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

by Jessica Beck

  “I heard her calling out, and a few seconds later I moved Chester’s body just enough so that I could help Annie to her feet. The next thing we did was to call you,” Pat explained, calmly and rationally. I had always been more inclined to let my emotions rule me, whereas my twin was the more cerebral of the two of us. Both parts came in handy at times, and right now, I wouldn’t want Pat to be any other way.

  “And neither one of you touched the skillet? Is that correct?”

  “Not this morning, anyway,” I said, and Pat echoed the fact that he hadn’t handled it, either.

  “Good,” Kathleen replied, seeming happy with our admissions.

  “But I touch that pan every day, so unless someone wiped it down after they walloped Chester with it, my fingerprints are bound to be all over it,” I said. “Whenever I’m finished using any of my cast iron, I clean them, warm them up, and then I wipe them down with a very light coating of olive oil before I put them away. I can’t help touching them all through the process.”

  “That’s fine,” Kathleen said absently.

  “How is that fine?” Pat asked heatedly, certainly out of character from his normal calm demeanor. “Annie just admitted that her fingerprints are probably going to be all over a murder weapon. In what way possible could that be considered fine?”

  “Take it easy, bro,” I told Pat, trying to calm him down. My twin rarely raised his voice, no matter what the circumstances, so I knew that he was as rattled as I was about discovering Chester’s body. “Let Kathleen do her job.”

  “Thanks,” she said with a soft smile. “I’ve got more bad news for you. I’m afraid that you’re going to be closed for the day. Could you call Skip and Edith and tell them not to bother coming in?”

  “She’s not going to like not being able to hand out the mail,” I said. Edith was a widow well into her sixties, and despite that fact, she still somehow had more energy than Pat and me combined.

  “I don’t know what I can do about that,” our older sister said with a frown.

  Pat spoke up. “Why can’t we open the back door and let folks come in that way? Chester never made it off the porch. Is there any reason you need to shut the entire Iron down?”

  “Do you honestly feel like opening after what just happened?” Kathleen asked us both somberly.

  “I know that it must sound counterintuitive to you, but it just might be the optimal thing we can do,” I said. “After all, I’ve got a feeling that keeping busy is the only thing that is going to keep my mind occupied. If I’m busy cooking, I might not have as much time to think about Chester.” I turned to Pat. “What do you say?”

  “I’m okay with it if you are.”

  I turned to our sister. “Kathleen? Can we open?”

  She frowned for a few moments before she spoke. “The truth is that I think you’ve both lost your minds, but you make a good point, Annie. Fine. Keep the front door bolted and the shades drawn, and you can go ahead and open for business, as long as it doesn’t interfere with official police business.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and then I hugged her. Kathleen usually shied away from public displays of affection while she was in uniform, but I was glad that she was making an exception for me. It probably didn’t hurt that the three of us were the only ones there.

  “You’re welcome. Just don’t let anyone out the front door, and we should be okay,” she instructed.

  “We won’t.”

  After Kathleen was gone, Pat and I walked to the front of the store, dead bolted the door, and then we pulled every shade that faced the front porch until that part of the building’s interior was cast in shadows. Pat turned and looked at me for a moment before he spoke. “Sis, are you sure about this?”

  “No, but it’s the best option we have, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so. Honestly, the only way we’ll probably be able to cope with Chester’s murder right now is to try to act as though nothing happened.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” I said out loud as a thought that had been growing in my mind was starting to demand to go public.

  “No, of course not,” Pat backpedaled. “I don’t want to ever forget about what happened to Chester, either. Maybe we should have a memorial or something for him.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about,” I said. “Pat, I think you and I should try to figure out who killed the man ourselves.”

  CHAPTER 4: PAT

  “You what? You can’t be serious.” My twin sister had had some crazy ideas in the past, but this one trumped them all. “Annie, we’re not even the least bit qualified to solve a murder.”

  “What have we been reading since we could hold books?” she asked me. “Mysteries! We cut our teeth on the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, and we’ve kept the habit all the way through to the latest cozy trends.”

  “I can’t argue with the fact that between the two of us, we’ve read more mysteries than anyone else in this part of the state,” I admitted. “But solving a fictional case is a lot easier than doing it in real life.”

  “You’ve heard Kathleen. Most crooks aren’t exactly rocket scientists. We’re bound to be smarter than they are.”

  “Why not let our big sister do her job, and we’ll do ours?”

  “Because this is personal,” Annie answered grimly. “Chester was murdered on our front porch with my favorite skillet. How much more involved can we be?”

  “You’ve got a point there,” I conceded, “but I still think it’s dangerous.”

  “What have we always said, Pat? There’s nothing that the two of us can’t accomplish if we put our minds together. Why should this be any different?”

  “I can guarantee you that Kathleen’s not going to like it one little bit.”

  Annie frowned. “Probably not. We’ll have to keep what we’re doing from her until we’re ready to give her the killer’s name.”

