She sighed. “I don’t. Truly, Merry, I would tell you if I could.” Her shadowed face was marked by an expression of indecision.
“Okay. Who disliked him enough to kill him?”
Hannah grimaced. “Poor Tom. He was good at making people dislike him. I don’t know why.”
“Then where should I start?”
“Well, two places. I heard he had a fistfight with Junior Bradley, the zoning commissioner. They were childhood friends. Tom wouldn’t tell me why they fought.”
I’ll bet he wouldn’t tell her why. The girl adored him, and he would have shattered her view of him if he told her that he and his friend had come to blows over a stripper. I’d definitely have to check out that dancer and Junior Bradley. “And who else?”
“Well, you should probably consider Dinah Hooper.”
The name sounded familiar, but with all the locals I had been meeting, I was momentarily stumped. “Who is she?”
“She is . . . was . . . Rusty’s girlfriend. She works at Turner Construction. Her son, Dinty, worked there, too, but he left town some time back.”
“How is Dinah dealing with Rusty’s disappearance?”
Hannah looked pensive. She angled her face upward, and a ray of light shone in one of the few high windows in the dim library, catching her eyes, beaming brightly in the luminous gray depths. She was like a faery, sometimes fey, sometimes grave, looking like a child but speaking like a woman. I’ll admit, among the many characters of Autumn Vale, she fascinated me most.
“I feel sorry for her; I’d say she’s truly upset and worried. It’s difficult for her, I imagine. But . . . I won’t say anything else. You should talk to her yourself.”
“I will. Is Dinah Hooper in a position to inherit anything, now that Tom is gone, and Rusty probably, too?”
She didn’t flinch from the question, and in fact I could tell she had already considered it. “I don’t think so. She didn’t live with Rusty, and they weren’t married. If anything, I think it kind of exonerates her, you know? Because if she was out for money, it would have been better for her if Rusty had stuck around and married her.”
“The son, Dinty . . . when did he leave town? Before or after Rusty disappeared?”
“Uh, after. A few months, actually. Why?”
I shrugged. It could mean nothing at all, or it could have been guilt that sent the guy away. I didn’t know him, but I’d bet that Gordy and Zeke did. I’d have to tap into those two guys’ knowledge at some point. Should be easy if I used Shilo as a lure.
“I don’t care what happened to Rusty,” Hannah said, her fine-boned face holding a grim expression. “We’re trying to figure out who killed Tom, and why.”
“I know. I’m just trying to find my bearings. Could it all be tied up together?”
“I suppose.”
Shilo came back in to the library, a poorly hidden expression of excitement on her face.
“Shilo, this is Hannah,” I said. “Hannah, this is my best friend, Shilo.”
“Shilo . . . that means peaceful.”
“Bad name for me!” Shilo said with a laugh, plunking down in a chair by the librarian.
“You’re so beautiful,” Hannah said, gazing at her steadily. “You look how I always imagined Rebecca from Ivanhoe would look.” She reached out and touched Shilo’s long, dark hair. She fingered the curled locks with a wistful look. Her own hair was thin and mousy, lying flat on her narrow skull, parting around her ears like a stream around a rock.
“And you make me think of the pixies,” Shilo said, touching Hannah’s hand gently. “I believed in pixies when I was a kid. I played with them, out in the forest. Always my favorite faery folk.”
I could see they would be friends, each a little odd, each willing to say exactly what she thought. Hannah nodded, as if reading my mind.
“I saw Jack McGill,” Shilo said, her eyes sparkling, as she turned back to me.
“McGill?” Hannah said.
I whirled around and looked at Hannah. “You call him McGill, too?” I said.
“Sure,” Hannah replied. “Jack is too common a name for him.”
“I know. Even though he is a Jack-of-all-trades, in a sense. He’s filling in the holes that Tom dug.” That sobered me, bringing me back to Tom’s death. I could see it had affected Hannah similarly. “How did you happen across him, Shi? What did McGill have to say for himself?”
“Well, he was showing an empty storefront to a prospective tenant. The tenant was Dinah Hooper.”
