Much Ado About Muffin by Victoria Hamilton

anyone!”
    â€œCan we go to the Vale for coffee?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “The morning crowd has already gathered. You won’t survive unscathed with that pack of gossip hounds.”
    He was right, of course. We could sit in my car, but folks passing by would be sure to stop and try to get us to talk about what was going on.
    â€œWhat should we say to Binny and Patricia?” I asked. “It’s obvious
something
has happened.”
    â€œJust say . . .” He pondered that for a second, his browneyes thoughtful. “You found Minnie dead, but that you can’t say anything else because it’s post office business now, and you have to talk to them first.”
    Gogi nodded and I agreed. Of all people, Binny was safest to sit with. She is relatively incurious when it comes to anything other than food and money.
    We did exactly as he said. The bakery was a safe haven, and I never got tired of examining her collection of teapots, begun when her mother was still in town, Binny once told me. They line the walls of the front of the shop, impeccably clean, as is everything in her bakeshop. The front of the store is relatively small, with curved old-style glass cases filled with treats, and stacks of Binny’s Bakery white pastry boxes behind the counter ready to be filled with her excellent bakery goodies.
    Binny was alone. She brought us out a couple of folding chairs, and we sat along the wall under one shelf of teapots while she made a pot of herbal tea.
    I remembered something I noticed, though it hadn’t made an impact until this moment. “Was Minnie in here this morning before she went to work?” Gogi sent me a look, but we were all thinking of Minnie, and we couldn’t
not
talk about her.
    â€œShe stops in
every
morning at about ten to eight,” Binny said. “Or . . .
stopped
, I guess, not
stops
. Jeez, that’s so sad. She’d buy a dozen assorted pastries, ‘
to share,’
she always said, but I don’t think she actually shared them.”
    I nodded. I had noticed one of Binny’s bakery boxes on the counter by one of the shelves. It was spattered with blood, like everything else. “What time does the mail truck get there?”
    â€œHe’s always there by eight twenty or so. Sometimes he goes to the Vale and picks up a coffee to go, but this morning he was a little late; I noticed because he drove out of town fairly quickly without stopping.”
    Hmm . . . interesting. The police would look into that, I was sure. “Did Minnie say anything? How did she seem?”
    Binny looked up from her task; she was building more bakery boxes, standing at the pass-through to talk as we sipped our tea. “She was pretty normal, I guess,” she said. “She complained about the heat, and said her feet were aching already. Did she have a heart attack or something?”
    I shook my head and exchanged a glance with Gogi. “I don’t want to speculate.”
    â€œIt’s weird; I can’t believe she’s gone. She was always my third customer of the day.”
    â€œThird?” I said.
    She nodded. “Isadore comes in first thing. I save her day-old stuff, and she buys what she likes. Lately, now that she’s making a little money at the Vale, she’s been buying everything. She’s so skinny! I don’t know what she does with it all. The second is Helen Johnson,
most
mornings. She’s always got some church group meeting that she’s buying treats for. I don’t think she knows Isadore comes in before her and buys all the day-olds.”
    â€œThey’re kind of friends, aren’t they?” I asked.
    â€œI’m not sure. I think they were, but not lately. Helen is pushy, and Isadore is kind of a recluse.”
    Kind of
was an understatement.
    â€œBad mixture,” Gogi said.
    â€œPish keeps trying to befriend Isadore, but he’s going about it