Bran New Death(50)

“Found what?”

But she was mute, just shaking her head. I was touched and sad for her. When my grandmother died and then my mom, six months later, I was a mess. Virtually the same thing was happening to her now at just a little older than I had been. “What did you find?” I urged again. “Something that leads you to believe your dad is alive? Why don’t we talk about this whole mess?”

The shop door jangled, indicating customers. She grabbed a rag and blotted her eyes, settled her expression, and headed out to the shop. I could hear her talking, and then the door jangled again a couple of times, quickly. I tried to imagine what it was that had suddenly given her hope that her father was alive. When things quieted down, she came back to the kitchen, more composed. I stood, but just then the bells over the door jangled once again. She headed to the door.

“Look, Binny,” I said, stopping her by putting my hand on her shoulder. “I know what you’re going through. Or at least . . . I know some of what you’re going through. I have a lot of questions, but you’re getting busy.” I felt her tense, needing to tend to her shop. “Why don’t you . . . would it be too hard for you to come out to the castle after the shop closes? Come out for dinner?” Tom’s body was gone, but I wasn’t sure she could handle coming to the site of his murder.

She nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I will. I know the way.”

We set a time, and I left the shop with an agreement that I would come out the next day to use her ovens to bake muffins.

But I wasn’t heading home. I took out my cell phone and miracle of miracles, it decided to work! I punched in a number from memory.

“Jack McGill here,” came the real estate agent’s voice.

“Hey, McGill, it’s Merry Wynter. I wanted to check . . .”

“I’m not available right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get right back to you!”

Darned voice mail! I hated the kind that fooled you into thinking you’d reached the person you wanted. I clicked my phone off and stuffed it back in my purse. McGill had said that Junior Bradley was fine, and who would know better? The township zoning offices were on a short, dead-end street off Abenaki, so I walked there after stopping back into Binny’s Bakery, leaving word with her where I was headed in case Shilo stopped by looking for me.

The door listed office hours as eight a.m. to four p.m.; I rapped and walked in. It was a dusty, dank, little space, no light, little air. Junior Bradley sat at the only desk, a metal monstrosity from the fifties or earlier, and glared at a computer screen that showed a FreeCell game in mid-play.

“Hi,” I said brightly, determined to be friendly even though his expression as he looked up at me was as if he had bitten into a lemon. “We haven’t formally met yet, but I’m Merry Wynter,” I reminded him, “Melvyn Wynter’s great-niece and heir.” I moved forward, hand stuck out, but he ignored it.

“Okay, so what do you want?”

He wasn’t going to be polite. All right, kill him with kindness, as my grandmother used to say. “I’m so sorry. I know you must be devastated, having just lost your best friend, Tom Turner. And how sad that your last dealing with him was a fistfight!”

His face turned bright red, but he only sputtered and shook his head. I sat down in the uncomfortable, rickety chair across from him and crossed my legs. The chair wobbled precariously, and I quickly uncrossed my legs and sat straight. I did not want to end up on the floor, legs in the air; so undignified. “Look, I’m not here to talk about Tom Turner or his death,” I said. Mendacity suited me at that moment. “It’s none of my business. But I am here to find out some information about my property. I understand that Turner Wynter Construction had some kind of plan to build a subdivision, or neighborhood . . . or something, on the castle property. I’ve begun to look through my uncle’s papers, but they’re a mess, and it’s going to take me a while. Can you tell me anything about it?”

He stared at his computer screen for a long minute, then pasted a weak smile on his pale face. “I can try to help,” he said. “I’m just real torn up about Tom. We were kids together, you know?”

My bull-crap radar was beeping loudly, and I never ignore that. “I had heard you were best friends, but that things had changed between you lately.”

He sighed. “Yeah, we were friends, and rivals. We dated the same girls, played the same games, sometimes on the same side, sometimes against each other. It was never serious, you know, when we fought over women.”

“Like the last time?”