“I don’t doubt it.”
“I want to find out about my uncle’s dealings with the Autumn Vale Community Bank . . . you know, whether there were any outstanding loans, or anything like that. Isadore is either stonewalling me, doesn’t like me, or . . . I don’t know.”
My cell phone chimed and I jumped. It wasn’t a sound I was used to hearing in the dead zone that was Autumn Vale. It was Dr. Ling, telling me that Becket was going to be all right. He was exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry, but recovering rapidly. I could take him home.
I sat staring at the phone for a moment. “I guess I have a cat,” I finally said.
“Let me think about things,” Gogi said, “and try to figure out if there are any details I should have shared with Virgil. He really is trying to solve this, you know. Tom was his friend. He doesn’t show it, but this has upset him badly.”
A big, black car pulled up to the home, and an older gentleman got out, grabbing an old-fashioned doctor’s bag from the backseat along with a briefcase.
“That’s the doctor,” Gogi said. She stood, and I did, too. She reached out and pulled me into a hug, then held me away from her. “I hope you figure out a way to stay in Autumn Vale, Merry. This is a good place to live. It took me a while to see that, but I finally did.”
As she met the doctor, hugging him briefly—she was definitely a hugger—and then walked up the path with him, I remembered what the postmistress had implied, but dismissed it. Gogi Grace had not knocked off her husbands for the insurance money and inheritance. It was patently ridiculous.
Chapter Twenty-three
AT THE VET’S office, I was given Becket’s collar and the bill. I paid Dr. Ling’s assistant using a credit card; I needed to save my cash to pay for local labor, because I didn’t think Gordy and Zeke—if they ever decided to come out to work at the castle—would take MasterCard. I bought a case of cat food, too, and litter and a box. It was all in the backseat, while Becket snoozed on the towel on the passenger seat. The vet said he was still weak and would need several days to fully recover. I petted his head and he opened one eye, meowing weakly.
As I drove through town, I noticed Simon Grover getting into what I presumed was his car. It was a vintage, black Lincoln with some dull-black paint concealing what looked like old damage on one side. Damage, on Simon Grover’s black car. It gave me food for thought, I can tell you, since I was still puzzling out the first assignment given to me in Autumn Vale by Gogi Grace: to find out if my uncle was murdered.
I followed Simon out of town—not on purpose, but we were evidently both going the same way—wondering where he and his wife lived. We ascended up and out of Autumn Vale, me following him, still not on purpose. When he finally turned off the highway, though, I was curious, so I turned, too, and followed him at a discreet distance. After a while I wondered, was he even going home? I could be following him all the way to Rochester to visit his troubled son, Booker. That was not a good idea with a sick cat on the front seat. I was slowing, ready to do a U-turn, when I saw him pull into a drive some distance down the road.
This was where the bank manager and Janice lived? It was a side-split ranch house with a double garage, tidy and modern. I had pictured a woman like Janice Grover rattling around in a great, shambling Victorian, stuff everywhere, her love of junk evident in her home, as it was in her shop.
But wait . . . someone was coming out of the house, and it wasn’t Janice. The hefty bank manager heaved himself out of the car and another man approached, took a briefcase from Grover, and the two men shook hands. The other man was Andrew Silvio. They strode into the open garage together.
I had no excuse for going up there, and had a sick cat that was beginning to wake up and meow. So I eased back onto the road and drove past the house, looking for a place to turn around, as I pondered what I had just seen. There were a hundred innocent explanations, I supposed. Grover could easily have retained Silvio for some legal work. Silvio could be legal counsel for the Brotherhood of the Falcon. Or he could even be a member of the organization. Wasn’t that what businessmen did, join fraternal groups to make contacts, network?
I turned and cruised back past the house, but there was no activity that I could see. What I kept coming back to was the badly repaired damage to Grover’s black sedan. Did it mean something, or was that pretty normal? In the past week or so, I had noticed a lot of cars with damage on them. One local was driving around with a smashed windshield, the result, I was told, of a run-in with a deer. I just didn’t know. My uncle’s accident was nine months ago; if Grover had been the one to push him off the road, surely he would have gotten the damage to his car fixed right away? And though I had the feeling that Virgil had left the casebook on my uncle’s accident open for a reason, he must have noticed the bank manager’s damaged front panel.
As I pulled up my weedy lane, some uniformed officers were packing it in, closing the doors on the back of the state police van and winding up electrical cord. Virgil Grace was talking to a couple of detectives, but it had the appearance of a conversation that was coming to an end. McGill was, to my surprise, filling in the last hole, except for the one poor Tom Turner died in. He and Shilo had made great progress.
I didn’t know what Shilo and I would do without McGill around. He jumped down from the excavator, and grabbed the crate of cat food and other stuff while I carried Becket into the house, gently toting him upstairs, and doing the necessary things, like setting up the cat litter box I had bought, putting down bowls of food and water, and making a bed for him near the radiator in my room, where it was warm. I made sure he was comfortable, then closed the door behind me and descended.
Outside, it looked barren. Deserted. “Where’s the sheriff?” I asked McGill, who was locking down the excavator.
“He’s gone.”
Gritting my teeth, I slapped my thigh. “Darn! I wanted to talk to him.” Really, I had wanted to tell him what I had seen, but what did I have to report? That I had seen the bank manager and the local legal eagle together? Big whoop, as Shilo would say.
Speaking of . . . Shilo came floating out of the castle, a skirt and pretty, gauzy top on, with a jacket over it and a scarf fluttering from under the lapels. She took McGill’s hand and he stared down at her with a goofy smile. “We’re going to have dinner with McGill’s mom. Is that okay with you, Merry?”
“Of course, sweetie.” I could not believe the change in my friend. What would happen if McGill was the one? Could I picture her becoming an Autumn Vale businessman’s wife? Maybe even a mother?
“Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you alone with a sick cat.”
“You two go on. Have fun.”
Still, my friend hesitated. “Do you want to come with us?” she asked. “We can fit you into the car. Or take mine.”
“No, I’m beat. I think I’ll go to bed with a book.”
“You go on to the car, Shi. I’d like to talk to Merry,” McGill said.
Shilo smiled and floated over to the car, leaning against it, elbows on top of the tiny roof, staring off to the woods.
Tugging at the cuffs of his jacket, the real estate agent looked uneasy. “Merry, I need to ask you a couple of questions. And . . . and to say something.”
I matched my expression to his serious tone. “What is it, McGill?”