Muffin But Trouble

by Victoria Hamilton

  Millicent—she was the third waitress in as many months to wear the uniform, a knee-length blue polyester dress that looked like it came from the seventies and was three sizes too big for her, stitched with a name patch that said Millicent in flowing script—nodded laconically, not looking up from her phone. “Yeah. Him and a bunch of other loony tunes have been hanging around for a few years now. Started out keeping to themselves, but they’ve been getting more social.”

  “So I understand from the lady cop.” I cringed a little at myself; lady cop? Haven’t I learned not to say stuff like that?

  She set down her phone and leaned across the counter. One blue eye wandered, but one fixed on me and met my gaze. “A few of ’em came into church a week ago. Reverend Maitland was so excited at that many new congregants you could almost see him counting the tithe.”

  I knew the church she spoke of, the Autumn Vale Methodist Church, which was outside of my town in a pretty valley. I also knew the reverend and his wife. “They came to a service? That must have raised a few eyebrows.” I pictured the sneering fellow and others of his ilk lining pews in the cobblestone country chapel. If they spoke their thoughts on women, Graciela, the reverend’s wife, would have had a few choice words for them.

  Millicent the Third snickered. “Alls they did was listen and pass the offering plate without adding anything to it. After the service, as folks were filing out, they stood outside and handed each person a pamphlet saying they were all going to hell for supporting a church that had been commandeered by—” She paused, looked around, leaned further across the counter, and whispered, “Feminists, harlots, adulteresses, drug addicts and alcoholics.”

  She slid a pamphlet across the counter to me and I looked down at it. It was crudely done, with a yawning pit and cartoony flames leaping up and seizing some women who were wearing short skirts and drinking cocktails. Someone had been watching too many reruns of Sex and the City.

  “Wow. Just now a member of the group called me a jezebel because I’m wearing pants. The officer warned him and he took off in a painted van.”

  “That painted van!” The man who spoke was at a table near the coffee counter. He was a rough-looking dude, in baggie blue jeans and stained jean jacket, muttonchops, dirty graying hair with a red ball cap jammed on. He was eating the hungry man’s breakfast (breakfast is an all-day event in most local diners, coffee shops and cafés) of pancakes swimming in faux maple syrup, sausages, bacon, ham, three eggs and canned beans, all on a platter the size of a hubcap. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, the rough brown paper scraping against his three-day growth of beard, and shook his head. “They got all kinds of crap written on that van. You seen it up close?”

  I shook my head.

  “Have you, Mack?” Millicent asked.

  “Sure have. I know those folks all too well. I picked up a hitcher one day—not supposed to do that, trucking for Atlantic Produce, but . . .” He shrugged. “Hate to see folks walkin’ on the highway. Anyways, I took a little side trip to give him a lift to their camp—it ain’t too far from my farm—and saw that van. They got stuff in big letters, but they also got stuff written and painted all over it. I grew up in the church, an’ I seen a lot of stuff I recognized, like the Sacred Heart, and crosses, Mother Mary, bits of lyrics . . . you know, ‘Shall We Gather at the River,’ and the ‘Old Rugged Cross.’”

  “Do you know the people there?” I asked.

  “I’ve met a few of ’em,” he said grudgingly, a worried look on his craggy face, acne scars on his fleshy cheeks, but kindness in his washed-out blue eyes. “They’re, you know, the dregs. The . . . I dunno. The folks who don’t fit anywhere else.”

  “Bullcrap,” growled another man, sitting at a different table. “I’ve met ’em too. Bunch o’ religious nuts and commies,” he said.

  The first trucker said, “Bob, I got no beef with you; us truckers gotta stick together. But you know ’em a whole lot better’n you’re letting on, amiright?” He stood and threw a twenty on the table. “I gotta go. Fresh lettuce waits for no man, y’know?” He tromped out, the plastic aglets of his boot laces flopping with a ticking sound on the tile floor, and the bells over the door chiming as he exited into the fall sunshine.

