Bran New Death(47)

Who wanted him dead? I had a host of possibilities.

Junior Bradley had to be at the top of my list because of his fight with Tom at that bar. Dinah Hooper, his father’s girlfriend . . . well, I didn’t actually know of any reason, but there were such close ties there. One man in her life was missing and one was dead. She had to be a suspect.

I guess I had to add Gordy Shute to the mix, given Lizzie’s description of the torment Tom had inflicted on him, and even Binny made the list. She didn’t appear to be on particularly close terms with her brother. Neither of those seemed likely to me, though.

This was ridiculous. I squeezed my eyes shut. Why had I promised Hannah I would try to figure out who did it? I had a feeling that whenever Hannah wanted something, she would just turn her luminous gray eyes on the person, and they would agree to anything. Even she hadn’t been able to answer the one outstanding question that was bugging me the most; what was Tom Turner digging on my grounds for? It was absurd to think he was looking for his father’s body. Only Binny apparently believed that.

And I had told Gogi I’d try to find out if my uncle was murdered. Melvyn was eighty and driving along a treacherous, icy road. Why did it have to be murder? And was I really going to play Nancy Drew?

When I opened my eyes, it was to find Virgil Grace standing before me, a mixture of sympathy and weariness on his face. “Hi, Sheriff. Sorry. I guess I drifted off for a moment just standing here.”

“I don’t blame you. We’re pretty much finished there, but I’m putting crime-scene tape around the hole and I’d appreciate it if you could keep away from it until I say different. I know Jack wants to get going on filling it in, but he’s going to have to find another excavator for now, and work on other holes.”

“Another excavator?” That was bad news. I was prepared for a delay, but not the barring of the little excavator’s use altogether. “For how long?” I asked, dismayed.

“Can’t say,” he grunted, his tone clipped. “Until I say so.” He turned to go.

“Sheriff, hey! I’m sorry, you know . . . about Tom Turner. Were you and he friends?”

He had turned to watch me, and shrugged. “Kinda. I mean, we were on the high school football team together. We hung out, but not in recent years. He passed his time with a different crowd.”

“With guys like Junior Bradley?”

“What do you know about that?” he asked, squinting at me as the sun set behind him, the gleaming shards of light streaking his dark hair with silver. It made him look older and, to me, more attractive. He moved back to stand in front of me, looking down into my eyes with his curious, flat gaze.

Behind me, in the house, I could hear Shilo clattering up and down stairs, yelling, “Magic! Magic!” like a demented conjurer. The sheriff had lines under his eyes, and I almost reached out to smooth his ruffled hair back from his temple. I shivered. “What do I know about Junior Bradley? Just what I told you earlier, that I heard he and Tom got into it at some sleazy dive bar. Why?”

“Nothing.”

But there was something, and I’d swear it was more than just a bar fight over a woman. I stared at him, unblinking.

“Look, I know this is awkward for you, being new here, and the owner of this place,” he said, waving to include all of Wynter Castle and its environs. “But just let me do my job, which is to figure out who killed Tom Turner. Believe me, I want to know. Tom was a good guy. You didn’t know him that way, but I did.”

“I heard he was a bully in high school.”

Virgil shrugged. “High school was a long time ago. People change.”

“One more question,” I said as he started to walk away, and he turned back again. “Do you think that Tom’s murder has anything at all to do with his father’s disappearance?”

“Disappearance? You mean Rusty? So you believe that story that Dinah’s spinning, that Rusty just up and disappeared. He left his son and daughter and business and just evaporated, poof, into a puff of smoke.”

That statement told me more than anything about his own beliefs on the matter. “Okay, so you think Rusty Turner is dead. Is Tom’s murder a part of the whole mess? Do you suspect Dinah?”

“Not specifically. And I don’t know where Rusty is, dead or alive. Other than that, I can’t comment,” he said, turning away and stalking toward his cruiser. “Lock your doors at night,” he hollered back at me, then got in, slammed the door, gunned the motor, and skidded out of my weedy drive with a screech of tires. Was he angry? At what?

“Man, he was pissed,” Shi said from behind me.