Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery)
Page 21
I filled him in on our trip to the Turner Construction trailer, and my discoveries about the shoddy plat and grade school–level renderings of the Wynter Acres plan. Then I told him about what Shilo had discovered: the regular large cash deposits to Turner Construction accounts in the Autumn Vale Community Bank that had no discernible source, given that work had all but stopped in recent months.
“Who would have had the ability to deposit in the account?” he asked.
“Since Rusty’s been gone? Probably just Tom and Dinah.”
“Dinah was not married to Rusty Turner, is that right?”
“No, nor living with him,” I said, beginning to see what he was asking. I thought about our conversation, how Dinah had more or less given up on working at Turner Construction since before Tom died. She seemed a little desperate to find a way to make money. And yet she said she hadn’t been taking a wage from Turner Construction in the last few months. Why, if there was a large amount of money there, as there seemed to be? Did she know where it came from or not? Did she refuse to touch it or take her wage because of the money’s origins? If it was Tom’s, I supposed that would make sense. I shared my thoughts with Pish.
“I don’t want to say too much, my dear, but it sounds to me as if Tom Turner had found a way to make money that had nothing to do with construction, and it may have led to his death.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, drug peddling is one possibility, I suppose. But maybe he was involved in some kind of money-laundering scheme. And if he was, the kind of folk he would have been dealing with . . . well, he wouldn’t be the first who thought he was smart and ended up dead.”
That gave me pause, and I remembered someone—was it Gordy or Zeke?—had said something about a couple of scary guys in town late last year, about the time Rusty disappeared and my uncle died. I had a lot to think about. Pish told me to give his love to Shilo, and that he would be in touch—he was going to see if there was any information he could dig up—and that he hoped I’d take pictures of the castle and send them to him. As soon as I got my digital camera out of storage and my laptop working and got Internet service out in the boonies, I would.
I sat for a while staring at the empty fireplace. Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I turned to see a big-bellied fellow draining the last of the coffee urn and snagging two muffins.
“You Mel’s niece?” he asked. He was dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt, but the getup didn’t quite look natural on him.
“I am,” I said, rising and going toward him. “Merry Wynter,” I added, sticking out my hand. I recognized him, but waited for him to introduce himself.
“Simon Grover,” he said, juggling the muffins and coffee, then clasping my hand in a firm grip. “You been talking to my wife.”
“You’re the bank manager, and head of the Brotherhood of the Falcons!”
“Yup. Not here because of that, though; I’m captain of the Autumn Vale Volunteer Fire Patrol. We’re providing backup to the state police and Virgil’s boys and gals.”
Making a quick decision, I motioned to the comfortable chair by the empty fireplace. “Would you like to sit and have your coffee in comfort, Mr. Grover?”
“I sure would,” he said with a sigh of relief. “My dogs is barkin’! These boots ain’t made for walking.” He spoke with a folksy air, maybe one he had developed since coming to manage a bank in a small town in rural upstate New York.
Grover waddled over to the fireplace and I let him sit with his coffee and muffins while I put the urn on to perk again. Then I joined him and we sat in companionable silence for a long moment, while I tried to figure out how to introduce the topic of my uncle’s dealings at the bank. In one sense, it was my business since I was the heir, but what went on before my uncle’s death could be deemed private, I supposed.
“You know,” he said, “I liked your uncle. We were brothers, in a sense, and Rusty Turner, too; us three were the founding members of the Brotherhood of the Falcons. Now I’m the only one of the three founding members left. The three amigos.”
Mad thoughts of a tontine-like arrangement flitted through my mind. But was it so mad? “I didn’t know my uncle was part of the club.”
“When my wife and I first moved here, I went out of my way to be pals with Melvyn. He was getting to be a crusty old fella even then. Not many friends.”
“He was friends with Gogi Grace’s husband, though, I understand. And Doc English.”
He shrugged, his bulky shoulders rolling. When he didn’t answer, I wondered if I had offended him by naming Melvyn’s buddies, right after he had said my uncle didn’t have many. He didn’t look offended, though. He was holding his empty coffee cup, glaring into it with a sad expression.
“Let me refill your cup with fresh coffee,” I said. When I came back and handed him the fragrant steaming brew, he sighed in contentment.
“Your coffee’s better’n my wife’s.”
“A lot of people like perked coffee better than drip.” How could I talk to him about my uncle’s affairs, I wondered. To make conversation, I said, “It’s great of you and your volunteers to come out this afternoon.” I wasn’t sure how they could possibly help or what they were doing other than standing around talking, drinking coffee, and eating muffins. It was more likely that he had come out for one more excuse to avoid his wife’s company, although maybe that was unfair. “I got the mugs from your wife’s shop,” I said, testing the waters.
“Bunch of old crap she’s got there. Never makes a penny,” he grumbled.
Okay. “It must have been awkward for you, with both Melvyn and Rusty as founding members of the Brotherhood, and them being at legal loggerheads.”
“It sure the hell was! Pardon my French. Those two old arseholes—again, pardon the French—were getting more and more cantankerous. I tried to get ’em to see sense, but they just . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “Couldn’t get ’em to stop feuding.”
