An old fellow in a trapper hat and plaid jacket shambled past, making use of his cane. He eyed me with interest, his smudgy glasses not quite concealing the intelligence in his beady eyes. I’d try again. “Excuse me, sir,” I said. I had to bend over to talk to the elderly gnome, but his eyes twinkled with reassuring sharpness. “Could you help me?”

“Mebbe,” he said, bushy brows raised. “Whadyawant?”

“I’m trying to figure out the best way to get to Wynter Castle on Exeter road.”

He made a choked sound in his throat and bolted away from me as if I had a communicable disease. Who knew someone using a cane could move so quickly? Tap-tap, tappity-tap.

“Charming.” As I stood watching the oldster speed down the sidewalk, a police cruiser slowed near my rental car.

I walked toward it, watching the cop lean across the passenger seat and examine my rental’s license plate. If he was so interested, he may as well help me out. I walked out onto the street and leaned over the cruiser, gesturing the cop to roll down his window. He did, and I leaned in the open window. “Hi there! Maybe you can help me?”

He looked down at my cleavage and smiled, then looked up into my eyes. “I sure hope I can,” he replied.

Never failed. I sighed inwardly, but smiled back, amused, as always, by the male fascination with breasts. The poor dears just can’t help themselves. I read his name tag, and said, “Well, Officer Virgil Grace—”

“Sheriff Virgil Grace, ma’am,” he said with an attractive grin.

“Sheriff, how . . . Western. Anyway, I’m trying to find someplace.”

“I’d love to help,” he said, a dimple winking in his cheek. “You looking for the way to my heart?”

He was a definite cutie, but too young for me. I wasn’t on the lookout for the trail to any of his vital organs. “Maybe another day. Right now I just need directions to Wynter Castle, but no one wants to tell me how to get there, not even the friendly voice on my GPS.”

Watching my eyes, he frowned and said, “Why do you want to go to Wynter Castle?”

It wasn’t any of his business, but maybe it would help if I explained. “I’m Merry Wynter, Melvyn Wynter’s niece and heir. Wynter Castle is my property.”

He nodded. “Okay. I heard you were trying to sell it.”

“I was . . . am . . . but no one seems to be in the market for a monstrosity of a castle in the wilderness of upstate New York,” I said, and stood, hand to my back. After no sleep and hours of driving I was cranky, but had to stifle the urge to snap at him. I bent back down and said, in as neutral a tone as I could manage, “So what is the problem with me trying to find Wynter Castle?”

“No problem,” he said, his expression serious. “Follow me and I’ll lead you there.”

“Thanks!”

“You may not thank me when you see the place.”

Chapter Two

TWENTY MINUTES OR so later, I followed him up a winding lane, emerging from a thick forest that opened out to a long, green slope up to Wynter Castle. I parked in a weed-infested flagstone drive and got out. The sheriff parked, too, and walked over to me. I was numb with fatigue and something else: a weird, bittersweet feeling of coming home. This was one of the few places I had ever gone with my mom, and the only place I knew of where my father had stayed for any length of time.

But holy catfish, no wonder it hadn’t sold! First I scanned the land and shook my head. The landscape, a huge open area rimmed with dense forest, was riddled with holes dotted around the long grass—big holes, all with mounds of dirt beside them. The yawning cavities littered the open landscape, right to the edge of the woods. The sun rose up over the forest and beamed down beneficently on the weird and troubling scene. Turning in a complete circle, I counted about thirty holes, give or take, and there might be more beyond my field of vision or behind the outbuildings that dotted the landscape. The sheriff stood staring, glancing back and forth between my face and the gaping wounds. “This may be one of the problems with selling Wynter Castle,” I said. That was probably the understatement of the century.

He didn’t say anything, and I turned to finally look at the building itself. My inheritance really was an American castle, old and shrouded in ivy that coated the hewn, stone walls, almost concealing the diamond-pane, Gothic-arched windows. It was big, even bigger than I remembered from my one visit so long ago.

Just then another car pulled up the lane, a tiny Smart car with a sign on the side that read Autumn Vale Realty. It shrieked to a stop, and a tall, gangly man emerged, unfolding himself like a backward origami. “Miss Wynter?” he asked, approaching at a lope, his hand stuck out. “Jack McGill, your realtor.”

“Hey, Jack,” Virgil said.

“Hey, Virge, what you doing here?” he said, dropping his hand to his side.

“Showing Miss Wynter the way to her property.”

“You should have stopped at my office,” he chastised, shaking his finger at me. “I would have showed you the way!” He extended his hand again.

I took it and shook. “I couldn’t find your office. I couldn’t find anything.” I paused and looked around, then back at him, examining his beaky, honest face topped by a shaggy shock of reddish-brown hair. “I’m beginning to see the problem here, Mr. McGill, why Wynter Castle won’t sell. We have giant gophers on the property.”

He broke out into astonished laughter and doubled over, folding like a jackknife, slapping his thigh. “That’s a good one, Miss Wynter.”

“Call me Merry.” It wasn’t that funny.

Sheriff Grace, who had been leaning against his patrol car listening in, cocked his ear at a scratchy call on the radio in his car and said, “I’d better get going. I would seriously suggest, Miss Wynter, that you not stay out here alone.”

“Why?”

He let his gaze travel over the hole-riddled property. “Wouldn’t want to see you end up in one of these.”

I gasped and spluttered, openmouthed.

“You know, like falling in.” He got in and drove off, a hail of gravel from the edge of the drive shooting up in a shower from his back tires.

Was that a threat of some sort? Ridiculous man!

“Don’t mind him,” the realtor said.

“I don’t mind him at all. In fact, I doubt if I’ll even think of him after this moment.”

He cast me a glance, shaggy eyebrows raised. “Now, I suppose you’ll be wondering what caused all these holes here?”

“No, not at all.”

“Oh.” He was silent.

“I was being facetious,” I said, stifling a sigh. “Bad habit of mine. So . . . who is digging the holes? And why?”

“Well, that’s just it. We don’t know.”

I looked at him in amazement. “You don’t know?” He shrugged, and I strolled over to one of the holes, looking into it, then turned back to McGill. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? You’d think you could have mentioned it in all the conversations we had.”

His face turned red, right up to his ears. “I tried.”

“You did not.”

“Okay, well, I tried to get you to come here.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I told you there were things you ought to handle yourself, and that we needed to talk face to face.”

He was right about that. “Why did the baker in town say all I’d find out here is death?” I asked.

“You talked to Binny? Last person you should talk to.”