Muffin to Fear, page 3
“Hello, Merry,” he said, with a smile that tugged on the corners of his lips. “Thank you so much for allowing us to go on with our schedule. I understand from Mr. Lincoln that you didn’t know about this until you arrived home from your honeymoon. You’re extraordinarily gracious to allow this motley crew to invade.” His voice had an intangible accent, almost English, but not quite, posh, but not exactly pretentious. It was pleasant, well modulated. “I had to come myself when I heard we were shooting at a castle. Your home is lovely.”
“Thank you so much.” I extended my hand and we shook. “Welcome to Wynter Castle.”
Everything about him screamed money, from his Savile Row shooting jacket (olive green with a maroon plaid) to his Berluti shoes, old but very classy and expensive, polished to a high sheen, with gleaming gold buckles. His feet were pretty big; there were likely not a lot of shoes that fit him well unless he had them made. He had very pale blue eyes and big horsey teeth, slightly yellowing and very much his own. In fact, he looked kind of like Prince Philip only younger, with the slight stoop in his posture of someone who had to bend over to speak to people quite a bit.
“I hope we don’t inconvenience you too much.”
“As long as I can go on with my life in the meantime and have access to my kitchen during the day, I’m good.” Autumn Vale needs my constant supply of muffins. I had left two weeks’ worth frozen for Golden Acres (Gogi Grace’s retirement residence) and the Vale Variety and Lunch, but fresh was far better!
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You should meet the others, now that you’ve paid homage to the head guy,” Serina said. “Todd and Rishelle are in here somewhere.”
We moved away, and Hugh shouted to his crew, “I need someone to sort out this equipment. Let’s get organized.”
As I followed, Serina explained that Todd, whom Pish had talked to originally, was the lead investigator with his partner, Stu Jardine. Rishelle was Todd’s wife. According to Serina, she had shoehorned herself into the team, insisting on becoming a part of the show once it became popular. It sounded like Rishelle was resented for hopping on the bandwagon as it was almost to the top of the hill while the rest of them had been pushing steadily from the bottom.
“Todd started out doing this part-time with Stu, just two guys pursuing their passion for paranormal investigation.”
There was admiration in her voice, and it hinted that I was right about her feelings concerning Rishelle’s recent addition to the team. “Did they have a job before this?”
“They were media consultants originally and kept doing it, investigating the paranormal stuff part-time. They first had a short-lived series on paranormal investigation. When it died they started Haunt Hunt, and in the last three years it’s taken off like crazy. Hugh was new at HHN, and I give him a lot of credit for its success. He’s made key decisions that have panned out well.”
“Like . . . ?”
“Much as I hate to admit it, like bringing psychics on board. That was all Hugh. Every time Hugh makes a change we all hold our breath, but every single time he’s been right.”
“That’s probably why he’s a producer.” I followed Serina.
My real honest-to-goodness American castle is big, with the library, dining room, and parlor lined up on one side of the great hall, and the breakfast room and ballroom along the other, and the huge kitchen at the back, with a long butler’s pantry hallway, off of which was the only main floor half bath, and a side door. The dining room is large and can easily seat thirty or forty people. There is a big stone fireplace at one end with a piano by it, and a full wall of Gothic arched windows. The equipment table was now set up by them right next to a bank of laptop computers on tables with a few of my dining room chairs hauled over to provide seating.
A late-thirtyish guy sat in front of one of the laptops tapping at a keyboard and grunting at the screen, while another guy, a little older, watched over his shoulder.
“So that’s Ian Mackenzie—the guy at the computer—and Arnie Ball looking on,” Serina said. “Arnie is lead camera and Ian is second camera. Right now they’re checking angles for the DVR camera shots. They set up a lot of unmanned digital video recording cameras around the site, as you may have noticed. They’re sometimes set to run constantly while a hunt is on, or just motion activated.” She turned and muttered behind her hand, “Ian’s okay as a camera operator, but his real genius is editing, which takes a lot of skill when you’re dealing with some questionable occurrences. He can make a door creaking into a major moment. Arnie’s the better cameraman.”
