“What do you mean?”
“Well, drug peddling is one possibility, I suppose. But maybe he was involved in some kind of money-laundering scheme. And if he was, the kind of folk he would have been dealing with . . . well, he wouldn’t be the first who thought he was smart and ended up dead.”
That gave me pause, and I remembered someone—was it Gordy or Zeke?—had said something about a couple of scary guys in town late last year, about the time Rusty disappeared and my uncle died. I had a lot to think about. Pish told me to give his love to Shilo, and that he would be in touch—he was going to see if there was any information he could dig up—and that he hoped I’d take pictures of the castle and send them to him. As soon as I got my digital camera out of storage and my laptop working and got Internet service out in the boonies, I would.
I sat for a while staring at the empty fireplace. Someone cleared their throat behind me, and I turned to see a big-bellied fellow draining the last of the coffee urn and snagging two muffins.
“You Mel’s niece?” he asked. He was dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt, but the getup didn’t quite look natural on him.
“I am,” I said, rising and going toward him. “Merry Wynter,” I added, sticking out my hand. I recognized him, but waited for him to introduce himself.
“Simon Grover,” he said, juggling the muffins and coffee, then clasping my hand in a firm grip. “You been talking to my wife.”
“You’re the bank manager, and head of the Brotherhood of the Falcons!”
“Yup. Not here because of that, though; I’m captain of the Autumn Vale Volunteer Fire Patrol. We’re providing backup to the state police and Virgil’s boys and gals.”
Making a quick decision, I motioned to the comfortable chair by the empty fireplace. “Would you like to sit and have your coffee in comfort, Mr. Grover?”
“I sure would,” he said with a sigh of relief. “My dogs is barkin’! These boots ain’t made for walking.” He spoke with a folksy air, maybe one he had developed since coming to manage a bank in a small town in rural upstate New York.
Grover waddled over to the fireplace and I let him sit with his coffee and muffins while I put the urn on to perk again. Then I joined him and we sat in companionable silence for a long moment, while I tried to figure out how to introduce the topic of my uncle’s dealings at the bank. In one sense, it was my business since I was the heir, but what went on before my uncle’s death could be deemed private, I supposed.
“You know,” he said, “I liked your uncle. We were brothers, in a sense, and Rusty Turner, too; us three were the founding members of the Brotherhood of the Falcons. Now I’m the only one of the three founding members left. The three amigos.”
Mad thoughts of a tontine-like arrangement flitted through my mind. But was it so mad? “I didn’t know my uncle was part of the club.”
“When my wife and I first moved here, I went out of my way to be pals with Melvyn. He was getting to be a crusty old fella even then. Not many friends.”
“He was friends with Gogi Grace’s husband, though, I understand. And Doc English.”
He shrugged, his bulky shoulders rolling. When he didn’t answer, I wondered if I had offended him by naming Melvyn’s buddies, right after he had said my uncle didn’t have many. He didn’t look offended, though. He was holding his empty coffee cup, glaring into it with a sad expression.
“Let me refill your cup with fresh coffee,” I said. When I came back and handed him the fragrant steaming brew, he sighed in contentment.
“Your coffee’s better’n my wife’s.”
“A lot of people like perked coffee better than drip.” How could I talk to him about my uncle’s affairs, I wondered. To make conversation, I said, “It’s great of you and your volunteers to come out this afternoon.” I wasn’t sure how they could possibly help or what they were doing other than standing around talking, drinking coffee, and eating muffins. It was more likely that he had come out for one more excuse to avoid his wife’s company, although maybe that was unfair. “I got the mugs from your wife’s shop,” I said, testing the waters.
“Bunch of old crap she’s got there. Never makes a penny,” he grumbled.
Okay. “It must have been awkward for you, with both Melvyn and Rusty as founding members of the Brotherhood, and them being at legal loggerheads.”
“It sure the hell was! Pardon my French. Those two old arseholes—again, pardon the French—were getting more and more cantankerous. I tried to get ’em to see sense, but they just . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “Couldn’t get ’em to stop feuding.”
“Toward the end, was my uncle okay?” I still feared that the body in the woods was Rusty Turner, and that my uncle had gone off his rocker and killed him.
“Okay, as in, all his marbles?”
I nodded.
“Well, yeah, I’d say your uncle was sharp as a tack and just as painful, if you sat on him.”
I pondered what that meant. “In other words, he was fine, unless you crossed him?”
“Yup. Then he was like a wasp, wouldn’t let you out of his sight until he’d given you what for.”
His chagrined tone made me wonder if Simon Grover, bank manager, had crossed Melvyn Wynter before he died. I knew too well that Rusty Turner had, repeatedly. “Did he, uh, come in to the bank ever?”
Grover shrugged. “Sometimes. Not often.”
“Was my uncle worried about anything? Before he died, I mean.”
“He was mad as hell that Rusty had disappeared. Said the old coot was trying to avoid the lawsuit.”
I pondered my discovery that Uncle Melvyn had been heading into town that fateful morning when he went off the road. “Was he angry enough that he’d be confronting someone about it?”
The banker frowned into his empty cup. “Like who?”
A sudden inspiration made me say, “The lawyer, maybe? Mr. Silvio was trying to get them both to agree, though, right? Like you were. He was trying to solve things between my uncle and Rusty Turner?”
The man snorted into a chuckle, then a wheezing, coughing guffaw. “Have you ever heard of any lawyer trying to settle out of court unless there was a wad of cash involved? No way! Silvio was lining his pockets from the money two old men with grudges brought him. He wasn’t mediating; hell, he was exacerbating, egging each one on to file more and more lawsuits!”
I heard a noise behind us, but it was just McGill, filling a couple of mugs with the fresh coffee. He had an odd look on his face, one that I couldn’t translate.
“Merry? Virge wants to see you outside.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Grover heaved himself out of his chair and set his mug in the sink as he waddled past. “I guess I’d better go home, see what the little woman’s got for supper,” he grumbled, heading for the door. “She can’t make coffee worth a damn, but at least she can cook.” He lumbered outside.
Darn! I had just been about to ask him about finding my uncle’s car off the road, hoping to quiz him on what he had seen. It still seemed odd to me that he was returning home to Autumn Vale at six in the morning! And I hadn’t had a chance to inquire about my uncle’s bank dealings and what was up with Isadore Openshaw. That would all have to wait.
I took my time, delaying going out to see the sheriff. Instead, I stacked dirty mugs in the sink and ran soapy water, then washed them and set them on the drain board to air-dry. I had a lot to consider, and what the bank manager had just said about the lawyer made me wonder. The tangled mystery of who killed Tom Turner in the middle of the night on my property had many threads. Who wanted him dead being the central thread, of course, or even, who needed him dead and why? I knew so little about the local dynamics that I was afraid I was missing much of what could help me figure it out. But then, Virgil Grace was local, and he might even now have a solid idea of who killed Tom. I wouldn’t discover that until he made an arrest. I sure hoped it wouldn’t be me led away in handcuffs. I had to believe Sheriff Grace would realize that an argument in town in front of witnesses did not make me guilty of murder.