Cast Iron Will (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 1)

by Jessica Beck

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 2: PAT

  CHAPTER 3: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 4: PAT

  CHAPTER 5: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 6: PAT

  CHAPTER 7: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 8: PAT

  CHAPTER 9: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 10: CHESTER’S LETTER

  CHAPTER 11: PAT

  CHAPTER 12: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 13: PAT

  CHAPTER 14: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 15: PAT

  CHAPTER 16: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 17: PAT

  CHAPTER 18: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 19: PAT

  CHAPTER 20: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 21: PAT

  CHAPTER 22: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 23: PAT

  CHAPTER 24: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 25: PAT

  CHAPTER 26: ANNIE

  CHAPTER 27: PAT

  RECIPES

  JESSICA BECK

  CAST IRON WILL

  THE CAST IRON COOKING MYSTERIES

  Cast Iron Will

  Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Beck All rights reserved.

  First Edition: May 2015

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Recipes included in this book are to be recreated at the reader’s own risk. The author is not responsible for any damage, medical or otherwise, created as a result of reproducing these recipes. It is the responsibility of the reader to ensure that none of the ingredients are detrimental to their health, and the author will not be held liable in any way for any problems that might arise from following the included recipes.

  The First Time Ever Published!

  The First Cast Iron Cooking Mystery.

  Introducing CAST IRON WILL, Book 1 in the brand new cozy mystery series, the Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries, from New York Times Bestselling Author Jessica Beck!

  To P, for gleefully joining me on this roller coaster ride called life!

  When a customer is murdered on the front porch of the Cast Iron Store and Grill with one of their favorite skillets, fraternal twins Pat and Annie must solve the crime, or they just might be next items on the killer’s to-do list.

  CHAPTER 1: ANNIE

  Finding a body slumped over in one of our rocking chairs on the Iron’s front porch was just about the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and that counted losing my parents in a car wreck when my twin brother, Pat, and I were sixteen years old, more than a dozen years before. At first glance, I thought we simply had an early-morning visitor waiting for us to open the store and grill for the day, but the closer I got, the more I realized that whoever was perched there wasn’t getting up again, at least not under their own power.

  It was six thirty in the morning, and my day was suddenly getting off to a very bad start.

  Not as bad as the person in that chair, though.

  I didn’t think things could get any worse, and then I saw a cast iron skillet, one of my favorite Griswolds, lying on the porch floor just behind the victim. From where I stood, I could see that there was something staining part of the iron, and I had a sick feeling that it was this poor soul’s blood.

  Somebody had used one of my favorite cooking instruments for murder.

  Folks often ask me what it’s like being a twin. Me, I wonder what it’s like not being one. Sure, it can be comforting having someone so close to share just about everything with, especially growing up, but in the end, my brother and I are two different people, just like any other two siblings. We have a large number of similarities, but we have our differences, too. As for convenience, it’s not like we can share clothes or anything. The truth is that my brother, Pat, would look ridiculous in one of my dresses, though I can normally be found at the Iron in blue jeans and a T-shirt.

  The Iron. That’s what we call the place we jointly own, formally known as The Cast Iron Store and Grill, which is a mouthful to say, particularly if you’re in a hurry, which most folks seem to be in these days.

  Our older sister, Kathleen, who just happens to be the sheriff in our little town of Maple Crest, North Carolina, says that my brother and I are equal parts weird/scary/odd the way we can communicate with each other without saying a word, but try sharing a womb with somebody for nine months and then get back to me. You can’t get any closer than that. While Kathleen’s out trying to keep the citizens of our little mountain town safe from the outside world—and each other, on occasion—Pat and I are keeping them fed, up to date, and well stocked with just about anything they need. The Iron is the lifeblood and the heartbeat of our little town. Nearly everyone in town comes by most days, either for my cooking—I specialize in food nearly always made in one of our cast iron skillets or pots—our general store where we sell a variety of the basic necessities and a few niceties, too, or the post office, where we deliver the mail. The latter is a small space that occupies one thin sidewall section of our building. After paying Edith Bost, a retired schoolteacher who’s found a second career as our postmistress, to run the mail drop for us, we don’t make a lot off of the arrangement, but it’s a good way to keep our customers coming in.

  We have a very specific division of labor at the Iron: I cook and run the grill, my brother oversees the cash register and the general store area, and Skip, our eighteen-year-old employee, helps out wherever we happen to need him at the time. If you’d ask him, though, he’d probably say that he’s primarily there to run Skip’s Corner, a small area on the sales floor that we’ve designated as his space to sell some of the crafts he loves making, from candles to soap to some of the funniest greeting cards anyone would ever want to send.

