“Good morning,” I said, looking up. “Can I come up and talk to you?”

“I was just on my way out,” she said. “Do you want to meet me at my new shop?”

“Sure,” I said. “Would you like coffee, or something from Binny’s Bakery?”

Her expression brightened. “That would be nice! Meet you there in ten minutes!”

Food smoothed social communication, I’ve always thought. There was a reason many deals were done over lunch at nice restaurants, and it wasn’t just the booze. I got a selection of pastries from Binny’s and two coffees to go from the Vale Variety, and headed to Dinah’s storefront.

The door stood wide open, and she was inside, moving a couple of folding chairs to a small, teetery, wrought-iron table. I “hallooed” and entered, carefully navigating through boxes with the cups, box of pastries and my purse.

“Here, let me help you!” she said. She took the box and trotted back to the table, propped it open, and set a stack of paper napkins beside it.

I put the coffees on the table, as well as the creamers and sugar packets, then tucked my purse under one of the chairs and sat down.

“This is nice!” she said with a bright smile. She eyed my skirt suit, pointed, and said, “I love the color!”

It was a robin’s egg blue, not perhaps very fallish, but it was a lovely cut and fit well. I had put my hair up and was wearing gray pumps and chunky jewelry to make the color seem less out of sync with the season. After all, it was after Labor Day but not quite autumn yet. “Thank you! Loehmann’s Back Room,” I said with a grin.

She sighed. “I miss shopping. I only make it to the city once or twice a year. Rochester and Buffalo are okay, but they are not Manhattan!”

She was stylish, like Gogi was. I wondered if the two women were friends, being of similar age and tastes. I wondered why Dinah stayed in Autumn Vale, now that Rusty and her job were gone. I wondered a whole lot of things, but didn’t want to rush the inquisition . . . er, chat. “You do manage to find Prada, though,” I said, pointing my spoon at her handbag. “And Balenciaga!” I shifted my pointer to her shoes, chunky-wedge platforms.

“Rochester has a few good shops. I’ll take you there sometime, maybe?”

Having bonded over a similar taste in nice clothes, handbags, and shoes, we continued over awful coffee and wonderful French pastry. “Binny is wasting her talents here,” I mumbled around mille-feuille, which crumbled in my mouth and showered my lap with crumbs.

“That is God’s own truth,” she muttered. “She should still be working in New York City.”

As we drank coffee and ate pastry, I mentioned my problems with cell reception. She nodded. Autumn Vale itself was kind of a dead zone, she said, because of its location in a deep valley with few towers close by. It was definitely underserved.

“Your best bet is to switch providers.”

She went on to advise me that if I didn’t want to do that or didn’t think it would help, I could have Wi-Fi installed at the castle and have my cell phone jigged to ping off it, or some such nonsense. I’m substituting words; it was all too technical for me. “I am impressed, and a little in awe,” I admitted.

She shrugged. “I have to deal with stuff like that all the time, so I’ve worked out the bugs.”

I looked around the empty, uninspired space, wondering what Dinah would do with it. But I had other fish to fry, as my grandmother used to say, and many questions to ask. “So what is a nice, stylish woman like you doing in the cultural desert that is Autumn Vale?”

She shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “It’s as good a place as any, I guess. Cheaper than a city.”

“I’d take you for a Florida sort,” I said. It was true; she looked like a Boca Raton real estate agent, or a senior sales associate at an upscale boutique catering to wealthy retirees.

“Can’t stand hot weather,” she said with a laugh.

“I still can’t imagine why you came here to live, of all places!”

“I knew someone who lived here, and it seemed like a nice area. Then I found a job, and just . . . stayed.”

“Who did you know in town?”

“It was an old friend, but she died a year ago,” she said, her eyes watering. She ducked her head down and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I gave her a moment, then asked, “What do you plan on doing with this shop? Have you decided?”

For the next ten minutes, she sketched out her plans for a florist-slash-design boutique. It sounded like the kind of place I’d shop, but I had to say, “Do you think that will fly in Autumn Vale?”

“I hope so,” she said. “I need to find some way to make money. I have a little cash to set up with, but if it goes under, I’ll be broke. I’ve tried looking for a job, but there’s nothing. Since Rusty disappeared, most of Turner Construction’s jobs dried up, too, and I didn’t even take a salary for the last three months or so. Tom just wasn’t like his father, you know? The boy had no hustle.”

Rusty’s disappearance had hurt her in more ways than one, it seemed. “I don’t want to probe a delicate subject, Dinah, but you seem sure Rusty is alive. Where do you think he went?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Then why do you think he’s still alive?”

She set her lips in a straight line and frowned, wrinkles gathering on her forehead, below her fluffy, white-blonde bangs. “He left a note, see.”

“He did?” That was the first solid evidence I had heard that he had skipped town and not died. Binny hadn’t said anything about a note.

“He did. He went to the bank and withdrew ten thousand dollars, and when I went to work the next morning, I found a note on my desk.”

“What did it say?”

“It said he had business to take care of, and not to worry, that he would be back.”

“He didn’t say how long he’d be gone?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything to his kids, which surprised me. Him and Tom had been fighting, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected Rusty to say anything to him, but Binny . . . Lord, the sun rose and set by that girl, according to Rusty. He would have done anything for her. Him not telling her . . . well, it’s odd. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think why he up and left like he did.”

She sniffed and reached into her bag, drawing out a packet of tissues and blotting her mascaraed blue eyes carefully. “He’s been gone so long. I have to . . . I’m starting to think something happened while he was away. If I knew where he was going, I could check with the police there and hospitals, but . . .” She trailed off and shrugged. “That sheriff is no good at all. I keep hounding him to try to find Rusty, but he’s not doing a darn thing. I just don’t know what to think! And now, with Tom dead . . . poor Rusty! He’s going to be devastated with how he left things with Tom. When . . . if he comes back.”

“What did they fight over?”

“I just don’t know. I think it was business, but I’m not sure. There was something going on between Rusty and Melvyn. I knew that, but I didn’t think Tom was involved, other than it had to do with his father. There were lawsuits and bickering and turmoil. Gosh, it was nasty! Old Melvyn came out to the office with a double-barrel shotgun one day and called Rusty a low-life, lying snake.” She shook her head, but there was a faint smile curving up her lips.

“Did he mean it? I mean, my uncle, with the shotgun?”

“Well, the hole in the side of the trailer would seem to suggest he was serious!”

Chapter Seventeen