Текст книги "Bran New Death"

Автор книги: Victoria Hamilton

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

I set Magic down on the table and wrote a list of things to do on the morrow. Lists are my thing. I love lists, so making one felt like I was returning to some semblance of my former self, the self before Leatrice stabbed me in the back and twisted the knife.

The list:

1. Call Pish Lincoln and throw myself on his mercy.

2. Go to the police station and demand to know what they took from the castle.

3. Question Dinah Hooper about the financial dealings of Turner and Turner Wynter Construction.

4. Find someone to mow the freaking field that’s growing up around the castle.

Seriously, Wynter Castle was beginning to look like an abbey abandoned during the Reformation, only not as neat and tidy.

Oh yeah . . . I jotted one more thing down on my list.

5. Go for a long walk in the woods with Lizzie, and get her to show me the abandoned encampment.

I wanted that torn down, removed, cleansed. Picking up Magic again, I went back upstairs and actually slept for three hours, waking up feeling more like myself than I had in years.

Chapter Fifteen

THE LIST WOULD need to be tweaked, I discovered. I got a call first thing in the morning from Sheriff Grace asking me to come in and sign a statement. If I was going to be out and about, then I may as well do the things on my list that required a trip to town.

Shilo and I, following directions—turn left off Abenaki at the Autumn Vale Community Bank—found the tiny police station. Located at the end of obscure and brief Valley View Avenue, the sheriff’s department was a small, modern building with a barracks-like look, narrow, slit windows, and overall gray, drab appearance. I left Shilo in the car, went in past the big, glass, double doors, and was guided to Sheriff Grace’s office by a young female deputy. I sat down in an uncomfortable chair across the desk from his leather swivel chair. He joined me moments later, but not before I examined his walls, the “artwork,” such as it was, included local citations for his coaching of the town’s Little League baseball team and an honorary membership in the Brotherhood of the Falcon. They had made him an “Eyas,” which I guess was a fledgling falcon. Other than that there was a pleasant if nondescript watercolor of an autumn forest.

As he took a seat across the desk, I remembered my late-night thoughts and blushed. I don’t blush. Ever! But he was very good looking: dark, wavy hair, thick enough to catch your fingers in, and just that bit of shadow along the jaw, very much like Miguel always had five minutes after shaving. I have been alone a long time, I thought. Nothing wrong with a little late-night fantasizing if it was left to late at night. I took a deep breath as he slid some paperwork across the desk to me, regarding me with that steady, unsmiling look he had perfected.

“This is the list of what we took from the castle,” he said. “It’s mostly paperwork, anything with Tom Turner’s name on it.”

“Was there a lot with his name on it? Why would there be?” I squinted and examined the paper. Pretty soon I was going to have to admit that I needed close-up glasses—cheaters, my mother had called them. Oh, joy. Anyway, it was a simple list, though from it I could not tell what each document pertained to.

The sheriff shrugged. “Old Melvyn and the Turners were involved in some real estate deal that went bad, and there were lawsuits, so there was a fair bit of paperwork and we just wanted to look it over more closely, see if we can find anything that has to do with Tom. It’s a mess of bank loans, defaults, zoning problems, and missed deadlines.”

Bank loans? Oh, lord, I thought, I hope that the estate is not saddled with a mountain of debt, undiscovered until now. I was going to have to take this seriously and untangle the mess before the property was actually salable. I felt like I had been wearing blinders, and they had just fallen off. Lawyer Silvio, among others, had some ’splainin’ to do.

“Your uncle also wrote nasty notes to the Turners, and vice versa,” the sheriff went on. “I know about a lot of this because I was occasionally involved, called in by both parties at different times. I know very well what those two old men were like.”

“But they’re all dead now,” I said, glossing over the fact that no one truly knew what had happened to Rusty. Despite Binny’s and Dinah’s hopes, I figured the old guy had probably died, and his body just hadn’t been discovered yet. Maybe he went for a walk and fell off a cliff. Who knew? “What does this have to do with Tom’s murder?”

“We don’t know. But there were things mentioned in the letters . . .” He stopped abruptly.

I was intrigued. “What kind of things?”

He regarded me calmly. “Tom was well-enough liked by many, but he had his peccadilloes.”

Peccadilloes; is that what they called them in a small town? I smiled inwardly. “Such as?”

“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 Construction 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.”

A newcomer. I blew air out of my lips, my bangs fluffing out, and she grimaced in sympathy. “I guess I’d better go and find the other newcomer in town,” I said. I took a last look around at the boxes and tables and shelves jammed with junk. It was so packed in the shop, I was on sensory overload, and I’d need a day or more to explore. “I’m going to have to come back and look around. You might even have some stuff I need.”

“You bet! That place needs dressing up. Say, I have a storage place—kind of a warehouse on the outskirts of town—where all my big stuff is stored, like outdoor stuff. You need to have a look. I’m usually here, even when the sign says Closed, so just bang on the door anytime and I’ll take you there.” She sighed. “It’s my hobby and my addiction, I suppose.”

I went out and circled to the side of the building, on a narrow lane, finding the door right where Janice had said it would be. I hit the buzzer, and after a few seconds, a window slid open above me. The nicely coiffed Dinah stuck her head out.

“Good morning,” I said, looking up. “Can I come up and talk to you?”

