Bran New Death(53)

Binny was already at the door of the trailer riffling through a ring of keys and trying them. “I don’t know what key works,” she lamented. “These are Tom’s keys; the cops gave them to me.”

“But you have a key to the office yourself, right?” I asked, remembering her refusal to give Tom the office key for Dinah.

“I did have one, but I’ve . . . uh . . . misplaced it,” she said.

Misplaced it?

“Let me try,” Shilo said. She took the ring and studied the keys by the yellow bug light over the trailer office door, then she bent over and stared into the lock. She took one key in hand, inserted it, and voilà, the door opened.

Binny gaped, mouth open. I shrugged and said, “Don’t ask, because I don’t know how she does it.”

“I’m a gypsy,” Shilo said, her grin wide. “We’re good with locks.”

We entered, and Binny flicked on a light switch; fluorescents shuddered and blinked into wavering brightness. The place was a mess; papers everywhere, trash bins overturned, surfaces heaped with junk. “Somebody has trashed the place,” I said, aghast.

Binny looked around. “No, this is pretty much how it always looks.”

Her voice sounded a little odd, and I shot a quick look over at her, but her face was blank. “Dinah Hooper worked here, right?”

Binny nodded. “She was the office manager; took care of day-to-day stuff.”

“And she was okay with this mess?”

“She had her hands full lately just trying to keep the company going. Dinah and Tom . . . since Dad has been gone, they didn’t work together too well, you know?”

There was an old sofa bed in one corner, and it looked like someone used it to sleep on. I hoped some bum wasn’t using the place to hide out, but there was no evidence of that. I suspected Tom had been using it as a crash pad. As far as that went, I didn’t even know where he lived, or if he used the office as his full-time apartment. “Had your brother been sleeping here, do you think?”

Binny seemed reluctant to answer, but she nodded. “I think he may have been. He was living at the house with Dad, but then Dinah kind of semi-moved in, and he started to bunk out here, sometimes.”

“I thought Dinah and your dad didn’t live together?”

“They didn’t officially live together, but she stayed there sometimes.”

“Do you live in your father’s house?”

“Nope. I live over the bakery. It’s more convenient. Dad’s house is in town, but it’s a ways away, at the other end. We own the building my bakery is in, so I took one of the apartments upstairs. Gordy and Zeke share the other one, a two-bedroom over the back.”

“So . . . no one is living in your dad’s house right now.”

She shook her head. Tears began welling in her eyes, and I knew I had to back off. Shilo, meanwhile, while Binny and I were talking and looking around, had sat down at one of the desks and turned on the computer. She was a card game addict, so she was probably taking the opportunity to play solitaire.

“What were they doing businesswise before Tom died?” I asked, scanning the junk, trying to make sense of the place.

“I think they were doing work for the Brotherhood of the Falcon. They needed the roof fixed on the hall and some other repairs.”

“Really?” I remembered Gordy’s wild theories about the Brotherhood; should I be dismissing out of hand what I didn’t know a thing about? Then I recalled a random comment made by someone or other. “Your dad was a member, right?”

She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. Again. She turned away and stood, clenching and unclenching her fists.

I hastily moved on. “They weren’t doing anything else? Did Tom work with anyone?”

“Not lately,” she said, turning back to me, having mastered her emotions. “Not as far as I know. I think they used to hire guys as they needed them. Neither he or Dad talk . . . talked . . . about the business with me.”

I looked around. The faux wood–paneled trailer itself was long and narrow, with two desks right near the door, and an area at the back that held a washroom, a kitchenette, and the ratty sofa bed. In between there was a drafting desk by the only window, and along one wall a large, wooden cabinet with shallow drawers that I knew would hold blueprints, maps, and plans. I worked in a planning office when I was a teenager, just as a gopher. For a while I even wanted to be an interior decorator, and thought getting the job at the planning office was a first step. Fetching coffee didn’t teach me a whole lot, but snooping did.

“I want to see the plans for the development of Wynter Acres. Do you know if Turner Wynter ran their business out of these same offices?”