Muffin But Murder (A Merry Muffin Mystery) by Victoria Hamilton

that crap about the necklace, Merry. You should come back to New York! So many of the girls could do with your stylist skills.”
    “I’m so far out of it fashion-wise,” I told her. “I don’t think I can do it anymore.”
    She didn’t continue on that line, thank heavens, and instead wanted to know what Shilo was doing hooking up with a local yokel. I watched Shilo and McGill whirling down the ballroom to the barely heard music, her skirts and long, dark hair, headscarf apparently abandoned, flaring out around her. “Jack has been good for her. I’ve never known her to feel like any place is home, but here, she seems to feel . . .” I paused. I was about to say
safe
, but I didn’t know why I was thinking that. “At home,” I said instead. My former “friend” looked at me like I’d lost my marbles, then walked away, shaking her head, to rejoin the fashion crowd that huddled as far away from the food table as they could.
    Home. Had Shilo found that in Autumn Vale and with Jack McGill, real estate agent and jack-of-all-trades? It was an elusive concept, home. I hadn’t had one—not a true home in every sense of the word—since Miguel died.
    Pish approached and took my arm. He was one constant in my world, and his kindness had been my most homelike experience for some time. I leaned against him as we observed the chattering, circulating mob, gowned and costumed in an array of gaudy outfits. It sure seemed like there were a lot of people. I had kept the guest list down to what I thought we could comfortably hold, but the ballroom was crowded.
    “Does this seem like a lot of people to you?” I muttered to Pish. The babble of noise was growing in volume, and the jazzy music was barely audible over the chatter.
    He looked around uneasily and nodded. “I’m seeing people I don’t know, and I knew everyone on your list. Did you see the hooker in the Mardi Gras mask and the cowboy?”
    I shared his concern. “There’s one guy here with a wild wig who is either the Barber of Seville or Sweeney Todd, it’s hard to tell which. I don’t know who
he
is. And there are
three
Draculas, though I thought only one of our guests was coming as a vampire.” I was glad a fair number of our important guests had opted not to wear costumes, because at least I recognized them. Percy Channer, I noted, was not among the attendees, unless he had managed to elongate and thin out his barrel shape. But I had this uneasy sense that there were people avoiding me, vanishing onto the terrace or into the great hall as I moved toward them. I was pondering that, trying to figure out what had led me to that belief, when Pish stiffened beside me, on the alert.
    “Who are the ones dressed like a football team?” Pish asked, pointing across the room.
    I eyed the group. It was all men, and they were having a wonderful time drinking wine and talking to the girls. One slung his arm over Juniper Jones’s shoulders, almost upsetting her tray. I was about to cross the ballroom to intervene, but she ducked away from him and continued on with the hors d’oeuvres, a frown etched permanently on her face. “I don’t know who that is,” I said, but then remembered the truckload of guys I had turned away the day before. I shared my hunch, and Pish agreed I was probably on the money. “What are Zeke and Gordy thinking, letting them in?”
    I started toward them, trailed by Pish, but was waylaid by Melanie Pritchard, an amazing New York real estate agent I’d met while I worked for Leatrice Peugot. I had invited her to get an honest critique from her viewpoint on how likely it was that I could market the castle to New York entrepreneurs.
    She was angry, and I knew there were few things that infuriated her. “Merry, what the hell is going on?” she griped, tugging her suit jacket down over her hips. She was not costumed, and I hadn’t expected she would be. “First of all, my flight was delayed—some kind of bomb scare—so I had to rent a