  Bob, skinnier than Mack and tougher-looking, but about the same age and with the same shaggy graying hair, gave an ugly look at the door, then his gaze swung around and he met my eyes. He wiped his hands on his black Harley-Davidson T-shirt and looked me up and down, slowly. “Mack’s got no right putting me down. He’s the one who oughta not talk. Those folks out there . . . lotta stuff goes on, you know?”

  “What do you mean?” Millicent asked.

  “None o’ your beeswax.”

  “Whatever. Hey, Bob . . . has Walt got time to look at my car?”

  He shook his head, tossed back the last gulp of coffee, wiped his mouth, threw down a ten. “He’s busy right now at the farm. Got some machinery he’s fixing.” He exited, the chimes jingling and the door slamming shut as a gust of wind caught it.

  “Too bad about your car. Who is Walt?”

  “Bob’s brother. He’s a welder by trade, but he’s a pretty good mechanic, too.”

  “I always have Ford Hayes. He’s the best mechanic around.”

  “Yeah, well, he charges, too. Walt will make deals . . . trade services for services, you know?” She winked and grabbed the tub of muffins.

  As the waitress unloaded the fresh muffins into the coffee shop’s own containers, the cook came out with the money they owed me, retrieved from Joe, the manager, who sat in the back room most of the time. I signed a receipt, thanked him, and he nodded and returned to his post in the kitchen. I held up the Light and the Way Ministry pamphlet. “All right if I keep this?” I asked Millicent. She nodded. I slipped it and the money into my purse, hoisted it on my shoulder and picked up my empty plastic tote. “Well, I suppose I’ll go. What happened to the last Millicent, by the way?” I asked. “I was just getting used to her.”

  Millicent 3.0 shrugged. “Took off, I guess. Disappeared, anyway.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad. What was her real name, anyway?”

  “Cara Urquhart.”

  Another Urquhart; Ridley Ridge was riddled with Urquharts. “What’s your real name?” I asked.

  “Phyllis Urquhart.”

  “Any relation?”

  “Cara is my second cousin, twice removed, or something like that,” she said. “She always said she was going to leave one day and never come back.” She shrugged. “I guess she finally did.”

  I nodded, smiled, and left. From Ridley Ridge I stopped in Autumn Vale to drop off a supply of homemade Merry’s Muffins to the variety store/café and my mother-in-law’s senior residence, Golden Acres. Gogi Grace—a pretty, well-dressed sixty-something widow—owns it and lives in her own suite there. I supply the kitchen with muffins for the tenants. I dawdled at the library for a couple of hours, talking to Hannah about her plans for the library, then paused at Binny’s European Bakery for some Portuguese rolls; Binny Turner is the very first Autumn Vale resident I met when I entered the town what seems like a hundred years ago. She is delightfully taciturn, and an extremely talented baker.

  I walked past the few shops on the main street and examined the window display of the newest, a yoga studio. It looked like they were set up to sell athleisure clothes, too, as well as yoga classes; I’d have to check that out, at some point. I may not exercise much, but I can wear the clothes. Shopping is my sport. After that, I bought two steaks from the newest business in town, a butcher’s shop that was the logical outlet for a local farmer who has long sold meat from his own stock.

  Business and shopping done, I headed home as the afternoon sun began to angle golden light through the trees.

  Chapter Two

  I drove home to my “estate,” Wynter Castle and the property on which it sits. I know I’ve talked about the castle a lot in the past, how much I love its mellow gold stone and the grandeur of living in an honest-to-goo
dness American castle, built two hundred years ago by my Wynter ancestors. It’s gorgeous, and I’m lucky. I still feel that every time I approach my home.

  But . . . a lot has changed.

  It’s been a busy year or two. In fact, my second wedding anniversary was coming fast, two years married to Virgil Grace. I can honestly say time flies when you’re having fun. As I drove through the new (vintage) ornate wrought iron gate, supported by stone pillars (built by a local craftsman), I smiled as I always do. I drove up the sloped winding road through the woods. To my right was the arboretum, or planned woods that my great-uncle had planted many, many years before, carrying on the work that his father and grandfather had started. Any moment the vista would open to reveal magnificent Wynter Castle. As bizarre as it seems, I’m so happy not to live there now.

