Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (12 page)

“Hey, wait a minute!” I called after him. “Do you have any leads? Are you going to interview Junior Bradley? What’s going on?”

“I can’t comment on that,” he said.

“What do you mean, you can’t comment?” I raced after him and caught his sleeve. “I’m not a reporter, for crying out loud; I’m the one who found Tom’s body.”

“All the more reason.” And he was gone, off talking to the team, which appeared to be wrapping up. I watched as they moved Tom’s body, bagged in black, into the hearse and cleaned up the area of all of their tools. It was sobering, and left me with the familiar desire to leave, to run away from sorrow. It tugged at my heart, urging me to abandon ship. So far, life in Autumn Vale had been such a mixed bag of fear, sadness, and bafflement that I just didn’t know what to make of it all.

Just as the hearse started to clear out and the cops looked like they’d be doing the same soon, Jack McGill booted up the lane in his Smart car. Together we watched the hearse drive off, then I said, “Want to come in? A teenage girl named Lizzie is here; she kind of hitched a ride with us. Maybe you can take her back to town.”

“Lizzie Proctor? I know who you mean.” He looked toward the castle. “Troubled girl. Doesn’t get along with anyone.”

“Neither do I,” I grumbled. I was tired and completely worn out. “You people have the strangest little town I’ve ever seen.”

As we walked toward the castle, I asked him about Dinah Hooper, telling him what Isadore Openshaw had said. “But Dinah seemed like an okay woman to me. What does Isadore have against her?” I could not believe their feud was over catnip mice.

“Beats me. Isadore is a little odd. Never married. Has cats. Lives alone.”

“And that makes her odd?” I challenged. “Good lord, McGill, I thought better of you than that.”

He held up both hands in protest. “That’s not me!” he protested. “I’m just repeating what the locals have been saying. Even folks at the bank find her odd. My mom knows her from book club and says she’s kind of got a conspiracy-theory paranoia. Thinks people are watching her home. She moved here about ten years ago to take care of her brother, and when he died, she stayed.”

“So she’s not a born-and-bred local?”

“Not exactly.”

“Could’ve fooled me. She certainly has the Autumn Vale stamp of peculiarity.” I glanced over at McGill, but he didn’t seem offended by my grumpy honesty. We circled the castle and entered through the butler’s pantry door to find Shilo and Lizzie sitting together companionably, eating muffins and drinking milk. McGill’s eyes lit up when he saw Shilo, but first he said, “Hey, Lizzie. How’s school going this year? You’re a junior, right?”

“I’m just the belle of the ball, y’know? Half the boys in love with me, the girls all jealous bitches. Five dates lined up for junior prom already. Which lucky guy shall I choose as my escort? And gee whiz, will he bring me a wrist corsage?”

I cocked my head and examined her. She had a definite edge to her, but I’d bet she was smarter than any of the kids in her class. If I didn’t watch it, I’d find myself liking her. “Why aren’t you in school today?”

“Got suspended.”

“Already?” I exclaimed.

“Yup. New record.”

“Hi, McGill,” Shilo said, throwing him a muffin. “Sit. Eat!”

“Be honest,” I said, sitting down. “Why did you hide out in Shi’s trunk, Lizzie?”

She chewed and swallowed a bit of her muffin, drank some milk, made a face, and set her glass down carefully. “I think I know who killed Tom Turner.”

O
F COURSE WE
all shouted at once, but since we all shouted different things it was kind of a scramble of “Who?” “How do you know?” and “What did you see?”

I was the one who shouted “Who?”

Lizzie looked a little scared, and Magic, the bunny, who had been sitting quietly munching on a carrot—I didn’t mention that before, did I?—squeaked and jumped off the table.

I put up my hands for silence, let Lizzie finish her last bite, and said, calmly, “Who do you think killed Tom Turner?”

“That weirdo Gordy Shute,” she mumbled.

“Gordy?” I was puzzled. “Why would Gordy kill Tom Turner?”

Lizzie looked calmly across the table to McGill. “Why don’t
you
tell her?”

The real estate agent looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lizzie.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come
on
! I’ve only been here a year, and I know about this old crap. Everyone knows that Tom was always a big old bully, and that he used to pick on Gordy back in high school.”

“Where did you hear that?” I asked. “That was forever ago, if they were teenagers.”

“It’s a small town,” Lizzie said. “People still talk about the earthquake of 1957 as if it happened last week.”

I blew air out through pursed lips. The amount I didn’t know about living in a small town . . . well, it was a tonnage. I eyed her with some respect; the kid was smart. Could a grudge live that long in the incubating atmosphere of Autumn Vale? Did proximity fester rage?

Shilo was staring at McGill. “Did you go to school with them, Tom and Gordy and Zeke?”