  “Do you honestly think that it’s going to be as easy as all that?”

  “Pat, we both know that Kathleen is a fine sheriff, but how many real murders has she ever had to investigate during her tenure? I’m not talking about the few cases of drunken homicide she’s had to deal with, or any of the other run-of-the-mill murders that have happened on her watch. I’m talking about cases that require a special skill set for investigation. Think about it. Folks around here are cautious about what they say to her when she’s asking questions as the sheriff, but they all talk to us freely. Plus, between the two of us, we know everyone in Maple Crest. Not only that, but we know what buttons we need to push to get answers, and if someone’s acting out of character, we’ll realize it before anyone else does. Come on, Pat. This is important.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said, “but just because we can do something doesn’t mean that we should.”

  Annie took a deep breath, and then, in a voice I recognized as being as serious as she could get, Annie said, “Patrick, his body was right on top of me. Someone obviously has a grudge against us, and if we don’t catch them, one of us might be next.”

  Annie rarely used my full given name, just as I didn’t call her Analeigh unless the circumstances were particularly dire. Still, her conclusion was a little hard to swallow. “What makes you think the killer didn’t just take advantage of the opportunity to kill Chester when he was alone? It could just be a coincidence that it happened on our porch.”

  “Maybe so, but how do you explain my skillet being used as a murder weapon? Whoever did it had to have at least planned that part of it out.”

  Annie had a point, and I felt myself coming around to my twin’s point of view. “So answer me this. What do we have in common with Chester Davis that might make someone come after us, too?”

  My twin’s look of delight warmed my heart. “Does that mean that we’re going to do it?”

  “It appears that it would at least be prudent to look into this a little further,” I said, trying not to encourage her too much. When my sister’s enthusiasm was on fire, it
was difficult not getting swept up by the oncoming flames.

  Trying her best to look somber, Annie nodded. “Prudent. That’s the perfect way to put it.”

  “So, where should we get started?” I asked her.

  “First off, we need to make a list. Don’t our favorite authors all do that?”

  I nodded as I reached behind the counter and pulled out a plain brown paper bag after I grabbed one of the pens from the register. When I looked up at Annie, I was faced with a look of disappointment on her face. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want to write things down?”

  “Why don’t we use the menu board instead?” she suggested, pointing to the big whiteboard near the grill in back where she wrote her daily specials.

  “Because we don’t want the world to see what we’re up to. Honestly, we probably don’t even want Skip or Edith to know.”

  “Why shouldn’t we recruit them to help us with our cause?” Annie asked.

  “Can you really see either one of them keeping it a secret?”

  She frowned before she spoke. “Point taken. It’s got to just be the two of us, then.”

  “Well, we’ve always been up for any challenge in the past,” I said, “though this is bound to be the hardest thing we’ve ever faced.”

  “I know that, but don’t forget, we have another advantage over Kathleen.”

  “What’s that? She’s a trained law enforcement officer with years of experience on the job. What can we possibly bring to the table that our sister can’t?”

  “We have twin power,” Annie said with a grin.

  As kids, we’d made up our own superhero characters—twins, naturally enough—that solved crimes and saved the world on a daily basis. “Do you think that’s going to help us in real life?”

  “Why shouldn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “There are so many reasons, I can’t even begin to count them.” I tore the bag down one side and spread the paper out into a single layer. “Now, before our staff arrives, let’s make a list of everyone we know who might have wanted to see Chester Davis dead.”

  “That might prove to be difficult,” Annie said. “I can’t imagine anyone openly hating him, can you?”

  “He was a good guy, but I’m sure that he had enemies like everyone else, though I can’t imagine anyone hating him enough to murder him in premeditation.”

  “Should we explore motives first, then?” Annie asked me. “That might tell us why someone would kill him, and then we could look for folks who matched the rationale.”

  “We might as well try it. After all, nobody’s going to ever know what we’re doing but us, if we do it correctly.” I started writing, explaining as I went. “Off the top of my head, rationales for murder that I can come up with are greed, lust, love, revenge, protecting a secret, stopping someone from doing something, defending someone from the victim, or just plain, old-fashioned hate. Do you have anything to add to my list?”

  Annie whistled softly. “Wow, you rattled off that list pretty quickly. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about motives for murder, Pat?”

  “Only when things are slow in my part of the Iron,” I said with a grin.

  “Remind me never to cross you, Brother.”

  “You, of all the people in the world, have nothing to worry about from me. After all, killing you would feel too much like suicide.” I hoped that my grin conveyed the fact that I was just teasing her. I couldn’t imagine my life without my twin sister, and if anything ever happened to her, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to go on.

  “Again, good to know,” she answered, smiling back. “I think you’ve covered all of the bases for now, unless something comes up later.”

  “Fine. The next question is, who do we know that fits into any of these categories?”

  My sister was about to answer when the back door opened. Fearing that it was Kathleen, I haphazardly folded the bag back together and buried it under the others.

  It wasn’t our sister, though.

