Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery) (24 page)

As Hannah and her parents headed off, Gogi Grace came down the sidewalk and sat down beside me. She looked calm and serene, but I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Are you okay?” I asked, watching her face.

She nodded. “The doctor is coming to pronounce death. I’m keeping an eye out for him.”

“So . . . the patient died?”

“It was just a matter of time. She slipped away peacefully ten minutes ago.” One tear escaped and raced down her cheek, marking a pale trail in her matte foundation.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “I’m all right. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”

We spoke of my and Lizzie’s discovery of the body in the woods, and she frowned over that. Autumn Vale had occasional missing persons, she said, and those who just left town for greener pastures. That was a fairly common occurrence. But she agreed with me that it was more likely that the dead fellow was a hiker who had either run afoul of a friend he was with, or died of natural causes. The sheriff had told me his head was bashed in, though, so definitely murder. I also told her about meeting Helen Johnson in the bakeshop, along with Isadore.

“They’re both in my book club,” Gogi said. “Helen goes for Christian and Amish romance novels.”

“Amish romance novels?” I said, eyebrows high.

“Oh, yes, they’re very popular with the ladies of the Methodist church. Isadore, on the other hand, reads a bit of everything, kind of a literary omnivore.”

“I noticed. What is that woman’s deal?” I asked. “She always seems so . . . tense.” I explained about my visit to the bank.

“She has a lot of responsibility on her plate. I think she takes her job very seriously.”

“She pretty much said that Simon Grover wouldn’t know how to open the bank without her there.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“I want to find out about my uncle’s dealings with the Autumn Vale Community Bank . . . you know, whether there were any outstanding loans, or anything like that. Isadore is either stonewalling me, doesn’t like me, or . . . I don’t know.”

My cell phone chimed and I jumped. It wasn’t a sound I was used to hearing in the dead zone that was Autumn Vale. It was Dr. Ling, telling me that Becket was going to be all right. He was exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry, but recovering rapidly. I could take him home.

I sat staring at the phone for a moment. “I guess I have a cat,” I finally said.

“Let me think about things,” Gogi said, “and try to figure out if there are any details I should have shared with Virgil. He really is trying to solve this, you know. Tom was his friend. He doesn’t show it, but this has upset him badly.”

A big, black car pulled up to the home, and an older gentleman got out, grabbing an old-fashioned doctor’s bag from the backseat along with a briefcase.

“That’s the doctor,” Gogi said. She stood, and I did, too. She reached out and pulled me into a hug, then held me away from her. “I hope you figure out a way to stay in Autumn Vale, Merry. This is a good place to live. It took me a while to see that, but I finally did.”

As she met the doctor, hugging him briefly—she was definitely a hugger—and then walked up the path with him, I remembered what the postmistress had implied, but dismissed it. Gogi Grace had
not
knocked off her husbands for the insurance money and inheritance. It was patently ridiculous.

A
T THE VET’S
office, I was given Becket’s collar and the bill. I paid Dr. Ling’s assistant using a credit card; I needed to save my cash to pay for local labor, because I didn’t think Gordy and Zeke—if they ever decided to come out to work at the castle—would take MasterCard. I bought a case of cat food, too, and litter and a box. It was all in the backseat, while Becket snoozed on the towel on the passenger seat. The vet said he was still weak and would need several days to fully recover. I petted his head and he opened one eye, meowing weakly.

As I drove through town, I noticed Simon Grover getting into what I presumed was his car. It was a vintage, black Lincoln with some dull-black paint concealing what looked like old damage on one side. Damage, on Simon Grover’s black car. It gave me food for thought, I can tell you, since I was still puzzling out the first assignment given to me in Autumn Vale by Gogi Grace: to find out if my uncle was murdered.

I followed Simon out of town—not on purpose, but we were evidently both going the same way—wondering where he and his wife lived. We ascended up and out of Autumn Vale, me following him, still not on purpose. When he finally turned off the highway, though, I was curious, so I turned, too, and followed him at a discreet distance. After a while I wondered, was he even going home? I could be following him all the way to Rochester to visit his troubled son, Booker. That was not a good idea with a sick cat on the front seat. I was slowing, ready to do a U-turn, when I saw him pull into a drive some distance down the road.

This was where the bank manager and Janice lived? It was a side-split ranch house with a double garage, tidy and modern. I had pictured a woman like Janice Grover rattling around in a great, shambling Victorian, stuff everywhere, her love of junk evident in her home, as it was in her shop.

But wait . . . someone was coming out of the house, and it wasn’t Janice. The hefty bank manager heaved himself out of the car and another man approached, took a briefcase from Grover, and the two men shook hands. The other man was Andrew Silvio. They strode into the open garage together.

