“Yeah. That note I got . . . it said to meet him at the hunting cabin on the Turner Construction land—it’s an old cabin back in the woods where he used to take me when I was a kid—but like I said, he never showed.”
“You really didn’t see him until yesterday.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure the note was from him. I just didn’t know!”
“Look, do you want to come in for a cup of tea, or coffee?” I said, waving my hand toward the castle.
“No, I’m on my way to the hospital to pick up my dad. They say he can go home now.”
“He is one tough bird,” I said in admiration. “Did he really live out in the woods all that time?”
“Sometimes in the woods, sometimes he broke into sheds to sleep, sometimes he even went back to the house, but he didn’t dare stay there.” She shook her head. “Can you believe it? Dinah had him convinced Russian gangsters were after him.”
“Russian gangsters?” I wanted to laugh, but that would have been inappropriate.
“I know, right?” she said, shaking her head with a smile on her pink-cheeked face. “It was a couple of guys she worked with. I remember them . . . they came into town with fake accents and black suits.” She laughed out loud, a great honk of sound.
I could see Lizzie in her; the Turner gene pool was strong in both of them. “Dinah had him reeled in.”
“Still, who believes that kind of crap? I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on him, but he should have talked to me.” She shifted the bakery box from one arm to the other.
“He probably didn’t want you to be involved.” Or he didn’t want his beloved daughter to know about the mess he had made of things. “If you don’t mind me asking, did he know about what she was doing, at any point?” I had been wondered about that; was Rusty aware of the illegal nature of what Dinah was doing from the start, or was he totally oblivious?
“Not really.” She grimaced and shrugged. “He kind of knew about some of it, but she told him there was a legal way to make money by setting up some corporations. He and poor old Melvyn had been working on a plan to develop this place to be Wynter Acres.” She shuffled in place, kicking at the flagstones that edged the drive. “Tom drew up a plan, and got his buddy Junior to give it the green light, and it got bundled into the whole scam operation. My dad found out, but he didn’t want Tom to get in trouble. Then Melvyn got wind of it, got POed, filed a lawsuit to stop them using his name, and threatened to expose the whole thing.” She shook her head.
That explained the shoddy plat. “It’s a mess,” I said, “and it’s going to take time to sort out.” Junior Bradley was going to be in some trouble, too, it sounded like.
“You better believe it,” she said fervently.
“But the good thing is, it looks like we’ll be able to get rid of any outstanding lawsuits between us. We’ll talk about it another day.”
She nodded. “Anyway, when Dad got scared by her fake Russian mobsters, Dinah told him he should use his hunting cabin in the woods, just disappear for a while. She’d help him out. He took money out of the bank and gave it to her to help him. She supposedly used it for food. He lived in there for a long time, and she kept upping the ante, telling him the thugs were back, and if he came out of hiding they might kidnap me to try to pressure him.”
“She is some piece of work!”
With a glowering look that reminded me of Lizzie, Binny said, “I can’t wait to see her in court for murdering Tom!” She hung her head for a moment. “Anyway, poor Melvyn must have been suspicious, and I guess he told Dinah that he was going to the cops to tell them what he knew.”
“He got a bank statement in the name of Turner Wynter Global Enterprise, one of Dinah’s shell companies,” I explained. “He was suspicious, all right. All that time he had thought Rusty was in on it, but I think he finally figured out it was Dinah at the heart of it. Especially after Rusty disappeared.”
“Melvyn’s death scared Dad. He heard about it, and I think that’s when he began to wonder if Dinah was scamming him. He left the hunting cabin in the late spring, from what he told me last night, and Dinah has been looking for him ever since.”
“That’s why she kept showing up on her dirt bike in my woods! If I’d known it was her . . . but everyone looks alike, on a dirt bike in a helmet.”
“Anyway, that’s why I want to give this to you,” she said, shoving the box at me.
I stared at the box, which clunked when it moved. Okay, so not cannoli. Darn!
“It’s the Italian teapot you admired in my shop. It’s something Dinah gave to me, and I don’t want it. She said it was valuable . . . real valuable. Told me to keep it on a shelf in the shop for good luck. But you like it and have no connection with it so . . . would you take it? Partly as thanks for . . . for everything?”
And partly just so she didn’t have to look at such a vivid reminder of Dinah Hooper and all she represented, I thought. “I’d love it,” I said sincerely. “I’ll look after it well.”
“I’d better go,” she said, looking off to where Zeke and Gordy were taking a break in the shade. “It’s looking better out here. Not so much like an abandoned graveyard.”
Which reminded me . . . “Binny, there’s one thing I still can’t figure out . . . why was Tom digging holes on my property? Did he or did he not know that Rusty was still alive?”
“I just don’t know,” she said on a sigh. “I can’t believe he knew Dad was alive, or he’d have told me. Maybe Dinah will spill her guts.”
“If Dinty was alive you’d have him to contend with, too.”
“I know, but Dad still feels bad about that. Dinty was a lug, but I don’t think he knew what his mom was up to. My dad has a feeling Dinah told Dinty that he—Dad—was trying to kill her, and that’s why Dinty went after him.”
“Hey, it was him or Dinty. I just don’t understand why Dinah stayed around Autumn Vale for so long. It would have made sense for her to tie up loose ends and take off, start fresh somewhere else.”
Binny shrugged, then snuck a look at my face, and looked away, shuffling awkwardly. “I gotta get going. I’m going to pick up my dad, and we have a lot to talk about. Uh . . . Gogi Grace said . . . she told me something in confidence, something she says you already know.”
I waited.
She eyed me again, but then broke eye contact and looked up at the sky. “I guess . . . that girl who has been hanging around, that Lizzie Proctor . . . she’s Tom’s daughter, Gogi says. Now I get why Emerald kept coming into the bakery. She always looked like she wanted to talk. Maybe she was trying to get the guts to tell Tom the truth. I only knew her as an old high school girlfriend of Tom’s, but I guess they were more.”
I believed that Tom already knew the truth, or suspected, and that’s why he wanted to make money, to help his daughter, but I didn’t say anything. “Have you told your dad yet?”
She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “I want to be sure, first.”
“Gogi is sure and Hannah is sure; I think they both have good instincts about it all. By the way, Lizzie took some pictures out here of the castle and promised to take them in to the library to show Hannah. Can you—”
“I’ll make sure she does it,” said Binny, already in stern-aunt mode.
They were all going to be okay.
*
TWO DAYS OF HECTIC ACTIVITY FOLLOWED. I BAKED muffins at the bakeshop, fielded a few irate phone calls from Janice Grover (she thought I was behind the tub of boiling-hot water Simon Grover and his bank were now in; I set her straight, then went there to buy some stuff), orchestrated, along with Gogi Grace, an emotional meeting among Lizzie Proctor, her grandmother, and mother, and Binny and Rusty Turner. Among all the bustle, I chauffeured Pish back and forth to the police station. My dear friend was “helping” federal officers as they tried to figure out, with the assistance of Isadore Openshaw and a sniveling, frightened Simon Grover, all the financial monkey business Dinah Hooper had created. The woman had been busy with several different scams, among them, ones using the US Postal Service, which, ironically, could wind up costing her as much jail time as the murder charges would net.