“Girlfriends he had cheated on. Friends he had betrayed in some way or another. Don’t we all have those dark spots in our past?”
I stiffened. It felt like his comments were aimed at me. It would only take a phone call or two to come across Leatrice’s accusations of thievery against me. Maybe he already knew about it. But that had nothing to do with this. “What’s your point, Sheriff?”
He leaned across the desk. “Now, locally, folks are kind of looking at you oddly because you threatened Tom Turner, and then he winds up dead in your yard.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m not the kind of woman who goes around bashing people over the head!”
“Maybe so, but folks around here don’t know you, right? And you must admit—”
“I don’t have to ‘admit’ anything,” I snapped. “I didn’t kill him, but I sure would like to know who did so I can sleep better at night.”
He thrust his fingers through his hair, and it stood straight up. Combined with his dorky uniform, a dark-blue shirt done right up to his neck and adorned with a clip-on tie, it made him just too cute in a way my perfect, suave, dignified Miguel never was. Come to think of it, that was Miguel’s only fault, his lack of a sense of the ridiculous, especially about himself.
“Look, I’m not accusing you, all right? I’m worried. There have been break-ins all over the county lately, and you and your friend are alone out there at that castle. If I thought you’d do it, I’d say find someplace in town to stay.” He paused, eying me and narrowing his eyes. “You wouldn’t, would you?”
“No. Mostly because that doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.” I shifted my purse on my lap. “Sheriff, I don’t mean to be difficult, but you’re not going to find evidence of whomever killed Tom in my uncle’s papers. Surely you have leads? Personal issues?” His stony expression told me that if he did, he was not going to share them with me. There was more I should ask, more I wanted to know, but he wasn’t going to tell me anything. I took the receipt and stood. “If that’s all . . . ?”
“We’d like to take your statement now,” he said, his tone expressionless. He pushed a button, and the female officer came in and sat in the spare chair. “We’ll be taping the interview, and you can sign the transcript once it’s done.”
“I did give a statement that night,” I said, keeping my tone carefully neutral. I really wasn’t trying to be difficult, but he grated on my nerves.
He met my eyes. “That was preliminary in nature. Miss Wynter, please . . . I’d appreciate your cooperation.”
I nodded, and he took me through the evening one more time. It was like reliving it, especially looking down into the hole and seeing Tom at the bottom. I made sure to be clear about the crowbar, which I had found at the lip and tossed aside. By the time I was done, I was shaking, emotions rising within me that I thought I had tamped down and conquered. Death is wicked, and a purposeful death—robbing someone of all the potential life he had left to live—was evil.
I had one last thing to say on the record. “I want whoever did this found and prosecuted. I want them to spend the rest of their life in jail. It’s horrible to think that there is a killer out there, and he or she could be watching me, or have some reason to want to hurt me.” My voice was trembling. I steadied it, as I finished. “It was on my property, and I won’t rest until the killer is out of circulation.”
That was the end of my statement, but not the end of my visit with the sheriff. I had been ready to walk out before, but calmer now, my flare of anger gone, I remembered that I had questions, too, and a promise to fulfill. As the female officer left the room, I stayed in my seat. “Sheriff, I would like to learn more about my uncle’s death, the car accident. Do you have a moment?”
He hesitated. “Not really, but shoot.”
“What happened? All I know is he slid off the road on an icy, November morning.”
“That’s pretty much all we know, too. Old Mel was in his eighties, and his eyesight was not the best. Regardless, he seemed to have taken it in his head to drive the highway at six or so in the morning.”
“It would have been dark at that time.”
Virgil nodded. “We were having a cold snap. The road was practically frozen over.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
“Silvio mentioned that Mel told him he was heading to Rochester for some reason. That’s all I know.”
“So it was just an accident?” I thought of Gogi’s suspicions, and wondered what was behind them. It seemed simple enough to me; an elderly man with poor sight on an icy highway in the dark. It sounded like a recipe for trouble.
“I have no reason to think it was anything else.”
“Where’s the car?”