“Toward the end, was my uncle okay?” I still feared that the body in the woods was Rusty Turner, and that my uncle had gone off his rocker and killed him.
“Okay, as in, all his marbles?”
I nodded.
“Well, yeah, I’d say your uncle was sharp as a tack and just as painful, if you sat on him.”
I pondered what that meant. “In other words, he was fine, unless you crossed him?”
“Yup. Then he was like a wasp, wouldn’t let you out of his sight until he’d given you what for.”
His chagrined tone made me wonder if Simon Grover, bank manager, had crossed Melvyn Wynter before he died. I knew too well that Rusty Turner had, repeatedly. “Did he, uh, come in to the bank ever?”
Grover shrugged. “Sometimes. Not often.”
“Was my uncle worried about anything? Before he died, I mean.”
“He was mad as hell that Rusty had disappeared. Said the old coot was trying to avoid the lawsuit.”
I pondered my discovery that Uncle Melvyn had been heading into town that fateful morning when he went off the road. “Was he angry enough that he’d be confronting someone about it?”
The banker frowned into his empty cup. “Like who?”
A sudden inspiration made me say, “The lawyer, maybe? Mr. Silvio was trying to get them both to agree, though, right? Like you were. He was trying to solve things between my uncle and Rusty Turner?”
The man snorted into a chuckle, then a wheezing, coughing guffaw. “Have you ever heard of any lawyer trying to settle out of court unless there was a wad of cash involved? No way! Silvio was lining his pockets from the money two old men with grudges brought him. He wasn’t mediating; hell, he was exacerbating, egging each one on to file more and more lawsuits!”
I heard a noise behind us, but it was just McGill, filling a couple of mugs with the fresh coffee. He had an odd look on his face, one that I couldn’t translate.
“Merry? Virge wants to see you outside.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Darn! I had just been about to ask him about finding my uncle’s car off the road, hoping to quiz him on what he had seen. It still seemed odd to me that he was returning home to Autumn Vale at six in the morning! And I hadn’t had a chance to inquire about my uncle’s bank dealings and what was up with Isadore Openshaw. That would all have to wait.
I took my time, delaying going out to see the sheriff. Instead, I stacked dirty mugs in the sink and ran soapy water, then washed them and set them on the drain board to air-dry. I had a lot to consider, and what the bank manager had just said about the lawyer made me wonder. The tangled mystery of who killed Tom Turner in the middle of the night on my property had many threads. Who wanted him dead being the central thread, of course, or even, who needed him dead and why? I knew so little about the local dynamics that I was afraid I was missing much of what could help me figure it out. But then, Virgil Grace was local, and he might even now have a solid idea of who killed Tom. I wouldn’t discover that until he made an arrest. I sure hoped it wouldn’t be me led away in handcuffs. I had to believe Sheriff Grace would realize that an argument in town in front of witnesses did not make me guilty of murder.
But Mr. Lawyer Silvio . . . I hadn’t even put him in the mix until now. Far from trying to put a stop to the back-and-forth lawsuits between the two old men, as he said he was doing, it appeared—or so the bank manager said—that he had been spurring both men on. But why? The answer that made sense was, to make as much money as he could with the fees he would accrue from one or the other. But Silvio had already told me he represented neither man in the lawsuits, since that would be a conflict of interest.
Did I believe him? It should be easy enough to find out the truth. Or maybe he was making money off the discord somehow. Could I really see Silvio creeping across my property in the middle of the night wielding a crowbar and cracking Tom Turner over the head? I wouldn’t put it past him, especially the creeping part. One thing I had to keep in mind when dealing with anyone was, there could be motives that I just wasn’t seeing because I had not been in town long enough. That went for Mr. Silvio, too. He had not always been an Autumn Vale citizen, but maybe he had been there long enough to have a grudge against Tom Turner. Hannah had said Tom was doing something for a lawyer. If that was Silvio, maybe whatever it was went wrong? Did Tom find something out and threaten Silvio with it?
I had a lot of questions, and very few answers. I wandered outside. McGill was still hard at work, despite it getting darker by the minute and the grim scene of police vans and patrol cars. Shilo talked earnestly to one of the investigators, Miss State Police Khaki Uniform.
The sheriff saw me and approached, full tilt. “Didn’t McGill tell you I wanted to talk to you?”
“Yes, he did.” I looked up at him, examining the line of scruff along his jaw. “If this is twenty questions, it’s my turn. Did you know that you constantly have an unpleasant look on your face? One of these days, you’re going to turn into a grumpy old man with a peptic ulcer.”
I turned away and watched McGill push dirt into a hole not that far away from us. He had been working steady, making progress while I mooned around weeping to old friends on the phone, talking to a hypertensive bank manager, and washing mugs.
The sheriff settled his expression some, and said, “Well, I just thought you’d like to be the first to know. We don’t think the dead body is Rusty Turner.”
I actually felt a leap of joy at that; one thing poor Binny would not have to deal with. But the question remained. “Who else could it be?”
“We’re still working on that. The medical examiner might be able to tell us more.”
