Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (17 page)

“Here is a photo, my dear,” Pish said, holding the book out. “It should have dropped green-husked walnuts on the ground, since that occurs in October. According to the book, we are in a little pocket in New York State where it will grow.”

The tree apparently grew tall and stately when in a forest but would spread more if it was near the edge of the arboretum forest. I stepped along the path a short ways and came to some green husks, chewed through by some critter, as well as a few walnut shells. “Here!” I said, indicating the black walnut. It was a tall tree stretching up to the sun, the last leaves clinging to it a dull brown, withered and curled. “We’re doing well!”

My merry—pardon the pun—little band followed the trail of trees deep into the woods, with Becket racing ahead as if he knew where we were going even before we got there. We had to venture off the beaten path, but it seemed to me that there was still a kind of path here, just not one that was used much. The discordant screech of a blue jay cut the quiet, and it chattered as we advanced, scolding us for our intrusion.

“You ought to invite some of the professors from Cornell out here, you know, to investigate your arboretum,” Pish said, his voice hushed in the deep chilly shade of the woods. “I’ve been to their arboretum—went to a wedding there once—but this is a little wilder, less cultivated. Quite, quite amazing.”

I felt a chill race down my back as I stopped to look around me. This place . . . it wasn’t just an inheritance, it was a
responsibility
, and I hadn’t thought of that until now. Melvyn had named me the inheritor rather than donating the estate to the town or whomever because he assumed someone with the name Wynter would care about it more than someone who might just see the commercial value of the castle and the trees. Which was basically how I was viewing it. There was so much I just didn’t know about my paternal family history, and there was nowhere else I could find it out but at Wynter Castle and in Autumn Vale. The book entries I had read the previous night had just been a beginning.

Wynter Castle was my home more than any other place on earth besides New York City. For the first time I experienced a moment of certainty that I would exhaust every avenue to see if there was any way to keep this place rather than just give up on the notion. Though if Cranston ended up being my cousin, then I might have no choice but to sell to satisfy any claim he might have on the place. I would still go through with my plans to market the place for now, but I was having real doubts as to the wisdom of selling. Maybe I should be fighting tooth and nail to keep it.

But how? I just couldn’t imagine.

“Where are Shilo and McGill?” I asked, then realized I was talking to myself. I looked around and spotted them nearby, at one of the faery structures Alcina had constructed by a mossy log. Shilo was sitting, and McGill was
kneeling
! It was
the
moment, the one he had told me would happen. Pish was taking photos as McGill drew out a ring box from his jacket pocket. I softly approached, coming up behind Pish as he shot photo after photo. Shilo sat trembling, staring raptly down into McGill’s eyes.

“Shilo, Hannah says your name means ‘peaceful,’ but you say you’re not peaceful at all. I disagree. You are more yourself than any person I’ve ever met, and that’s a kind of peace.” He was speaking quickly and gazing up at her with hopeful adoration. “Most folks struggle to be someone—someone else, someone important, someone who matters or makes a difference—but you . . . you just
are
. And I love you.”

His voice was trembling, guttural with emotion. “It happened in a moment, that
first
moment when you asked me directions to Wynter Castle, and it gets deeper every day. If you will do me the honor of marrying me, I will make it my life’s work to give you a home in my heart and in this community so you will never be lonely or afraid again.”

I choked back tears. They must have talked about Shilo’s desperate fear of being alone, with no one to love. McGill understood, and he had the heart to give her the love and security she needed for the rest of her life. Shilo cried, “Yes!” and threw herself into his arms. They tumbled to the forest floor, laughing and joyous, as Pish clicked away with his camera and I chuckled, viewing it all through a misty veil of tears.

McGill had to practically hold my dear friend down to push the ring on her finger, and she danced around the faery structure, a little stump hut with a tea party set of Pepto-Bismol-pink Barbie doll furniture outside of it. Pish finally stopped taking photos and stood with McGill as I dashed to my friend and pulled her into a dance. When I was out of breath, I said, “Shilo, will you just show me the ring, already?”

I had advised McGill to get a ring as unusual as Shilo, and he had done a magnificent job. It was white gold, a circle of flowers with amethyst and emerald stones alternating in the center of each posy.

