Death of an English Muffin (22 page)

I
HAD A
sleepless night, tossing and turning and worrying. I felt in my bones that the crime came down to Lauda, Patsy, Vanessa, or Barbara. Which one?

It was Friday and that was normally a baking day, but Zeke had been there the previous afternoon and I sent a bunch of muffins back to Autumn Vale with him, enough for Golden Acres and the Vale Variety and Lunch. So I didn’t need to go anywhere, and decided to pin each of the ladies down and figure it out.

Barbara was again sitting out on the flagstone terrace wrapped in a quilt, her bulk huddled like a depressed quilted hilltop. I brought her out a cup of her favorite tea, Earl Grey. In my comfort clothes, yoga pants and a long tunic T-shirt, I sat cross-legged on the edge of the flagstone terrace, staring off down the lane.

“Barbara, I feel like you are maybe one of the more realistic of your group, the one with a firm grasp on the personalities of the others.” Flattery was always a good start to
every conversation, I had learned in my time as a stylist to models, whose fragile egos needed to be propped up. Instead of complimenting them on their looks or fashion sense, which they were accustomed to, I always chose something else: their business judgment, intelligence, sense of humor. It was disarming.

But Barbara Beakman was too cagey an old bird for that. “What do you want, Merry?”

I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I want your considered opinion on who did this awful thing.” I turned to face her, looking up into her hooded eyes, the wrinkles making them into slits as she narrowed her eyes against the sun. “Who, among you, is capable of killing Cleta Sanson?”

She smiled, settling her chins on the soft quilt drawn up over her bosom. “You don’t think I did it, do you?”

Well, of course I thought it was possible, but I wasn’t going to admit that to her. “Why would you? Of them all, I just feel like you don’t have any reason. You seemed on good terms with her.” Enough to double-team in bullying on occasion, I added in my mind. “And your absences from the tea that afternoon are documented, right? You went back to the kitchen once, and . . . where else?”

“I did go to the bathroom on the main floor, before it became the scene of the crime.” She chuckled, and it shuddered over her body. “I have no clue who killed Cleta, but I do think she had it coming for her years of bullying.”

“I know I’ve asked this a million times, but why did you all put up with it?”

“Some things you just get used to.”

“Not bullying. There was something else going on. Don’t you think? What was she holding over people?”

“That’s an interesting thought,” she said. “You’re no doubt thinking of that old scandal of mine, my dead husband.”

I physically jolted and she laughed.

“Of course I figured out you knew. Someone would have
told you at some point. We haven’t lived this long without being in proximity to some meaty scandals. The question you have to ask is, what are the
other
ladies’ scandals?”

I recalled Pish telling me how Lush was heartbroken over something Cleta had done. I had never followed up on that, caught up in all the other stuff that had happened. Though I had dismissed Lush as a suspect, I didn’t want to overlook anything. “Okay, what
are
the other ladies’ scandals?”

“You think I’m going to supply them to you on a platter? Go find out yourself.”

I watched her for a moment, huddled into the quilt, frown etched on her face. “Are you all right?”

“Patsy drives me nuts. She complains constantly, but she has a child who is always concerned about her. She’s the lucky one, but you wouldn’t know it.”

“Her daughter seems like a nice woman.”

“What kind of a name is Pattycakes for a grown woman?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, and it would only bring on another wave of negativity anyway. “Why did you come here, Barbara?”

“What else did I have? I’d have been stuck in New York with no friends and nothing to do.” She sucked in a deep breath, then cried out, “Who the hell wants an old woman like me around?”

Her words, like a wounded animal’s keening cry, got to me. “It sounds like you’re in a bad place. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m old and getting older. How could that
not
be a bad place?”

“I understand. Coming to Autumn Vale was my answer when I was stuck and going nowhere fast. I don’t mean to be snoopy, but are you actually ill? You seem to still have your mobility.” Better than that, she seemed to do just fine, when she had to move quickly.

“I was sick for a long time. That’s why I quite working with the theater.”

“But you’re better now, right? Couldn’t you go back to what you love, working with kids and theater groups? You have so much knowledge; you should share it.”

She shook her head and stared off into the distance.

“Just think about it. Barbara, I keep coming back to the same question: who told Cleta you were coming here? Not one of you will admit it.”

“They all said the same, that they were coming, but not to tell Cleta! And I didn’t, not really. She already knew and asked if I was going. I said yes, and she said she was, too. I assumed someone had broken down and asked her, Lush probably. It was too late to say no by then.”

“Would you have, if you’d known ahead of time that she was coming, too?”

“I guess I still would have come. What else was I doing? But I wasn’t the first to tell her.”

I stood and stretched. “Think about what I said. Consider going back to New York and getting involved in youth theater again. When you talk about it you sound happy.”

“I
was
happy, but I wouldn’t know where to start. Who would want an old woman around?” She shook her head.

“That’s up to you,” I said. She could talk herself right out of it, and probably would, but it was beyond what I could help her with. I put my hand on her shoulder. “Please, just think about it. Ask Hannah for some recent material on youth theater in New York. She’s a great resource and can find out anything for you.”

I went inside and headed to the kitchen. Juniper was scouring the sink, her favorite occupation, it sometimes seemed. It was as good a time as any to approach her about the cigarettes. I leaned against the counter. “You were good friends with Miss Sanson, weren’t you?”

Juniper shrugged and kept scrubbing.

“Juniper, stop; look at me.” She did, and I was surprised by the pain on her face. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

She rinsed her arms off and dried them carefully, wiping the countertop around the sink of any drips. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Yes, it is, and you can tell me.” My voice quavered just a little. I was afraid of what she might say but determined to get at what was upsetting her.

