Bran New Death(45)

I put up my hands for silence, let Lizzie finish her last bite, and said, calmly, “Who do you think killed Tom Turner?”

“That weirdo Gordy Shute,” she mumbled.

“Gordy?” I was puzzled. “Why would Gordy kill Tom Turner?”

Lizzie looked calmly across the table to McGill. “Why don’t you tell her?”

The real estate agent looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lizzie.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on! I’ve only been here a year, and I know about this old crap. Everyone knows that Tom was always a big old bully, and that he used to pick on Gordy back in high school.”

“Where did you hear that?” I asked. “That was forever ago, if they were teenagers.”

“It’s a small town,” Lizzie said. “People still talk about the earthquake of 1957 as if it happened last week.”

I blew air out through pursed lips. The amount I didn’t know about living in a small town . . . well, it was a tonnage. I eyed her with some respect; the kid was smart. Could a grudge live that long in the incubating atmosphere of Autumn Vale? Did proximity fester rage?

Shilo was staring at McGill. “Did you go to school with them, Tom and Gordy and Zeke?”

He was kind of pinkish as he said, “I went to school in another town, a . . . a religious school.”

He seemed embarrassed. Maybe in Autumn Vale that made him an oddball? In New York, every second kid went to Hebrew school, a Roman Catholic academy, or a new age arts school. “Just because Tom bullied Gordy,” I said, “it doesn’t mean that Gordy would want to kill the guy, Lizzie.” To her, high school was the current state of her suffering, but about fifteen years later? Folks might remember that Tom was a bully, but the feelings from past events could not be running as hot. It was possible though, that there was a more current tension between them.

“Whatever,” Lizzie said, shrugging her shoulders. “Are you going to show me around this place, or what?”

I stared at her, bemused by her moodiness. “How old are you?”

“How old are you?” she shot back.

Shilo suppressed a snort.

McGill, two spots of red on his gaunt cheeks, said, “Lizzie, you might want to try being polite for a change.”

“She has a point,” I said, watching her. “Why should she answer, unless I’m willing to do the same? I’m thirty-nine. And three-quarters.”

Her eyes widened. “Geez, my mom is only thirty-two. I turned fifteen a month ago.”

“Happy belated birthday. Was the camera a gift?”

“You could say that.”

Not exactly a straightforward answer, but maybe it was none of my business. I was not going to be bullied in my own castle, however, by a teenager with bad manners. “Lizzie, you might want to consider this; you have a long life to live ahead of you. At the rate you’re offending people, you’re going to run out of folk to talk to before you’re twenty.”

Shilo snickered and McGill smiled.

“That doesn’t matter because I’m going to be out of this hick town the moment I turn eighteen.”

“Where are you going to go?” Shilo asked.

“New York, where people actually have lives,” she grumbled, slumping down in her chair.

“Look, I know being fifteen can suck at times,” I said. “Been there, done that. But like it or not, you’re stuck here for at least another three years, right? Not everyone is out to make you miserable, and it’s up to you to figure out who might be an ally, and who just needs to be ignored.”

She was silent, for once, and looked like she might actually be thinking about that.

“Gogi Grace is an ally; you’ve already figured that out, I think.”

More silence.

“Besides, even in New York you have to be nice to people sometimes,” I said. “Now, do you want to rephrase your request for a tour?”

She watched my eyes, fiddling with her camera. “Okay. Can I see the castle? Please?”

“That’s better. Sure.” I left McGill and Shilo to flirt cautiously in the kitchen, and I took the kid on a tour. I even let her take photos. As we left one of the bedrooms—not mine or Shilo’s . . . I left those out of the tour—I said to her, “No Facebooking them, okay? No sharing them at all without my permission, and that goes for anything on my property.” I thought it best to lay the groundwork so there would be no misunderstandings later.

She shrugged. “My grandma doesn’t have Internet access,” she said, “and no one will buy me a cell phone. So I don’t have Facebook or anything. I’m a pariah.”