Much Ado About Muffin (4 page)

As they chugged away from the curb, I asked Janice to wait for a moment while I skipped into the bakery. Binny's Bakery was the first place I entered in Autumn Vale, and as such it holds a special place in my heart. The walls are lined with shelves of teapots, and the place always smells wonderfully of Binny's fabulous baked goods: focaccia, Portuguese rolls, cream puffs, Napoleons, and lots of other goodies. I stepped up and in, the little bells chiming over the door. This time it wasn't dour Binny at the counter, but a smiling Pattycakes.

“Merry!” she cried, raising the pass-through and sidling through the opening. She hugged me tightly; it was like being hugged by a fragrant pillow, soft and squishy. “I heard you were back. Roma called me last night. She was afraid she'd made a bad impression on you, but I reassured her you were probably just worn-out from your flight.”

I felt the subtle criticism. “You and Roma are friends?”

A voice from the bakery intoned, “More like freaking mother and daughter if you ask me!”

“Binny!” I cried. “Come on out here. I came in to see you.”

Binny Turner strode out from behind, her tunic covered in flour, her dark hair tucked up into a hairnet. She regarded me seriously, then looked over at Pattycakes, or Patricia, as she was properly called. I sensed some tension.

“It's good to see you, Binny. How is your dad doing?”

She gave me a rare smile. Her father, Rusty, had been
missing for a long time, almost a year. When she got him back a year ago, after tragically losing her brother, she had worried about his health for a while, as well as his legal bills, given the tangle he was in from his involvement with a con artist's web of deceit. “He's doing a lot better. In fact, he's got Turner Construction up and running again. There's lots of work. They're going to be moving a house off a lot near the sheriff's department, which has bought some land to expand. Dad's not doing much himself, yet, but he hired a few guys to work, plus Junior Bradley to manage the construction office and job sites.”

“Really? That's great, Binny.” Junior was an underqualified zoning commissioner who had messed up often during his tenure and who was facing some legal woes of his own. It was a bit of a surprise that he'd gotten work in the construction business, but he had been Binny's brother Tom Turner's best friend, almost like another son to Rusty, and he did need a job.

Patricia smiled and wriggled her eyebrows. “He's hired some out-of-towners, good-looking guys,” she said. “Hubba hubba.”

“I'm surprised you've had time to notice, with Roma calling you with her latest tale of woe every time you turn around,” Binny said, her tone dark.

My gaze volleyed between the two women. The sense of trouble brewing between them was clearly on point.

“She's an uneasy soul,” Patricia said mildly. “You need to cut her some slack.”

Binny turned and headed back to the work area. “I'll give her enough slack to hang herself,” she tossed over her shoulder. “Nice to have you back, Merry. Maybe you can start baking muffins again. Patricia is too
busy
for muffins most of the time.”

Patricia shrugged her ample shoulders. She's a big woman, like Janice, but favors comfortable yet kind of fashionable Alia plus-size wear, today a pair of tan capris and a madras blouse in pastels, her long hair wound up into a bun on the top of her head. She glanced back, then leaned toward me. “Binny doesn't like Roma, as you can tell.”

“They're really different women,” I murmured. If Patricia was a fan, then I wasn't going to spoil Roma's friendship by giving my own opinion of the diva.

A customer entered to order a birthday cake, so I returned to Janice, who stood waiting outside. As we walked on to the antique store, I told her what had gone down.

“I don't blame Binny a bit.” Janice sniffed. “That Roma is a pain. Got Pish wrapped around her pinkie, and Patricia, too? That's too much. I was promised—
promised!
—that the next piece our group did would
not
be an opera. We were supposed to do an operetta or a musical, like my favorite,
The King and I
!” She waltzed down the sidewalk and sang a snatch of “
Getting to Know You
.”

I was pleasantly surprised. She had a lovely, light soprano voice perfectly fit for operettas. You wouldn't have known that from her last performance, as Queen of the Night from
Die Zauberflöte
.

