The old ladies clustered together and watched, breathless, clutching each other’s arms in ghoulish delight.

“You going to make me?” I asked, in my best New York voice.

Binny had the phone in her hand and was dialing a number.

“I wouldn’t push me, if I was you, lady.”

“I’m not,” I said, backing down a bit and making my tone reasonable, as common sense prevailed. No real point in goading him to violence. I took a deep breath. “But I know for a fact that you’re the one damaging my property. I don’t know why you’re doing it, but I suggest you stop, now, or I’ll have you arrested for trespassing next time.”

“Tom, you keep your big mouth shut!” Binny warned, her hand over the phone receiver.

“Or just tell me the truth,” I said. “Why are you doing it?”

“You can’t prove nothing!” he said, his hands clenching into fists.

Only guilty people say that, and it made me mad. He was costing me a bunch, when all I wanted to do was sell the darned castle and scoot on back to New York. I got real close to him and looked up into his pouchy, red-veined eyes. Anger won out over common sense this time. “Look, you big goon,” I said, jabbing his chest with my pointed finger. “You come out to my property one more time and I will not be responsible for what happens!”

He sputtered and made inarticulate noises in the back of his throat, but nothing else.

“I’m calling the cops!” Binny said, watching us both.

“Good,” I said, moving toward the door. “Then I can tell Sheriff Grace exactly what I just told your brother, and he can look at those scratches.”

She slammed the phone down and glared at me, saying, “Maybe you had better go.”

Tom moved toward me slightly with a kind of growl in his throat, and I bolted outside. Heart pounding, I leaned against the brick wall. I hadn’t meant to get so worked up, but when I thought of how scared I was in the night, and how much it was going to cost to fix up the damage he was doing, I just lost it. When Tom stomped out the door, I don’t mind saying I hightailed it down the street, not wanting another confrontation. It was stupid to anger a guy who was that big and that short-tempered.

I strode down the sidewalk, heading who knew where, and dashed down a side street when I saw the sheriff’s car cruising toward the bakery. I didn’t know how to defend what I’d said, and didn’t want to deal with Virgil Grace at that moment. I walked along for a short way, leaving behind the clustered stores and buildings of downtown Autumn Vale, such as it was. I was fuming mad, at first, and didn’t much notice my surroundings, but the fog of fury began to dissipate.

I stopped and looked around; I was in a residential area now. The sign in front of me read Golden Acres. It was a lovely old manor, but didn’t look big enough to be a rest home until I started to walk up the angled drive. As I got past some of the century trees that shaded the grounds, I could see that a small, modern addition had been built behind the house. The drive sloped up to a prominence, where several park benches were set in the shade of a grove of maples along a smooth pathway. Some of Gogi Grace’s ‘oldsters’ were basking in the autumn sunshine, their faces turned upward like sunflowers, as the sound of warbling birds filled the air.

I nodded to them as I passed, and felt their eyes on me as I approached the door. I entered into a wide hallway, where a set of stairs ascended ahead of me and to the left. There was a reception desk, and the phone was ringing nonstop as the young woman who appeared to be the receptionist blocked the hallway.

“Mrs. Levitz, you can’t go out right now,” she said to an elderly woman. “It’s almost lunch. Don’t you want to stay and have lunch?”

The woman, wheeling along using a walker for support, had an angry look on her wrinkled face. She tried to dodge the girl, bellowing, “I’m going to see my mother. She’s waiting for me. School is over, and she always walks me home.”

“No, Mrs. Levitz, school’s not over yet,” the girl said, glancing to the left and right, probably looking for help.

“Yes, it is. You’re lying. If there’s anything I can’t abide, it’s a liar!” The woman plucked a stuffed animal out of the basket of her walker and chucked it. When the young girl dodged aside to pick it up out of the path of another resident, Mrs. Levitz rolled her walker around her and headed to the door.

I got in her way. “Ma’am, can you help me?”

The receptionist dashed behind her desk and hit a buzzer and another button. I could hear the lock on the front door snick into place.

“Who are you?” the old woman asked, glaring at me. “Are you one of the teachers?”

Just then, a big fellow in scrubs dashed down the hallway, and gently took Mrs. Levitz by the arm. “Dotty, your son is coming to see you this afternoon. Don’t you want to stay in? He’s going to come visit, and then he’ll take you for a long walk.” He gave the receptionist an apologetic shrug, and muttered, “She got away from Angie and we didn’t notice. Sorry, Jen.”

He got Mrs. Levitz turned around, confusion now wrinkling her brow as she plaintively asked, “I have a son?”

The receptionist swiftly answered the phone, transferred the caller, unlocked the door, and then smiled at me. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing,” I said. “Does she really think she was going to meet her mother? She must be about ninety!”

“Ninety-six and still hell on walker wheels,” the girl said and laughed. “Heavens . . . her son is over seventy! The dottiest ones are the most able to get about.”

She had a lilting Irish accent, and I smiled. “And Dotty is dotty, it seems.”

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I was wondering if Gogi Grace is here?”

The receptionist hit a buzzer, and said, “Mrs. Grace, someone to see you. Your name?” She looked up at me.

“Merry Wynter,” I said and she repeated it.

My new friend, today dressed in a soft-purple suit with businesslike gray pumps and a purple paisley scarf draped around her neck, emerged from a door down the hall and beckoned to me. “Come along, Merry. I’ll give you the tour.”

The modern addition was small, but clean and bright, with bedrooms off a square, open area centered by a nurse’s station. There were two dining rooms, she told me, one for the mobile folk, and another for those who needed more room and more help. The second floor of the new section was much the same as the first; an elevator with wider-than-normal doorways and a deeper cabinet accommodated motorized wheelchairs, and could even be used for transporting patients who were bedridden. “Turner Construction, Rusty Turner’s company, did all the work on this seven years ago,” Gogi said.

“It turned out well!” I replied, impressed by the neat, simple layout.

She took me out a side door on the main floor and showed me the protected garden, cradled in the L shape between the modern addition and the old building. “Rusty did this a couple of years ago,” she said, pointing out the six-foot-high privacy fencing, safe even for those with dementia who might wander off, since there was no external access except a locked gate.

“So all of this is in the newly built area; what’s in the older section?” I asked.

“I’ll show you that now.”

I followed Gogi, who was talking as she went; upstairs in the old section were suites for those who could manage stairs and were more independent. We descended the wide, sweeping staircase, as she explained that on the main floor were the social rooms. She led me to what was probably once the dining room and parlor, linked by pocket doors, which were open. There were tables set up sporadically, and settees and shelves with books lined one wall. A few gentlemen and ladies were seated in some of the comfortable wing chairs near the fireplace and by the front window. Some were reading, others chatting, and one was just watching everyone else.