Much Ado About Muffin (12 page)

He hugged me back, hard. “I'm so glad you're back,” he said, his voice muffled against my shoulder.

“I'm never leaving again.”

“Truly?” he asked, holding me away from him and gazing at me.

“Truly. Hey, I promised Becket. You don't promise things to a cat unless you're serious.”

We finished up and I drove to town, determined to get to the bottom of a lot of things. I visited Gogi first, and sat in her office chatting over a cup of cappuccino made in the new coffeemaker that Virgil had given her as a birthday gift. It reminded me that Virgil's birthday was in a week. What
to get him? Myself, perhaps, gift wrapped? I would enjoy the unwrapping.

“Agent Esposito has had his time with me,” Gogi said, frowning down into her cup. “That man! He made me feel like I had done it. I'm sympathetic now to folks who tell little lies, or who get nervous under questioning by the police. I always thought if you were innocent, there was no reason to worry.”

“That's because you have Virgil as a son.” I watched Gogi across the desk. She is a neat, tidy, sixty-plus woman with a cap of glossy professionally dyed blonde hair and impeccable fashion sense. It wasn't quite autumn yet, so she still wore a lightweight safari-style cotton skirt suit and Cole Haan slingbacks. “Why was Esposito questioning
you
? I can't believe he'd think you killed the woman.”

“I had a bit of a run-in with Minnie in early July. She knew I was working to get her replaced and confronted me one day when I was walking. She drove right up on the curb, hustled out of her car, and berated me in the nastiest language. I was worried and called the police. It was Deputy Urquhart who responded—imagine my luck—and he was neutral to the point of being ridiculous. Minnie was smart enough to tone it down in front of her nephew, and I had no witnesses to the altercation.”

I thought for a moment. “Urquhart told Agent Esposito about that run-in, and that's why the agent is targeting you?”

She shrugged. “It's the only thing I can think of.”

The Urquhart family was the one blight on my life in Autumn Vale. “Does she have any family who would know what was going on in her private life?”

“I don't think so; she's alienated most of her family in Ridley Ridge. I know because I've tried to find someone to talk some sense into her. Why do you ask?”

“I've heard that Minnie was doing online dating.
Apparently one of the guys that Rusty has hired was going out with her. They met online and he moved here to be close to her. What do you know about that?”

She shook her head and blinked, but didn't answer. “This murder seems too personal for someone who just met her; the way she was killed, I mean. That guy would have no access to the weapon.”

“Roma's letter opener,” I said, with a grimace. “I'd like to know how the killer got it.”

“The one thing I do feel guilty about, and maybe this is why I was so uncomfortable talking to Agent Esposito, is that this clears the way for what I want to do about the post office.”

The idea was to move a variety of services to a vacant building on a side street, one that had been built for offices back in the Victorian heyday of Autumn Vale. With elections coming up she had gotten local council members who were running for reelection on her side. If she had her way the township offices, as well as other departments, would share a compartmentalized but wheelchair accessible space with the post office.

“How were you getting information on her?” I asked, thinking of that campaign to get Minnie fired.

“
I haf my vays
,” she said in a vamped-up accent, and winked.

We talked a little more. I told her Virgil had discussed his FBI plans with me.

“I'm glad he told you,” she said, putting her hand over mine, where it rested on her desk. “I know we'll miss him if he makes it and heads off to Quantico, but—”

“But it's time he did something for himself,” I said. “He has my support, Gogi, whatever he wants.” My feelings were a lot more complicated than that, but I was not going to tell either of them how much I wished he wouldn't go. I got up and tugged at my walking shorts and jacket. “I'd better get
going. I want to figure out who did this. I don't believe Roma did, but she's making it hard not to suspect her.”

I headed over to Jack and Shilo's new home. Dewayne Lester was working alone, using a plane on a new handrail, wood chips forming curls and falling to the beaten-down grass under the sawhorse. It appeared that they had stabilized the porch and supported it structurally, as the jacks were gone. Dewayne looked up and smiled as he saw me.

“Is Shilo home?”

He nodded. “So is Jack. He's changing his clothes and is going to help me, since my partner is out of commission today.”

“Pete? What, too much beer at the bar in Ridley Ridge?”

“No, his allergies are acting up. The guy has eyes so red you'd swear he was a zombie. He says he's always like this in fall—ragweed or something.”

“I'm sorry. Shouldn't make assumptions.” I paused and watched his dark eyes as he regarded me calmly. “I heard you and Minnie were going out.”

He nodded. “I've only known her a few weeks. She was getting back into dating, I guess, after some time.”

“I'm the one who found her dead. I'm so sorry.”

He nodded. “It's an awful thing. She had her flaws, but she just wanted to be loved.”

“Don't we all?”

“You, I hear, have a thing with the sheriff.
If
we're talking love lives, I mean.”

