Excerpt of Double or Muffin by Victoria Hamilton

One

It started out as such a beautiful autumnal morning; a little chilly, as November is wont to be, but bright and clear. 

Don’t you love stories that begin like that? It started out… It had been… It was a lovely day… all with the implication that something bad is coming around the bend. In truth, had I but known what was coming in the next week—most of it exhausting and some of it life threatening—I probably would have gotten out of bed anyway and forged on. It’s what I do. There have been tragedies and frightening moments in these last three years, but for every bad thing that has happened, I have been overwhelmed by good things that also happen. I arrived at Wynter Castle over three years ago feeling alone and desperate; I now have a husband who adores me, and I’m surrounded by wonderful people who I love. 

Anyway… it was a November Tuesday, and a beautiful autumn morning. Virgil and I indulged in a longer than normal breakfast after a fun sunrise surprise under the covers in our wonderful sunny bedroom in our gorgeous Craftsman home. I was feeling pretty blissful. If you like food descriptions I can tell you that he had extra crispy bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast, a big breakfast to suit his big appetite. I ate my favorite morning meal, a toasted ‘everything’ bagel with olive schmear and lox, brought back two days before from a too-brief trip to the city with Pish, my friend and now business partner. 

Virgil had a teleconference call coming in at ten—he was still working with Sheriff Baxter of the Ridley Ridge Sheriff’s Department, his former father-in-law (don’t ask)—and Sheriff Urquhart of the Autumn Vale Sheriff’s Department. Virgil and his PI partner Lester were helping in the formation of a task force to investigate a too-long list of missing local young females. So with a full cup of coffee he retreated to the office and I ascended to our master suite and dressed in boyfriend jeans, boots and a gorgeous cinnamon cable knit long sweater. 

“C’mon, Becket!” I said, as I threw a cape over my sweater, grabbed my favorite Birken bag and headed out toward the castle. Pish and I were working toward the finalization of our business plan for the Wynter Woods Performance Center… if that’s the name we settled on. Despite being still in the planning stage we had secured much of the funding necessary, some of it so far promised, not guaranteed. It made me nervous.  Promises needed to turn into checks. 

Becket, my marmalade cat, pranced at my side as I did my usual long slog from our house at the far edge of my property to tour the houses we had moved from Autumn Vale—homes that would soon be occupied—as we moved more onto foundations now poured and ready. We are creating our own mini village that will be filled with creative types and their financial backers from the Lexington Symphony Orchestra and the Lexington Opera Company (the LSO and the LOC), all in support of the performing arts center we are building back in the woods. We’ll open next summer, if all goes well.

I walked past the foundations where two more houses would soon nestle and stopped in front of the two already built, ready to be occupied. They are lovely, two distinct styles surrounded by nicely landscaped property. Behind them is a wall of forest, a few brilliant leaves still clinging, while more fluttered on the breeze; on the edge of the forest a white-tailed doe stood completely still and stared at me with a steady gaze. I held my breath, but then Becket leaped at a mouse and at the sound and flash of movement the deer whirled and fled into the woods. I let out my breath and smiled, but my smile died. 

I had one of those unexplainable chills run down my back. Life was too good; my day had already been too perfect. Something was set to mar it. Looking back, the foreboding feeling was justified.

I turned away from the forest view and followed the path toward the castle. Leaves crunched under my booted feet along the worn path, and the nutty aroma rose to my nose like a perfume I’d never tire of. The view of the castle front is now partially screened when approaching from that direction by a hedge of arbor vitae, a fast growing evergreen, which hid the new parking lot from the castle. I walked along the edge of the parking lot, where Pish’s car was the only vehicle. 

In two weeks a documentary company was filming establishing shots of my castle for a docudrama on the robber barons of the nineteenth century. The producer was bringing a full crew, with cranes and drones and cameras, but they would only need a few days to film because establishing shots in this case meant exteriors only. Brad and Dani, the owners/operators of Batavia Sparkle Clean, were scheduled to begin a thorough cleaning of the windows. We have a lot of windows: gothic arched windows line the dining room, French doors line the ballroom terrace, there is a magnificent stained glass rose window that takes up a large portion of the back wall of the great hall staircase, and a gothic diamond paned window panel dominates the entry wall, over the big oak double doors. It was going to take them the better part of a week.   

I took a deep breath and rounded the hedge. The Batavia Sparkle Clean van was not yet parked in front of the castle. However, what was parked there made me yelp in dismay. Three Helping Hands Network cube vans crowded the crushed gravel circular drive, along with two more vans and a couple of Lexuses, and the castle doors were propped open with equipment boxes. “No, no, no!” I muttered and hastened on, hugging my Birken bag to my chest, my long cape like wings flapping in the breeze as ominous clouds began to muddy the clear blue sky of moments before. A storm was brewing, both in the weather overhead and in my heart. I’m sure I looked the very image of a vengeful valkyrie on the warpath, but there was only one thought in my mind…

HHN vans should not be in front of my castle.