by Jessica Beck
“Cam is just a friend,” Serena said. After biting her lower lip for a moment, she said, “I’m afraid the mayor is awfully busy at the moment, but I’d be glad to pencil you in for sometime next week, if you’d like to come back.”
Before I could respond, Davis walked out of his office. “I thought I heard voices out here. Wasn’t Chief Cameron just here?”
“He left just a second ago. We thought he came by to see you,” I said.
“No, not that I know of,” the mayor said. “What brings you two by my office?”
“Mr. Mayor, don’t forget, you have that meeting with the Women’s Auxiliary.”
Davis glanced at his watch. “That’s not for half an hour. I have plenty of time to speak with these folks. Why don’t you both come into my office?”
“This won’t take long,” I assured him. “We’re here to invite you to a cookout tonight at Della’s place.”
“I’d be delighted to come,” he said, accepting before learning a single detail about the invitation. “Is there something I can bring?”
“How about firewood?” Annie asked. “We’re cooking ribs outside in a cast iron Dutch oven.”
“So, you need the wood for cooking,” he said.
“No, we’re using charcoal for that, but a fire would be useful for seasoning the iron. Besides, it will make it nicer for us as we cook, and Aunt Della did say that you made the offer earlier in the year.”
“Sure, grab all you want. It’s stacked up under the back deck, but you’re welcome to all that you can carry,” he said. “What time should I come by for the meal?”
“When you smell the ribs cooking, it’s time to come on over. If you need a more precise time than that, I’d say sometime around six would be fine,” Annie said.
“I’ll be there,” he said, and then his cellphone rang. After glancing to see who was calling him, he said, “Sorry, but I have to get this.”
After Davis walked back into his office, deep in conversation, he shut his door.
“That sounds like fun,” Serena said, trying to appear nonchalant.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“A barbeque. I’ve never had cast iron ribs before. I bet they’re delicious.”
It was clearly a request for an invitation, but I wasn’t sure that we’d have enough food if she came. Besides, the dynamic might be a little odd if Della, the mayor, and his secretary were all there at the same time. I was about to say no when Annie surprised me.
“Sure, the more the merrier. Come by around six.”
I gave my sister an odd look, but before I could withdraw Annie’s invitation, she said, “I hate to just run off, but we’d better go. If you’d like to bring something, how about a dessert? Make it something decadent, okay?”
“I can do that,” she said, smiling at my sister.
Once we were back out at Annie’s car, I asked, “Would you mind telling me what that was all about?”
“Pat, there will be plenty of food. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried about the amount of food I’m going to get,” I said.
“Really?”
“Well, not just that. Why did you invite her?”
“How could we not?” Annie asked. “We can see firsthand how Serena reacts to Della and Davis together. I would have invited the police chief too if I’d thought about it when we saw him.”
“There’s still time,” I said sarcastically.
“You’re right. Let’s go find his office. It’s in the basement, isn’t it?”
“Are you serious?”
“Come on. Let’s make it a party. Do you think Gary White will come, too?”
“That’s where I’m drawing the line. Even with the police chief, we’ll have more people than we know what to do with.”
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll turn our invitation down,” Annie said.
No such luck, though. To my surprise and my sister’s delight, the police chief accepted as well. He hadn’t even had to mull it over.
“We’re going to need a bigger Dutch oven,” I said as we walked out to Annie’s car.
“Don’t forget, Aunt Della made a ton of food for lunch today. We can have a buffet and a campfire. Who knows? Maybe it will loosen some tongues if we bring out some wine, too.”
“You never know,” I said. “All of a sudden this has turned into a major production.”
“No worries, little brother. It will be fun.”
“I didn’t realize that we were doing this for our own amusement,” I told her.
“No, but it’s nice if it’s a bonus, don’t you think?”
We got back to Della’s, and while Annie took the food inside to start the marinating process with the ribs and barbeque sauce, I went next door to Davis’s place to get the promised firewood.
What I found under the mayor’s deck put our bonfire plans on hold, maybe indefinitely.
I could tell from the first glance that one piece of wood was different from the rest. Every other piece under the deck was split and seasoned firewood, but one was a rounded limb three inches thick, twice as long as the other pieces, and still green and covered with bark. I picked it up and was ready to throw it toward the back of the pile under the deck when I noticed two things about the limb: it had bits of hair clinging to one end of it, as well as some kind of manmade fabric strands.
Were the police wrong about what had knocked Cheryl Simmons out?
Was this the murder weapon instead of the flashlight they believed had been used?
“Annie, I need you right now,” I said when I called my sister next door.
“Can it wait? I’m almost finished marinating the ribs.”
“Rome is burning,” I said, our cue that something was indeed very wrong.
“Are you at Davis’s house?” she asked me, her voice suddenly cold.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right there.”