  Between the four of us, we make a go of it, and somehow we manage to profit enough each month to stay afloat, no matter how troubling the times might be. It helps that Pat lives in the apartment above the store, so he doesn’t have to pay anyone rent. Neither do I, for that matter. I live alone in my tiny home on the outskirts of town—a cabin perched on the edge of my very own lake—on eighty-five acres of land that’s been in our family forever. I think Pat is crazy for living so close to where we work, and he thinks I’m equally insane being alone out in what essentially feels like the middle of nowhere to him.

  I know that’s a lot of information to swallow all in one gulp, but sometimes it’s easier to get it all out there in the beginning, like speed dating, or how to sum up your life in thirty seconds or less.

  Now, back to the body. Before I called my older sister or even my twin, I had to see who had been murdered on the front porch of the Iron. Maybe they were even still alive, no matter how bad things looked from where I was standing. Who was it, anyway? Clearly a man: he was dressed in faded work pants, an old flannel shirt, and worn work boots, and he was sporting a battered old baseball cap with a tractor logo on the front of it. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many men in our town that might describe, ranging from their early twenties to their late seventies. There was no other way around it; I was going to have to get a closer look.

  As I knelt down and moved forward in order to check for a pulse and try to see the victim’s face a little more clearly, my leg must have hit the chair’s front rocker. Before I knew what was happening, the victim pitched forward out
of the rocker and landed right on top of me, pinning me to the floor. As we both fell, his hat came off, and I could see that it was Chester Davis, one of our regular customers at the Iron. Who would want to kill Chester? As far as I knew, he was just a regular kind of guy in his late thirties, once divorced, a man I served breakfast to just about every morning. He’d always had a ready smile for me, and he never left a tip of less than twenty percent in our jar up front. I didn’t have time to think much about motives at that moment, but it would certainly come to occupy my thoughts quite a bit later.

  Right now, I had more immediate issues. What could I do with Chester’s body pressing on me with a weight I had to struggle with to nudge even a little? I knew that it might have seemed as though I had a lot of time to think about my situation, but my thoughts were flying through my mind at the speed of light. Almost no time passed between Chester’s tumble and my reaction to it.

  In the end, I did what any sensible person in that situation would do.

  I screamed.

  CHAPTER 2: PAT

  My twin sister, Annie, is a great many things, but a screamer isn’t one of them, so when I heard her yell just outside the front door of the Iron as I prepared to open the business for the day, I knew that I needed to come running, no questions asked.

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I got out front, but finding her wrestling with one of our customers on the floor of the porch didn’t even make the top one hundred on my list. “What’s going on?” I asked her as I knelt down to lend a hand.

  “Roll him off of me, Pat.” I complied, grabbing the man’s shoulder and flipping him over. It was Chester Davis, and his eyes were tightly shut when I saw his face.

  “What happened? Did he faint?”

  “Yeah, that’s what happened. We were standing here having a nice little chat, and all of a sudden Chester pitched forward and pulled me down to the floor with him.”

  Annie could be sarcastic at times, particularly when she was scared. Or rushed. Or upset. Or impatient. Come to think of it, my twin had gotten a lot more of that particular trait than I had. As I finished dislodging Chester’s body enough to free my twin, I helped her up and said, “Tell me what happened, Sis.”

  Annie took a deep breath, started to look down at Chester’s body, and then she quickly looked away. “It was awful, Pat.” Her voice sounded more like a little girl’s than that of the woman she’d grown into.

  I touched her shoulder lightly. “Take it easy. It’s going to be okay.”

  “I don’t see how.” After a moment, she added, “I got out of my car and was heading up the stairs just like I do every day when I saw someone slumped over in one of our rocking chairs. Then I spotted my favorite skillet on the floor over there. It’s got blood on it.”

  I glanced down at where she was pointing, and then I saw it myself. It had been partially hidden by Chester’s leg when he’d fallen, but the pan was easy enough to make out after I knew where to look. Most of our friends had collected stamps, coins, even rocks when Annie and I had been kids, but we’d been hooked on cast iron even then. We didn’t even have to buy it on occasion. Our local town dump had an area set up for residents to pick and choose from, and anything of value that the owner no longer wanted went there. Annie and I had marveled about the old cookware, brands like Wagner and Griswold and Montgomery Ward, and we’d quickly loaded up our wagon with the heavy ironware. On that first trip, we almost didn’t make it home, it weighed so much. When we finally got there, we proudly showed our discoveries to our grandmother, who had loved cooking with cast iron since she’d been a girl, and that was when our obsession had started.

  I took out my phone and dialed Kathleen’s number. “We need to call Sis.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Annie was doing her best to keep her gaze averted from the scene, but I could tell by the tremor of her lower lip that she was close to losing it.

  “Why don’t you go inside and wait for her there?”

  “Thanks, but I’m good right here,” she replied. That was Annie, always strong, even when it cost her a little part of her soul.

  “Kathleen, we need you at the Iron,” I said when our older sister answered my call.