I watched Sheriff Grace’s profile; he was a good-looking man, no doubt about it. But his permanent scowl damaged that, and I was serious about him ending up with a peptic ulcer if he didn’t watch it. Looking at it from his viewpoint though, this was serious business and nothing to smile about. And these folks were his friends and neighbors. “You know, it’s probably just the body of some hiker who got lost, set up camp, and had a heart attack in his sleep.”
“I wish I thought that,” he said. “But he has blunt-force trauma to the head, from what the ME says, and in his pockets he had some stuff that makes me think he’s local. I just can’t figure out who the hell it could be.”
Local, and not Rusty Turner. “What did he have in his pockets? A card from a local business? A takeout menu from Vale Variety and Lunch? He could have that kind of stuff and still just be a transient passing through.”
Virgil shook his head, and I knew he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer me.
“It’s getting too dark to do anything, so we’re packing it in. But we came across the other site you and Lizzie found, and we’ve got it cordoned off. We’ll have a team here tomorrow morning to investigate it, in case it holds any answers.”
“Okay.” I watched as he stalked off.
Shilo joined me as the officers packed up and departed.
I told her I had spoken to Pish, and she was happy about that. I then threaded my arm through hers and we reentered the castle. “You and I have a lot to talk over,” I said. “Starting with the fact that I have discovered who Lizzie Proctor is, or at least, who her father is, supposedly. Shilo, Binny Turner has a niece.”
“What? You mean . . . ?”
“Yup. Tom Turner was Lizzie’s father.”
“Wow. Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Neither did I.”
Chapter Twenty-one
I WOKE UP the next day sure of a few things. First, I needed to speak to Junior Bradley again and try to find out what he and Tom Turner had really been fighting about. At the same time, I needed to know about the faulty plats and plans I found at Turner Construction. Who approved them? Who loaned the company money for construction based on them? What lawsuits were truly extant when Melvyn died? Did it have anything to do with those faulty plans, I wondered.
I also needed to get a handle on who I thought might have killed Tom Turner. Despite everyone’s belief in Virgil Grace’s ability to solve the murder, I could not just stand by and wait. After all, nine months later he still had not figured out if my uncle’s “accident” was really an accident. Maybe I could even help, with an outsider’s viewpoint. I wondered what the buzz was in town, especially now, with this body we found yesterday.
As Shilo snored on the other side of the Jack and Jill bathroom door, I showered and dressed comfortably in jeans and a soft, V-neck T-shirt. Then, cup of coffee in hand, I exited the front door, descended from the terrace, and walked down the weedy drive to try to get a better view of the castle and decide what needed to be done first. I turned and squinted, looking over my inheritance. As I had begun to realize, I was going to be at Wynter Castle longer than I had anticipated, and had better start planning for a winter spent in upstate. But I had a couple months of outdoor time left before the unpredictable winds of November set in.
The exterior itself was attractive: old, cut stone, square facade with a turreted look to the rounded extensions at either end, and Gothic-arched windows. The entrance, centered on the long, flagged terrace that wrapped around the ballroom on the west side of the castle, was bland, though, even with those amazing oak doors. It needed something to set it off, to make it stand out. Maybe gardens or potted plants and statuary. The terrace, I had discovered, extended all the way along the far side, and the ballroom’s French doors opened out onto it. That, too, needed something to break up the long expanse.
How was I going to afford any of the upgrades needed? I had to make or borrow enough money to bring Wynter Castle up to a degree of attractiveness for potential buyers. The property would only appeal to someone who could afford to gamble. Wynter Cast
le was too far away from New York City to make it a spa retreat, and there was absolutely nothing nearby to make it a desirable destination from a tourist’s aspect. Investors would cringe. It needed a buyer with imagination and bucks.
I turned away and wandered the property near the castle, avoiding what I now thought of as the death hole, where crime-scene tape still fluttered from hastily erected fence posts. It was only early September, but after a couple of very cool nights the leaves were beginning to get that desiccated look from late-summer stress and nearly autumn change coming on. A blue jay shrieked at me from a cluster of brushy shrubs that had grown up in the long grass.
When was my grounds crew going to show up? They never did phone me. Had I done the right thing, hiring Zeke and Gordy to mow the fields? They didn’t strike me as the brightest bulbs in the package, maybe twenty-five-watt in a hundred-watt world, but how bright did you have to be to mow a yard? That sounds snooty, but I was getting irritated at the slow pace of life in Autumn Vale. No one seemed to be ready to hustle. The grass, or hay, or weeds—whatever the mess was—had to be taken care of and soon, because . . . well, because I needed to see progress.
I walked past the excavator parked among the filled-in holes, thinking of all the damage Tom had done, and wondering why. He could not possibly have believed that old Melvyn Wynter had buried his father, not when he was digging all the way out to the edge of the property. It didn’t make a bit of sense!
Sipping my coffee as I scanned the edge of the woods, I thought I saw a patch of orange. Was Becket back? In all the flurry of the day before, I had almost forgotten the poor, limping cat! I edged closer, but the animal didn’t move this time. My heart started pounding, and my stomach lurched. I walked faster, speeding to a trot. It was Becket; it had to be!