Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (22 page)

“As soon as we figure out who Cranston is, we may have a better handle on him.” Virgil paused, then went on: “I can tell you this much: I checked out his ID, and there actually is a Cranston Higgins about his correct age and with a bit of the right backstory, but then, there would be if he’s any kind of a con man. I have questions in to other law enforcement agencies about him, and I’m waiting for word back. One of my officers is doing background checks using every bit of info Cranston gave us about his life. This is all the collection of information that will eventually let me nail him to the wall on the con, and maybe even make a murder charge stick, if he did it.”

I nodded. Investigation for the police was a matter of following leads, coming up with theories, and checking the known facts against them. It was being picky and careful and painstaking that would get Virgil to the answer. I had to learn to be patient.

“Right now we’re missing Cranston and Juniper, who I would also like to ask a few questions. Baxter has first dibs on Juniper, though, because of the attack on Zoey Channer. If you had called us the minute Juniper showed up at your door, we’d be further ahead.”

“I’m sorry, Virgil. You’re right, of course.” And he was.

He looked a little taken aback at my ready admission of fault. “Good. Next time, call me. Let me handle things like that. Now, I just put in a call to Baxter in Ridley Ridge to pick up Les Urquhart for questioning.”

I was relieved at that. I did have one more question, though. “Virgil, tell me the truth about this, because it’s very important to me. You’ve told me all you did to check out Pish’s involvement with Hooper. Honestly . . .
did
you suspect him of killing the guy?”

“Merry, what can I say? It was a possibility,” he admitted. “I had to investigate it, especially when I traced a deposit Pish Lincoln made into one of Hooper’s bank accounts. He gave that guy ten thousand dollars. I know he didn’t exactly tell me he
didn’t
pay him off; he fudged in a very expert way. It
had
to be hush money, Merry. I’m sorry. I like Pish, and no, I
don’t
think he killed Davey Hooper, but it would have made it a hell of a lot easier if he had told me the truth. I wish he had trusted me.”

Me, too, I thought. I sure wish Pish had trusted me enough to tell me about paying off Davey Hooper so I didn’t have to hear it from Virgil.

Chapter Nineteen

I
DIDN
’
T
SAY
that to Virgil, though. He had been remarkably helpful and forthcoming. I opened my mouth to casually ask about his ex-wife, but he got a call just then and said he had to go. He almost ran out of the park, and I watched him leave with regret. Maybe Gogi could tell me more about his ex, but I did not want to question his mother on something so sensitive if I could avoid it. I wanted it to come from him.

There was something between us, I could have sworn it. I liked him more than I had any man since my husband died, liked him in that “way” every girl knows once she reaches puberty: the stomach turning over, the sense of attraction, the tingling, the wish to know more and be closer. But he was avoiding me, and it either meant he liked me, too—I remember a boy from childhood who pulled my hair and made faces at me because he liked me, and some fellows never get over that method of wooing—or he wanted nothing to do with me. There was no middle ground, I was afraid. My instincts were rusty from not paying much attention to them in the last ten years since I’d gotten married. But if those instincts
were
to be trusted, I suspected that he was attracted to me.

I pushed my hands deep into my sweater coat pockets and strolled back through the park as a cool wind whipped up, gathering dead leaves and sending them into tiny tornadoes. I vividly remembered a time walking in the Volksgarten, a beautiful park in Vienna, in the autumn. Miguel had hummed snatches of Haydn and Mozart, but otherwise we were silent. It was enough just to have his arm around me, keeping me warm. I would give anything to have him back, I thought.

But that memory took me by surprise. Why, I wondered, did I think of Miguel
every
time I had been with Virgil? Did my attraction toward Virgil feel like cheating, eight
long
years after my husband’s death? I would have to think about that . . . another day.

Shaking off my mild depression, I strode purposefully through the wrought iron arch—I had partaken of enough nature for one day—and back along the town streets toward Jezebel. I needed to go home and talk to Pish about why he didn’t feel that he could confide in me about paying Davey Hooper off. We were better friends than that, I had thought. I wanted to weep; how could he not trust me with the truth?

Thank goodness our miracle mechanic had old Jezebel working much better, and she started up without so much as a whimper of protest. Once again the clouds had come in to close off the celestial blue of the sky over Autumn Vale, and as I began the climb out of town, thick rain sheeted across the windshield. I tapped my thumbs on the steering wheel in time to the
slap-slap-slap
of the wipers and hummed “Me and Bobby McGee,” singing out the line about windshield wipers slapping time. My mother had played the guitar and sung that song, along with Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez songs.

