Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (13 page)

“Sure. They were carved on stone, but we had ’em.”

I chuckled. “Do you happen to have a copy?”

“Nah. Why would I keep old crap like that?”

He was indeed the embodiment of Carl Sandburg. I thought for a moment, and something occurred to me. He might not have a yearbook, but I knew someone who just might: Hannah, my favorite librarian in the world. I said good-bye, surprising him with a kiss on the cheek that had everyone staring, and headed to the library.

Hannah was open for business, but there wasn’t a soul there, for a change. Inevitably, we had to talk more about the party, but as we did, she appeared to be avoiding mention of the dead man. I knew her sensibilities; she is like Beth in
Little Women
, focusing on the beauty and light in humanity rather than the depravity, which, though she acknowledged it, did not touch her. However, I wanted to know what she’d noticed or seen, regarding the crime that happened just yards away from us all. She is intelligent and from long habit notices what others are doing, even those who eschew her company.

“Hannah, did you notice anything that night to do with the fellow dressed as a cowboy, or the girl with the feathered Mardi Gras mask on?”

She met my eyes and nodded. “He was interesting. Before Zee got me caught up with the group talking about books, I watched him for a while as Mom and Dad went to get some drinks and look around the castle more. I thought . . .” She frowned down at her slender hands, her delicate fingers threaded together. “I had a feeling he was looking for someone.”

“Looking for someone,” I repeated. “Did he find that person, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said he was interesting; why?”

She frowned and turned her face up to the light that filtered in from the small windows that lined the upper portion of the library wall. Her gamine face had filled in some in the month I had known her, and yet she was still painfully thin and faerylike. Thoughtfully and slowly, she said, “He wasn’t just chatting and eating and looking around like everyone else. He seemed to be looking for someone specific, like he was there to meet someone. I don’t know if he met that person, but I just felt like he was tense, you know? And anxious. He wasn’t there to enjoy the party.”

Davey Hooper would certainly not have been there to enjoy the party. There was only the most tenuous connection between me and Dinty, his late brother, but Binny had been at the party, too, and it was her father who had killed Davey’s brother, albeit in self-defense. Could she have been his quarry? He had not approached Binny at all that evening, though, to my knowledge. It didn’t seem like revenge was his purpose. And I would have thought that if he was after Pish, then he would have approached him at the party, but he hadn’t.

Or had he? Pish was hiding something, I was afraid. He tries to protect me, no matter how much I tell him I don’t need protecting. It goes back to the time right after Miguel’s death, when I was so fragile that just the mention of death or sorrow cut me like a Ginsu knife through a paper heart.

“You know now who he was, the cowboy.” It was a statement, not a question. The whole town knew who the cowboy was, in one sense.

She nodded. “The fellow who died, and the brother of Dinty Hooper. I heard from Zeke.”

“Zeke comes in here?”

She smiled. “We went to middle school together, before I started homeschooling. He was left back and I skipped grades, so we weren’t far apart. When he began to have trouble in high school, I tutored him in literature and English. He’s . . .” She hesitated. “He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s dyslexic, so reading comprehension takes him longer.”

Suddenly some things made sense. Zeke always let Gordy, who was not really as bright as he was, do a lot of the tasks that required reading. “It won’t go beyond me, and if he never brings it up, I won’t mention it.” It gave me an idea for how to organize the lists for the next party. “Would it help Zeke, do you think, if I matched photos with the names of folks on the list for the next party? Would that make identification easier? It actually makes sense for a whole lot of reasons, and Zeke’s dyslexia is only one.”

Hannah approved. “It’s easier for him to remember names, especially unusual ones, if he has a picture to go with it. That’s how he got better in history. He’s smart; he’s the one who helped me install the computer and Internet here in the library, and he always takes care of any problems I have that way.”