Arnie was the guy operating the Steadicam when I first arrived.
She strolled over to the table. “Guys, this is Merry Wynter, the castle owner.”
“Hey, Merry,” they chorused, both looking up only momentarily before bending back to the screen.
A young man and woman approached with technical questions, and I was able to get no more than a visual impression of the two fellows. Ian Mackenzie, the younger of the two and sitting at the computer, was fair and plump with a red complexion and thinning, frizzy, fading reddish hair, squinting and blinking through wire-framed glasses. He was slightly disheveled, wearing a Windbreaker with Haunt Hunt emblazoned in yellow over the HHN symbol, two hands clasped in a prayerful manner.
Arnie Ball, a more substantial and imposing man, was heavyset, broad shouldered, with dark, wavy, unruly hair held down by a gray knitted toque. He was a good-looking guy in the same way Virgil is, only forty pounds or so heavier. He must have been at least six-four, though he was slouching. His feet were clad in multicolored high-top sneakers adorned with the trademark swoosh along the side. It was an untidy look, because his khaki cargos sagged down his butt, the hem half tucked into his shoes and half dragging on the floor.
When I see a guy like that I want to style him, or at least tidy him up. That hair . . . and the knitted toque. It set my teeth to clenching in dismay. Any man that big should know he stands out, and look after himself, at least in public.
We wove around tables and entered the library, one of my favorite rooms. It is a turret room, so shaped as a half hexagon, but squared off on the other sides and lined with bookshelves. The walls are wood paneled, and there is a big old Eastlake desk near the front windows, some comfortable sofas and club chairs in the center, and a couple of leather-topped library tables with folios and hardbacks stacked haphazardly. It feels warm and homey. There we found a couple, Todd and Rishelle Halsey, apparently, sitting on one of the sofas, and a fellow who I assumed was Stuart Jardine in a club chair, staring at his cell phone and playing with something that looked like a pack of cigarettes in his other hand. Serina introduced me, then melted away, saying she had a lot of work to do before they started taping.
“This place is amazing,” Todd said after we had exchanged pleasantries. He was tall, lean, with the wide-mouthed grin of a joker and well-cut sandy hair. His voice was mellow, nicely baritone, but with a gritty quality that would sound good on TV. “We’ve filmed in castles before, but usually they’re tourist traps. This is pristine!”
“Pristine,” echoed Stu Jardine, looking up from his phone.
He was what I’d call a faux nerd with a soupçon of hipster. He had the requisite dark-framed glasses, a long, narrow face with short spiky dark hair topped by a black fedora that had a plaid band. A goatee scruffed his chin, a small mustache perched on his upper lip, and he wore a long-sleeved yellow-and-black plaid shirt with slacks, suspenders, and a contrasting bow tie. He wore dark, skinny slacks too short, with plain white Converse sneakers. But tattoos peeked out from the cuffs of his shirt, and he sported a neck tattoo as well, of a dove with an olive branch in its beak. His ears were pierced all the way up to his upper lobes. At least it was a styling, even if I thought he was on the caboose end of a fashion train that was headed off the rails. A man bun would have finished his unhip-hipster look.
He still clutched his cell phone in one hand, and it was indeed a cigarette pack in the other, but it appeared to be clove cigarettes, not regular tobacco. I’d have to remind everyone . . . no smoking in the castle.
Rishelle Halsey smiled over at me, exposing white even teeth and a dimple winking in one cheek. Her hair was black and lustrous, her lips full and coated in red matte lipstick, a good color for her skin, which was pale and lightly freckled. It was an attractive look on an attractive woman. “You’re probably wondering what the heck you’ve gotten into with us here,” she said with a self-deprecating smile. “We do kind of overwhelm.” She was slim but bosomy, with freckled cleavage displayed to advantage by a push-up bra under a V-neck T-shirt. Said cleavage was adorned with an eye-catching tattoo; it appeared to be two halves of a heart that were only together making one heart because her breasts were hoisted together.
