Cast Iron Cover-Up (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 3) (4 page)

Chapter 8: Pat

A
nnie’s suggestion was a good one, and I was glad that Timothy was willing to go along with it. To my surprise, we didn’t have far to look.

We found the van parked in the sheriff’s headquarters parking lot.

“Wow, Kathleen must be even better than I thought,” I said.

“Do you think she’s arrested the killer already?” Annie asked. Did my twin sister actually sound a little disappointed by the prospect?

“Hang on. From what you two have told me, we still don’t know for sure if anyone’s even dead,” Timothy added.

“You weren’t there when Peggy came to us and we saw the blood all over her. She was pretty convincing that something bad had happened to Bones.”

“I’m not saying that she didn’t believe it herself, but she could have been wrong. I know for a fact that a head wound can be pretty minor, but it’s bloody as can be. One of the men in my class this week hit his head on the corner of a beam, and it bled like crazy before he was able to get it stopped. There’s no sense in jumping to conclusions until we have more information, so let’s go in and see what we can find out,” Timothy said.

“What makes you think Kathleen’s going to tell us anything?” I asked him.

Timothy looked surprised by my question. “She’s your big sister. Why wouldn’t she share what she’s uncovered?”

Annie shrugged. “You’d be surprised.”

“It’s still worth a shot asking her, isn’t it?” Timothy asked as he parked the truck next to the van.

“Why not?” I asked. “Like you said, we have nothing to lose.”

When the three of us walked into the station, it was time for our next surprise. Instead of being interrogated by Kathleen, three of the college students were just sitting there alone in the waiting area. Henry, Marty, and Gretchen all looked pretty upset, but we didn’t know yet what it was all about.

Henry spotted me immediately and stood up. “Finally, a friendly face in this town. Pat, can you help us?”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“Life was fine after we had lunch at the Iron, and we were all working in different sections of our dig when things started to fall apart. We can’t find Peggy or Bones, and to make matters worse, we had to abandon our site.”

Ignoring the first part of his statement, I asked, “Why did you have to leave?”

“The guy who owned the property showed up and threw us off his land,” Henry said with a shrug. “We went by the Iron, but you were already closed for the day, so the only other thing we could think of doing was coming here.”

Timothy took a step forward. “What did this guy who claimed to own the land look like?” Since he was the rightful owner, I understood him being upset about being impersonated.

Henry scratched his chin before he spoke. “He was pretty fit for his age, probably somewhere in his sixties if I had to guess, and he had a streak of gray running through his hair that made him look kind of like a skunk.”

The description was on the nose, and I had no trouble recognizing who he was talking about. It was Carter Hayes, retired from his civil service job for years. These days, he mostly spent his time being a thorn in everyone else’s side. He was one of the greediest, cheapest, and most miserly men I’d ever known. I had no problem believing that Carter would throw the college kids off of land he didn’t even own.

Timothy spoke up. “Well, for your information, it’s my land, and while I wasn’t the one who threw you off, Carter did me a favor. What were you thinking, digging all of those holes on somebody else’s property without getting permission first?”

“Let’s not get off the main subject,” I said. I understood Timothy’s frustration, but we had something more important to worry about at the moment. “Henry, we need to talk about Bones.”

“Do you know where he is?” Gretchen asked. “Is he somewhere with Peggy? It’s not like the two of them to just run off like that.”

“I thought Peggy left to go get supplies,” Annie said.

“Have you seen her? You must have if you know that. Where is she?”

“She’s at the hospital,” Annie replied.

Henry’s face lost its color. “What happened to her? Is she okay?”

“She’s going to be fine,” I reassured him. “She told us that she left to get supplies for dinner, but when she got back, most of you were gone.”

“What do you mean, most of us?” Marty asked. “Did she at least find Bones? And if she’s okay, then why is she in the hospital?”

“Finding Bones’s body at the dig site was too much for her,” Annie said. I’d been half expecting her to say something inflammatory, and I watched everyone closely to see if any of them showed a single sign of recognition, but the truth was that they
all
looked stunned by the news.

“He’s dead?” Gretchen asked. “He can’t be!”

“As a matter of fact, we don’t know that just yet,” I said.

Henry held up his hands. “Hang on a second. You just told us that she found his body. That implies that he is dead, doesn’t it?”

