Much Ado About Muffin

by Victoria Hamilton

  I sat for long minutes staring into space, thinking. When I was young I was always moving, hopping from place to place, restless, fretful. The older I get, the more apt I am to stare out windows for long periods of time without moving. Stillness allows the brain to access the furthest recesses of the mind. That’s my story, anyway.

  At length I rustled around in my purse once more as I sat and stared at the dilapidated home that was Minnie’s castle, and fished out a notebook. I had too many things to consider, find out, and confirm, and too little brainpower. So I made a list.

  Where did Roma go the morning Minnie was killed?

  Why was Minnie having her home evaluated?

  Who was Minnie’s next of kin, and who inherited whatever she left?

  Why was Minnie seen talking to a drug dealer on more than one occasion?

  How did the killer get the letter opener, presuming the killer and Roma weren’t the same person?

  Was there a reason Minnie was killed at the post office? Was anything stolen?

  My phone chimed. It was Janice.

  “Simon was pretty cagey,” she said, her voice full of satisfaction. “But I got your answer. Want to trade?”

  “Trade?”

  “Quid pro quo, Merry. You do something for me, I give you information.”

  “What do you want?” I asked. With Janice, you never knew, and I couldn’t promise without knowing. She might want something ridiculous or devious.

  “I want you to talk Pish into scrapping Much Ado About Nothing and get him to do The King and I instead.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Why not? Pish will do anything you tell him.”

  “No, he won’t.” If I made a big deal out of it, he probably would, but that’s the thing: I would never make a big deal out of it to get him to do something for my benefit. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

  “Okay, fine, you don’t want the info enough, then.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “I’ll talk to him, but I can’t promise I can talk him out of Much Ado About Nothing.”

  “You have to try, Merry. I mean really try!”

  “Okay, I will really try. Hannah would prefer The King and I, too. She’d like to play Lady Thiang. Now, what do you know?”

  “Minnie did come into the bank and ask for a loan. But she didn’t want to tell Simon what it was for. He told her that he couldn’t give her a loan for some unspecified purpose. And anyway, if she was going to use her house as collateral she needed to get an evaluation done first. I guess she called Jack to do an evaluation. You know Jack; he’s a straight shooter. He apparently told her that her dump would get her enough for a loan for a pack of gum and a coffee. Maybe.”

  I smiled but felt some sadness. Minnie seemed like one of those folks who struggle to understand life, while lashing out blindly at those who could be her friends if she let them. I never wanted to make an enemy of her, but neither did I try too hard to be friends, not after the way she spoke about Gogi to me. “Did she ever go back?”

  “Yeah, just last week. She went in to talk to Simon about getting a loan to fix her house up. She said if she ever wanted to pass it on, she had to smarten up and make it worth something. It was all she had, her legacy.”

  “I wonder what that meant?”

  “I have no idea. Minnie and I weren’t on the best terms.”

  Maybe Minnie was getting older and thinking of family; maybe she had a nephew or niece she was especially close to. It didn’t appear to have anything to do with her murder, but it was a part of the riddle, like that piece of sky in a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t look quite right until it clicks into place. Maybe this would make sense once seen within the context of more information.

  My phone rang. It was Gogi, and she told me that Sonora had discovered a lot from her husband. “Minnie had been in to see Andrew about estate planning.”

  “Estate planning?” I opened my car window and stared at the dispirited, sagging house that was crying out for a wrecker to do his job.

  “He’d done her will years ago, but she wanted to change it. She wanted to know if there was some way to tie up her estate so that her inheritor would have to abide by certain rules to get his or her bequest.”

  “Did Sonora use that wording, his or her?”

  “Yes.”

  “So no clue as to whether the inheritor would be a man or woman, or even if she had a specific inheritor in mind?”

  “Sonora wouldn’t know that. But I’d say if Minnie was rewriting her will, she had someone in mind. I believe she’d already done it, from how Sonora put it, but that’s third-person information, of course.”

  “And Minnie wanted to place some strictures on her inheritor. What kind, I wonder?”

  “Sonora didn’t know, but her husband said people try to do that all the time.”

  I was left with more questions than answers; I hate when that happens. “If you hear anything, let me know.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Gogi said, “Why are you looking into this, Merry?”

  I explained about Roma, and how I feared her outburst would impact the FBI investigation.

  “You have to give the agent some credit, Merry. Aren’t you taking this rather personally, anyway? This is Roma’s problem if her actions have gotten her in hot water. Maybe she’ll learn from it.”

  “You’re right in a lot of ways, Gogi, but maybe I don’t have as much faith in the power of human growth as you do. Roma is Pish’s friend and protégé, and I don’t want him troubled.”

  Gogi chuckled. “You don’t need my advice. Just go on and do what you do; it’s worked out so far.”

  After we hung up I revved the Caddy and pulled away from the curb. I wondered if investigating Minnie’s death was a way for me to try to assuage my guilt . . . or not guilt, but sorrow at the way things had been between Minnie and me. I’d never been able to mend our rift, but I could, perhaps, help find who’d killed her.