“Dinah Hooper?” Once you hear a name, I thought, you just keep hearing it! “Rusty Turner’s girlfriend. Why would she be renting out a storefront?”
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Shilo said. “But it’s interesting, right?”
I chewed my lip. It was certainly interesting.
There was probably more I could have asked Hannah, but a local library patron came in, an odd woman, heavyset and with a determined frown; she wore a red hat and purple dress, and pushed a rolling walker along the shelves, but didn’t seem to depend upon it for support. She grabbed books as she went, tossing them into the basket of her walker.
“Hey, do you take book donations?” I asked.
“We do!” Hannah said, luminous eyes glowing. “Do you have any?”
“I sure do. I have my mother’s books, which have been in storage since she died; a lot of classics and poetry. I also have my grandmother’s. She favored kids’ books and classic mysteries. Lots of hardback Agatha Christie novels. All my boxes are coming from storage, and I could sure use a home for the books . . . that’s if they’re in good shape. They should be. Can you use them?”
“We definitely can. Whatever we can’t use, we sell to raise money at the annual Autumn Vale Harvest Sale.” Her smile died. “Tom always takes the books to the auditorium for me.” Tears welled up.
“I bet Jack would help out with that,” Shilo said softly, smiling down at Hannah.
The girl brightened just a shade. “Do you think so?”
“You know he will,” Shilo answered. “He seems to be very civic-minded, and the book sale . . . I’m sure lots of folks count on that every year.”
Hannah colored faintly and nodded. “Thank you.”
I told Hannah I’d be back another day, and she said she was often at Golden Acres for their Book Hour. She took in coffee table–type books for some of the old folks to look over and reminisce about. She was something of an amateur historian, it seemed, and talked to the oldsters about their early years in Autumn Vale and made up trivia games. She had heard about the muffins I was supplying, she informed me, and approved.
“I like muffins,” she said. “Take the book I gave you; it will give you some information on Wynter Castle. And come back in and check out more of the local history books sometime.”
As Shilo and I left, the purple-dressed woman eyed us covertly, using the brim of her red hat to shield her interest. Not very successfully, I might say. “Maybe I’ll see you at Golden Acres, then, or I’ll come back here!” I said as I waved good-bye to Hannah.
As we emerged out to the main street, I felt like I’d just left a dream. Hannah was an odd, little creature, full to the brim with emotion and tremulous longing. I wondered how hard that would be, to have people dismiss you because of your stature or disability when inside you were an adult woman, yearning for love. But she filled the library with her personality, making a gray, dull interior into a faery land.
“Do you want to see the store Dinah Hooper was looking to rent?” Shilo asked.
Tucking the book into my voluminous bag, I replied, “Yes! I do.” I didn’t know Dinah Hooper, and so couldn’t conclude that she had anything to do with Tom’s murder on my property. I was grasping at straws, but it was worth a look.
We strolled along the main street, as I tried to get used to being stared at. It was natural, I suppose; I was a stranger, and the owner of a notorious plot of land. I was a Wynter. But a local had also been murdered on my property, aft
er vandalizing it repeatedly. I smiled and nodded at those who met my eyes, and ignored those who didn’t.
“This is it,” Shilo said as we came up to a small storefront.
A nicely dressed older woman trotted toward us, concentrating on the tiny screen of her cell phone and tapping away at a text message. She stopped abruptly as she looked up and saw us watching.
“Hi,” I said, striding toward her, arm outstretched. “My name is Merry Wynter. This is my friend, Shilo Dinnegan.”
The other woman awkwardly shuffled her armload of papers, Prada handbag and cell phone, and put her hand out, grasping mine in a warm grip that almost hurt because the number of rings on her fingers. “Binny told me all about you.” She eyed me up and down, then turned her attention to Shilo. “But she didn’t mention you.”
“I’m just here as support,” Shilo said. “Are you Dinah Hooper? Jack McGill mentioned he was meeting with you, and that you were looking to rent a storefront.”
