“I’ll be in soon,” I yelled after them. Shilo waved without looking back. “And don’t let her out of your sight.”

“I won’t,” Lizzie shot back.

I chuckled and shook my head. “I know a bit about her story,” I said, turning to Virgil. “Gogi told me she was caught spray-painting gravestones.”

He nodded. “Yeah, not good, I know; her mom is a piece of work. Just showed back up in Autumn Vale a year or so ago with Lizzie in tow, after being gone for years. Lizzie will not say why she was vandalizing tombstones.”

I turned and watched Shilo and Lizzie as they entered the castle. “I heard that she’s living with her grandmother?”

“Yeah, her mom’s mom. No one knows who Lizzie’s dad is, or even if he’s local. The dad could be some dude her mother picked up wherever she took off to after high school.”

One more mystery in a town that seemed to offer them by the gross. “What do you want to know, Sheriff?”

He took me back through my interaction with Tom, and even my brief encounters with Binny, giving me no hint what he was looking for. I also told him all that I’d heard in town, about Junior Bradley and Tom Turner’s fight a while ago. When I was done, he shook his head.

“Keep everything locked up tight, okay? There was another break-in last night not too far from here, just a farmer’s shed, but I want you to be careful.”

“Maybe that was Tom’s killer, have you thought of that?”

With a disgusted look on his face, he said, carefully, “Well, Miss Big City, no, gee golly gosh, I never would have thought that a break-in and a murder the same night might be connected. Thank you so much for pointing that out.”

Okay, he had a point. He turned and started walking away.

“Hey, wait a minute!” I called after him. “Do you have any leads? Are you going to interview Junior Bradley? What’s going on?”

“I can’t comment on that,” he said.

“What do you mean, you can’t comment?” I raced after him and caught his sleeve. “I’m not a reporter, for crying out loud; I’m the one who found Tom’s body.”

“All the more reason.” And he was gone, off talking to the team, which appeared to be wrapping up. I watched as they moved Tom’s body, bagged in black, into the hearse and cleaned up the area of all of their tools. It was sobering, and left me with the familiar desire to leave, to run away from sorrow. It tugged at my heart, urging me to abandon ship. So far, life in Autumn Vale had been such a mixed bag of fear, sadness, and bafflement that I just didn’t know what to make of it all.

Just as the hearse started to clear out and the cops looked like they’d be doing the same soon, Jack McGill booted up the lane in his Smart car. Together we watched the hearse drive off, then I said, “Want to come in? A teenage girl named Lizzie is here; she kind of hitched a ride with us. Maybe you can take her back to town.”

“Lizzie Proctor? I know who you mean.” He looked toward the castle. “Troubled girl. Doesn’t get along with anyone.”

“Neither do I,” I grumbled. I was tired and completely worn out. “You people have the strangest little town I’ve ever seen.”

As we walked toward the castle, I asked him about Dinah Hooper, telling him what Isadore Openshaw had said. “But Dinah seemed like an okay woman to me. What does Isadore have against her?” I could not believe their feud was over catnip mice.

“Beats me. Isadore is a little odd. Never married. Has cats. Lives alone.”

“And that makes her odd?” I challenged. “Good lord, McGill, I thought better of you than that.”

He held up both hands in protest. “That’s not me!” he protested. “I’m just repeating what the locals have been saying. Even folks at the bank find her odd. My mom knows her from book club and says she’s kind of got a conspiracy-theory paranoia. Thinks people are watching her home. She moved here about ten years ago to take care of her brother, and when he died, she stayed.”

“So she’s not a born-and-bred local?”

“Not exactly.”

“Could’ve fooled me. She certainly has the Autumn Vale stamp of peculiarity.” I glanced over at McGill, but he didn’t seem offended by my grumpy honesty. We circled the castle and entered through the butler’s pantry door to find Shilo and Lizzie sitting together companionably, eating muffins and drinking milk. McGill’s eyes lit up when he saw Shilo, but first he said, “Hey, Lizzie. How’s school going this year? You’re a junior, right?”

“I’m just the belle of the ball, y’know? Half the boys in love with me, the girls all jealous bitches. Five dates lined up for junior prom already. Which lucky guy shall I choose as my escort? And gee whiz, will he bring me a wrist corsage?”

I cocked my head and examined her. She had a definite edge to her, but I’d bet she was smarter than any of the kids in her class. If I didn’t watch it, I’d find myself liking her. “Why aren’t you in school today?”

“Got suspended.”

“Already?” I exclaimed.

“Yup. New record.”

“Hi, McGill,” Shilo said, throwing him a muffin. “Sit. Eat!”

“Be honest,” I said, sitting down. “Why did you hide out in Shi’s trunk, Lizzie?”

She chewed and swallowed a bit of her muffin, drank some milk, made a face, and set her glass down carefully. “I think I know who killed Tom Turner.”

Chapter Twelve

OF COURSE WE all shouted at once, but since we all shouted different things it was kind of a scramble of “Who?” “How do you know?” and “What did you see?”

I was the one who shouted “Who?”

Lizzie looked a little scared, and Magic, the bunny, who had been sitting quietly munching on a carrot—I didn’t mention that before, did I?—squeaked and jumped off the table.

I put up my hands for silence, let Lizzie finish her last bite, and said, calmly, “Who do you think killed Tom Turner?”

“That weirdo Gordy Shute,” she mumbled.

“Gordy?” I was puzzled. “Why would Gordy kill Tom Turner?”

Lizzie looked calmly across the table to McGill. “Why don’t you tell her?”

The real estate agent looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lizzie.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on! I’ve only been here a year, and I know about this old crap. Everyone knows that Tom was always a big old bully, and that he used to pick on Gordy back in high school.”

“Where did you hear that?” I asked. “That was forever ago, if they were teenagers.”

“It’s a small town,” Lizzie said. “People still talk about the earthquake of 1957 as if it happened last week.”

I blew air out through pursed lips. The amount I didn’t know about living in a small town . . . well, it was a tonnage. I eyed her with some respect; the kid was smart. Could a grudge live that long in the incubating atmosphere of Autumn Vale? Did proximity fester rage?

Shilo was staring at McGill. “Did you go to school with them, Tom and Gordy and Zeke?”

He was kind of pinkish as he said, “I went to school in another town, a . . . a religious school.”

He seemed embarrassed. Maybe in Autumn Vale that made him an oddball? In New York, every second kid went to Hebrew school, a Roman Catholic academy, or a new age arts school. “Just because Tom bullied Gordy,” I said, “it doesn’t mean that Gordy would want to kill the guy, Lizzie.” To her, high school was the current state of her suffering, but about fifteen years later? Folks might remember that Tom was a bully, but the feelings from past events could not be running as hot. It was possible though, that there was a more current tension between them.