Muffin to Fear, page 6
As if that eliminated any possibility of her having heard about it beforehand. I wondered . . . did the investigators or psychics do any advance research? Someone must, or they would have no clue what they were walking into. I had an uneasy feeling. Dirk had been in town, he said. If he asked around, I was all too aware of what he would dig up to “sense” in my castle. We had a couple of memorable bodies found, one in a hole on the lawn near the drive and one on the terrace by the ballroom windows. Oh, and one in the half bath off the butler’s pantry hallway.
I closed the laptop and set it aside, then turned over, laying my cheek against Virgil’s chest, playing with the dark hair that lay like a mat across his skin. “I wish Pish hadn’t invited them. I was looking forward to moving ahead with our plans, no distractions. Except the pleasurable kind.”
“I know.”
I could feel the rumble of his voice in his chest against my cheek. He threaded his fingers through my hair, pulled my head back, and kissed me. His lips were warm and I tasted the toothpaste from his pre-bed ritual. Just before I lost my mind, he whispered that we’d soon have the place all to ourselves, that they’d all be gone in a couple of days.
Jinxed.
• • •
The next morning the male in my bed was decidedly more of the ginger persuasion than when I had drifted off to sleep. I dropped a kiss on Becket’s pink nose, told him I adored him as he stretched, yawned, and meowed at me, then I slipped out of bed. It was later than my usual early rising, but then, the day before had been long. The castle was blessedly quiet, the crew off doing something. I should have known then that trouble was brewing.
Had I But Known . . .
Virgil had left early and would be gone at least overnight, and perhaps for a couple of days. His partner, Dewayne Lester, needed him to surveil a worker’s compensation insurance cheat who was expected to move houses in the next couple of days. If he did any of the heavy lifting himself, then the insurance company wanted proof he was malingering.
I expected I’d do on-camera interviews with the Haunt Hunt guys, Todd and Stu. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but if I was going to be on camera, I was going to look good. So I styled my hair the way I like it, in a half updo. My makeup was perfect—smoky eye and all—and I put on something I’d bought in New York City at Monif C., a black, cold shoulder jumpsuit. Then I rethought that. It was way too fashionable for what I’d seen of the show. I chose instead an ecru lace tunic top and jeans, but left my hair and makeup.
I let Becket out for his morning constitutional, baked more muffins, let them cool while I did dishes, then packed them in tubs. I was going to make the rounds in town, a little post-honeymoon visitation to thank everyone who had made my wedding so magical, including my dearest friend, Shilo, my fey, magical hippie darling who was, I had found out, indeed pregnant. I had suspected it first, had urged her to test for it and to start taking care of her growing baby’s needs.
And I was right. Hours before my wedding, which she and Jack had come back to attend from her newly reunited family in West Virginia, she had whispered the news to me. It was my wedding present, and there could never be a better one. I don’t have actual blood family; sweet Shilo is the nearest thing to a sister I’ve ever had, so I would be an aunt. I wanted to check in with her and see how she was doing.
And Doc English! He had given me away, representing, he told me, the men of my family, all gone now: my father, my great-uncle Melvyn, and my grandfather Murgatroyd. Pish, of course, had presided, Hannah and Lizzie had been my maids of honor, beside me at the fireplace in the great hall of my castle, while Virgil (his groomsmen were two of his brothers, whom I met for the first time on our wedding day) and I said our vows. Hannah, seated in her mobility wheelchair, cried, tears streaming down her pale, ethereal face. Lizzie dashed tears away, too, while she grabbed her camera and snapped pictures. While in town I would visit Hannah, Gogi, and everyone else, but the gifts I had brought home would wait for a calmer opportunity. I had all the time in the world, and would wait until the ghost hunters had left so I could have all my friends to dinner.
So, sure, I was still a little peeved about the Haunt Hunt escapade, but even the weird specter of a ghost hunting crew at my castle could not undo the happiness I felt bone deep.
