“Look, I’m not accusing you, all right? I’m worried. There have been break-ins all over the county lately, and you and your friend are alone out there at that castle. If I thought you’d do it, I’d say find someplace in town to stay.” He paused, eying me and narrowing his eyes. “You wouldn’t, would you?”
“No. Mostly because that doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.” I shifted my purse on my lap. “Sheriff, I don’t mean to be difficult, but you’re not going to find evidence of whomever killed Tom in my uncle’s papers. Surely you have leads? Personal issues?” His stony expression told me that if he did, he was not going to share them with me. There was more I should ask, more I wanted to know, but he wasn’t going to tell me anything. I took the receipt and stood. “If that’s all . . . ?”
“We’d like to take your statement now,” he said, his tone expressionless. He pushed a button, and the female officer came in and sat in the spare chair. “We’ll be taping the interview, and you can sign the transcript once it’s done.”
“I did give a statement that night,” I said, keeping my tone carefully neutral. I really wasn’t trying to be difficult, but he grated on my nerves.
He met my eyes. “That was preliminary in nature. Miss Wynter, please . . . I’d appreciate your cooperation.”
I nodded, and he took me through the evening one more time. It was like reliving it, especially looking down into the hole and seeing Tom at the bottom. I made sure to be clear about the crowbar, which I had found at the lip and tossed aside. By the time I was done, I was shaking, emotions rising within me that I thought I had tamped down and conquered. Death is wicked, and a purposeful death—robbing someone of all the potential life he had left to live—was evil.
I had one last thing to say on the record. “I want whoever did this found and prosecuted. I want them to spend the rest of their life in jail. It’s horrible to think that there is a killer out there, and he or she could be watching me, or have some reason to want to hurt me.” My voice was trembling. I steadied it, as I finished. “It was on my property, and I won’t rest until the killer is out of circulation.”
That was the end of my statement, but not the end of my visit with the sheriff. I had been ready to walk out before, but calmer now, my flare of anger gone, I remembered that I had questions, too, and a promise to fulfill. As the female officer left the room, I stayed in my seat. “Sheriff, I would like to learn more about my uncle’s death, the car accident. Do you have a moment?”
He hesitated. “Not really, but shoot.”
“What happened? All I know is he slid off the road on an icy, November morning.”
“That’s pretty much all we know, too. Old Mel was in his eighties, and his eyesight was not the best. Regardless, he seemed to have taken it in his head to drive the highway at six or so in the morning.”
“It would have been dark at that time.”
Virgil nodded. “We were having a cold snap. The road was practically frozen over.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
“Silvio mentioned that Mel told him he was heading to Rochester for some reason. That’s all I know.”
“So it was just an accident?” I thought of Gogi’s suspicions, and wondered what was behind them. It seemed simple enough to me; an elderly man with poor sight on an icy highway in the dark. It sounded like a recipe for trouble.
“I have no reason to think it was anything else.”
“Where’s the car?”
“Our impound lot. It’s damaged beyond recovery.”
“How did the call come in? What time of day was it?” I asked.
“Early. It was about six a.m. when we got the call from a citizen who was passing by and saw a car off the road. They were concerned, and told us where to find the car.”
“Who was it who called?”
“Not my place to tell you, Miss Wynter. The caller wished to remain anonymous unless called to give evidence at an inquest.”
“And? When is the inquest?”
“We haven’t scheduled it yet. I haven’t gathered all the information I need.”
“Why not?”
No answer from the stone-faced cop. He was being deliberately difficult, and I eyed him with suspicion. Something else clicked in at that moment. I didn’t recall any mention of an insurance settlement in the accident case, so it was not closed, not by any means. “You’re not convinced it was an accident,” I said, suddenly sure of my conclusion. “And you don’t want an inquest until you know the truth. Why? Was there any damage not accounted for by the accident?” I saw by his expression that I had nailed it.
“We’re investigating. I haven’t closed the books on it yet.”
“So there is something about the car-accident theory that doesn’t ring true to you.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “Miss Wynter,” he said, his tone frosty, “I said, I’m still investigating. I have no concrete proof that it was anything more than an accident, but there are a couple of minor scrapes of black paint on the back bumper that trouble me. Mel was not a great driver, however. For all I know they could be from a fender bender in the parking lot of a Wegmans in Buffalo!” He stood and walked to his office door, holding it open for me. “And that is all I have to say.”
But as I passed, he grabbed my elbow.
“Merry . . . Miss Wynter, please be careful,” he said, his gaze intense, his voice a growl that sent shivers down to my toes. “I don’t like the idea of you out there at the castle with a killer on the loose. Please reconsider staying in town.”
I pulled away from him, tugged down my jacket—I was dressed for professionalism in a skirt suit—and headed out to the car, where Shilo, out of the car now, sat on a curb, waiting. We got back in and I let Shilo off at Jack McGill’s office—she and the lanky Lothario were getting along like a house afire, it seemed to me—and found a parking spot outside of Binny’s Bakery.
Okay, I thought, gripping the steering wheel a little too tightly, so I had gone to the police station and demanded to know what they took from the castle. Check that off on the list, and note a big, fat nothing beside what I had learned, other than the fact that Virgil Grace was cute, in uniform or out, and had a sexy voice. Oh, and that my uncle may have been murdered in a hit-and-run accident. Maybe Gogi was right after all, to be concerned.
I stopped at the bakery and told Binny I would be back later to bake—I was going to try some chocolate-walnut and prune Danish muffins—but right then I was going to track down Dinah and find out what, if anything, she could tell me about the financial troubles between my uncle and Rusty Turner. Binny gave me Dinah’s address.
She lived in a little apartment over Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles, one of the shops on Abenaki, Binny had told me. I walked down the street toward it, not even sure of what I needed to know, or what to ask Dinah. I guess I was trying to figure out where everyone fit in the scheme of things in Autumn Vale, New York. It was as if three jigsaw puzzles had been tossed into a box together, and none of the pieces I was collecting came from the same one.
As I remembered from my first morning in Autumn Vale, Crazy Lady Antiques and Collectibles was the last shop in a line of conjoined downtown building faces, all brick, some painted, some left natural, and most windows boarded up this far down the block. I had never stopped to look in the window. Wow. I stared in openmouthed awe. There was a jumble of stuff packed into the store window, from petit point dining chairs to a gigantic plant stand in the shape of a dragon. There was new junk, old crap, antiques, and kitsch all sharing space, jammed cheek to jowl as my grandmother used to say.