“This must all be so difficult,” I said. “Was Tom like a son to you? Were you close?”

“Close? No. But I don’t know how Rusty is going to feel about all of this.”

“You think he’s still alive?” I blurted out, then clapped my mouth shut.

“I’m sure of it!” she said fervently, fingering the strap of her purse, pulling at a loose thread. “He just has to be. I will not believe that he’s dead.”

I didn’t know what to say to this. It sounded like she was in denial.

Shilo glanced at me sideways, then said, “Do you think he just left town, then? Why would he do that?”

The woman frowned as her cell phone chimed with a dance tune. She looked at the screen, and said, “I have to take this. To answer your question, Rusty was not well. He was upset by some stuff at work—Tom, God rest his soul, was giving him no end of heartache—and I think he just took off. I didn’t think he’d be gone this long, and I wish I had a way to contact him.”

“But Tom and Binny seem to think their father is dead!” I said.

Dinah shook her head, her blonde hair stiffly resisting any movement. “They just don’t want to believe that he would purposely leave them alone, that’s all. They don’t understand their dad.”

“Who do you think killed Tom?” Shilo said.

“If I knew, don’t you think I’d have told the cops by now?” Dinah answered smartly, and then punched a button on her cell phone. She said hello as she got her keys out, entered her new storefront, and closed the door behind her.

We stood staring after her. “That was sudden,” I finally said.

“I guess she didn’t appreciate being questioned by strangers,” Shilo commented with a wry tone. “Who could imagine that?”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “We were a little nosy and pushy with her. Let’s find a restaurant in this town and have something to eat.” It was early afternoon, and I hadn’t eaten anything but some muffins since earlier in the morning.

Shilo moved the car closer, locked up as best she could—her car is in bad enough shape that the locks only work intermittently—and we began looking in earnest for some place to eat. Most small towns have that one place, usually a down-home kind of café or restaurant, where everyone gathers to gossip. As soon as I saw it, I knew that Vale Variety and Lunch was it. I had passed it several times in my hunt for muffin ingredients over the last few days, thinking it was just a mom-and-pop variety store, but now I noticed the “Lunch” part of the sign. When Shilo and I entered, I saw that beyond the variety store at the front was a lunch counter and café area, which was quite deep.

Gordy and Zeke were there, and greeted us as long-lost friends. It seemed some kind of badge of honor that they could introduce us to others, among them, significantly, Junior Bradley, who had been Tom Turner’s friend before having a fistfight with him over a dancer named Emerald, as the story went.

Junior looked up, briefly, but then hunched back down over his grilled cheese sandwich and Rochester newspaper. Various others included the odd-looking woman in the red hat and purple dress, whose bag full of books was now on the floor near her walker, beside her tiny table at the back of the diner. She was reading a romance while she slurped tomato soup through her teeth. At another table, studiously ignoring her, was a woman of about the same age—late fifties/early sixties, at a guess—wearing a dress made out of cotton with multiple, humorously positioned cats all over it. She was rigidly upright, and stared straight ahead of her as she sipped a cup of tea from a thick, white, porcelain, restaurant ware cup.

Shilo and I sat at a table near Gordy and Zeke, our two personal informants, and a waitress slouched over, handing us a menu and mumbling the specials: tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwich or tuna salad on an English muffin. I noted “Breakfast All Day” written on the chalkboard above the counter, and ordered two eggs, sunny, with whole-wheat toast. Shilo ordered breakfast too: eggs, bacon, toast, but with sausages and a stack of pancakes as well. The Hungry Gypsy’s Special, I guess.

“What do you think of Dinah Hooper?” I asked Gordy, who was staring at Shilo with an intensity that most would find unnerving, but didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest.

“Dinah?” Zeke answered, instead of his bewitched friend. “She’s a good egg. She’s involved in everything: annual fall fair, hospital committee, reads to the old folks at Golden Acres . . . lots of other things.”

The prim woman in the cat dress slammed her teacup down on the table in front of her and stood, her pale-green eyes bulging with emotion. “That woman! That woman is the devil’s pawn . . . you mark my words.” With that, she gathered up her things and marched out of the café.

Chapter Eleven

WE ALL WATCHED her stomp out of the place, and though I can’t speak for the others, I was stunned by her pronouncement.

“Who the heck is that?” Shilo asked.

“Isadore Openshaw,” Gordy said.

Shilo burst into laughter, and I snickered, too. Both guys looked confused, so I said, “C’mon, guys . . . Isadore Openshaw?”

They exchanged looks. “I don’t get it,” Zeke said.

“Never mind.”

The woman in purple rose up, and said, “It’s funny . . . ‘Is a door open, Shaw?’ How can you rubes not get that? That’s why Isadore doesn’t speak to me. I laughed at her name once. Woman’s got no sense of humor. I guess that’s what happens when you work in a bank too long.” She turned to me and nodded. “I was hoping you’d be smart. Guess you are. If you’re smart, then you’ll be looking at the whole ball of wax. What happened to Rusty Turner? What happened to Melvyn Wynter? And now Tom Turner?”

I glanced at Shilo, and said, “It seems like an awful lot of intrigue in such a small town.”

The purple lady made her index finger into a gun, her thumb the hammer. “Bingo,” she said, cocking and firing the little finger gun. She then grabbed her walker and strode out, leaving a trail of cracker crumbs in her wake.

“Wait, what do you mean?” I called, half rising from my chair.

“Don’t bother,” Zeke said. “She won’t tell you. She fancies herself a kind of oracle, or something. Likes to make mysterious pronouncements, then never explains ’em.”

“Who is she?” I said, watching her weave expertly through the variety store at the front and toward the door.

“Janice Grover,” Gordy said. “Her husband is Simon Grover, the Grand Tiercel of the Brotherhood of Falcons.” He nodded slowly and winked that slow wink of his that indicated a fount of secret knowledge.

Zeke rolled his eyes.

“Is she . . . reliable?” I asked, not quite sure how to phrase my real question, which was, is she a whackadoodle?

“She’s got three grown kids,” Zeke said, frowning.

I wasn’t sure if that was an answer to the question I was truly asking, or his own interpretation, but decided not to pursue that line of investigation. “So what about this Openshaw woman . . . what’s she got against Dinah Hooper?”

“Now, that’s a good question,” Gordy said. He furrowed his brow, indicating deep thought, then said, “I bet it goes back to last year’s fall fair catnip mouse incident.”

“Do tell,” I said. I couldn’t wait to hear this.

Zeke nodded and his Adam’s apple bounced up and down his throat. “That’s prob’ly it. At last year’s Autumn Vale Harvest Fair, Miss Openshaw set up a booth selling catnip mice to benefit the kitty cat rescue organization she’s trying to start, you know.”