The Pumpkin Muffin Murder (7 page)

And Logan Powell was right in the middle of it, Phyllis saw as she carried one of the scarecrows from her car across the park. Despite the things Carolyn and the other women had said about him, Logan seemed to be heavily involved, striding around the park and issuing orders, talking on the cell phone tucked into his ear, and popping peppermints. He saw Phyllis and gave her a grin and a wave, then pointed out to one of the workmen where a sign needed to go.

Phyllis came to a bale of hay with a stake lying on it. She set the scarecrow on the hay, positioned it, and picked up the stake.

“Careful,” a voice said behind her. “You could kill a guy with that thing.”

P
hyllis turned her head, looked over her shoulder, and saw Logan grinning at her. She positioned the stake, worked it through a precut slit in the overalls, slid it down the scarecrow’s back, and pushed it into the hay until it was good and solid.

“There,” she said as she straightened and stepped back. “How does that look?”

“It looks great,” Logan said. “Very autumnal. I didn’t know you were gonna help with the decorations, Phyllis. You don’t mind if I call you Phyllis, do you?”

“No, not at all. I guess you could say I’m a late-blooming volunteer, at least in this case.”

“We appreciate all the help we can get.” That seemed to be a common sentiment. Logan looked around. “Hey, where’s that grandson of yours?”

“Oh, I left him at home with . . . a friend of mine.” Phyllis wasn’t going to start referring to Sam as her boyfriend when she was talking to other people. It was one thing to come to an understanding between themselves, but quite another not to act her age in public.

“Well, be sure to bring him to the festival tomorrow. He’ll get a big kick out of it. There’ll be a lot of good food, too. You know there’s gonna be a cooking contest.” Logan smiled again and made a production of licking his lips. “I’ve got a real sweet tooth, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed you eating those peppermints.”

“Yeah, I guess I, ah, picked up the habit when I quit smoking.”

“It’s a much healthier habit, I would think,” Phyllis said. “I’m entering the contest, you know.”

Logan’s eyebrows went up. “Really?” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “What are you making?”

Phyllis glanced around, falling into the same conspiratorial attitude. Then she said quietly, “Pumpkin cheesecake muffins. With pecan crumble topping.”

“Ohhhh,” Logan said. “That sounds delicious. I’ll be sure to try one.”

“I hope you like it.”

“Well, got to get back to work,” he said. “No rest for the wicked, as they say. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Phyllis nodded. “Of course.”

Logan walked across the park to talk to some of the city employees. Phyllis started back toward the parking lot to get another scarecrow out of her car.

Carolyn fell in step beside her. “That was Logan Powell talking to you, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“He was
flirting
with you, Phyllis.”

Phyllis stopped in her tracks and turned to look at her friend in surprise. “Flirting with me?” she repeated. “No, he wasn’t!”

Carolyn nodded. “He most certainly was,” she insisted. “I was watching. I saw the way he smiled and laughed the whole time he was talking to you. I kept waiting for him to touch you on the arm or the shoulder, but he never did. He thought about it, though.”

“Well, that’s just crazy,” Phyllis said with a shake of her head. “I’m at least twenty years older than he is.”

“Some men like older women, or so I’ve been told.” Carolyn added grudgingly, “Anyway, you don’t look as old as you really are. You could pass for—I don’t know—sixty.”

“Thanks . . . I think. But you’re wrong about Logan. He was just being friendly. He’s a salesman, Carolyn. I’ll bet he’s in the habit of talking like that to everyone he meets. It’s a lot easier to sell something to someone when you’ve established some sort of connection with them first.”

“Maybe,” Carolyn said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

“Anyway, there’s no reason in the world for Logan to flirt with me when he’s got a beautiful wife like Dana.”

“Some men don’t need a reason. Like you said, it’s a habit.”

Phyllis didn’t want to continue with this conversation. As far as she was concerned, the very idea was just silly. So she said, “We’d better get the rest of those scarecrows out.”

“I’ve only got a couple left. When I finish with them, I’ll help you with the others.”

It didn’t take long for them to unload and position the rest of the scarecrows. When that was done, Phyllis asked, “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

Carolyn shook her head. “That’s all I was supposed to do, and it went a lot faster than I expected it to, since you gave me a hand.”

“I think I’ll go back to the house, then, and mix up a batch of those muffins.”

“One more test run, is that it?”

“I suppose you could call it that. Really, though, I’m just hungry for them.”

“I’m looking forward to trying them,” Carolyn said. “I can’t let that influence any decision I might make as a judge in the contest, though.”

“I wouldn’t expect it to,” Phyllis told her honestly. Carolyn was her oldest friend, but she knew that Carolyn would also be scrupulously fair when it came to judging the entries in the contest. Neither of them would have had it any other way.

They drove back to the house, Phyllis arriving ahead of Carolyn because of the traffic. When she pulled into the garage, she saw Sam and Bobby standing by the workbench. Bobby was wearing a pair of safety goggles that were much too big for him, but at least his eyes were completely covered and protected, Phyllis thought. The elastic strap attached to the goggles had been tied in a knot behind Bobby’s head so it would hold them on.

“Look at me, Gran’mama,” he called to her as she got out of the car.