“Okay, I’ll do it that way next time. Now . . . you said you don’t know if the cowboy found who he was looking for?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. I saw him talking to several people, so I suppose any one of them could have been who he was looking for. He spoke to Cranston and Emerald, as well as the Mardi Gras girl. And Juniper . . . he spoke to her, too.” Hannah paused, then went on. “Juniper looked unhappy.”

“How is that different from her usual look?”

“The same but more. Does that make sense? I just had a feeling there was something
more
wrong that evening for Juniper.” She paused, then glanced over at me and asked, “Binny says Juniper lived in Ridley Ridge before here?”

“That’s what she says. Why?”

Hannah just shook her head. I knew she’d be thinking about it—whatever
it
was—and when she had something solid she’d call me. I changed the subject, bringing up my conversation with Doc. I shared his note. She read it over and her eyes lit up when I asked about yearbooks.

“I do have a stack. I’ve been working on getting the whole set of Ridley Ridge High School yearbooks from the beginning, in the twenties.”

“I’d need . . . let’s see . . . nineteen forty or forty-one, I think.”

She moved the joystick on her wheelchair and zoomed expertly around her desk to a shelf at the far end of the room. I followed, and she clicked along the tidy row of yearbooks, the slim leather-bound volumes all kinds of dull colors from gray to brown to maroon, until she found what she wanted. She put a finger on the top of one and slid it out from among its brothers. “Here we go, nineteen forty-one. Let’s look for your uncle first. When we’ve done this, I have some stuff to show you.”

“What did you find?” I asked, excited. “Is it about Violet? And my uncle?”

“Not now, after,” she said firmly.

She held the book on her lap with one hand and worked the joystick with the other. We went back to her desk, and she laid the book on the surface. Her gray eyes sparkling, she looked up at me. “I feel like we’re uncovering a mystery, you know? Like Nancy Drew and her friends.”

“
You
can be Nancy. I think I’m more Jessica Fletcher than Nancy Drew.”

She pulled her gooseneck lamp down, closer to the book—the library was a little gloomy; it could use better lighting—and opened it. We scanned through it together until we found the senior class section and located Melvyn Wynter’s oval portrait; he stared out at me from the page in all his teenage skinniness. His expression was bland, but I swear there was a twinkle in his eyes that made me think he was the jokester I had been told he was by Doc English. I made a mental note to look back to the previous grades for my grandfather, Murgatroyd Wynter, a character even less well known to me than my uncle.

On the seniors’ welcome page, titled “Class of ’41,” Melvyn was listed, to my astonishment, as the class poet. There was a better photo of my great uncle, his gaze brooding, his hawklike profile very much what I (barely) remembered of my father. Was there any of Cranston in his appearance? I did search, but Cranston had a bluff, friendly appearance, not the hatchet face of Melvyn. Maybe if I found Violet I’d see the resemblance. Hannah and I both searched but didn’t find a Violet among the senior class, nor the juniors. Was Cranston’s whole story a hoax or a lie?

I just didn’t know. After all, Hannah
had
found the reference to Violet Flores’s “leaving town” party in the local newspaper archives. In such a small place, how likely was it that there woud be two Violet’s leaving town at about the same time? If Violet Flores was indeed my Uncle Melvyn’s Violet, then perhaps she had left school early, though no one had said so.

Hannah looked thoughtful for a moment, then pulled up a search on her computer. She softly said, “Aha!” and turned the screen to me. I saw a list of other versions of the name Violet and there, under Spanish, was Yolanda, one of the names of the girls in the senior class.

“Yolanda is such a pretty name; why would she go by Violet instead?”

Hannah hesitantly said, “It made her stand out. Maybe in 1941 she didn’t want to sound foreign, you know . . . Spanish or Mexican.”

I nodded. She had a point. In the America of the time, with all the uncertainty of a world at war, blending in may have been a priority. “So this may be Violet; we don’t know.”

But just then I saw something else, a random photo of a group of kids from the senior class hanging around the football field. There, his arm slung over Yolanda’s shoulders was my uncle, Melvyn Wynter. “That’s her!”