I had no excuse for going up there, and had a sick cat that was beginning to wake up and meow. So I eased back onto the road and drove past the house, looking for a place to turn around, as I pondered what I had just seen. There were a hundred innocent explanations, I supposed. Grover could easily have retained Silvio for some legal work. Silvio could be legal counsel for the Brotherhood of the Falcon. Or he could even be a member of the organization. Wasn’t that what businessmen did, join fraternal groups to make contacts, network?

I turned and cruised back past the house, but there was no activity that I could see. What I kept coming back to was the badly repaired damage to Grover’s black sedan. Did it mean something, or was that pretty normal? In the past week or so, I had noticed a lot of cars with damage on them. One local was driving around with a smashed windshield, the result, I was told, of a run-in with a deer. I just didn’t know. My uncle’s accident was nine months ago; if Grover had been the one to push him off the road, surely he would have gotten the damage to his car fixed right away? And though I had the feeling that Virgil had left the casebook on my uncle’s accident open for a reason, he must have noticed the bank manager’s damaged front panel.

As I pulled up my weedy lane, some uniformed officers were packing it in, closing the doors on the back of the state police van and winding up electrical cord. Virgil Grace was talking to a couple of detectives, but it had the appearance of a conversation that was coming to an end. McGill was, to my surprise, filling in the last hole, except for the one poor Tom Turner died in. He and Shilo had made great progress.

I didn’t know what Shilo and I would do without McGill around. He jumped down from the excavator, and grabbed the crate of cat food and other stuff while I carried Becket into the house, gently toting him upstairs, and doing the necessary things, like setting up the cat litter box I had bought, putting down bowls of food and water, and making a bed for him near the radiator in my room, where it was warm. I made sure he was comfortable, then closed the door behind me and descended.

Outside, it looked barren. Deserted. “Where’s the sheriff?” I asked McGill, who was locking down the excavator.

“He’s gone.”

Gritting my teeth, I slapped my thigh. “Darn! I wanted to talk to him.” Really, I had wanted to tell him what I had seen, but what did I have to report? That I had seen the bank manager and the local legal eagle together? Big whoop, as Shilo would say.

Speaking of . . . Shilo came floating out of the castle, a skirt and pretty, gauzy top on, with a jacket over it and a scarf fluttering from under the lapels. She took McGill’s hand and he stared down at her with a goofy smile. “We’re going to have dinner with McGill’s mom. Is that okay with you, Merry?”

“Of course, sweetie.” I could not believe the change in my friend. What would happen if McGill was the one? Could I picture her becoming an Autumn Vale businessman’s wife? Maybe even a mother?

“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you alone with a sick cat.”

“You two go on. Have fun.”

Still, my friend hesitated. “Do you want to come with us?” she asked. “We can fit you into the car. Or take mine.”

“No, I’m beat. I think I’ll go to bed with a book.”

“You go on to the car, Shi. I’d like to talk to Merry,” McGill said.

Shilo smiled and floated over to the car, leaning against it, elbows on top of the tiny roof, staring off to the woods.

Tugging at the cuffs of his jacket, the real estate agent looked uneasy. “Merry, I need to ask you a couple of questions. And . . . and to say something.”

I matched my expression to his serious tone. “What is it, McGill?”

His lean face, beaky nose, and too-full lips combined in a look that was earnest and honest and wholly adorable. I understood Shilo’s attraction; McGill was the kind of guy you just looked at and trusted. Trust was a big deal for Shilo.

“Shi and I have talked a lot, but she keeps avoiding the subject when I ask about her parents.” He glanced back at her. “Are they dead?”

“Not that I know of. I’ve known her a long time, McGill, and she rarely mentions them. I have a feeling they’re alive, but she’s estranged from them.”

“That doesn’t seem possible! She’s such a sweetheart.”

“I know, but there are reasons a girl might cut off contact with her parents. I figure she’ll tell me about them when she’s ready.”

He nodded. “You’re right. I just don’t know what to say to my mother. She’d like to know more about Shilo, but there isn’t much to tell.”

It must be quite an adjustment for a small-town parent, accustomed to knowing something about the girls her son dates. “You’ll have to get used to that. Her life started when she came to New York at eighteen to become a model. That’s about all I know. But I can tell you a lot about her life since.”

He smiled as he watched her. “I feel like I know everything I need to know.”

“Then what else did you want to ask?”

Turning his gaze back to me, he said, “What kind of ring would she like? Elaborate or simple? I don’t know much about stuff like that. I only did it once.”

