“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.
“I want to see the plans for the development of Wynter Acres. Do you know if Turner Wynter ran their business out of these same offices?”
“I suppose so,” Binny said, looking around dejectedly. “I mean, this is the only office that I know about. I wish I could help more.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “You’ve helped a lot just by letting me in here.” More than Junior Bradley had with his obstructionism, I thought.
“Well, if there was—or is, rather—a Turner Wynter Construction Company, then you and I might end up being co-owners of at least part of this mess. I’m going to need help to figure it out.”
That wasn’t a welcome prospect, because it tied me more firmly to a place I needed to leave, sooner rather than later. But if there really were lawsuits filed, maybe that could be resolved by the two of us more equitably than if Tom had still been involved. “Let me just riffle though the plans, see if I can come up with anything.” I pulled a stool over to the cabinet and read the labels, looking for anything that referenced Wynter property. None of the labels made any sense to me, so I just started at the top.
I soon figured out that most of the big jobs had been done years ago, and that lately—whether it was because of the economy or something else—the jobs had been getting smaller and smaller. The most recent big project appeared to be Binny’s bakeshop remodel. Turner Construction had redesigned and rebuilt the place to include room for the ovens and front shop area. The upstairs apartment had been renovated. Other than that, there were some sloppy-looking drawings for an addition proposed to the Brotherhood of the Falcon clubhouse, and a proposal for another addition to Gogi Grace’s Golden Acres.
I was vaguely aware that Binny was looking over Shilo’s shoulder, and I wondered what they were up to. I was about to ask when I suddenly came across charts and drawings that appeared to reference Wynter Acres. I pulled them out of the drawer and rolled my chair over to the drafting table, turning on the powerful light over the desk.
My first impression was that whoever had done the plan was a rank amateur.
First, the plat. A plat is a scale map showing the proposed subdivision of the land, and often includes vegetation and other considerations. This plat was crude; barely legible; and with few markers to show landmarks, elevations or even the lot sizes. It didn’t look like they had had a surveyor do the necessary work to mark out the proposed subdivision of the land. If this was the plat registered with Junior Bradley’s zoning office, it should have been rejected immediately. Would my uncle have understood enough to know that?
I sat and stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out what was going on. There was no way they could have intended to proceed in subdividing the Wynter land using this plat as a planning device. It was impossible. There wasn’t even a compass indication on it, or access roads marked. Why would Rusty’s office draw this shoddy plan up in the first place? And it was while Rusty was still in the mix; I could tell by the date, which indicated the plan was from the previous spring. If that date was legit. Careless work like this could have numerous mistakes or deliberate errors.
There were so many considerations if they planned on subdividing Wynter land into a community; what about water? Roads? Drainage? Electricity?
And what about buyers?
The town of Autumn Vale was barely viable as it was, with empty storefronts along Abenaki, and more houses for sale than anyone could ever want. Who did my uncle and Rusty Turner think was going to buy these condos at Wynter Acres? Silvio had claimed the idea was to attract aging boomers who wanted to live in the country but have the convenience of condo living, but the plans I saw were for sizable, single-family dwellings, not condos.