Death of an English Muffin (11 page)

S
HE HAD TWO
battered suitcases, a 1960s powder-blue train case, and a guitar case on the flagstone terrace around her. I remembered them from her brief visit on the day she arrived, except for the guitar case—where did she get that? I heard a car roar off down the lane. A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky and a flash of lightning turned dark night into a photo shoot, the outline of the spiky pine tree forest in backlit relief. The Queen of the Night had arrived in polyester stretch pants and a Windbreaker.

“I have to pee,” she said, pushing past me into the great hall, somehow dragging
all
of her cases in with her. “Where is my aunt’s room? I’d like to get settled in.”

I turned to stare and was gaping like a landed fish when Pish arrived to save the day and toss her out. Or not.

“Lauda! What are you doing here?”

She peered into the gloom. “Oh. It’s
you
.” She looked back to me and squinted, swiping her hair out of her face. “So Auntie Cleta is dead. I figured, what is the point of me
paying for an expensive place in town when her room is paid up for the month? I’m the one who’s going to have to clean up her stuff anyway.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” I protested. “Her friends are here.”

“You’re going to make a bunch of eighty-year-old women pack up her stuff? What kind of woman are you?”

Hadn’t I just been bemoaning the fact that I didn’t know what I was going to do with Cleta’s stuff? And here was her niece, her only relative, offering to do it. I was willing to forgive her histrionics at the luncheon. If my aunt disappeared from New York, I might fear she’d been kidnapped, too. She seemed to care for Cleta more than the woman had deserved.

“Besides,” she said, bridling, double chin up in a pugnacious manner. “I’m executrix of the will and her sole heir, so it will all be mine to deal with anyway. You can check with the lawyer; it’s Swan Associates in Manhattan. I’d like to get an organized start. Who knows how someone else would handle it all?”

Something pinged in my mind when she said
will
, but I was driven by a need to make a quick decision, and I’d think about that later. Lush, who had followed her nephew, cleared her throat and moved restlessly, wringing her hands.

“I haven’t cleaned the room yet,” I said.

“I can do that. I’m not afraid of hard work. If you’d seen how Aunt Cleta drove me, you’d know that.”

I hesitated, but it was getting late. Lightning flashed again and the heavens opened with a torrent of rain that gushed from the sky as thunder rumbled and crashed. I pushed the door closed and leaned back against it. I briefly considered Cleta’s assertion that Lauda was trying to kill her, but I hadn’t heard a thing that made me believe her, and it seemed to me that it was just the kind of thing Cleta would say to self-dramatize. One episode of food poisoning and someone
shoving her from behind in Manhattan traffic didn’t make me a believer. Besides, nature and her heart condition had taken care of Cleta, no murder needed.

Ultimately, expedience compelled my decision. “Pish, can you help me take Lauda’s luggage upstairs?”

We headed up, with Lauda toting the heaviest of her bags, Pish the next heaviest, and me with her guitar and train case. Lush twittered behind, chattering about something; I couldn’t understand one word in twenty. Lauda was certainly strong for a woman of her age and build, on the fluffy end of the weight spectrum. She hoisted the heavy bag like a mule, over her shoulder. Once up the stairs I led the way around the gallery to Cleta’s turret room at the far end. “If you’ll wait, I’ll get Juniper to make up the room with fresh sheets and clean the bathroom,” I said, as I opened the door and let her pass me. I put down her guitar and train cases and shoved them into the room with my foot.

“Don’t worry about it, I said,” she practically shouted. “I can do it all myself. Just give me the sheets and I’ll take care of it.”

When I stepped back into the gallery hall, she slammed the door shut. I blinked. What had I done? Pish was right there, carrying her extra bag.

“Well, that was rude of her,” he said, setting it down.

“I don’t know why I let her in.” I fretted. Pish took Lush’s arm and guided her along the hall to her own room.

Vanessa poked her head out of her room, the next one over. “What’s going on?”