I smiled in acknowledgement of his jest. “
If
we're talking love lives. You took quite the chance, moving here to be with Minnie, though you only met online.”

He eyed me warily. “Where'd you hear all that?”

“Around.”

“She had another fellow, too, who she was talking to. I don't know that she was all that thrilled when I told her I was coming to stay in Autumn Vale for a while.” He straightened
and put a hand to his back, stretching. “I'm not much for staying in one place. Here sounded as good as anywhere, and there was a job available with Rusty. So I moved.” He shrugged as if moving to a new town was no big deal.

Something was odd about Dewayne Lester, but I couldn't put my finger on it. He was not out of the running as a murder suspect, in my book. “Did she ever say anything about the kids who boarded with her?”

He bent back to his work. “She was worried about one of 'em.”

“Which one?”

“I don't know. She didn't tell me his name.”

His. “But it was definitely one of the
guys
she was concerned about? In what way? Worried
for
him, or
about
him?”

He paused again and looked up. “You sure do ask a lot of questions.”

Shilo erupted from the house, stomping across the porch and trotting down the stairs, gypsy skirts fluttering with movement, but she stopped abruptly when she saw me.

Jack came flying out after her. “Shilo, wait, honey, I'm sorry, I—” He, too, stopped as soon as he saw me.

“I came by to talk. Is it a bad time?” I looked between Shilo and Jack.

She gave me a quick hug and mumbled something about an appointment. She jumped into Jezebel and roared away. I stood staring after her as Jack joined me.

“We were in the middle of an argument,” he said glumly.

“What was the argument about?”

“I don't even know. She got a letter, and I asked who it was from. She wouldn't tell me. It was just idle curiosity on my part; no one gets actual letters in the mail anymore. I guess I thought it might be from her family.” His homely, bony face was drawn down in a hangdog expression, and he shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “She threw it in her purse and said she had to go out. I grabbed her arm to get
her to stop for a minute, and she got mad, said I was being snoopy and she didn't want that.”

I was worried, and so was Jack. He didn't know what was wrong. Shilo had been moody for a few weeks, and had started avoiding him, he told me. “I'll get to the bottom of it, I promise, Jack. I'll track her down and
make
her tell me what's going on.”

“Not right now, Merry, please,” he said, touching my arm. “I never want her to feel like I'm trying to cage her, you know?”

The worry in his eyes made me tear up. He loved her so much. I couldn't swear he had nothing to worry about, couldn't reassure him that she'd stay with him forever. I just didn't know.

Jack got me an Adirondack chair from the shed and plunked it down while he and Dewayne got to work. As Dewayne sanded and planed, Jack applied a wood sealant, prepping the railings and spindles for white paint. When Dewayne left to go get some more supplies from the Turner Construction site, I took the opportunity to ask Jack what he knew about the guy.

Jack sat down on the grass and frowned, shaking his head. “Not much. He seems like a good guy, but he's kind of sketchy about his past, you know? I guess he's ex-military—I noticed a faded old Desert Storm tattoo on his shoulder one day—but other than that . . .” He shook his head and stared up at the sky.

“Have you known Minnie for long, Jack?”

“Sure, but we didn't have the same friends or anything. Something was going on in her life, that's one thing I'm sure of. A few weeks ago she called me to come evaluate her house.”

“Evaluate her house? Why would she do that? Was she going to sell?”

“She said no.”

“Why else?”

“Lots of possible reasons: she may have been thinking of new insurance coverage, making out her will, taking out a loan using it as collateral, any number of other things.”

I watched him. “But you have an idea, don't you?”

“I'm not sure, Merry. But I do know one thing that troubles me. Minnie has recently been spending a lot of time talking to a drug dealer I know of in Ridley Ridge.”

“A
drug
dealer?”
I blurted out.

Jack nodded.

I laid my head back and thought about it, but then sat up straight. “Whatever else she was, Minnie was
not
a druggie. Really, the idea's ridiculous, and you know that better than I do. So why would she be talking to a drug dealer? Maybe he's another one of her nephews and she was trying to straighten him out.”

“He's not related, I know that. I'll ask around.”

Dewayne screeched his battered pickup truck to a halt along the curb. As he returned to his work I regarded him thoughtfully. “I imagine the police have spoken to you about your relationship with Minnie. Probably asked you where you were that morning.”

“I
have
spoken to the police about my relationship with Minnie.” He straightened from cleaning a spindle with mineral spirits, the smell tangy on the dank, listless air that had
rolled in after the brief promise of cooler weather this morning. “Are
you
asking where I was?”

He seemed a little defensive, but after all, I was a stranger and he owed me no information. “It's none of my business, is it?” I smiled, even though I did wonder, where
was
he that morning? Perhaps there were ways to figure it out. I got up and shouldered my purse. “Jack, walk me to my car?” As he got to his feet I turned to Dewayne. “I didn't mean anything by asking questions, I promise you. Snooping is getting to be a bad habit with me.”

