Rusty’s disappearance had hurt her in more ways than one, it seemed. “I don’t want to probe a delicate subject, Dinah, but you seem sure Rusty is alive. Where do you think he went?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Then why do you think he’s still alive?”
She set her lips in a straight line and frowned, wrinkles gathering on her forehead, below her fluffy, white-blonde bangs. “He left a note, see.”
“He did?” That was the first solid evidence I had heard that he had skipped town and not died. Binny hadn’t said anything about a note.
“He did. He went to the bank and withdrew ten thousand dollars, and when I went to work the next morning, I found a note on my desk.”
“What did it say?”
“It said he had business to take care of, and not to worry, that he would be back.”
“He didn’t say how long he’d be gone?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything to his kids, which surprised me. Him and Tom had been fighting, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected Rusty to say anything to him, but Binny . . . Lord, the sun rose and set by that girl, according to Rusty. He would have done anything for her. Him not telling her . . . well, it’s odd. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think why he up and left like he did.”
She sniffed and reached into her bag, drawing out a packet of tissues and blotting her mascaraed blue eyes carefully. “He’s been gone so long. I have to . . . I’m starting to think something happened while he was away. If I knew where he was going, I could check with the police there and hospitals, but . . .” She trailed off and shrugged. “That sheriff is no good at all. I keep hounding him to try to find Rusty, but he’s not doing a darn thing. I just don’t know what to think! And now, with Tom dead . . . poor Rusty! He’s going to be devastated with how he left things with Tom. When . . . if he comes back.”
“What did they fight over?”
“I just don’t know. I think it was business, but I’m not sure. There was something going on between Rusty and Melvyn. I knew that, but I didn’t think Tom was involved, other than it had to do with his father. There were lawsuits and bickering and turmoil. Gosh, it was nasty! Old Melvyn came out to the office with a double-barrel shotgun one day and called Rusty a low-life, lying snake.” She shook her head, but there was a faint smile curving up her lips.
“Did he mean it? I mean, my uncle, with the shotgun?”
“Well, the hole in the side of the trailer would seem to suggest he was serious!”
Chapter Seventeen
"YOU MEAN MY uncle actually shot the place up?”
“Oh, he wasn’t aiming at anyone,” Dinah assured me. “He shot over Tom’s head, but said next time a Turner would pay.”
Holy crap, I thought. He had waved a shotgun at Janice Grover, too. Maybe old Melvyn was truly nuts and did kill Rusty. But he didn’t kill Tom Turner, and that was the murder I was hoping would be solved pronto. Was it all tied in together? Did the “something funny” going on have to do with those poorly drawn up plans for Wynter Acres I found? “Dinah, were you in on any of the discussions between Rusty and Melvyn about subdividing the Wynter land to build condos?”
“I came in on the tail end of it. It didn’t make a bit of sense to me,” she said, eyes wide. “I asked Rusty, who would buy a condo out in the middle of nowhere?”
“My thoughts exactly! What did he say?”
She rolled her eyes. “Men! He said to keep my pretty, little nose out of it, that Melvyn had hidden assets and the only way to get them out of him was to go along with the old fool.” She gasped. “Oh, dear. He was your uncle, and . . . I’m so sorry for how that sounded. Rusty wasn’t the easiest guy to deal with. It sounds bad, but he didn’t mean it . . . well, I’m not sure exactly how he meant it.”
“It sounds like Rusty was using Mel,” I said, my tone blunt. I didn’t want to reveal that I had seen the shoddy plats and subpar plans.
She put one hand on mine on the table, and said, “Merry, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about Rusty. He’s a great guy, honest! Except he sees the world in terms of black and white; he seemed to think Mel owed him. He was worried, and had some kind of plan in mind to keep the company afloat.”
Uh-huh, a plan to cheat old Melvyn, maybe. Was that where the money in the account came from? And who else was he swindling? “You did the bookkeeping for the company, right?”
“I did.”
Interesting; she had just implied that Rusty, her boss and boyfriend was trying to cheat my uncle, but had no problem admitting she did the company bookkeeping. “Was everything aboveboard and square?” She looked a little offended. I hadn’t worded that very well. “I didn’t mean about your bookkeeping, Dinah. I guess I meant the books from before you took over.”
Mollified, she sighed and said, “They were a terrible mess! I started out as just a kind of office manager and receptionist, you know, but Rusty was in over his head. He used to have a gal who came in two days a week to do the deposits and payroll, but she quit. She had messed things up so badly, I didn’t even know where to begin. There were checks that hadn’t been deposited, bills that hadn’t been paid . . . it took me a year to get things straightened out, and I’m not positive that I did get it all square and shipshape. I wasn’t a very good bookkeeper myself when I started, but I took a correspondence course, and a lot of it is common sense along with the ability to look up state and federal regulations and apply them.”
“Who was it who used to come in to do the bookkeeping?”
“I . . . don’t remember the name,” she said, her gaze shifting away. “Is it important?”
“I guess not.” I had a sense that she did indeed remember very well but didn’t want to implicate someone.
She stood and shook crumbs off her lap. “I had better get down to the nuts and bolts. I have to measure this place and figure out what I’m doing. Gogi Grace is going to give me a hand.”
“She’s great, isn’t she?” I said, standing and likewise scattering crumbs from my skirt.
“She is, honest to God, like the sister I never had.”
I walked to the door, my heels clunking on the board floors and echoing in the empty place; it was a bland space right now, plain-board floors, white walls, dusty from disuse. It needed a lot of work before it could be a design store, and I hoped she knew what she was up against. I turned before I got to the door. “By the way, do you know anyone who does yard work or anything like that? I can’t seem to find any listing for a landscaping company in Autumn Vale, and I need the Wynter property taken care of on a regular basis.”
“What, you’re not going to mow it on your own?” she said with a quick grin. “I say just put up a notice at the Vale Variety. Rusty used to find day workers that way, for when we needed site cleanup.” Her grin died, as she talked again about her missing boyfriend.
“I’ll do that. Thank you, Dinah. I hope this place does great guns!”
“Me, too, if I ever figure out what to make it!”
I left the pastries behind for her and Gogi. On the street, I looked up and down as a young woman with a stroller passed me, a determined frown on her face. I had a lot to think about and even more to figure out. The last few days had revealed that the odd little town of Autumn Vale had seen some swirling controversies and issues over the last few years, some of them to do with my late uncle.