Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (21 page)

It still didn’t solve who Cranston was, but he and I were going to have a talk, and then I was going to turn him over to Virgil. I looked over at Doc, who nodded and dropped a wink at me as he took Hubert’s bishop.

I was getting ready to leave when who should arrive but Virgil Grace himself, looking handsome and spiffy in his uniform. He kissed his mother on the cheek and then turned his gaze to me. My heart skipped a beat. I wondered: would Miguel like this man who was so completely different than he? I had been going to go to the sheriff’s office anyway, and in anticipation of meeting up with Virgil I had dressed with care. Not that I don’t always, but today I wore a challis skirt and soft smocked tunic in autumn colors with cowboy boots and a scarf. I had a heavy sweater coat on.

“Hey, Merry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked me up and down. “I got your message last night about Juniper Jones and passed on the information to Baxter in Ridley Ridge. We think she’s driving Binny’s car, which was parked behind the bakery. Binny said she’d loaned her the car while the girl worked for her. She hasn’t shown up again, has she?”

“No, but I have a lot more to tell you. I may want to press charges against the guy posing as Cranston Higgins, and I was wondering if you’d come up with any information about him. Could we talk privately?”

“We can talk here,” he said.

I was flummoxed, I don’t mind saying it, because I was convinced in that moment that he did not want to spend time alone with me. What the heck was wrong with him? I glanced over at Gogi, but though she was smiling, her eyes were wrinkled with concern. Hannah smiled up at me, oblivious to the undercurrents. “I have a lot to talk about, and I don’t want to do it here,” I insisted.

“Okay, all right. Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

I wanted to tell him just to get lost. I wanted to sling back:
I don’t want to twist your arm, dumbass
,
but I held my temper and said, “Let’s walk, Sheriff.”

After saying affectionate good-byes to Gogi and Hannah, I strode ahead of him out of Golden Acres to the street. I hadn’t had a chance to explore the town too much at this point, but from the highway above I had noticed a little park, and I wanted to see it. Let him follow me.

I walked, not letting myself be concerned that he was seeing me from an unflattering angle, and made my way down to the corner, turned left, then down to another short street, another left, and into a small pocket park of the type that had delighted me in New York. I entered through a wrought iron gate over which were the words
Come and Partake of Nature
.

I stopped and took in a deep breath, and the rhythm of my walk slowed. I love parks, and this one was a gem, enclosed by lovely old wrought iron fencing and with a meandering gravel path through it. I wondered if my grandfather had courted my grandmother here, those many years ago. I knew so little; I didn’t even know if my grandmother was a local girl or if Murgatroyd, my grandfather, had met her somewhere else. As I followed the path past big trees—some of which I now recognized, thanks to my uncle’s arboretum—I pondered all the mysteries of my life. If my father hadn’t died when I was so young, would everything have been different? Would I ever have moved to New York City? Would I have even gone down the same career path, or ever met Miguel?

Virgil caught up with me. He took my arm, saying, “Why don’t we sit for a moment?”

We found a park bench, and I told him about Cranston, why we thought he was a fraud, and what Juniper had told us about seeing him at the Party Stop, as well as her admission that Les Urquhart was one of the unknowns at the costume party, and that it sounded like he was the Sweeney Todd. I worried at Cranston’s link to the whole affair; could he possibly be connected to Les Urquhart and Davey Hooper? Was that the key to the whole mess and the timing of the con? How was that possible?

“What I can’t understand is: what did he expect to get from it?” I mused, staring up at a big old bur oak. “He stopped asking for a payout after the first few days and seemed content to wait to do the DNA test I needed before sharing the estate with him. But he wasn’t related to me. What, then, is the con?”

“Wait a sec,” Virgil said, and took out his phone. He walked a ways away and spoke to someone for a few minutes. He made a second call, then came back. “I have a few ideas on that, so I’ve put in a call to an acquaintance on another police force. I’ll know more shortly. Can I ask you: have you spoken to everyone you invited to your party since that night?”

