Muffin But Murder by Victoria Hamilton

Author:Victoria Hamilton [Hamilton, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

HANNAH SQUEALED EXCITEDLY and clapped. “You’re right!”

We read the caption: Melvyn Wynter, our local poet, takes a moment with his friends and Yolanda Flores, the lucky young lady who has caught his eye.

“Well, that certainly suggests Yolanda is Violet,” I said.

She nodded, thoughtfully. “I wish we had Cranston’s locket here so we could tell if this is the same woman as in the photo.” She glanced over at me. “What do you think of that?”

“What do I think of the locket?” I shrugged. “A sweet gesture on Melvyn’s part, the kind of thing a young fellow would buy his girl, right?”

Hannah frowned down at the page, then turned back to her computer, her tiny fingers flying over the keyboard then clicking her mouse. “Here,” she said, turning the screen toward me. “This is a file I made of pictures of lockets from the nineteen forties; click on the arrows to scan the photos. They look a lot like Cranston’s locket. During World War Two the government shut down gold mining, so anything made of gold got more expensive or was just impossible to get. That could be why the locket is gold filled, or some cheaper alloy, or it could just be that he was only a teenager, after all, and couldn’t afford anything better. But it’s something else that has me puzzled.” With a click of her mouse, she brought up photos of the insides of the lockets. “Do you notice anything that makes these different from Cranston’s?”

To humor her I looked at the photos. I’m ashamed to say it took me a solid three or four minutes of examining the photos before I caught on. By then I had prodded her a few times just to tell me, but she wouldn’t and watched my eyes instead. Then it dawned on me. “Oh. Wow. Of course! Why didn’t I get this before?” It was staring me in the face the whole time. “If Melvyn gave Violet a locket, then he would put in his photo, not hers.”

She clapped her hands. “Very good!”

I smiled over at her, thinking what a little teacher she was. The photo was certainly something to consider and to ask Cranston about. “Was this what you wanted to show me?”

She nodded.

“There may be a logical reason,” I warned.

“Of course. But it’s something, right?”

“It sure is. You are one smart girl.”

Some patrons came in just then, but I had to leave anyway. Hannah whispered that she was going to search through some local archives next and try to find any references to Melvyn and Violet among them. I told her about the trunks in the attic and how I hoped to search through them for any photos or anything related to Melvyn and Yolanda/Violet. I was full of questions, including what had been going on between Melvyn and his parents and with my grandfather, Murgatroyd, during this time.

I headed out, down the little side street on which the library lived, and out to Abenaki, then down to Binny’s Bakery.

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