Cast Iron Cover-Up (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 3) (7 page)

Chapter 12: Pat

“I
s there any news about Bones?” Henry asked as my sisters and I walked back into the Iron. Annie was about to say something when I shot her a warning glance. This news was Kathleen’s, not ours, and we had no right to share it.

“Bones is dead,” she said, and I watched the three students quickly in turn, hoping for some kind of giveaway reaction.

Henry frowned deeply, Marty shook his head, and Gretchen started to cry. She was the first one to speak. “Are you sure? Maybe you made a mistake.”

“Someone killed him and dumped him into Annie’s pond,” Kathleen said severely. “There’s no mistaking it.”

“Are you sure that he didn’t drown accidently?” Henry asked. “Maybe someone hurt him, but his actual death could have been an accident.”

“If he sustained the original wounds during a confrontation, legally it doesn’t matter,” Kathleen said, “but chances are good that he was dead before his body went into the water.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Marty asked her.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Please, spare us the details,” Gretchen said, crying softly as she spoke. I wasn’t even sure she was aware that she was doing it.

“I want to know,” Marty said.

“I doubt the coroner will find any fluid in his lungs, based on the severity of his other injuries,” Kathleen said. “That means that most likely, he was dead before he hit the water.”

“If he didn’t drown, then what did kill him?” Henry asked. “Peggy said she found him bloody, but she didn’t know much more than that.”

“Keep in mind that we just found him, but from our preliminary inspection, it appears that he was struck from behind with a pickaxe.”

Gretchen wept softly, and Annie moved to comfort her. Marty wouldn’t let it go, though. “At least he didn’t know what hit him.”

“Marty!” Henry said. “Show some respect.”

“He’s dead. Bones is way past caring about respect.”

“I’m afraid that it wasn’t that easy a death,” Kathleen said, still watching the three of them closely.

“What do you mean?” Henry asked.

“It’s pretty clear that the first blow didn’t kill him. It probably wasn’t even the second or third.”

Gretchen grabbed her mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”

“The restroom’s back here,” Annie said as she led her away.

“Nice, Marty,” Henry said. “Are you happy with yourself?”

“Hey, blame the sheriff for her answer. I just asked the question.”

“Sorry, but there was no easy way to couch the news,” Kathleen said.

I begged to differ, but I wasn’t going to do it aloud. My sister had her reasons to use the shock value of the information for her investigation, but that didn’t mean that I liked it, let alone agreed with it. Still, she was the sheriff, and I was just a storeowner.

“Does Peggy know you found Bones?” Henry asked.

“Isn’t that why she’s in the hospital in the first place?” Marty asked. “Finding him was clearly what sent her over the edge.”

“We don’t know what’s going on with her yet,” Henry said, and then he turned to Kathleen. “I need to see her.”

“Sorry, but she’s not allowed to have any visitors right now,” Kathleen informed him.

“But I’m her friend,” Henry pled. “Can’t they make an exception?”

“What good is it going to do her having her suspicions confirmed?” Marty asked. “Let the poor girl rest at least one night without having her worst fears realized.”

“Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from,” Henry said, and then he stared at his fellow student for a moment before adding, “Marty, you don’t seem all that upset by the news.”

“That’s because I figured he was dead from the moment Peggy told everyone that she found him,” Marty explained pragmatically.

“Still, somebody died today,” Henry insisted.

“Murdered, actually,” I added.

“Even worse,” Henry responded.

“Come on,” Marty said. “Don’t pretend that you liked Bones all of a sudden, Henry, just because he’s dead now. I saw him putting the moves on Peggy this morning, and what’s more, I saw the way you reacted to it. You wanted to kick his tail, and now all of a sudden, you’re all broken up because he’s dead.”

“You hated him because he was rich,” Henry accused him. “I watched you bristle every time Bones reminded us that he was financing our dig. It drove you nuts, didn’t it?”

Marty just shrugged, but Henry had struck home with his point. I could start to see the method to Kathleen’s technique. After she’d dropped her bombshell about finding Bones’s body, she sat back and watched her suspects turn on each other.

As if on cue, Gretchen returned, with Annie just behind her. “What did we miss?” my twin sister asked.

“Henry’s pretending that he’s sorry Bones is dead, even though he wanted to kill him himself this morning because he was jealous,” Marty said.

