Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (2 page)

A young woman wiped her floury hands on her floury apron and approached the counter. “Can I help you?” she asked, looking me over like I was an alien life-form.

I glanced around the bakery, and was riveted by the shelves lining one whole wall. Teapots! Hundreds and hundreds of teapots! I truly was home, in one sense. I smiled, as I turned toward her. “How are
you
this morning?”

“Fine. Can I help you?”

The woman didn’t
sound
fine. Her mouth had a natural downturn, unfortunate in someone so young and attractive, I thought, noting dark hair pulled back in a ponytail that was confined in a net.

“You have a wonderful place, here. There is no better smell on earth than fresh-baked bread, is there? And teapots; you have an a
maz
ing collection.”

The teapots ranged from a marvelous Mount Rushmore—impractical, but very collectible—to a chintz, porcelain beauty that I lusted after. My not-so-secret passion is collecting teapots in a variety of shapes, sizes, and prints. That’s what was in at least twenty of the boxes at the Manhattan Mini Storage: 253 teapots, about half of them miniatures. Another ten boxes held teacups, an uncounted number.

I pointed to an elderly beauty. “That ornate one . . . it’s Italian, right? Majolica? And the other one, with the roses and cherubs . . . that’s Capodimonte.”

Sighing, the woman rolled her eyes. “Look, not to be rude, but I have a million things to do. The focaccia is almost ready to come out of the oven.” She glanced over her shoulder at a timer, then back to me. “How can I
help
you?”

I scanned the others—there were English and Chinese teapots, art deco shapes, utilitarian designs, and fanciful animal shapes—but I didn’t have time to look them over, as the baker was getting impatient. No small talk, then. Too bad. I’m the master of small talk. In the modeling world, it pays to know how to schmooze, no matter what your position. First as a model, then a stylist, and then, finally, as a personal assistant to a model, being nice to hair stylists, makeup artists, set decorators, assistants, gofers, photographers, and everyone in between had paid off.

“I need directions,” I said, holding up the printed map, flapping it around. “This seems to be useless, since none of the roads around here have the names listed on the map.”

The woman cracked her first smile. “It’s a conspiracy,” she said with a short laugh. “Town council and the county can’t agree. The names get changed every year or so. You’d think they didn’t want anyone to find us. What are you looking for?”

Finally, some friendliness! “I’m trying to find Wynter Castle, on Exeter Road.”

The woman’s smile died swiftly. “You don’t want to go out there. All you’ll find at Wynter Castle is death.” She turned away as the oven timer
bing
ed a warning.

“What do you mean?”

She bustled around in the back, taking a tray out of the oven and banging it down on the counter.

“Hello?” I hollered. “What do you mean by that?” She wouldn’t come back, ignoring me completely, so I stalked out of the place, winding up on the sidewalk again, looking up and down the street.

An old fellow in a trapper hat and plaid jacket shambled past, making use of his cane. He eyed me with interest, his smudgy glasses not quite concealing the intelligence in his beady eyes. I’d try again. “Excuse me, sir,” I said. I had to bend over to talk to the elderly gnome, but his eyes twinkled with reassuring sharpness. “Could you help me?”

“Mebbe,” he said, bushy brows raised. “Whadyawant?”

“I’m trying to figure out the best way to get to Wynter Castle on Exeter road.”

He made a choked sound in his throat and bolted away from me as if I had a communicable disease. Who knew someone using a cane could move so quickly?
Tap-tap, tappity-tap.

“Charming.” As I stood watching the oldster speed down the sidewalk, a police cruiser slowed near my rental car.

I walked toward it, watching the cop lean across the passenger seat and examine my rental’s license plate. If he was so interested, he may as well help me out. I walked out onto the street and leaned over the cruiser, gesturing the cop to roll down his window. He did, and I leaned in the open window. “Hi there! Maybe you can help me?”

He looked down at my cleavage and smiled, then looked up into my eyes. “I sure hope I can,” he replied.