She stopped and turned. “Instead, thanks to Roma, we're doing an awful rendition of
Much Ado About Nothing
, with her royal highny in the lead part. Pish wants me to be Dogberry.
Dogberry!
”

I gave her a look of astonishment, since that was clearly what was called for.

She stared at me for a minute. “You don't have a clue who Dogberry is, do you?”

“Not a single clue,” I admitted as we got to her shop.

“Dogberry is the foolish constable,
and
he's a he,
and
a tenor!” She went in and slammed the door, then poked her head back out and said, “Say hello to Hannah and Gogi for me, will you?”

H
oping to see
both Gogi and Doc, I retrieved the Caddy and drove to the Golden Acres retirement home. The seniors' residence started life over a hundred years ago as a gracious home on a quiet, shady street a few blocks from downtown. Gogi had expanded it with a modest two-floor addition that stretched behind the house, giving room for a couple of dozen folks of varying abilities.

The front of the residence had been kept much as it was as a private home. I pulled up to the curb and parked, gazing up the sloping lawn to a grove of maples along a smooth pathway. The day had warmed up swiftly; upstate was suffering a hot and dry September. Several of the residents were sitting on benches in the shade, chatting. My favorite, Doc English, was not among them, I was disappointed to note. I was looking forward to seeing him.

I strolled up the walk, nodding to folks as they watched my progress, pausing in their conversations to do so. I entered through the double doors, passed the reception desk,
and headed for one of the common areas, a living room furnished with comfortable but supportive sofas and chairs.

Bookshelves lined the walls, except for a table that held urns of tea and coffee. In the corner on a sofa sat Doc, my favorite old-timer, with a book held up to a strong light. He was reading
Democratic Vistas
by Walt Whitman, a work I knew was political rather than poetical. Doc truly
was
a medical doctor, who had earned his degree partly with the help of the GI Bill. But in his retirement he had taken up poetry and prose reading with a vengeance, and at ninety-plus could hold an abstruse conversation with anyone, including Pish, one of his favorite people. Pish had been a financial wizard before his semiretirement, but he shared with Doc an appreciation of American poetry.

I watched for a moment, love for the old dude welling up in me. He is the closest I will ever get to knowing my great-uncle Melvyn Wynter, who left me Wynter Castle. Doc and my uncle were childhood friends and enlisted in the army after Pearl Harbor, served with honor, and came back from WWII together. He felt like the grandfather I'd never had.

Something must have caught his attention, because he turned slightly, his thick glasses sliding down his nose, and saw me. His expression gladdened; there is no better way to say it. He grinned, gappy teeth exposed. I knew why I had come back, and why Autumn Vale had wormed its way into my reluctant heart: it was love, pure and simple. Love for the people, for my family history, which I was just learning about, and for individuals like Doc English.

He tossed the book aside and struggled to his feet, holding his arms open; even as I walked toward him I noticed with concern a bandage around his foot.

“Merry, honey, I thought you were gone for good,” he said in my ear as we hugged. “And so did Pish, lemme tell ya. He visited me two, three times a week, faithful as a beagle, and told me he was afraid you'd sell up and marry that Spanish
creep.” His hearing wasn't that good, so he talked loudly. Some of the others in the living room eyed us with curiosity.

“I thought about it, Doc,” I joked, even as I felt a pang in my heart that Pish had hidden that fear from me. “Easy life; I didn't have to move a muscle. I was in danger of turning into one giant plate of paella!”

He patted my hips. “You look good. Feel good, too.” He paused and eyed me, his smudgy glasses askew on his beaky nose. “Or maybe you're back just to collect your things.”

I smiled. The men in my life seemed worried about my intentions. “I'm back for good, Doc.” I put my arms around him and squeezed again, then released. “For
good
, for good.”

He stared at me. “You mean you've finally decided you ain't going to sell the castle?”

“I'll find some way to keep it. I'm staying.” It was a momentous proclamation, but somehow, some way, I would keep Wynter Castle.

