The Pumpkin Muffin Murder Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Recipes

  Author’s Note

  Unseasonably Cold

  She had just paused to look through one of the cabin’s windows at the period furnishings inside when she heard a man say, loudly and distinctly, “If you try anything like that, I’ll kill you.”

  Phyllis stiffened in surprise at hearing such a threat expressed like that. The man’s voice came from in front of the cabin. Phyllis was torn between the urge to see what was going on and the natural caution that told her to stay right where she was, out of the would-be murderer’s sight.

  As she stepped around the corner of the cabin, she saw a man standing there. He laughed and said, “No, really, I’ll kill you.” He seemed to be talking to himself, because there was no one else anywhere around except Phyllis. Then she noticed the earphone tucked into his ear and realized he was talking on one of those Bluetooth cell phones, or whatever they were called. As Phyllis watched, the man put some sort of pill in his mouth, then took a drink from the water bottle in his hand. He laughed again, then froze as he noticed her standing there. . . .

  PRAISE FOR THE FRESH-BAKED MYSTERIES

  “The whodunit is fun and the recipes [are] mouthwatering.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Washburn has a refreshing way with words and knows how to tell an exciting story.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Delightful, [with a] realistic small-town vibe [and a] vibrant narrative. . . . A Peach of a Murder runs the full range of emotions, so be prepared to laugh and cry with this one!”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “I really enjoyed Murder by the Slice. . . . It’s got a nice plot with lots of twists.”

  —James Reasoner

  Other Fresh-Baked Mysteries

  Killer Crab Cakes

  The Christmas Cookie Killer

  Murder by the Slice

  A Peach of a Murder

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, November 2010

  Copyright ⓒ Livia J. Reasoner, 2010

  All rights reserved

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Washburn, L. J.

  The pumpkin muffin murder: a fresh-baked mystery/Livia J. Washburn. p. cm.

  “An Obsidian mystery.”

  eISBN : 978-1-101-46613-1

  1. Newsom, Phyllis (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Retired teachers—Fiction. 3. Harvest festivals—Fiction. 4. Baking—Competitions—Fiction. 5. Weatherford (Tex.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.A787P86 2010

  813’.54—dc22 2010029369

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to

  my husband, James Reasoner,

  and

  my two daughters, Shayna and Joanna,

  who are very tolerant of my craziness

  when deadlines loom.

  Chapter 1

  One thing you never forgot about being a parent, Phyllis Newsom thought, was the feeling of helplessness that comes over you when your child is sick. Of course, Bobby was her grandson, not her son, but that didn’t matter. He felt miserable, and she had done everything she could to make him feel better, but he still sobbed in pain as she held him and carried him back and forth across the dimly lit living room of her house, trying to calm him down.

  “It’ll be all right, Bobby,” she told the four-year-old. “Don’t worry; everything will be just fine. You’ll be all well soon.”

  Not soon enough to suit her, though. The pediatrician had said that it might be a week or more before Bobby’s ear infection cleared up. And it would have to heal on its own, because this wasn’t like the old days when doctors prescribed antibiotics for such ailments. Phyllis remembered giving her son, Mike, the wonderful pink liquid when he was little and came down with something like this. That stuff seemed to cure anything.

  Now the doctors claimed that it really didn’t, and Phyllis supposed that they ought to know what they were talking about. They were doctors, after all. But she missed being able to feel like she was accomplishing something, like she was helping her child get well sooner.

  Ah, well. She sighed and held Bobby closer, letting him rest his head on her shoulder. She was wearing a nice thick robe over her pajamas, so she supposed it almost felt like a pillow to him.

  The sound of footsteps made her glance toward the stairs. Sam Fletcher’s long legs came int
o view, followed by the rest of his lanky form. He was dressed in pajamas, a robe, and slippers, too, although his were a nice manly brown rather than the purple of Phyllis’s nightclothes.

  “Thought I heard the little one carryin’ on,” Sam said as he came from the foyer into the living room.

  “I’m sorry, Sam. He just can’t rest comfortably with his ear hurting that way. I gave him some pain reliever like the doctor said, but ...”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah, I reckon it must hurt, all right.” He held out his arms. “Here, let me hold him for a while.”

