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 strolled 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.