I bit my lip to keep from laughing at the tragic look on my friend’s face. She’s just heard the lecture once too often, I thought. “You go feed your bunny, or something, while I tell McGill all about it.” I got the other three sets of my brand-new muffin tins out of the bag—I think I had wiped out the town of Autumn Vale where muffin tins were concerned—and washed them, then dried and lined them with paper cups as I answered McGill. “It’s easy. Most people think that if it’s frosted or iced, then it’s a cupcake, but that’s not so. Some muffins can be frosted, too. Instead, think of the difference between a banana cake and a loaf of banana bread.”

“Okay,” he said. “I got that.”

“Well, with the batter of a banana cake, you can make cupcakes, and with the batter for banana bread, you can make banana muffins. You can do the same with any cake batter or quick-bread batter.”

“Ah!” he said, his eyes lighting up. “Cakes are to cupcakes as, uh, what did you call it?”

“Quick bread,” Shilo, who had not gone to feed Magic, filled in.

“Right . . . cakes are to cupcakes as quick breads are to muffins!”

“Correct!” I scanned my pile of ingredients. I hadn’t been able to find bran at the general store, so I’d bought a big box of bran cereal. “In general, muffins are denser and a little less sweet. They’re a whole lot easier and less finicky than cupcakes, let me tell you, but right now I’d give my right arm for my cookbooks.” Why hadn’t I thrown them in the car instead of in a bin at the self-storage? Because I hadn’t foreseen a retirement home full of seniors needing bran muffins. “Well, here goes.”

“Feel free to experiment on me,” McGill said. “But right now, I’d better get back to work.”

For a few minutes, Shilo was my assistant, but eventually she wandered off, and I was left to work alone. I like it that way, when I’m baking. One batch came out too coarse and dry. I hadn’t let the bran cereal soak up the moisture for long enough, I thought, so I increased the milk content and waited a little longer for the next batch. They turned out a lot better, and I tried another recipe that I vaguely remembered from my grandmother’s handwritten recipe cards, locked in a storage container in Manhattan at that moment. In the end, I had two dozen each of banana bran and peanut butter–bran muffins, and a whole bunch suitable only for the birds. It had been good to cook again, even in the huge unfamiliarity of the castle kitchen, and I had gone overboard, as usual.

Once more I offered McGill lunch, and as we three ate at the long table, I pumped him for information on Sheriff Virgil Grace and his mother, the elegant Gogi Grace.

Gogi, he told me, was a local who had left Autumn Vale to go to college in the sixties; she did the hippie-chick thing for a few years—and had been at Woodstock, it was rumored—then came back to town and married a local boy. She would have loved my mother, I interjected. Mom always claimed she was at Woodstock, too, but then, there were a million or so people there, right? Anyway, McGill went on to explain that Virgil was her youngest, the only one of her kids who stayed in town. With Rusty Turner’s help, she had bought and renovated Golden Acres, a century-old house that had been completely redone, with modern lifts so her oldsters didn’t have to climb stairs.

“What about the sheriff?” I asked, still wondering about those scratches on his face and the long time it took to respond to our call the night before.

“Yeah, is he married?” Shilo, said, leaning against McGill’s arm and batting her long eyelashes up at him.

McGill looked down at her, his mouth pursed, and said, “No, he’s not. Why, you interested? You wouldn’t be the first outsider to try to get him.”

Shilo reared back and frowned. She looked especially pretty today, her long, black hair tied up in a ponytail with a paisley scarf. “I’m not interested,” she sniffed, her dark eyes snapping with irritation. “I was asking for Merry!”

“Don’t do me any favors.” I said. “I’m just curious about him, McGill. How well do you know him? What’s he like?”

He shrugged, his favorite evasion. “I’ve known him our whole lives. He’s divorced, owns his own house, which I sold him, and works a lot. When his mom had breast cancer . . . whoops!” He looked stricken. “That’s private info; I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s okay. Consider it forgotten,” I said.

“Well, when she was sick, he looked after her. Her other kids don’t get back to Autumn Vale much, but he’s stayed.”

“He sounds like a good guy,” I mused.

McGill shifted in his seat. “He is,” he said shortly. “I gotta go back to work. See you gals later.”

“Swell,” Shilo said softly, grinning up at him.

I showered and dressed carefully, choosing a soft, gray jersey Kiyonna wrap dress and letting my long, dark hair flow over my shoulders. I scanned myself in a cheval mirror in my bedroom, when a wolf whistle made me whirl around; Shilo stood at the door, grinning.

“Who are you dressing up for?” she asked. “Some man coming that I don’t know about?”

I laughed and turned back to the mirror, making sure the dress tie was properly draped. “Don’t you know? Women dress mainly to impress other women. You have to see Gogi Grace. That woman is stylish, and I don’t want to look frumpy.” I hooked sterling silver hoop earrings in my ears, slipped an art-glass pendant over my head, and stood looking at myself. It was good to have an occasion to dress nicely for, and I was glad I’d thrown the Kiyonna dress in my bag at the last minute.

“And she’s the mother of that good-looking Sheriff Virgil Grace, right?”

“Yes, but that has nothing to do with anything,” I said primly, slipping my feet into red Marc Jacobs pumps. “You were way out of line with what you said to McGill earlier. I’m not interested in him or anyone else. Let’s go downstairs. If someone knocked on that gargantuan door, I wouldn’t hear a thing from here.”

“Doesn’t the doorbell work?”

“I don’t know, I never thought of—”

Just then a sonorous gong sounded.

“It works,” we both said at once, and laughed.

I clattered down the stairs and across the flagstone floor, followed by Shilo, then threw the door open for Mrs. Grace, who entered bearing a large box with a huge bow on top.

“Housewarming gift, my dear,” she said, as she handed it to me and walked past. “Or should I say castle-warming?”

I handed the box to Shilo with raised eyebrows, and followed Mrs. Grace, who had strolled into the middle of the great hall and was looking around.

“I haven’t been in here for years,” she said, slipping off her violet cashmere wrap. “Melvyn got a little . . . odd . . . these last few years.”

“Odd? In what way?” I folded her wrap and put it on the side table in the entryway.

Gogi met my eyes and smiled. “Patience, my dear. I have a feeling that there is a lot you would like to know about your uncle, and Wynter Castle, but one step at a time.”

I watched her eyes, veiled today by a fringe of soft, silver bangs. There was something there beyond what she was saying. I remembered what I had said to Shilo about the woman being a valuable ally, and nodded. I could be patient. But still, I was curious. First things first: I introduced Gogi to Shilo, and both women looked each other over.

“Jack McGill told me about your friend,” Gogi said, taking Shi’s hand and giving it a gentle shake. “He mentioned how beautiful you are, Shilo. I haven’t heard him say that for a long time.”

My friend smiled, then pardoned herself to go clean Magic’s cage.

As Gogi and I started up the stairs for her tour, I said, “I hear that Rusty Turner did the renovations on your retirement home.”

“True. There are a few handymen in Autumn Vale, and they can do things like installing a toilet or painting a room, but Turner Construction was virtually the only game in town for large operations.”