“Our impound lot. It’s damaged beyond recovery.”
“How did the call come in? What time of day was it?” I asked.
“Early. It was about six a.m. when we got the call from a citizen who was passing by and saw a car off the road. They were concerned, and told us where to find the car.”
“Who was it who called?”
“Not my place to tell you, Miss Wynter. The caller wished to remain anonymous unless called to give evidence at an inquest.”
“And? When is the inquest?”
“We haven’t scheduled it yet. I haven’t gathered all the information I need.”
“Why not?”
No answer from the stone-faced cop. He was being deliberately difficult, and I eyed him with suspicion. Something else clicked in at that moment. I didn’t recall any mention of an insurance settlement in the accident case, so it was not closed, not by any means. “You’re not convinced it was an accident,” I said, suddenly sure of my conclusion. “And you don’t want an inquest until you know the truth. Why? Was there any damage not accounted for by the accident?” I saw by his expression that I had nailed it.
“We’re investigating. I haven’t closed the books on it yet.”
“So there is something about the car-accident theory that doesn’t ring true to you.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “Miss Wynter,” he said, his tone frosty, “I said, I’m still investigating. I have no concrete proof that it was anything more than an accident, but there are a couple of minor scrapes of black paint on the back bumper that trouble me. Mel was not a great driver, however. For all I know they could be from a fender bender in the parking lot of a Wegmans in Buffalo!” He stood and walked to his office door, holding it open for me. “And that is all I have to say.”
But as I passed, he grabbed my elbow.
“Merry . . . Miss Wynter, please be careful,” he said, his gaze intense, his voice a growl that sent shivers down to my toes. “I don’t like the idea of you out there at the castle with a killer on the loose. Please reconsider staying in town.”
I pulled away from him, tugged down my jacket—I was dressed for professionalism in a skirt suit—and headed out to the car, where Shilo, out of the car now, sat on a curb, waiting. We got back in and I let Shilo off at Jack McGill’s office—she and the lanky Lothario were getting along like a house afire, it seemed to me—and found a parking spot outside of Binny’s Bakery.
Okay, I thought, gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly, so I had gone to the police station and demanded to know what they took from the castle. Check that off on the list, and note a big, fat nothing beside what I had learned, other than the fact that Virgil Grace was cute, in uniform or out, and had a sexy voice. Oh, and that my uncle may have been murdered in a hit-and-run accident. Maybe Gogi was right after all, to be concerned.
I stopped at the bakery and told Binny I would be back later to bake—I was going to try some chocolate-walnut and prune Danish muffins—but right then I was going to track down Dinah and find out what, if anything, she could tell me about the financial troubles between my uncle and Rusty Turner. Binny gave me Dinah’s address.
She lived in a little apartment over Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles, one of the shops on Abenaki
, Binny had told me. I walked down the street toward it, not even sure of what I needed to know, or what to ask Dinah. I guess I was trying to figure out where everyone fit in the scheme of things in Autumn Vale, New York. It was as if three jigsaw puzzles had been tossed into a box together, and none of the pieces I was collecting came from the same one.
As I remembered from my first morning in Autumn Vale, Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles was the last shop in a line of conjoined downtown building faces, all brick, some painted, some left natural, and most windows boarded up this far down the block. I had never stopped to look in the window. Wow. I stared in openmouthed awe. There was a jumble of stuff packed into the store window, from petit point dining chairs to a gigantic plant stand in the shape of a dragon. There was new junk, old crap, antiques, and kitsch all sharing space, jammed cheek to jowl as my grandmother used to say.
But I wasn’t there to browse, I was looking for the door to Dinah Hooper’s apartment. I searched to the right and to the left on the old, brick building facade, where there ought to be a door opening to reveal a staircase. In fact, there should be a mailbox or buzzer or something indicating the upstairs apartment, shouldn’t there?