  Our two employees were coming into work, chattering about what they’d just seen outside. It was going to be difficult keeping our investigation from them, but I’d meant what I’d told Annie. While it was true that Skip and Edith might be able to bring new information to the table, there was no way that either one of them would be able to keep the fact that we were digging into murder a secret, and that was one of the main things that Annie and I had going for us. If the killer didn’t even suspect that we were investigating the crime, they might just slip up and tell us something by accident. The fact that we didn’t want Kathleen to find out what we were doing was a factor as well, but I decided not to dwell on that. If she ever did discover what we were up to before we handed the killer to her wrapped up neatly in a pretty bow, I couldn’t imagine the wrath my twin and I would face.

  CHAPTER 5: ANNIE

  “Good morning,” I said as I gave Pat a warning look not to say anything to Skip or Edith. I loved my twin brother more than I could ever express, but sometimes he had difficulty knowing when to talk and when to keep his yap shut. “Thanks for coming in today. Listen, given what just happened, if either one of you would rather forget about work today, it’s perfectly understandable.”

  “My dear, sweet child,” Edith said as she approached me with a concerned “mother hen” expression on her face. “Are you all right?” Though she was getting on in years, Edith normally exuded a youthful zest for life that sometimes put mine to shame, though something was different about her demeanor now; apparently murder brought out the nurturer in her. Edith was a petite woman, her figure no doubt just as trim as it had been when she’d been a teenager, and while most women her age seemed to go for a multitude of hair dyes, frostings, and even wigs, Edith proudly sported her own natural silver-gray hair, cut short in a stylish bob.

  As she took a few steps toward me, I had to stop her before she tried to hug me. “I didn’t actually see the killer,” I admitted. “You know that, right?”

  “I understand, but finding poor Chester like that must have been absolutely traumatic for you.”

  “I have to admit, it wasn’t the highlight of my day,” I admitted, “but I’m okay now. I feel bad for Chester, though.”

  “I can’t believe we had a murder right here at the Iron,” Skip said, a little too excitedly for my taste. He’d just turned eighteen, but while a great many of his contemporaries were heading off to college, the armed forces, or even matrimony, our Skip had a single-minded passion for one thing. Besides his love of crafting, he was convinced that he was the next great entrepreneur-inventor, always searching for the one perfect idea that would skyrocket him to fortune, though not necessarily fame. Skip was tall and skinny, and he sported a mop of chestnut hair that was constantly in need of a trim, but when it came to hard work, he was never afraid of getting his hands dirty. “I didn’t think anything happened in Maple Crest.”

  “I would have just as soon have had it happen somewhere else,” I said. “So, what do you two say? Would you like to skip out today with no hard feelings?”

  Edith frowned before she spoke. “If it’s all the same to you and Pat, I’d rather be here manning my station. After all, I took an oath.” If she’d recited any words of honor and duty about working at our dinky little satellite post office, I hadn’t heard about it, but then again, Edith always had considered her job more of a calling than an occupation.

  “Skip? How about you?”

  “I’m good,” he said as he glanced at the big clock mounted over the front door. “How are we going to tell folks that we’re here, though? When I rode in on my motorcycle, I had trouble getting in. The police had the driveway blocked.”

  “I had to park down the block in front of Murphy’s,” Edith echoed, naming the only real furniture store we had in town. “Let me tell you, Betty Murphy looked none too pleased about me taking one of her parking spaces. She acts as though she owns the street itself.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Pat? Do you want to
get things ready in here while I go talk to Kathleen?”

  “Maybe I should be the one to speak with her,” my twin volunteered. “I’m sure you have work to do to get ready for your grill customers.”

  I knew why my brother was offering to speak with our older sister. He didn’t quite trust me to be diplomatic when I asked her to kindly get her squad cars out of our customers’ way. Where he got the notion that I couldn’t be as cordial and sweet as the next person was beyond me. “Thanks for offering, but I don’t mind doing it. Until we find a way to get our customers into the Iron, I don’t have anything to do, anyway.”

  “I could make a sign,” Skip offered.

  “You do that,” I said as I winked at Pat.

  He understood by my grin that I wasn’t going to budge, and bless his heart, he knew better than to try to fight me. After all, I was the older of the two of us, even if it was just by seven minutes, a fact that I rarely gave him the opportunity to forget. In my mind, he was the baby of the family, a title that he didn’t have to share with anyone else, particularly me. “Remember, you need to be civil,” he told me sternly.

  “Me? I’ll be the very picture of Southern grace and charm.”

  That made him laugh, which was my goal. I decided to walk out on that note and go in search of our older sister.

  I didn’t have far to go.

  Apparently she was on her way into the Iron to have a word with us, and from the expression on her face, I knew that it wasn’t going to be good.

  “Annie, we’ve got a problem,” Kathleen said as we approached each other just outside the back door. There were woods both beside and behind the Iron, something that I thought made the place feel as though it had been set down rather than been built in place.