Thanks for Muffin, page 1
Thanks for Muffin
After years of planning and hard work, Merry Wynter was finally ready to host the grand opening gala of the Wynter Woods Center for the Performing Arts. With musicians, entertainers, members of the media and even influencers on the guest list, the event went off without a hitch—until a particularly nasty journalist posted a criticism of the gala and everything Merry was trying to accomplish. Still reeling from the review days later, Merry wasn’t sure what to feel when she discovered the reporter’s dead body on the grounds of Wynter Castle.
With many of her guests staying on at the castle for the weekend, Merry realizes they’ve got a murderer in their midst. Going from celebrating to sleuthing, she discreetly questions each of them, trying to weed out the culprit. She quickly learns that the victim had heated arguments with several of the people at the gala, and it turns out those people were all connected by a tragedy in the past. Certain the killer is among them, Merry will have to unearth the final clue that nails the killer—before the killer decides she’s getting too close . . .

Copyright
Thanks for Muffin
Victoria Hamilton
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
www.beyondthepagepub.com
Copyright © 2025 by Victoria Hamilton
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
ISBN: 978-1-966322-23-8
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Dedication
To the faithful and ever-patient readers of the Merry Muffin Mysteries, I hope catching up with Merry, Virgil, Pish, Doc, Lizzie, Hannah and the gang gives you as much pleasure reading this book as it has given me to write it! Thank you for waiting, thank you for asking about it, and most of all, thank you for reading!
Contents
Thanks for Muffin
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Cast of Characters
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Recipes
Blueberry–Sour Cream Coffee Cake Muffins
Pish’s Thanksgiving Leftover Poutine
Cheddar and Chive Buckwheat Scones
Exclusive Offer
Books by Victoria Hamilton
About the Author
Cast of Characters
The Merry Muffin Mystery Series
Merry Grace Wynter: newish owner of a real American castle, and muffin baker extraordinaire!
Virgil Grace: her husband, former sheriff of Autumn Vale and now private investigator
Gogi Grace: Virgil’s mom and owner of Golden Acres Retirement Residence
Olivia Grace: Gogi’s sixteen-year-old granddaughter
Lizzie Proctor: Merry’s teen friend
Pish Lincoln: Merry’s best male friend, and partner in a new venture
Doc English: Irascible senior, Merry’s living link to her past
Hannah Moore: Autumn Vale librarian
Zeke: Local tech expert and Hannah’s new husband
Isadore Openshaw: Hannah’s friend and unofficial library assistant
Dewayne Lester: Virgil’s PI partner and old friend
Patricia Lester: Dewayne’s wife and cake baker extraordinaire
Sheriff Cam Urquhart: Autumn Vale sheriff
Janice and Simon Grover: Merry’s eccentric opera-loving Autumn Vale friends
in Thanks for Muffin
Herman Ramsbottom: Former landscaper at Wynter Castle, now a hermit
Liliana Bartholomew: World-renowned soprano soloist
Luxe Bartholomew, aka Luxe Lyfe: Singer
George Bartholomew, aka Blaq Mojo: Rapper, singer and award-winning producer
Pat Jefferson: George Bartholomew’s driver and factotum
Unwin MacGregor: Luxe’s hairdresser and assistant
Adrienne Harris: Luxe’s gala hairdresser
Epiphany “Piph” Lincoln: Pish’s sister
Jet: Piph’s boyfriend
Dan Sooner: Local newsman and podcaster
Heather Baker: Dan’s live-in girlfriend
Andrew Ostler: Opera reviewer and podcaster
Mac Duncan: Oscar-nominated actor
Sandy Paderewski: Nineties pop star and songwriter
Glengarry and Brenda Polk: Broadway producer/director and his younger wife
Margot Villiers and Price Wharton: Acid-tongued fashion reviewer and her younger husband
One
It was a late November Monday. In two days my friend Pish Lincoln and I (Merry Grace Wynter) would find out if our meticulously planned opening of the Wynter Woods Center for the Performing Arts would be a success. I stepped out the front door of my home into autumnal gloom, a gray cloud ceiling hovering oppressively overhead as I eyed it with dread. Was rain coming? Or even snow? I decided to take my chances and not carry an umbrella. I stepped down from the porch, setting out for my walk wrapped in a wooly coat, warm leggings and boots.