My sister was as good as her word. Twenty seconds later, I heard Annie calling out from nearby, “Pat? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
She climbed beneath the deck, which was about four feet off the ground. Annie had to stoop over, but I was hunchbacked where I was. “What is it, Pat? What’s wrong?”
I showed her the length of wood in my hand. “Do you see what I see?”
I loved that my sister was so quick. “That’s what somebody used on Cheryl Simmons, not Aunt Della’s flashlight.”
“I agree. The real question is what should we do with it?”
“We have to tell Chief Cameron,” Annie said firmly.
“Do we? Are you absolutely sure about that?”
She frowned at me before she spoke again. “Pat, we can’t obstruct justice. This could be important.”
“We don’t even know with any certainty what it is,” I said.
“No, but we both have a pretty good idea, don’t we?”
“Is that enough, though? I agree, we need to tell the police chief about this. My question is, do we have to do it this exact second?”
“Are we going to just leave it here and pretend that we didn’t find it?” Annie asked me.
“Of course not. We’re taking it with us. I’m not going to take the chance that the killer might come back for it. At least not yet.”
“You have a plan, don’t you?”
“It’s more of an inkling at this point, Annie. We may be able to use this to our advantage, but if we turn it over to Cameron, we’re giving up the first real edge we’ve had since we started digging into this.”
“What if it could help him solve the murder?” my sister asked me.
“What if he’s the killer himself?” I countered.
“Do you honestly believe that the chief of police was stupid enough to throw this branch under here instead of straight in the water?”
“Who knows? Maybe something startled him, and he had to suddenly run from the murder scene. Throwing this into the water would just call a
ttention to it, and he surely wouldn’t want to be caught with it red handed. What better place to hide a piece of wood than among other pieces of wood?”
“If he’s the one who did it, he’s going to suspect we found it, given the fact that we’re about to have a fire, and it isn’t here any more. Doesn’t that say we should leave it right here?”
“Again, I don’t want to take the chance of losing it. Is taking it ideal? No, but what choice do we have? This could be the piece of evidence that helps catch a killer.”
“I have another thought,” Annie said.
“I’d love to hear it.”
“I think I saw more wood like this when we walked the lake path last night. Let’s go check it out.”
“Should I just leave this here then?” I asked her as I gestured with the limb still in my hands.
“No, you’re right. Until we figure out what we’re going to do, we need to keep an eye on it. Bring it with us.”
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be seen carrying the murder weapon around in my hands. “How about if I store it somewhere no one will be able to find it?” I asked her.
“Where can you do that?”
“We could always put it in the back of your car,” I suggested. “At least that way we’d be able to lock it up.”
I could tell Annie wasn’t too thrilled with my plan, but when she couldn’t come up with another one on the spur of the moment, she agreed. I grabbed her car keys and put the wood in back, pulling the cover over it so no one could see it if they happened to glance in the back. The Subaru didn’t have a trunk, per se, more of a cargo space, but there was a cover that retracted which we could use to hide what I’d just found. It felt good getting it out of my hands, and I wiped them both on my jeans subconsciously, trying to get rid of the taint of death from them.
“I’ll follow you,” I said when I got back to Annie, and we started walking down the path we’d taken the night before. I hadn’t spotted any wood on the side of the way, but then again, I hadn’t been holding the flashlight, either. Sure enough, between us and the crime scene tape, some thick branches had been recently cut to clear the path a little. It was obvious that the piece I’d just hidden in Annie’s car had come from this cutting.
Annie reached down and picked up another piece that came close to matching the murder weapon in length and diameter. “Here’s what we’ll do. We put this where you found the other one, and if the killer comes back for it, he won’t be suspicious about its absence.”
“Only this one’s missing hair and fiber samples,” I said.
“They aren’t going to be looking at it that closely. What do you think?”
“It sounds like a good plan to me. I’ll feel better once we get this back in the other one’s place, grab our firewood, and get away from that deck altogether.”
“Me, too,” Annie said as we walked back toward Davis’s place in single file.
We almost made it without being seen.
The key word was “almost.”
CHAPTER 14: ANNIE
“What are you two up to?” a voice called out from ahead of us on the lake loop path.
I nearly dropped the wood in my hand when I saw that it was Chief Cameron. Without a word, my brother stepped in front of me, allowing me to be shielded for a moment before the chief could see us clearly. At least we’d been coming around the bend, and thus out of his sight, before he’d called out. The branch in my hand was large and heavy, and not at all easy to shove into my pocket. I couldn’t let the police chief see me with it, though. There was only one thing I could do. I hiked up Pat’s jacket, shoved the branch under it, and then I tucked the edge of it down his pants. He jerked a little, and I knew that the bark must have taken off a little skin, but to his credit, he didn’t cry out.
“Hello, Chief,” I said as I stepped out from behind my brother. “We decided to take a little walk before we started working on dinner. I’m so glad that you’ll be joining us.”