I told her and she beckoned me over.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, dear? Cleta didn’t trust Lauda toward the end.”

“Cleta didn’t trust anyone, Vanessa. I would never take that as a point against someone.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“What do
you
think of Lauda?” I whispered, glancing
over at the door. Though Pish had set down her other suitcase, I was loath to bang on the door to hand it over. I was uneasy, having just remembered the reference to the will from Cleta and Lauda’s conversation in Autumn Vale as overheard by Gordy. But allowing Lauda to stay made a kind of sense given the way Cleta had died.

“Lauda didn’t have an easy life,” Vanessa whispered, patting at her hairnet-covered hair. “The family was wealthy, but Cleta’s sister had married badly, then squandered every last penny she inherited, so Lauda got nothing when her mother died. She did so much for Cleta, but you know what that woman was like; she was often cruel to Lauda. She made jokes at her expense about her weight and her looks. But Lauda never snapped back.”

“What did you think of the scene Lauda made, accusing us of kidnapping her?”

Vanessa grimaced. “We
did
sneak out of Manhattan. Cleta sent Lauda on some wild-goose chase for currant jam and clotted cream, all the way to New Jersey! She timed it
just
for when we were leaving. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going, not even her lawyer, Joey Swan.
Let them all stew!
she said.”

“Nice.” I made a mental note of Cleta’s lawyer’s name for Virgil to check in with.

Lauda came out into the hall, and Vanessa slipped back into her room.

“Look, I’m sorry if I seem on edge,” Lauda said, taking a deep breath and letting it out. With her Windbreaker off, I could see that with her polyester stretch-waist pants Lauda had paired a purple madras plaid shirt, tails out and worn long. It was only a slight improvement over the mud-colored dress she wore the first time I saw her. “It was such a shock when the police told me Auntie Cleta had passed, and we didn’t even get a chance to make up. I was hoping I could come out and we’d have coffee. I just wanted her to know I
acted as I did because I was frightened.” There was a whine in her voice, a thin sound of dismay, and she clasped her hands together in front of her. “She left the city without even telling me where she was going!”

Her puffy face was heavily lined, bloodshot eyes swollen, prominent bags under them. She certainly
looked
like she had been crying. I was reminded that just because I found Cleta insufferable didn’t mean someone couldn’t love her. What did I know of these two women’s relationship? “I understand,” I said, my voice gentler than it would have been just moments before. She must have cared deeply about her aunt to have hung around Autumn Vale for so long waiting for Cleta to calm down so they could talk. “I am
so
sorry about what happened. There was nothing anyone could do.”

“I know that. Can I get those sheets from you?”

“Sure.” I had turned my uncle’s tiny old office into storage: shelves and shelves of linens, cleaning supplies, and other stuff. Sheets and fresh towels in hand, I returned, gave them to Lauda and was about to offer to help her when she grabbed the last suitcase and again slammed the door in my face. Sheesh!

Vanessa emerged again, as did Patsy. In whispers, taking turns, we filled Patsy in on Lauda staying. She looked concerned.

“Is that safe?” she whispered, eyeing the door like she expected a snake to whip out of it and chomp her head.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The two women exchanged a look.

“Well, someone
was
trying to kill Cleta!” Patsy said.

We had just been through that. “Okay, that was in New York, and I’m sorry, but given the behavior I witnessed from Cleta it could have been any one of a number of people she had contact with. Besides, she died of a heart attack!”

Patsy heaved a sigh of relief. “Of course you’re right, dear.”

Vanessa still looked doubtful. “I know it seemed I was
being an apologist for Lauda, but Cleta didn’t trust her niece. It
is
unnerving.”

“I’ll take all this into consideration,” I said. “But for now, everyone just go to sleep. Lock your doors if it makes you feel safer.” I was being facetious, but Patsy nodded, as did Vanessa.

“We’ll do that,” Patsy said.

