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

by Jessica Beck

  I shook my head. “It won’t work, because we’re forgetting one very important fact.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whoever killed Chester stole one of your skillets to use as a murder weapon. That means that it was premeditated, and also that whoever did it was trying to cast suspicion on us in the process.”

  “On me, you mean,” Annie said.

  “It could have just as easily have been meant for me,” I said.

  “Honestly, Pat, when’s the last time you used a skillet to cook?”

  “Hey, I might not use the Griswolds as much as you do, but I still know my way around the grill. After all, this place is called the Iron because we both love cast iron.”

  “You’re right,” Annie said contritely, apologizing immediately. My twin could really rattle my cage at times, but she also knew how to apologize with her entire heart. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to exclude you. Until we know better, we need to assume that we were both targeted.”

  “Why does that admission not make me feel any better?” I asked her with a smile.

  “Maybe because it involves both of us and not just one of us.”

  “If I have to have a target painted on my back, I’d just as soon have you watching out for me.”

  “Right back at you,” Annie said lightly, and then she frowned. “You know, they were both here yesterday.”

  “Bryson and Julia?”

  “Yes. I served them lunch, at different times, heck, even different meals, but one of them could have slipped out with the skillet when I wasn’t watching.”

  “The skillet wouldn’t exactly be easy to smuggle out without anyone noticing, would it?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Annie said. “It’s a Griswold number 5, which puts it at approximately eight inches across and a little over two pounds. That’s plenty of weight to be lethal if it were swung hard enough. The truth is, it wouldn’t be hard at all to slip it under a jacket or even into an oversized bag like the one Julia was carrying yesterday.”

  “It still doesn’t answer the question of why someone would try to drag us into it.”

  “We’re going to have to be patient, Pat. If it were easy, everyone would be solving crimes, now, wouldn’t they?”

  I smiled slightly. “You’ve got a point.” I looked around the empty space. “Do you think any of our customers will ever come back?”

  “Once the word gets out, we’re going to be crawling with people, just you wait and see.”

  “Do you honestly think so?”

  “If I know the fine folks of Maple Crest, they’re going to want to see where the murder occurred, and they’ll be asking questions, too.”

  I shuddered a little. “That sounds a little ghoulish, don’t you think?”

  “Pat, whether we like it or not, it’s the most excitement we’ve had in town since the football team stole the cannon on the town square on homecoming three years ago.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Look at it this way. If they come by to gawk, they’ll feel obligated to order food or at the very least to buy something. We didn’t have anything to do with Chester’s murder, so there’s no reason to punish the Iron. Besides, if we keep our eyes and ears open, we might just uncover a new lead or two while we’re working.”

  Annie had a point. She could be pragmatic when it suited her, but I’d meant what I’d said.

  The sooner we solved this murder, the quicker we could get back to our lives, something I very much wanted to happen.

  But it wasn’t going to occur unless my twin sister and I did some serious digging, and fast.

  CHAPTER 7: ANNIE

  It turned out that I was even more on the money than I’d imagined when I’d told Pat that our customers would be back. Within half an hour, the Iron was hopping with people, all curious about what had happened to Chester Davis. I overheard several theories espoused as I cooked, each wilder than the one before it, but I paid attention to each and every one of them. How could I know if one of my customers might just have gotten it right?

  The grill itself was busy, with all twelve of my barstools occupied, and half a dozen other folks hovering nearby, browsing among Pat’s shelves and picking up things to buy while they waited for a spot to open up. It often worked out that way when we were at our busiest, and some of our regulars fussed that they had to wait for a place at the bar, but we were happy with the system as it stood. After all, Pat wasn’t all that keen on the space I was already taking up, let alone ready to allow me to put a few tables in, even though he knew that the food I offered served as a draw for the rest of the place.

  It was busy, but I never felt any pressure, no matter how many diners I had waiting to be seated. Cooking on the range was fun as I danced among the six burners, two feet of griddle, and the pair of large ovens beneath them.

  I worked in silence to music that only I could hear, flipping hash browns and pancakes on the griddle, plating fried eggs as I added a few slices of bacon I’d just finished cooking, and grabbing a few biscuits, all the while scraping the grill down for my next order. I’d tried hiring help one summer to serve the food for me, but we’d just ended up getting in each other’s way. Over the years, I had mastered the art of taking orders, cooking them, and then turning one step back to serve them, sliding the bill under the plate just before it landed. At least I didn’t have to worry about taking payments and making change; Pat handled all of that up front at his register. I’d argued that having a tip jar on the counter near me when the co-owner ran the grill was a little off-putting, but when my customers had insisted on leaving me tips tucked under their plates anyway, I’d installed a handy jar at the counter. There was a note on it that stated that all tips were donated to our local animal rescue center, and that seemed to appease everyone, with the added bonus of making me feel good every time someone slipped a single—or even a dime for that matter—into the jar.

  As I worked, I continued to eavesdrop on my customers. It didn’t bother me in the slightest, since none of them had any real expectation of privacy. After all, they had to figure that someone would be listening.

