Lorna Barrett - Chapter & Hearse

Tricia marched into her kitchen, Miss Marple trotting along behind her.

“We are going to make muffins. You like muffins,” she told the cat.

Miss Marple agreed with a hearty “ Yow!” She jumped up on one of the stools at the kitchen island and watched as Tricia assembled her ingredients. Tricia was delightfully surprised she had so many on hand. She retrieved a small bag of flour from the fridge. Since she didn’t use it often, Angelica had warned her it might pick up weevils if she left it in the cupboard. Tricia had baking soda, vegetable oil, and eggs. No blueberries, but she’d substitute Craisins for this particular batch. And if she couldn’t get fresh blueberries (too early in the season?), she’d try to find canned or frozen. And since she didn’t actually have a mixing bowl, she took out a large salad bowl.

Tricia consulted the recipe again. Butter. Butter was fattening. She’d replace it with her low-cal spread. Hmm . . . she didn’t have any baking powder. But weren’t baking powder and baking soda pretty much interchangeable? And she didn’t actually have a muffin tin. She could just plop the dough (or was it batter?) onto a cookie sheet. That would probably be okay.

“Angelica thinks she’s the only good cook in this family,” Tricia told Miss Marple. “Well, we’ll prove her wrong, won’t we?”

Again Miss Marple agreed with a loud “ Yow!”

Twice Tricia plunged her cup measure into the flour, sending plumes of powder into the air. Both were a little more than full, but if a cup was good, surely a bit extra would be better. Next she added the baking soda. The dry ingredients were supposed to be sifted together, but since she didn’t have a sifter, she stirred the mixture with a spoon.

She consulted the recipe again. It called for two large eggs. Eggs had cholesterol, right? She’d use one. And two-thirds of a cup of sugar seemed a lot. The fruit was naturally sweet. She’d cut that in half, too.

After finding another large bowl, Tricia combined the sugar, the spread, and the egg, beating the mixture with a wooden spoon until it was nicely blended. The recipe said to alternately combine the milk and the butter mixture with the dry ingredients, but that seemed counterproductive. She mixed the milk with the spread, then added it to the flour. The dough was stiffer than she would have thought, and there seemed to be a lot of lumps, so she kept mixing until the dough was completely smooth—building her biceps as she went.

Oops! She had forgotten to preheat the oven. She turned it on and searched for the aluminum foil to cover the cookie sheet. Next, she found her ice cream scoop. Since she didn’t have a muffin tin, she wanted the muffins at least to have a rounded shape. She scooped out twelve mounds of dough, setting them on the cookie sheet. The recipe said it made twelve muffins, but she still had plenty of dough left, so she kept scooping, adding some to each mound until the salad bowl was empty.

The oven wasn’t quite up to speed, but she popped the tray into the oven anyway and set the timer, giving the muffins an extra few minutes.

Now that the action was over, Miss Marple settled down on the stool to doze while Tricia tidied up the kitchen. Soon the aroma of baking filled the entire loft. “Who says baking is so tough?” she asked Miss Marple, who didn’t react.

Eventually the timer went off, and Tricia grabbed her pot holder, removing the cookie sheet from the oven. The muffins weren’t exactly beautiful. She’d get some of those little paper cups from the baking aisle next time she went to the grocery store. And if they had a muffin pan, she’d buy that, too. Maybe Angelica sold them in her store—Tricia wasn’t really sure what stock her sister handled besides new and used books.

She left the muffins on the counter to cool, and headed for her bedroom to get ready for bed. Ten minutes later, she was back in the kitchen. Miss Marple was nowhere to be found, and one of the muffins lay on the floor. “Miss Marple,” she called, but the cat refused to come out. Tricia picked up the muffin, which had obviously been nibbled, and sniffed it. Not wonderful, but not horrible, either.

Tricia removed the rest of the muffins from the cookie sheet, piled them on a plate, placed a clean dish towel over them, and put them in the microwave, out of harm’s way.

It was with a feeling of accomplishment that Tricia climbed into bed. Together, she and Rex Stout—or should she credit Nero Wolf?—had done it. As she drifted off to sleep, Tricia looked forward to the morning and providing her employees with a wonderful breakfast treat.

Tricia and Miss Marple made it down to Haven’t Got a Clue early the next morning. Tricia wanted to be ready for Ginny and Mr. Everett to arrive, and set the coffee to brewing. As she opened the shop blinds, Tricia was surprised to see a ladder standing against the gas lamp outside her store. A pickup truck was parked at the curb, its cargo bay filled with hanging baskets holding gorgeous salmon-colored geraniums.

A young woman removed one of the baskets and turned toward the ladder. Tricia left her shop to investigate. “Hi,” she called.

The woman—who looked to be about college age—smiled. “Hi. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and it looks like you’re about to make it prettier,” Tricia said, indicating the flowers. She introduced herself.

“Amy Schram. Pleased to meet you,” the woman responded.

“What’s with the flowers?” Tricia asked.

“Part two of the Beautify Main Street campaign of the Stoneham Board of Selectmen. My family owns Milford Nursery. We were hired to hang and maintain the flowers over the summer,” she said as she climbed the ladder and hung the basket from a bar on the gas lamp. “Come Christmastime, they’ll hang banners.”

Tricia hadn’t heard about these plans, and decided she ought to make more of an effort to get to Board of Selectmen meetings. She admired the robust basket. “I recognize geraniums, but what are the other plants?”

Amy stepped down from the ladder and folded it. “Each basket has a spike and a trailing vinca. They should look even nicer in a couple of weeks when it all bushes out.”

Tricia glanced down the street, noting Amy had already hung five or six baskets. They added a lovely accent to the already picturesque street. Too bad they couldn’t dress up the empty lot where History Repeats Itself had been.

“You’ll be seeing a lot of me over the summer,” Amy said and hefted the ladder, carrying it to the next lamppost.

“Well, I won’t keep you from your work now. It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise,” Amy called, and continued with her work.

Tricia retreated to Haven’t Got a Clue. She’d just counted out the money for the till when Ginny arrived.

“Hey, did you see all those pretty flower baskets hanging from the gas lamps?” she called, and stepped up to the cash desk.

“Yes, they’re gorgeous.”

“Sure makes me wish I had a store here on Main Street,” Ginny said wistfully.

“You’ll have your store one day.”

“Yeah, a million years from now,” she groused. “You know, you ought to have postcards made showing Haven’t Got a Clue’s facade—especially with the flowers looking so pretty right now. You could give them away to tourists.”

“That’s a great idea. Thanks.”

The door opened, and Mr. Everett entered. “Good morning, ladies. Have you seen the lovely flowers hanging outside?”

“Yes,” Tricia said, “we were just admiring them. And I have another surprise for you two.” She directed her employees to follow her to the coffee station, where the muffins she’d made sat on the counter, still covered by the dish towel.