Muffin But Trouble

by Victoria Hamilton

  A bunch of rowdy guys tromped into the stands, whistling and hooting, as Virgil and his teammates took to the ice. The rowdies, though, were fans of the opposing team and made their preference known. I recognized a few, and saw the truckers, Mack and Bob, I had seen in the coffee shop in Ridley Ridge the day before. The one named Mack had a younger woman with him. He kept her tucked under his arm even when he was banging his feet on the bleachers. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

  I watched her carefully, worried at how miserable she looked, but then my attention was drawn back to the action on the ice. I was joined by wives and girlfriends of some of the other players; they surrounded me chattering and laughing. The reverend and Graciela said good night and departed, with a shouted promise to talk in future.

  The game proceeded. I leaped to my feet, spilled horrible coffee, and shouted just as much as the other women. Virgil is team captain and plays defense; he’s good at it because he never stops moving, he’s always aware of what is going on all over the ice (I think being a cop helped him, surprisingly enough) and his backward skating skills are amazing. In my humble opinion he is the best man on the team (of course) and this particular night he got two assists on goals. His team won.

  I cheered, but the truck drivers and their friends booed loudly, which is to be expected. What wasn’t expected or needed was one of them throwing his half-full beer cup onto the ice. A security guard approached, and they said they were leaving anyway.

  I waited until that group had tromped their way out of the stands, then followed, hanging around at the front of the arena waiting for Virgil. Though he often goes out with his buddies for beer and wings after the game, on nights I attend he comes home with me. The truck driver with the girlfriend was at the front trash talking and saying he was going to whomp one of Virgil’s teammates who had apparently, according to him, tripped the truck drivers’ friend on the team. I knew which player he was talking about and didn’t think that was going to happen. The guy in question is a gentle giant, but does not suffer fools gladly. In the coffee shop in Ridley Ridge Mack had seemed calm and sane enough, but amped up on arena beer and athletic bravado he was loud and boisterous.

  I slipped by the guys to head to the entry to the hall that led back to the changing rooms. As I skittered past, I again noticed the girl. I caught her eye, wondering why she looked so forlorn, but her gaze slid away and she melted back, behind Mack. I had seen her before in some other background. I shook my head, unable to bring it to the front of my brain.

  Spectators were coming in for the next game, crowding the entrance. It was a busy arena, and evening ice times were devoted to games, so spectators were a constant. Virgil’s teammates were beginning to emerge from the hallway, scrubbed and wet-haired from showers. As I expected, Virgil’s gigantic teammate defused the combative situation with a “friendly” choke hold that sent the trucker and his pals muttering away, the girl skittering with them as if she was eager to get away from the arena.

  Virgil was the last to emerge from the dressing rooms, his head together with Urquhart. I suspect he joined because Virgil was team captain. I expected that they would be talking police matters, but they were actually talking hockey and parted with a fist bump. My hubby, his eyes gleaming with good health and high spirits, took me in his arms and gave me a long, lingering kiss, unfazed by a few of his teammates’ good-natured catcalls. We walked out to the dark parking lot and headed home.

  Chapter Four

  Virgil was gone early the next morning. I was going to check in at the castle, and on my dear friend Pish Lincoln. We—meaning all of us, Pish, Virgil and I—had made many decisions in the last year and a half. One of my first was that although I love my castle, and my darling friend Pish thrives in the chaos, I was weary of living there. It has its drawbacks, and surprisingly, privacy is one of them. It’s like a hotel, and we had a revolving door of weirdos for a while: friends came and went, but also we hosted a bickering crew of elderly ladies, one cruel but talented opera soprano, a cadre of ghost hunters and various others who passed through. When I saw several homes in Autumn Vale slated to be razed to make way for progress, I got the idea of taking one to be my new home, on my castle property but set apart from it. It afforded Virgil and me privacy, which I found soothing and delicious.