“I am Dinah Hooper,” she said. She looked up at the storefront with a worried expression. “This place is going to be my new business. I need to have something to do since . . .” She broke off and shook her head, her eyes tearing up. “Since poor Rusty disappeared, and now Tom is gone, too. I just don’t know what’s going to happen with Turner Construction. I guess I don’t have a job anymore! Not that I’ve been doing anything there for a while. I’m going to do something with this place; maybe open a flower shop.”
“This must all be so difficult,” I said. “Was Tom like a son to you? Were you close?”
“Close? No. But I don’t know how Rusty is going to feel about all of this.”
“You think he’s still alive?” I blurted out, then clapped my mouth shut.
“I’m sure of it!” she said fervently, fingering the strap of her purse, pulling at a loose thread. “He just has to be. I will not believe that he’s dead.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. It sounded like she was in denial.
Shilo glanced at me sideways, then said, “Do you think he just left town, then? Why would he do that?”
The woman frowned as her cell phone chimed with a dance tune. She looked at the screen, and said, “I have to take this. To answer your question, Rusty was not well. He was upset by some stuff at work—Tom, God rest his soul, was giving him no end of heartache—and I think he just took off. I didn’t think he’d be gone this long, and I wish I had a way to contact him.”
“But Tom and Binny seem to think their father is dead!” I said.
Dinah shook her head, her blonde hair stiffly resisting any movement. “They just don’t want to believe that he would purposely leave them alone, that’s all. They don’t understand their dad.”
“Who do you think killed Tom?” Shilo said.
“If I knew, don’t you think I’d have told the cops by now?” Dinah answered smartly, and then punched a button on her cell phone. She said hello as she got her keys out, entered her new storefront, and closed the door behind her.
We stood staring after her. “That was sudden,” I finally said.
“I guess she didn’t appreciate being questioned by strangers,” Shilo commented with a wry tone. “Who could imagine that?”
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “We were a little nosy and pushy with her. Let’s find a restaurant in this town and have something to eat.” It was early afternoon, and I hadn’t eaten anything but some muffins since earlier in the morning.
Shilo moved the car closer, locked up as best she could—her car is in bad enough shape that the locks only work intermittently—and we began looking in earnest for some place to eat. Most small towns have that one place, usually a down-home kind of café or restaurant, where everyone gathers to gossip. As soon as I saw it, I knew that Vale Variety and Lunch was it. I had passed it several times in my hunt for muffin ingredients over the last few days, thinking it was just a mom-and-pop variety store, but now I noticed the “Lunch” part of the sign. When Shilo and I entered, I saw that beyond the variety store at the front was a lunch counter and café area, which was quite deep.
Gordy and Zeke were there, and greeted us as long-lost friends. It seemed some kind of badge of honor that they could introduce us to others, among them, significantly, Junior Bradley, who had been Tom Turner’s friend before having a fistfight with him over a dancer named Emerald, as the story went.
Junior looked up, briefly, but then hunched back down over his grilled cheese sandwich and Rochester newspaper. Various others included the odd-looking woman in the red hat and purple dress, whose bag full of books was now on the floor near her walker, beside her tiny table at the back of the diner. She was reading a romance while she slurped tomato soup through her teeth. At another table, studiously ignoring her, was a woman of about the same age—late fifties/early sixties, at a guess—wearing a dress made out of cotton with multiple, humorously positioned cats all over it. She was rigidly upright, and stared straight ahead of her as she sipped a cup of tea from a thick, white, porcelain, restaurant ware cup.
Shilo and I sat at a table near Gordy and Zeke, our two personal informants, and a waitress slouched over, handing us a menu and mumbling the specials: tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwich or tuna salad on an English muffin. I noted “Breakfast All Day” written on the chalkboard above the counter, and ordered two eggs, sunny, with whole-wheat toast. Shilo ordered breakfast too: eggs, bacon, toast, but with sausages and a stack of pancakes as well. The Hungry Gypsy’s Special, I guess.
“What do you think of Dinah Hooper?” I asked Gordy, who was staring at Shilo with an intensity that most would find unnerving, but didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest.