“Gems have a language, you know,” Shilo said. “Amethyst means ‘peace,’ like my name, and emerald . . .” She broke off and blushed, giving me that under-the-lashes look she was famous for. “It means ‘love and rebirth’ . . . new life, actually. And fertility.”

McGill and Pish approached, and Jack put his arm over his new fiancée’s shoulders. “Now we just have to set a date and plan the wedding!” he said.

“When do
you
want to get married?” Shilo looked up at him, her eyes shining.

“Soon as possible,” McGill said fervently, tightening his grip. “You name the time and place and I’ll be there with bells on.”

“Christmas. At the castle!” she said, and then met my gaze. “If that’s okay with you, Merry. Just our friends and that’s all.”

Could we do a wedding in just over a month and a half? We sure could try! I nodded, smiling at the joy it gave her.

“And now, on with the treasure hunt,” McGill said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. “I have a bottle of wine in the car for later, to celebrate whatever we find.”

“Even if we don’t find a thing, we’ll have something to celebrate!” I said.

Chapter Sixteen

B
ECKET
CAME
CRASHING
toward us through the woods and I jumped, then we heard bickering voices. “Who the heck could that be?” I asked, then hollered,
“Hello!”

Lizzie and Alcina clambered through the bush . . . or rather, Lizzie clambered and Alcina hopped and skipped through the brush. Lizzie looked cross, her dark frizzy hair escaping from a ponytail and flying in wisps around her red face. That’s a perpetual expression with Lizzie, so I wasn’t concerned. Alcina seemed serene as always, her long, silky blonde hair falling in waves over her shoulders and a ratty camo jacket covering a chiffon dress that looked like a fifties vintage party dress. She wasn’t wearing wings, for once. She bounced over to Shilo. Those two were kindred spirits, and it didn’t surprise me when the child grabbed Shilo’s hand to drag her off somewhere to see something. Shilo would tell us what it was when she got back. Alcina rarely spoke—to us, at least.

“What are you guys doing in the woods?” I asked.

“Alcina said we had to come out here early to see what the freakin’ frost faeries left,” she griped. “A half hour on a bicycle, freezing my butt off, just to see frost. I thought she meant something special!”

“I suppose to her it is special. I’ll bet you got some great photos,” I said.

“Well, of
course
I did,” she said in that teenage tone that meant “duh.” “What are
you
all doing here?” Lizzie’s gaze took all of us in, lingering on the book and shovel. She eyed Pish’s camera and nodded, looking down at her own. Hers was better, I surmised from her satisfied look. I had originally wondered where she’d gotten it, almost afraid to find out, but now knew it had been a gift from Tom Turner, her father, before he was murdered. He had told her to keep it a secret, and she said she’d thought he might have been a perv, but she’d taken the camera anyway.

Though we’ll never know for sure, Binny figured Tom had wanted to give his daughter a gift, but because he hadn’t yet worked things out with her mother, and hadn’t acknowledged his paternity, he didn’t want to tell her
why
he was giving her such a costly item. I think it became doubly valuable to Lizzie when she learned it was the only gift her father would ever be able to give her. It had given purpose and a goal in life to a kid who was going through a rough patch. How had he known to give her a camera? It made me wish I had known him apart from our very brief confrontation before his death, because his gift had been a stroke of genius.

I heard a squeal of delight off in the woods, and would have bet that Shilo had told Alcina about her engagement. “We’re following my weird old uncle’s treasure trail,” I answered my young friend.

Lizzie’s eyes lit up, gleaming with greed at the word
treasure
. “What have you found? What did he leave? Was it gold? Jewels? Can I have some?”

“We haven’t found anything yet, and we won’t unless we get a move on. The weather looks dicey.” I had been noticing the change in light for a half hour now, as a frosty brilliant morning turned gloomy above us. In the depths of the woods, you can’t see much of the sky, but I was beginning to appreciate how the shifts in light revealed all you needed to know.

We moved on, with Alcina and Shilo bouncing around us like puppies at an off-leash park. The trees fascinated me as we followed my uncle’s quirky path. Who knew there were so many species of oak and maple, sycamore, birch, ash, and beech? I’d always loved walking in Central Park in the different seasons, watching the changes taking place, but now I wondered about all those trees . . . what were they? Pish was right; I would need to contact someone to come and tell me more about my forest and how to take care of it.