From what Binny had told me, Dinah Hooper had shown up in Autumn Vale two years or so prior. Binny was not in town then; she was still exploring the world of baked goods by apprenticing in a Paris boulangerie. Dinah, following a friend, had come to Autumn Vale looking for a fresh start, apparently, and soon found work at Turner Construction as office manager. She had swiftly moved on to become the boss’s girlfriend, and made new friends in town.
Binny appreciated the kindness she saw in Dinah, and the good care she took of Rusty, who was on several different types of medication. Dinah regulated them, and made sure he kept his doctor’s appointments. In the months before he disappeared, his health had actually improved considerably, Binny said. That was why she was having so much trouble figuring out what had happened to him. Dinah was firm in her belief that Rusty was not dead, but had just left town for some reason, though she claimed not to know why.
Stymied, I stood and frowned at the storefront. Darned if I could find a doorway. I was being watched, too, not just by some of the fine citizens of Autumn Vale from across the street, but also by a woman in the window. Aha! It was the odd woman in purple, Janice Grover, the woman I had first seen in the library and then later at Vale Variety and Lunch. She gestured to me to come in. I stepped up and opened the door, a chime hung over it announcing my entry.
“I’m looking for Dinah Hooper,” I said, as I squeezed past a shelf that was in the way. “I was told her apartment is above the shop?”
“Sure is.” The woman eyed me up and down. “What do you want with her?”
“Why?” I asked.
She grinned. “Now, that isn’t supposed to be what you say. You’re supposed to answer me. Most people do, if you surprise them with a direct question.”
“I’m not most people.” I looked around the shop. It was as crammed full as the front window. “Where did you get all this?”
“Estate sales, closeouts, bargain-basements. Liquidations. Garage sales, flea markets, the dump.” She adjusted a stack of dusty teacups on a shelf. “My husband says I never saw a sale I couldn’t wipe out.”
“Your husband . . .” I searched my memory. “Oh yes! Your husband is the Grand T-something of the Brotherhood of Falcons.”
“Grand Tiercel. And the head of the local Old Duffers chapter—though they never get off their fat behinds to golf—and bank manager. Man never stops going to meetings. You’d think he was afraid to come home!”
One look at her formidable person, today clothed all in fuchsia, her shelflike bosom jutting like a magnificent ship’s prow, and I wondered, was her husband as afraid of Mrs. Janice Grover as everyone else seemed to be? I remembered her remark about Isadore Openshaw’s lack of a sense of humor; she had said maybe that’s what happened when you worked in a bank too long. Was her husband as humorless as Ms. Openshaw? Or just terrified of the indomitable Mrs. Grover? “Bank manager,” I mused, and I remembered the stodgy little edifice I had passed. “Is that the Autumn Vale Community Bank?”
“That is the one and only bank in this town, in case you hadn’t noticed, and the one everyone uses. Most don’t want to go all the way to Ridley Ridge, where there are a couple of branches of the major banks. Autumn Vale is kind of . . . insular.”
“That’s one thing to call it.”
“Weird being another? I thought that when we moved here twenty years ago,” she said, moving a poodle figurine an inch on a piecrust tabletop, leaving a clean ring in the dust. “But since then, I’ve come to embrace its oddities. It’s freeing in a way,” she said, adjusting her parrot earrings. They matched the fuchsia dress nicely. “You’re the Wynter heiress, right?”
Heiress? Moi? I had never thought of myself that way. Could you be broke and still be an heiress? “I guess you could say that. I’m Melvyn Wynter’s great-niece, and his heir.” She was someone else in town I thought I’d enjoy getting to know. I do enjoy the offbeat. Maybe it was all those years living in Greenwich Village, though the neighborhood had become awfully stodgy of late, not like it was when I was a teenager. Perhaps I did belong in Autumn Vale, where weird was a way of life. “You seemed to feel, when you talked to us in the restaurant the other day, that Melvyn’s death, Rusty’s disappearance, and Tom’s murder are all connected. Who do you think did it?”
“Not a clue, my dear girl. Not a clue! But it seems like an awful lot of tragedy for one small family and business, unless you’re in the middle of a Greek drama or a Shakespeare play. Or one of those cozy mysteries, where the residents of a tiny town are bopped off one by one, and yet no one gets the willies and leaves.”