Chapter Twelve

H
ANNAH
SQ
UEALED
EXCITEDLY
and clapped. “You’re right!”

We read the caption:
Melvyn Wynter, our local poet, takes a moment with his friends and Yolanda Flores, the lucky young lady who has caught his eye
.

“Well, that certainly suggests Yolanda is Violet,” I said.

She nodded, thoughtfully. “I wish we had Cranston’s locket here so we could tell if this is the same woman as in the photo.” She glanced over at me. “What do you think of that?”

“What do I think of the locket?” I shrugged. “A sweet gesture on Melvyn’s part, the kind of thing a young fellow would buy his girl, right?”

Hannah frowned down at the page, then turned back to her computer, her tiny fingers flying over the keyboard then clicking her mouse. “Here,” she said, turning the screen toward me. “This is a file I made of pictures of lockets from the nineteen forties; click on the arrows to scan the photos. They look a lot like Cranston’s locket. During World War Two the government shut down gold mining, so anything made of gold got more expensive or was just impossible to get. That could be why the locket is gold filled, or some cheaper alloy, or it could just be that he was only a teenager, after all, and couldn’t afford anything better. But it’s something else that has me puzzled.” With a click of her mouse, she brought up photos of the
insides
of the lockets. “Do you notice anything that makes these different from Cranston’s?”

To humor her I looked at the photos. I’m ashamed to say it took me a solid three or four minutes of examining the photos before I caught on. By then I had prodded her a few times just to tell me, but she wouldn’t and watched my eyes instead. Then it dawned on me. “Oh. Wow. Of course! Why didn’t I get this before?” It was staring me in the face the whole time. “If Melvyn gave Violet a locket, then he would put in
his
photo, not hers.”

She clapped her hands. “Very good!”

I smiled over at her, thinking what a little teacher she was. The photo was certainly something to consider and to ask Cranston about. “Was this what you wanted to show me?”

She nodded.

“There may be a logical reason,” I warned.

“Of course. But it’s something, right?”

“It sure is. You are one smart girl.”

Some patrons came in just then, but I had to leave anyway. Hannah whispered that she was going to search through some local archives next and try to find any references to Melvyn and Violet among them. I told her about the trunks in the attic and how I hoped to search through them for any photos or anything related to Melvyn and Yolanda/Violet. I was full of questions, including what had been going on between Melvyn and his parents and with my grandfather, Murgatroyd, during this time.

I headed out, down the little side street on which the library lived, and out to Abenaki
,
then down to Binny’s Bakery. I wanted to ask Juniper about being accosted by the cowboy, Davey Hooper, and what he had wanted. She had no doubt been questioned by the police by now, but I would never know what they had learned from her.

I entered, only to find a harried Binny simultaneously looking after the counter and tending to her ovens in back, where she was making a hundred creampuffs for a wedding-shower order. I zipped behind the counter and helped her clear the backlog of customers, after which she slumped down on a stool and pulled off her baker’s hat, wiping her forehead of sweat, her curly dark hair, so like her newly discovered niece’s, sticking out in spiky fluffs.

“So where is your new helper? I wanted to talk to her about the party, to see if she saw or heard anything.”

She sighed, heavily. “She was here this morning, for all the good she was.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she wouldn’t stop crying. The cops talked to her yesterday, and she came in this morning babbling about how mean they were. I tried to calm her down—told her they had asked everyone at the party the same questions, probably . . . I know they did me—but I was busy. Virgil came in at one point and asked if she could come by the police station again after work.”

“What did he want?”

“He didn’t say. Why? Is it important?” Binny asked.

“I don’t know; probably just more questions.”

“Yeah, I guess. He asked me the weirdest stuff, like did I see Pish with the dead guy at any point.” She eyed me. “What’s that all about?”