I needed to see the performing arts theater again, to be sure it was real and not just a dream. We had been in the planning stages for so long it seemed impossible that it was finally finished. I was accompanied by Becket, my ginger boy cat, lithe and lean after a long summer and fall of gallivanting through Wynter Woods. As I started to walk, burying my hands in my pockets, he was at my heels but pranced off on occasion to hunt imaginary (or real, ick!) mice and tiny, adorable shrews. He had killed way too many of those cute northern shrews, plump little vermin with velvety gray fur, prominent teeth and short tails. How do I know what they look like? My darling boy lays them on my doorstep, as if he is storing them for the coming winter, little cords of shrews suitable for roasting on an open fire.
“Pardon me, boy, he is the cat who chewed my new shrews,” I sang aloud to the tune of “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” just for a giggle. He gave me one disgusted look over his shoulder. If he could have rolled his eyes, he would have.
Becket dashed off with the concentration of a cat who knows that after three seasons spent outdoors for the most part, haunting Wynter Woods, the arboretum my great-uncle planted many years ago, he would soon be dividing his time in the bleak midwinter between Wynter Castle and Virgil and my Arts and Crafts–style house. He would sleep in our room by the fire most nights dreaming of hunting as the snow piled up outside.
I strolled on, taking in a deep lungful of cold air and letting out puffs of white breath. An hour before I had fed both my cat and my man and kissed the human goodbye before he headed out, duffel bag in hand. Virgil Wynter Grace, my handsome husband, had a thriving PI business with his good friend Dewayne Lester. He would be away for two days following up on skip traces for a buddy in the Rochester PD. In two years their business had increased so much the partners were now considering hiring another investigator and establishing a formal office.
It had been a long two years for all of us. Our work on the center had been delayed by fundraising shortfalls, labor shortages, and what was vaguely referred to as “supply chain issues.” Our contractor, a specialist on the dome theater we were building, was wonderful, and accommodating to our occasional fundraising troubles. I couldn’t complain.
We were finally ready to open. On the negative side, it was November, too late for the sylvan ribbon-cutting ceremony I had envisioned. But I was not going to reschedule the opening for better weather, which in Western New York could mean next May. Or June. Maybe even July.
Late November it was, so everything connected to the grand opening would occur indoo
But most of our gala guests would depart that same night aboard executive recliner party buses (wifi, bathrooms, satellite TV, the works!) we had rented to convey them hither and take most of them away again. It was a six-hour trip each way, so they would be returned to the eternal city (for me that’s New York . . . sorry, Rome!) by morning, able to snooze in the bus recliners. They’d be in New York in time for their Thanksgiving plans, whether that was the Macy’s parade, a drunken bacchanal “friendsgiving,” or a family dinner with turkey, football and all the fixings.
Of course, the many locals we had invited to the gala would be returning to their own homes in town.
In short, we had two full days to apply a few finishing touches before our gala opening.
I had walked the most desolate part of the property by now, the vast open space between our house and the first Wynter Castle outbuildings. As I approached the back of Wynter Castle I examined the carriage house, on my left. It was one of the first outbuildings to be converted and to have an actual address. It is now “the Carriage House, Wynter Woods” and was completely reimagined, with suites upstairs to accommodate groups for seminars and artistic getaways. The spacious main floor can be used as a dance studio or meeting space, with one mirrored wall and a ballet barre. We have hosted conferences, a ballet camp, and the previous summer in rapid succession a quilting weekend, an opera symposium, an art show and sale, and a writers’ retreat. The big main floor space was perfect for the art show and sale.
The one thorn in my side is the shed.
Two
I huddled in my jacket, letting the wind buffet me about as I regarded the shed. It was “the Shed at Wynter Woods” in my mind, a small stone structure for which I have an elegant vision. I’m a devoted watcher of British barn conversion videos and can picture it redone with fieldstone, repointing and a large glass addition, doubling its size. My ambition is to make it over into an artist-in-residence studio. But for now I have a smelly hermit named Herman residing in it. Yes, I have a Herman hermit. And he’s English too. Or maybe not. He has one of those accents that’s hard to place.
He’s an inoffensive fellow who started out as a helper to our landscape architect. Herman Ramsbottom is between sixty and seventy, I suppose, though I have no actual clue. He’s a bit of a mystery, so he could be anywhere between forty and eighty. Though he apparently had a highfalutin job in his younger days, he now looks like a hermit—tall, but as skinny and wiry as a bantam rooster. Efren Boldrick, our landscaper, swore he couldn’t do the work without him.