“Are you . . . are you sure?” I gasped, my breath knocked out of me. I knew what he was really asking, but I composed myself. This was important. “Are you sure you’re not moving too fast?”

“I’m sure here,” he said, hand on his heart. “My mind hasn’t quite caught up yet.”

My eyes burned, and so did my heart. I wasn’t sure if it was joy for Shilo over what she’d found, or jealousy, or a sense of loss, a fear that I might never feel that emotion again. “Pretty . . . a heart-shaped stone, maybe, as unusual as she is. Not a plain white diamond, but maybe a pink diamond, or something colorful. Anything you like, she’ll love.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking my hand in his and squeezing it. “I’ll have her home late. I want to show her all my hideouts from when I was a kid.”

I sighed as he hopped in the car and drove away, and sent a wish after them, that their love was true, and happiness would follow them wherever they went. Instead of looking through the library, I spent a couple of hours going through more paperwork, and searching through my uncle’s stuff, trying to understand his relationship with Rusty Turner. Not a lot to go on there. I checked in often on Becket, following doctor’s orders, which were to feed him and give him water, as much as he wanted, but in small quantities often, rather than letting him gorge himself. He seemed to want out, but I kept him in my room to keep him from doing too much too fast.

My supper was solitary, a grilled chicken breast and salad eaten at the big kitchen table with a book of poetry propped up in front of me. It gave me a good sense of what my life would be like if Shilo married McGill and moved in with him. The castle was far too huge and echoed at night, making weird noises that had me on edge. I was tired and weepy and feeling sorry for myself. What was I going to do with Wynter Castle, being that I was the last remaining Wynter? I was about to turn out the lights and go upstairs when the phone rang. I picked it up, said “Hello?” as I flopped down in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

“Merry? It’s Hannah.”

“Hi, Hannah! Nice to hear your voice.”

She said much the same back, a very polite girl, then told me that over supper, she had asked her mother some questions. Her mom was the Lady’s League organizing chair, and she knew Isadore Openshaw and Dinah Hooper quite well. When Hannah mentioned Isadore’s trouble with Dinah, her mother told her something important.

“It all goes back to Dinah taking her job away at Turner Construction,” Hannah said.

“Dinah doing
what
?” I said.

“Dinah got a job there as kind of office manager, mostly because Rusty was hot-cha-cha in lust with her,” Hannah said on a cute giggle. “But Isadore did the bookkeeping for the company . . . you know, taxes, payroll, that kind of thing. It was just part-time, in addition to her job at the bank, which was just part-time at that point, too. I forgot that there used to be a lady named Mrs. Murphy, who was like the dragon lady of the tellers. Isadore supplemented her teller’s job with doing bookkeeping for folks. Anyway, that all changed when Dinah took over at Turner Construction.”

I thought about it for a long moment. That explained Isadore’s venom toward Dinah, but it didn’t explain why Dinah had claimed not to remember who used to do the books for the construction company. Although . . . if I had had to get someone fired because they were doing a lousy job, I might avoid the whole question, too. “Wait . . . how did Isadore get out to Turner Construction? It’s a ways out of town. She couldn’t have ridden her bike out there all winter.”

“Wait a sec, I’ll ask my mom,” Hannah said. When she came back, she said, “Mom says Isadore used her brother’s big, old car to drive out there. I guess she can drive, but leaves the car in the garage most of the time.”

Except when she was running my uncle off the road? Okay, so that was a stretch, but it was possible. “You have been a busy little bee, haven’t you, to find all this out?”

“I have! Oh, and one more thing I found out,” she said. “Tom was following someone for a lawyer, right, but we didn’t know what lawyer? Well, I know Mr. Silvio’s secretary, Chrissie; in fact, we went to school together when we were just little kids, and she comes in to the library all the time.
She
says that Tom was following a woman because Mr. Silvio suspected her of something, she wasn’t sure what.”

“What woman?”

“She didn’t know,” Hannah said regretfully. “She might be able to find out, though, tomorrow, when she’s in the office.”

“Why wouldn’t he hire the private investigator who has an office in the same building, if he wanted someone followed?”

“I don’t know. That guy doesn’t spend a lot of time in Autumn Vale, I think. Plus, Tom would have been cheaper, I suppose. He wasn’t doing much, with his dad missing and Turner Construction mostly out of business.”

“You’re right,” I said thoughtfully. “Thank you, Hannah. You’ve given me a lot to think of.”

“I may find out more tomorrow!” she said.

“Hannah, now listen to me; you be careful. I don’t want you asking too many questions.” In every detective book I’ve ever read, the one who gets snoopy gets in trouble. I couldn’t bear the thought of little Hannah being targeted. This was serious. I heard someone yelling in the background.