“Why?”

“Well, Binny claims that your great-uncle Melvyn killed her daddy, Rusty Turner, and buried him somewhere on the grounds of Wynter Castle. We think the holes have something to do with her, or with her brother, but we can’t prove it.”

*

“HONEST, SHILO, THIS PLACE IS CREEPIER THAN I EVEN remember.” I paced beside the rental, holding my cell phone to my ear. It kept cutting out on me and blinking back in, so our conversation had the constancy of a distant radio station. “Shilo, you there?”

“I’m here. I can barely hear you!” Her voice was crackly.

“Crappy reception.” Every once in a while I looked back at the castle and shuddered. What was I going to do if I couldn’t sell it?

“Mer, honey, you should just hire someone to fill in the holes and leave!” Shilo said as the airwaves cleared for a few seconds. “Come back to New York. Surely you can find work?”

“After that trouble with Leatrice? Nobody is going to hire a thief, Shi.”

“No one who knows you believes her!” my friend said.

“But the world is not made up of people who know me.”

“She doesn’t have that much influence! I told one jerk who asked about your trouble with Leatrice why he supposed the police hadn’t arrested you, if you really did steal her necklace?”

I appreciated her support. Shilo is one in a million, a model with a solid-gold heart. “I’m working on getting the holes filled in this very minute,” I said, glancing over at my real estate agent, who was sitting in his car talking on his own cell phone—organizing some help, I hoped. “But honestly, Shi, the trouble with Leatrice is only one of the reasons I came out here to stay. It’s time I dealt with this place instead of ignoring it.” I stared at the castle for a long moment. “I need to move on from Leatrice and not let her hijack my life for one more minute.”

“I miss you already,” she said after a long pause, during which my cell reception blinked in and out.

She was going to make me cry if she kept that up. But I was in upstate New York, not the deserts of equatorial Africa, for heaven’s sake! “I have to stay, honey. The estate property taxes are paid up in advance, thank God, but the life insurance Melvyn had was just enough to pay for his burial and the estate expenses for a few more months. There doesn’t seem to be any cash. The lawyer says it all disappeared in the last few years.” I ruminated on that; where had Melvyn’s money gone?

But back to the matter at hand. “I have got to stay and make this place salable, which is going to be easier said than done since the grounds look like giant prospectors have been digging for gold. It’s a mess! I clearly can’t trust my realtor to sell it alone.” I kicked at a tuft of weeds in the driveway. I hadn’t told my best friend everything, and had to confess. “I’m broke, or almost, anyway, and I have to stay here until I sell. I didn’t tell you but . . . I gave up my apartment in the city.”

“You gave up your apartment?” she screeched.

Well, that certainly came through loud and clear. I held the phone away from my ear. “Yes.”

“Honey, you shoulda told me. Why didn’t you tell me? And you left without even letting me know. I should be furious! Come back and move in with me.”

“Into your Cracker Jack box? Why don’t you move in with me, instead?” I joked.

“Into the castle?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve got lots of room,” I said, waving my hand around. “Oodles! We can fill in giant gopher holes together and ignore the morose people of Autumn Vale.” I started to laugh, but then heard the dial tone. What the heck? Had my phone dropped the call? Or had I said something to upset her? Impossible, I thought, staring at my phone. You can’t offend Shilo Dinnegan.

The realtor unfolded himself from his clown car and came back toward me. “Well, Miss Wynter, I’ve found someone who will fill in these holes for you at a rock-bottom cost.”

“What is rock-bottom cost?”

He named a number I could live with. “Okay. Mr. McGill—”

“Jack!” he said waggling his finger at me. “You’re to call me Jack.”

I smiled, and put my hand on his shoulder. “I need to sell this monstrosity, and soon. Mr. Silvio said that even just the land is worth a lot. I need to look at all possibilities, even carving up the property to sell lots.”

The realtor shrugged. “Mr. Silvio is not an expert on property, but even he should know things aren’t that simple in Abenaki County.”

Andrew Silvio was the lawyer who had been responsible for drawing up Uncle Melvyn’s will, and handled the estate’s probate proceedings. He had encouraged me to put the castle and property up for sale as soon as possible. Even if other claimants came forward—unlikely, he said, because Melvyn had died “without issue”—the castle would still have to be sold to satisfy their demands on the estate.

“I need to sell it quickly, to be frank, because I’m broke,” I said. “I know people, a few A-listers and a lot more B-listers. I’m not saying any of them will buy Wynter Castle, but even if they don’t they may know people who will.” I eyed the castle, doubt plaguing me for a moment. “It’s magnificent in its own weird way. I guess. No one, however, is going to buy a place riddled with holes.”

“And I’ve solved that little problem for you,” he said, rocking back on his heels, then onto his toes.

“When can the hole filler start?”

“Later this morning.”

“That’ll work temporarily, at least, until the next infestation of giant gophers. If this Binny person is behind it, I’ll need to figure out how to stop her. Me staying here might help.” I took a deep breath. “Now I’d like to go inside.”

He nodded and straightened his shoulders. “Okay. I’m ready if you are.”

I tried to judge if that was a “I’m ready for you to shriek and fall into a dead faint” look, or a, “It’s not as bad as it looks from the outside” kind of expression. Nothing to do but enter. We ascended to a flagged terrace, which ran the length of the building, seventy or eighty feet by my rough estimate. McGill (he just didn’t seem like a “Jack” to me, and I already thought of him just as “McGill”) had a big key, which he rattled in the lock, finally unlatching it. He pushed, and the oak, Gothic-arched double doors swung open, the resounding creak like a Foley guy’s version of a haunted castle sound.

“It’s kinda damp and cold, but it’s been modernized, thanks to your uncle Melvyn,” McGill said as I slipped past him. “We’ll have to get the boiler serviced before firing it up. I can get the guy out today to check it for you. It gets kinda cold here at night, even in September.”

He nattered on, his voice echoing as we entered, and the door shutting with a thud that reverberated through the whole castle, but I didn’t hear anything else as I gaped at the place. The great hall was enormous, with ceilings twenty or thirty feet high—I’m a poor judge of those things—and stone walls covered by tapestries that did little to hush the sound of my high heels on the flagstone flooring. I was faced by a grand, two-directional staircase that split, climbing to galleries that overlooked the great hall on both sides. As I slowly turned, I saw that the double doors were topped by a huge, diamond-paned Gothic window. If it had not been covered in dirt and ivy, it would have flooded the hall with light.

I was taken back nine years to my wedding to Miguel, held at a lovely small “castle” much like this, only in Connecticut. I had descended stairs like those to the strains of “Clair de Lune,” and down the aisle to Miguel, where he stood, handsome and dark, before the reverend. As the pianist lingered gently over the last notes, we joined hands.

Tears filled my eyes, and I was lost in time. Two years later, the same music played as his friends carried his casket from the church, and the mingled joy and sadness I feel when I hear it takes me back to that lovely, perfect wedding, and the hauntingly sad finale of our marriage. So much joy for two short years. I hugged myself, willing the tears to dry. Had this place ever held such beauty? Would anyone ever fondly say “Oh yes, the Wynter Castle! We had our wedding there.”