Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (7 page)

Emerald tried to shepherd Alcina back to the pack, but the girl just smiled and drifted away again. Emerald told me Alcina’s parents, including the fatally ill mother, were advocates of the “unschooling” philosophy of learning, so Alcina did not go to the local school. The parents apparently had a farm and sold vegetables at the roadside all summer; what they did for sustenance in winter I did not know. However, what I
did
know was that Alcina not only had no ability to focus on anything for more than a few minutes, but she was also frightfully ignorant of even the basics of literature and, I was afraid, could not yet read properly, even at thirteen.

The fact that she did not need her parents’ permission to help out at the ball was even more scary. In theory I thought that unschooling could work, but I didn’t think it was doing Alcina any favors. Maybe that said more about her parents than unschooling, and it may have had a lot to do with her mother’s health problems. The girl was certainly creative and talented, a gifted artist of the faery genre, but I worried for her future in a world that was hard on dreamers. I settled for explaining to Lizzie what I wanted from them. I wasn’t going to be too hard on Alcina, not when she had so much going on at home.

I heard a vehicle pull up outside the open front door and left Binny in charge. Dashing outside expecting another delivery, I was startled to see a pickup truck with a bunch of guys in the back.

“Can I help you?” I asked, striding toward them. I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked them over.

“You sure can,” one fellow in a torn Budweiser tee said. “Hear you’re having a party tomorrow night. What time?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Another of the guys said, “Can’t hear very well, huh?
What time?
” He shouted the last, as if by virtue of being nearly forty I was also hard of hearing.

“Why does the time matter to you?” I asked, beginning to get an uneasy feeling.

“We wanna know when to show up. Duh!” yet another guy said, shaking his shaggy hair back out of his eyes and jamming his hat down over curls.

“But you haven’t been invited,” I replied, beginning to feel a little desperate.

He looked puzzled and adjusted his ball cap so the duckbill was pointed sideways. “But it’s a party.”

“That requires an invitation to attend,” I finished, staring up at him.

The guys looked puzzled still, and exchanged looks. Was the concept of a party to which you needed an invitation so foreign to them?

“We’ll bring a case, if that’s what you’re worried about. We aren’t stiffs, you know.”

“I’m sorry guys,” I said, keeping my tone light, “but this is a ‘by invitation only’ party. It’s business, you know, just to showcase the castle. You’d be bored to tears.” I regretted adding the last part immediately, because it implied I was only
not
inviting them to save them from boredom.

Budweiser T-shirt guy knit his brow, and said, “Okay. We thought . . . Never mind.”

The driver gunned the motor, reversed, spun around, and roared back down the lane. I hoped I wouldn’t have any trouble with them. They hadn’t seemed violent, just a little clueless.

I got through the endless day, fell into bed exhausted, and awoke the next morning knowing that I was going to be even more tired by the end of the night. I would need to be fortified by lashings of hot coffee and the good sense of my friend Pish. He has thrown a hundred parties and thrives on the chaos, the utter anarchy, of the party atmosphere, whereas I prefer order and calm. Shilo and McGill were supportive, too; they had some work to do at a house he was selling but put it on hold just to help me get the place ready.

By six thirty
PM
, just before my helpers were to arrive, I stood in the great hall and surveyed the decorations. There was a comforting blaze in the grate of the great hall fireplace, with the massive screen I had found in Janice’s warehouse guarding it, and beside it a set of tools. It was McGill’s job to make sure the fire was safe through the evening; I wasn’t taking anything for granted, enlisting the most responsible person among us. I wasn’t even using real candles, figuring battery-operated flameless candles were more expensive but a lot safer.

Along the railing of the grand split staircase—it started as one wide sweep and then split to arc up to the gallery by two separate staircases; think the Titanic staircase, only without the handrail in the center—I had swooped swaths of maroon and gold material. In the middle of the great hall on a low table was the casket I had rented from Janice. A couple of borrowed five-foot-tall candelabras stood by it with flameless tapers flickering. In the casket was a mannequin dressed in an old tailcoat with his eyes wide open. That was my nod to Halloween, a few days away.

Just then the music started, chamber music with a very gothic feel. Pish’s sound system worked beautifully. He would switch to some light jazz once all the guests were there and we began to serve snacks. I had hired two real bartenders, fellows who could help with crowd control if the unforeseeable happened, and two cocktail servers, one woman and one man, all from Buffalo; they were coming with a busload of party attendees and had told me over the phone what to set up for them. The bar was in the ballroom. Juniper would be circulating with trays of hors d’oeuvres and helping out in the kitchen, where a couple of local women would fill trays and do other tasks. I didn’t want to hire Juniper, but Binny had pled her case—the girl needed to make some money after a couple of months unemployed—and I caved.