  Don’t get me wrong; as I said, I’m grateful to own it. I adore it in all its grandeur, from the flagstone terrace to the big oak double doors and fabulous stained glass window, the ballroom and the gorgeous dining room, with gothic arched windows that face the arboretum. And I especially love the commercial kitchen that my late great-uncle installed in one of his renovation fits, when he was thinking the castle could be turned into a hotel.

  I’m even more thrilled with the many ways my life has changed since that day over three years ago when I arrived to inspect my inheritance, guided there by then-sheriff Virgil Grace of the Autumn Vale sheriff’s department, now my loving hubby and sexy PI. The castle had been in my family for two hundred years, give or take, and was passed to me by my great-uncle Melvyn Wynter, a man I met once when I was five, before he had a falling out with my widowed and tetchy mother.

  Moving in and dealing with crisis after crisis, as well as a welter of new problems, joys and difficulties, financial and personal, taught me to embrace change. I’ve learned my lesson well. I lived in it for two years as my life and castle proved elastic, able to take in both of my best friends from New York City—Pish Lincoln, still living in the castle, and Shilo Dinnegan McGill, now married to a local realtor and refurbishing, baby on her hip (my goddaughter, Autumn Dinnegan McGill), a fabulous old Victorian monstrosity in the old part of Autumn Vale—as well as a multitude of new ones, too numerous to mention. The cast of characters in my life has grown like a one-woman show enlarged to a musical extravaganza.

  I felt the peace of coming home wash over me as I passed my lovely castle, on the left, and continued past the big carriage house garage on my right, soon to be repurposed after years as a storage building. Other storage sheds and shacks dotted the landscape, most to be torn down eventually as we figured out what could be used and what needed to be discarded for our plans. In the distance was the planned enclave of period houses (two completely built so far, but with plots planned for five or so more) rescued from razing in Autumn Vale and beyond. We had no set title for the project yet, but I was thinking of an overall name of Wynter Woods.

  At the end of the half-mile drive through my property I pulled up to our Craftsman beauty. In that, my human-sized home, I live now with Virgil Grace, my gorgeous and thrillingly sexy husband. A whole house to ourselves is enough for this former lifelong New Yorker made over into a staunch Autumn Valeite.

  I grabbed the bags and empty muffin tubs from my backseat and struggled across the long covered porch and through the big dark wood double doors. If you’ve never seen a Craftsman home, I think it is probably the best designed house on earth: handsome, sturdy, built to last . . . kind of like Virgil and me, I suppose. We saved ours from demolition in Autumn Vale, where they are making way for a new complex that will eventually house the town council chambers, zoning offices, and various other local necessities. It had appeared to be in bad shape but was surprisingly solid, built in the nineteen twenties before the crash, lovingly crafted with oak floors and built-ins. It was the very first structure we moved to Wynter Woods, as plans for the property began to take shape.

  The exterior is painted a moody olive green, with natural wood trim, and we do have a garage around the side-back that I rarely use. Virgil—who sold his ranch-style house in Autumn Vale, and paid for the renovations himself—wanted a garage, and he wanted it in front. I acknowledged the need for storage, but didn’t want a garage, except maybe a detached one at the back. We compromised. I allowed the attached garage, but was adamant that it wasn’t going to be at the front, spoiling the period look of my lovely work of art. So it is off to the side, near the back, with the front edge made to look like an extended wing of the house.

  I rarely use it, but my husband insists I park the old Caddy—which I also inherited from my great-uncle—inside. I now drive a newer hybrid, and leave the garage for the small garden tractor with a snowplow and snowblower attachment (as well as mowing capability), the Caddy and Virgil’s Hummer. Okay, so it’s not a Hummer, but his latest vehicle is huge and heavy, an old beat-up Suburban, or something like that, his second souped-up vehicle, done over by Ford (short for Rutherford) Hayes, the best mechanic in four counties, as he will tell you himself. Virgil, his PI partner, Dewayne Lester, and elderly-but-spry Ford Hayes spend many a Sunday afternoon out in that garage chortling and murmuring about cars. I call Ford the car whisperer because he can get any vehicle moving with some grease, a wrench and muttered blandishments. He often says that it doesn’t matter what a car looks like on the outside (the Suburban is dinged and rusted, perfect for surveillance in bad neighborhoods) but what’s under the hood. It can look like a wreck and drive like a dream.