We sat and talked for a while. He had a sore on his foot that, because of his type 2 diabetes, wasn't healing. But he was doing fine, otherwise. He told me more unvarnished truth in a half hour than anyone else would in two days.

Emerald had moved into a house with Crystal Rouse. Doc called Consciousness Calling “that pack of mumbo jumbo crap.” I expressed my concern for Lizzie in the midst of it all. Lizzie, he told me, was still volunteering at Golden Acres, which she had begun doing as community service after a run-in with the law, and kept doing because it suited her.

“What do you think of Roma Toscano, the diva Pish invited to stay?”

He chuckled. “Pish brought her to meet me. I kinda like her. She adds a little color to the neighborhood, a little vivacity. She flirts with me.
And
every other man in sight. But I kinda feel sorry for Pish; he creeps around visiting folks Roma's upset so he can placate 'em. Puttin' out fires she's started with her tongue. I told him, stop worrying about it so
much. People get too cranked over stupid stuff, then that's their problem, not his.”

Hmm . . . so everything wasn't so shiny happy in Pish's world. I stored that info to use on him later, when I tried to persuade him to send Roma back to the city. I told Doc I knew Roma from days gone by, but I had other concerns I wanted to discuss. “I'm worried about Shilo, more than anyone. She won't answer when I call her on the phone. I'm going to have to track her down and get her to talk to me.”

Doc frowned and wiped his glasses on the corner of his plaid shirt, managing to make them more smudgy than they had been. I took them from him and got a tissue.

“I seen her in the park one day talking to someone,” he said, blinking blindly. “Not Jack.”

“That doesn't surprise me. She's a friendly girl,” I replied, polishing his glasses and handing them back to him.

He put them on and squinted, grunting. “Better. Thanks, honey. No, this was something else. She looked scared, don't know why.”

“What did the guy look like?”

“Skinny, dark, dressed in city clothes, you know . . . blue jeans, a leather jacket—even on a hot day—and fancy boots.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“I was going to, but she saw me and hurried off; don't know if you've noticed, but I ain't so fast. Bet she didn't think I recognized her from a distance.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Oh, 'bout a month ago or so.”

“About the time she stopped coming to the phone to talk to me.” I pondered it a moment. “I'll go see her later today. She's not going to weasel out of it. Can I tell her what you saw if I need to?”

“Sure can.”

“Doc, my friend, I've been here over a year, haven't I?”

“Yup.”

“I'm thinking of throwing a party to celebrate. What do you think?”

“I'll be there with silvery tinkling bells on.”

I left my friend behind with his book and unsmudgy glasses and found Gogi in her small office off the reception area. She was glaring at a book of figures, her cheaters down low on her nose as she kept glancing from the book to the computer screen and back. It looked like she was trying to reconcile what was in the book with what was on her monitor.

“Merry!” she cried when she saw me. She leaped up and circled the desk, hugging me closely. “Glad you're back.
Some
folks thought you were gone for good, but I knew you'd come home.”

Home. I was home. One of the folks who thought I was gone for good may have been her son, Virgil. “I was speaking with Doc. Is his foot going to be okay?”

“We hope so. It'll take some time. It was funny to listen to him and the doctor consulting over it.”

I sat down opposite Gogi and thought for a moment, watching as her eyes strayed back to her screen. “Gogi, before I left, Virgil and I had a talk. I know about his ex-wife.” Virgil's ex, Kelly, was the daughter of Sheriff Ben Baxter, head of the sheriff's department for Ridley Ridge and its surrounding county, which abutted ours. Their marriage had been hasty, entered into for all the wrong reasons by them both. When she left Virgil, her father was angry; to him, marriage was for life. In a moment of weakness she told him that Virgil had been cruel to her, and had even struck her.

Virgil had spoken to her since, and she regretted it deeply—I had read the letter she wrote to him acknowledging her wrongdoing—but she was too afraid of losing her father's love and, more important to her, his respect, and hadn't gotten up the nerve yet to tell her father the truth. I hashed this out with Gogi. “It's unfortunate that the very
next day after we . . . uh, talked, I got the call that Maria was dying and headed to Spain.”