As far as the murder went, Virgil would take care of things. Whoever had killed Davey Hooper, it had to be among those three men: the spurious Cranston Higgins, angry hotelier Percy Channer, or drug dealer/Party Stop owner Les Urquhart. I supposed Juniper was a distant possibility, and Zoey even more distant, but both were possible. Or it could have been a combination of two or more of them.

I climbed and climbed as the weather got nastier. What was winter going to be like at the castle? How was I going to afford to stay? What was I going to do about Pish? How should I handle Virgil? Questions and troubles raced around in my brain, zinging from one to another until I settled myself down, needing to focus on the road in the worsening weather. Little bits of the gravel road had washed away down the slope. I sure didn’t want to wreck Jezebel.

A couple of miles before the castle I saw a car half off the road in the ditch. That was exactly what I had feared happening! I screeched to a halt on the wet gravel and flung myself from the car, racing to where a girl huddled on the gravel shoulder of the road, blood on her leg. She was soaked, makeup-smeared, and shivering. “Zoey!” I cried, as I approached her.

She turned, her face wet with tears and rain. “Thank God someone’s here. I was coming out to talk to you, but my car went off the road!” Blood soaked the bandage on her leg, visible under a short skirt.

“Come on, let me help you up, and I’ll get you to the castle.”

She sobbed and shivered, holding out her hand for me to help her up. But she couldn’t put her full weight on her injured leg. “Can you take me back to the hospital? I have stitches, but I think I’ve ripped them open, and it hurts like hell!” Moaning, she bent over, touching the bandage. Her hand came away red with blood, and she began to wail.

I thought for just one second, pulling my sweater jacket off and wrapping it around the shivering girl, but my course was obvious. I led her to Jezebel, supporting her as she limped/hopped down the road, and said, “You’re right. The hospital is the best place for you.” I worried about hypothermia and the risk of infection, and in the awful shape she was in I would rather have a doctor take care of her than us. Once she was settled into the passenger seat, I revved the motor and turned on the heater. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it was worth a try. Mr. Hayes must have performed some voodoo spell, because the heater kicked in with a stream of warmish air, probably the first time that had happened since 1989.

I turned the car around and sped off. I knew where Ridley Ridge General Hospital was, as I had seen it in passing while looking for the Party Stop. Glancing over, I saw that Zoey had stopped shivering and looked almost asleep. I hoped that wasn’t shock.
Don’t die on me
, I prayed fervently. “Zoey, wake up! How did you run your car off the road? Why were you coming to see me?” I asked. “Zoey, open your eyes! Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, I think,” she said, looking over at me blearily. “It just . . . hurts.”

“I’ll get you to the hospital. Why did you even leave in the first place? I understood that you were staying at the hospital until you worked things out legally, and until you saw a plastic surgeon.” No answer. “Zoey, honey, keep your eyes open. Why did you leave the hospital? I didn’t think you’d be allowed. You’re on parole, right?”

I looked over at her, but she had her eyes closed again. “Zoey, the police want to talk to you about what happened the night of the party. Did you see anything? Is that what you were coming out to the castle to tell me? I hate to say it, but you’re not hanging out with the best crowd, especially not for someone on parole. Either Les or the guy posing as Cranston Higgins had to have been the one who killed Davey Hooper.” I didn’t want to mention her father as a suspect.

She was silent, but at least she was sitting up now and looked more alert. She rummaged in her little shoulder bag, took out a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out of the pack, her slim fingers dexterous.

I plucked it from her fingers and tossed it in the backseat. “Sorry, not in the car.” I turned onto the highway into town.

We were silent for a long moment, and she had closed her eyes again. The bandage on her leg was a weird red, practically a fluorescent color, and there was a
lot
of blood, drying into a strange drippy pattern. That could not be good. But it made me think of the bloody handprint on the wall and what Virgil had said about there being no ridge detail. Whoever made the handprint had been wearing gloves. Who had been wearing gloves with their costume? Gogi was as La Dame Aux Camélias. Juniper had gloves on to serve with. My eyes widened. That was true! I wondered if she had gotten rid of the gloves or if she had still been wearing them at the end of the evening.

“I’m sorry, Zoey. It must have been a shock, Davey Hooper dying like that.” I thought over all I had heard. There were so many things that just didn’t add up, but one thing that stuck was the fact that Zoey Channer didn’t seem to care about Hooper’s death. That was true from what I had observed at the back of the Party Stop.

