Free Much Ado About Muffin by Victoria Hamilton Page A

she there?” Gogi asked.
    I didn’t answer as I tiptoed in, with her close behind me. Something was off; my scalp prickled. There was a terrible odor in the air, the smell tangible even to my tastebuds, as if I were holding a hairpin in my mouth. Gogi gagged and made a retching sound. I turned and saw what she saw.
    Minnie Urquhart’s large body was partially stuffed in a big canvas postal sack, blood dripping from a dagger stuck right through her blue golf shirt. I moaned, covering my mouth, my stomach twisting, but in those few seconds,stunned and revolted and afraid as I was, I still recognized the weapon.
Not
a dagger; it was a decorative letter opener that had been jammed into her side.
    Gogi cried out and I swore, both at the same time—a delayed response of horror warring with disbelief. Gogi, though, with more presence of mind than I, pushed past me and pulled the canvas sack aside until she found Minnie’s neck. She touched her carotid artery, feeling for a pulse, while I stifled the urge to vomit or run.
    Gogi turned and looked at me, shaking her head. “She’s dead.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    She moved out of the way and I saw Minnie’s eyes, wide and staring, pupils dilated. Her double chins were flaccid and sagging, her mouth gaping open, some kind of white powder coating the sprouting hairs on her chin. Blood was everywhere; she was soaked in it. There was no expression on her familiar face. Tears welled in my eyes, but Gogi grabbed my forearms and backed me out.
    â€œMerry, she’s been murdered,” she said, her voice guttural and trembling. “We need to get out of here, in case the murderer is still inside, and call Virgil!”
    She pushed me out and we stood in the back alley, shivering even on a warm, humid September day. “Go get your phone and call Virgil.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll stay here and make sure no one goes in . . . or out.”
    She paused, shook her head. “No, Merry, what if—”
    â€œNo one would stick around after . . . after doing that,” I said, my voice getting steadier now that I couldn’t see poor Minnie.
    â€œYou’re right. I’m going to get my cell phone, but I am going to call
while
I’m walking back to you.”
    Gogi walked swiftly along the back of the post office and disappeared around the side. I had become less squeamish in the last year, but still, my stomach churned as I steppedback through the door. I had to look, I just had to! Poor Minnie. Poor,
poor
woman. I may not have liked her, but she was an Autumn Vale citizen and cared about our town.
    I took a deep trembling breath and examined the scene. On closer look, Minnie wasn’t actually stuffed in the mailbag; that would have been impossible. She was slumped on the floor, and now that I was looking for them, I saw spatters of blood across the floor and on the other canvas mail sacks that were lined up for processing. She was in a heap, one arm was in a mailbag, and there was another empty mailbag partially pulled over her. Her uniform was a pale bluish golf shirt that blended with the stained dull gray of the canvas postal bag.
Everything
had blood on it; she must have been stabbed more than once, judging by the multiple bloody spots on her body. Her hands, too . . . There were cuts and bruises on the one palm that I could see. I held back the violent urge to throw up, my stomach roiling at the smell and the blood. Poor woman, to have suffered such horror in her last minutes on Earth. Who would do such an awful thing? Tears wet my eyes.
    There was blood soaking through the canvas bag that Minnie was partially in, her right arm and shoulder concealed. The letter opener was jammed into her right side, under her breast and through her uniform shirt, with a big patch of blood soaking the shirt around it. It had looked like a dagger at first because it had a brass hilt and steel blade,