“And even more unfortunate that in two-plus months you couldn't make it back here, even for a visit.”

Her eyes were cold, her expression neutral, but I could tell she was hurt, mostly for her son. She was right; I
could
have come back to Autumn Vale, even if it was just a brief visit. “I care about Virgil, Gogi, but I'll admit I was confused, and I got caught up in my late husband's family. I don't know if I can explain it, but it was like going back to the security and comfort I felt while married to Miguel. This last year has been tough, and being with the Paradiso family . . . it was like shedding all that responsibility for a brief reprieve. Like returning to a cocoon.”

“It wasn't just you leaving, or even you staying away,” she insisted. “But you sounded so
different
when you called people.
I
noticed it.
Pish
noticed it. I'm sure Shilo and Virgil did, too.”

“You're right.” I paused for a moment and looked down at my hands, wanting to get the words right. “At first, all I could think about was coming back to Autumn Vale and . . . and Virgil. But after a while I began to feel numb, like that life, that
lifestyle
, had anesthetized me. I know now that it was partly the security and comfort that made Miguel so attractive to me. I had been through so much, and here was this wonderful, gorgeous, wealthy man who wanted me and
only
me. I loved him deeply, so the lifestyle was a bonus.” I paused, but then forged on. “But I don't love Tony. He asked me to marry him, Gogi, and that woke me up. I think his proposal, offhand and kindly meant as it was, shook me out of my fog.”

Gogi sighed and nodded, then reached across the desk and took my hand. “I'd like to stay angry at you, but I can't. As a woman who has struggled in her life, I get it.” She had lost two husbands and been through a serious bout with
breast cancer. “You need to tell Virgil this. He thought . . .” She shrugged and shook her head. “That's between you two. You sort it out.”

It dawned on me in that moment that Virgil may have interpreted my extended absence and increasing withdrawal as a reluctance to get involved with him in the face of his complicated ex–marital status. “I appreciate your insight. I don't regret being gone that long. I
can't
regret it, because I finally got the perspective on my marriage that I needed. I've idealized Miguel, completely forgetting that he was a mortal man. But I do regret how I've hurt you all. Even if I needed to figure things out, I could have expressed that. I'm sorry.”

I paused, emotion overtaking me, and stared out the small window that overlooked the lane to the back parking lot. Gogi was silent, but I could feel her watching me, her hand still holding mine. A hot wind tossed the trees in the distance. “Miguel and I fought once because he went back to Spain to care for his mother for six weeks when she had the flu and Tony was out of the country. But until now I had forgotten the
real
reason we fought: He wouldn't take me with him. He said it would upset Maria. Upset his mother to have her
daughter-in-law
around! I was right to be angry about that; he should have put me first in that case. It would have given Maria and me a chance to make friends. He wasn't perfect, but in eight years of mourning I had forgotten that.”

She smiled and squeezed my hand. “Now tell
Virgil
all that. I'm rooting for you two.”

I didn't tell her
everything
I had learned, of course, how I had figured out that my romantic interlude with Virgil had scared me. Retreating to Spain right then had cemented my fear that if I moved on and left my love for Miguel behind I would risk losing someone all over again. Virgil is in a sometimes dangerous business. He carries a gun, for heaven's sake. If I came to care for him as much as I thought I might, it would be a risk for so many reasons.

I took a deep breath and let go of her hand. “Hey, to change the subject, I heard about problems between Minnie Urquhart and Crystal Rouse. What the heck is going on with all of that?”

She looked more troubled than I thought she would be. “I don't like Minnie; you know that.
Everyone
knows that. But I'm almost on Minnie's side in this. I don't trust Crystal. I've tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but her simplistic magical positivity message is at the very least a nonanswer for those with real problems in their lives, and at worst a kind of blame-the-victim philosophy.”