  “Had you seen Chester lately?” Darrel Hodges asked Jimmy Oleander as they ate their breakfasts. Darrel was a sculptor in wood, and quite a good one, while Jimmy served as the town’s chief maintenance engineer. That man could fix anything that had ever broken, and if Humpty Dumpty had gone to him for help, he’d have been whole again in no time.

  “As a matter of fact, I talked with him the day before yesterday,” Jimmy said as he mopped up some egg yolk with a piece of buttered biscuit with fingers constantly darkened by working on oily machines and never completely clean. I’d made sausage gravy earlier using a cast iron skillet and one of my gas burners, and Jimmy had requested extra gravy. I’d buried his biscuit in an avalanche of the stuff, bringing a smile to his face that I doubt anyone had seen in awhile. He often moonlighted after his regular working hours were over, and Pat and I had used his services a few times in the past when we’d needed something around the Iron fixed.

  “How did he seem to you?” Darrel asked. The man was an artist with any carving tool imaginable, from a dental probe to a chainsaw, and I’d heard that some of his work was featured in some of the nicer homes across the country. You’d never know it by his demeanor, though. He was as humble as a bag of dirt, as he liked to say whenever he was given the chance.

  “He was a little off, truth be told,” Jimmy reported. “He kept mumbling about something that didn’t make any sense to me when I was over there working at his place.”

  “What were you doing for him?” Darrel asked. It was the wrong question in my mind. I wanted to shout, “What did he say?” but if I did that, then they’d both know that I’d been listening in.

  “He wanted me to reinforce the hinges on his safe,” Jimmy said. “I told him that it couldn’t be done. If he wanted something stronger than what he had, he was going to have to order it.”

  “I’ll bet
he didn’t like that one little bit.”

  Jimmy shrugged. “It didn’t take him long to see that I was right. While I was standing there, he got on the phone and ordered a safe that would withstand anything short of an atomic bomb going off nearby.”

  “What do you suppose he was going to keep in there?” Darrel asked.

  Wow. That was a good question that it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask. Maybe it was good that I couldn’t just interrupt their flow.

  “That’s what he was mumbling about. He kept saying, ‘They’re mine, and nobody else’s. Nobody’s going to steal them from me. Nobody.’”

  “That’s kind of odd,” Darrel replied. “I wonder what he didn’t want stolen.”

  “Is that the first question that came into your head?” Jimmy asked as he sopped up more gravy. There wasn’t much biscuit left, but that didn’t stop him from shoveling the gravy into his mouth anyway. After he finished his bite, he said, “I kept wondering who he thought might be wanting to steal from him.”

  “That’s a good question, too,” Darrel said. He’d finished his breakfast, and I could see a few other patrons eyeing him as they frowned for his benefit. It was my policy that if folks were waiting, nobody got to dawdle, and I meant it. I’d been known to scare a customer away by slamming my spatula down on the counter in the past, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it at the moment. I needed to give the two men time to finish their conversation.

  I was thwarted in that as well, though, as Jimmy pushed his plate away and collected his bill. “Maybe we’d better finish this conversation outside. There’s quite a line forming back there.”

  Darrel looked up, and he seemed surprised to see that Jimmy was telling the truth. He grabbed his own check, and then he snatched up Jimmy’s. “I’ve got this one.”

  “You paid last time,” the maintenance man protested.

  “I know, but I just sold a piece to a guy in Seattle, and I want to celebrate. That’s why I asked you to join me for breakfast.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “You call having a meal with me celebrating? Man, I don’t think that word means what you think it does.”

  “Jimmy, we’ve been friends since we got put in opposite corners in first grade for cutting up during class. Who else would I celebrate with?”

  “I don’t know, a pretty girl comes to mind right off the bat.”

  Darrel shrugged. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time. Did you have any girls in particular in mind?”

  “Let’s talk about that outside, too,” Jimmy said. “At least let me tip the dogs.”

  That was how my regulars referred to my jar. “Okay, but don’t go too crazy.”

  After Jimmy shoved a five in the jar, I watched as the two men walked to the front register together, all the while talking about something. I wanted to abandon my station and follow them, but if I even thought about doing that, I’d have a riot on my hands.

  It was something to keep in mind, though.

  I cleared away their dirty dishes into a bin I kept behind the bar, wiped down the counter where the two men had just been sitting, and then I invited the next two diners to join me. There really wasn’t a formal line as such, but I knew for a fact that my patrons were well aware of who was next, and heaven help the diner who tried to skip ahead out of sequence.

  “Ten more minutes on the breakfast menu, folks,” I told them as I pointed to the board mounted to the wall. I’d tried one on an easel at first, but it had taken up too much valuable space, so I’d switched to the current method. I’d had to learn to write legibly while leaning over the counter, but it was a much better system.

  “I don’t suppose lunch is ready yet, is it?” Margaret Wilson asked me as she frowned at the menu. She had taught me in the third grade, and something that I’d always cherished about her was that she’d never talked down to me, even way back then.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s not due to be served for another ten minutes,” I said loudly, and then I winked at her. With a whisper, I added, “If you and Larry would like some chamomile tea while you’re deciding, you should be just fine, though.” Her husband had been a teacher at my elementary school as well, though I’d never had any classes with him. Maybe that was why I could call him by his first name now, while his spouse would always be Mrs. Wilson to me.