“So I've heard,” he said, and bent back to his task.

Jack took my arm and we moved toward my car.

“Where is Dewayne staying, Jack? Was he staying with Minnie?”

“Nope. As far as I know he's staying in the trailer on the Turner Construction site, kind of acting as a night watchman.”

I remembered that before I left in the spring Binny had said something about kids breaking into the Turner Construction storage shed and stealing tools. They must have done a background check on Dewayne if they trusted him so much.

“I'm going to try to talk to Shilo, Jack,” I said as we approached my car. “There's something I'm concerned about.” I told him what Doc had seen, and how Shilo had behaved. He had a right to know. We all only wanted what was best for her, but she had a hard time trusting that. The letter she had received but not shared with Jack worried me. He nodded, but didn't say anything.

I changed the subject, and filled him in on the little I'd heard about Karl Mencken's run-in with Minnie the night before she died. As I got in my car, I asked, “What's the address of Minnie's house?”

He gave it to me, I pulled away and drove there, a seedy backstreet minutes away. There were still many parts of
Autumn Vale that I hadn't explored, and this area was one of them; the whole neighborhood looked run-down, like folks had stopped caring a long time ago. As I slowly cruised, I noticed a couple of houses for sale, and a few that looked abandoned.

I found the correct address and saw that Minnie's house was a century bungalow in desperately poor condition with two huge trees out front. One, an old, leaning poplar with dead branches, was far too close to the stone foundation, which was cracked and mossy, with crumbling mortar. There was an overgrown forsythia bush in front, so big the branches trailed down to the ground. The clapboard siding was probably once a brilliant white, but now it was mostly bare gray boards, stripped of paint by time and weather. What little remained was peeling and bubbled. The whole thing had an atmosphere of desolation and decrepitude. Even the concrete block porch in front, with two columns supporting a porch roof, looked dizzy, leaning drunkenly to the right.

Two of Minnie's boarders, Brianna and the dark-haired boy—probably Logan Katsaros—exited, talking intently. They must still be living there, but I was sure the FBI had searched the house from top to bottom. It wasn't as if she had died there, but they still would have searched for clues to anyone who may have wanted her dead.

Janice had told me that Minnie made virtual offspring out of her young boarders, Karl, Brianna, and Logan. Who knew what tensions and turmoil went on within the walls of that moldy, decrepit-looking house? One or all of them could have their own reasons to kill Minnie, who must not have been the most congenial of landladies despite trying to mother them.

My curiosity, once stirred, would not be put to rest. I had to find out, I thought, watching them descend from the crumbling porch onto the walk, where they paused as she
rummaged in her shoulder bag for something. With not much thought and even less planning, I got out of my car and headed toward them. Had they conspired to kill Minnie so they could . . . what? At best they'd be out of a home, and at worst, they'd be the subject of a police investigation as well as being out of a home.

Unless there was something
else
going on. Had Minnie caught them at something illegal? Was that why she was visiting a drug dealer in Ridley Ridge? I could not forget seeing Brianna with that suspicious package in the parking lot behind Golden Acres.

I approached with what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Hi! Are you the owners of this house?” I asked.

The boy eyed me with interest. “Why?”

Brianna dug him in the ribs with her elbow, but he shrugged and moved out of her reach.

“I've been told there are some houses along this street for sale. Is this one of them?”

“It will be,” he said.

“I'm looking for cheap properties to buy up and redevelop.” To them I must have looked businesslike in my dressy shorts and jacket.

“I've seen you before,” Brianna said, her voice laden with suspicion. “Coming out of Golden Acres.”

“Sure. I visit an old fellow there, Doc English. Now, about the house . . . Who can I talk to about it?”

“Us,” the fellow said.

I thrust out my hand and took his in a shake. “I'm Merry Wynter. I own Wynter Castle, that big place out of town? But I'm looking for investment opportunities in Autumn Vale. And you are?”

“Logan Katsaros.”

“Pleased to meet you. And you are?”

“Brianna,” she said, without elaborating, and without offering her hand.

“So you think I could obtain this house, and maybe some of the others along here, for redevelopment? I don't think you mentioned who owns the house?”

“That's up in the air right now,” he said. “But we could maybe arrange for you to get first dibs for, like, a commission?”

Brianna grabbed his T-shirt sleeve and jerked it. “We can't
do
that.” She turned to me. “This was Minnie Urquhart's place, and she's dead.”

“I'm so sorry!” I said. “You rented it from her?”

“We rent rooms,” Logan said, with an appropriately sad expression, given that he was trying to help facilitate a sale of the property just seconds before.

“So who owns it now? I mean, who is the inheritor?”

