uncle’s cat, who disappeared soon after Melvyn died. So much had happened in a year that I felt like a different person, and yet here I was, looking for Becket and contemplating a murder that I had discovered.

  I was losing track of the possible killers, there were so many, at least in the police’s eyes, no doubt. Esposito didn’t know what a lovely, nonviolent person I was. He had to be considering me as a suspect, as well as Gogi, or maybe both of us together. The person who discovers the body is often the murderer, I have heard, though that hasn’t been my experience. So far.

  But there were others. I mentally ticked them off on a list as I walked and called to Becket.

  Roma Toscano, though I had argued against her to Esposito. She had motive; Minnie had injured her ego and humiliated her in front of others. Despite my speech to Esposito, that did make her a suspect. She had the means, with Pish’s car, and the opportunity, since she wouldn’t tell us where she had actually gone that morning.

  Crystal Rouse—I couldn’t let my personal dislike of her lead me astray, though I found her behavior toward Emerald unsettling, drenched with such a proprietary air. She and Minnie had clashed at one of the meetings, so Crystal was another suspect. I was going to have to attend a CC meeting, perhaps pretending more curiosity and open-mindedness than I felt.

  Emerald. I didn’t believe for a moment she would kill anyone, but I was sure the agent would be looking at her seriously, since she was Crystal’s acolyte and would seem, from an outsider’s perspective (and maybe in truth, judging from what I had seen), to be pretty firmly under the woman’s thumb. And she had punched Minnie on the nose.

  “Be-cket!” I trudged farther into the woods, getting close to where poor Rusty had had his almost-lethal run-in with a killer in the autumn of last year.

  Karl Mencken: he was a serious contender. He had an argument with Minnie that apparently got heated enough that he stomped out. I paused and thought. He’d said that to Gordy and Zeke, anyway. Was there another side, silenced now that Minnie was dead? I made a mental note to find out more. They were all suspects, not just Karl. Living with Minnie, given her personality, may not have been easy. I knew zero about their arrangement, aside from the fact that she had three boarders and their names. Hannah knew more; I’d talk to her.

  And then there was the supposed new love life she had embarked on via online dating. Shilo had shared that Rusty’s new employee was going out with Minnie and had moved to Autumn Vale for that purpose. Was he the only one she was involved with online? Who would know? I needed to find out if she was especially close to anyone in her extended Urquhart family, someone she may have talked to.

  And here I was going over suspects as if I was investigating, a habit I had fallen into after the events of the last year. But once again, I felt I had a personal stake in this. If Roma was guilty, if she had used Pish’s car . . . I shivered with dread. I couldn’t bear for him to be in danger.

  I stopped dead on the spot, listening to a blue jay in the tree above me. It had followed me from my first entry into the forest, flitting from tree to tree, squawking the whole way. I put my hand up to my mouth and called, “Be-cket!” There was a rustle in the undergrowth near an open spot. Was it him? “Becket! C’mon, sweetie, come home. I miss you!”

  I used to be one of those people who thought women who talked to cats as if they were human were idiots. And yet here I was, in the woods, treat can in hand, wanting with all my heart to find my own animal familiar, the independent ginger tabby who had become my companion. I stared at the thick undergrowth. “Becket, please come home. I miss cuddling,” I confessed. “I miss taking walks with you, buddy. Come home.”

  I heard a querulous, demanding yowl of unhappiness. “Becket! Where are you? Come on out.”

  I saw some brush rustle, dry leaves dropping as a bush shuddered, and there he was, tentative, distrustful, emerging from the shadowy underbrush and standing, watching me. I sank down onto the forest floor cross-legged and rattled the tin. “Come on, sweet boy,” I crooned, rattling the treats again. I didn’t care that I had become the kind of person I used to make fun of. So I was a cat lady now. So what? “I won’t be doing that again, going away for months at a time. Ever. Never.”

  He stretched casually and ambled along the edge of the brushy area, sliding side glances my way. He looked awful, weed seeds and burrs matting his fur, skinny again like he was when I found him.

  “C’mon, Becket; I have treats.” I rattled the tin. Pish had told me that Becket had seemed okay at first, but over the weeks he’d stayed away longer on his trips into the forest. Finally, he just hadn’t come home. Pish had called him, but my friend isn’t much of an animal person and Becket had never warmed up to him. Pish’s trip back to New York to take Lush home had lasted a couple of weeks, and though my friend had arranged for someone to leave food out for Becket, the cat must have decided he had truly been abandoned.