“I was not!” Henry said as he took a step toward Marty, his fists clenched. There was definitely a bit of temper showing, not that he didn’t have a reason to be upset.

“What about you, Marty? You didn’t like him, either,” Henry said.

“Maybe so, but at least he wasn’t hitting on my girlfriend, was he?” Marty shot back.

“Peggy is not my girlfriend,” Henry said icily.

Did Gretchen look particularly interested as Henry said it? Maybe it was just my imagination, or could she have had a motive herself that we hadn’t learned yet? “How did you get along with Bones?” I asked her.

“He was nice enough to me,” Gretchen said.

“Tell the truth, Gretchen,” Marty said.

After a moment, she wrinkled her nose. “Fine. He was overbearing, and he tried to grope me a couple of times, but he didn’t do anything that merited murder.”

“I guess you’re wrong about that,” Kathleen said.

“Why do you say that?” Gretchen asked her.

“He didn’t fall on that pickaxe four times by accident,” she said calmly.

That tended to end that part of the conversation. When I glanced at Gretchen’s jacket, I noticed that a button was missing. The remaining ones looked a great deal like the one I’d uncovered near the crime scene. Had Kathleen spotted it yet? I decided to ask Gretchen about it directly. “What happened to your jacket?”

She looked at the missing button, and then she shrugged it off. “It’s been loose for weeks, and I guess it finally came off. I’ve been meaning to fix it, but I never had the time. Now I’m going to have to find a replacement. What a pain.”

It was a logical story, told calmly and believably.

So why didn’t I believe her?

Kathleen said, “Given the circumstances, I think it’s best if you all come with me after all.”

“Are you arresting us?” Marty asked.

“No, I’m renewing my offer of giving you a place to stay tonight. We can take the sleeping bags and air mattresses with us, but it makes more sense if you’re at the station in case something else comes up and I need to speak with one of you immediately. If we move the conference table out, you’ll have plenty of room to spread out, and there’s a bathroom attached to it as well.” She turned to me. “Is that okay with you, Pat?”

I wasn’t finished with these three, and I had a hunch that Annie wasn’t either, but what could I say? There was no legitimate reason to protest the move, especially since we now knew without a doubt that Bones was dead. “That’s fine.”

Annie nodded, a little reluctantly, and we gathered the bags and mattresses together. Each student carried their own load and thanked us for dinner as they left, even though their praise was halfhearted at best.

“Did you get anything out of them when Kathleen dropped the news about Bones on them?” Annie asked me after they were gone.

“They all reacted, but I don’t know any of them well enough to know if any of their responses were out of character for them.”

“Where does that leave us, then?” Annie asked.

“I wish I knew. I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I would still really like you to stay here tonight.”

“Why should I do that? The killer, whichever one of them it is, is going to be safely locked away at the police station.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But what if they’re not?”

“Is there a suspect you haven’t told me about?” Annie asked me.

“You know, I hesitate bringing this up, but we’ve been discounting someone. Up until now we’ve been treating Peggy as an innocent bystander, but what if she’s not? She found the body originally, she had blood all over her, and there’s no one who can say whether she killed him herself, moved the body, and then came here to cover up her crime or not.”

“I didn’t really think of that,” Annie admitted, “but while we’re throwing out suspects, I think we should look at Carter Hayes, too.”

“Carter? Why?”

“He tried to throw those kids off Timothy’s land, claiming that it belonged to him.”

“That doesn’t make him a killer,” I said.

“No, but ask yourself a question. What was he doing back there in the first place? What if he got wind of buried riches there, and he wanted whatever was there for himself? You know as well as I do that Carter is the greediest man in four counties. If he got wind that there was money for the taking, what would he stop at to get it?”

“I don’t know,” I said uneasily. “Should we go talk to him in the morning?”

“We don’t have to. He comes in at nine every day to check his mail. I think we should corner him then.”

“Okay, but don’t do it without me,” I told her.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, trying not to smile.

“I mean it, Annie. He could be dangerous.”

“Everyone we run into these days is potentially a killer,” she said. “It’s kind of hard at this point to know who we can trust.”

“That one’s easy. For you, there’s Kathleen, and then there’s me. Everyone else is a suspect.”

