“Grand Tiercel. And the head of the local Old Duffers chapter—though they never get off their fat behinds to golf—and bank manager. Man never stops going to meetings. You’d think he was afraid to come home!”
One look at her formidable person, today clothed all in fuchsia, her shelflike bosom jutting like a magnificent ship’s prow, and I wondered, was her husband as afraid of Mrs. Janice Grover as everyone else seemed to be? I remembered her remark about Isadore Openshaw’s lack of a sense of humor; she had said maybe that’s what happened when you worked in a bank too long. Was her husband as humorless as Ms. Openshaw? Or just terrified of the indomitable Mrs. Grover? “Bank manager,” I mused, and I remembered the stodgy little edifice I had passed. “Is that the Autumn Vale Community Bank?”
“That is the one and only bank in this town, in case you hadn’t noticed, and the one everyone uses. Most don’t want to go all the way to Ridley Ridge, where there are a couple of branches of the major banks. Autumn Vale is kind of . . . insular.”
“That’s one thing to call it.”
“Weird being another? I thought that when we moved here twenty years ago,” she said, moving a poodle figurine an inch on a piecrust tabletop, leaving a clean ring in the dust. “But since then, I’ve come to embrace its oddities. It’s freeing in a way,” she said, adjusting her parrot earrings. They matched the fuchsia dress nicely. “You’re the Wynter heiress, right?”
Heiress? Moi? I had never thought of myself that way. Could you be broke and still be an heiress? “I guess you could say that. I’m Melvyn Wynter’s great-niece, and his heir.” She was someone else in town I thought I’d enjoy getting to know. I do enjoy the offbeat. Maybe it was all those years living in Greenwich Village, though the neighborhood had become awfully stodgy of late, not like it was when I was a teenager. Perhaps I did belong in Autumn Vale, where weird was a way of life. “You seemed to feel, when you talked to us in the restaurant the other day, that Melvyn’s death, Rusty’s disappearance, and Tom’s murder are all connected. Who do you think did it?”
“Not a clue, my dear girl. Not a clue! But it seems like an awful lot of tragedy for one small family and business, unless you’re in the middle of a Greek drama or a Shakespeare play. Or one of those cozy mysteries, where the residents of a tiny town are bopped off one by one, and yet no one gets the willies and leaves.”
“Do you know anything about my uncle Melvyn’s accident?”
“Not much. It was Simon—my husband, you know—who called the police.”
Chapter Sixteen
I WAS SHOCKED by that, but tried not to show it. “Really?”
“It was early in the morning, about six or so, and Simon was just coming back from the city, where one of my sons had some kind of crisis. He saw poor old Mel’s car off the road and down the embankment. Well, he got out and shouted down, but no answer. He came home and asked what he ought to do, and I said ‘Call the police, you idiot’!” She laughed, a great honking hoot that was out of place given the subject matter. “For all he’s a good, solid guy, Simon can be a bit of a dope.”
My mind whirled with thoughts; had Simon Grover been the one who forced my uncle off the road, by accident or on purpose? I mean, who comes back from a trip to see their son at six in the morning? Was he drunk? Was he out to get Melvyn?
What color car did Simon Grover, solid citizen, drive?
“So, your husband was coming back from seeing your son?” I asked slowly, watching her face. “Weird time of day, wasn’t it?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. Booker is a good boy, but he was having girlfriend troubles and called, upset, wanting to talk. Simon drove up to Rochester to see him but didn’t want to miss work, so he started back early.”
“He must have been tired, and then to see Melvyn’s car off the road . . . did he stop to try to help?”
“Well of course! I said that already, right? He shouted. But Simon’s in no shape to scale down an embankment. He came home and we called Virgil.” She paused and eyed me. Slowly and with great emphasis, she said, “The sheriff told us there was no way poor old Melvyn would have been alive, even if Simon had been able to make it down the embankment.”
Well, that was clear enough, but still . . . how could I ask about her husband’s car color? There didn’t seem to be any way without showing my suspicion, but it was the kind of thing I ought to be able to find out fairly easily. Gogi might even know.