“I don’t have a clue,” I said, thanking my lucky stars that not only does Binny not listen to gossip, she is the least curious person I have ever known, solely focused on her baking business and now her family; otherwise, she would have put two and two together. “What happened then?”

“Then she went out for a smoke break and just never came back.” Binny fluffed her erratic bangs until they were even worse. “I’d have more luck hiring Isadore.”

“Frying pan into the fire pit,” I said. Isadore Openshaw did not, in my opinion, belong in the service industry. Some folks just don’t. “Juniper was seen talking to Davey Hooper the night of the party. I wonder if there’s some connection there.” I was willing to entertain any notion that would distract attention from Pish’s past with the victim.

“Could be. That would explain why she’s so upset, I guess,” Binny mused. “I don’t think she knew who the dead guy was until the cops told her during questioning.”

“When did she leave the party that night?” I asked. “And how? She was supposed to stay, and you were going to give her a ride home.”

“She just took off. I don’t know
how
she got back to Autumn Vale. I forgot to ask, I’ve been so busy. Right now I’ve got a hundred creampuffs that I need to box, and I’d better get back to it, because I’ve only got half an hour. Thanks for the help, Merry.”

I took the hint, left the bakery, got into Shilo’s rust bucket, and headed out of town toward home, climbing out of the Vale. But I then had a fateful brainstorm and changed direction. The day was turning gloomy, and the wind tossed the tops of the trees, sending showers of golden and red leaves fluttering across the highway, swirled into torrents by the car. That should have been the harbinger of evil to come, but I blithely crossed a river ravine on a low truss bridge, turned onto a wider highway, and was soon in the depressing environs of Ridley Ridge. I was going to go to the Party Stop, but thought I’d make another stop first.

I parked on the main street and got out of the car. Shilo’s dilapidated rattletrap, groaning and griping as it shuddered to a stop, seemed peculiarly at home in this gray, sad town. A faint misty rain was blowing across the street, and one person hustled into the little café, the place I had entered to ask the waitress about the location of the Party Stop. The same pudgy, texting waitress was working, this time pouring a cup of coffee for the newcomer, who had taken a window seat. Why anyone would want a window seat in Ridley Ridge I could not say. Any other seat, maybe one of the ones next to a faded travel poster with a photo of Greece, would have been preferable. I turned up my sweater collar and ran across the street to the café, entered, and approached the waitress, who was already slumped down on a stool at the lunch counter near the cash register, texting madly.

“Hi,” I said, sitting down on the stool next to her and taking off my damp sweater.

“Uh, hi,” she said, jumping up. “You want coffee?”

“Sure. Is the owner here?” I asked.

“No. Joe only comes in on Saturday to sign paychecks,” she said, slipping behind the counter and grabbing an almost empty coffeepot.

That was good, because she was the one I wanted to talk to. I took the cup of coffee, though I could tell it was old, burned, and awful, with a visible oily sheen on the surface. I cradled it in my hands; at least it was hot, and I was cold. “My name is Merry, and I bake muffins. I was wondering,” I said, eying the glass cake cover with a pile of sugary donuts under it, “do you think the owner would sell my muffins here?”

It was a simple question, but she stared at me like I had asked if he would sell crystal meth if I cooked some up. “I don’t know.”

“Can I have Joe’s phone number? I’ll just ask him, okay?”

She readily agreed to that and wrote his name and phone number down on the back of an order slip. I stuck it in my purse, then sipped some of the wretched coffee, choking it down with difficulty. “You lived here long?” I asked, setting the cup down and pushing it away. “Susan,” I added, glancing at her name tag.

“All my life.” She was starting to get more comfortable with me.

“I came here a couple of weeks ago looking for the Party Stop, remember?”

She nodded.

“Do you know a girl named Juniper Jones? She’s working in Autumn Vale now, but said she worked at the Party Stop before moving on.”

Susan rolled her eyes. “I know her. She’s a special kind of crazy, I’ll say that.”