“Dinah?” Zeke answered, instead of his bewitched friend. “She’s a good egg. She’s involved in everything: annual fall fair, hospital committee, reads to the old folks at Golden Acres . . . lots of other things.”
The prim woman in the cat dress slammed her teacup down on the table in front of her and stood, her pale-green eyes bulging with emotion. “That woman! That woman is the devil’s pawn . . . you mark my words.” With that, she gathered up her things and marched out of the café.
Chapter Eleven
WE ALL WATCHED her stomp out of the place, and though I can’t speak for the others, I was stunned by her pronouncement.
“Who the heck is that?” Shilo asked.
“Isadore Openshaw,” Gordy said.
Shilo burst into laughter, and I snickered, too. Both guys looked confused, so I said, “C’mon, guys . . . Isadore Openshaw?”
They exchanged looks. “I don’t get it,” Zeke said.
“Never mind.”
The woman in purple rose up, and said, “It’s funny . . . ‘Is a door open, Shaw?’ How can you rubes not get that? That’s why Isadore doesn’t speak to me. I laughed at her name once. Woman’s got no sense of humor. I guess that’s what happens when you work in a bank too long.” She turned to me and nodded. “I was hoping you’d be smart. Guess you are. If you’re smart, then you’ll be looking at the whole ball of wax. What happened to Rusty Turner? What happened to Melvyn Wynter? And now Tom Turner?”
I glanced at Shilo, and said, “It seems like an awful lot of intrigue in such a small town.”
The purple lady made her index finger into a gun, her thumb the hammer. “Bingo,” she said, cocking and firing the little finger gun. She then grabbed her walker and strode out, leaving a trail of cracker crumbs in her wake.
“Wait, what do you mean?” I called, half rising from my chair.
“Don’t bother,” Zeke said. “She won’t tell you. She fancies herself a kind of oracle, or something. Likes to make mysterious pronouncements, then never explains ’em.”
“Who is she?” I said, watching her weave expertly through the variety store at the front and toward the door.
“Janice Grover,” Gordy said. “Her husband is Simon Grover, the Grand Tiercel of the Brotherhood of Falcons.” He nodded slowly and winked that slow wink of his
that indicated a fount of secret knowledge.
Zeke rolled his eyes.
“Is she . . . reliable?” I asked, not quite sure how to phrase my real question, which was, is she a whackadoodle?
“She’s got three grown kids,” Zeke said, frowning.
I wasn’t sure if that was an answer to the question I was truly asking, or his own interpretation, but decided not to pursue that line of investigation. “So what about this Openshaw woman . . . what’s she got against Dinah Hooper?”
“Now, that’s a good question,” Gordy said. He furrowed his brow, indicating deep thought, then said, “I bet it goes back to last year’s fall fair catnip mouse incident.”
“Do tell,” I said. I couldn’t wait to hear this.
Zeke nodded and his Adam’s apple bounced up and down his throat. “That’s prob’ly it. At last year’s Autumn Vale Harvest Fair, Miss Openshaw set up a booth selling catnip mice to benefit the kitty cat rescue organization she’s trying to start, you know.”
Silence. “And?” I prompted.
Gordy took up the story. “Well, then Mrs. Hooper, who was the organizer, you see, told her she couldn’t collect money for a charity if it wasn’t registered, and made her close up her booth. Miss Openshaw was left with 227 catnip mice and nowhere to get rid of ’em. Ended up giving ’em to the shelter over in Ridley Ridge to give away with every cat adopted.”
“Is that it?”
Gordy and Zeke both looked surprised at my comment. “Caused quite a kerfuffle at the time,” Zeke said, and Gordy nodded in agreement.
Still, the devil’s pawn? Wasn’t that a little harsh over catnip mice? Maybe I just didn’t get the complicated nature of relationships in small towns.
Shilo and I ate our lunch, my head swimming with all the oddball people I was meeting. Autumn Vale was turning out to be one strange little burg, more entertaining than any street corner in the weirdest section of New York. Was it something in the water? Maybe I’d better stick to Perrier, I thought, pushing away my glass of tap water.
Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery) Page 11