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

by Jessica Beck

  Should Lydia be on the list, too? I wish I could say for sure one way or the other, but I can’t. She was a complicated little girl, and that didn’t change when she grew up. I don’t know if you realize this or not, but my little sister married for money all three times, and never for love, at least as far as I could tell. She is driven by greed more than any one person I could name, and if she believed that she was going to inherit much more than a postage stamp from me, she might have done it, as much as it pains me to admit it. I doubt that she’ll be all that happy with just twenty-five percent, either, but it is what it is.

  I’m guessing that you’re going to think that Julia, my ex-wife, should be next, but I’m not so sure about her. I know for a fact that she loved me, once upon a time; of that there is no doubt. I guess a part of me has always loved her, too. She’s in my will, and she knows it. Is ten percent of what I have enough to kill for? I don’t know. Could she have done it? It’s probably worth looking into.

  Bryson Oak, on the other hand, has deservedly earned himself a spot near the top of your list. The two of us have had an unhealthy relationship since we were in school, and I’m ashamed to admit that if there was ever a chance to screw him over, I always took it gladly. If anyone had a reason to want to see the end of me, Bryson would certainly qualify.

  The last name on my list has to be Harper Gentry’s. I’ve been going out with Harper for awhile now. What can I say? We have a complicated relationship; things constantly seem to run hot or cold between us. When we’re getting along, it’s amazing, but when we’re not, it makes me rethink the entire arrangement. In case you’re wondering, she’s getting ten percent herself, so that most likely gives her a motive, too.

  And that’s it for my list of suspects.

  It amazes me even now just how shameful this process of self-examination has been for me, and if I live through the next attempt on my life, I’m vowing right here and now to try to do better by the folks around me and to make amends wherever it’s possible. I believe that I’ll be judged for my actions sooner rather than later, and I’ll accept my fate, whatever it might be, but I truly wish there was more time to make things right with the people in my life.

  And now here are the details about what has happened so far. As far as I can tell, there have been two separate attempts on my life in the past week. Six days ago, I was out for my standard early-morning walk to the Iron when a car approached from behind me. It was still dark out, but they didn’t have their lights on. Almost too late, I noticed the car barreling toward me, and at the last moment, I jumped off the road and into the trees. If I hadn’t been paying attention, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d be dead now. Hang on, that doesn’t make sense, because if you’re reading this, I’m dead, anyway. You understand what I mean. The car was one of those big dark ominous machines, like it was capable of transporting storm troopers or something. Have you ever been behind an Escalade or a Denali and tried to see around them? It’s a nightmare. If that thing had hit me, there wouldn’t have been enough left to bury.

  The second attempt was when I was checking out one of my properties outside of town. I’ll bet you didn’t know that I owned 828 acres all around Maple Crest. I’ve acquired it slowly and steadily, and as far as I know, I’m the biggest land baron in town, if you can believe that. That acreage was picked up mostly on the cheap, but a great deal of it’s worth a fortune now. Anyway, I was out walking the land because someone had tipped me off anonymously that a thief was clear-cutting my acreage. I was deep in the heart of the woods without seeing any signs that it was true when I heard a shot being fired. An instant later, a chunk of bark flew off the tree trunk beside me. I ducked down for cover just as the second shot hit over my head. Somebody was clearly after me, but what they didn’t realize was that I was armed myself, just in case there was a confrontation with this supposed thief. I fired a shot in the general direction of where the two shots had come from, and I was about to investigate when I heard a car in the distance driving off like a madman. I know in my heart that there was nothing accidental about the shooting. So why didn’t I tell anyone, not even your sister? Stubborn pride, I guess, or maybe I just realized how futile it would be to bring the police into it after the fact. After that, I started watching my back wherever I went, but evidently, I wasn’t quite vigilant enough if you both are reading these letters right now.

  Like I said before, the killer’s crafty, so be careful.

  And that about sums everything up.

  All I ask is that you both do the best that you can. Know that I’ll appreciate it more than I could ever tell you, and don’t worry. If you should decide not to help me out after reading all of this, well, I don’t suppose that I can blame you a bit. It was worth a shot asking you, though.

  No matter what, please remember that you had my true friendship in life, and my gratitude for all of the little kindnesses you did for me over the course of our association.