“I’m never going to be good enough,” she said, her voice low. “My mom always told me I was a screwup. I don’t know why you all put up with me, you and Binny and Em. And then you go and fix up my space so nice, even after I was smoking, and Miss Sanson died, and . . . and—” To my horror, Juniper—tough-as-nails, dangerous-to-cross Juniper—burst into tears, big ugly gulping sobbing tears that made her face red and her cheeks puff out.

I ran the cold water, got a clean cloth, and made her sit down, putting the cool cloth on her forehead and kneeling beside her on the hard flagged floor. I let her cry. There is nothing worse as a woman than being told not to cry. It threatened to be a long crying jag, so I pulled a chair over and sat knee to knee with her, waiting.

“What’s this all about?” I finally asked, when she took the cloth and mopped her eyes. She had been wearing Goth makeup when I first met her, but lately she had given up makeup completely, and it was a vast improvement. She was a very ordinary girl, with a very ordinary face—chin a little too pointed, eyes a little too small—but without the makeup she had an innocence to her look that was disarming.

She shrugged, her typical answer, but then she started talking. At first I couldn’t understand what she was talking about, but it soon emerged that she had been feeling guilty because Cleta Sanson had demanded she keep a secret from me.

“What secret?”

“That she snuck smokes all the time in her room. That’s why she took such a hissy fit about Shilo. Shi commented on the smell once, so Miss Sanson got pissed.”

I was angry all over again at the dead woman. “I wish I had known! I could have reassured Shilo. I suppose she gave you some of her cigarettes?” I said, thinking of the Treasurer Gold butts I had emptied from the attic.

Juniper looked a little shamefaced. She shook her head.

“You
took
them from Miss Sanson’s things?” I screeched.

“No way; I gave up stealing,” she said, with a virtuous sniff. “But Miss Sanson only smoked, like, an inch of them, and they’re really expensive. I was curious what made them so expensive . . . like, just how good were they? So instead of emptying her saucer of butts into the garbage I snuck the butts out in my pocket and smoked them.”

I tried not to look as disgusted as I felt. “So the only reason she wanted you instead of Shilo was because you smoked, too, and wouldn’t rat her out?”

“It wasn’t just that,” Juniper said. “She was real particular. She liked her towels to be squared off on the rack, with the finished edge—you know, the one with that band of braid—on the outside and halved properly. She couldn’t stand it the other way. Shilo just does whatever she feels like. Miss Sanson called her . . . uh . . . feckless? Is that a word?”

I nodded. “But Shilo is not feckless. So you two were birds of a feather?”

“I got along with her all right, but she sure was peculiar. I was cleaning in her room once and she shooed me out. Said she had a little business to conduct.”

“Business? With who?”

“One of the other ladies, she said.”

What kind of business would they have among them? Not one of them sold Avon or pot that I knew of. “Did you happen to see which lady it was she had business with?”

“The only one who went into her room after I left was Mrs. Schwartz. I kinda hung out in the gallery shining up that brass pot of dried flowers, ’cause I wanted to finish Miss
Sanson’s room. When Mrs. Schwartz came back out she was real mad and stomped off downstairs.”

Interesting. We chatted for a while after, but I couldn’t get that out of my head; Patsy Schwartz had gone into Cleta’s room and come out angry after talking about “business.” I remembered what Barbara had said about all of them having secrets, and Pattycakes’ assertion that Cleta collected them, using them to intimidate the others. I knew Barbara’s secret, but I didn’t know Patsy’s, which her daughter had refused to reveal. Nor, for that matter, did I know Vanessa’s secret. I let Juniper go, but I gave her a hard hug first. I clamped my hands on her shoulders and stooped a little to look her in the eye. “Juniper, I never want you to think you don’t deserve the stuff folks do for you. You’re a good person, a
valuable
person, and I like you.”

She wriggled out of my hold, her face getting red and her eyes tearing up, then she ducked her head and escaped.

I did all the prep for dinner, put everything back in the fridge, then went upstairs to glare at one of the empty rooms that was in progress, wallpaper partially stripped, paint colors striped on the walls for me to choose. This life I had taken on seemed so strange. When I was married I worked some as a stylist but kept myself free for Miguel’s weird schedule. He liked me to travel with him, and I saw Austria, Spain, Germany, and the Caribbean. I enjoyed life as a newlywed right up to the day I got the phone call that ended it all, telling me Miguel had crashed his car on the way to a shoot.

Then came eight years of slow progression from devastation to my current state, restless and uncertain about a love life. At Wynter Castle, I had opened a new chapter in the book of my life. Virgil Grace piqued my interest romantically; I felt the rush of attraction, the sense that this man was different from others, at least to me. I had been asked out a few times in the last eight years, but no one had appealed to
me until Sheriff Virgil Grace. Shilo called him my own personal stud muffin.

I just couldn’t face peeling more wallpaper, not with the mystery of who killed Cleta Sanson testing my patience and giving me a heartache and a headache. Death had once again laid its cold hand on my castle, my home. Maybe Cleta had earned her murder with the way she had lived, hoarding secrets like gold, using them as food like a vampire uses blood. But there was
never
a good reason to kill someone unless you or someone you loved were in imminent mortal danger.

I descended, dusting as I went, the banister, the great hall table, heading toward the library, thinking about the photo that Lizzie had shown me. All my life I had been afraid to ask my mother much about my father and his family. The subject seemed to upset her. My few questions weren’t answered anyway; she didn’t like to talk about it, and I always thought there would be more time. There was enough tension between us that I hesitated to create more. When she got sick, it was already too late. All we had time for was to scramble to doctors, treatments, diagnoses, all grim, all too little too late. We were hurtling toward some abyss that I could only dimly sense, and then at twenty-one I was alone, adrift without family until Shilo, Pish, and Miguel entered my life.