Herman, gray hair flapping in the breeze, was dogged, trotting wheelbarrows of dirt, gravel, and mulch with the alacrity of a racehorse. Didn’t matter how cold or hot it was, he wore what he insists on calling a jumper, a stripy knitted concoction threadbare at the wrists and neck, and long enough to cover the top of his cargo khakis. He smokes cheroots when he can get them, and nothing else. He drinks beer, eats jerky, and has fitted the shed up with shelves and shelves of books he has salvaged from the dump. As a result the shed, the one or two times I forced my way in, smells like mold and damp rot. He doesn’t have a car so he hitchhikes to the dump and brings back treasures with which he decorates. He claims it’s his hobby.
Hey, I’m not judging. I too have found marvelous finds at the dump. However, the agreement was that he could stay in the shed as long as he was needed, but the work was completed more than a month ago. Efren is gone, but Herman shows no signs of leaving.
You’d think he would want to go after being run down while hitchhiking by a Ridley Ridge hooligan speeding down a back road. But Herman was philosophical about it, saying he wasn’t hurt badly beyond a few scrapes and bruises. The driver in the car behind who saw it happen couldn’t have been nicer about picking him up and taking him out of his way to the dump, and giving him a ride home.
I suppose his squatting in the shed shouldn’t bother me, but as I walked closer to the shed, digging my freezing hands into my pockets, it did. It was a blot on the otherwise attractive, if a little barren, scenery. The weeds grew up around the shed and the fieldstone foundation is blackened from the darned building almost burning down a month before. A bush burned in the fire and now stabs the air with blackened branches ominously pointing skyward. Surrounding the shed are hand-painted signs like ARGH, get offa my lawn or I’ll shiver your timbers.
Pish found it hilarious. I didn’t. I had tried subtlety, but maybe I’d have to be stern and talk to Herman again. I am not a Regency-era landowner smitten with the notion of having a hermit for a pet.
I turned away from the shed and looked out over the property. The carriage house is beautifully landscaped. Even on cold nights the sight of a warm glow from within, of lamplight and firelight, makes me happy. And when I turned, the castle was lovely, with a healthy garden growing herbs even in November, and the gentle plash of water in the fountain out front that now works perfectly, thanks to Efren. He is a jack-of-all-trades besides being a landscape architect. It’s just the darned shed that is the blot on an otherwise attractive landscape.
As for Wynter Woods, the arboretum is highlighted with signs, a path through it, and a placard honoring my great-uncle, who left me the castle. On the other side of the castle a parking lot is perfectly concealed by a lovely row of arborvitae, a living screen of gorgeous evergreen bushes.
So the shed was the only blot on the landscape. That would change, sooner rather than later, I hoped.
One huge improvement I should mention is, we haven’t had a single murder in over two years! No holes in the lawn with corpses at the bottom, and no dead bodies popping out of faux coffins. No ghost hunters murdered, or elderly ladies slumped on toilets. Not one. I was optimistic that after a slew of them a couple of years ago, that was the end of the trials and tribulations.
Tugged and shoved to and fro by the brisk wind, rather than head to the castle I cut across the grassy flat behind it, toward the performing arts center, in my uneasy quest to reassure myself. On the right was that row of quaint houses, on the left the drive into the woods, to the theater. The closest home to the performing arts center had been leased by George Alan Bartholomew, known internationally by his rap stage name of Blaq Mojo. Grammy winner, DJ and devoted son to the inimitable opera diva Liliana Bartholomew, he had been among the first to show interest in our vision.
Liliana is connected to the Lexington Opera Company and has appeared in many of their performances. George leased the house for himself and his mother as a comfortable place away from the city for her, mostly. She craves privacy and peace, and we offer both. He had customized the lower level of the house with a sound-insulated state-of-the-art recording studio, so he’ll be in residence often.
He was also our consultant on the sound mechanics and electronics of the theater. It would have been pointless to have such a beautiful space if it wasn’t also functional.
I paused and gazed along the row of unique houses that backed onto the far forest of the Wynter property and tried to calm my mind by thinking about the future of the community. It was, so far, a jumble of interesting architectural styles from faux Tudor to cottages to a former farmhouse with clean lines. Other than the Bartholomew house, a few have been leased, but others stand empty awaiting finishing touches.
I was grateful to George for his help and support. For the gala opening he had invited a slew of folks, including his cousin, singer Luxe Lyfe, aka Luxe Bartholomew, and her retinue. They would be among those staying the weekend but would bunk with Liliana and George. I was looking forward to meeting her.
Picking up my pace now that the wind was not in my face, I soon dove into the woods, striding along the paved path that was traversable by car, golf cart or even tour bus.
