Bran New Death by Victoria Hamilton

Author:Victoria Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths
ISBN: 9780425258835
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2013-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

AN HOUR LATER, Shilo and I, in her rattletrap vehicle, pulled into the yard by the makeshift offices of Turner Construction behind Binny’s van. It was starting to get dark, and the yard was a place of long shadows and murky corners. Before Shi turned off her headlights, I saw the Turner Construction sign looking the worse for wear, a random pattern of holes scattered over it as if it had suffered target practice.

Binny was already at the door of the trailer riffling through a ring of keys and trying them. “I don’t know what key works,” she lamented. “These are Tom’s keys; the cops gave them to me.”

“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.

Binny gaped, mouth open. I shrugged and said, “Don’t ask, because I don’t know how she does it.”

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

We entered, and Binny flicked on a light switch; fluorescents shuddered and blinked into wavering brightness. The place was a mess; papers everywhere, trash bins overturned, surfaces heaped with junk. “Somebody has trashed the place,” I said, aghast.

Binny looked around. “No, this is pretty much how it always looks.”

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?”

Binny nodded. “She was the office manager; took care of day-to-day stuff.”

“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?”

Binny seemed reluctant to answer, but she nodded. “I think he may have been. He was living at the house with Dad, but then Dinah kind of semi-moved in, and he started to bunk out here, sometimes.”

“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.

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