Lizzie’s mother had seemed pensive until now, but there were tears standing in her eyes by the time I finished. She had her arms folded over her chest, and she was chewing on her fingernail. I suspected that she had recently quit smoking, or was trying to refrain, since I’d seen other ex-smokers nervously biting their fingernails. She turned away and stared out the front window. “Poor Lizzie,” she said, a catch in her voice. “Mama, I want her to come home with me.”
“Why? So you can leave her alone while you go off to do whatever it is you do?”
“I work, Mama, I work!” She sobbed, and headed for the door. “She’s fifteen, not five . . . she can stay alone sometimes.” Shaking her head, she cried, “It’s no good; I don’t know what to do anymore. I just don’t . . .” She flung the door open and stomped out onto the tiny, cement porch, then stood staring at the Caddy, which was blocked in by my rental. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the sky was still a leaden gray.
“You can have your daughter back when you stop working at that awful place,” the older woman yelled after her.
“I’d better move my car,” I said, and headed to the door.
“You’re never going to understand what I’ve been through!” the younger woman hollered back at her mother from outside.
“You’d better not say that again, Emerald Marie Proctor, because I understand more than you’ll ever know.”
I stopped stock-still on the bottom step and stared at Lizzie’s mom. “Your name is Emerald?” I asked stupidly.
“Yeah. Why?” she growled at me. “You going to move your car or what? I need to get out of here and get ready for work.”
But I couldn’t move. Emerald was Lizzie’s mother, and Emerald was the woman over whom Junior and Tom Turner had fought. There could not be two women named Emerald in or near Autumn Vale, could there? She was agitated, I could tell, but I needed to ask her a couple of questions. “Hey, I was just wondering . . . I know you and Lizzie are having a tough time right now—”
She snorted. “Yeah, a tough time because my own mother is turning her against me!”
I remembered Lizzie’s remark about her mother being a whore. Emerald might be right. My mind was working a mile a minute, and I thought a shot in the dark may be required. “It must be difficult, especially with . . . especially since Tom Turner died recently.”
She whirled to face me, her expression one of terror. “What are you saying?”
“You and he were . . . you had a relationship, right?”
She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. She jangled her keys in her hand, and said, “Yeah, a long time ago. Then I took off. I just came back to Autumn Vale a year or so ago. Thought I’d reconnect with my mother! Ha! Then Tom started coming around again, and he got to wondering . . .” She trailed off and shook her head, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“He got to wondering if he was Lizzie’s father, is that right?” I said it softly, but she nodded. “Was he?” She nodded again. “But you haven’t told Lizzie.”
She shook her head, and choked back a sob. “What’s the point now?”
“What were he and Junior Bradley fighting over at the bar you work at that involved you?”
“Nothing!”
“But I heard . . .” I paused, remembering what Zeke had said. “Someone in town told me that Junior told Tom to keep his hands off you.”
She frowned and shook her head. “Where do people get that garbage? That never happened. The fight was not about me at all. Look, I can’t do this right now. I have got to go. Move it or lose it, lady!” She got in her car, slammed the door, and gunned the motor. When I hustled to pull out, she screeched down the drive, backing up as skillfully as a NASCAR driver, and took off out of town, perhaps toward the bar at Ridley Ridge to work.
I decided to check on Lizzie, but when I went up to the door, I could see her sitting on the sofa with her grandmother, who had her arms around her grandchild. It was a complicated situation, and I didn’t think I could help, at least not today.
Instead, I headed back into the heart of Autumn Vale and Crazy Lady Antiques, parking along the side street that intersected with Abenaki behind a dirt bike that was taking up an on-street parking spot. Janice was in her shop and answered the door when I knocked. I told her my need for serving coffee to the masses, and she located a big box of oddly assorted mugs, most with funny and/or inappropriate sayings, and I carried them outside and around to the side street, with her following me. She threw in a box of odd plates and serving pieces she obviously wanted to get rid of. I asked, “You knew the Turners, right?”
“Of course.”
“Did Tom ever get married?”
“Nope. That boy could never settle on one girl. My Jackson is about the same age—Jack moved to New York for school and never came back—and he said that Tom was serious about some girl in high school, but she broke up with him and broke his heart.”
Was that Emerald, I wondered? “What do you know about Junior Bradley?”
“Never trusted that boy. He cheated my boy Booker out of some money once.” She cocked her head as I shoved the box of mugs in the backseat of the car, and turned to take the box of serving pieces from her. “Are you trying to figure out poor Tom’s murder?” she asked. “Better leave that up to the cops.”
I straightened. “It happened right outside my door, Janice. I’m unnerved. I want it solved. Is that so strange?” I wasn’t about to talk about the dead stranger in the woods, not before we knew who it was.
“Virgil Grace is a good investigator, Merry. Leave it alone.”
“I would think you would subscribe to that old adage, Janice, that no woman who ever got anything done did so by listening to people telling her not to do things.”
She chuckled and patted my shoulder. “But in this case, there’s danger afoot. And you’ve got enough to do sorting out your family estate without getting involved in murder.”
It was good advice that I wouldn’t be taking. The bakery was still open, so I stopped in and bought up her stock of end-of-the-day rolls and sweets. I don’t know why I was bulking up my store of coffee mugs and treats as if I expected a horde, but from the number of cars that had been at the castle when I left, I wanted to be prepared. Anything I didn’t use I could toss in the commercial freezer.
I saw through Binny’s sullen facade now that we were friends, and I was dreadfully worried about the body in the woods. Odds were it was her father, and who would break the news if it was? I’d have to be there for her, if it proved to be true. Losing her brother had been tough, but if the body in the woods was Rusty, it was going to be doubly hard on her. On the other hand, she now had a niece she had not known about before. But none of that news was the kind of thing I could pass on at the moment, so I kept my mouth shut.
I pondered the whole mess as I drove back to the castle. Should I be leaving well enough alone, as Janice suggested? Virgil Grace was investigating Tom’s murder, and he knew the town and its people better than I, but I couldn’t just forget about it. As I had said to Janice, it happened right outside of my door, and the killer was still out there.
When I returned, the investigation was in full swing, with a state police command center vehicle now parked in my weedy drive. The clouds had cleared enough that a ray of sunlight peeped through. I called McGill over to collect the box of mugs, and commandeered Shilo to help with the bags of treats. I carried the smaller box of plates and serving pieces; together, we hauled them to the kitchen, and Shilo and I washed and dried all the dusty mugs, setting them out on trays on the long kitchen table.
The afternoon sun was lowering in the sky by the time we were done, and I strolled over to where Virgil was talking seriously with a woman in state police khakis. When she cast a glance at me and strode away, I approached the sheriff. He looked worried and tired and none too pleased to see me. Couldn’t blame him. On the other hand, it wasn’t my fault the body was in my woods.