But she was mute, just shaking her head. I was touched and sad for her. When my grandmother died and then my mom, six months later, I was a mess. Virtually the same thing was happening to her now at just a little older than I had been. “What did you find?” I urged again. “Something that leads you to believe your dad is alive? Why don’t we talk about this whole mess?”
The shop door jangled, indicating customers. She grabbed a rag and blotted her eyes, settled her expression, and headed out to the shop. I could hear her talking, and then the door jangled again a couple of times, quickly. I tried to imagine what it was that had suddenly given her hope that her father was alive. When things quieted down, she came back to the kitchen, more composed. I stood, but just then the bells over the door jangled once again. She headed to the door.
“Look, Binny,” I said, stopping her by putting my hand on her shoulder. “I know what you’re going through. Or at least . . . I know some of what you’re going through. I have a lot of questions, but you’re getting busy.” I felt her tense, needing to tend to her shop. “Why don’t you . . . would it be too hard for you to come out to the castle after the shop closes? Come out for dinner?” Tom’s body was gone, but I wasn’t sure she could handle coming to the site of his murder.
She nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I will. I know the way.”
We set a time, and I left the shop with an agreement that I would come out the next day to use her ovens to bake muffins.
But I wasn’t heading home. I took out my cell phone and miracle of miracles, it decided to work! I punched in a number from memory.
“Jack McGill here,” came the real estate agent’s voice.
“Hey, McGill, it’s Merry Wynter. I wanted to check . . .”
“I’m not available right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get right back to you!”
Darned voice mail! I hated the kind that fooled you into thinking you’d reached the person you wanted. I clicked my phone off and stuffed it back in my purse. McGill had said that Junior Bradley was fine, and who would know better? The township zoning offices were on a short, dead-end street off Abenaki, so I walked there after stopping back into Binny’s Bakery, leaving word with her where I was headed in case Shilo stopped by looking for me.
The door listed office hours as eight a.m. to four p.m.; I rapped and walked in. It was a dusty, dank, little space, no light, little air. Junior Bradley sat at the only desk, a metal monstrosity from the fifties or earlier, and glared at a computer screen that showed a FreeCell game in mid-play.
“Hi,” I said brightly, determined to be friendly even though his expression as he looked up at me was as if he had bitten into a lemon. “We haven’t formally met yet, but I’m Merry Wynter,” I reminded him, “Melvyn Wynter’s great-niece and heir.” I moved forward, hand stuck out, but he ignored it.
“Okay, so what do you want?”
He wasn’t going to be polite. All right, kill him with kindness, as my grandmother used to say. “I’m so sorry. I know you must be devastated, having just lost your best friend, Tom Turner. And how sad that your last dealing with him was a fistfight!”
His face turned bright red, but he only sputtered and shook his head. I sat down in the uncomfortable, rickety chair across from him and crossed my legs. The chair wobbled precariously, and I quickly uncrossed my legs and sat straight. I did not want to end up on the floor, legs in the air; so undignified. “Look, I’m not here to talk about Tom Turner or his death,” I said. Mendacity suited me at that moment. “It’s none of my business. But I am here to find out some information about my property. I understand that Turner Wynter Construction had some kind of plan to build a subdivision, or neighborhood . . . or something, on the castle property. I’ve begun to look through my uncle’s papers, but they’re a mess, and it’s going to take me a while. Can you tell me anything about it?”
He stared at his computer screen for a long minute, then pasted a weak smile on his pale face. “I can try to help,” he said. “I’m just real torn up about Tom. We were kids together, you know?”
My bull-crap radar was beeping loudly, and I never ignore that. “I had heard you were best friends, but that things had changed between you lately.”
He sighed. “Yeah, we were friends, and rivals. We dated the same girls, played the same games, sometimes on the same side, sometimes against each other. It was never serious, you know, when we fought over women.”
“Like the last time?”
“The last time?”
“The last time, when you had a bar fight, reportedly over a girl named Emerald?” I watched his expression.