“The key is that Peggy
told
us that’s what happened, but so far, no one else has seen the body,” I answered.

“Then let’s go to the site and look for him,” Gretchen insisted as she headed for the door.

“I can save you all a trip. We’ve already been there,” Annie explained softly. “There was no sign that anything had happened there at all.”

“If Peggy said she saw it, then that’s what happened. She wouldn’t lie about something like that.” Henry was pretty emphatic about that, and I wondered if they were more than just friends.

“Would you mind if we looked in the back of the van while you’re waiting on the sheriff?” I asked them.

“Why? What does that have to do with anything?” Marty insisted on knowing.

“I’m not sure, but if you don’t have anything to hide, why would you care if we had a look?” Annie asked him.

“Get a warrant, and then you can look all you like,” Marty said sharply.

Henry shook his head. “Don’t be stupid, Marty.” He turned to me and said, “Of course you can look. In fact, let’s all go to the parking lot right now together. At this point, I’m not even sure the sheriff is coming back. They told us to be patient, but I’m not sure that we have any left.”

I neglected to tell any of them that the sheriff was our sister, and evidently Annie didn’t feel the need to share that information, either. “No worries on that count. If she does come in, we’ll see her out there.”

We got to the van, and Henry unlocked every door to it and swung them all wide open. “Help yourself.”

“I still don’t like this, on principle, if nothing else,” Marty said.

“Henry’s right, Marty. We don’t have anything to hide,” Gretchen reassured him.

It was pretty clear that there wasn’t a body in the van at the moment, and it would take a trained forensics team to say whether there’d been any blood spilled in the back. After a quick examination, I said, “You can lock it back up. Thanks.”

As Henry did as I suggested, Marty asked, “Just out of curiosity, what exactly were you looking for?”

“Does it matter?” Annie asked. “It wasn’t there.”

A look of realization spread over Gretchen’s face. “You thought we were hiding Bones’s body in the van, weren’t you?”

“The thought crossed our minds,” I said.

Henry looked upset by the suggestion. “We aren’t killers, Pat. We want to know what happened to him more than you do. Why are you so interested, anyway?”

“Peggy came to us this afternoon with blood all over her hands and face. As far as we’re concerned, that makes it our business.”

“I need to see her to be sure that she’s okay,” Henry said as he reopened the driver’s door of the van. “Where exactly is this hospital?”

Kathleen drove up at that moment, and after spotting the van, she pulled her squad car behind it, effectively pinning it in place.

After our sister got out, she asked me, “What’s going on here?”

Before I could answer, Henry said, “We came here to report that two of our friends are missing.”

“These are the college kids I told you about,” I told her.

“Let’s all go inside and talk about this,” Kathleen said.

“You can’t just arrest us,” Marty protested. “We know our rights. We haven’t done anything.”

Kathleen stood inches from him. “Who said anything about arresting you? That’s interesting that you’d jump to that conclusion. Do you have a guilty conscience, maybe?”

“I couldn’t, because I haven’t done anything to feel guilty about,” Marty said, though he shrank back a little as he said it. Kathleen could be pretty intimidating when she chose to be.

“Good. Then like I said, let’s go in and talk about it,” our sister said.

The three students agreed, and the three of us naturally followed them all inside. Kathleen noticed our behavior, but she didn’t comment on it directly. “Since there are so many of us, let’s go into the main interrogation room, okay?”

“Why, are you going to interrogate us?” Gretchen asked, clearly upset by the prospect.

“Let’s call it the conference room instead if that makes you feel any better,” Kathleen answered, doing her best to put them all at ease.

Annie, Timothy, and I followed them as well, but Kathleen stopped us as the students entered the largest room in the precinct. “I’ll be right with you,” she told them, and then she closed the door. Turning to us, she said, “I’m truly sorry, but I can’t allow any of you inside during an official interrogation.”

“I thought it was just a conference?” I asked her with a grin.

She didn’t return it. “We both know better. Something’s going on, and I aim to find out exactly what it is.”

“So then, you believe Peggy?” Annie asked her.

“Unless she’s completely delusional, something happened out at your land, Timothy. If this kid everyone keeps calling Bones isn’t dead, he’s in bad need of a doctor.”

“What about your theory that she was on some kind of drugs?” Annie asked her.