  Even though that wasn’t my job. I had other things that should be a priority. Like finding out what was bothering my dear friend Shilo so I could help Jack make it better, or helping Lizzie and Emerald. I was most certainly going to attend a CC meeting, which I understood was scheduled for this very evening. But first I was going to enlist my very own super sleuth, Robin to my Batman, Watson to my Sherlock, Hastings to my Poirot.

  There need to be more female crime-fighting duos.

  I parked by the library hoping Hannah would be in, and she was. She pretends the library is only open three days a week, when in reality it’s open most days for those who know to try the door.

  We had tea, and I talked over what all I was trying to find out. Hannah is consistently my best sounding board because she has a deep maturity based on reading, studying, and a humanity that had taken suffering—she had been through innumerable operations and medical treatments in her less than thirty years—and transformed it by some alchemy into an uncynical yet practical knowledge of people. She also has a wickedly subversive sense of humor not everyone gets to see.

  “Minnie must have had an heir in mind, if she was asking about enforcing some kind of behavior by her will,” I said. “Do you know any of her nieces and nephews? Maybe it’s Deputy Urquhart.”

  “I wouldn’t assume the heir is biological family,” Hannah said.

  “You’re right. Minnie had created a kind of surrogate family with her boarders. Maybe it was one or all of them who were going to be, or had become, her heirs?”

  “That’s possible. And if that’s the case, even a thousand dollars seems like a lot of money if you don’t have any.”

  Especially if you were an addict, I thought. That might tie in with her conversations with a drug dealer in Ridley Ridge. Was she trying to straighten out one or all of her boarders? Was the will an attempt to enforce better behavi
or, and had it backfired, with the heir (or heirs) deciding to kill her for the money rather than straightening up? Much would depend on whether she had actually gotten around to creating the will that would apply strictures on her heir’s behavior.

  “So, I came here for another reason,” I said, setting aside my teacup. “Have you ever attended one of these CC meetings?”

  “Emerald’s shop isn’t wheelchair accessible,” she said. Much of Autumn Vale was not wheelchair friendly. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m concerned about the effects Consciousness Calling and Crystal Rouse are having on Emerald, and more particularly on Emerald and Lizzie’s relationship.”

  Hannah nodded gravely. “Lizzie was crying on my shoulder before you came back from Spain. She didn’t like Crystal moving in with them. She says now with Emerald working so much, Crystal is constantly monitoring what she does. You know how independent she’s always been; it’s driving her bananas. Crystal has got Em believing that too much freedom has made Lizzie rebellious toward her mother.”

  That was pretty much what Lizzie had said to me. My young friend is smart. But the more you try to control her, the more rebellious she becomes. It was only with a liberal amount of freedom that she and Emerald had started to patch up their fractured relationship. Lizzie is independent, but uses her time wisely. She isn’t taking drugs or stealing cars; she takes pictures. Her photos are artful, her intentions pure. Alcina, from whom she was being kept because of Crystal, is a good friend to her in so many ways. Like Lizzie, she’s creative and independent. Even if she hadn’t been, forbidding the friendship was the way to make a rebellious teen more likely to head off the rails rather than toe the line.

  “I got an uneasy feeling about Crystal when I met her. I’m going to the CC enrollment meeting tonight for that reason, but also because I’ve heard from Mabel, Janice, and Lizzie that Minnie’s boarder Brianna is involved. Could you do a little research for me? I’ve also heard that Crystal came here to stay with another Consciousness Calling follower; I think the name was Aimee? Who is she and what is her current relationship to Crystal? And I want to know about this whole CC thing.”

  Hannah jotted some notes. Shyly, she eyed me then looked away. “If you’re going to be home tomorrow, maybe Mom and Dad could bring me out to the castle? I haven’t been out for a long time.”

  “You’re on. Come out tomorrow morning and bring me news!”

  She tapped away on her computer keyboard and watched her monitor, biting her lip and frowning. She looks like a fragile china doll, the old-fashioned kind with the two tiny china teeth showing. But far from fragile, Hannah was tough as nails, and I loved her like a combination little sister and daughter. Her parents were two of the sweetest people I’d ever met.

  “Ah!” she blurted out. “I’ve got it!” She turned to me, her big gray eyes shining in the dimly lit library. “I’ve got a name. I knew I had seen it on social media—a friend of a friend, you know? The woman Crystal stayed with when she first got to town was Aimee Jollenbeck. And she’s heavily into Consciousness Calling, from what I can see. She’s probably your best source of info on Crystal and CC.”

  “Yes! Now I have Aimee’s last name.” I hugged her and headed out of town, making a brief stop at the variety store for several tins of red salmon. Only the best for Becket. I drove back to the castle, bracing myself for whatever I may find, aware that I had promised Janice I’d raise the topic of The King and I with Pish.

  Chapter Eleven

  The castle was quiet . . . too quiet. A peremptory sign on the library door simply said Recording. I listened for a long few minutes; Roma hit the high note in “O Mio Babbino Caro” over and over, her voice cracking each time in the same spot. “Make her sing ‘Il Dolce Suono,’” I muttered, heading for the stairs with one of the tins of salmon and a dish. That was rather mean-spirited of me, since at the end of that aria, Lucia di Lammermoor expires.