“I was just on my way out,” she said. “Do you want to meet me at my new shop?”

“Sure,” I said. “Would you like coffee, or something from Binny’s Bakery?”

Her expression brightened. “That would be nice! Meet you there in ten minutes!”

Food smoothed social communication, I’ve always thought. There was a reason many deals were done over lunch at nice restaurants, and it wasn’t just the booze. I got a selection of pastries from Binny’s and two coffees to go from the Vale Variety, and headed to Dinah’s storefront.

The door stood wide open, and she was inside, moving a couple of folding chairs to a small, teetery, wrought-iron table. I “hallooed” and entered, carefully navigating through boxes with the cups, box of pastries and my purse.

“Here, let me help you!” she said. She took the box and trotted back to the table, propped it open, and set a stack of paper napkins beside it.

I put the coffees on the table, as well as the creamers and sugar packets, then tucked my purse under one of the chairs and sat down.

“This is nice!” she said with a bright smile. She eyed my skirt suit, pointed, and said, “I love the color!”

It was a robin’s egg blue, not perhaps very fallish, but it was a lovely cut and fit well. I had put my hair up and was wearing gray pumps and chunky jewelry to make the color seem less out of sync with the season. After all, it was after Labor Day but not quite autumn yet. “Thank you! Loehmann’s Back Room,” I said with a grin.

She sighed. “I miss shopping. I only make it to the city once or twice a year. Rochester and Buffalo are okay, but they are not Manhattan!”

She was stylish, like Gogi was. I wondered if the two women were friends, being of similar age and tastes. I wondered why Dinah stayed in Autumn Vale, now that Rusty and her job were gone. I wondered a whole lot of things, but didn’t want to rush the inquisition . . . er, chat. “You do manage to find Prada, though,” I said, pointing my spoon at her handbag. “And Balenciaga!” I shifted my pointer to her shoes, chunky-wedge platforms.

“Rochester has a few good shops. I’ll take you there sometime, maybe?”

Having bonded over a similar taste in nice clothes, handbags, and shoes, we continued over awful coffee and wonderful French pastry. “Binny is wasting her talents here,” I mumbled around mille-feuille, which crumbled in my mouth and showered my lap with crumbs.

“That is God’s own truth,” she muttered. “She should still be working in New York City.”

As we drank coffee and ate pastry, I mentioned my problems with cell reception. She nodded. Autumn Vale itself was kind of a dead zone, she said, because of its location in a deep valley with few towers close by. It was definitely underserved.

“Your best bet is to switch providers.”

She went on to advise me that if I didn’t want to do that or didn’t think it would help, I could have Wi-Fi installed at the castle and have my cell phone jigged to ping off it, or some such nonsense. I’m substituting words; it was all too technical for me. “I am impressed, and a little in awe,” I admitted.

She shrugged. “I have to deal with stuff like that all the time, so I’ve worked out the bugs.”

I looked around the empty, uninspired space, wondering what Dinah would do with it. But I had other fish to fry, as my grandmother used to say, and many questions to ask. “So what is a nice, stylish woman like you doing in the cultural desert that is Autumn Vale?”

She shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “It’s as good a place as any, I guess. Cheaper than a city.”

“I’d take you for a Florida sort,” I said. It was true; she looked like a Boca Raton real estate agent, or a senior sales associate at an upscale boutique catering to wealthy retirees.

“Can’t stand hot weather,” she said with a laugh.

“I still can’t imagine why you came here to live, of all places!”

“I knew someone who lived here, and it seemed like a nice area. Then I found a job, and just . . . stayed.”

“Who did you know in town?”

“It was an old friend, but she died a year ago,” she said, her eyes watering. She ducked her head down and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I gave her a moment, then asked, “What do you plan on doing with this shop? Have you decided?”

For the next ten minutes, she sketched out her plans for a florist-slash-design boutique. It sounded like the kind of place I’d shop, but I had to say, “Do you think that will fly in Autumn Vale?”

“I hope so,” she said. “I need to find some way to make money. I have a little cash to set up with, but if it goes under, I’ll be broke. I’ve tried looking for a job, but there’s nothing. Since Rusty disappeared, most of Turner Construction’s jobs dried up, too, and I didn’t even take a salary for the last three months or so. Tom just wasn’t like his father, you know? The boy had no hustle.”

Rusty’s disappearance had hurt her in more ways than one, it seemed. “I don’t want to probe a delicate subject, Dinah, but you seem sure Rusty is alive. Where do you think he went?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Then why do you think he’s still alive?”

She set her lips in a straight line and frowned, wrinkles gathering on her forehead, below her fluffy, white-blonde bangs. “He left a note, see.”

“He did?” That was the first solid evidence I had heard that he had skipped town and not died. Binny hadn’t said anything about a note.

“He did. He went to the bank and withdrew ten thousand dollars, and when I went to work the next morning, I found a note on my desk.”

“What did it say?”

“It said he had business to take care of, and not to worry, that he would be back.”

“He didn’t say how long he’d be gone?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything to his kids, which surprised me. Him and Tom had been fighting, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected Rusty to say anything to him, but Binny . . . Lord, the sun rose and set by that girl, according to Rusty. He would have done anything for her. Him not telling her . . . well, it’s odd. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think why he up and left like he did.”