“We don't know,” Brianna said. “You'll have to talk to the lawyer, Mr. Silvio, about it.” She grabbed Logan's wrist. “We have to go. I'm late for work.”

“I guess the police have been here already?”

Logan turned back to me, even as he was being dragged away. “Yeah. They've had a good look around, but she wasn't killed here, you know. So it's not haunted or anything.”

“Okay. Thanks for the information.” I smiled and waved, and he waved back, winking, before striding off with his arm slung over Brianna's shoulders. She shrugged it off.

I got back in my car, retrieved my cell phone, and called Janice. Simon, her husband, was the local bank manager; after a scare when he thought he might lose his job and face prosecution for some funky goings-on at the bank, he had pulled up his socks, relearning his trade and making all of us proud. Janice was the only one I knew who would be able to get bank information from him, so I told her what I needed to know and she said she'd call me back.

Logan had mentioned Andrew Silvio, the lawyer. He was pretty much the only lawyer in town, and had been my uncle's probate attorney. As such, we had gotten to know each other
pretty well. But he was a stickler for the rules, and would not likely offer me private information about Minnie Urquhart's affairs. However . . . as in the case of Simon, his wife was much more likely to be able to wangle info from the man than I would be. I called Gogi, who was in a book club group with Sonora Silvio and knew her much better than I. She might be able to find out what I needed to know.

I sat for long minutes staring into space, thinking. When I was young I was always moving, hopping from place to place, restless, fretful. The older I get, the more apt I am to stare out windows for long periods of time without moving. Stillness allows the brain to access the furthest recesses of the mind. That's my story, anyway.

At length I rustled around in my purse once more as I sat and stared at the dilapidated home that was Minnie's castle, and fished out a notebook. I had too many things to consider, find out, and confirm, and too little brainpower. So I made a list.

Where did Roma go the morning Minnie was killed?

Why was Minnie having her home evaluated?

Who was Minnie's next of kin, and who inherited whatever she left?

Why was Minnie seen talking to a drug dealer on more than one occasion?

How did the killer get the letter opener, presuming the killer and Roma weren't the same person?

Was there a reason Minnie was killed at the post office? Was anything stolen?

My phone chimed. It was Janice.

“Simon was pretty cagey,” she said, her voice full of satisfaction. “But I got your answer. Want to trade?”

“Trade?”

“Quid pro quo, Merry. You do something for me, I give you information.”

“What do you want?” I asked. With Janice, you never knew, and I couldn't promise without knowing. She might want something ridiculous or devious.

“I want you to talk Pish into scrapping
Much Ado About Nothing
and get him to do
The King and I
instead.”

“I can't do that!”

“Why not? Pish will do anything you tell him.”

“No, he
won't
.” If I made a big deal out of it, he probably would, but that's the thing: I would
never
make a big deal out of it to get him to do something for my benefit. “We don't have that kind of relationship.”

“Okay, fine, you don't want the info enough, then.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “I'll talk to him, but I can't
promise
I can talk him out of
Much Ado About Nothing
.”

“You have to try, Merry. I mean really
try
!”

“Okay, I will really
try
. Hannah would prefer
The King and I
, too. She'd like to play Lady Thiang. Now, what do you know?”

“Minnie did come into the bank and ask for a loan. But she didn't want to tell Simon what it was for. He told her that he couldn't give her a loan for some unspecified purpose. And anyway, if she was going to use her house as collateral she needed to get an evaluation done first. I guess she called Jack to do an evaluation. You know Jack; he's a straight shooter. He apparently told her that her dump would get her enough for a loan for a pack of gum and a coffee. Maybe.”

I smiled but felt some sadness. Minnie seemed like one of those folks who struggle to understand life, while lashing out blindly at those who could be her friends if she let them. I never wanted to make an enemy of her, but neither did I try too hard to be friends, not after the way she spoke about Gogi to me. “Did she ever go back?”

“Yeah, just last week. She went in to talk to Simon about getting a loan to fix her house up. She said if she ever wanted to pass it on, she had to smarten up and make it worth something. It was all she had, her legacy.”

“I wonder what that meant?”

“I have no idea. Minnie and I weren't on the best terms.”

Maybe Minnie was getting older and thinking of family; maybe she had a nephew or niece she was especially close to. It didn't appear to have anything to do with her murder, but it was a part of the riddle, like that piece of sky in a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't look quite right until it clicks into place. Maybe this would make sense once seen within the context of more information.

My phone rang. It was Gogi, and she told me that Sonora had discovered a lot from her husband. “Minnie had been in to see Andrew about estate planning.”

“Estate planning?” I opened my car window and stared at the dispirited, sagging house that was crying out for a wrecker to do his job.

“He'd done her will years ago, but she wanted to change it. She wanted to know if there was some way to tie up her estate so that her inheritor would have to abide by certain rules to get his or her bequest.”