  I cooed and fawned over Becket for a while until he was eying me with the disdain cats save for those who are loopy over them. I watched him gobble up his salmon and then bathe himself all over in the slow thorough way that meant he knew he now had all the time in the world. He looked awful, with his orange-and-buff fur matted into clumps, his bones sticking out on his haunches where he had lost too much weight.

  “You, mister, are not going out for a few days,” I said, though I knew I’d let him go out when he wanted. That was the arrangement we had: I fawned all over him and cuddled him whenever he allowed it. He, in turn, wandered when he felt like it, came home if he cared, and let me take care of him, petting him and spoiling him rotten. It was my first boyfriend all over again.

  I headed down to the kitchen to bake muffins. As I peeled and chopped apples, I thought of my list of questions. I had answered one, at least.

  Minnie was having her home evaluated because she wanted a loan to fix it up, and she wanted to fix it up so it would be worth something when she passed it on to her heir. But who was the heir? I still didn’t know. I wondered if the heir was aware of the bequest coming their way when Minnie died, and whether they were sufficiently cold-blooded to hasten her passing.

  I put together an oatmeal streusel and played with the ingredients, finally coming up with what I’d call Apple Crisp Muffins. I popped them in the oven, setting the timer, then stared into the freezer for a few minutes. It would be quiche for dinner, since I had frozen pie shells and lots of eggs, cheese, and frozen spinach.

  The phone rang while I was sautéing onions and garlic. It was Virgil, and we chatted, but he seemed distracted and admitted it was driving him nuts not to be in on the investigation into Minnie’s murder, especially since she was one of his people, a Valeite.

  “I’d love to crack the case and rub the FBI’s faces in it. To hell with Esposito,” he growled.

  Interesting attitude for a man considering joining the FBI, but having dealt with the agent, I wasn’t shocked. He treated Virgil like a gofer and messenger boy. Hesitantly, I told him what I’d discovered about Minnie’s attempts to make her home worth more to leave to an heir. “So she was thinking of her own mortality, but I’m not sure it’s connected. She was getting older and decided to do something, I guess.”

  I could practically hear him think.

  “That doesn’t sound like Minnie. She was difficult, and I know you two didn’t get along, but—”

  “Virgil, she made my life hell! And I’m not the only one; your mother had her problems with her, too. About the second day I was in Autumn Vale Minnie told me Gogi was a double murderer . . . that she had killed both her husbands.”

  “But she wasn’t proactive. Minnie waited until something happened to her.”

  I bit my lip. Virgil did have a way of ignoring my outbursts. Was that most endearing or annoying? “Maybe something had happened. Did she have any health issues? Something that might worry her enough to make a change?” It was something to look into, but not for me.

  We talked awhile longer, and I told him about Shilo acting odd, and what Doc had said about seeing her talking to a man. I fussed a little about Crystal Rouse, Emerald, and Lizzie. After a few minutes I could tell he was stifling either laughter or a yawn, and I wasn’t sure which I preferred. “What is up with you?” I asked as I scooped the sautéed onions into the crust and crossed to the big professional fridge for eggs and cream. “Are you bored or laughing or what?”

  “It sure didn’t take you long to get back into the swing of Autumn Vale, and making everything your business.”

  I had a decision to make; I could either be offended or go along, and I did see the humor. I laughed. “Jerk. So what are you up to tonight?”

  “I’m coaching the junior hockey team. We have our first formal practice tonight.”

  “You’ll miss that when you go to Quantico,” I said.

  “If I go to Quantico; I haven’t been accepted yet. Heck, I just printed off the
application today. They may not want an aging small-town sheriff.”

  “Virgil, you’re in better shape than most twenty-five-year-olds, and you’re smarter than any cop I’ve ever met. You’ll make it.”

  He then asked if he could take me to dinner out of town one evening. I felt a flutter of nerves, and said, “Sure, but you can come out here for dinner anytime, you know.”

  He growled, a throaty murmur. “I am not going to be subjected to Pish’s pet opera singer’s pawing. I’d rather take you away from the castle.”

  I smiled. He was not saying that for me; Roma’s relentless flirting made him uncomfortable. I ate dinner alone with a book in front of the empty fireplace. Well, not totally alone; Becket came down and had a bit of quiche with me. He expressed no desire to go out, and followed me back upstairs when I took a plate of dinner to Pish.

  He was in his sitting room working at his desk. Maybe writing? But no, he was doing sketches for the Much Ado About Nothing staging. He is a Renaissance man, capable of most things he puts his mind to, and anything he puts his heart into.

  “There’s lots of quiche, if Roma wants some. I wrapped it and put it in the fridge.”

  “I’ll tell her when she comes back. She went for a drive.”

  A drive? Where? I wondered. “Pish, has she told you yet where she was the morning Minnie was killed? You have to know that she could have been anywhere, even Autumn Vale.”

  He just shook his head and leafed through his sketches. “What do you think of this?” he said, pushing a sketch across his desk.

  So, we weren’t to speak of his pet’s potential as a murderess. He started eating while I glanced over it.