The party was expensive, but Pish was excellent at wheeling and dealing. He had called in some favors, too, and I was grateful to my excellent friends. I had rescued a few bottles of Uncle Melvyn’s best wine, but I was saving that for the richest of guests. Yes, I was discriminating, but I needed to schmooze. My stomach was in knots as I finally ran up to get ready for the party.

In choosing a costume for myself, I wanted something I could wear all evening, something I could move in, and something attractive—no hideous witch costumes for me. I was the hostess, and I wanted to stand out. Janice Grover was once smaller than her present abundance—in other words, she was once my size—and had, from her days as a New York hostess before her husband had been consigned to the management of a backwoods bank, a store of costumes from parties of the past. Honest to goodness, the woman had never thrown anything out in her life.

From her hoard I chose a beautiful brocade Victorian gown of sumptuous purplish material that was surprisingly lightweight and loose enough on me to be comfortable. It wasn’t meant to portray any actual person, nor was it Halloweenish, but if forced to answer
Who are you?
, I would be happy to tell them Christina Rossetti. I expected that would elicit little more than blank stares, but I had become accustomed to that in Autumn Vale. To be fair, I would have received the same blank stares among my New York acquaintances.

I stared at myself in the mirror and evaluated my costume, running my hands down over the lovely fabric. The proper undergarments, vital for a woman of my figure (which is “plush-size,” according to Shilo), had transformed the sagging dress into a proper regal shape with the additional help of a few safety pins. I had wound my dark hair up into two knots at either side of my head, and I draped a gold embroidered shawl over my shoulders. Pish had wanted me to dress as Cleopatra, while Shilo had suggested I go as a queen, any queen, because she said I’d look “splendiferous” in a crown, but this was good for me.

As I descended, the door gong sounded. Pish opened it to a crowd of locals, and from then on the evening descended into chaos. Organized to some extent, but still chaos. I had gotten a one-time permit to serve alcohol, but it was important that everything be done to adhere to the law, so I had been extremely stern with Lizzie and Alcina; if I caught so much as a hint that they were drinking the wine, or even carrying it, they would both be chauffeured home. Their jobs were to show folks where to hang up their coats, help Juniper with the trays of hors d’oeuvres, assist in the kitchen in any way they were asked, and check the smoking pit for full ashtrays or burning butts.

Gogi Grace came as Sarah Bernhardt, the legendary actress, dressed as La Dame Aux Camélias from the famous poster. Nobody was going to get that, either. I wouldn’t have, except she had told me in advance. Virgil, looking embarrassed but handsome, came in a cape coat and deerstalker hat, carrying a pipe and a magnifying glass. Sherlock Holmes; how perfect!

Doc English trailed them. I cocked my head to one side as he bowed before me, and I tried to figure out if he was wearing a costume or had just randomly plucked things from the lost and found. He wore an oversize pinstripe suit jacket and a weird beige colored wig on backward, so the hair all fell forward, and carried a cracked leather briefcase. He told me he was Donald Frump. It was hilarious and brilliant.

Emerald was dressed as a cocktail waitress; her costume was going to hopelessly confuse people, because the female cocktail server I had hired was going to be dressed similarly. Simon and Janice Grover arrived as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, though she insisted they were Tweedledum and Tweedledummer. I knew which was which, in that case; I didn’t have a good opinion of the bank manager’s intelligence. Cranston was costumed as Doctor Frankenstein, with thick glasses and a lab coat and carrying a severed hand. Binny was adorable as the Pillsbury Doughboy. At first I couldn’t figure out who Isadore Openshaw was, but Janice, who had been trying to make up to the woman for making fun of her for years, whispered to me that the fluffy knitting gave it away: she was Miss Jane Marple, an easy costume to pull off in that it resembled her usual dress.

Shilo wore a tiered skirt and an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse with a scarf holding back her abundant dark hair, while Jack had on black pants tucked into knee-high boots with a white shirt, and he also had a colorful scarf over his head. He sported a clip-on earring in one lobe and carried a fiddle. They were gypsies, suitable, since Shilo always said she was half gypsy and half Irish traveler. Pish was dressed as the fifties version of that most hedonistic of all heterosexual males, Hugh Hefner, with a velvet smoking jacket and silk pajama pants and carrying a pipe and a
Playboy
magazine, the Marilyn Monroe issue. Not everyone would get the joke, but anyone who knew my good friend well enough would.