“They did a blood test. She’s clean. That gives her story about Bones a little more credibility than it had before.” She gestured toward the closed interrogation room door. “I’m going to get it out of them, one way or another.”

“They all claimed to be just as surprised about the disappearance as we were,” I said.

Kathleen looked hard at me for a moment before speaking. “Pat, don’t think that I don’t appreciate you bringing these kids to me, but that’s where it ends. I have to handle this myself.”

“I understand,” I said. “For what it’s worth, the body isn’t in the van at this moment, not that it wasn’t necessarily there earlier.”

“You searched their van? You can’t do that!”

I’d clearly struck a nerve, and I was about to defend myself when Annie did it for me. “We asked them nicely if they’d mind if we looked around, and they opened all of the doors for us willingly. There was no duress or threat, implied or otherwise, Kathleen.”

That seemed to calm her down a little. “Maybe not, but I still don’t like it.”

“Then I’m not sure how you’re going to feel about this,” I said as I brought out the button and thread that I’d found near where Peggy had claimed she’d found the body. “This was in the grass.”

“And you just picked it up?” she asked as she took it from me. “What were you thinking, Patrick?”

I hated when she used my given name, and it made me a little agitated. “I was thinking that if I left it where it was, there was a chance that your team would miss it altogether.”

“Tell her about the drag marks,” Annie suggested.

“What are you two talking about?”

“We saw evidence in the grass and weeds that something heavy had been dragged from that dig site,” I said. “I tried to get a photo of it, but it didn’t turn out. Believe me, it was there, though.”

“Fine,” Kathleen said with a resigned air. “I’ll tell my people to look for it. We have a little better equipment than a camera phone.”

“I already did. Kathleen, if I hadn’t said anything about it, the grass could have bounced back by the time they looked for it if I hadn’t mentioned it to Hank,” I said. “Anyway, I just thought you should know.”

“I appreciate it.” She hesitated, and then she added, “I’m sorry I snapped at you both earlier. This vanishing body is driving me crazy. Whether Bones is dead or not,
something
happened out there.”

“Good luck figuring it out,” Annie said.

“Thanks.” She looked at Timothy and added, “I’m sure your first reaction is to go out there and fill in every last one of those holes, but resist the temptation. I’m having the entire area cordoned off, so until you hear otherwise from me, that part of your land is off limits. Understand?”

“I hear you loud and clear,” Timothy answered, but it was clear he wasn’t happy about it.

“Now, if you all will excuse me, I have work to do,” Kathleen said as she disappeared into the interrogation room.

I would have given anything to be a fly on the wall in there, but it wasn’t going to happen.

For now, we were out of the loop, whether we liked it or not.

Chapter 9: Annie

“I
’m glad you made it back a day early,” I told Timothy as he, Pat, and I walked out of the police station. “I missed you.” I kissed him lightly, or at least I tried to, but he pulled away a little at the last second. Was he shy about me bussing him with Pat there?

“Me, too,” he said.

I glanced over at Pat to see if he’d been watching us, but he was careful to be looking elsewhere when I did.

“Would you like me to make you something good for dinner tonight?” I offered, trying my best not to sound peeved about the refusal. “We just got a great deal on pork roast, and I’ve been dreaming about ways of making it in my cast iron Dutch oven.”

“As tempting at that sounds, what I really need this evening is sleep. Do you mind too much if I take a rain check, Annie? That course was exhausting. I’m going to go home and collapse.”

“I totally get that,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment again.

“If you’re sure, then as soon as I drop you two off at the Iron, I’m heading home.”

“No need to even do that,” I said, fighting to keep my voice light. “Pull over. We can walk from here.”

Timothy’s face clouded a little. “Come on, there’s no need to be that way. I have time to at least take you back to your vehicles.”

“Don’t be silly. We’re fine, aren’t we, Pat?”

My twin brother knew better than to argue with me at that moment if I’d offered to walk a hundred miles instead of one. “It’s true. I need to stretch my legs a little.” After Timothy pulled the truck over, Pat got out and said, “Annie, if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to pop into the auto supply store. I need to pick up new windshield wipers. See you around, Timothy. Thanks for the lift.”