  It’s a bit of a distance, but I had my own reasons for walking all the way to the castle that Wednesday morning. Becket, my late uncle’s ginger cat, who had survived for almost a year in the woods after my uncle’s death, joined me as I donned rain boots—it had poured down during the night, and so it was a little spongy walking across the grass—and walked toward the castle. Not toward, in the normal way, I suppose. I was taking a circuitous route, first to view the work being done by Turner Construction. The last touch-ups were under way on the two houses we had already moved into place from their previous location in Autumn Vale. I stood and eyed the homes that were almost done, pulling my heavy sweater coat close about me against the quickening breeze and shivering.

  There was a rather lovely Tudor-style brick and stone of moderate size. A young man, probably in his early twenties, was repointing the brick, filling with mortar the gaps caused by moving the structure, and it settling, as well as natural loss over the years. I moved slowly on to the next; the second home was an even smaller Cape Cod, with three dormer windows along the roof. A fellow nimbly trod the roof with a tool belt and hammer installing the last of the flashing along the dormer joints, after which he would finish with silicone caulking. I can’t believe how much I now know about home construction, but I had learned a lot while ours was being moved onto the foundation and during the long process of making it fit for habitation.

  Each house is set on a half-acre lot, and backs onto the far woods, distant enough away from Virgil and my house that we still felt we had our privacy. Both were beautiful. Once landscaping was done in the spring, when the first homeowners were scheduled to move in, it would begin to feel like a community. A man and woman consulted over spread-out plans. The woman was a local decorator and handywoman who was doing the interior painting and woodwork. The man was the Turner Construction project manager, a new guy Rusty Turner had brought in to manage the company for him, now that he is retired. I was happy with the new guy because he is responsive to my concerns. He had actually fired one worker, even though the guy was good enough at his job, because the fellow had harassed Shilo, shouting sexual innuendos and following her home, hanging around outside of her house until he was chased off by Shilo’s husband, Jack.

  I appreciated his rapid response, and that there was no hesitation in the firing. I waved to the two but did not interrupt.

  I walked on down the lane that connected the row of houses; site prep had been completed for two more. Foundations were dug and cement poured; it had to cure and then the houses could be moved into place. Once that was done the interior renovation could continue all winter long. I approached one and eyed the giant hole in the ground. Becket jumped up and confidently walked along the board-enclosed poured concrete foundation, then jumped back down. Our little community was taking shape.

  I have moments when I am unbearably excited about the enormous project we have undertaken, and many more moments when I’m scared to death. It’s a wild ride, but like a roller coaster, once you’re on, you don’t get off. I’m in it for the duration, as is Pish.

  Becket raced ahead, then leaped out at me from behind a clump of bushes as I strolled past. I laughed, the breeze carrying my laughter away, then picked him up, burying my face in his fur. He wriggled, squirming, and leaped down. I walked on. My property is large; it takes a half hour to stroll the length of it, longer when I meander. It’s big enough that I don’t think even now I have explored every acre. The enormous open area, within which the castle is centered, is rimmed on all sides with forest. For the first year I explored the forest along the road, which is a wonderful arboretum, a planned forest with a variety of natural American tree species. Ear
ly in my second year on my property, I explored the furthest treed area, what we call the Fairy Tale Forest. That was enough for a while . . . I’ve been a city girl my whole life. Conversion to a country girl is a slow and ongoing process.

  I finally did a more thorough exploration with Virgil over this last spring and summer. The rest of the forest, this back acreage, is beautiful in a different way than the arboretum, wild and dark, deep and dense. It starts out relatively flat, but then in one section it climbs into a hilly area, with a stream running through it, and a small waterfall over a rock outcropping that I found when I followed the sound of splashing water. In spring there are the most amazing wildflowers in unexpected places: trilliums and lady slippers, May apples and dog’s-tooth violets, all along old paths that may be dried up creek beds, locals tell me. It’s all natural, acres of ash, maples and beech, among other trees.