Zeke and Gordy, dressed in tailcoats and white gloves, were to check names at the door against the master list I had given them and park cars for those who had not been chauffeured. I didn’t have the kind of insurance I would need for true valet service, so they couldn’t
present
it as such, but they could help folks out if they asked. There wasn’t much they could get in trouble with, as far as cars went—I hoped—since we were in the middle of nowhere.

I personally supervised Hannah’s arrival at the pantry door, where the wheelchair ramp had been installed. Her Clara costume, a white blouse, pink striped dirndl and shawl, was adorable on her slight frame, and her parents, dressed in cute Tyrolean costumes rented from some shop (definitely not the Party Stop in Ridley Ridge), were Grandfather and Fraulein Rottenmeier. Once they had seen the ground floor, I left them to their own devices. Juniper Jones arrived dressed as a French maid, though her sour expression did not seem very service oriented. I crossed my fingers and hoped she wouldn’t throw a tray of hors d’oeuvres at a guy if he pinched her butt or did something equally heinous, like saying hello or smiling at her.

The stretch Escalade and the tour bus arrived, as did other chauffeur-driven vehicles. The Westhavens, a couple from a family of famous hoteliers, had come as Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I appreciated even if no one else got it. They were friends of Pish and attended as a favor to him. I didn’t expect them to be interested in the castle as a purchase; they just loaned élan to the whole affair, and I thought I might be able to pick their brains later regarding who might be interested in buying my castle.

I had also invited a couple of society-type newshounds, hoping the party would warrant a small notice in the
New York Times
or the
Daily News
, or at least some social media buzz. The bartenders did their jobs, and the two servers circulated with glasses of wine, threading in and out of the ballroom and the great hall, as Juniper carried trays of hors d’oeuvres and pastries. Once I judged everyone to be lubricated but not drunk, I went to the stairs and took the microphone that Pish had set up with his PA system. I cleared my throat and said, “Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Wynter Castle. My name is Merry Wynter, and the fellow in the casket is
not
my late uncle; he is the ghost of Wynters past!”

Chapter Seven

E
VERYONE
TIT
TERED
AND
applauded politely, then I stated the reason for the soiree. “We have gathered you all here to give a first exclusive look at the Wynter estate, a property that not only holds this wonderful eighteenth-century castle, but also has seven outbuildings, including a garage holding a genuine vintage Oldsmobile, and various sheds. There is so much more here, though, than meets the eye.

“More than fifty years ago, my great uncle Melvyn Wynter planned and planted an arboretum that holds hundreds of species of native flora. The whole property is several hundred acres, and I believe this place would be perfect for a retreat or a spa, or a country destination inn like the world famous Castle on the Hudson or Oheka Castle. Please enjoy your drinks and the snacks provided by local businesses, such as Binny’s Bakery in downtown Autumn Vale, and ask any one of the waitstaff where the washrooms and smoking area are set up. Please see me for information about the castle.”

“Or me,” Cranston said, stepping up on the stairs beside me, grabbing the microphone and waving his hand around. “I am Cranston Higgins, the grandson of Melvyn Wynter.”

I held my temper; this was not how we had talked about the intro, but I wasn’t going to get into family—or faux family—business in front of the crowd. “Please see me
personally
,” I said into the mic, “so we don’t get confused about who is thinking about what, okay?”

As I drifted from the great hall to the ballroom and back, I overheard Cranston bragging about his roots in the area. There was no real way to stop him, not without creating an unpleasant scene, so I ignored him, chatting with my guests about Wynter Castle and its potential. I had prepared a few pieces of interesting history about the area and the Wynter family, but I didn’t know enough. I needed to correct that before the next party.

Some of the folks on the list would never be investors or buyers of the property and had been invited simply because I wanted gossip to get out. This would be the beginning of creating buzz, as marketers say, so I had tried to capitalize on many of my past connections. This unfortunately meant inviting some of my former friends in the fashion world, and it seemed like every single one of them felt the need to give me the latest scoop on Leatrice’s continued descent into lunacy.

One former model, who was now a talent scout for Leatrice’s agency, followed me around as I mingled, telling me that my former employer had gone through four assistants since my hasty departure, and had called the police on three of them. “Everyone knows she trumped up that crap about the necklace, Merry. You should come back to New York! So many of the girls could do with your stylist skills.”

“I’m so far out of it fashion-wise,” I told her. “I don’t think I can do it anymore.”