His face was lined beyond his years, and he had pouches under his weak eyes. He rubbed them and pinched over his nose. “Uh, that was just . . . a misunderstanding.”
“On whose part?”
“Mine. I . . . uh . . . I thought the girl was, uh . . . trying to tell him to get lost and he wasn’t listening. Look, what’s that got to do with anything?” He squinted across the desk at me and leaned over on his elbows. “Didn’t you say you wanted to talk about your uncle’s zoning problems?”
“Problems? I didn’t actually know there were problems.”
He picked up a pencil and began tapping it on the desktop. “Well, yeah, you know, Melvyn and Rusty . . . not the two sharpest tools in the shed. And always at cross purposes. One would file a paper and the other wouldn’t know a thing about it.” He shrugged. “They would have worked things out eventually, I guess.”
Helped by him? In a town as small as Autumn Vale, you wouldn’t think two partners could be working so determinedly at cross purposes. Something didn’t seem right. “But there were lawsuits in the works, then Rusty disappeared and Melvyn died.”
He nodded. “Yup.”
“Where does that leave me?” I asked, curious about what he’d say.
He colored pinkish. “What do you mean?”
“How can I clean up my zoning problems?”
“You mean, you intend to go ahead?”
I narrowed my eyes and watched him for a moment. He seemed panicked. What about? “I haven’t decided yet. But one thing I know for sure: the zoning still being up in the air is not good news for a potential buyer. I’d like to get everything sorted out and resolve the lawsuits that were in play at the time of my uncle’s death. Can I see the paperwork?”
“What paperwork?”
I was losing patience quickly. “The paperwork having to do with the zoning of my uncle’s—and now my—acreage.” I thought way back to my few months working in a zoning and planning permissions office in New York. “I’d like to see any plans that were filed, as well as the paperwork that went with it, any zoning change requests, building permits, lot subdivisions, anything.”
“I’ll . . . uh, well, geez, I’ll need a while to pull everything together,” he said, rising and walking over toward the door. “I’ll give you a call when I have it all ready, okay? I got work to do, now, so you run along and I’ll give you a call.”
I didn’t get up to leave, I just turned in my seat to watch him, standing there, the door open to the outside, where autumn sunshine was flooding the street. A breeze fluttered in the open doorway, clarifying the musty air. “You’re playing a computer game, Mr. Bradley. Surely you can pull away from that to get me some paperwork.”
“Uh, I don’t even know if I can show it to you, you know,” he said, and cleared his throat. He rocked onto the balls of his feet and back. “It’s, uh . . . well, I don’t know. You know, it was Rusty’s project, too, and with Tom gone, maybe Dinah is in charge.”
“Or maybe Binny is,” I said.
He was getting redder by the minute. “Binny doesn’t know a damned thing about her father’s business.”
“Is that why Tom is dead and Binny’s alive?” I asked. It just popped out. It was a dumb thing to say.
“I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about,” he said.
His mystification seemed genuine. I got up and strol
led toward the door, stepping through and turning back. “When can I come to look over the paperwork?”
His expression hardened. “When you’ve got a court order.” He slammed the door in my face and I heard the lock snick.
Jerk.
I rounded up Shilo, who had been shopping in a couple of places, and we got groceries and headed back to the castle. About six, Binny Turner rolled up to the parking area in a white van that read Binny’s Bakery on the side. She strode up to the castle with her gaze resolutely turned away from the hole that was still cordoned off with police crime scene tape. I met her at the door and showed her around the place, then we sat in the kitchen and ate dinner. I’d made chicken spaghetti, which went nicely with the focaccia she had brought and the bottle of merlot I found tucked away in my uncle’s wine cellar. I was definitely going to have to explore the cellar a little more thoroughly, because the merlot was not half bad.
Over dinner, I told her and Shilo what had happened with Junior Bradley in the zoning office.
“What is his problem?” Shilo said, indignant on my behalf.