“With all of my suspects gathered together, how could I refuse?” he asked, still watching us both suspiciously. “That’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it? You want to get everyone together like some kind of mystery from the forties and name the killer.”
“You’re reading way too much into it. We’re just having a meal,” I said.
“Sure. I believe you,” he said in such a way that it was clear that he didn’t trust us at all.
“See for yourself this evening,” Pat said. “By the way, what are you doing out here? I figured you’d be busy working on your case.”
“I am. I keep thinking that we’re missing something, so I decided to walk the path from Della’s to the spot where Cheryl was murdered to see if there’s anything I might have missed. You two haven’t seen anything, have you?”
It was the perfect time to come clean with him, but I wasn’t about to do it, and I knew that Pat was just as reticent as I was about sharing our recent find. Was Chief Cameron really out looking for clues, or had he come to retrieve the murder weapon? If so, he’d already found that it was missing, and we had to be his main suspects, given our proximity to the deck.
“No, not so much,” Pat said. I knew without even glancing at my brother that he was thinking the same thing I was. This man could be extremely dangerous to us, and we might have inadvertently tipped our hand without realizing it. If he’d seen the branch in my hand before I’d managed to hide it under my brother’s jacket, we’d both just drawn targets on our backs. The police chief may have just been one of several of our suspects, but he was certainly the most well-armed one.
“We need to get to work if we’re all going to be eating in time, so we’ll see you this evening,” I said as he walked past us. He glanced back at Pat, but I’d maneuvered myself to block the chief’s view of the bulge in my brother’s back.
“See you then,” he said as he moved on, scouring the path in front of him, at least pretending to look for something significant. Before Cameron turned the corner, I saw him glance back in our direction out of the corner of my eye, but Pat was pointing to some nonexistent object out on the water, and I pretended to be mesmerized by it. The police chief followed our glances, but he clearly couldn’t see our imaginary focus point, and he quickly moved away out of sight.
“That was quick thinking,” Pat said as he retrieved the branch from his jacket.
“Sorry if I scraped some skin jamming it back there,” I said.
“Hey, I’m just glad he didn’t see what we were up to. He didn’t, did he?”
“I wish I could say for sure, but I think we’re in the clear,” I said. “That depends on whether he hadn’t already checked under the mayor’s deck for the murder weapon, that is.”
“Have we suddenly decided that Chief Cameron is the killer?” Pat asked me curiously.
“No, I don’t have any real reason to think that, at least not any more than I do the others, but it does seem rather suspicious that he shows up here at this moment, just after you discover what was really used to send Cheryl Simmons tumbling into the lake.”
“Then again, he might just be telling the truth, and he’s out looking for clues like he said he was.”
“If that’s the case, then we just deprived him of finding anything, didn’t we?”
“For now,” Pat said. “Are you having doubts about our plan?”
“No, but we should keep an eye on our guests and see if any of them venture under Davis’s deck while we’re not looking.”
“I can do that,” Pat said. “I’ll plant this branch back where I found the other one and grab some firewood while I’m down there. Are you about ready to start seasoning that iron, or did I interrupt you too soon?”
“No, I was just about finished with the marinade, and Aunt Della offered to put it in the fridge for me when I left to join you.”
“What excuse did you make for leaving so abruptly?” my brother asked me.
“I told her you dropped your wallet somewhere, and I was going to hel
p you look for it,” I said apologetically. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sound like a dolt.”
“It could have been a whole lot worse. You could have said that I lost my pants.”
“I’ll save that for next time,” I said with a grin.
“What makes you think there’s going to be a next time?” he asked me with a smile of his own.
“Face it. With us, there’s always going to be a next time,” I replied. “Build a good fire. I need some hot coals to get the iron up to temperature.”
“I’m on it,” Pat said.
We parted ways after I helped him carry a load of wood from Davis’s place to Aunt Della’s. Pat was starting the fire as I ducked inside, only to find Aunt Della standing at the back door staring at me.
What was this about, I wondered?
“Did you find it?” she asked me.
For a moment I panicked, forgetting what excuse I’d used to get away from her so quickly. Then it came back to me. “We sure did. It turned out to be the last place we looked.”
“Well, I certainly hope so, else why would you keep looking?” she asked. “I need to ask you something.”
Oh, no. Had she seen what we’d done? I hadn’t realized it, but from where we were standing, my aunt had a perfect view of the path below us, right where I’d jammed that branch up Pat’s jacket and down his pants. “Fine,” I said, trying to keep my expression neutral as I gathered up the Dutch oven’s top and pot, the olive oil, a hot pad, and a roll of paper towels.
“Annie, how many people did you invite tonight?” she asked me.
It was all I could do not to show my relief upon hearing her question. “We’ll have a minimum of four, and a maximum of seven.”
“Seven people? I’m worried that there won’t be enough food,” she protested.
“We can all share, and if we need more, we can always dip into the leftovers from lunch,” I explained.