  Phyllis hesitated. Not because she didn’t trust Sam, of course. In the nearly two and a half years that he had rented a room in her house here in Weatherford, Texas, she had grown to know him very well. He was both strong and gentle, just the sort of man who wouldn’t think twice about offering to comfort a sick child. But Bobby was her responsibility, not his.

  “It’s the middle of the night,” she told Sam. “You should be sleeping. I’ll be all right.”

  A smile spread across Sam’s rugged face. “Shoot, I wasn’t asleep anyway. Seems like the older I get, the less easy it is for me to sleep. I was on the computer lookin’ at YouTube. You know they got clips on there from all the TV shows I used to watch back in the fifties? I hadn’t seen George Burns and Gracie Allen in a long time.”

  Phyllis couldn’t help but smile back at him. They were roughly the same age, in their late sixties, and it wasn’t unusual for either of them to discover something new and wonderful on the Internet that most younger people had probably known about for years.

  “I’ll have to check that out sometime,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t mind . . . ?”

  Sam motioned with his fingers to indicate that she should give Bobby to him.

  “Well, all right.” She handed the whimpering youngster over.

  Bobby immediately threw his arms around Sam’s neck and buried his face against the man’s shoulder. His sobs began to subside.

  “I think I’m jealous,” Phyllis said with a laugh. “He appears to like you more than he does me.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He just senses that we’re kindred spirits.”

  Phyllis raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

  “Normally, I sleep like a baby, too. I kick and fret all night.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Phyllis said as she arched an eyebrow.

  Sam chuckled as he started walking slowly back and forth across the living room. Bobby quieted even more. Within a few minutes, he appeared to be sound asleep.

  Sam looked at the boy, then grinned at Phyllis. “Say good night, Gracie,” he whispered.

  “Good night, Gracie,” she responded. She held her arms out. “I’ll put him in bed.”

  “No, I got him. We start passin’ him around like a football, he’s liable to wake up again.”

  Sam left the living room and started carefully up the stairs. A couple of days earlier, when Bobby had come to stay with Phyllis, Sam and Mike had climbed up into the attic of the old house and brought down the crib Mike had slept in twenty-some-odd years earlier. Bobby had complained that he wasn’t a baby and shouldn’t have to sleep in a crib, but that was really the only place Phyllis had for him to sleep. They had compromised by leaving the sides down when they put the crib in Phyllis’s bedroom.

  She was in the kitchen brewing some herbal tea when Sam came back downstairs. “Figured I’d find you in here,” he said.

  “Did he keep on sleeping?”

  “Like a rock. I reckon that medicine finally caught up with him and made him conk out.”

  “You want some tea?”

  “Is it made from flowers and stuff?”

  “Well, I’m not going to drink regular tea at this time of night. I never would get to sleep.”

  “All right, sure. I guess I don’t need anything else keepin’ me awake, either.”

  Phyllis poured the tea when it was ready, and they sat down on opposite sides of the kitchen table. She sipped from her cup, then said, “I wish Bobby had been able to go to California with Mike and Sarah. This may well be Bud’s last Thanksgiving.”

  “That’s Sarah’s dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “At least she’s gettin’ to spend this time with him.”

  “Yes, and that’s a blessing.”

  Phyllis thought about her daughter-in-law. She knew from experience how terrible it was to have to face the impending end of a loved one’s life. She had lost her husband, Kenny, a number of years earlier. And Sam had gone through the same thing when cancer claimed his wife. But Phyllis also knew that the last days spent together could be some of the most precious of all, easing the passing of the one who had to leave and creating memories that those left behind would carry with them for the rest of their days.

  So when Bobby had come down with the ear infection the day before Mike and Sarah were supposed to leave to spend a couple of weeks in California with Sarah’s parents, and the doctor told them they couldn’t take him on the airplane, Phyllis hadn’t hesitated. She had urged them to make the trip and leave Bobby with her. “I’d love the chance to spend that much time with him,” she had told her son and daughter-in-law. “That way you can make your trip without having to worry about him.”

  “Oh, I’ll worry about him,” Sarah had said, and Phyllis knew exactly what she meant. Worrying was a parent’s permanent job. Mike was a grown man, and not a day went by that Phyllis didn’t spend some of the time wondering where he was and what he was doing and worrying about whether he was all right.