Never failed. I sighed inwardly, but smiled back, amused, as always, by the male fascination with breasts. The poor dears just can’t help themselves. I read his name tag, and said, “Well, Officer Virgil Grace—”

“
Sheriff
Virgil Grace, ma’am,” he said with an attractive grin.

“Sheriff, how . . . Western. Anyway, I’m trying to find someplace.”

“I’d love to help,” he said, a dimple winking in his cheek. “You looking for the way to my heart?”

He was a definite cutie, but too young for me. I wasn’t on the lookout for the trail to
any
of his vital organs. “Maybe another day. Right now I just need directions to Wynter Castle, but no one wants to tell me how to get there, not even the friendly voice on my GPS.”

Watching my eyes, he frowned and said, “Why do you want to go to Wynter Castle?”

It wasn’t any of his business, but maybe it would help if I explained. “I’m Merry Wynter, Melvyn Wynter’s niece and heir. Wynter Castle is my property.”

He nodded. “Okay. I heard you were trying to sell it.”

“I was . . .
am
. . . but no one seems to be in the market for a monstrosity of a castle in the wilderness of upstate New York,” I said, and stood, hand to my back. After no sleep and hours of driving I was cranky, but had to stifle the urge to snap at him. I bent back down and said, in as neutral a tone as I could manage, “So what is the problem with me trying to find Wynter Castle?”

“No problem,” he said, his expression serious. “Follow me and I’ll lead you there.”

“Thanks!”

“You may not thank me when you see the place.”

T
WENTY MINUTES OR
so later, I followed him up a winding lane, emerging from a thick forest that opened out to a long, green slope up to Wynter Castle. I parked in a weed-infested flagstone drive and got out. The sheriff parked, too, and walked over to me. I was numb with fatigue and something else: a weird, bittersweet feeling of coming home. This was one of the few places I had ever gone with my mom, and the only place I knew of where my father had stayed for any length of time.

But holy catfish, no wonder it hadn’t sold! First I scanned the land and shook my head. The landscape, a huge open area rimmed with dense forest, was
riddled
with holes dotted around the long grass—
big
holes, all with mounds of dirt beside them. The yawning cavities littered the open landscape, right to the edge of the woods. The sun rose up over the forest and beamed down beneficently on the weird and troubling scene. Turning in a complete circle, I counted about thirty holes, give or take, and there might be more beyond my field of vision or behind the outbuildings that dotted the landscape. The sheriff stood staring, glancing back and forth between my face and the gaping wounds. “This may be one of the problems with selling Wynter Castle,” I said. That was probably the understatement of the century.

He didn’t say anything, and I turned to finally look at the building itself. My inheritance really was an American castle, old and shrouded in ivy that coated the hewn, stone walls, almost concealing the diamond-pane, Gothic-arched windows. It was big, even bigger than I remembered from my one visit so long ago.

Just then another car pulled up the lane, a tiny Smart car with a sign on the side that read Autumn Vale Realty. It shrieked to a stop, and a tall, gangly man emerged, unfolding himself like a backward origami. “Miss Wynter?” he asked, approaching at a lope, his hand stuck out. “Jack McGill, your realtor.”

“Hey, Jack,” Virgil said.

“Hey, Virge, what you doing here?” he said, dropping his hand to his side.

“Showing Miss Wynter the way to her property.”

“You should have stopped at my office,” he chastised, shaking his finger at me. “I would have showed you the way!” He extended his hand again.

I took it and shook. “I couldn’t
find
your office. I couldn’t find anything.” I paused and looked around, then back at him, examining his beaky, honest face topped by a shaggy shock of reddish-brown hair. “I’m beginning to see the problem here, Mr. McGill, why Wynter Castle won’t sell. We have giant gophers on the property.”

He broke out into astonished laughter and doubled over, folding like a jackknife, slapping his thigh. “That’s a good one, Miss Wynter.”

“Call me Merry.” It wasn’t
that
funny.

Sheriff Grace, who had been leaning against his patrol car listening in, cocked his ear at a scratchy call on the radio in his car and said, “I’d better get going. I would seriously suggest, Miss Wynter, that you not stay out here alone.”

“Why?”

