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

had he gotten back in? “No cat in the kitchen,” I told her sternly, but she didn’t listen to me and set him down in one of the big armchairs near the fireplace.
    “I have to go into town today, my
darling
dumpling,” Pish said, laying a kiss on my floury cheek. He grabbed an apple cinnamon muffin and perched on a stool by the distressed wood worktable.
    I eyed the sport coat and sweater vest he wore and smiled. Pish can be flamboyant, his dialogue sprinkled with exaggerated emphasis and wild hand movements, but he buttons it down when need be, like while talking to the federal agents who were examining Autumn Vale Community Bank. He was working with them to try to uncover and minimize the damage done to the bank by the scheming Dinah Hooper, who now languished in a federal prison awaiting trial for the murders of Tom Turner and Melvyn Wynter. She had not been granted bail, as she was considered a flight risk.
    I said she was a flight certainty, but then I had looked down the barrel of her rifle and survived. To say I was happy they were keeping her out of circulation would be a vast understatement. “I’m going in about twenty minutes,” I said. “Is that too early for you?”
    “Not at
all
my dear. I’m going to see Isadore this morning before the bank.”
    Isadore Openshaw, a former teller at the bank, had not been arrested—yet—and was cooperating with the federal agents. Pish felt sorry for Isadore, and I think she had become something of a pet project of his, the plan being to keep her out of trouble and reform her life. He told me that she reminded him of an aunt who had floated in and out of his life when he was a kid. That poor woman eventually died alone in a house overrun by cats, and he foresaw a future like that for Isadore if someone didn’t intervene. Given how unpleasant she could be, I wasn’t sure Pish was ever going to succeed, but his charm and good nature gave him a better chance at it than most.
    “Will you invite her to the party?” I asked.
    Shilo snorted. I turned to where she sat, curled up in a chair by the fire with Becket in her lap. “What’s up?” I asked her.
    “I was trying to imagine what costume she’d come up with.”
    I smiled, knowing that her laughter didn’t hold any malice. Isadore was peculiar in her dress. She tended toward homemade shifts sewn from fabric featuring frolicking cats or enthusiastic, bleary-eyed bunnies. She wore jewelry to match, dangling kitties or bunnies with carrots. “Maybe she’ll come wearing a Donna Karan skirt suit.”
    Pish and I headed out twenty minutes later with six tubs of assorted muffins, most for Golden Acres and a few for the café. I dropped him off near Isadore’s home, the house she had inherited from her cousin. It was a gloomy little bungalow with a dark front porch that loomed on the house like a beetle brow. He had never yet been in the house, but I knew he would keep trying to befriend her. He’d find his own way on to the bank, then back to the castle, he told me, likely with Jack McGill, who would be making one of his daily trips out to see Shilo.
    I then pulled up to Golden Acres and delivered the muffins to the back kitchen, where I had made fast friends with the sole, overworked cook. It was morning snack time in the parlor, so I joined the group and sat with Doc, who was drinking a cup of premium coffee he had filched from Gogi Grace’s private stock.
    “It’s gonna close, you know it’s going to!” one old guy was stating loudly, shaking his cane at no one in particular.
    “What are we complaining about today?” I asked Doc.
    “Everyone’s afraid the bank is going under. That’s what happened in Ridley Ridge a few years back—to the community bank, that is . . . used to be the Ridley Ridge Savings and Loan—and look at that town now. Folks in Ridley Ridge, their mortgages have been sold to some big bank and they can’t get ahold of no one when they need to talk. Damned shame.”
    I