“Melvyn’s death scared Dad. He heard about it, and I think that’s when he began to wonder if Dinah was scamming him. He left the hunting cabin in the late spring, from what he told me last night, and Dinah has been looking for him ever since.”

“That’s why she kept showing up on her dirt bike in my woods! If I’d known it was her . . . but everyone looks alike, on a dirt bike in a helmet.”

“Anyway, that’s why I want to give this to you,” she said, shoving the box at me.

I stared at the box, which clunked when it moved. Okay, so not cannoli. Darn!

“It’s the Italian teapot you admired in my shop. It’s something Dinah gave to me, and I don’t want it. She said it was valuable . . . real valuable. Told me to keep it on a shelf in the shop for good luck. But you like it and have no connection with it so . . . would you take it? Partly as thanks for . . . for everything?”

And partly just so she didn’t have to look at such a vivid reminder of Dinah Hooper and all she represented, I thought. “I’d love it,” I said sincerely. “I’ll look after it well.”

“I’d better go,” she said, looking off to where Zeke and Gordy were taking a break in the shade. “It’s looking better out here. Not so much like an abandoned graveyard.”

Which reminded me . . . “Binny, there’s one thing I still can’t figure out . . . why was Tom digging holes on my property? Did he or did he not know that Rusty was still alive?”

“I just don’t know,” she said on a sigh. “I can’t believe he knew Dad was alive, or he’d have told me. Maybe Dinah will spill her guts.”

“If Dinty was alive you’d have him to contend with, too.”

“I know, but Dad still feels bad about that. Dinty was a lug, but I don’t think he knew what his mom was up to. My dad has a feeling Dinah told Dinty that he—Dad—was trying to kill her, and that’s why Dinty went after him.”

“Hey, it was him or Dinty. I just don’t understand why Dinah stayed around Autumn Vale for so long. It would have made sense for her to tie up loose ends and take off, start fresh somewhere else.”

Binny shrugged, then snuck a look at my face, and looked away, shuffling awkwardly. “I gotta get going. I’m going to pick up my dad, and we have a lot to talk about. Uh . . . Gogi Grace said . . . she told me something in confidence, something she says you already know.”

I waited.

She eyed me again, but then broke eye contact and looked up at the sky. “I guess . . . that girl who has been hanging around, that Lizzie Proctor . . . she’s Tom’s daughter, Gogi says. Now I get why Emerald kept coming into the bakery. She always looked like she wanted to talk. Maybe she was trying to get the guts to tell Tom the truth. I only knew her as an old high school girlfriend of Tom’s, but I guess they were more.”

I believed that Tom already knew the truth, or suspected, and that’s why he wanted to make money, to help his daughter, but I didn’t say anything. “Have you told your dad yet?”

She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “I want to be sure, first.”

“Gogi is sure and Hannah is sure; I think they both have good instincts about it all. By the way, Lizzie took some pictures out here of the castle and promised to take them in to the library to show Hannah. Can you—”

“I’ll make sure she does it,” said Binny, already in stern-aunt mode.

They were all going to be okay.

*

TWO DAYS OF HECTIC ACTIVITY FOLLOWED. I BAKED muffins at the bakeshop, fielded a few irate phone calls from Janice Grover (she thought I was behind the tub of boiling-hot water Simon Grover and his bank were now in; I set her straight, then went there to buy some stuff), orchestrated, along with Gogi Grace, an emotional meeting among Lizzie Proctor, her grandmother, and mother, and Binny and Rusty Turner. Among all the bustle, I chauffeured Pish back and forth to the police station. My dear friend was “helping” federal officers as they tried to figure out, with the assistance of Isadore Openshaw and a sniveling, frightened Simon Grover, all the financial monkey business Dinah Hooper had created. The woman had been busy with several different scams, among them, ones using the US Postal Service, which, ironically, could wind up costing her as much jail time as the murder charges would net.

I finally had a day to myself, and was out on the front step, drinking a cup of coffee, accompanied by my ginger cat, Becket. Gordy and Zeke struggled manfully along the arboretum forest, clearing brush from the edge; they were almost halfway along. Those guys were proving to be worth every penny I paid them, and the goodwill I was getting in town from hiring locals was astounding. I was making friends. Befriending Gogi Grace, capturing the murderer of Uncle Melvyn and Tom Turner, and restoring Rusty Turner to his daughter and the community didn’t hurt, either.

Shilo was gone somewhere with McGill, who had finished all of the hole filling, even the one poor Tom Turner died in, and she had offered to ferry Pish into town this time, where he was yet again consorting with the federal forensic accountant. This was like a grand holiday for my wise and wonderful pal; financial scams were a hobby of his, and he knew a lot about them, enough so that he was writing a book on the topic, of which this would be a chapter, I was sure. It said a lot about his reputation that he was actually being utilized rather than shut out of the process.

I heard before I saw the giant truck lumbering up my long and winding drive. It finally came into sight, and pulled up in front of the castle. A burly, sweaty driver jumped down, grumbled his way over to me, and announced, in a growl, that he had my stuff.

He had my stuff . . . yay! It was here, out of storage, at long last! I gave a little hop of happiness, overjoyed at the prospect of unwrapping treasures that I hadn’t seen in years. Zeke and Gordy helped him offload, which only took an hour or so; I directed and Becket oversaw the whole affair from a place of honor, the round table in the center of the great hall. Everything labeled “Teacups” or “Teapots” was to go into the dining room, where the box with the Italian teapot still sat, unopened, on the huge dining room table. Everything labeled “Kitchen” went into the kitchen. Every other box should be piled in the great hall, I told them, so I could unpack and disseminate the contents.

I then declared I was serving a big meal in the kitchen for Zeke, Gordy, and the sweaty driver, who proved to be more human once he was given a towel and washcloth and offered a place to cool off. They all accepted my invitation. We were having a spurt of indecently hot weather in upstate; it was enough to make anyone a little tetchy, as locals called it.

But I still had made soup and sandwiches, as well as a batch of corn muffins. After a long lunch, the truck driver gave the two fellows a ride back into town—neither had a car, but that hadn’t been a big problem while they used Gordy’s uncle’s tractor, which had now been returned—and I was left alone in my beautiful castle.

My insanely beautiful, despicably impractical, infinitely precious, huge castle.

I wandered through, admiring the furniture. Once Shilo and I had taken all the Holland covers off, we found there was a theme to the furnishings, in the largest part of the castle. Eastlake was the most common style, but Pish told me that it was all part of a Gothic neo-medievalist–style revolution of the late Victoria, era. I’m glad he knew that, because I didn’t have a clue. It was all big, garish, and yet strangely magnificent, scaled to fit thirty-foot ceilings and forty-foot rooms.

I made my way into the dining room, where the boxes labeled “Teacups” and “Teapots” had been piled. I hadn’t opened the box Binny had brought yet, but I pulled it toward me across the oak table and used my fingernail to cut through the tape, which held down the lid. I opened the flap and took out the gorgeous Italian teapot, a Capodimonte piece with a raised relief pattern of a girl and donkey. It was in beautiful condition. I took the lid off and examined it carefully, but there were absolutely no chips.