He let his gaze travel over the hole-riddled property. “Wouldn’t want to see you end up in one of these.”

I gasped and spluttered, openmouthed.

“You know, like falling in.” He got in and drove off, a hail of gravel from the edge of the drive shooting up in a shower from his back tires.

Was that a threat of some sort? Ridiculous man!

“Don’t mind him,” the realtor said.

“I don’t mind him at all. In fact, I doubt if I’ll even think of him after this moment.”

He cast me a glance, shaggy eyebrows raised. “Now, I suppose you’ll be wondering what caused all these holes here?”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh.” He was silent.

“I was being facetious,” I said, stifling a sigh. “Bad habit of mine. So . . . who is digging the holes? And why?”

“Well, that’s just it. We don’t know.”

I looked at him in amazement. “You don’t
know
?” He shrugged, and I strolled over to one of the holes, looking into it, then turned back to McGill. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? You’d think you could have mentioned it in all the conversations we had.”

His face turned red, right up to his ears. “I tried.”

“You did not.”

“Okay, well, I tried to get you to come here.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I told you there were things you ought to handle yourself, and that we needed to talk face to face.”

He was right about that. “Why did the baker in town say all I’d find out here is death?” I asked.

“You talked to Binny? Last person you should talk to.”

“Why?”

“Well, Binny claims that your great-uncle Melvyn killed her daddy, Rusty Turner, and buried him somewhere on the grounds of Wynter Castle. We think the holes have something to do with her, or with her brother, but we can’t prove it.”

*

“HONEST, SHILO, THIS PLACE IS CREEPIER THAN I EVEN
remember.” I paced beside the rental, holding my cell phone to my ear. It kept cutting out on me and blinking back in, so our conversation had the constancy of a distant radio station. “Shilo, you there?”

“I’m here. I can barely hear you!” Her voice was crackly.

“Crappy reception.” Every once in a while I looked back at the castle and shuddered. What was I going to do if I couldn’t sell it?

“Mer, honey, you should just hire someone to fill in the holes and leave!” Shilo said as the airwaves cleared for a few seconds. “Come back to New York. Surely you can find work?”

“After that trouble with Leatrice? Nobody is going to hire a thief, Shi.”

“No one who knows you believes her!” my friend said.

“But the world is not made up of people who know me.”

“She doesn’t have
that
much influence! I told one jerk who asked about your trouble with Leatrice why he supposed the police hadn’t arrested you, if you really did steal her necklace?”

I appreciated her support. Shilo is one in a million, a model with a solid-gold heart. “I’m working on getting the holes filled in this very minute,” I said, glancing over at my real estate agent, who was sitting in his car talking on his own cell phone—organizing some help, I hoped. “But honestly, Shi, the trouble with Leatrice is only one of the reasons I came out here to stay. It’s time I dealt with this place instead of ignoring it.” I stared at the castle for a long moment. “I need to move on from Leatrice and not let her hijack my life for one more minute.”

“I miss you already,” she said after a long pause, during which my cell reception blinked in and out.

She was going to make me cry if she kept that up. But I was in upstate New York, not the deserts of equatorial Africa, for heaven’s sake! “I have to stay, honey. The estate property taxes are paid up in advance, thank God, but the life insurance Melvyn had was just enough to pay for his burial and the estate expenses for a few more months. There doesn’t seem to be any cash. The lawyer says it all disappeared in the last few years.” I ruminated on that; where
had
Melvyn’s money gone?

But back to the matter at hand. “I have
got
to stay and make this place salable, which is going to be easier said than done since the grounds look like giant prospectors have been digging for gold. It’s a mess! I clearly can’t trust my realtor to sell it alone.” I kicked at a tuft of weeds in the driveway. I hadn’t told my best friend everything, and had to confess. “I’m broke, or almost, anyway, and I
have
to stay here until I sell. I didn’t tell you but . . . I gave up my apartment in the city.”

“You gave up your apartment?” she screeched.

Well,
that
certainly came through loud and clear. I held the phone away from my ear. “Yes.”