“You’re welcome,” Timothy said to his retreating back. I had no idea if my brother needed new wipers or not, but I couldn’t blame him for getting away from us as quickly as he could manage it. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t sure if there was about to be a scene, and at the very least, he wanted to give us some privacy. If it had been him and Jenna, I would like to think that I would have done the same thing for him.

“Annie, I swear I don’t mean anything by turning down your generous offer to feed me. If it means that much to you, I’d be happy to have dinner with you.”

“Thanks, but I’d never forgive myself for depriving you of your rest. I’ll see you later.”

Now that my brother was gone, it was clear that my boyfriend was ready for that kiss, but I wasn’t in any mood to give him one now. Even as I forced a smile and walked away from the truck, I was beating myself for acting like a petulant little girl. Why did I do that sometimes? Just when I thought I was finally growing up, I’d have a brief relapse of my adolescence.

I glanced backward as I walked into the automotive parts store and saw Timothy still watching me with a deep frown. Oh, well. I’d make it up to him later, but for now, I had no choice but to play it out until the end.

Pat looked me over carefully when I joined him inside the store. “What is it?” I asked him. “What are you looking for?”

“Well, I don’t
see
any blood,” he said with the hint of a smile.

I could stay in my little snit, or I could smile and accept his comment for what it was: a way to break the mood and make me smile. I was proud when I realized that it would be the latter, not the former. That still didn’t make me a grownup, but at least I felt a little better about myself. “I overreacted back there, didn’t I?”

“Are you kidding? I thought you used great restraint, Annie.”

“Pat, this is no time to make fun of me.”

“I’m not. I swear, I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to turn down your invitation. Even if your cooking wasn’t suitable for stray dogs, which everyone who has ever tasted knows that’s far from the case, that was an invitation he should have accepted. I’m not the greatest guy in the world when it comes to reading a woman’s signals, but man, he makes me look downright smooth sometimes.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I said with a smile.

“For what it’s worth, I’d still be honored to have dinner with you. Tell you what. Why don’t we go back to the Iron, and I’ll make something for you for a change?”

“As much as I appreciate the gesture, would it be okay with you if I cooked instead?” I loved my brother dearly, but I was in no hurry to sample his food again any time soon.

“It would be a great deal more than okay, as far as I’m concerned,” he said with a grin. “Can we still have that pork roast you were talking about? Ever since you mentioned it, I’ve been trying not to drool on my chin.”

“Why not?” I asked with a laugh.

He started to walk out of the store when I stopped him. “What about your wiper blades?”

“What? Oh. I don’t know the right size I need. I’ll have to come back when I’m driving.”

I looked at him skeptically, but I decided not to push it. After all, it wouldn’t be fair to point out that his excuse to leave me alone to deal with Timothy had been for my benefit and not his.

It was a pleasant late afternoon, and I enjoyed the walk back to the Iron with my brother. Thankfully no one was waiting for us when we got there, but I didn’t like the look of that bloody handprint that was still on the door. The blood had darkened somewhat and now looked crimson. “Pat, if you’ll clean that up with some ammonia window cleaner, I’ll get things started for our supper.”

“Tell you what. Let me watch you prepare the pork roast, and then I’ll clean the window when you put it in the oven. Is that a deal?”

“Since when did you take so much interest in my cooking?”

“What if you’re gone sometime and I have to fend for myself or, worse yet, run the grill in your place?” he asked me.

“Me? Where would I go?” I asked him.

“Who knows? You might want to take a trip someday.”

“Not alone I won’t, and the prospect of going with anyone else seems farfetched at the moment,” I answered.

“Do you mind an audience while you cook?” he asked again. “If you don’t want me hovering around, I understand completely.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re more than welcome to watch.”

We walked inside together, and I noticed that Pat was careful to lock the door behind us. Flipping on a few lights, we made our way back to the grill. I took out one of my favorite Dutch ovens and put it on the counter. Preheating the oven to 325 degrees F, I took out a two-pound roast and put it on one of my cutting boards reserved for meat only. Taking a sharp knife, I cut diagonal diamonds on the fat side, piercing the thin layer with two-inch-deep cuts about the same distance from each other. Taking some of the sauce I loved, I rubbed it into the top, being sure to get sauce into the crevasses I’d created. “Normally I’d let this marinate for four or five hours, but I think we’ll be fine if we go ahead and pop it straight into the oven. Besides, you don’t want to wait until midnight to eat, do you?”