Lots of stuff did not add up. I invited Les and had him on the guest list, but he hadn’t checked in at the door like he should have. Why not? He had come in costume, because it was clear to me at that point that he
was
the Sweeney Todd with the straight razor. “How much did you know about Davey’s con, the plot to make money off me?” I suddenly asked.

She sounded drowsy as she said, “He hired some jerk, some guy who makes a living swindling old folks, to play your cousin. Usually the guy works the grandson scam, you know? Finds a mark, then makes the phone call:
Grandma, I’m in trouble. Can you send me money to get out of jail?
What kind of loser scams little old ladies?” She giggled, ending on a snort and a snuffle. “But the guy went off script on his own, and Davey was mad as hell.”

That much I had already figured out. So Davey Hooper was coming to my party to have it out with Cranston. For the first time, I wondered when Cranston had left that evening, why he had left before other locals, and if he still had his lab coat from his Doctor Frankenstein costume on? Why had I not wondered about that before? “You were Davey’s girlfriend, right? You met through his mother, who you met in jail; she sent you to him with a message about me and the castle.”

She glanced over at me, her makeup-streaked face marked by a surprised expression. I looked back, needing to keep my focus on the road. We were almost to Ridley Ridge, and I was relieved that she seemed better than she had at first, when I’d thought she was going into shock.

“How involved were you in the plot?” I asked, slowing to go around a branch that had fallen in the road. I wove around it, waiting for her answer. Involved enough that she’d come in costume to the party . . . the Mardi Gras mask and gaudy costume, complete with gloves. She had been involved enough that she could be going back to jail, I suspected, for more than just the parole violation.

Wait . . . gloves? “How involved were you, Zoey?” I said, my blood running cold. “Involved enough that you were at the scene of the crime?”

“Enough. Shut up now!”

I felt something poke into my side and looked down at the barrel of a gun. I jumped and the car swerved.

“Geez, will you watch what you’re doing?” she screeched, grabbing the door handle. “Just drive and stay steady, ’cause my finger’s on the trigger.”

My hands were shaking and the weather was getting worse, and I didn’t know what else to do but keep driving and hope I could figure something out. Zoey with a gun, holding it on me. What the heck was going on? Maybe as I slowed to go through town I could catch someone’s attention. At the edge of Ridley Ridge, as I began to brake, Zoey moved across the seat, put the gun to my head, and stomped on the gas. I had no choice but to stay straight, weaving around the very few cars that were on the road in the storm, and we zoomed past the hospital and out the other side of the town like a greased pig slipping through a narrow doorway. I was terrified, and I struggled to keep control both of myself and the car. I shouted at her to get her foot off the gas, and as the gun wavered away from me, I kicked at her, completely forgetting about her wounds.

It was all I could do to control the car for a long two or three minutes that felt like an eon as I slowed it to a moderate speed. She still held that gun on me, cursing me out the whole time and telling me to smarten up. Then she suddenly grabbed the wheel and wrenched it hard to the right, sending us and the car careening into a parking lot by an abandoned-looking gas station about a quarter mile past Ridley Ridge.

I shrieked, but she just laughed hysterically; we bounced and jolted down a rise and slid to a stop in a shower of gravel as I slammed on the brakes. I was shaking badly, my heart pounding and bile rising in my throat, the seatbelt having taken my breath away. I undid it, rubbing my breastbone, which ached from the sudden stop. Before I could collect myself, Les Urquhart dashed out of the gas station, jerked open my door, and yanked me out by the hair. I scrabbled for footing on wet gravel and whacked at his hands, only succeeding in smacking myself in the head.

“Shut up and get the hell into the station,” he growled, as unlike the lackadaisical man I had met on two occasions as could be imagined.

“What’s going on?” I gabbled, clucking like a chicken about to lay an egg. Frigid rain poured down, soaking me in moments as he pushed me, stumbling and staggering, toward the door. “What are you doing this for?”

“Between you and effing Juniper and Davey, you’ve ruined a beautiful, elegant,
simple
plan.” He wrenched my arm behind me and frog-walked me through a rickety screen door into a dark and musty interior. “Move the car, Zoey,” he yelled over his shoulder.

He pushed me down on a wheeled office chair that skidded across the cement floor, screeching all the way. As I was about to spring up to bolt, he grabbed me again, shoving me back down on the chair. He was a lot stronger than I ever thought he could be, and he used the weight of his body to hold me down in the heavy vintage office chair, which was more steel than padding, as he efficiently zip-tied my hand to one armrest. “Stop struggling or I’ll kill you, I swear to God.”