“He and Tom really were lifelong friends,” Binny said, doubt creeping into her voice. “He’s probably just reacting, you know, to Tom dying.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and I impulsively put out my hand, covering hers on the table. I shared a look with Shilo, who got up, collecting our plates.
“You’ve gone through so much,” I said softly, leaning toward her. “I want you to know, I understand. I do. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, and grief changes you, at least for a while. And sometimes for always.” My voice caught on the last word, as I thought of Miguel.
“I just . . . I don’t want to wallow, you know? I called my mom last night. She’s going to come to Autumn Vale next week and spend a couple of weeks here to . . . to help plan the funeral. I mean . . . I don’t know when I can hold it because the police haven’t released the b-body yet. But I’m all Tom had left, with Dad who knows where, so I’m going to have to take care of it.”
She broke down and cried then, her head cradled in her arms on the table, and I was glad. She had been holding it all in, determined to be strong, but strength doesn’t come from suppressing emotion. I knew, because I had gone that route and all it led to was an emotional collapse. I went around to her side of the table and sat beside her, at first rubbing her back, but then talking about Tom, and her complicated relationship with her brother.
She seemed grateful to speak with someone who had no personal feelings in the matter. They had been apart for a significant portion of her childhood, so when she came back to Autumn Vale she had had to forge a new relationship with her brother. That had been complicated by her father’s disappearance just months after she opened the bakery. She and Tom had gotten along all right, but were not close, and she still felt like an outsider in Autumn Vale, even though she had been born here.
“I didn’t know what to think, at first, when Dad disappeared. I mean, Tom seemed certain Dad was murdered, and by Melvyn!” She sighed. “I just didn’t know what to believe. He knows everyone so much better than I do.”
I remembered what she said in the bakery when she asked if she could trust me. What had she been about to tell me when I made that ill-timed joke? A direct question would probably just scare her off. “But you see how ridiculous that is, right, to think that Melvyn could have killed and then buried your father?” I asked, as Shilo ran water and squirted detergent in the sink. When Binny nodded, I said, “I think Tom never actually believed that your dad was buried on the Wynter property, it was just an excuse to justify to you why he was digging.” I paused to let that sink in. “But if that’s so, then what was he looking for here? And who else knew he’d be here digging?”
She looked thoughtful, but shook her head. “I just don’t know. I wish I did.”
I wished she did, too. Shilo sat back down opposite me and we exchanged glances. “Did your brother have any enemies?” I asked. “Was he involved with anyone?”
“He didn’t have a girlfriend. I know people said stuff about some dancer, but I don’t think that was serious, just guy stuff, you know? Between him and Junior? He had a serious girlfriend a long time ago, but then she left town and that was it. He said he wasn’t the marrying kind.”
“What about work?”
“Work . . . you mean the company? Turner Construction? Him and Dinah have been trying to keep it afloat since Dad disappeared.”
“Is that why she asked for the key to the office?”
She had a blank look for a moment, then said, “Oh, the other day, in the bakery before . . .” Tears welled in her eyes. “Tom said she’d lost her key, but she hasn’t been working there for a while, as far as I know. There wasn’t much to do. Tom just wasn’t able to keep Turner Construction going like Dad did.” She sniffed, and Shilo handed her a paper napkin. “She probably just wanted in to collect some of her personal stuff.”
Or maybe Tom wanted the key himself for some reason. It was all a jumble in my head. But my mind kept returning to the zoning problems and Junior’s evasion. Was there something there? Did it all come back to that, something about the Wynter property?
“Binny, this is going to seem like an odd request,” I said. “But could you get me into the Turner Construction offices to look around sometime?”
“Well, sure.” She blew her nose. “How about tonight?”
Chapter Fourteen
AN HOUR LATER, Shilo and I, in her rattletrap vehicle, pulled into the yard by the makeshift offices of Turner Construction behind Binny’s van. It was starting to get dark, and the yard was a place of long shadows and murky corners. Before Shi turned off her headlights, I saw the Turner Construction sign looking the worse for wear, a random pattern of holes scattered over it as if it had suffered target practice.
