“It broke the day she died. My mother dropped it while she was trying to make tea. I think she was stifling how awful she felt, and she was shaking from the effort. I didn’t know what to say; she just seemed to not want me to help, or comfort her, or anything.”

“I think it’s hard for a mother to let her kids see her cry,” Gogi said. “Virgil hates it, but he’s good about letting me do what I need to do.”

I knew she was likely referring to grief and pain during her battle with breast cancer, but didn’t say anything. If she wanted me to know, she’d tell me. I made tea in the lovely pot, poured for us all, and told Gogi about my teapot collection, and how I had felt a kinship for Binny the moment I saw her cool collection of teapots.

Shilo said. “You mean there is another woman in the world obsessed with teapots? And I thought you were the lone lunatic!”

I smiled. “Nope, there are a lot of us.”

“Merry, since you’re here for a while, I wonder if you’d consider doing something?”

I was wary immediately; Gogi Grace already had me agreeing to make 120 muffins a week, and that was about the limit of what could be expected from me, I would hope. “Uh, I don’t know. Do you need a kidney?”

Her eyes widened and she was startled into laughter. “No, I have very healthy parts, thank you very much, and the ones that weren’t healthy were lopped off.”

Again, I caught her wry reference to breast cancer, but I wouldn’t have understood it if McGill hadn’t already spilled the beans.

She drank the last gulp of her tea and stood. “I want you to think about something you could do while here. Since I can’t get my darling son to take me seriously, I wonder, would you sniff around and see if Melvyn’s death seems on the level to you?”

I was not expecting that and I laughed, thinking she was joking. She apparently wasn’t. I coughed, shrugged, and looked to Shilo for help.

But she was watching me, too, and said, “Maybe you should, Mer. I mean, he was your uncle, and he left you this big, beautiful castle! Poor guy . . . hey, maybe he could tell us what happened?”

I gave her an exasperated look. “Shi, really? Do you remember what happened the last time you tried to hold a séance?”

She had the good grace to look embarrassed. I turned to Gogi, who had a definite question in her eyes. “Shilo fancies herself a gypsy. We held a séance to contact my grandmother at Shi’s place. Shilo invited some friends, and the lights were out.”

Shilo snickered, and I threw her a dirty look.

“What happened?” Gogi said.

“My friend Gregory got fresh with Merry,” Shi said, giggling. “She decked him, and at the same time my bunny—his name is Magic—had gotten loose and hopped up onto the table, turned the candle over, and sent my neighbor shrieking out of the room and down to the superintendent to tell him my apartment was possessed.”

“And the candle set fire to the tablecloth and we had to put it out with the wine I’d brought,” I finished.

“But you had enough left to throw some in Gregory’s face,” Shi finished, still giggling.

“And your neighbor was really scared because you kept yelling ‘Magic! Magic!’ like a maniac, and she thought you were out of your gourd, when you were just yelling at your rabbit.”

Gogi Grace laughed heartily, but then finally said, with a sigh, “I have to get going. It’s getting toward supper, and some of the oldsters need help getting to the dining room. I’m always there at dinner.”

“I’ll bag these muffins for you,” I said. “And maybe pop them in a box; it might make them easier to carry. Four dozen muffins are kind of heavy. We’ll bring them out to the car for you.”

She graciously accepted our help, and Shilo and I followed her out to her car, parked by my rental in the weedy driveway. She put the muffins on the passenger seat and slammed the door. She surveyed the potholed land with her hand shading her eyes from the slanting sun, then her gaze settled on me. “You didn’t answer my question. Will you at least think about looking into Melvyn’s death?”

I felt uneasy, and I wasn’t sure why. An old man had died going off a slippery highway. There didn’t seem to be much of a mystery there, but then, Gogi Grace knew my uncle, and I didn’t. “Your son is professional law enforcement; if there was something there, I’d think he’d know.”

“He thinks I’m imagining things, but there were so many people who didn’t like Melvyn. And with his dealings with Rusty . . .” She shook her head. “The whole thing has upset me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Promise me you’ll really think about it, not just let some time lapse then say no.”

I shifted from one foot to another. She had certainly caught me at what I was planning. “I will seriously think about it, I promise,” I said, meeting her gaze.

She came around the car to me and enfolded me in a warm hug. “Thank you, Merry. And you, too, Shilo. You know, you’re right about Jack McGill,” she said, winking at my friend. “He is cute, and he’s a very smart fellow. A good catch!” She waved, popped into her car, and drove away.

As I watched her go, I had the troubling thought that maybe I would have to look into my uncle’s death. If it had anything to do with the Turners’ obsession with my property, and even, perhaps, their father’s disappearance, I might need to know so I could protect myself and my inheritance.

Chapter Seven

THE NEXT MORNING I left Shilo to “supervise” McGill’s hole filling. I was going to need to take back my rental car eventually, but not yet. Once I did, I would be relegated to borrowing Shilo’s rattletrap ancient vehicle, which I didn’t relish, or buying a car, which suited me even less, so for the next little while I’d stay with the rental.

I drove into Autumn Vale, intent on a few errands. Ingratiating myself to the locals was on my list, but first I was going to visit the lawyer. I had talked to Andrew Silvio many times over the last few months as he probated the will, but I had never met him. Gogi had given me directions to his office, and I found it with relatively little trouble. It was on the first floor of a beautiful, old house that had been converted to offices.

The central foyer, from which an impressive staircase wound up to a second floor, had a brass plate announcing whose offices were in the Autumn Vale Professional Suites. There was a doctor, a dentist, a chiropodist, and a licensed private investigator, among other professionals. I entered the glass door that had “Andrew Silvio” etched on it in gold, and as I did, a buzzer sounded somewhere close; a short, stocky man barreled out of an inner office. He looked around and saw me standing by the door.

“Miss Wynter, right?” he said, his voice gruff. “C’mon in. Nice day, huh? Take off your sweater. Want a coffee?”

I followed him into his inner sanctum, but didn’t take off my sweater. I slung my bag over the back of a chair and took a seat across the mahogany desk from him as he sat, donned close-up glasses, and shuffled through papers on his desk. “No coffee for me, Mr. Silvio. I came just to introduce myself in person, and ask for some advice.”

“Legal?” he asked, looking over the rims of his glasses at me.

“Not exactly.” I put both hands on the surface of the desk and composed my thoughts. Wow, I needed a manicure. That’s the first thought I had. Then I thought some more. “You knew my uncle.”