It was ridiculous. Maybe my uncle had been a pie-in-the-sky dreamer, but from all evidence Rusty Turner had been a pragmatic man with many years of experience in the building and development business. He had sent his daughter to culinary school. He had taken whatever small jobs were available in their town. Why have this shoddy plat drawn up? To fool Melvyn?
But . . . why?
I remembered something Andrew Silvio had said; Melvyn accused Rusty of cheating him. Based on the plat I had examined, that could well be, if Mel was paying to have the advance work done, and this pathetic piece of crud was what Turner had come up with.
I rolled back to the drawers and leafed through anything else I could find, and concluded that there was no way anyone had had serious plans to develop Wynter Acres. I had gone through a few of my uncle’s papers so far, and hadn’t come across anything to indicate some long-term strategy . . . unless . . . I cocked my head as I remembered the envelope I had found in my uncle’s desk to Turner Wynter Global Enterprises. Was that related to the real estate development? It had to be; it was the only thing the two men were involved in together, as far as I knew.
But had Virgil Grace taken stuff out of the castle when they searched it? He said he did, but I didn’t have the receipt yet, so I didn’t know what. That was going to be my first order of business the next day. Did items taken away by the police have anything to do with Wynter Acres?
My head hurt. I was confused, even worse than I had been before this little field trip. I stared at a map of Autumn Vale and followed the valley until I got to a road that rose up to a town on a ridge . . . ah, Ridley Ridge. There was a bar in that town where Tom and Junior Bradley had fought.
Maybe I would need to talk to Emerald and find out a little more about Tom Turner and Junior Bradley and the truth behind the fight. So far he was my star suspect for Tom Turner’s murder. Why? I didn’t have a clue at this point, except that I was following the violence.
I had one more thing to do. I looked up, but Shilo and Binny were still engrossed in something on the computer, so I went back to the drawers. I began searching through, and found that all of the old stuff was properly drawn up. When Golden Acres was redesigned, for example, it had been perfectly planned and executed, judging by the professional-looking drawings I came across, which included site elevations, blueprints, and drainage locations. Zoning permissions were all in place, as were building permits, with official seals and the zoning office stamp of approval, though the zoning commissioner at the time must have been Junior’s predecessor, since the signature was different.
That was the last indication I needed that Wynter Acres, no matter what Uncle Melvyn thought, was never a serious plan, at least as far as Rusty Turner was concerned. Was it possible that my uncle had found this out and turned nasty? I didn’t believe for a second that he had killed and buried Rusty on the property, but had he killed him and dumped him somewhere else?
“You done yet, Mer?” Shilo said, her eyes shining with excitement.
“Uh, yeah . . . what’s up with you two? What have you been doing?” Though Shilo looked excited, Binny appeared troubled.
“I think . . . I think my father and my brother were involved in something shady,” Binny said.
“I was just coming to the same conclusion,” I said. “Why do you think so?”
“The figures don’t add up,” Shilo said.
Oh, did I forget to mention that Shilo, among her other talents, can look at a list of figures and add them up in her head at warp speed? She can also see anomalies, little things that don’t make sense in the numbers. She’s an odd duck, to be sure.
“There is a heck of a lot of income coming in,” she continued, “but almost no work done to account for it. And there are, like, shadowy references to other accounts, but nothing to back it up. There might be something I’m missing, but I doubt it.”
“What could that mean?” I wondered out loud.
Binny spoke up. “The logical explanation, I guess—the legitimate explanation—is that if Dad and your uncle were going into business together to develop your uncle’s land, maybe they had started up accounts to use for equipment purchases and rentals.”
That actually made a lot of sense, and if it was true, then the accounts could have to do with that, and there would be no mystery. “Who did the bookkeeping for your dad’s company?”
“Lately? Dinah Hooper.”
“Then I think we’ll have to ask some questions of Ms. Hooper tomorrow,” I said. “I have some of my own for Mr. Silvio and Sheriff Grace, too.”
*
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS FOR ME. The next day was going to be full, and the anxiety of unanswered questions, financial worries, and a plethora of other problems had me awake at three a.m. I brewed tea made in my new Brown Betty teapot and filled a mug. As I stood in the pantry doorway, a cool breeze wafted in, the smell of night-scented phlox drifting toward me from the weedy yard, as well as the comforting chirp of crickets. Disregarding the necessity of selling this property—I honestly did not see anything changing that—if I could, would I stay here at Wynter Castle? If it were financially feasible, would it be my choice?
Though I had been a city girl most of my life, settling in at the castle had come surprisingly easy. I loved the place; it suited me somehow. Oh, it was way too big, and in winter it was going to be hell to heat, and if Shilo hadn’t happened to stalk me all the way to upstate New York I would be hideously lonely. But right now, leaning in the doorway of the back door and drinking tea, I was weirdly content for someone who had found a dead body just a couple of nights before.
I had my notebook in the kitchen and I returned to the table and began doodling, which soon enough became a list of ideas that would let me keep the castle. It could become a rest home, a retirement home, an inn, or an event venue, if I chose to run it as one of those things. I could sell off some of the land—if anyone would buy it—or I could . . . I ran out of ideas, and my wayward mind began roaming over random thoughts.
Those random thoughts began to settle around the enigma that was Sheriff Virgil Grace; what did I make of him? He was good-looking in a surly way. Kind of scruffy, but a manly man, to be sure. I do like a manly man. When you’re a big girl, being held by a big guy makes you feel fragile and feminine. Dumb, right? But I can’t help it! I’m a modern woman with retro hormones.
I recalled a little tidbit that McGill had let slip; Sheriff Grace had other siblings, but when his mom was sick, he was the one who looked after her. Tears welled and one dripped onto the notebook page, smearing my ink; I thumbed the droplet away, which smudged the page even worse. That was my Miguel, all over. When his mom came down with a virulent form of influenza in the first year of our marriage, he flew back to Spain to be with her for six weeks. It had been our only source of contention, but looking back, I was being petty and selfish. If I could only turn back the clock, I would have behaved much differently. If only. I wished with all my heart I could tell him now, that what I had complained of then made him a very good man, and I wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything different. Miguel’s selflessness and nurturing ability was some of what made me love him so much.
Was Virgil Grace another very good man? I had not been in love, or had a crush, nor had I even kissed another man in seven years. Erotically charged dreams of the past had been my only outlet. Would I ever love again? Would the part of me that died the night Miguel crashed his car ever come back to life?
I sniffed back tears and abandoned that morose nighttime melancholy. I couldn’t undo the past, and I couldn’t live in it. Picking up and petting Magic—he had somehow, as his name suggested, escaped Shilo’s closed room—I reflected on the changes Wynter Castle had worked in me. I felt, like the night-scented phlox that bloomed in wild profusion among the weeds, that I was opening up, blooming to new possibilities in my life. Leatrice’s betrayal of me and the friendship I had thought we had was a closed book. Her treachery had poisoned the well of the New York fashion world in a way that hurt to my core, but it had shown me who my real friends were.