Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (20 page)

Lizzie paused, looked around and nodded. “I know where we are, now. I’ve only been this way a couple of times, but I think we’re almost there.”

Close to us was the sound of water, and soon we stepped over a trickling stream that bubbled and chuckled along a winding trail. I stopped and cupped some of the water in my hand. It was frigid cold and clear, and tasted clean when I sipped it from the cup of my hand. My fabulous woodswoman skills told me it was springwater. My spirits lifted. I could not believe that this was my land!

Lizzie led me up a path that was even more treacherous because it was on a slope. She scrambled ahead of me, and I heard her cry, “Aha!”

I scaled the last bit, huffing and puffing, and looked down over a crude encampment with another half-collapsed tent. The fire pit was like the other one, a simple ring of rocks. Lizzie took photos, as she had of the other encampment, searching for unusual angles and zooming in on things, while I looked around.

Finally, I sat down on a log near the fire pit and picked up a stick, while Lizzie wandered, taking close-ups of the tent. I was about to tell her we ought to get going, when I heard an involuntary exclamation from her and turned to find her backing away from the tent, her expression blank, her whole body trembling.

“What’s wrong?” I said, standing. She just pointed.

I strode over to the tent and looked in. Then I turned around and raced to the edge of the woods to throw up. I still contend that is any sane woman’s reaction to finding a very,
very
dead body.

I
’M ASHAMED TO
say that I did not hold it together as well as Lizzie did. That fifteen-year-old girl led me out of the woods and back to the castle, where I babbled to McGill and Shilo about the awful scene we had discovered. McGill called Virgil, and before long the cops were at the castle yet again, this time in the bright light of day. Fortunately, Lizzie, her face white, her lips compressed, assured them she was able to guide them back to the scene—I would have had no clue how to find the encampment again—but I made McGill go with them, so he could make sure
she
was all right.

My story this time, as related to a sheriff’s deputy, was brief, because the body had been there awhile before we arrived on the scene. We found it, that was all. I paced after that, then went to the kitchen to make a big pot of coffee. Shilo and I had discovered a commercial coffee urn in one of the closets in our perambulations of the castle, and it was about to come in handy. I made several dozen mini muffins, too, with the mini-muffin tins I had bought the day before, and heaped them in a basket and set them on the kitchen table. I set out as many coffee cups as I could find, then called Janice Grover at Crazy Lady Antiques to see if she had a box of old mugs I could buy or borrow. Unfortunately, all I got was an answering machine. It was just make-work anyways, something to keep my mind busy as it shied away from the terrible sight I had seen in that tent.

Who
was
the dead body in the tent? Had he or she died alone, or been killed?

I paced along the flagstone terrace of the castle, as Shilo tried to make me feel better by avoiding the topic. A cold breeze swept up the lane, tossing the tops of the trees, and clouds began to scud along the vaulted blue, closing the scene in with ominous darkness, very Hollywood horror movie like. All we needed was a crypt, a coffin, and thunder to make it complete. But through it all, as I paced, Shilo talked about McGill, Ridley Ridge, and then McGill some more.

I whirled and gazed steadily at her. “Do you think that body is . . . could it be Rusty Turner?” Had he gone no farther than the woods near the castle and died of a heart attack or stroke? Or had old Uncle Melvyn murdered him and left his body there to rot? Given the conflict between them, it was a legitimate concern.

“We don’t know anything yet,” Shilo pointed out.

Finally McGill and Lizzie emerged from the woods as a light rain began to spit down. I hopped down off the terrace and raced to them, hugging Lizzie. She rocked back on her heels and stared up at me, a question in her eyes. What the question was, I couldn’t say. “Are you okay, Lizzie?” I asked, staring down at her. “You don’t need to be strong, or anything, just tell me how you feel.”

“She was great,” McGill said, one hand on her shoulder. “She led Virgil and his boys right to the spot, and told them what she found and how, and pointed out where you had thrown up. We stayed a few minutes, and then I asked Virge if it was okay if we came back here.”