The next morning I was up early and, I’m sorry to say, cheerful at not having to face Cleta. I had a lot of muffins to bake, so Emerald came down to cook for herself, Lizzie, and Juniper, and also the Legion minus one.

And
plus
one.

I explained about Lauda as Em scrambled eggs for Lizzie, who sat in grumpy silence at the long worktable.

I turned the oven on to preheat and assembled my muffin ingredients: flour, eggs, oil, sugar. And what else? I paused, remembering the first morning after they had arrived. Cleta viewed my breakfast offerings with dismay.
Where are the muffins?
she demanded. She had heard I was famous for my muffins. When I pointed out the basket of carrot, apple, and bran muffins, she sneered that they were not muffins at all.

It took a while to realize she had expected what we think of as English muffins, but to her mind were simply muffins. I asked how long she had been living in America, and she told me over fifty years. I pushed the basket over to her and said,
Then
have a muffin
. Pish chuckled, and after that, I referred to her in code as “The English Muffin
.
”

And now she was gone. How sad was it that her death made me more cheerful? I decided to make a very American culinary invention, Morning Glory muffins, since it was a beautiful morning. I gathered sunflower seeds, coconut, and raisins—I wouldn’t be using walnuts, since Gogi didn’t like them in muffins for Golden Acres—then grated carrot into a pretty pile. Emerald fed Lizzie while I mixed batter and filled muffin cups.

“How is school going, Lizzie?” I asked.

No answer.

“Remember what we said, about getting through school with a good grade average so you could get into college for photography?”

She eyed me with a squinty expression. “I hate it when you say crap like that,” she griped. “Makes me know I have to go to school.”

Emerald threw me a grateful look.

“I know. I wasn’t thrilled with school when I was your age, either, but I went.”

“Why can’t you homeschool me like Alcina?” Lizzie asked her mother, pulling her bushy hair back into a ponytail and binding it with a heavy elastic.

“Because unlike Alcina’s parents I have things I want to do with my time,” she shot back, crossing from the sink to her daughter and helping her with her unruly hair, which was escaping already. She bent over Lizzie’s shoulder, looked her in the eye, and said, “Including getting the diploma I never got, and some training so I can make us a decent living.
And
pay for your college!” She snapped the elastic into place and patted her shoulder.

Perching at the castle was temporary, and I knew Emerald wanted to buy or rent a place of their own. I appreciated her help in the meantime, though. She was planning to do something in the reflexology or massage field, and working through a course Consciousness Calling offered.

“All right, okay, I get it. I’ll go to freaking school,” Lizzie said, getting up and hoisting her backpack over her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll get a scholarship. I hope they have one for talented photography nuts who hate math.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said, with a laugh.

She turned back, though, before she headed down the back hall. “Oh, Merry, I found some stuff in one of the boxes of photos that I want you to see.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you later!” she said, then set off down the hall and out the back door, followed by Becket, who had snuck into the kitchen when I wasn’t looking and now headed out for his daily prowl.

Elbows deep in muffin batter, I was fortunate that Emerald, my godsend, served the ladies, including Lauda, breakfast. I was happy not to be at the table for
that
awkward meal. She came back to the kitchen briefly and said it was going all right, though it was frosty and quiet, then she headed back in with another pot of tea.

I was alone in the kitchen when I heard the heavy knocker on the big double doors out in the great hall; again with the
thud-thud-thud
. I was going to get a complex if this was another shot of bad news or someone else showing up on my doorstep wanting a room. I whipped a tea towel over my shoulder and marched out to answer the door, waving Emerald back into the breakfast room, where I was sure the ladies would be keeping her busy with demands for fresh tea and coffee.

I yanked open the door and there was my very own handsome sheriff, Virgil Grace, with two of his henchmen. “Virgil. What’s up?” Becket slipped in the door past him. I hoped he wasn’t bringing home his own take-in breakfast, like a supersize McRodent Happy Meal.