“No, not at all. I’ve tried to get ahold of some of them, but I’m not getting answers and haven’t had time to follow up properly. I’ve been kind of distracted about things.” I glanced at him; he had a hawklike profile, with dark brows that sloped down over his brown eyes when he was deep in thought, as he was now. He sat back on the bench and put his arm over the back behind me. I was a little cold and wanted to cuddle up to him, but I figured that would send him running for the hills. I longed to ask him about his ex-wife, the daughter of the Ridley Ridge sheriff, but now was not the time.

“I have to think he’s connected to Hooper,” he said. “We now know that Hooper received a message from his mother through someone who visited someone else in jail. It’s possible that this was how he met Zoey Channer, since she was at the same jail for a very brief period while being transferred.”

“You mean maybe Dinah sent a message to Davey via Zoey when she got out?” He nodded. So the rumored jail-cell friendship was between Dinah and Zoey, and that’s how Zoey had met Davey. “What did Zoey do that had her in the same jail as Dinah?”

“Drug offense. She’s wanted right now on a parole violation, so she’ll be returned to custody as soon as she gets out of the hospital.”

“She’s still in the hospital? Was she
that
badly hurt?”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s Baxter for you. As you know, Percy Channer headed to Ridley Ridge General—he’s been there raising a stink nonstop about his precious daughter and how badly she was hurt because a homicide suspect from Autumn Vale was on the loose. Baxter is eating it up, blaming it all on me, and letting her stay at the hospital so she can consult a plastic surgeon that Channer flew in. Something about the gash in her leg needing special care.”

Again, there was a subtext about the tension between him and the Ridley Ridge sheriff because of Baxter’s daughter and the divorce. As I had already decided, though, this was not the time to follow up on my questions about Virgil’s ex-wife, so I turned my mind back to the conundrum of how Cranston, Hooper, Les, Juniper, and Zoey were all connected, and who had done Hooper in. “So, is it feasible that it wasn’t Cranston at all who came up with the con? That Hooper used information from his mother plus a little research to construct it?”

“Good thinking,” Virgil said. “Given the skill sets of the folks we’re talking about, that’s logical. Dinah probably figured there was more money there than anyone was acknowledging.”

“Even though there’s not. She was after my great uncle’s rumored millions. If only she knew that the secret hidden money my uncle constructed a grand puzzle and search for turned out to be a satchel of worthless stock certificates from long-gone South African mining companies. But . . . okay, I’m trying to figure this out. Dinah set her son up to try to con me into giving them money—through Cranston, whoever he is—thinking I would pay up to get him to just go away?”

“Makes sense. Davey looked so much like Dinty that we would have recognized him right away—like I did recognize his body—so they needed someone else to play the part of the Wynter heir. I have a report of Hooper spotted at the library in Ridley Ridge and an Internet café in Batavia, and we think he accessed the same information Hannah has discovered about the woman Melvyn was connected to in his youth.”

We had already figured that out, but it was news that Virgil had been investigating the same avenue. Of course, what did I
think
he’d been doing? “Virgil, where were you when you were out of town?”

He shifted. “I was in Cayuga, getting information on the lawsuit Davey Hooper tried to file against Pish from jail. No one there believed Hooper at the time, and they still don’t.”

“Did you really believe Pish could have killed Hooper?”

“That’s not how law enforcement works, Merry,” he said, meeting my gaze. “I can’t figure I like someone, so there’s no way he could be a murderer, and I won’t go into any investigation with a preset idea of the outcome.”

“But you can’t totally shut off your feelings!” I exclaimed. “That’s inhuman.”

“Merry, I won’t let my ‘feelings,’ as you call them, influence the direction of an investigation. That is crappy technique, though I’m not saying there aren’t cops out there who do it. I call it lazy. I don’t mind a hunch now and then, but I need to find facts to back it up, and I
won’t
close off other avenues of investigation while I look into it.”

At least I knew he was passionate about something . . . his job. “I
know
that.” I paused, letting the heat between us subside. “Virgil, when I went out to the terrace, I noticed a bloody handprint on the wall. Whose was that?”

“We don’t know yet. There are no ridge details.”

“Ridge details?”

“Sorry—fingerprints. It appears the perp wore gloves. Problem is, a lot of people wore gloves as part of their costumes. If we find a set with Hooper’s blood, we could look for the killer’s DNA on the inside.”

