“Whatever,” Lizzie said, shrugging her shoulders. “Are you going to show me around this place, or what?”

I stared at her, bemused by her moodiness. “How old are you?”

“How old are you?” she shot back.

Shilo suppressed a snort.

McGill, two spots of red on his gaunt cheeks, said, “Lizzie, you might want to try being polite for a change.”

“She has a point,” I said, watching her. “Why should she answer, unless I’m willing to do the same? I’m thirty-nine. And three-quarters.”

Her eyes widened. “Geez, my mom is only thirty-two. I turned fifteen a month ago.”

“Happy belated birthday. Was the camera a gift?”

“You could say that.”

Not exactly a straightforward answer, but maybe it was none of my business. I was not going to be bullied in my own castle, however, by a teenager with bad manners. “Lizzie, you might want to consider this; you have a long life to live ahead of you. At the rate you’re offending people, you’re going to run out of folk to talk to before you’re twenty.”

Shilo snickered and McGill smiled.

“That doesn’t matter because I’m going to be out of this hick town the moment I turn eighteen.”

“Where are you going to go?” Shilo asked.

“New York, where people actually have lives,” she grumbled, slumping down in her chair.

“Look, I know being fifteen can suck at times,” I said. “Been there, done that. But like it or not, you’re stuck here for at least another three years, right? Not everyone is out to make you miserable, and it’s up to you to figure out who might be an ally, and who just needs to be ignored.”

She was silent, for once, and looked like she might actually be thinking about that.

“Gogi Grace is an ally; you’ve already figured that out, I think.”

More silence.

“Besides, even in New York you have to be nice to people sometimes,” I said. “Now, do you want to rephrase your request for a tour?”

She watched my eyes, fiddling with her camera. “Okay. Can I see the castle? Please?”

“That’s better. Sure.” I left McGill and Shilo to flirt cautiously in the kitchen, and I took the kid on a tour. I even let her take photos. As we left one of the bedrooms—not mine or Shilo’s . . . I left those out of the tour—I said to her, “No Facebooking them, okay? No sharing them at all without my permission, and that goes for anything on my property.” I thought it best to lay the groundwork so there would be no misunderstandings later.

She shrugged. “My grandma doesn’t have Internet access,” she said, “and no one will buy me a cell phone. So I don’t have Facebook or anything. I’m a pariah.”

A pariah . . . how did she even know that word? What an odd girl! “Just putting it out there. What do you photograph?” I asked as we moved back down the stairs to the main hallway.

She didn’t answer until she had framed and taken a photo of the rose window, and the double oak doors. Then she sat down on the steps. “Wanna see?” I sat beside her and together we scrolled through all the photos on her SLR digital camera. She took all kinds of pictures . . . people, places, and nature. She was pretty good. Better at framing photos than me, that was for sure.

“Where is that?” I asked, as she scrolled to a photo of a wooded area, and a sad, leaning tent spotted with mildew.

“That’s in your woods . . . or I think it’s probably your woods,” she said. “I don’t know where the property line is, or anything. There’s a few trails. I followed one, and then there’s kind of a clearing beneath a hill; that’s where this camp is. Creepy. All kinds of crap there . . . old tins, clothes, other stuff.” She brought up an interesting photo of a burned-out fire, with a can of beans, the label charred and the lid half opened.

I made a mental note to walk through the woods sometime. If there was an old encampment, that was the kind of thing I wanted cleaned out, so it didn’t encourage trespassing. “Can you show me where this is sometime?”

“Sure. If I remember. Like I said, there’s a kind of path to it, but it’s overgrown and weedy. This picture was from, like, June or something.”

“Do you ever come across other camps?”

“Sometimes,” she said.

“If you do, I want to know. I’d appreciate it.” Of course, I didn’t want her to be wandering in my woods alone, but that was a conversation for another day. If I had made enough of an impression, she might just ask me when she wanted to explore, instead of sneaking around.

She nodded, but was silent. She was a complicated girl. Chatty and gushing while I showed her around the castle, she had now clammed up and become broody again, as moody as fifteen can be. She clicked through to another photo, and I yelped. “Hey, that orange cat,” I said, pointing to the picture on the screen. A big orange fluffy cat was sitting on a stump, staring directly at the photographer. “Do you see it often?”

“Sure. Whenever I’m in the woods it follows me, but I can’t get close to it, I don’t know why.”

I stared at the photo, wondering if it was indeed my uncle’s cat, Becket. I was going to have to remember to take treats in my pocket when I went for a walk in the woods. If it was Melvyn’s cat, I wanted to rescue it.

McGill came out to the entry hall, with Shilo trailing behind him.

“McGill, is this my uncle’s cat? Show him the picture, Lizzie.”

He bent over and looked at the photo. “Yup, that’s Becket all right.”

Wow. The cat had been living in the woods for so long? Amazing.

“I gotta get going,” McGill said, straightening to his full height. “Come on, Lizzie, I’ll give you a lift back to town.”

She rose and nodded. She turned to me and said awkwardly, “Thanks for showing me the castle. It’s cool.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “If you’d like to come out again, let me know. Just don’t stow away in a car trunk.”

Her eyes lit up, but she merely nodded, and trailed McGill to the double oak door.

“McGill, would you have a moment free tomorrow?” I asked.

“I might. How can I help you?”

I was aware that I was seriously imposing on his time, but there was so much I needed to know about Autumn Vale, and people I needed to talk to. “I have to talk to Junior Bradley about the zoning for this real estate venture my uncle and Rusty Turner were involved in. Would you go with me to talk to him?”

“Well, sure, I can go. But Junior’s an okay guy. He’s just got a lot on his plate lately.”

“You think it would be all right to talk to him alone?”

“Yeah,” McGill said. “I have to deal with him all the time, and he’s fine, once you get past his attitude. All business when it comes down to it.”

“Okay.”

“But if you still want me to go with you, just give me a call.” McGill said he’d be back to continue filling in holes when the cops released the site, and then he and Lizzie left, the Smart car tootling down the winding laneway. McGill beeped the horn just before they disappeared around the bend.

Shilo said she was going to find Magic, who had hopped away after being startled in the kitchen. I stood looking out over the scene, leaning against the door frame. I was so tired, for a moment I felt like I was floating away above the grounds, looking down the hole to poor Tom at the bottom. It was a nightmare vision, and I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the lingering impression. Whatever he had done in life, he hadn’t deserved to be murdered.

Who wanted him dead? I had a host of possibilities.

Junior Bradley had to be at the top of my list because of his fight with Tom at that bar. Dinah Hooper, his father’s girlfriend . . . well, I didn’t actually know of any reason, but there were such close ties there. One man in her life was missing and one was dead. She had to be a suspect.

I guess I had to add Gordy Shute to the mix, given Lizzie’s description of the torment Tom had inflicted on him, and even Binny made the list. She didn’t appear to be on particularly close terms with her brother. Neither of those seemed likely to me, though.