“Even Timothy?” she asked.

“I’m afraid even Timothy,” I said. I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I hadn’t said anything to Annie yet. It was time.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked me, clearly troubled by the thought.

“It was his land they were digging on, and you heard him as well as I did. He left class early to come home, but do we really know how
early
he left? I know you don’t like thinking about it, but what if he came back even sooner than he claims, found them digging on his land, had a fight with Bones, and killed him?”

“First off, Timothy doesn’t have that kind of temper,” she said, defending her new boyfriend. “And secondly, he wouldn’t dump Bones’s body in my pond, even if he did kill him.”

“What if the two events weren’t related, though?” I asked her.

“Why would someone work so hard to get rid of his body if they didn’t kill him in the first place?”

“What if they thought they were protecting the real murderer?” I asked.

“I don’t see it, Pat. You’ve got to be wrong.”

“Maybe I am, but we still need to look into it.”

“I don’t know. I need some time to think,” Annie said as she headed for the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” I knew that what I’d said had troubled her, but she’d needed to hear it.

“No offense, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather be alone.”

Once Annie was gone, I began to regret some of the things I’d said, not because I didn’t think they were possibilities, but because I’d clearly hurt my twin sister by saying them. I knew that once she had a chance to mull over what I’d said, she’d realize that it was important to consider all of the possibilities, no matter where those paths led us.

I just hoped she’d get over it soon.

Being at odds with her was painful for me, made even worse by the fact that there was a killer on the loose.

Chapter 13: Annie

M
y brother was being ridiculous. At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I left the Iron and headed for my cabin, despite his protests that I should stay there with him. The very idea that Timothy could have had anything to do with the murder and/or the body being dumped in my pond was too wild to even consider. Why would he do such a thing? And then something Pat had said struck home. I knew that on rare occasions, Timothy could have a bit of a temper, particularly if it was over something territorial. Could he have come back early, found Bones desecrating his land by digging it up, and then struck the man down in a fit of anger? I didn’t like to even consider the possibility; it didn’t fit into my picture of the man. For argument’s sake, I tried to figure out of if it were possible; not probable, not likely, just feasible. Pat and I had grown to believe recently that given enough motivation, just about anyone could find themselves in a position where they felt forced to take another life. It wasn’t a pretty part of the human psyche, but it was there, whether we liked it or not. But Timothy? Dear sweet Timothy whose embrace made me feel so safe when so many others had failed? A killer? No matter how I felt about the man, I had to acknowledge that my brother was right. My new boyfriend needed to be on our list of suspects, regardless of my feelings toward him. I loved my brother, forever and always, but I didn’t necessarily always have to like him, and at the moment, he was far from my most favorite person in the world.

The crime scene tape around the pond’s edge near my cabin didn’t help matters. The garish yellow tape with bold black letters seemed to shout as it destroyed the visual tranquility of my homestead. Maybe Pat had been right about that as well. I probably should have stayed with him in the upstairs bedroom at the Iron, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it. Besides, I’d needed to be alone long enough to examine my thoughts and feelings. Doing my best to ignore the
yellow tape and, more importantly, what it represented, I let myself into the cabin and built a fire. The evenings had a distinct chill to them now, and I knew that cold weather wasn’t that far away. At the moment, I wished for a blanket of snow over everything, washing away the details of the world around me in swaths of white, hiding the ugliness around me. Then again, there wasn’t enough snow in the world to disguise what someone had done to Bones. Settling in by the fire, I found myself drifting off despite the dark thoughts flying through my mind, and when I woke up the next morning, I was startled to see that I’d spent the night on my couch, even though my loft bed was just a few feet away. I’d had a restless night’s sleep, and I wasn’t really in any shape to face the world, but unfortunately, the world had other plans, so I got up, showered, put on fresh clothes, and headed back into the Iron.

Pat was waiting for me out on the front porch. “Annie, I wanted to talk to you about how we left things last night,” he said. The man was clearly as miserable as I was, and I doubted that he’d gotten much more sleep, either.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” I said, simple and straight to the point. “You were right. Timothy has to be a suspect. Personal feelings shouldn’t matter.”