She didn’t continue on that line, thank heavens, and instead wanted to know what Shilo was doing hooking up with a local yokel. I watched Shilo and McGill whirling down the ballroom to the barely heard music, her skirts and long, dark hair, headscarf apparently abandoned, flaring out around her. “Jack has been good for her. I’ve never known her to feel like any place is home, but here, she seems to feel . . .” I paused. I was about to say
safe
, but I didn’t know why I was thinking that. “At home,” I said instead. My former “friend” looked at me like I’d lost my marbles, then walked away, shaking her head, to rejoin the fashion crowd that huddled as far away from the food table as they could.

Home. Had Shilo found that in Autumn Vale and with Jack McGill, real estate agent and jack-of-all-trades? It was an elusive concept, home. I hadn’t had one—not a true home in every sense of the word—since Miguel died.

Pish approached and took my arm. He was one constant in my world, and his kindness had been my most homelike experience for some time. I leaned against him as we observed the chattering, circulating mob, gowned and costumed in an array of gaudy outfits. It sure seemed like there were a lot of people. I had kept the guest list down to what I thought we could comfortably hold, but the ballroom was crowded.

“Does this seem like a lot of people to you?” I muttered to Pish. The babble of noise was growing in volume, and the jazzy music was barely audible over the chatter.

He looked around uneasily and nodded. “I’m seeing people I don’t know, and I knew everyone on your list. Did you see the hooker in the Mardi Gras mask and the cowboy?”

I shared his concern. “There’s one guy here with a wild wig who is either the Barber of Seville or Sweeney Todd, it’s hard to tell which. I don’t know who
he
is. And there are
three
Draculas, though I thought only one of our guests was coming as a vampire.” I was glad a fair number of our important guests had opted not to wear costumes, because at least I recognized them. Percy Channer, I noted, was not among the attendees, unless he had managed to elongate and thin out his barrel shape. But I had this uneasy sense that there were people avoiding me, vanishing onto the terrace or into the great hall as I moved toward them. I was pondering that, trying to figure out what had led me to that belief, when Pish stiffened beside me, on the alert.

“Who are the ones dressed like a football team?” Pish asked, pointing across the room.

I eyed the group. It was all men, and they were having a wonderful time drinking wine and talking to the girls. One slung his arm over Juniper Jones’s shoulders, almost upsetting her tray. I was about to cross the ballroom to intervene, but she ducked away from him and continued on with the hors d’oeuvres, a frown etched permanently on her face. “I don’t know who that is,” I said, but then remembered the truckload of guys I had turned away the day before. I shared my hunch, and Pish agreed I was probably on the money. “What are Zeke and Gordy thinking, letting them in?”

I started toward them, trailed by Pish, but was waylaid by Melanie Pritchard, an amazing New York real estate agent I’d met while I worked for Leatrice Peugot. I had invited her to get an honest critique from her viewpoint on how likely it was that I could market the castle to New York entrepreneurs.

She was angry, and I knew there were few things that infuriated her. “Merry, what the hell is going on?” she griped, tugging her suit jacket down over her hips. She was not costumed, and I hadn’t expected she would be. “First of all, my flight was delayed—some kind of bomb scare—so I had to rent a car instead of catching your bus. Then those goons at the door tell me I’m already here!”

I exchanged a glance with Pish. “I’m so sorry, Melanie. I’d better sort this out,” I said, and headed out of the ballroom to the great hall and toward the front door. I was stopped often on the way, sometimes by well wishers, sometimes by folks actually interested in the castle, but twice by other people who’d had the same experience as Melanie. I was getting more and more annoyed with the boys.

“Merry, have you seen Binny?” Emerald asked, stopping me with a hand on my arm.

“No, why?”

“I’m worried about Juniper,” she said, chewing her lip and looking around. She said something else, but the noise level was worsening in the great hall as folks were posing for photographs with the dummy in the casket. Uncle Mortimer, as Pish had begun calling him, was a popular fellow.

“I couldn’t hear you,” I hollered. “What did you say?”

Emerald came closer and cupped her hand near my ear. “I
said
, Juniper was talking to some dude, and he had his hand on her arm, and she looked upset. I wanted to find Binny to get her to ask Juniper what was wrong. Last time
I
tried to talk to that girl, she gave me a look that would freeze Satan in his tracks.”

“If I see Binny I’ll tell her. Or I’ll tackle the girl myself; where
is
Juniper? I saw her heading this way, but she’s disappeared on me.”

Emerald turned and searched the boisterous crowd around the casket. “I don’t know. She was talking to that guy, the one just heading back into the ballroom,” she said, pointing to a blue-jeaned figure wearing a cowboy hat.