I wondered if she got the tattoos before or after the implants, and what they would look like as she aged. Maybe that sounds mean, but I don’t intend it that way. It’s what I wonder all the time about unusual tattoos and piercings. This was a little distracting because the eye was constantly drawn to that darn heart. It almost looked like it was beating as she breathed.
“I’m a little out of my comfort zone, for sure. I’ve been on a movie set before,” I said, and explained having been a stylist for a time. I sat down beside her on the leather sofa. “But this is different. I guess since it’s my home.”
Rishelle put one slim hand on my sleeve, showing off a giant diamond and eternity wedding set. “We’ll do our best to stay out of your hair. You might even find it fun to watch filming, if you stay quiet as a mousie!”
Stu and Todd exchanged irritated looks, and I guessed that her offer was not one they would have extended. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way,” I said, but I’ll admit, I used a tone that was calculated to make them capitulate, because I did want to keep an eye on what they did in my house.
“You can watch, if you want,” Todd said, his tone grudging. “But it’ll be boring as hell.”
I arched one brow. “Boring to watch ghosts flit through my castle? How could that be dull?”
Both the men’s attention had shifted as I spoke. We were not alone, a fact I had only had time to vaguely notice. An argument between two oddly dressed people flared on the other side of the room by a bookcase. Assorted crew members were gathering, and we all twisted on the sofa and watched. At first the quarrel was just a mishmash of voices, one high and fluting, one low and rumbling, but as I watched and listened I eventually sorted it out enough to get the drift.
“Millie, darling, sweet idiot, you’re off your rocker, as usual,” said the man. He was tall and had long, black, curling hair. He wore a black canvas duster coat over black jeans, but it appeared a considerable paunch was concealed under the voluminous duster coat. “You cannot possibly be sensing a Revolutionary soldier within these walls. This heap was probably built in the Victorian era by some vainglorious robber baron steel manufacturer.”
“I tell you, Dirk, I know what I felt the moment I walked into this desolate structure! It was horrible. I was all atremble, quivering with the imminent threat of something awful, simply terrible, about to happen!”
The speaker was dressed colorfully, to put it mildly. She wore a long, floaty skirt, a multiplicity of scarves, and a colorful tunic embroidered with butterflies. She had long sandy brown kinky curly hair that was restrained by yet another scarf wrapped around her head a few times to make a bulky headband. She positively jingled with jewelry, too much to take in at one glance.
Actually, the clothes were similar to Shilo’s attire, but my friend was a model, now married to local real estate agent Jack McGill, and she could pull off the hippie chic look that this girl was probably aiming for. I itched to get my hands on her, to restrain her sartorial overkill and find the elegant swan underneath the layers of fluffy feathers. If there was a swan and not a quacking duckling. Hard to tell with all that going on.
“You are so full of crap, your eyes should be brown,” the man said.
“Who are they?” I asked Rishelle, who was watching, spellbound, a delighted smile on her pretty face.
“Those are our pet psychics,” Rishelle muttered as Todd and Stu got to their feet and started across the room to the pair. “Dirk Phillipe, apparently his real name, though I’ve never seen his birth certificate, and Millicent Vayne, also supposedly her real name. Sounds like the pseudonym a romance writer would choose. She’s one of those vague wilting-flower types.”
I glanced over at Rishelle, aware of the deliberately insulting language and descriptions. “You don’t like her,” I said as she jumped up to follow her husband and I rose to follow.
“It’s not that. She’s just too, too precious.”
“What about him?” I asked. “Dirk Phillipe? He looks—”
“Like a big fat phony with an arrogant attitude and zero people skills?”
“All righty, then,” I muttered, following her. She didn’t like either of them.
Todd had his hand on Dirk’s arm, while Stu had taken Millicent aside, arm over her shoulders, and was murmuring to her in a soothing undertone. I don’t like seeing women bullied—I don’t like to see anyone bullied, as a matter of fact—and thought Mr. Dirk Phillipe should be told a thing or two.
