Made sense to me.
But as I had been pondering, Dinah had not been quiescent. She was gone from her spot, and I didn’t know where. Damn! I could run right into her while trying to escape. How was I going to lead her away from poor old Rusty, and yet stay safe myself?
I had to get moving. I took a deep breath, scanned the forest around me for any revealing blonde, piled-up hair, and began to steal through the forest like a jungle cat. Okay, maybe not like a jungle cat, but I sure hoped not like a charging rhino. It wasn’t going to be easy, because I couldn’t use the path, even if I could have found it. I spotted Becket. He looked tired and cranky, distinctly in a bad mood, and I didn’t blame him. For the first time, it occurred to me that all those times I had caught sight of him, he was trying to get me to follow him. Had he been trying to lead me to Rusty, to get him help? Stranger things had happened.
I was hearing rustling from everywhere, now, and didn’t quite know what to make of the sounds. In the forest with me were Dinah, Rusty, and Becket. The cat I could see, but the two humans eluded me. I hoped that Rusty had either gotten away, or was hunkered down somewhere safe. This was exhausting. I stopped, trying to catch my breath, wishing I had worn yoga pants or anything more forgiving than form-fitting DKNY jeans.
Needing to get the heck out of there so I could call Virgil and tell him about the nutbar in the woods, I put some speed on, and began to climb over fallen branches and crash through foliage at a faster pace. I looked over my shoulder, as I went, fearing the worst, that Dinah, rifle cocked, was following me or drawing a bead, or whatever expert markswomen did.
And that’s probably why I almost ran right into her.
“Stop!” she yelled.
I whirled to find her on the path toward which I was headed, rifle up, aimed right at me. Damn. “Hi, Dinah.” I caught my breath and considered my options. Groveling while begging for my life seemed about the only one.
“You should have taken my deal.”
“I didn’t actually hear a deal,” I said evenly, trying not to let my eye flick behind her, where I saw a figure creeping up on her with all the stealth a seventy-or-so-year-old man can muster. Inside, I was screaming No, Rusty, don’t do it! But I tried not to show it. “Uh, so, I guess it’s silly to even think that you will just leave and let me go?”
Regret in her pale eyes, she shook her head. “No. Can’t do it.”
“The body in the tent is your son, Dinty?”
She nodded, her eyes blurring. “Idiot. I told him to go take care of Rusty, but he must have underestimated the old coot. I’ve been looking for him for months; figured he’d taken off. He’s disappeared on me before.”
She hadn’t known Dinty was dead—or at least hadn’t been sure—until Lizzie and I stumbled over the body. So . . . “Why try to kill Rusty in the first place?”
“I wasn’t ready to leave town yet. I thought there was more I could squeeze out of this operation. It took so much to set it up!” She sighed. “I should have left town a month ago, I guess. Look, Merry, I don’t want to kill you, but you haven’t left me much choice.”
“You have a choice; don’t kill me. Leave town.”
“Not an option,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to do this,” she repeated. “I’m not a killer.”
Rusty was getting closer, a rock in his hand. Damn. What were the chances this would come off okay? Not great. “You keep saying you’re not a killer, but you did kill Tom Turner, and on my property!”
“I had to. He was trying to blackmail me. Once he figured out what I was doing—and that took a while, fortunately, because he was one dumb jerk—he wanted a cut just for keeping his mouth shut. That effing lawyer was figuring things out, and set Tom on my trail.”
Stupid Tom! Why didn’t he just take what he’d learned back to his employer? “So he wanted money?”
She nodded. “Like I’d pay for him to keep his mouth shut. He said he needed cash for something important.”
“What about my uncle? Did you kill him, too?”
“Your uncle was an interfering old fool and deserved what he got,” she said, raising the gun and sighting. “This is not personal, I just—”
Rusty leaped, stumbled, and the rock he had intended to bring down on her head instead bounced harmlessly to the ground and rolled away as the old guy fell to his knees. But she was momentarily distracted. I charged and using all my weight, bulldozed her, knocking her to the ground where she lay, stunned. Sometimes there are benefits to being bigger than your average ballerina. I snatched up the gun as Rusty, his hermit face twisted into a grimace of hatred, scrabbled over, picked up the rock, and brought it down on her head.
“Stop!” I yelped, but he had knocked her out.
“That’s for Tom,” he hollered, and dissolved into weeping into his filthy hands.
Autumn Vale . . . the only spot in upstate, surely, where a Shakespearean drama, with lovers killing each other’s sons, played out in the woods surrounding a castle. Weirdness compounded weirdness. I leaned over Dinah; she was breathing but was unconscious. I had the rifle, so I didn’t think she’d be any more danger even if she managed to get up and follow us. I grabbed the old man by the arm, hauled him to his feet, and said, “Come on, Rusty, we need to get out of here. If I’m right, we’re only a little ways away from the castle grounds.”
It took longer than I thought, but we finally emerged from the woods and started across the weedy expanse. The heavy sound of a motor vibrating the ground startled me as we broke through the last line of trees; lo and behold, there was Gordy atop a tractor, hauling a piece of machinery that was mowing and piling the dry grass into neat rows. His buddy, Zeke, was standing to one side, watching, gesticulating, and yelling critiques. I stood stock-still at the awesome sight, just as, sweeping up the drive, came my rental car and behind it, Virgil Grace’s sheriff’s car. I almost dissolved into tears of gratitude.
Sometimes your prayers are heard, I guess. It wasn’t until later that I found out the serendipitous arrival of the sheriff was owing to Shilo’s gypsy instincts. She just felt something was wrong—bad vibrations, she called it—so they stopped in Autumn Vale and, miracle of miracles, convinced Virgil to follow them to Wynter Castle. At that moment, though, I was just grateful for the “coincidence.”
I dropped the damned rifle and helped Rusty over to the cop car. Virgil made him get in and sit while he called for medical backup. I babbled about Dinah in the woods unconscious, telling the sheriff about all she had confessed to, and Virgil assured me, as he called for his deputy, that they would be able to find our path, given that we had crashed through the brush with all the delicacy of a bull elephant.
Finally I turned, looking toward my friends. Pish, darling man, held out his arms and I staggered wearily over to him; he folded me into a hug. I was about to exclaim that I needed to find poor Becket when the ginger cat strolled nonchalantly out of the woods and picked his way through the long grass, eyeing the giant tractor and mower. It was silent right then, while Gordy and Zeke gawked at all the action. It would be all over Autumn Vale by noon. McGill was on his way over to the fellows, and I hoped he cautioned them to keep their mouths shut until we figured out the whole mess.
A half hour later, Rusty Turner had been taken to the hospital in Ridley Ridge, accompanied by his tearful daughter, Binny, who had screamed up to the castle in her van after hearing the news. She babbled to us that she had actually known/hoped/prayed he was alive for a few days, because he’d managed to get a note to her, asking her to meet him. That was the day she tootled off, leaving me in charge of the bakery. Unfortunately, terrified and stalked by a half-crazed Dinah, Rusty did not make the meeting. She was left frightened for her father, but not sure who to trust. In retrospect, if she had told Virgil about the note he could have taken care of everything, but Binny didn’t know what her father had done, at that point, and was afraid of setting the law on him.