  The fact that Mike was a deputy in the Parker County Sheriff’s Department didn’t make things any easier. But Phyllis knew she would have worried about him no matter what he did for a living.

  Phyllis realized that she’d been sitting there quietly, musing over the events of the past few days, without saying a word. Sam had been silent, too. Yet she didn’t feel the least bit awkward or uncomfortable because of the silence, and from the looks of him, neither did Sam. It had been a good thing when she’d had a vacancy open up in the house a couple of years earlier, she thought. Her old superintendent, Dolly Williamson, had suggested that she rent the room to Sam, and even though there had been some rough patches at first, caused by having a man in a house full of retired female teachers, it hadn’t taken long for Sam to become a member of the family.

  And that was the way she thought of him and Carolyn Wilbarger and Eve Turner, the other retired teachers who lived with her. They were all family now.

  “This tea’s not bad,” Sam said. “Bein’ a good Texan, though, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to drinkin’ any kind of tea without a bunch of ice cubes in it.”

  Before Phyllis could respond, a key rattled in the lock of the back door.

  She and Sam looked at each other in puzzlement. Who in the world could be coming in at that hour? It was after midnight and, anyway, no one had a key to her house except the people who lived there and Mike. Carolyn and Eve were upstairs asleep, and Mike was in California. . . .

  Phyllis felt a little twinge of apprehension. Maybe someone was actually trying to break in. They could be attempting to pick the lock. But would a burglar do that when the lights in the kitchen were on and someone was obviously in here?

  Sam was on his feet, facing the door. He had braved danger to protect her in the past, and she wasn’t surprised that he would do it again. She wouldn’t let him do it alone, though. She stood up as well and started looking around for some sort of weapon.

  The door swung open, and Carolyn said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb anybody.”

  Sam, bless his heart, didn’t miss a beat. He crossed his arms, frowned at Carolyn, and said, “Young lady, do you have any idea what time it is?”

  Carolyn looked flabbergasted for a second, but then she glared as she closed the door and said, “I don’t need any sass from you, Sam Fletcher. I’m tired.”

  “Well, I’d imagine so, what with you out gallivantin’ around until the
wee hours of the morning.”

  Carolyn looked at Phyllis, who came around the table and got between them. “I thought you were upstairs asleep,” Phyllis said to her old friend.

  “I would have been if I hadn’t gotten a call from Dana Powell,” Carolyn said as she took off her coat. “Logan was supposed to help her with some decorations for the Harvest Festival, but you know how undependable he is. I’ve been over at Dana’s house all evening, giving her a hand.”

  Phyllis shook her head. “I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

  “She called me on my cell. Anyway, you were busy with Bobby.”

  Like seemingly everyone else in the world these days, Phyllis carried a cell phone, but having lived for decades before the things were even invented, she sometimes forgot how ever present they were. Occasionally she had to remind herself when she was out that she didn’t have to look for a public phone if she wanted to make a call.

  “Like I said, I didn’t want to disturb anyone,” Carolyn went on. “So I just slipped out and went on over there.”

  Dana Powell was about twenty years younger than Carolyn—and Phyllis and Sam, for that matter—but she and Carolyn had taught together at the same school before Carolyn retired, and they were still friends. Phyllis liked her as well, although she thought sometimes that Dana was a little too skinny and a little too blond for an elementary school teacher. But there was no denying that Dana was good with the kids and was also heavily involved in the community, including being in charge of some of the plans for the upcoming “Harvest Festival.”

  In recent, more politically correct years, that term had been adopted in a lot of places for Halloween celebrations, but this year, in Weatherford, Texas, the festival was taking place the Saturday before Thanksgiving, which as far as Phyllis was concerned was a more traditional and appropriate time for it, anyway. The festival was being held in a city park on the south side of town that surrounded a small lake known for the flock of ducks that lived there most of the year. The ducks would be gone now, having migrated south for the winter, but the park was still a pleasant, picturesque place with playground equipment for the children, hiking trails, picnic areas, and a couple of old settlers’ cabins that had been moved in from farther west in the county. Phyllis remembered taking some of her history classes to the park on field trips so the students could see the bullet holes left behind in the walls by Indian battles, and check out the interiors, which were furnished in pioneer fashion.