  “That sounds lovely,” my former teacher said. “What are we having today?”

  “I’ve got some wonderful chickens in the oven roasting with carrots, potatoes, and onions in two of my Dutch ovens, and some ribs, onions, and bell peppers in another. There will be cornbread, too, and if it turns out okay, I’ll have some pineapple upside down cake available as well.”

  She smiled broadly at the news and then turned to her husband. “Shall we order one of each and share?”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said with a smile.

  “Excellent,” Mrs. Wilson said. I always had a pot of hot water simmering away on the back burner of my range, so preparing the tea was simplicity itself. After I poured two cups for them, I served them with lemon wedges and milk, something I knew that Mrs. Wilson preferred.

  “Thank you, my dear,” she told me before taking a sip of her tea. “It’s wonderful.”

  “Glad you like it,” I said as I turned back to my grill. “I’ll serve you shortly.”

  “No hurries, no worries,” Larry said. His disposition matched his wife’s beautifully, and I doubted that the two of them had ever raised their voices in each other’s company. I knew that some of my friends thought that arguments were required to have a good relationship, but I didn’t think so. My folks had shared the same kind of relationship as the couple in front of me, and if their lives hadn’t been ended so abruptly by a hit-and-run driver, I knew in my heart that they would still be together. The only negative I could see from being such a close observer of that tranquil a relationship was that it set the bar rather high for me and my siblings. Was that why Kathleen, Pat, and I had yet to find significant others in our lives? I hoped not. Someday, I wanted what my parents and the Wilsons shared.

  “How are you dealing with the morning’s events?” Mrs. Wilson asked me as I served Les Hodges his eggs and sausage nearby.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “It must have been quite a shock,” Larry chimed in. “Has Franklin been by?”

  “No, not that I’m aware of,” I said. Franklin Davis was Chester’s older brother. He could put on a nice front when it suited his needs, but I’d never been a fan of the man.

  “That surprises me,” Larry said with a frown.

  “Why is that?”

  “You might not realize it, but Franklin was protective of his little brother back in school, at least where other people were concerned. While he considered it his right to beat on Chester whenever it pleased him, no one dared touch his little brother, or they would have to face Franklin’s wrath.”

  “That’s an odd way to act,” I said.

  “That was Franklin to a tee. That’s why I figured that he’d be over here demanding somebody’s head by now.”

  “Is there a possibility that no one’s told him yet?” Mrs. Wilson asked. “That’s a ghastly thought to consider.”

  “I’m certain that Kathleen has spoken to him by now,” I replied.

  “I hope so. It would be a dreadful thing to discover by accident.”

  I agreed with my former teacher, and I wondered if I should call Kathleen and ask her if she’d spoken to Franklin yet. No, she’d think I was meddling, and since it was true that I was actually digging into the murder behind her back, she would have been right. I decided to let that particular detail go and hope that she’d chatted with him by now anyway.

  “As for me, I’m curious if anyone’s told Harper Gentry yet,” Les said, clearly eavesdropping on our conversation. In his defense, everyone was jammed fairly tightly into a relatively small space, so it was difficult not to overhear half a dozen conversations.

  “Why should anyone tell Harper anythin
g?” Larry asked him.

  “Hadn’t you heard? They must have been dating. At least that’s what I figured after what I saw.”

  “What did you see?” I asked, unable to help myself.

  “All I know is that the two of them were in the park last night arguing like a couple of teenagers,” he said.

  “They were fighting? Then what makes you think that they were dating?” Mrs. Wilson asked.

  “Trust me, nobody has that much passion in a fight unless there’s love behind it,” he said knowingly.

  “It sounds like you’re speaking from experience,” Sally Tremont observed from Les’s other side.

  “You know it,” Les said with a grin.

  “Lester Dale Hodges, you don’t know what you’re talking about, as usual,” Sally said matter-of-factly, and then she pressed her lips tightly together.

  “Sally, when are you going to let it go? We went out once, it didn’t work out, so we went our separate ways,” Les said with a wicked grin. “Can I help it if I didn’t fall in love with you like you did with me?”

  Sally’s face turned such a bright shade of red that for a moment, I thought she might be having a heart attack. “Lester, you take that back!”

  It was loud enough to stop every other conversation in the Iron, even the ones that hadn’t been close enough to hear what had been going on.

  “I’m sorry,” Les mumbled. He’d crossed a line, and he knew it.

  “I didn’t hear you. You’ll have to repeat that,” Sally said forcefully.

  Was she really going to make him say it again?

  “I said that I was sorry,” Les said a little louder that time. He was suitably chastised, but Sally wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. I had to stop this before it got even uglier. I plucked up Sally’s check and handed it to Les. “Sally, Les will be happy to buy you breakfast if you promise to drop it right now. Won’t you, Les?” I asked as I stared hard at him.

  “Of course I will. I said that I was sorry.”