And there I went again, thinking about the place as if I was going to be able to keep it.

We trudged on, and the forest began to thin somewhat as we crested a hill. It was as if Melvyn’s tree trail had been designed to show all the beauties of Wynter Woods, as I thought of it. There were open marshy areas where wetland trees thrived, and occasional ponds around which wildlife proliferated. There were high hilly mounds and a windswept open vista or two that looked across a pine forest and down to the valley in which Autumn Vale was nestled.

I had not yet explored so much of the woods; it was a revelation and a lesson. The woods may not have been perfectly planned—and indeed there were quite a few dead or dying trees as well as some that were completely down—but still, it was glorious. My uncle had done well in planting the woods, and he had done magnificently in planning his little journey.

“This is the last tree in the list,” I said. “
Nyssa sylvatica
.”

Pish examined the book. “Ah, here it is. It is commonly known as the black tupelo, tupelo, or black gum. It likes a wetland area.”

I looked down the hillock to a marshy area and saw a tree standing alone. I scaled down, slipping and sliding on wet leaves, and rooted around at the base—a lot of the trees had identifying markers at the base of the trunk—and uncovered a metal tag. “‘
Nyssa sylvatica
: black tupelo’,” I read. “Here it is.”

We all looked at each other, and McGill said, “Well, no time like the present, right?” He looked up at the lowering sky, now visible because of the space in the canopy. “Gonna rain soon.”

He dug, and we helped as much as we could by clearing sticks and leaves away, but mostly just watched him work. If Melvyn had buried something, it would likely be on the side where the tag was, so that’s where McGill started. It wasn’t long before he hit something with a hollow
thunk
. Alcina skipped and Lizzie let out a
woosh
of sound. Pish grabbed my hand and I held my breath.

McGill reached down and rooted around and yanked on something. He dug some more, then grabbed and pulled and fell backward in a great shower of dirt and leaves. We all crowded around. As Jack got back up, I wiped off the item; it was an old leather satchel. I was trembling with excitement and cold as a pelting rain started, the pitter-patter on the layer of dead leaves like tiny feet on patio stones.

I looked up. “Let’s wait to open this until we get back to the castle,” I said.

I was grateful that Lizzie, who knew the woods a lot better than any of us, was there. She led us back to the actual path, and we sped through the woods in the cold rain shower. McGill took Shilo’s newly repaired car to pick up the girls’ bikes out on the highway, making us swear to wait until he got back before we opened the satchel.

It was the least I could do, since he had done all the actual digging, but it was difficult looking at it sitting there, mysteriously full of something. So we got busy, hauling some more comfortable chairs into the kitchen near the fireplace. Pish laid a fire and lit it while I made some double-chocolate muffins, coffee, tea, and cocoa.

Finally, we all gathered together with the filthy satchel on newspapers on a low table in front of us. Lizzie had already photographed it from every possible angle: with the fire as a backdrop, from above, and close up. With trembling hands I worked at the latch, a shot of WD-40 squirted on it helping immeasurably. I had discovered, in my crash course in Care and Handling of an Old Castle, that WD-40 fixed everything from squeaky hinges to locks that wouldn’t work.

I opened the satchel and found a black plastic bag securely wrapped in brittle duct tape. It was like unwrapping a mummy. I carefully slit the plastic and pulled it open. Inside was a crumbling pile of documents.

“What are they? Gold certificates?” Lizzie asked.

How she would know such things exist, I could not tell you. “I don’t know what they are yet,” I said, unfolding the documents. I examined them, Pish reading over my shoulder. When I had finished one, I looked up at him, and he shook his head. He looked as sad as I felt. I sighed and slumped down.

“What is it? What are they?” Shilo asked.

“They’re stock certificates,” I said.

“How much are they worth?” McGill asked.

“Nothing,” Pish said, sadly. “Not even the paper they’re printed on.”

“What? Why?” Lizzie asked. She examined my face with a skeptical frown and narrowed eyes. “What do you mean they aren’t
worth
anything?”