She shrugged, more to get McGill’s hand off her shoulder than anything else, I thought.

“Do you want to go home?” I asked. Her face looked a little pinched and white, and she nodded. “I’ll drive you.” I turned to Shilo. “Can you tell the sheriff where I’ve gone, if he asks?”

She nodded yes, her arm through McGill’s, her head on his shoulder.

I retrieved my keys—I had already changed my clothes, so I was fit to meet a grandmother—and pointed out my rental car. “You’ll have to guide me,” I said, sliding in to the driver’s seat as she settled in on the passenger’s side.

She didn’t answer. I glanced over as I started down the long, curved drive. Tears were rolling down her pale cheeks. I let her silently cry, concentrating on driving in the brief shower, until we reached the turn-off to her grandmother’s home, which was on the outskirts of Autumn Vale. “Are you going to be okay?” I asked, glancing over at her.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” She sniffed. “It was just . . . when I thought about someone dying all alone in that tent, just lying there . . . it was awful. Do you think he was old or young? Did he suffer?”

I pulled the car over onto the shoulder of the road and turned to face her. “It’s one of those things that we might never know. It’s a terrible tragedy, but it’s just as possible the person died in their sleep, and didn’t even feel a thing.” I didn’t think so, but there was no point in saying that to Lizzie.

Her tears had dried, and skepticism was back in her eyes. “Right. Not likely.”

I shook my head. “Just trying to make you feel better.” I stopped, and realized that was what someone had once tried to do for me, and it didn’t help a bit. The night my grandmother died, I was at a party. I knew she was in the hospital, but didn’t think it was anything serious, so I went out with my friends. I was doing shots while my grandmother lay dying in the hospital. An earnest, young nurse tried to make me feel better later, when I found out she’d died while I was getting drunk, but I saw right through her, like Lizzie saw through me.

But this was not about my haunting guilt, my sense that I had let my beloved grandmother down, this was about Lizzie. And she had no guilt to feel, no reason to let it affect her beyond the human kindness that allows us to feel empathy for our fellow creatures. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, this was that person’s path in life. There is not a thing you can do about it. If you want to talk about it, I’m here.” She was tougher, in some ways, at fifteen than I had been at twenty-one, but I wouldn’t take that for granted. I vowed to myself that I’d check in with her often over the next few days. I wondered if the local police department had a victims’ services or social worker to deal with the traumatized.

We drove on, and she indicated her grandmother’s home, which was a tiny bungalow on a narrow street that angled up toward the ridge above town. But when we approached, she suddenly said, “Why don’t you just drop me off? I’m fine.”

“Lizzie, I’m going to speak to your grandmother. Number one, I want her to know about that poor soul we found in the woods, and that we’re taking care of it, and number two, I want to be sure it’s all right that you come out to the castle again.”

She shook her head, tight-lipped, but I was not going to be swayed. She was very young, and even asking her to come out to the castle could be misconstrued. I should have checked with her grandmother before asking her to guide me through the woods. No one in Autumn Vale knew me from Eve. What was I thinking? I pulled into the driveway, where a beat-up Cadillac sat, parked on a crazy angle. Lizzie flung herself out of my car and stomped up the drive, with me following as quickly as I could. She disappeared around the side of the house, toward the back, but I was going to knock on the front door like a civilized human being. I heard the shouting before I even got up to the porch.

“I don’t care what you say, Lizzie is
my
daughter and I can take her back any time I want.”

“Not without CPS getting involved!”

Lizzie’s mother and grandmother?

“You don’t have a court order, Mama, so don’t try to fight me on this.”

“You are
not
gonna take that child back to your house; not with all manner of things going on!”

I hesitated, not sure what to do. I stared at the screen door and willed the arguing to stop, so I could knock.

“
What
things? You don’t know a damn thing about me. You
think
you do, but you don’t. I don’t even drink anymore!”

“Stop it, both of you!” That was Lizzie intervening.

“Honey, I didn’t know you were home. Your mom and I are just . . . we’re talking about where you’re gonna live, and I told her you’re staying here until she can . . . until she gets herself straightened around.”

