Chapter Fifteen

THE LIST WOULD need to be tweaked, I discovered. I got a call first thing in the morning from Sheriff Grace asking me to come in and sign a statement. If I was going to be out and about, then I may as well do the things on my list that required a trip to town.

Shilo and I, following directions—turn left off Abenaki at the Autumn Vale Community Bank—found the tiny police station. Located at the end of obscure and brief Valley View Avenue, the sheriff’s department was a small, modern building with a barracks-like look, narrow, slit windows, and overall gray, drab appearance. I left Shilo in the car, went in past the big, glass, double doors, and was guided to Sheriff Grace’s office by a young female deputy. I sat down in an uncomfortable chair across the desk from his leather swivel chair. He joined me moments later, but not before I examined his walls, the “artwork,” such as it was, included local citations for his coaching of the town’s Little League baseball team and an honorary membership in the Brotherhood of the Falcon. They had made him an “Eyas,” which I guess was a fledgling falcon. Other than that there was a pleasant if nondescript watercolor of an autumn forest.

As he took a seat across the desk, I remembered my late-night thoughts and blushed. I don’t blush. Ever! But he was very good looking: dark, wavy hair, thick enough to catch your fingers in, and just that bit of shadow along the jaw, very much like Miguel always had five minutes after shaving. I have been alone a long time, I thought. Nothing wrong with a little late-night fantasizing if it was left to late at night. I took a deep breath as he slid some paperwork across the desk to me, regarding me with that steady, unsmiling look he had perfected.

“This is the list of what we took from the castle,” he said. “It’s mostly paperwork, anything with Tom Turner’s name on it.”

“Was there a lot with his name on it? Why would there be?” I squinted and examined the paper. Pretty soon I was going to have to admit that I needed close-up glasses—cheaters, my mother had called them. Oh, joy. Anyway, it was a simple list, though from it I could not tell what each document pertained to.

The sheriff shrugged. “Old Melvyn and the Turners were involved in some real estate deal that went bad, and there were lawsuits, so there was a fair bit of paperwork and we just wanted to look it over more closely, see if we can find anything that has to do with Tom. It’s a mess of bank loans, defaults, zoning problems, and missed deadlines.”

Bank loans? Oh, lord, I thought, I hope that the estate is not saddled with a mountain of debt, undiscovered until now. I was going to have to take this seriously and untangle the mess before the property was actually salable. I felt like I had been wearing blinders, and they had just fallen off. Lawyer Silvio, among others, had some ’splainin’ to do.

“Your uncle also wrote nasty notes to the Turners, and vice versa,” the sheriff went on. “I know about a lot of this because I was occasionally involved, called in by both parties at different times. I know very well what those two old men were like.”

“But they’re all dead now,” I said, glossing over the fact that no one truly knew what had happened to Rusty. Despite Binny’s and Dinah’s hopes, I figured the old guy had probably died, and his body just hadn’t been discovered yet. Maybe he went for a walk and fell off a cliff. Who knew? “What does this have to do with Tom’s murder?”

“We don’t know. But there were things mentioned in the letters . . .” He stopped abruptly.

I was intrigued. “What kind of things?”

He regarded me calmly. “Tom was well-enough liked by many, but he had his peccadilloes.”

Peccadilloes; is that what they called them in a small town? I smiled inwardly. “Such as?”

“Girlfriends he had cheated on. Friends he had betrayed in some way or another. Don’t we all have those dark spots in our past?”

I stiffened. It felt like his comments were aimed at me. It would only take a phone call or two to come across Leatrice’s accusations of thievery against me. Maybe he already knew about it. But that had nothing to do with this. “What’s your point, Sheriff?”

He leaned across the desk. “Now, locally, folks are kind of looking at you oddly because you threatened Tom Turner, and then he winds up dead in your yard.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m not the kind of woman who goes around bashing people over the head!”

“Maybe so, but folks around here don’t know you, right? And you must admit—”

“I don’t have to ‘admit’ anything,” I snapped. “I didn’t kill him, but I sure would like to know who did so I can sleep better at night.”

He thrust his fingers through his hair, and it stood straight up. Combined with his dorky uniform, a dark-blue shirt done right up to his neck and adorned with a clip-on tie, it made him just too cute in a way my perfect, suave, dignified Miguel never was. Come to think of it, that was Miguel’s only fault, his lack of a sense of the ridiculous, especially about himself.

“Look, I’m not accusing you, all right? I’m worried. There have been break-ins all over the county lately, and you and your friend are alone out there at that castle. If I thought you’d do it, I’d say find someplace in town to stay.” He paused, eying me and narrowing his eyes. “You wouldn’t, would you?”

“No. Mostly because that doesn’t make a bit of sense to me.” I shifted my purse on my lap. “Sheriff, I don’t mean to be difficult, but you’re not going to find evidence of whomever killed Tom in my uncle’s papers. Surely you have leads? Personal issues?” His stony expression told me that if he did, he was not going to share them with me. There was more I should ask, more I wanted to know, but he wasn’t going to tell me anything. I took the receipt and stood. “If that’s all . . . ?”

“We’d like to take your statement now,” he said, his tone expressionless. He pushed a button, and the female officer came in and sat in the spare chair. “We’ll be taping the interview, and you can sign the transcript once it’s done.”

“I did give a statement that night,” I said, keeping my tone carefully neutral. I really wasn’t trying to be difficult, but he grated on my nerves.

He met my eyes. “That was preliminary in nature. Miss Wynter, please . . . I’d appreciate your cooperation.”

I nodded, and he took me through the evening one more time. It was like reliving it, especially looking down into the hole and seeing Tom at the bottom. I made sure to be clear about the crowbar, which I had found at the lip and tossed aside. By the time I was done, I was shaking, emotions rising within me that I thought I had tamped down and conquered. Death is wicked, and a purposeful death—robbing someone of all the potential life he had left to live—was evil.

I had one last thing to say on the record. “I want whoever did this found and prosecuted. I want them to spend the rest of their life in jail. It’s horrible to think that there is a killer out there, and he or she could be watching me, or have some reason to want to hurt me.” My voice was trembling. I steadied it, as I finished. “It was on my property, and I won’t rest until the killer is out of circulation.”

That was the end of my statement, but not the end of my visit with the sheriff. I had been ready to walk out before, but calmer now, my flare of anger gone, I remembered that I had questions, too, and a promise to fulfill. As the female officer left the room, I stayed in my seat. “Sheriff, I would like to learn more about my uncle’s death, the car accident. Do you have a moment?”