“Not with our schedule set for getting up bright and early tomorrow,” Pat said from a barstool across from where I was working.

“I didn’t think so,” I answered with a smile. Taking out another knife and a clean cutting board, I prepped an onion, slicing it horizontally to make rings from it, peeled and chopped large chunks of carrots, and then quartered a few medium-sized potatoes. “Does that look like enough vegetables for you?” I asked him.

“Aren’t you having any?” he asked me with a grin.

I added another potato, a few more carrots, and one more onion, and then I spread them out on the bottom of the Dutch oven. After that, I poured in about a cup of beef broth and then added the pork roast last.

“Why beef broth for cooking pork?” Pat asked.

“Just about any liquid will do,” I said. “There’s something about the beef broth as it steams that I like, though I’ve used water in the past, wine, and even some hard cider once.”

“How was that?” he asked me.

“Not good enough to justify giving up the hard cider,” I told him with a grin as I covered the lid. The oven reached its temperature, and I put the cast iron pot inside and then set my timer for an hour and forty-five minutes.

Pat must have seen the setting. “Do we really have to wait that long?”

“Well, we might be able to get away with just an hour, but I don’t like to take any chances with pork. I know the government has come out saying that an internal temperature of 145 degrees F is enough, but I like mine to be at least 160. If you’re feeling lucky, though, we can always roll the dice.”

“No, your way sounds fine to me,” he said. “Is that all there is to it?”

“Pat, I don’t make magic back here. Most of the work is done by the oven and the cast iron.”

“I don’t know. That seemed pretty labor intensive to me.”

“Trust me, it’s not. This is one of the easiest meals I make.”

“Then why don’t you serve it more often?” he asked me.

“Mostly because of the high price of those roasts. If I could get a bargain like I did on these, I’d make this all the time. Now, what do we do in the meantime?”

“I’ve got a window to clean, remember?” he asked with a grin.

“I don’t mind doing it, if you’d rather not.”

“No thanks. A deal is a deal. You cooked, so the least I can do is clean the window.”

“I’ll at least keep you company,” I said.

We walked out together, and Pat had the glass shining again in no time. “There. It looks as good as new, doesn’t it? That was easy enough. It still leaves us with an hour and a half to kill, though,” he said.

“Maybe we should come up with a different expression, given the circumstances.”

“What circumstances are those, exactly? We don’t have a body, and the only eyewitness’s account is a bit shaky, and that’s putting it lightly. If she really saw Bones in that hole, then what happened to him? Did someone drag him away, or did he crawl?” Pat asked.

“Did the way that grass and those weeds were bent look as though he could have crawled away under his own power?” I asked him.

“I don’t know. All I can say for sure is that he was nowhere around that dig site when we checked it out.”

“I wonder if Kathleen’s deputies found anything that we missed,” I said.

Pat frowned before he spoke. “We both know that we won’t hear a word about it, even if they did. Unless.”

“Unless what?”

“Why don’t we invite Kathleen to join us for dinner?” he suggested. “There’s enough to share, isn’t there?”

“We could feed six people, if we had to, based on how many vegetables I put in that pot,” I conceded.

“You’re right. That gives me an even better idea. We could invite her, and the three college kids, too. After all, they have to eat something, don’t they?”

“Pat, do you honestly believe that Kathleen is going to fall for that?”

“The only way to find out is to ask her,” he said with his most impish grin.

Why not? What could it hurt to at least make the offer? If she declined, then at least we’d tried to do something constructive. And if she said yes, we might end up getting more out of those students than anyone could expect. “There’s just one problem with your idea,” I told him.

“What’s that?”

“If we succeed, there won’t be any seconds, let alone leftovers.”

Pat pretended to ponder that for a full ten seconds before he finally shrugged. “If it helps our investigation, then it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

“Wow, now I know that you’re serious,” I told him as I picked up my cellphone and made the call.

To my surprise, Kathleen agreed to the plan almost immediately, whether it was because of what I was offering or because it gave her an opportunity to extend her examination of these kids.

Either way, it looked as though Pat and I hadn’t been completely cut out of her investigation after all, and Timothy’s refusal to have dinner with me had made that possible in the first place. If I was being mature about it, I’d thank him someday.

Just not today.