Even if my groom had slipped out at dawn, after kissing me awake.
Pish was in his sitting room working on the finishing touches on his next book about the financial industry and the con artists who abuse it. I skipped in, kissed his cheek, told him where I was going, and escaped as he tried to apologize yet again for the pseudo–reality show fiasco that was about to erupt. I laughed, too happy with life to let him feel any remorse about that. “We’ll get through it, my darling Pish,” I said. “Back to work!”
Autumn Vale was crisp and sparkling in the autumnal sunshine. There is something so invigorating about autumn air, and our pretty town looks its best, named after its most attractive season. As I descended into town from my lofty Wynter Castle peak, driving in the old Cadillac willed to me along with the castle, joy bubbled up and overflowed. It had taken me a long time to escape the pain of mourning for my late husband, Miguel Paradiso, but Autumn Vale, my friends within it (as well as my New York friends, Pish and Shilo), and Virgil, had finally done what years in the city had not been able to accomplish. While I still remembered Miguel with love and gratitude, I had moved forward and was living for now and the future.
My first stop was brief, the Vale Variety and Lunch, to drop off muffins and be thoroughly teased by Mabel, the manageress, about my “glow.” Isadore Openshaw, now working full-time at the lunch counter, offered me a rare smile. We’d never be best friends, but the woman was finally seeing that I meant her no harm. Trust me, with Isadore that is a huge step.
Mabel caught my arm as I was about to leave and pulled me aside. “One of those psychics was here this morning!” she said. “Sitting right at one of my tables. Large as life! I almost keeled over. Hubba hubba, what a gorgeous man!”
Gorgeous man . . . really? “You mean Dirk Phillipe, right?”
She nodded, picking a fleck of tobacco off her lip. “I watch that show Haunt Hunt all the time. It’s gotten ten times better since he came on.”
“Did you talk to him?”
She grinned. “I sure did. We chatted for half an hour.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her cardigan pocket and thrust it at me. “He even signed an autograph for me!”
I read it; on a Vale Variety napkin Dirk had written, in scrawled handwriting, To a smart lady, with much appreciation, Dirk Phillipe. I gazed at her, nonplussed. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought that Mabel “Tiger Lady” Thorpe, hard-nosed skeptic, would be a fan of Haunt Hunt. “What did you talk about?” I asked, handing the autograph back.
She stuffed it back in her pocket, leaned forward slightly, glanced around, and muttered, “I told him about when I was a teenager, and my brothers dared me to climb into the garage on the Wynter property. I saw something that night, and I’ll never know what it was, but it was not human! I never went back.”
I sighed. “I’ve been in there dozens of times and never had an experience.”
She sniffed. “Well, so that’s the final word, right, and no one else is entitled to an opinion?”
“I didn’t meant that, Mabel, I . . .” But she’d walked away in a huff. I knew better than to follow her. I had to let it be, and she’d have forgotten all about it next time I saw her.
I then stopped off at Binny’s Bakery. Both Binny and Patricia were there. They had helped cater my reception, a very small affair, and Patricia had done the wedding cake, a representation of the castle, with Virgil and me on the doorstep. Patricia had added a bulletin board to the bakery customer area, and a giant picture of the cake was pinned to the center. I gave them both checks for their services, thanked them, hugged them, told Binny what her niece, Lizzie, was going to be doing with the Haunt Hunt crew on-site, and toddled on my way.
Off to Golden Acres and a visit with my mother-in-law . . . Gosh, it is weird to say “mother-in-law,” especially about Gogi, one of my first friends in Autumn Vale. I had a coffee with her in her office—she owns and runs Golden Acres—told her what was going on and what Mabel had told me, then found Doc.
He was sitting in the parlor, which is kind of a visiting room, with a table holding coffee and tea for clients and their guests, and shelves of books. Doc had taken up reading, sometimes with just his jam jar–bottom glasses, but often with both them and a magnifying glass. He was making his way through the classics, all the books he didn’t have time to read, he tells me, as a busy general practitioner, husband, and father. His two kids, whom I had never met, lived on opposite ends of the country and visited only a couple of times a year. But both were approaching retirement age and would be able to visit more often.