“I couldn’t help overhearing your discussion, Mr. Phillipe,” I said loudly, over the chatter of the tech crew who had entered the library to set up cameras. I waited until Dirk Phillipe slowly swiveled and eyed me with incomprehension. He was a very tall fellow, head to toe in black (was that black guyliner rimming his eyes?) and with enormous black cowboy boots for footwear. Interesting choice.
“You were saying this is a Victorian copy of an old castle,” I continued, now that I had his attention. “But it’s not. It may not be Revolutionary period quite, and it likely is a copy of European castles, but it’s just slightly post–Revolutionary era. It was constructed in the late seventeen hundreds by my paternal ancestors, who were from England. They made their fortune in lumber mills.”
Dirk looked over to me, his glance lingering, his pale eyes blank. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
I was startled. “I beg your pardon?” Maybe I misheard him.
“You’ve been misinformed. This heap was built in the late eighteen hundreds at best. Nineteen ten or twenty at worst. With too much money and too little taste, I might add. Just look at the furnishings!” he said with a negligent wave of one large hand. “It’s all faux medieval crap.”
Holding on to my temper, I said, “You’re wrong. Wynter Castle was built in the late seventeen hundreds. I’ve looked it up.”
“You’ve looked it up.” He smirked and snorted through a big, beaky nose. “Why does everyone say that, and with such finality, that air of confidence? I looked it up. Probably on the Internet. This castle is a prototypical example of the neoclassicism of the late Victorian, early Edwardian period.”
What a load of garbage! I opened my mouth to argue, then shut it without saying a word. He apparently didn’t know neoclassical from neo-Gothic. My castle is sturdy and in some ways graceless, with the turreted solidity of a Norman castle, not the refined neoclassical structures that copied Greek ideals. I know because Pish has done all the research. And I could prove it was built in the late seventeen hundreds, not eighteen hundreds—I have copies of the original land deeds and building specs for the castle built by my some number of great-grandfather, Jacob Lazarus Wynter—but . . . why should I prove anything to a stranger? Even if I offered proof, he was the kind to dismiss it. Rishelle watched me, eyes wide, and smothered a laugh as I turned away.
A plain, dark-haired young woman trotted into the library just then. “Stu, we’ve got a problem,” she said, ignoring the rest of us. “A big, freaking, loud problem. Or rather two problems.”
Chapter Three
THE WOMAN HUDDLED with the men, including Hugh, who had just entered the library behind her. She was probably in her thirties, no makeup, blunt dark hair straight to her shoulders, and a bosomy but graceless figure clothed in a formless sweatshirt and baggy jeans. She had a Windbreaker tied around her waist as if she were a middle schooler afraid to lose her jacket. It’s hard to describe what I mean by graceless, but she held herself as though she disliked her body. There was nothing wrong with her figure—there is nothing wrong with any shape of body, in my estimation, big or small, tall or short—but she appeared to dislike her physical being.
“Who is that?” I asked Rishelle as we watched the consultation taking place in ferocious whispers and gesticulations.
“That’s Felice Broadbent; she’s another of the talent.” She rolled her eyes as she said “talent.” “She’s one of those women, the kind who thinks that everything is a big freaking problem.”
“I wonder what’s wrong?”
“She probably saw a spider.”
I could hear some of her complaint.
“When were you going to tell us you’d hired them?” she demanded.
“It was an agreement with Mr. Lincoln, and a condition of our being allowed to film here. It was a small concession, that’s all.” Hugh Langley seemed bemused but not particularly alarmed by the woman’s ire.
“Not good enough, Hugh,” she exclaimed. “Last thing we need is a bunch of amateurs stumbling around, getting into shots, taking up valuable time.”
“I’m no amateur, I’m a freakin’ photographer!”
I knew that voice and turned, overjoyed. “Lizzie! And Janice!” I cried. My young teenage friend, Lizzie, grinned and whooped, fist pumping joyously, while Janice plowed through the confusion and mess like a schooner through rough waters, stepping daintily over wires and evading furniture with a sway of her hips. Janice and her husband are both big people, but they wear it well, especially Janice, who seems queenly despite her at times strange choices in clothing.