  We spotted a few problems. I enlisted the help of a local arborist, and he has done some preventative work to maintain the health of the trees. It’s been expensive, but worth it in the long run. Everything related to our project and my property has been expensive. Without Pish’s infusion of cash and planning abilities and connections I’d be bankrupt already. Unless our plans work that still may happen.

  But now it was autumn, once again. The trees were turning, uneven as always, different species following their own time line, so there were leaves of green, gold, brown and scarlet. I strolled along the forest edge, down a path that was widening as vehicles were now using it. I came to a break in the trees and entered, following the newly cleared path that was kept high and dry with the copious use of mulch over a gravel bed. Fall in my forests is so beautiful; leaves were fluttering to the ground as birds chirped and flitted from branch to branch.

  I wandered down the new forest lane as Becket trotted ahead of me. It was nice to be in the virtual silence. I hadn’t slept well. Something troubled me; it harkened back to the conversation with Urquhart about all the missing girls. So as Virgil snored beside me I stayed awake and worried about young women disappearing. It was troubling, and I needed a little forest to calm me. I could have walked in the Fairy Tale Forest behind my new home, but after my conversation with Graciela Maitland, our performing arts center was on my mind, so I decided to see if any progress had been made.

  It was all Pish’s idea. Besides becoming the summer performance venue for the symphony and opera company, we were going to become an artistic retreat and performance center, with up-to-date recording facilities, too. In summer we would host the LSO, but for the rest of the year we would have traveling troupes of Broadway shows, and many other concerts. Pish had grand and exciting plans for musical camps for kids, and all kinds of wonderful artistic endeavors. Without his vision it would not be happening.

  The woods opened up to a huge clearing, an enormous three-plus-acre open area in the middle of the woods, now fully equipped with fiber optic, electrical, sanitary, plumbing and water, all the services that had to be created and buried before construction began. This had been accomplished after extensive dealings with the county for permissions and zoning. That in itself is a huge undertaking and has required an enormous amount of investigation, research, labor and money, all to accomplish an open space that looked like nothing had been done, though various pipes stick up out of the ground in strategic locations. Becket, who had trailed me this far, dashed off after a saucy red squirrel as blue jays shrieked in alarm, flitting from branch to branch in the trees bordering the opening. Sunlight streamed in, beaming on the leaf-strewn floor as I regarded it with an unsettling mixture of apprehension and exhilaration.

  Pish and I had made three trips to New York over the last year and had found sponsors and benefactors, and had held fund-raising—with the considerable help of the Lexington Symphony Orchestra—so that now we have enough to begin construction of the performance hall. I hope to hell we’re doing the right thing. In this enormous clearing in my beautiful autumnal woods, we are building a dome theater. This was far too big a job for Turner Construction so Pish was up to his eyeballs in bids, blueprints, schedules, and a million other small and large tasks.

  I retraced my steps, emerged from the forest, again followed by Becket, and headed along a worn and rutted footpath to the castle. Though Wynter Castle is the same as it has been since it was built two hundred years ago—timeless, built of mellow gold stone that warms me to see—the landscaping around it is now unrecognizable. That is one area in which, I’ll freely admit, I do not shine. For the first two years I had absolutely no idea what to do with my huge American castle, set in a barren plot on a couple hundred acres of mostly flat, virtually untreed and unlandscaped acreage.

  But Pish knew someone who knew a landscape artist who had had a nervous breakdown but needed to get back into this beloved art. That fellow, a modern-day Capability Brown (the most famous landscape artist of the eighteenth century), took six months and transformed the grounds. Pish and he spent long hours poring over landscape plans, seed catalogues, books on landscaping castles in Europe, and nursery catalogues of trees, shrubberies and the like. They hired dozens of locals, many of them teenagers, over the summer, and quite a few of the un- or underemployed. The result is a stunning transformation.