I flipped through the rest, and it confirmed Pish and my pessimism. “They’re investment bonds from the early nineteen seventies for South African companies, most of them small steel manufacturing and mining,” I said.

“Ah,” McGill said. He understood immediately.

Pish, McGill, and I explained about apartheid, the horrible system of segregation in South Africa. I knew a lot about it because of my mother’s involvement in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s. “Divestment—in other words, selling off investments in South African companies—was meant by other nations to pressure South Africa, to isolate it until the government repealed apartheid. As a result, some companies went belly-up,” I concluded. “And we’re pretty sure that these are investments in those companies.”

“I recognize some of them,” Pish said. “I gave seminars on ethical investment in the eighties and nineties. I used some of these companies as examples of where not to invest. Both from an ethical standpoint and from a risk standpoint, they were not good investments. Just at a glance, if they all have similar face value, I’d estimate that these were probably worth in the neighborhood of between two or three hundred thousand dollars when they were bought.”

Jack whistled through his teeth. “That’s some ritzy neighborhood.”

Alcina giggled, but everyone else was somber.

“I think I’m beginning to understand why my mother and Melvyn did not get along,” I said. “She would have been horrified if she had known about his investments. Rightly so. Conditions for black African workers under apartheid were appalling, which is one of the reasons university students across our country rallied to force their schools to divest from companies like these.”

Pish got his laptop and did a little research, and confirmed our suspicions. There was not a single stock certificate in the bunch worth a dime.

I decided I couldn’t mourn money I never had and never would. Despite our differences, I was still my mother’s daughter, and the idea of the profit Melvyn intended to make on the broken backs of poverty-stricken African workers made me ill. I was glad they were worthless, happy those companies had gone bust.

“Who’s hungry for lunch?” I asked, and got a show of hands. Everyone was, even Alcina.

I made lunch, and we ate in the breakfast room I had used just the day before for lunch with Elwood. As we finished, I decided I needed to draw Alcina out a little. She seemed silent and uncommunicative with any adult but Shilo. I rarely saw her face, since it was shielded by a curtain of silky hair. “So, Alcina, how are your lessons coming along? Do you study, or just . . . uh, read and . . . um, learn?”

She lifted her head and stared at me for a long moment, her beautiful blue eyes wide and her head cocked. I felt like she was deciding if she should talk to me or not. “I explore,” she answered in her lilting voice. “My mother says if you keep your eyes and ears open, you can learn as much as from any book ever written.”

I am a passionate advocate of books and didn’t agree, but I needed to keep an open mind. Even from the little I had seen, it was clear that the child was already a gifted artist, and I believed the world needed to nurture artists. “What have you learned lately from keeping your ears and eyes open?”

She kept her gaze fixed on mine and said, “At your party, the dead cowboy was with the fat vampire, and the fat vampire said to him that he better get his chaps out to the terrace if he didn’t want to get okay corralled. I didn’t know what that meant so I asked my mom, and she told me about the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. I read a book about it, but I don’t think it happened the way they said. My mother says all written history is . . .”

She paused, searching for the right word, then said, “Suspect. She said suspect. I don’t know what she meant by that. She says, ‘History is a bunch of stories written by the winners.’” She paused, tilted her head to one side, and swiped her silky hair behind one ear in a Shiloesque movement. “Later I heard the cowboy died. So was he shot? Is that what the vampire meant by ‘okay corralled’?”

I was bewildered by Alcina’s sudden stream of verbiage, and I noticed that Lizzie looked just as surprised. “Wait . . . fat vampire?” I said, finally catching the one important part. This was independent corroboration of what Virgil had told me about a stocky Dracula and his argument with Hooper. “Did any of the rest of you notice a fat vampire?” I asked my friends. Not one of them had. “Are you sure of what you saw and heard, Alcina?” I asked. She was such a dreamy child, and I wondered if she had made the story up.

She nodded but wouldn’t elaborate, saying that was it. I met Pish’s gaze, and he nodded, then bustled off. I thought he was probably going to phone Virgil to give him the corroborating information and relate what Alcina had indicated about Channer telling Hooper he wanted to talk to him out on the terrace, because that fit with what we suspected about Percy Channer. How
had
he avoided me so successfully? “No, he wasn’t shot,” I said. “What time would this have been?”