Much Ado About Muffin Read Online Free PDF Page B

stand with Minnie. Rouse is not welcome here, and neither are her followers.”
    Janice and I left soon after. She had her shop to run, and I had a lot I wanted to accomplish. It felt good to get back in the swing of Autumn Vale happenings. The Villa Paradiso torpor was drifting away like mist on the wind, and I felt alive again.
    We stood outside the variety store and luncheonette for a moment, then walked toward her store. Zeke and Gordy slouched out of the door that led to their apartment over Binny’s bakery. It warmed my heart that both fellows’ eyes lit up when they saw me. They eagerly told me what wasgoing on in their lives. Gordy was headed out to his uncle’s farm, where he was working fairly steadily.
    â€œGordy’s giving me a ride to work,” Zeke said. “I got a job in Ridley Ridge in the sheriff’s department, doing custodial.”
    Getting a steady job in a depressed area was a big deal. I congratulated him sincerely. Gordy pointed out his “new” car parked at the curb. His uncle had given it to him so he could get to work and back. It was a real beater, with damage on the front end and lots of Bondo and duct tape holding it together, but if it got him from A to B, then he was better off than he had been.
    As they chugged away from the curb, I asked Janice to wait for a moment while I skipped into the bakery. Binny’s Bakery was the first place I entered in Autumn Vale, and as such it holds a special place in my heart. The walls are lined with shelves of teapots, and the place always smells wonderfully of Binny’s fabulous baked goods: focaccia, Portuguese rolls, cream puffs, Napoleons, and lots of other goodies. I stepped up and in, the little bells chiming over the door. This time it wasn’t dour Binny at the counter, but a smiling Pattycakes.
    â€œMerry!” she cried, raising the pass-through and sidling through the opening. She hugged me tightly; it was like being hugged by a fragrant pillow, soft and squishy. “I heard you were back. Roma called me last night. She was afraid she’d made a bad impression on you, but I reassured her you were probably just worn-out from your flight.”
    I felt the subtle criticism. “You and Roma are friends?”
    A voice from the bakery intoned, “More like freaking mother and daughter if you ask me!”
    â€œBinny!” I cried. “Come on out here. I came in to see you.”
    Binny Turner strode out from behind, her tunic covered in flour, her dark hair tucked up into a hairnet. She regarded me seriously, then looked over at Pattycakes, or Patricia, as she was properly called. I sensed some tension.
    â€œIt’s good to see you, Binny. How is your dad doing?”
    She gave me a rare smile. Her father, Rusty, had beenmissing for a long time, almost a year. When she got him back a year ago, after tragically losing her brother, she had worried about his health for a while, as well as his legal bills, given the tangle he was in from his involvement with a con artist’s web of deceit. “He’s doing a lot better. In fact, he’s got Turner Construction up and running again. There’s lots of work. They’re going to be moving a house off a lot near the sheriff’s department, which has bought some land to expand. Dad’s not doing much himself, yet, but he hired a few guys to work, plus Junior Bradley to manage the construction office and job sites.”
    â€œReally? That’s great, Binny.” Junior was an underqualified zoning commissioner who had messed up often during his tenure and who was facing some legal woes of his own. It was a bit of a surprise that he’d gotten work in the construction business, but he had been Binny’s brother Tom Turner’s best friend, almost like another son to Rusty, and he did need a job.
    Patricia smiled and wriggled her eyebrows. “He’s hired some out-of-towners, good-looking guys,” she