  I circled to the front of the castle, as always, and paused, the autumn sunshine reflecting off the gold stone warm on my face. My barren castle is now beginning to look like it belongs in the landscape, rather than being dropped and abandoned by an alien race. Efren Roderick Bolden, the landscaper, had clustered some fast-growing evergreens in a few seemingly random places around the castle. Off to one side was a cleverly concealed parking area, something that would become necessary over time, but needed to be planned and installed now, rather than later. It was hidden by a row of a North American species of arborvitae, fast-growing white cedar. It made an effective screen to hide the ugly but necessary parking area. In front he had torn up (to my dismay at the time, though I see his point now) a lot of the flagstone—which he would reuse elsewhere—so he could create gardens to welcome visitors.

  For a while it literally looked like the landscape had been bombed, and it brought back memories of the way I had first seen it, with giant holes dug in the landscape because of a rumor my eccentric uncle had buried treasure. But now the space has been transformed; there is a grand circular drive, with a grassy strip within the circle and a huge reclaimed fountain (from a mansion that had been razed to rubble) centered in that. It had required thousands of dollars’ worth of piping and electricity, but now it was lovely, and the water tinkled and welcomed visitors who drove up the graveled drive. There were perennial gardens around the terrace, which stretched across the entire front and along the far side, where the ballroom opened out to it. Efren would like to use the reclaimed flagstone to complete the terrace along the other side, so the dining room would overlook it; tables and chairs could be placed there for al fresco dining. That part wasn’t done yet, and the flagstone was piled alongside it.

  This was all necessary because my castle would be the iconic centerpiece of the performance center. It will house, in its high-ceilinged bedrooms, the elite among the guests, hosted by Pish, of course. It was to be kind of a guesthouse to conductors and composers, performers and reviewers. The ballroom would be a reception area, and the dining room would host formal dinners. The castle would finally be revived and become what it was always meant to be, a grand estate.

  To that end there are further plans afoot: a statuary garden; an Elizabethan knot garden using herbs; and a garden with box hedges in the shape of the initials of the place, WC. Pish and Efren convinced me that the drive should continue all the way back to the gorgeous carriage house garage, which was going to be renovated with the addition of a second floor to become quarters for summer band camps, ballet camps, and other learning opportunities. I shivered. It was so, so much: so much work, so much money, so much!

  I grabbed one of the big double oak doors and pulled; it opened. That meant Pish was up
and about. Becket raced in ahead of me and dashed up the stairs to have a good look around his domain for the first years of his life, when he lived with my reclusive uncle. Pausing, I changed from rubber boots to a pair of loafers I keep near the front door, and took in the tinkle of classical music over the sound system, which was the first thing Pish spent money on in the castle. Vivaldi; it was a good day.

  But as I advanced toward the kitchen I heard voices raised in an argument. I followed the clamor and entered the long, professionally outfitted kitchen, where I always made the muffins, preferring to keep the ingredients, tubs, pans, and all the rest in one place.

  “You’re being dramatic,” Pish said.

  “I’m not! I swear to you, no one knows where Alcina is,” Lizzie yelled. “It’s spooky. I took Grandma’s car and drove out to their old place, but it’s abandoned . . . like, overgrown. And she hasn’t been to school since the first few days of the new school year.”

  “Maybe they moved away,” Pish said as I entered. Clad in his royal blue silk dressing gown, he shuffled over to the coffee press, yawning and pouring himself another cup of his custom blend.

  “Hey, you two, quit the kvetching!” I said.

  Lizzie and Pish both looked over, but then back at each other. “If that’s the case, why didn’t she tell me?” Lizzie complained. “I’m pretty much her only friend. She’s been avoiding me, sure, and she was hanging out with a real bunch of losers, but we still talked once in a while on social media. But she’s gone silent. It’s like I’ve been ghosted.”

  “Maybe she was avoiding you because you called her new friends losers.” Pish gave me a look, one of his Here we go with the teen angst looks.

  “Hey, Lizzie, what’s up?” I asked, though of course, having heard the rant I already knew.