  Virgil would be home soon. He had a meeting with his former deputy, who took his place as sheriff of Autumn Vale; I had an hour before he came home. He was going to grill the steaks on the flagstone patio, which faces my back woods (the Fairy Tale Forest, as I call it) and is almost exactly on the spot where we first made love.

  I had time for a long, perfumed bath, and some soft, lovely clothes.

  • • •

  Virgil came home while I was still in the giant jetted bathtub I demanded when we renovated, we had a little watery fun, then dressed and descended, he wearing his beloved New York Rangers gear—the hockey team is his favorite, so he has the full pajama pants and hockey shirt ensemble—and I in my Lane Bryant tunic over leggings.

  “By the way,” he said into my ear, holding me from behind as I stood at the kitchen counter looking out over the back patio, “Urquhart is coming over after dinner.”

  “Okay.” I turned in his arms and looped mine around his neck. “Is he still dating that nice girl, the assistant district attorney?”

  He kissed me, which is rather nicer than the plain way I put it. He’s a big guy, and freshly shaved (he needs to shave twice a day, some days, his beard comes in so fast) he is breathtakingly handsome. Heck, he’s breathtakingly handsome with scruff, without scruff, in hunting clothes, hockey uniform, greasy jeans . . . however.

  “ADA Elisandre Trujillo . . . he is,” he murmured against my lips. “Why?”

  “Maybe you should invite them over to dinner before it gets too cold. You can grill.”

  He pulled back, his brown-eyed gaze fixed on mine. “Really?” he said, his thick brows raised. “You hate him.”

  “I do not hate him!” I exclaimed, frustrated by my inability to shake that notion from everybody. Sheriff Urquhart of the Autumn Vale sheriff’s department is someone I have had problems with in the past, but our relationship is getting better. “I don’t hate him . . . anymore, at least. That woman is making him over to be almost human rather than a Terminator clone. But if you’re going to be working with him again I want to be on good terms.”

  “How about Friday night?”

  “Okay. Why is he coming over tonight?”

  “He wants Dewayne and me to go over some cold cases. We talked about it briefly today, but he was too busy to get into it.”

  “Murders?”

  “Mmmm, missing people, but yeah, also a couple of bodies found about three years ago, before you arrived. Near Ridley Ridge.”

  I frown
ed. “Ridley Ridge. Huh.”

  “Why ‘huh’?”

  “No reason. Not about murders, anyway.” I debated saying anything; he looked suddenly tense. “I was there today,” I said quickly to quell the worried look. “To deliver muffins to the coffee shop. I was confronted by a religious nut holding a despicable sign. That’s all.” He untensed, and I got it, suddenly. I sighed and patted his cheek. “My dear hubby, I am not still worried about your ex-wife.” Kelly was the daughter of the sheriff of the county surrounding Ridley Ridge, Ben Baxter, and had recently moved home to sort her life out. She and Virgil had been separated for years in an acrimonious parting that had only in the last year or two, since our marriage, become less tense. “You can talk to her, you can help her move, you can have coffee with her . . . whatever. I am secure. You are mine, mine I say!” I threw my head back and laughed manically.

  He kissed me deeply and I lost a few minutes.

  “Invite Dewayne and Patricia to dinner, too,” I murmured into his neck, intoxicated by more than the wine I had drunk. Heady stuff, my husband.

  About eight or so Urquhart came over and he and my hubby sat in the great room, our living space off the kitchen and dining area. We have a big, U-shaped couch and a couple of chairs, a big-screen TV over a fireplace, and a large coffee table. They had laptops and notebooks spread out and were hunched over something. I drifted in and asked about his girlfriend. The man blushed. He is growing on me, I must say. He ducked his head and said she was great, and he appreciated the invite to dinner. He’d check with Ellie, as he called her.

  “So what’s this about missing people? Or murders?” I asked, sitting on the arm of the sofa by Virgil. He put his arm around my butt and caressed my leg.