Double or Muffin by Victoria Hamilton

Author:Victoria Hamilton [Hamilton, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cats, small town, baking, Cooking, blackmail, reality tv, opera divas
Publisher: Beyond the Page Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

“Virgil?”

“Yup.”

I was reassured by his gruff voice on the other end of the line. “Virgil, we have a problem at the castle. Gilda is missing.” I had a knot in the pit of my stomach. I flattened my hand over my belly and swallowed hard, willing myself to calm down. As I explained the circumstances, including the bow I knew was Gilda’s, he listened and did not brush aside my concerns.

“Have you checked the whole castle?” he asked.

“Not the whole castle . . . not the attic, or the cellar.”

“Do it, but take someone with you. I’m on my way. I’ll call Lester and we’ll come and search the grounds. Ask Anokhi, Liliana and the rest if they’ve seen her . . . discreetly, of course. She may be at one of the houses working, you never know.”

“I can get Pish to do that.”

“Question: Becket was out all last night. Could he have been in the woods?”

“I’m assuming that’s where he was. You know what he’s like; he gets these fits where he remembers his life during the year he was lost and he spends a night skulking around in the forest.” I hesitated, but I had to know what he was thinking, afraid he was on my wavelength. “Why?”

“I stopped in the coffee shop on my way home and a woman who works in the store was telling a customer about her weird experience, seeing a big ginger cat at the edge of the woods, and hearing what she thought was a woman’s scream.”

I gulped, and my breathing sped up. This was worse than what I had been thinking. “Was she sure it was a woman’s scream?”

“She told the customer that at the time she thought it might be an owl that sounds like a woman . . . I think she said an eastern screech owl. But—”

“It could have been a woman. It could have been Gilda.”

“Look, it’s likely not. She’s a journalist; she probably took off on a gossip-finding mission. You know what writers are like . . . flaky.”

“Gilda was a dedicated professional, Virgil, not some dippy gossip columnist. I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

“Take it easy; we don’t know anything yet,” he said, then hung up.

I told Pish my worries. Gilda had not gone to the party the night before—which was one possibility, as she had been invited—and he hadn’t seen her after dinner. Lizzie and I searched the attic first and then the cellar. Gilda was in neither place, nor had Liliana or the others seen her, Pish reported to me when we next met.

I put on a sweater and headed outside. The window cleaners had set up scaffolding and were working on the diamond-paned gothic windows above the double doors, which would take a while. Dani came down the ladder from the scaffold when I beckoned and said she hadn’t seen anyone matching Gilda’s description.

“While I have you,” Dani said as I turned away, “has your partner looked into the missing stuff from our van?”

“You gave him a list?” I said, turning back to her.

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