Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

up in the attic while I was slithering through Ridley Ridge. There was, according to Pish, an embarras de richesses. Shilo said she wasn’t embarrassed at all, and in fact thought all the riches were cool. There was no point in explaining what that meant to Shilo, and why would we bother? Not everyone needs to get every snobbish literary or classical reference.
    There were oodles of furniture up there, as well as trunks and trunks of random goodies, they told me. While Shilo rhapsodized about the vintage clothing—she was toying with dressing as a flapper girl for the party—Pish was intrigued by what appeared to be boxes of financial records of the family dating back many years. While I couldn’t muster any excitement over those, I was interested to learn that there were old photo albums up there, too.
    We spent the evening planning the party décor and the placement of the casket, which Zeke and Gordy were bringing to Wynter Castle on a flatbed truck that Gordy would borrow from his uncle, the farmer. The coffin, with a mannequin, was going to sit on a low table in the great hall and be the welcome to the castle; Pish was planning to rig up the sound system he was working on so some maniacal laughter would emanate from the half-open oak casket. That was as far as I wanted the décor to go in that direction, I reminded him. I did not want kiddie Halloween party gruesomeness or a funhouse atmosphere.
    The alarm clock woke me the next morning just as a ray of autumn sunshine peeped past the drawn curtains. I rolled out of bed, groaning, “Time to make the muffins!” Mornings dawn early when you’ve promised four dozen muffins to an old-age home and another dozen to the local café. Muffins, my downfall in New York City, had proved to be my saving grace in Autumn Vale, New York. My temporary business, called The Merry Muffin for obvious reasons, was going great guns now that I had the castle kitchen vetted and licensed as a proper place in which to bake food for the masses.
    I showered and snuck downstairs, trying not to awaken my friends, who were still on New York City time, where nothing gets going until ten AM . Or at least not in my circle. I let Becket out the door—he had his own mysterious catty business to take care of, I suppose—donned a hairnet and got to work, baking two dozen spice muffins, two dozen bran, one dozen carrot, and one dozen apple.
    Since my stuff had come from storage, I had made myself comfortable in the kitchen, which boasted, thanks to my uncle’s ambition, an industrial-size oven and stovetop and stainless steel countertops worthy of any inn kitchen. Whatever holes there were in my equipment supply I had been able to fill from Janice’s junk store, so I even had industrial-size baking sheets for cookies and squares, which I had added to my repertoire.
    The kitchen was a long room, and now had a cozy nook at one end where the fireplace was topped by a mantel adorned with oil lamps and the more rustic of my teapot collection. I was using what I could of my own stuff to mingle with all that had been left in the castle when I inherited it, which was a lot. The huge Eastlake-style furnishings—including a marble-topped maple sideboard in the dining room that was eight feet tall, which fit the grand size of the room—along with random samples of furniture from every era in American history, made the castle a warm environment, but it was my decorations that were bringing it to life. When I had time, I was going to work on the dining room, where a long oak dining table and a huge Eastlake china buffet were currently cluttered with the remainder of my rather large teapot collection.
    I was just taking the last of the muffins out of the oven when Pish, looking spiffy and dressed for town, jogged into the kitchen and grabbed a cup of coffee. He was followed by Shilo, still wearing footie pajamas—charming on her: she’s twenty-nine but looks about ten years younger—and carrying Becket.
    How