“Have you tested our costumes for blood?”

“Yes, and before you ask, there was blood on both yours and Pish’s, but that doesn’t mean much, since by your own admission you both touched the body.”

I shuddered. “You’ve talked to a lot of people who were at the party. Did anyone see anything?” I knew the Grovers, Gogi, Doc, and all the other locals had given the police their statements, and I had heard through Zeke and Gordy that the police had tracked down and talked to the football boys and the Frobisher twins.

“No one has admitted to seeing anything yet. I haven’t been able to question Percy Channer, in case you’re wondering, because his damned lawyer has him clammed up.” Virgil rubbed his eyes. “That concerns me but isn’t particularly damning. That’s what guys like him do, lawyer up even when they aren’t hiding anything. Nobody’s admitting anything, but that’s pretty much the usual in a murder case. We’ve searched every Dumpster in town and beyond for clues, and we’ve interviewed everyone we can think of and followed up every lead.”

“So . . . are you at a roadblock?”

He glanced over at me, then looked straight ahead. “I have a few ideas, but I can’t discuss them with you. I’m sorry. It wouldn’t be right. I’ll find whoever did it, Merry; I promise you that. I’m beginning to get a sense of something, but I can’t talk to you about it.”

“Okay, I get it. I do.” I understood his point and decided to go back to the con. “What doesn’t make sense to me is: why did Cranston stop making demands? He started out pressuring me to buy him out, but lately he’s seemed completely willing to wait until the DNA test was proved. Why?”

Virgil’s phone chimed just then, and he answered, just making noises like
mhmm
and
okay
. There was a gleam in his dark eyes as he turned to face me on the bench. “You know your friend Melanie Pritchard?”

“Yes. She’s a real estate investor and agent in New York. Why?”

“That was my source, a guy pretty high up in the New York City PD. Apparently, a few days ago Ms. Pritchard reported to the New York cops a phone call she got from a man who identified himself as Cranston Higgins, a fellow she met at your party. He told her that you and he, joint heirs of the Wynter estate, were going in together to develop the property as a high-end spa, but you needed investors.”

I let it sink in for a moment, then exploded. “That
jerk
! I should have whacked him when I had the chance. Oooh! Last night I had the urge, but I held back, and I don’t hold back often.” I jumped up and paced back and forth in front of Virgil. “Oh my lord! How many other of my friends did he try to hit up?” I said, hands over my eyes. I dropped them and looked down at the sheriff. “How many friends am I going to lose over
this
one? I’ve already lost a ton of friends from that crap with Leatrice, and . . . I’m so mad I could spit!”

Virgil grabbed my hand and tugged me down to sit on the bench. I turned to face him. He still held my hand, and it was enveloped in his.

“Merry,
relax
. Ms. Pritchard did the right thing. She strung him along, then called the cops and gave them his cell phone number. She told the police she didn’t want to come down on you because she knew you were
not
involved.”

I slumped down, and he stroked my back, sending a chill down to my cowboy boots. I felt like weeping and laughing all at once as things finally started to make sense. “I wish she had told me, though.”

He let go of my hand and stopped stroking my back. I wished he’d kept it up, because it had felt lovely. “She thought he really was your cousin and coheir,” Virgil said, “but that he was maybe doing a little con. She didn’t want to alarm you until she checked it out.”

“This explains a lot, and it tells me why folks aren’t getting back to me. They’ve probably all been contacted.” My face burned at what my friends must be thinking, that I’d invited them to Wynter Castle hoping to pry money from them. “Now I know what he was doing on the days he wasn’t plaguing me about the castle. But it doesn’t tell me if he was involved in Davey Hooper’s death. However . . .”

I had a thought and stared off into space for a long moment. “So, what we surmise is: Davey Hooper set up the con and brought Cranston in as the Wynter heir. But Cranston went rogue, parting from Davey Hooper’s plan to get money out of me. Would that be why Les, Davey, and Zoey came to my party, because they knew he’d be there and they could blend in unnoticed? If that’s so, if they confronted him, Cranston
could
have killed Davey Hooper.” Could I picture Cranston killing anyone? No, but that was Virgil’s point, that you couldn’t just decide what you thought you knew about someone and proceed from that.