Bran New Death

Her voice broke on the last word, and I impulsively put out my hand, covering hers on the table. I shared a look with Shilo, who got up, collecting our plates.

“You’ve gone through so much,” I said softly, leaning toward her. “I want you to know, I understand. I do. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, and grief changes you, at least for a while. And sometimes for always.” My voice caught on the last word, as I thought of Miguel.

“I just . . . I don’t want to wallow, you know? I called my mom last night. She’s going to come to Autumn Vale next week and spend a couple of weeks here to . . . to help plan the funeral. I mean . . . I don’t know when I can hold it because the police haven’t released the b-body yet. But I’m all Tom had left, with Dad who knows where, so I’m going to have to take care of it.”

She broke down and cried then, her head cradled in her arms on the table, and I was glad. She had been holding it all in, determined to be strong, but strength doesn’t come from suppressing emotion. I knew, because I had gone that route and all it led to was an emotional collapse. I went around to her side of the table and sat beside her, at first rubbing her back, but then talking about Tom, and her complicated relationship with her brother.

She seemed grateful to speak with someone who had no personal feelings in the matter. They had been apart for a significant portion of her childhood, so when she came back to Autumn Vale she had had to forge a new relationship with her brother. That had been complicated by her father’s disappearance just months after she opened the bakery. She and Tom had gotten along all right, but were not close, and she still felt like an outsider in Autumn Vale, even though she had been born here.

“I didn’t know what to think, at first, when Dad disappeared. I mean, Tom seemed certain Dad was murdered, and by Melvyn!” She sighed. “I just didn’t know what to believe. He knows everyone so much better than I do.”

I remembered what she said in the bakery when she asked if she could trust me. What had she been about to tell me when I made that ill-timed joke? A direct question would probably just scare her off. “But you see how ridiculous that is, right, to think that Melvyn could have killed and then buried your father?” I asked, as Shilo ran water and squirted detergent in the sink. When Bi

She looked thoughtful, but shook her head. “I just don’t know. I wish I did.”

I wished she did, too. Shilo sat back down opposite me and we exchanged glances. “Did your brother have any enemies?” I asked. “Was he involved with anyone?”

“He didn’t have a girlfriend. I know people said stuff about some dancer, but I don’t think that was serious, just guy stuff, you know? Between him and Junior? He had a serious girlfriend a long time ago, but then she left town and that was it. He said he wasn’t the marrying kind.”

“What about work?”

“Work . . . you mean the company? Turner Construction? Him and Dinah have been trying to keep it afloat since Dad disappeared.”

“Is that why she asked for the key to the office?”

She had a blank look for a moment, then said, “Oh, the other day, in the bakery before . . .” Tears welled in her eyes. “Tom said she’d lost her key, but she hasn’t been working there for a while, as far as I know. There wasn’t much to do. Tom just wasn’t able to keep Turner Construction going like Dad did.” She sniffed, and Shilo handed her a paper napkin. “She probably just wanted in to collect some of her personal stuff.”

Or maybe Tom wanted the key himself for some reason. It was all a jumble in my head. But my mind kept returning to the zoning problems and Junior’s evasion. Was there something there? Did it all come back to that, something about the Wynter property?

“Bi

“Well, sure.” She blew her nose. “How about tonight?”

Chapter Fourteen

AN HOUR LATER, Shilo and I, in her rattletrap vehicle, pulled into the yard by the makeshift offices of Turner Construction behind Bi

Bi

“But you have a key to the office yourself, right?” I asked, remembering her refusal to give Tom the office key for Dinah.

“I did have one, but I’ve . . . uh . . . misplaced it,” she said.

Misplaced it?

“Let me try,” Shilo said. She took the ring and studied the keys by the yellow bug light over the trailer office door, then she bent over and stared into the lock. She took one key in hand, inserted it, and voilà, the door opened.

Bi

“I’m a gypsy,” Shilo said, her grin wide. “We’re good with locks.”

We entered, and Bi

Bi

Her voice sounded a little odd, and I shot a quick look over at her, but her face was blank. “Dinah Hooper worked here, right?”

Bi

“And she was okay with this mess?”

“She had her hands full lately just trying to keep the company going. Dinah and Tom . . . since Dad has been gone, they didn’t work together too well, you know?”

There was an old sofa bed in one corner, and it looked like someone used it to sleep on. I hoped some bum wasn’t using the place to hide out, but there was no evidence of that. I suspected Tom had been using it as a crash pad. As far as that went, I didn’t even know where he lived, or if he used the office as his full-time apartment. “Had your brother been sleeping here, do you think?”

Bi

“I thought Dinah and your dad didn’t live together?”

“They didn’t officially live together, but she stayed there sometimes.”

“Do you live in your father’s house?”

“Nope. I live over the bakery. It’s more convenient. Dad’s house is in town, but it’s a ways away, at the other end. We own the building my bakery is in, so I took one of the apartments upstairs. Gordy and Zeke share the other one, a two-bedroom over the back.”

“So . . . no one is living in your dad’s house right now.”