“Do you know anything about my uncle Melvyn’s accident?”
“Not much. It was Simon—my husband, you know—who called the police.”
Chapter Sixteen
I WAS SHOCKED by that, but tried not to show it. “Really?”
“It was early in the morning, about six or so, and Simon was just coming back from the city, where one of my sons had some kind of crisis. He saw poor old Mel’s car off the road and down the embankment. Well, he got out and shouted down, but no answer. He came home and asked what he ought to do, and I said ‘Call the police, you idiot’!” She laughed, a great honking hoot that was out of place given the subject matter. “For all he’s a good, solid guy, Simon can be a bit of a dope.”
My mind whirled with thoughts; had Simon Grover been the one who forced my uncle off the road, by accident or on purpose? I mean, who comes back from a trip to see their son at six in the morning? Was he drunk? Was he out to get Melvyn?
What color car did Simon Grover, solid citizen, drive?
“So, your husband was coming back from seeing your son?” I asked slowly, watching her face. “Weird time of day, wasn’t it?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. Booker is a good boy, but he was having girlfriend troubles and called, upset, wanting to talk. Simon drove up to Rochester to see him but didn’t want to miss work, so he started back early.”
“He must have been tired, and then to see Melvyn’s car off the road . . . did he stop to try to help?”
“Well of course! I said that already, right? He shouted. But Simon’s in no shape to scale down an embankment. He came home and we called Virgil.” She paused and eyed me. Slowly and with great emphasis, she said, “The sheriff told us there was no way poor old Melvyn would have been alive, even if Simon had been able to make it down the embankment.”
Well, that was clear enough, but still . . . how could I ask about her husband’s car color? There didn’t seem to be any way without showing my suspicion, but it was the kind of thing I ought to be able to find out fairly easily. Gogi might even know.
Simon was the local banker. I pondered the anomalies we had found in the business dealings between the Turners and my uncle, and the large cash infusions Turner Cons
truction had been receiving. Would the bank manager know where the money in the Turner accounts came from? At this point, I wasn’t ready to go into those oddities with a stranger whom I didn’t know if I could trust. I wanted to ponder it and talk to my financial-whiz friend, Pish, first; he was as trustworthy as a locked diary. “I’d better get moving. As much as I’d love to look around your store, I’m just looking for Dinah Hooper’s apartment right now. How do I get to it?”
“Around the corner you’ll see a nondescript kind of door. There’s a buzzer beside it, no name, though. Don’t know if she’s home.”
I paused. “What do you think about Dinah? She’s kind of new in town, right?”
Mrs. Grover shrugged. “Seems all right to me. She moved right into town, joined clubs, volunteered, made friends. Not like Isadore; when Isadore Openshaw came to town seven or eight years ago to look after her brother, she just kind of hid away. After he died, everyone thought she’d open up, have more time for folks, but once a grump always a grump. Set in her ways.”
Speaking of grumps set in their ways . . . “Did you know my uncle?”
“Weeeell, kinda. He wasn’t a big fan of mine, if you know what I mean.”
I looked at her, eyebrows raised, inviting her to continue.
“I’d been out to the castle a couple of times, just to look around, you know. He chased me off the property and told me never to come back.”
I bit my lip, trying not to giggle.
She eyed me with a smile. “Oh, don’t worry . . . once I got home, I laughed plenty. Must have been quite the sight, an old curmudgeon chasing a large lady in a floral muumuu, boobs bouncing like basketballs, down the driveway, shaking his shotgun and yelling, ‘Get off my property!’ at the top of his lungs.”
I liked Janice Grover! I couldn’t help myself. “I guess my uncle was a mean old man.”
She shrugged, her parrots swinging merrily. “I hear he wasn’t so bad if you knew him well. Gogi Grace swears he was once quite affable. But I was a newcomer, see . . . only been here twenty years.”
Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery) Page 16