  “What’s wrong, did raccoons get into your storeroom again?” Our sister loved to tease us both, and she rarely missed an opportunity to chide us.

  “I’m afraid that it’s a little more grave than that. Somebody killed Chester Davis on our front porch.” I hated the brutal way that it must have sounded to her, but it was the easiest way to convey the seriousness of the situation to her.

  “What are you talking about, Pat? What happened? Tell me everything.” There was a slight pause, and then she added, “On second thought, I’m two minutes away. Don’t touch anything until I get there.”

  “Sorry, but it’s too late for that,” I said, but the phone was dead in my hand.

  I’d tell her soon enough that we’d already disturbed the body.

  While we waited, I grabbed my twin’s hand to offer her what little comfort I could. “Kathleen’s on her way.”

  Annie just nodded, clearly fighting back the tears.

  Our elder sister was as good as her word, and in less than two minutes, she sped up to the Iron. At least she’d left her flashing lights and siren off. I had the feeling that we’d be getting plenty of attention because of the murder, and I wasn’t in any hurry to get that started.

  Kathleen jumped out of her squad car and raced to Chester’s body. As she rushed toward him, she asked, “Did you two touch anything?”

  “I turned him over,” I admitted.

  “Pat, you shouldn’t have done that.” Her words sounded ominous, as though I’d broken a law that I hadn’t been aware of.

  “He had to,” Annie said softly.

  “Why is that?” Kathleen asked as she searched in vain for a pulse.

  “Mostly because Chester was on top of me.”

  Kathleen looked up at Annie, and then she stared hard at me. “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning.”

  After I gave her a brief summary of what had happened, Annie began to add something of her own to the conversation, but our older sister held up one hand impatiently as she asked, “We’ll talk about it again later. For now, why don’t you two wait inside? I’ll be with you shortly.”

  “Can we make it quick? We open the store in ten minutes,” I said as I glanced at my watch.

  “Not today you don’t. This entire place is a crime scene until I release it.” Our sibling didn’t leave any room for discussion, and I knew that it would be senseless to fight her on it. Besides, the last thing I wanted to do was to wait on customers after what had just happened. Maybe this time, I needed to just give in.

  Annie and I went inside, and then we both headed straight for the front window where we could see what was going on. Kathleen was on her walkie-talkie, no doubt calling in her two employees on the force, Hank Timberline and Ginny Bost. Hank was nearing retirement age, while Ginny was barely out of the academy. I had to wonder what good either one of them would do Kathleen, but she hadn’t asked me for my opinion, so I’d decided to keep it to myself. They arrived together a few minutes later, riding side by side in the town’s only other squad car, stopping short and blocking our driveway to keep our customers out.

  As they approached the Iron on foot, I asked my twin, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Do you have anything stronger upstairs?”

  It was an odd request for her to make, since neither one of us drank, aside from a glass of wine with dinner every now and then. “I might have a root beer left in the fridge, but that’s about it.”

  “Tea’s fine,” she said. “But I’ll make it myself.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Pat, I appreciate that, but it’s still my grill,” Annie said as she headed to the rear of the store, where her workstation was located. There were no tables in our dining area, just a dozen round stools that spun around with a little
effort at the extended bar. I took a seat on one of them and watched my twin fill a teapot and turn on one of the gas burners. “Would you like some, too?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I can’t think of a reason in the world,” she admitted.

  We’d just finished our tea when the front door opened, and Kathleen walked in, a grim expression on her face. In her latex-gloved hand, she held the skillet in the air as she approached us. “Please tell me this doesn’t belong to you.”

  CHAPTER 3: ANNIE

  “I would if I could,” I said, “but you know how much I hate lying to you. As a matter of fact, it happens to be my favorite skillet. I’m never getting it back, am I?” Why had I said that? A man was dead, and I was suddenly concerned about getting my favorite skillet back? I clearly wasn’t myself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Pat reached over and patted my arm. It was amazing how much just a tiny bit of contact from my twin eased my mind. He’d always had a calming effect on me, and I’d never needed it more than I did at the moment. I patted his hand absently in return as he said, “It’s okay, Annie.”

  “I only wish that were true,” Kathleen said as she placed the skillet in a brown evidence bag. “Based on my preliminary investigation, it’s the murder weapon, so I’m not sure if you ever will get it back. Now, from the beginning, tell me what happened from the moment you found Chester’s body.”

  I took a deep breath, and then I started to speak. “I was coming up the front steps and noticed Chester slumped over in one of our rocking chairs, though I didn’t realize that it was him at that point. I didn’t see the skillet right away, so I wondered if he was just napping. Then, when I saw the blood, I knew that he was in trouble. I knelt down and leaned forward so I could check for a pulse, and my leg must have hit the rocking chair leg. It moved enough to unseat Chester, and before I knew what was happening, I was pinned to the floor by a dead man.”