Doc sat in his usual seat by a strong light, reading a newer book (for him) on Marxist philosophy. He looked up as I sat down, and laid the book aside. “Good to see ya. And a good reason to stop reading this horse pucky for a while.”
“If you hate it, why are you reading it?”
He chuckled. “Same reason I eat bran; everyone needs fiber in their diet to keep things moving.”
We talked for a few more minutes. He was finally scheduled for cataract surgery to fix his eyesight. He was upbeat about it, and I didn’t let him know I was worried. But I had to get back to the castle before the ghost crew started filming, since I wanted to watch what they were up to.
“You know, that there ghost crew was here this morning.”
I sat back down, the sofa springs squeaking alarmingly. “Really? Why?”
He shrugged. “I dunno, but the one guy, wearing a long black coat, was talkin’ to Hubert.”
Chapter Six
OH NO! I felt a twinge in the pit of my stomach. A charming octogenarian with a quirky sense of humor, Hubert Dread never met a conspiracy theory he couldn’t amplify. He delights in passing on—or more accurately, making up—stories about alien abduction (anal probes and all), government spying via drones (who knows; maybe he’s right about that?), New World Order conspiracy fantasies, and more. He has his nephew, Gordy, who works for me sometimes taking care of the Wynter Castle grounds, completely taken in about it all. What could Hubert have told Dirk Phillipe? And how would it affect the Haunt Hunt shoot?
“Did you overhear anything?”
“You know Hubert; he mumbles and whispers. But that Dirk fella . . . he’s got a real showy voice.” Doc eyed me. “I think he was askin’ Hubert about Tom Turner and those Hooper boys.”
“Hubert never even met any of them.”
Shrugging, Doc said, “Stop worrying. It’ll be fine.”
I left feeling unsettled and a little queasy. I ended my visit to town where I always do, at the library. Hannah Moore, one of my favorite people, was behind her desk, seated in her mobility wheelchair, eyes fixed on her computer screen, avidly watching something. When I greeted her and circled, I saw that it was an episode of Haunt Hunt, one of the ones I had seen the night before of their visit to a haunted prison.
After we hugged, she exclaimed, trembling with excitement, “Merry, the whole crew was here this morning. They filmed a sequence with me! I don’t know if they’ll use it or not, but I talked to one of the investigators and two others. Some guy, Dirk, and a woman, Millicent?”
The psychics? Why would they talk to a librarian researcher, other than to have stuff to “see”? “What did you all talk about?”
“They asked me about the castle. I told them some of the history, about the original builder and the area. I loaned them books on Autumn Vale. The gentleman who produces the show, Hugh Langley, made notes. He said it was for the voice-over narration.”
“Is that it?”
She bit her lip and eyed me. “Well, not exactly.”
“What is it exactly?” Her narrow face was screwed up into a grimace. I stared at her with sudden suspicion. “Hannah, what is it? You look nervous.”
“I kind of got . . . giddy.” Her slim hands fluttered and she giggled, then gave me a wide-eyed look. “Honest, Merry, I don’t know what got into me. I’ve never been a part of anything so exciting! I’m afraid I talked too much.”
Putting my hand over her slim-fingered one resting on the joystick control for her motorized wheelchair, I said, “Honey, I’m sure you didn’t.” I had faith in Hannah’s natural reticence, as well as her innate good sense.
“They asked an awful lot of questions about . . . about Tom’s murder,” she said. “And the troubles with the Hoopers—stuff like that.”
Good heavens . . . the murders. Again! First from Hubert, and now her. Poor Tom Turner, whose body I found a day or so after moving into the castle, and my trouble with the Hoopers, Dinah, Davey, and Dinty. This didn’t bode well for being able to leave behind the trouble I had had over the last year. I was silent, thinking over the endless possibilities for mortification.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her tone fearful.