“I wouldn’t say they don’t matter,” Pat said. “We just can’t let them rule us. I still should have been more sensitive to the way you felt than I was. The last thing I want on this earth is to ever hurt you, Annie. In case I don’t tell you enough, you’re not just my twin sister; you’re my best friend.”

I smiled at him as I mounted the few steps and hugged him. “I feel the exact same way about you, Pat.”

We held our embrace for nearly a minute, and as I pulled away, I asked, “Are you hungry? I haven’t had breakfast, and there’s time for me to make us something before we open the shop for the day.”

“I could cook for you,” he said, clearly still trying to make amends.

I wasn’t exactly sure that his cooking would help matters any, though. “Tell you what. Let me say that I appreciate your kind offer, but it’s still my grill. I’d be just as happy doing the cooking.”

“Happier, I’d guess,” he said with a grin, and I knew that things were right between us again.

“Happier,” I echoed. “What sounds good to you?”

“How about one of your famous scrambles?” he asked.

“I think that sounds great. I don’t have time to make biscuits, though. Will toast do?”

He feigned disappointment. “I suppose it will have to.”

“If you can wait until we open our doors to the public, I’ll be able to make you your biscuits.” It was a hollow offer, and he knew it.

“If we wait until then, I won’t get to eat until eleven or twelve.”

“If then,” I said with a smile.

“You know what? Toast sounds great!”

“I thought it might,” I said as we went inside. I headed straight for my area and scrounged around in the fridge before I even got the eggs out. I found some bacon, ham, and sausage left over from the day before. It seemed that we were destined to have a meat lover’s scramble today. Whipping up five eggs, I lit one of the burners and grabbed a large omelet pan. Not waiting for the eggs to set, I then added the meats, crumbling everything in turn, and then I proceeded to scramble the eggs, along with the extras that I’d added as well. Pat had once called it an ugly omelet, and I’d been a little miffed by his description, so that day I’d had it all to myself, despite being so stuffed I could barely get another bite down. Since then, they’d been known as scrambles, and we shared this one over coffee, finishing up just before Skip and Edith arrived for the day. The apologies had taken care of the momentary rift between my brother and me, while the scramble had sealed the deal. We were back on good terms, all the way, and I found myself bracing for the day’s activities. We were going to not only run the Iron together today, but we were also going to try to find out what had really happened to Bones and why. It was a tall order, but if anyone could do it, I knew that we could.

“Heads up,” Pat said a little after nine as he walked by the grill. I looked around to see what he was talking about. Carter Hayes had just come in, and he was heading straight for his mail.

“I’ll be right back,” I told the three customers waiting for their orders.

“Annie, how long is it going to be? I’ve got to get to work.” Thad Jennings, a construction worker who liked to have a late breakfast at the Iron just about every day, was frowning at me as he said it, tapping his wrist where a watch would be if he’d worn one.

I grabbed a piece of bacon I’d fried up earlier and slapped it between two pieces of dry toast. “There you go.”

“Hey, this isn’t what I ordered,” Thad protested. He’d asked for a sausage omelet, which I well knew, since it was his steady breakfast request.

“I know that, but I’d hate for you to be late for work,” I said with a grin. I turned to the other two customers. “Anyone else in a hurry?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I’m good.”

“Great,” I said. I glanced back at Thad. “I thought you were late. You’d better start eating.”

“You know what? They can wait for me,” he said.

I smiled, taking the poor substitute for a meal back from him. “Like I said, I won’t be a minute, and then I’ll make you a real breakfast.”

“Take your time,” Thad said, avoiding all eye contact with me.

I knew that I’d been a little harsh with him, so I patted him on the back as I walked past him. “I’m glad you can stick around. I appreciate that.”

“My pleasure,” he said with a genuine smile. “I’ve been trying to get Jay to take over more responsibilities on the job site. This will be a good test for him.”

“I’m happy I could help,” I said, then I joined Pat. Carter was just opening his mailbox when I caught up with my brother, and he looked absolutely startled when he turned around and found us both staring at him. It was time for us to have a little chat, whether Carter knew it or not.

“Hey, Pat; hi Annie. What’s up?” he asked us, clearly a little startled to find us both focusing on him. As a nervous tic, Carter pulled off his thick glasses and cleaned them with his bandana, something that I’d seen him do enough before to realize that something was on his mind.