Binny was already at the door of the trailer riffling through a ring of keys and trying them. “I don’t know what key works,” she lamented. “These are Tom’s keys; the cops gave them to me.”
“But you have a key to the office yourself, right?” I asked, remembering her refusal to give Tom the office key for Dinah.
“I did have one, but I’ve . . . uh . . . misplaced it,” she said.
Misplaced it?
“Let me try,” Shilo said. She took the ring and studied the keys by the yellow bug light over the trailer office door, then she bent over and stared into the lock. She took one key in hand, inserted it, and voilà, the door opened.
Binny gaped, mouth open. I shrugged and said, “Don’t ask, because I don’t know how she does it.”
“I’m a gypsy,” Shilo said, her grin wide. “We’re good with locks.”
We entered, and Binny flicked on a light switch; fluorescents shuddered and blinked into wavering brightness. The place was a mess; papers everywhere, trash bins overturned, surfaces heaped with junk. “Somebody has trashed the place,” I said, aghast.
Binny looked around. “No, this is pretty much how it always looks.”
Her voice sounded a little odd, and I shot a quick look over at her, but her face was blank. “Dinah Hooper worked here, right?”
Binny nodded. “She was the office manager; took care of day-to-day stuff.”
“And she was okay with this mess?”
“She had her hands full lately just trying to keep the company going. Dinah and Tom . . . since Dad has been gone, they didn’t work together too well, you know?”
There was an old sofa bed in one corner, and it looked like someone used it to sleep on. I hoped some bum wasn’t using the place to hide out, but there was no evidence of that. I suspected Tom had been using it as a crash pad. As far as that went, I didn’t even know where he lived, or if he used the office as his full-time apartment. “Had your brother been sleeping here, do you think?”
Binny seemed reluctant to answer, but she nodded. “I think he may have been. He was living at the house with Dad, but then Dinah kind of semi-moved in, and he started to bunk
out here, sometimes.”
“I thought Dinah and your dad didn’t live together?”
“They didn’t officially live together, but she stayed there sometimes.”
“Do you live in your father’s house?”
“Nope. I live over the bakery. It’s more convenient. Dad’s house is in town, but it’s a ways away, at the other end. We own the building my bakery is in, so I took one of the apartments upstairs. Gordy and Zeke share the other one, a two-bedroom over the back.”
“So . . . no one is living in your dad’s house right now.”
She shook her head. Tears began welling in her eyes, and I knew I had to back off. Shilo, meanwhile, while Binny and I were talking and looking around, had sat down at one of the desks and turned on the computer. She was a card game addict, so she was probably taking the opportunity to play solitaire.
“What were they doing businesswise before Tom died?” I asked, scanning the junk, trying to make sense of the place.
“I think they were doing work for the Brotherhood of the Falcon. They needed the roof fixed on the hall and some other repairs.”
“Really?” I remembered Gordy’s wild theories about the Brotherhood; should I be dismissing out of hand what I didn’t know a thing about? Then I recalled a random comment made by someone or other. “Your dad was a member, right?”
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. Again. She turned away and stood, clenching and unclenching her fists.
I hastily moved on. “They weren’t doing anything else? Did Tom work with anyone?”
“Not lately,” she said, turning back to me, having mastered her emotions. “Not as far as I know. I think they used to hire guys as they needed them. Neither he or Dad talk . . . talked . . . about the business with me.”
I looked around. The faux wood–paneled trailer itself was long and narrow, with two desks right near the door, and an area at the back that held a washroom, a kitchenette, and the ratty sofa bed. In between there was a drafting desk by the only window, and along one wall a large, wooden cabinet with shallow drawers that I knew would hold blueprints, maps, and plans. I worked in a planning office when I was a teenager, just as a gopher. For a while I even wanted to be an interior decorator, and thought getting the job at the planning office was a first step. Fetching coffee didn’t teach me a whole lot, but snooping did.
Bran New Death (A Merry Muffin Mystery) Page 14