“Don’t worry about it. Hubert already told Dirk Phillipe about the deaths, so it’s okay no matter what you said.” I reached out and hugged her. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
I released her and scanned her outfit. Her legs are small and she can’t use them, which is why she has a mobility chair. She’s slightly self-conscious about it, enough so that her mother, who makes all her clothes, sews gauzy skirts and dresses of pastel chiffon, things that drape nicely without being billowy enough to catch in her chair’s wheels. But today she was wearing an olive green skirt suit—an unusual color for her, but flattering—in material that had a sheen. The skirt wasn’t a pencil skirt, but it wasn’t a true A-line, either. It was something in between, and the fabric for the skirt was soft, to drape over her knees. She had also taken to wearing more accessories, bracelets altered to fit her tininess, and a burnt orange headband swept her cotton candy hair from her high forehead.
“You look very smart today,” I said. “Is this outfit new?”
She sat up a little straighter. “I’m a businesswoman and I should look like one, so Mom made this outfit. I’ve been asked to speak at the local library association meeting in Batavia next month about accessibility in libraries. Do you think this is appropriate?”
I eyed it and nodded. “It’s perfect. Your mom’s a genius; it’s tough to find skirt suit material that will lie flat when you’re sitting and fall over the knee properly. She could design a whole line of wheelchair fashion.”
“She’d love that!”
Fashion out of the way, we talked for a moment longer. “So, did the Haunt Hunt cast talk about anything else while they were here?”
“Not really. I got them out some research books. Two of them wanted to use my computer, but I couldn’t let them do that; it has patron information on it!”
“Why would that matter?”
Hannah’s face pinched in shock. “Merry! It’s private stuff, like phone numbers and addresses! I had my personal laptop here, though, so I let them use that, while I talked to that nice man, Mr. Langley.”
“Which two?”
“Todd Halsey and Dirk Phillipe.”
“And they wanted to use your computer for research?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. I guess they could have done other stuff. What else would they do?”
I shrugged. They all had devices—cell phones, laptops, tablets—and I have Wi-Fi at the castle, so e-mail or research they could do there, if they wanted. “I’m curious. . . . Can I check your laptop browser history?”
“I can’t let you do that, Merry.”
“But . . . why?” The expression on her face puzzled me; it was a mixture of horror and shock, as if I’d suggested she throw a nest of baby birds into traffic.
“It’s private.”
“I won’t look at any of your stuff, Hannah, just whatever the Haunt Hunt guys were looking up.”
“You don’t understand. If it was just my stuff on my computer you could look at it; of course. But they were library patrons.”
“But it’s your computer, not the library computer.”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Sorry, Merry. It wouldn’t be right.”
I know her well enough to know when it is useless to argue. She has a finely honed sense of right and wrong, and I trusted her judgment as much as my own, or perhaps even more. I stood and stretched. “I guess I’d better get going.”
“You’re not angry, are you?” she asked, in a small voice.
“Honey, I could never be mad at you, and why would I be?” I leaned over and hugged her tight. “You’re right, and I’m wrong. But I think I’d better go home and see what chaos the Haunt Hunt crew has wrought. I don’t dare leave them alone for too long. Talk to you soon, Hannah!”
“Let me know how it goes!”
“I will.”
As I headed toward the door I saw, on one of the long tables that filled the center of the room, a piece of paper with writing scrawled on it. I picked it up and glanced at it. It appeared to have been written by one of the guys from Haunt Hunt; it had their website scrawled on it, as well as the IMDb url, an NY dot gov website, and some random scribbling; FOI, SAFE, Art. 400, and other nonsense. I looked back; Hannah was frowning at her computer screen with intense concentration. I pocketed the piece of paper, curious about what the guys were using Hannah’s laptop for when they all had devices of their own. Maybe some of the scribbling would give me some insight.
