One look at her formidable person, today clothed all in fuchsia, her shelflike bosom jutting like a magnificent ship’s prow, and I wondered, was her husband as afraid of Mrs. Janice Grover as everyone else seemed to be? I remembered her remark about Isadore Openshaw’s lack of a sense of humor; she had said maybe that’s what happened when you worked in a bank too long. Was her husband as humorless as Ms. Openshaw? Or just terrified of the indomitable Mrs. Grover? “Bank manager,” I mused, and I remembered the stodgy little edifice I had passed. “Is that the Autumn Vale Community Bank?”

“That is the one and only bank in this town, in case you hadn’t noticed, and the one everyone uses. Most don’t want to go all the way to Ridley Ridge, where there are a couple of branches of the major banks. Autumn Vale is kind of . . . insular.”

“That’s one thing to call it.”

“Weird being another? I thought that when we moved here twenty years ago,” she said, moving a poodle figurine an inch on a piecrust tabletop, leaving a clean ring in the dust. “But since then, I’ve come to embrace its oddities. It’s freeing in a way,” she said, adjusting her parrot earrings. They matched the fuchsia dress nicely. “You’re the Wynter heiress, right?”

Heiress? Moi? I had never thought of myself that way. Could you be broke and still be an heiress? “I guess you could say that. I’m Melvyn Wynter’s great-niece, and his heir.” She was someone else in town I thought I’d enjoy getting to know. I do enjoy the offbeat. Maybe it was all those years living in Greenwich Village, though the neighborhood had become awfully stodgy of late, not like it was when I was a teenager. Perhaps I did belong in Autumn Vale, where weird was a way of life. “You seemed to feel, when you talked to us in the restaurant the other day, that Melvyn’s death, Rusty’s disappearance, and Tom’s murder are all connected. Who do you think did it?”

“Not a clue, my dear girl. Not a clue! But it seems like an awful lot of tragedy for one small family and business, unless you’re in the middle of a Greek drama or a Shakespeare play. Or one of those cozy mysteries, where the residents of a tiny town are bopped off one by one, and yet no one gets the willies and leaves.”

“Do you know anything about my uncle Melvyn’s accident?”

“Not much. It was Simon—my husband, you know—who called the police.”

Chapter Sixteen

I WAS SHOCKED by that, but tried not to show it. “Really?”

“It was early in the morning, about six or so, and Simon was just coming back from the city, where one of my sons had some kind of crisis. He saw poor old Mel’s car off the road and down the embankment. Well, he got out and shouted down, but no answer. He came home and asked what he ought to do, and I said ‘Call the police, you idiot’!” She laughed, a great honking hoot that was out of place given the subject matter. “For all he’s a good, solid guy, Simon can be a bit of a dope.”

My mind whirled with thoughts; had Simon Grover been the one who forced my uncle off the road, by accident or on purpose? I mean, who comes back from a trip to see their son at six in the morning? Was he drunk? Was he out to get Melvyn?

What color car did Simon Grover, solid citizen, drive?

“So, your husband was coming back from seeing your son?” I asked slowly, watching her face. “Weird time of day, wasn’t it?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. Booker is a good boy, but he was having girlfriend troubles and called, upset, wanting to talk. Simon drove up to Rochester to see him but didn’t want to miss work, so he started back early.”

“He must have been tired, and then to see Melvyn’s car off the road . . . did he stop to try to help?”

“Well of course! I said that already, right? He shouted. But Simon’s in no shape to scale down an embankment. He came home and we called Virgil.” She paused and eyed me. Slowly and with great emphasis, she said, “The sheriff told us there was no way poor old Melvyn would have been alive, even if Simon had been able to make it down the embankment.”

Well, that was clear enough, but still . . . how could I ask about her husband’s car color? There didn’t seem to be any way without showing my suspicion, but it was the kind of thing I ought to be able to find out fairly easily. Gogi might even know.

Simon was the local banker. I pondered the anomalies we had found in the business dealings between the Turners and my uncle, and the large cash infusions Turner Construction had been receiving. Would the bank manager know where the money in the Turner accounts came from? At this point, I wasn’t ready to go into those oddities with a stranger whom I didn’t know if I could trust. I wanted to ponder it and talk to my financial-whiz friend, Pish, first; he was as trustworthy as a locked diary. “I’d better get moving. As much as I’d love to look around your store, I’m just looking for Dinah Hooper’s apartment right now. How do I get to it?”

“Around the corner you’ll see a nondescript kind of door. There’s a buzzer beside it, no name, though. Don’t know if she’s home.”

I paused. “What do you think about Dinah? She’s kind of new in town, right?”

Mrs. Grover shrugged. “Seems all right to me. She moved right into town, joined clubs, volunteered, made friends. Not like Isadore; when Isadore Openshaw came to town seven or eight years ago to look after her brother, she just kind of hid away. After he died, everyone thought she’d open up, have more time for folks, but once a grump always a grump. Set in her ways.”

Speaking of grumps set in their ways . . . “Did you know my uncle?”

“Weeeell, kinda. He wasn’t a big fan of mine, if you know what I mean.”

I looked at her, eyebrows raised, inviting her to continue.

“I’d been out to the castle a couple of times, just to look around, you know. He chased me off the property and told me never to come back.”

I bit my lip, trying not to giggle.

She eyed me with a smile. “Oh, don’t worry . . . once I got home, I laughed plenty. Must have been quite the sight, an old curmudgeon chasing a large lady in a floral muumuu, boobs bouncing like basketballs, down the driveway, shaking his shotgun and yelling, ‘Get off my property!’ at the top of his lungs.”

I liked Janice Grover! I couldn’t help myself. “I guess my uncle was a mean old man.”

She shrugged, her parrots swinging merrily. “I hear he wasn’t so bad if you knew him well. Gogi Grace swears he was once quite affable. But I was a newcomer, see . . . only been here twenty years.”

A newcomer. I blew air out of my lips, my bangs fluffing out, and she grimaced in sympathy. “I guess I’d better go and find the other newcomer in town,” I said. I took a last look around at the boxes and tables and shelves jammed with junk. It was so packed in the shop, I was on sensory overload, and I’d need a day or more to explore. “I’m going to have to come back and look around. You might even have some stuff I need.”

“You bet! That place needs dressing up. Say, I have a storage place—kind of a warehouse on the outskirts of town—where all my big stuff is stored, like outdoor stuff. You need to have a look. I’m usually here, even when the sign says Closed, so just bang on the door anytime and I’ll take you there.” She sighed. “It’s my hobby and my addiction, I suppose.”

I went out and circled to the side of the building, on a narrow lane, finding the door right where Janice had said it would be. I hit the buzzer, and after a few seconds, a window slid open above me. The nicely coiffed Dinah stuck her head out.