“How’s it going, Carter?” I asked him as he glanced at his mail. It looked like all junk to me.

“Fine. Well, I’ll see you both around.”

He started to walk away when Pat stepped in front of him, not necessarily in a menacing way, but it was clear that we wanted to speak with him, and he didn’t have much choice in the matter. “We heard you had a run-in with some kids yesterday,” Pat said.

“No, not that I recall,” Carter said as he tried to get around my brother.

“Are you trying to say that you weren’t on Timothy Roberts’s land yesterday and told some kids that it belonged to you?” I asked him.

Carter frowned for a moment as he pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. It was pretty clear that we’d caught him in a lie, and I was curious to see how he was going to try to worm his way out of it. “Oh, that.”

“Yes, that,” I said.

“I wanted to talk to Timothy about something,” Carter said. “We were supposed to meet out on his land, but I found these kids digging up the ground when I got there instead. That’s why I ran them off. I didn’t figure they’d listen to me if I didn’t claim that the property belonged to me, but I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“There’s just one problem with that, Carter,” Pat said.

“What’s that?”

“Timothy was out of town when you had that confrontation with those college kids,” I told him, studying him carefully for a reaction to being caught. “There’s no way that he would have scheduled a meeting with you at that time.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting your information, Annie, but that’s not the case at all. I saw him yesterday just after lunch, and we made plans to get together out on his land. I wanted to hire on as a helper when he cut down enough trees to carve out his new homestead. He stood me up, though.”

“Funny, but Timothy hasn’t mentioned any of that to me,” I said.

Carter looked a little sly as he asked me, “Do you honestly think your new boyfriend is going to run everything he does past you first before he does it? I’d be amazed if there was a
lot
you didn’t know, Annie.”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” Pat said. I was shaken by Carter’s statement. Could Timothy really be keeping things from me? My life was an open book, and I’d just naturally assumed that his was as well. Had I been wrong about that from the start?

Pat continued, “Carter, you know the first thing we’re going to do is check with Timothy to see if that’s true or not.”

“Suit yourself,” Carter said as he sidestepped Pat and headed for the door. “You’ll see that I’m not lying to you about that or anything else.”

As soon as Carter left, I grabbed my phone.

Timothy didn’t answer, though. He could have been with a client with his accounting firm.

Then again, he could just be ignoring me.

At the prompt for a message, I said, “This is Annie. Call me the second you get this.”

“That was kind of cold, wasn’t it?” Pat asked me after I finished my message.

“Pat, he told me that he didn’t come back until later yesterday. You know that I can’t stand being lied to.”

“Annie, this might all just be a simple misunderstanding. Timothy might have slipped when he told you, or you might have remembered it wrong.” I looked at him steadily for a few moments before my twin brother added, “Okay, you’re not likely to be the one who made a mistake, but it doesn’t mean that Timothy’s been lying to you.”

“I suppose we’ll find that out when he calls back,” I said.

Ten minutes later, the man himself came into the Iron with a troubled look on his face.

“What was that message all about?” he asked me.

“You didn’t have to rush over here,” I said calmly, and then I glanced over at Pat. He knew that my tranquil demeanor was a storm warning sign if ever there was one. Timothy had better start treading lightly if he knew what was good for him.

“You sounded so cold that I was afraid not to,” Timothy said. “Whatever I’ve done, I apologize and beg you for your forgiveness.”

He’d tried to make light of the serious tenor of my mood, but I wasn’t having it. “When exactly did you get back into town yesterday?”

“I already told you that,” Timothy said, looking instantly uncomfortable.

“As a matter of fact, you were a little vague about the exact time you got back,” I reminded him. Pat knew when to be quiet, so I knew that he wasn’t going to say a word until this was resolved, one way or the other.

“What does it matter what the exact time was?” Timothy asked, clearly a little unhappy about my line of questioning.

“It matters to me. Isn’t that enough for you?”

He frowned and then nodded. “Okay, so maybe I’d been back a little longer than I might have let on. I was eager to get the ball rolling on clearing my homestead.”

“So you went to your property while the kids were still there, before we all went together?” I asked him icily. If it were true, it was a lie of a much greater magnitude than simply glossing over a particular time. He’d appeared to be honestly surprised by finding those holes on his land. Had he been lying about that as well?