I was torn; find Juniper or talk to Gordy and Zeke? “Look, I saw Juniper just a few minutes ago and she
seemed
fine . . . as fine as she ever is, anyway. But I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Are the girls doing all right?”

Emerald grinned, her eyes lighting up, the great hall fire giving her face a soft glow. “Lizzie is having the time of her life! But Alcina? Who can be sure what that girl is thinking?”

We parted ways. When I finally got through the crowd to the front door and exited the castle, there was no one on the front terrace. That was not right; one of the two guys was supposed to be there at all times.

Pish followed me out a moment later. “Where are they?” he asked.

My answer was not as eloquent as usual. The explanation soon presented itself, as Zeke and Gordy, in their rented tailcoats, came galloping around the side of the castle and along the flagstone, followed by Becket, who was howling furiously.

“Get that cat away from me!” Gordy yelped. “It’s got weird eyes. Get it away from me!”

A couple of girls in sleazy/sexy hooker getups, followed by another girl also disguised in sleaze but with a feathered glittery mask instead of elaborate makeup, trotted around the corner, laughing. As soon as they saw me, they skidded to a halt, their eyes wide behind the masks. The third girl retreated.

“Who are you two?” I asked pointing at them. “I don’t remember inviting you, whomever
you
are.”

They backtracked, giggling and hooting, and their laughter was joined by some male rumbling laughter around on the ballroom terrace. Ten to one they were with the football players. Followed by Becket, I stalked over to Gordy and Zeke who were conspicuously checking their clipboards and conferring. “Hand it over,” I said, my palm out.

Gordy handed me his clipboard, and I checked it in the weak light of the outdoor sconces, running down the list of names. Some had two check marks against them, and one of those was Melanie Pritchard. “If you can tell me how one person can arrive twice, I will let you both off the hook,” I said, pointing to the offending names.

Zeke shrugged. “How are we supposed to know what these folks look like?”

“So who were those two girls?” I said, hitching my thumb in the direction of the two gigglers.

“Uh, Melanie Pritchard and friend,” Zeke responded, his eyes wide. Gordy nodded in agreement.

“Neither one of them is Melanie. How did this happen?”

Zeke shrugged. “When she came—the taller one . . . they came together in a taxi from somewhere—she laughed and told me if I could guess who she was I’d get a kiss, so I said Miss Melanie Pritchard, ’cause she looked like a Melanie, and she said, yes, that’s exactly who she was. With a friend. And Gordy checked her off.”

“And she kissed us both!” Gordy added.

I thought I had covered everything with them, but apparently I forgot to tell them to engage their brains and not their groins in the ID process. “Okay,” I said, looking over Gordy’s clipboard. Every name had been checked off with the exception of Les Urquhart, the owner of the Party Stop, and Percy Channing. “So why did you start letting a
second
of each of these people in?” I asked, indicating the double checkmarked names. “Why didn’t one of you come get me?”

Both shuffled their feet and shrugged. I heard some boisterous noise through the open doors and uneasily wondered if things were getting out of hand. I sure hoped not, or this whole idea of introducing Wynter Castle to the world via parties could be done before it began. Pish appeared concerned, too, looking over his shoulder into the great hall. “Okay, no one else gets in,” I told Zeke, thrusting the clipboard back at Gordy. “I’m trusting you guys. I understand that you didn’t know who was who this time, and I’ll make sure you’re better prepared next time.” If there
was
a next time for them.

The evening wore on. I knew I should be schmoozing the potential investors, but there were too many other things going on, and I ended up stomping out social fires like a flamenco dancer on Red Bull. One of my fashion friends, Zimbabwe Lesotho (not her real name, and I only ever called her Zee), mortally offended Isadore Openshaw by cornering her and trying to give her fashion advice. I took Zee aside and told her that Isadore was a bit prickly; besides, what she was wearing was supposed to be a costume, though it was how she usually looked. My friend then had the good grace to apologize, complimenting Isadore on her “cool old-lady costume,” which opened up a whole new can of worms.

Doc English got tiddly and told a couple of my friends, “You’re fired!” They thought he was hilarious and launched a drinking game with the old guy. I was too busy looking for the football geeks and their girlfriends, a couple of whom had been seen heading upstairs. I didn’t find them, but I did find an angry Becket, who now sat teetering on the railing howling down on the gathering. “Becket, why don’t you hide in my room if you hate this so much?” He just hissed at me and stalked along the railing, leaping down to the floor and crawling away to a dark corner to grumble.