“I see you,” Phyllis told him. “With those big eyes, you look like a Martian.”

“A what?”

“A Martian. A man from Mars.”

“But there aren’t any men on Mars,” Bobby said, obviously puzzled. “My dad read to me about it in a book.”

Sam said, “We didn’t always know that, Bobby. Used to be, some folks thought there were people on Mars and Venus and most of the other planets.”

“In other dimensions or alt’nate universes, maybe.”

Phyllis and Sam exchanged a glance, and she could tell that he was thinking the same thing she was, about how much smarter in some ways children were these days. Four-year-olds knew about alternate universes, took iPhones for granted, and could even set the clock on a VCR . . . although VCRs had already long gone the way of the buggy whip, Phyllis reminded herself. It was all DVRs and TiVos and Hulu now.

“Has Sam been teaching you all about these tools?”

Bobby nodded. “Yeah, but he won’t let me use any of them yet. He says I have to be older first.”

“That’s right,” Phyllis said. “I’ll have to talk to your mother and father, and they’ll decide when they think you’re old enough to do things like that.”

“Okay. The saws are really cool, though. And Sam really knows how to use ’em.”

“I expect your grandpa Kenny was even better at it,” Sam said. “These were his tools, you know—most of them, anyway. They wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.” Sam paused and chuckled. “Neither would you.”

Bobby looked up and frowned. “How come?”

Phyllis put a hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the kitchen door. “You come along with me now, Bobby. I’ve got something you can help me with. I’m going to make a batch of muffins.”

He switched his gaze to her. “What kind?”

“Pumpkin.”

“Do I
like
punkin muffins?”

“You’ll like these,” she assured him. She pulled the goggles off his head and tossed them to Sam, who caught them deftly. She mouthed,
Thank you
to him. He just grinned and nodded.

Carolyn drove in as Phyllis ushered Bobby on into the house. She had him wash up while she did the same and then got the mixing bowls out in the kitchen. Carolyn didn’t come in the house right away, which was a little unusual, but Phyllis didn’t really think anything of it. A few minutes later, when Carolyn walked through the kitchen, she didn’t say anything.

Bobby stood on a chair to help him reach the counter as he and Phyllis worked together mixing up all the ingredients for the muffins. The bowl of cream cheese filling went into the freezer while they worked on the other two bowls. Phyllis poured the pumpkin batter into the baking cups Bobby had put in the muffin tins. She took the cream cheese mixture out of the freezer, where it had firmed. Carefully not touching the edges, she placed a spoonful in the middle of each muffin. She then handed the bowl of crumble to Bobby so he could add it on top. She had the oven preheating, and when the muffins were ready to go in, she said, “All right, we’ll check them in twenty minutes.”

“Then can we eat ’em?” he said eagerly.

“They might need to cook a little longer, and then they’ll need to cool. Well, now that I think about it, that might be too close to suppertime. It might spoil your appetite.”

Bobby’s face fell. “Oh.”

Phyllis couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, and anyway, he had helped her get the muffins ready to bake. “Tell you what,” she said. “Maybe we can split one of them, just you and me. I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

That brought the grin back to his face. “Deal!”

“You can go watch TV or play a game now.”

“Okay.” He hurried off toward the living room.

Sam came in from the garage a few minutes later while Phyllis was cleaning up the dishes she and Bobby had gotten dirty in preparing the muffins. He took a deep breath and said, “That smells mighty good. Nothin’ smells much better than baked goods.”

“You can have one of them at supper.” She kept her word and didn’t mention that she and Bobby intended to get a head start on the others.

Sam leaned a hip against the counter. He didn’t sound quite as casual as he looked when he said, “Carolyn tells me that fella Logan Powell was flirtin’ with you at the park.”

Phyllis turned to face him, not quite sure whether to be angry or amused. “She said what?” Without giving Sam a chance to answer, she went on, “That’s crazy. No such thing happened.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. You’re a mighty fine-lookin’ woman.”

“Oh, sure. Men who are young enough to be my son hit on me all the time.”

“I’m not afraid of a little competition, mind you.”

“Sam . . .” She put a hand on his arm. “Logan Powell is no competition for you.”

“That’s good to hear. I don’t reckon he’s tasted those muffins yet, though. That might get him even more interested.”

“He’s not interested. He has a lovely wife. But he
will
get a chance to try those muffins tomorrow. I suppose we’ll see what happens then.”

P
hyllis had made the pumpkin muffins a couple of times before. This batch turned out to be just as good as the others, maybe even better. Eve and Sam raved about them when they tried them after supper. Carolyn just said, “I can’t comment. It wouldn’t be proper, me being a judge in the contest tomorrow and all.”

Phyllis noticed that she ate two of the muffins, though.

Sam had noticed that there was an empty place in the muffin tin. “Looks like a little thief snuck in and helped himself before supper,” he said with a grin as he looked at the little boy.

“It was Gran’mama’s idea, I swear!” Bobby said. “And she ate half of it!”

Phyllis laughed. “I might not have given in if I’d known you were going to throw me under the bus that way. Sam didn’t even have to tickle you first to get the truth out of you.”

“I could tickle him now,” Sam offered.

Bobby bolted out of his chair and ran laughing into the living room.