  I kept talking softly and Becket got closer until finally he approached, gulped down some treats from my palm, climbed into my lap, circled once, and promptly fell asleep purring. I hugged him close and cried, letting go of all the angst and fear I had experienced since yesterday.

  We sat like that for a long time as I thought about the seasons of my life. For a while after my mother and grandmother died within months of each other, I was a wild child. I tried a lot of things: acting, modeling, drinking to excess, even a little pot to ease my sorrow and emptiness. I wasn’t overly successful at anything, and none of it made me happy. Jobs were increasingly scarce—there were never a whole lot of jobs for plus-size fashion models, and the ones there were went to harder-working, more disciplined girls than I—so I turned to styling other models and actresses, finding a talent and love of the job.

  Finally I had found something where my opinions on what suited people mattered. Around then I met my sweet friend Shilo. I was on a styling team at a fashion shoot and met Miguel, and through Miguel, Pish. I was on to the next season of my life as wife to a wealthy, cultured, loving man.

  A little more than two years passed. When Miguel was killed in a car crash, I leaned on my friends heavily. I holed up in my apartment, wrapped in a heavy cloak of devastation, but eventually I got strong enough to work and live, though not happily, not for a long time. That was a season of sadness.

  I found a way to move on as much as I was able, but love didn’t interest me. You’re only given one great love in life, I thought, and mine was gone. That long season was calm, serene at times, even, but there were things churning in my body and heart, things I wasn’t even aware of at times. It all seemed too much to bear, the day-to-day work of booking jobs and keeping going.

  For a brief time I thought being assistant to a testy, troubled model was the answer to my melancholy stasis; I knew how to handle her most of the time, and she seemed to need me. I was looking for that sense of being needed, though I didn’t realize it at the time. It was a disaster, and I ended up accused (unjustly) of stealing a valuable necklace that I suspect she either lost or pawned.

  Maybe it took that to shake me awake. I had inherited but had not yet come to see Wynter Castle. I arrived in Autumn Vale, met Gogi, Doc, Hannah, and the rest, Pish and Shilo joined me, and life changed. And then there was Virgil: handsome, passionate, sexy, strong. Going away for so long had given me a fresh perspective, how alive this place made me feel, and how dull life was, even amid luxury, while away. Here I awoke every day with purpose. Maybe purpose is the secret to a happy life. It could become my season of contentment and joy.

  I carried Becket back to the castle and up to my room, setting up his bowls filled with food and water, his litter box, and a comfy nest made of my bathrobe on the bed, where I set him, sleeping still, purring throatily. I had lots to
do and had to go out, but when I got home he was getting attention to his matted fur and burrs, whether he liked it or not.

  I had lunch with Pish—Roma was a no-show, despite an invitation—and talked nonstop about Becket, and what I had been thinking while I hunted him down. My friend chatted, but seemed troubled and distant. As I collected our plates and glasses, moving them to the big sink and squirting dish detergent over them, I looked over my shoulder.

  The lines on Pish’s tanned, lean face were more pronounced. This business was getting him down, but didn’t he know he could confide in me? I had left him in the lurch when I headed to Spain. He had just broken up with Stoddart, and even though their affair was brief, Pish doesn’t go into anything halfway. When he loves, he loves wholeheartedly. But our love was long-standing, and he had to know he could tell me anything. He had an old and bad habit of keeping anything sad or troubling from me, though, thinking I couldn’t handle it.

  I turned from the deep sink, my hands dripping with soapy suds. “Pish, tell me what’s going on.”

  He got up and dried as I washed. “Roma’s still not telling me what she was doing the morning Minnie was killed. I’ve hired a lawyer, a guy from Ridley Ridge that my attorney in New York recommends.”

  “A criminal lawyer?”

  He nodded.

  “For yourself, or for Roma?”

  “Both. Esposito is not kidding around, and I know it looks bad. Especially after what Roma did in New York, the threats against the LOC musical director. That episode involving Minnie looks bad, too, but Minnie, in her own way, was every bit as much a drama queen as Roma is.”

  I smiled at his acknowledgment; he recognized Roma’s shortcomings but loved her anyway. As he did me. I wiped my soapy hands and hugged him. “Pish, we’ll figure out who did this. I don’t think it was Roma, but keep working on her; she’s hiding something.”

  He hugged me back, hard. “I’m so glad you’re back,” he said, his voice muffled against my shoulder.