“Listen to me,” Lizzie pleaded. “Both of you shut up for one minute!”

But I didn’t want her to have to explain me. I knocked.

“Now who the heck is that?” came the grandmother’s worried voice.

When she came to the door, I introduced myself. She was a plump woman, probably in her sixties, with a worried round face much like her granddaughter’s, and faded blue eyes under a fringe of gray. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to come in and talk to you about Lizzie’s day.”

Looking confused and uncertain, she stood back and let me in.

Lizzie had disappeared. I entered the living room, a tidy enough space with a sagging couch and big-screen TV, on which a game show on mute played across the screen. A woman stood by the front window; so this was Lizzie’s mother. She was slim and attractive, with dark hair tied up in a ponytail, and she was wearing jeans and a jean jacket.

I explained why I invited Lizzie out to the castle in the first place, and apologized, acknowledging that I should have asked her grandmother first. I then told them both what we had found together. “I’m so sorry,” I finished, wringing my hands. “I just wanted you to know that if she seems quiet or upset, she may need to talk to someone. That sight . . .” I shuddered. “It’s not something anyone should ever see.”

Lizzie’s mother had seemed pensive until now, but there were tears standing in her eyes by the time I finished. She had her arms folded over her chest, and she was chewing on her fingernail. I suspected that she had recently quit smoking, or was trying to refrain, since I’d seen other ex-smokers nervously biting their fingernails. She turned away and stared out the front window. “Poor Lizzie,” she said, a catch in her voice. “Mama, I want her to come home with me.”

“Why? So you can leave her alone while you go off to do whatever it is you do?”

“I work, Mama, I work!” She sobbed, and headed for the door. “She’s fifteen, not five . . . she can stay alone sometimes.” Shaking her head, she cried, “It’s no good; I don’t know what to do anymore. I just don’t . . .” She flung the door open and stomped out onto the tiny, cement porch, then stood staring at the Caddy, which was blocked in by my rental. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the sky was still a leaden gray.

“You can have your daughter back when you stop working at that awful place,” the older woman yelled after her.

“I’d better move my car,” I said, and headed to the door.

“You’re never going to understand what I’ve been through!” the younger woman hollered back at her mother from outside.

“You’d better not say that again, Emerald Marie Proctor, because I understand more than you’ll ever know.”

I stopped stock-still on the bottom step and stared at Lizzie’s mom. “Your name is Emerald?” I asked stupidly.

“Yeah. Why?” she growled at me. “You going to move your car or what? I need to get out of here and get ready for work.”

But I couldn’t move. Emerald was Lizzie’s mother, and Emerald was the woman over whom Junior and Tom Turner had fought. There could not be two women named Emerald in or near Autumn Vale, could there? She was agitated, I could tell, but I needed to ask her a couple of questions. “Hey, I was just wondering . . . I know you and Lizzie are having a tough time right now—”

She snorted. “Yeah, a tough time because my own mother is turning her against me!”

I remembered Lizzie’s remark about her mother being a whore. Emerald might be right. My mind was working a mile a minute, and I thought a shot in the dark may be required. “It must be difficult, especially with . . . especially since Tom Turner died recently.”

She whirled to face me, her expression one of terror. “What are you saying?”

“You and he were . . . you had a relationship, right?”

She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. She jangled her keys in her hand, and said, “Yeah, a long time ago. Then I took off. I just came back to Autumn Vale a year or so ago. Thought I’d reconnect with my mother! Ha! Then Tom started coming around again, and he got to wondering . . .” She trailed off and shook her head, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“He got to wondering if he was Lizzie’s father, is that right?” I said it softly, but she nodded. “Was he?” She nodded again. “But you haven’t told Lizzie.”

She shook her head, and choked back a sob. “What’s the point
now
?”

“What were he and Junior Bradley fighting over at the bar you work at that involved you?”

“Nothing!”

“But I heard . . .” I paused, remembering what Zeke had said. “Someone in town told me that Junior told Tom to keep his hands off you.”