Bran New Death(20)

“Right-o. Gotta go. See you, Shilo!” He exited.

“Isn’t he cute?” Shilo said, racing to the window to watch him leave, her black ponytail swinging. “He rhymed everything with my name!”

I ignored her odd infatuation with the lanky realtor and turned to the muffins on the worktable. “I’d like you to try these, Mrs. Grace,” I said. “Let me know what you think.”

“You’re to call me Gogi, my dear, everyone does.” But the woman obediently tasted one of the buttered bran muffins. “Mmm!” she said, nodding, her mouth full. “These are splendid!”

“I can give the recipe to your cook.”

“She won’t have time to make them,” Gogi said with regret, brushing crumbs from her fingers. “I simply couldn’t ask it of the poor woman. She’s already overworked. And any new staff I hire has to be for the guests’ health care.” She squinted over at me, a calculating look in her blue eyes. “How much would you charge me for, say, ten dozen assorted muffins a week?”

“Ten dozen? As in one hundred and twenty muffins? Every week?”

“Sure.”

“But I’m not staying here!” I exclaimed.

“You’re staying long enough to fix the castle up and sell it, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you’ll need something to do.” The woman took a calculator out of her shoulder bag, slipped on a pair of glamorous, rhinestone-studded cheaters, and tapped at the number keys. “It’s just for the short term, until I can source muffins and cookies. You’ll need to get the kitchen inspected so I can buy the muffins from you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“State rules. I can take these because they are a gift,” she said, fluttering her hand at the muffins. “But if I buy muffins from you for the oldsters, they need to be made in a commercially licensed kitchen. This one is fitted with everything it needs, you just have to have it licensed.”

Shilo snickered, and I threw her a warning glance, before saying, “Mrs. Grace . . . Gogi . . . I have no intention of going into the muffin business, so there is no need to get the kitchen commercially licensed. Period.” I was putting my foot down. She was not going to run me over again.

“Maybe I misunderstood,” she said, head cocked to one side. “You’re thinking that this place could be sold to become an inn or event venue, right? That’s what Jack McGill told me.”

“Yes, I’m hoping so.”

“If the kitchen is already commercially licensed, that’s one step toward selling it for one of those uses.”

It made a dreadful kind of inevitable sense. “I’ll think about it.”

“Per dozen, times ten,” Gogi said, and showed me the sum on the calculator.

It wasn’t a fortune, but it would help pay the utility bills while I stayed. “I’ll make coffee,” I murmured, a little stunned at the way things were moving along.

She slipped her glasses and the calculator in her shoulder bag. We sat, ate a couple more muffins with steaming coffee, and she told me about Turner Wynter, the development company Rusty Turner and my uncle had co-owned. It employed both Tom Turner, Binny’s brother, and Dinah Hooper, Rusty’s girlfriend.

“Turner Wynter was a real estate development company,” I reiterated. “Was it going well? This is kind of the boonies for development, especially with the economy the way it’s been for the last few years.”

“I won’t say they got along well,” Gogi, said, her well-shaped brows raised. “There was quite a bit of trouble in the last little while before Melvyn died, some lawsuits about the business. Most of the townsfolk sided with Rusty because no one got along with Melvyn except me and Doc English, one of my residents.”

“Things got that bad?”

“Two men like Rusty and Melvyn were never going to work together well. Things got pretty heated. Virgil had to step in a couple of times, because the two old fellows got into fisticuffs.”

“Fistfights?” I said. “Really? What did they do, a swing and a miss, or was it walkers at dawn?”

Shilo snorted, but Gogi only smiled. “You’d be surprised the damage a couple of old guys can do to each other. Believe me, I’ve had to deal with it at my home. And even though Rusty was not as old as Melvyn, he’s the one who ended up on the short end of the stick. Your uncle was not afraid to whip out a rifle to defend his property. That’s one of the things that made me wonder . . .” She shut her mouth and shook her head. “Never mind.”

“No, go on . . . what were you going to say?” I asked.