I kept my expression blank but felt a little jiggle of excitement in my stomach. Had Juniper, seen arguing with Davey, killed him for reasons unknown? Had she known him before coming to Autumn Vale? “Crazy how?”

“Crazy as in
cah-razy
!” Susan said, eyes crossed and twirling her finger around one ear. Eyes wide, she leaned over the counter and whispered, “She threatened a girlfriend of mine at the pool hall one night just for laughing.”

“Laughing?”

“Yeah. Said she’d cut her pretty face into ribbons.”

“That sure is a special kind of crazy,” I said.
Cut her pretty face into ribbons
, eh? Sounded fairly psychopathic, and also like she’d be handy with a straight razor. “How long was she in town?”

“A few weeks, I guess.”

“Where did she come from?”

“I have no idea. I mean, who would purposely move to this town?”

I couldn’t disagree with her. “What about Les Urquhart; what do you know about him?”

“He went to school with my uncle Reg. Reg says Les is a sleazoid.”

“In what way?”

She leaned over again and whispered, “I heard he sells drugs out of the back of the Party Stop. He went to jail for dealing, you know.”

That confirmed my guess about Les’s side business. Maybe it was more than just pot, though. “So why did he hire Juniper Jones?”

“Who knows? He’s got all kinds of weirdos hanging out at that place. I wouldn’t step foot in there, even if the Party Stop
is
the only place in town to buy a Halloween costume!”

“What kind of weirdos?”

“Lately, there was this guy hanging around that no one saw except at night,” she said, glancing around as if there were a crowd trying to listen in on the gossip. “He was a skinny dude—tall, lanky, long hair. Everyone joked he was some kind of vampire, like . . . he only came out at night!”

I asked a few more questions, but that’s about all she had to offer. “Well, thanks, Susan,” I said, laying a five dollar bill on the counter and waving off change as I stood and hoisted my purse up on my shoulder.

“Anytime. It’s nice to talk to someone from the outside world,” she said wistfully, staring past the lone customer out the window to the gloomy streetscape.

“Have you ever thought of leaving Ridley Ridge?” I asked.

“Where would I go?” she said with a hopeless shrug.

Into the wide, wide world
, I wanted to say; a waitress can waitress anywhere, even New York City or LA. But it was her business if she was so defeated by life in the twilight burg that she couldn’t even see a place beyond the town line of Ridley Ridge. I got into Shilo’s car and headed to the Party Stop. The parking lot was surprisingly full, so I was forced to use on-street parking. The car idled for a moment before stopping, making a
knock-knock
sound that was not the beginning of a joke, I hoped. When I entered, it was to the noise of kids racing up and down the gloomy aisles while their mothers screeched at them to shut up as they surveyed racks of ready-to-wear Halloween costumes. Les sat at the cash desk still reading
Moby-Dick
and ignoring the chaos.

“It’s Halloween tonight, isn’t it?” I said by way of a greeting. I had forgotten. That had to be the result of some kind of blockage in my brain. My mind boggled at the thought of Halloween in Ridley Ridge.

He looked up and nodded. “Busiest day of the freakin’ year.” He sighed and put the novel down, splaying it out on the counter. “So how did your shindig turn out the other night?”

“It went pretty well, all things considered,” I said with crossed fingers. I supposed a murder at your party, if you didn’t find out about it until after the end, didn’t devalue the whole experience, right?

“Heard about your little trouble after. Sure am sorry for you.” He stood and rang up one brood, a woman with three kids, one a baby on her hip. She bought a witch costume, a mad doctor, and a pumpkin outfit for the baby.

“Thanks. It was a horrible thing to happen, even though I didn’t know the guy.”

Once the woman had exited, he leaned across the counter, swiped lanky hair out of his eyes, and said with a smirk, “I heard he was the twin brother of that other guy who got murdered out at your place. You seem to have your share of troubles.”