“Honey, you shoulda told me. Why didn’t you tell me? And you left without even letting me know. I should be
fur
ious! Come back and move in with me.”

“Into your Cracker Jack box? Why don’t you move in with me, instead?” I joked.

“Into the castle?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve got
lots
of room,” I said, waving my hand around. “
Oodles!
We can fill in giant gopher holes together and ignore the morose people of Autumn Vale.” I started to laugh, but then heard the dial tone. What the heck? Had my phone dropped the call? Or had I said something to upset her? Impossible, I thought, staring at my phone. You can’t offend Shilo Dinnegan.

The realtor unfolded himself from his clown car and came back toward me. “Well, Miss Wynter, I’ve found someone who will fill in these holes for you at a rock-bottom cost.”

“What is rock-bottom cost?”

He named a number I could live with. “Okay. Mr. McGill—”

“Jack!” he said waggling his finger at me. “You’re to call me Jack.”

I smiled, and put my hand on his shoulder. “I need to sell this monstrosity, and soon. Mr. Silvio said that even just the land is worth a lot. I need to look at all possibilities, even carving up the property to sell lots.”

The realtor shrugged. “Mr. Silvio is not an expert on property, but even he should know things aren’t that simple in Abenaki County.”

Andrew Silvio was the lawyer who had been responsible for drawing up Uncle Melvyn’s will, and handled the estate’s probate proceedings. He had encouraged me to put the castle and property up for sale as soon as possible. Even if other claimants came forward—unlikely, he said, because Melvyn had died “without issue”—the castle would still have to be sold to satisfy their demands on the estate.

“I need to sell it quickly, to be frank, because I’m broke,” I said. “I know people, a few A-listers and a lot more B-listers. I’m not saying any of them will buy Wynter Castle, but even if they don’t they may know people who will.” I eyed the castle, doubt plaguing me for a moment. “It’s magnificent in its own weird way. I guess.
No
one, however, is going to buy a place riddled with holes.”

“And I’ve solved that little problem for you,” he said, rocking back on his heels, then onto his toes.

“When can the hole filler start?”

“Later this morning.”

“That’ll work temporarily, at least, until the next infestation of giant gophers. If this Binny person is behind it, I’ll need to figure out how to stop her. Me staying here might help.” I took a deep breath. “Now I’d like to go inside.”

He nodded and straightened his shoulders. “Okay. I’m ready if you are.”

I tried to judge if that was a “I’m ready for you to shriek and fall into a dead faint” look, or a, “It’s not as bad as it looks from the outside” kind of expression. Nothing to do but enter. We ascended to a flagged terrace, which ran the length of the building, seventy or eighty feet by my rough estimate. McGill (he just didn’t seem like a “Jack” to me, and I already thought of him just as “McGill”) had a big key, which he rattled in the lock, finally unlatching it. He pushed, and the oak, Gothic-arched double doors swung open, the resounding creak like a Foley guy’s version of a haunted castle sound.

“It’s kinda damp and cold, but it’s been modernized, thanks to your uncle Melvyn,” McGill said as I slipped past him. “We’ll have to get the boiler serviced before firing it up. I can get the guy out today to check it for you. It gets kinda cold here at night, even in September.”

He nattered on, his voice echoing as we entered, and the door shutting with a thud that reverberated through the whole castle, but I didn’t hear anything else as I gaped at the place. The great hall was enormous, with ceilings twenty or thirty feet high—I’m a poor judge of those things—and stone walls covered by tapestries that did little to hush the sound of my high heels on the flagstone flooring. I was faced by a grand, two-directional staircase that split, climbing to galleries that overlooked the great hall on both sides. As I slowly turned, I saw that the double doors were topped by a huge, diamond-paned Gothic window. If it had not been covered in dirt and ivy, it would have flooded the hall with light.

I was taken back nine years to my wedding to Miguel, held at a lovely small “castle” much like this, only in Connecticut. I had descended stairs like those to the strains of “Clair de Lune,” and down the aisle to Miguel, where he stood, handsome and dark, before the reverend. As the pianist lingered gently over the last notes, we joined hands.