He was kind of pinkish as he said, “I went to school in another town, a . . . a religious school.”

He seemed embarrassed. Maybe in Autumn Vale that made him an oddball? In New York, every second kid went to Hebrew school, a Roman Catholic academy, or a new age arts school. “Just because Tom bullied Gordy,” I said, “it doesn’t mean that Gordy would want to kill the guy, Lizzie.” To her, high school was the current state of her suffering, but about fifteen years later? Folks might remember that Tom was a bully, but the feelings from past events could not be running as hot. It was possible though, that there was a more current tension between them.

“Whatever,” Lizzie said, shrugging her shoulders. “Are you going to show me around this place, or what?”

I stared at her, bemused by her moodiness. “How old are you?”

“How old are
you
?” she shot back.

Shilo suppressed a snort.

McGill, two spots of red on his gaunt cheeks, said, “Lizzie, you might want to try being polite for a change.”

“She has a point,” I said, watching her. “Why should she answer, unless I’m willing to do the same? I’m thirty-nine. And three-quarters.”

Her eyes widened. “Geez, my mom is only thirty-two. I turned fifteen a month ago.”

“Happy belated birthday. Was the camera a gift?”

“You could say that.”

Not exactly a straightforward answer, but maybe it was none of my business. I was not going to be bullied in my own castle, however, by a teenager with bad manners. “Lizzie, you might want to consider this; you have a long life to live ahead of you. At the rate you’re offending people, you’re going to run out of folk to talk to before you’re twenty.”

Shilo snickered and McGill smiled.

“That doesn’t matter because I’m going to be out of this hick town the moment I turn eighteen.”

“Where are you going to go?” Shilo asked.

“New York, where people actually have lives,” she grumbled, slumping down in her chair.

“Look, I know being fifteen can suck at times,” I said. “Been there, done that. But like it or not, you’re stuck here for at least another three years, right? Not everyone is out to make you miserable, and it’s up to you to figure out who might be an ally, and who just needs to be ignored.”

She was silent, for once, and looked like she might actually be thinking about that.

“Gogi Grace is an ally; you’ve already figured that out, I think.”

More silence.

“Besides, even in New York you have to be nice to people sometimes,” I said. “Now, do you want to rephrase your request for a tour?”

She watched my eyes, fiddling with her camera. “Okay. Can I see the castle? Please?”

“That’s better. Sure.” I left McGill and Shilo to flirt cautiously in the kitchen, and I took the kid on a tour. I even let her take photos. As we left one of the bedrooms—not mine or Shilo’s . . . I left those out of the tour—I said to her, “No Facebooking them, okay? No sharing them at
all
without my permission, and that goes for anything on my property.” I thought it best to lay the groundwork so there would be no misunderstandings later.

She shrugged. “My grandma doesn’t have Internet access,” she said, “and no one will buy me a cell phone. So I don’t have Facebook or anything. I’m a pariah.”

A pariah . . . how did she even know that word? What an odd girl! “Just putting it out there. What do you photograph?” I asked as we moved back down the stairs to the main hallway.

She didn’t answer until she had framed and taken a photo of the rose window, and the double oak doors. Then she sat down on the steps. “Wanna see?” I sat beside her and together we scrolled through all the photos on her SLR digital camera. She took all kinds of pictures . . . people, places, and nature. She was pretty good. Better at framing photos than me, that was for sure.

“Where is that?” I asked, as she scrolled to a photo of a wooded area, and a sad, leaning tent spotted with mildew.

“That’s in your woods . . . or I think it’s
probably
your woods,” she said. “I don’t know where the property line is, or anything. There’s a few trails. I followed one, and then there’s kind of a clearing beneath a hill; that’s where this camp is. Creepy. All kinds of crap there . . . old tins, clothes, other stuff.” She brought up an interesting photo of a burned-out fire, with a can of beans, the label charred and the lid half opened.

I made a mental note to walk through the woods sometime. If there was an old encampment, that was the kind of thing I wanted cleaned out, so it didn’t encourage trespassing. “Can you show me where this is sometime?”

“Sure. If I remember. Like I said, there’s a kind of path to it, but it’s overgrown and weedy. This picture was from, like, June or something.”

“Do you ever come across other camps?”

“Sometimes,” she said.

“If you do, I want to know. I’d appreciate it.” Of course, I didn’t want her to be wandering in my woods alone, but that was a conversation for another day. If I had made enough of an impression, she might just ask me when she wanted to explore, instead of sneaking around.

She nodded, but was silent. She was a complicated girl. Chatty and gushing while I showed her around the castle, she had now clammed up and become broody again, as moody as fifteen can be. She clicked through to another photo, and I yelped. “Hey, that orange cat,” I said, pointing to the picture on the screen. A big orange fluffy cat was sitting on a stump, staring directly at the photographer. “Do you see it often?”

