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

by Jessica Beck

  “Why would anyone move him?” I asked, feeling myself edging up to hysteria. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to look at the pond that I’d loved so dearly up until thirty seconds ago again.

  “It may have been to remove any evidence that was on the body, or they might have just tried to make it harder to figure out what happened to him,” she said.

  “Somebody was thinking about muddying the waters, but how did they even know about Annie’s place to begin with? That driveway of hers is long and treacherous, and I doubt anyone would venture down it without knowing what they were going to find at the other end,” Pat said.

  “Who knows? Maybe they didn’t even know there was a cabin there, let alone a pond. It may have been a matter of taking the first abandoned-looking road and dumping the body out of sight.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the reference to my long driveway in to the cabin, but then again, I couldn’t exactly dispute it, since it was a pretty accurate description. “What do we do now?”

  “I want to tell them,” Kathleen explained, “but I want you both to be watching their faces when I do. I have a feeling that two of them are going to be genuinely surprised by the news. We need to spot the one who isn’t.”

  “Because chances are pretty good that’s going to turn out to be our killer,” I said.

  “I’d say the odds would be in favor of it,” Kathleen replied.

  Before we could go in, Pat said, “Hold up a second. Should we keep the discovery from them? Maybe we’ll be able to use it later against them if they think he’s still alive.”

  “It’s not going to work,” Kathleen said. “I’ve got a team retrieving the body even as we speak, so the entire town is going to know by morning. We need to use this information while we still have the element of surprise working for us. Be vigilant, you two, okay?”

  “We will,” Pat and I said almost simultaneously.

  “Then let’s go tell them the news and see if anyone flinches,” Kathleen said.

  CHAPTER 12: PAT

  “Is 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

  My 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.”