“Sure. Whenever I’m in the woods it follows me, but I can’t get close to it, I don’t know why.”

I stared at the photo, wondering if it was indeed my uncle’s cat, Becket. I was going to have to remember to take treats in my pocket when I went for a walk in the woods. If it was Melvyn’s cat, I wanted to rescue it.

McGill came out to the entry hall, with Shilo trailing behind him.

“McGill, is this my uncle’s cat? Show him the picture, Lizzie.”

He bent over and looked at the photo. “Yup, that’s Becket all right.”

Wow. The cat had been living in the woods for so long? Amazing.

“I gotta get going,” McGill said, straightening to his full height. “Come on, Lizzie, I’ll give you a lift back to town.”

She rose and nodded. She turned to me and said awkwardly, “Thanks for showing me the castle. It’s cool.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “If you’d like to come out again, let me know. Just don’t stow away in a car trunk.”

Her eyes lit up, but she merely nodded, and trailed McGill to the double oak door.

“McGill, would you have a moment free tomorrow?” I asked.

“I might. How can I help you?”

I was aware that I was seriously imposing on his time, but there was so much I needed to know about Autumn Vale, and people I needed to talk to. “I have to talk to Junior Bradley about the zoning for this real estate venture my uncle and Rusty Turner were involved in. Would you go with me to talk to him?”

“Well, sure, I can go. But Junior’s an okay guy. He’s just got a lot on his plate lately.”

“You think it would be all right to talk to him alone?”

“Yeah,” McGill said. “I have to deal with him all the time, and he’s fine, once you get past his attitude. All business when it comes down to it.”

“Okay.”

“But if you still want me to go with you, just give me a call.” McGill said he’d be back to continue filling in holes when the cops released the site, and then he and Lizzie left, the Smart car tootling down the winding laneway. McGill beeped the horn just before they disappeared around the bend.

Shilo said she was going to find Magic, who had hopped away after being startled in the kitchen. I stood looking out over the scene, leaning against the door frame. I was so tired, for a moment I felt like I was floating away above the grounds, looking down the hole to poor Tom at the bottom. It was a nightmare vision, and I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the lingering impression. Whatever he had done in life, he hadn’t deserved to be murdered.

Who wanted him dead? I had a host of possibilities.

Junior Bradley had to be at the top of my list because of his fight with Tom at that bar. Dinah Hooper, his father’s girlfriend . . . well, I didn’t actually know of any reason, but there were such close ties there. One man in her life was missing and one was dead. She had to be a suspect.

I guess I had to add Gordy Shute to the mix, given Lizzie’s description of the torment Tom had inflicted on him, and even Binny made the list. She didn’t appear to be on particularly close terms with her brother. Neither of those seemed likely to me, though.

This was ridiculous. I squeezed my eyes shut. Why had I promised Hannah I would try to figure out who did it? I had a feeling that whenever Hannah wanted something, she would just turn her luminous gray eyes on the person, and they would agree to anything. Even
she
hadn’t been able to answer the one outstanding question that was bugging me the most; what was Tom Turner digging on my grounds for? It was absurd to think he was looking for his father’s body. Only Binny apparently believed that.

And I had told Gogi I’d try to find out if my uncle was murdered. Melvyn was eighty and driving along a treacherous, icy road. Why did it have to be murder? And was I really going to play Nancy Drew?

When I opened my eyes, it was to find Virgil Grace standing before me, a mixture of sympathy and weariness on his face. “Hi, Sheriff. Sorry. I guess I drifted off for a moment just standing here.”

“I don’t blame you. We’re pretty much finished there, but I’m putting crime-scene tape around the hole and I’d appreciate it if you could keep away from it until I say different. I know Jack wants to get going on filling it in, but he’s going to have to find another excavator for now, and work on other holes.”

“Another excavator?” That was bad news. I was prepared for a delay, but not the barring of the little excavator’s use altogether. “For how long?” I asked, dismayed.

“Can’t say,” he grunted, his tone clipped. “Until I say so.” He turned to go.

“Sheriff, hey! I’m sorry, you know . . . about Tom Turner. Were you and he friends?”

He had turned to watch me, and shrugged. “Kinda. I mean, we were on the high school football team together. We hung out, but not in recent years. He passed his time with a different crowd.”

“With guys like Junior Bradley?”

“What do you know about that?” he asked, squinting at me as the sun set behind him, the gleaming shards of light streaking his dark hair with silver. It made him look older and, to me, more attractive. He moved back to stand in front of me, looking down into my eyes with his curious, flat gaze.