  Your friend for all of eternity,

  Chester

  CHAPTER 11: PAT

  “What do you think about all of this, Annie?” I asked my sister as I finished my copy of the letter. She’d always been a faster reader than me, so I wasn’t surprised to see that she was already done with hers.

  “To be honest with you, I’m more determined than ever to find Chester’s killer,” she said.

  I tapped the letter in my hand on the counter. “Shouldn’t we share this with Kathleen?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  I looked at her to see if she was smiling, but there was no expression on her face. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Pat, think about it. If Chester had wanted her to know what we know, he would have sent her a letter, too. If she did get one, Chester didn’t mention it, and neither did Rob.”

  “Speaking of the attorney, were you seriously hitting on him when he was here?”

  “I was just being polite,” Annie said.

  “And there was nothing more to it than that?”

  She didn’t even dignify my question with a response, but that didn’t necessarily mean that I was wrong. Annie hadn’t been the luckiest when it came to love, but then again, neither had I. While I’d spent the last few years falling in and out of love with Molly, Annie had dated a few men casually, not a single one of them good enough for her, at least in my opinion. Maybe I should have backed off saying anything about the attorney. If she wanted to see him, it was none of my business. Being a twin entitled me to only so much information about her life, because it was reciprocal as well. If I kept badgering her about her love interests, it wouldn’t be long before she started hounding me about mine, and I wasn’t in the mood for it any more than she was.

  “Let’s focus on what we should do next,” Annie said, and I was more than willing to agree with her.

  “If we’re not going to tell Kathleen what we’re planning to do, then we need to interview as many of our suspects as we can without arousing her suspicions.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  “There’s going to be a viewing tomorrow at the funeral home,” I suggested. “I’m sure that everyone will be there.”

  “Pat, we can’t wait until then. I’m willing to bet that if you make a few phone calls, you’ll be able to find out where people are meeting this evening to offer their condolences.”

  “What are you going to be doing while I’m on the phone?” I asked her.

  “I’m going to make cornbread and pineapple upside down cake,” she replied. “We can’t exactly show up empty handed, now, can we? Unless you want to bake. Then I’ll make the phone calls.”

  “No, we should stick to what we’re both best at,” I conceded quickly. I could manage on a very basic level around the grill, but Annie was our chef, and what’s more, everyone knew it.

  I took one of the barstools at the counter and started making phone calls as Annie preheated one of the ovens and began mixing up her batters.

  “Jack, this is Pat f
rom the Iron.”

  “Pat, it’s a sad day, isn’t it?” Jack Forrester was a good customer as well as a longtime friend to us, as well as to Chester. Jack had retired from the Navy after putting in his twenty years, and then he’d worked for the state of North Carolina for another twenty, double-dipping pensions until he made more money on a monthly basis by not working a lick than nearly all of the rest of us did still slaving away. He was a year short of sixty, but he’d become firmly entrenched as the youngest member of the OTS—more formally known as the Old Timers’ Society—a group of seniors, mostly men, who liked to pretend that they were capable of solving the world’s ills, if only someone in power would ask them.

  “It is sad indeed. I’m guessing folks are gathering somewhere this evening, and Annie and I would like to come by and offer our condolences.”

  “What a fright it must have been for you both finding him like that.”

  “More for Annie than me,” I said, “not that it wasn’t upsetting to me as well. Would you happen to know where everybody’s getting together?”

  “Lydia’s hosting it, of course. Folks are already starting to gather at her place. From what I heard, Franklin didn’t even offer, but there’s no surprise there. The men shared a bloodline, but that was about all, and now they’ll never be able to patch things up. Is Annie cooking up something special?” Was there a hint of food lust in his voice as he asked?

  “As a matter of fact, she’s making her famous cornbread and pineapple upside down cake.”

  “Not in the same recipe, I hope,” Jack said with the hint of a smile in his voice that came through over the phone. “Sorry, that wasn’t called for. After all, a man’s dead. I’m heading over there right now myself, so I’ll let them know that you’re on your way.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything,” I said hastily before he could hang up.

  “Is there a reason you don’t want anyone to know ahead of time?” Jack asked me suspiciously.

  “It’s just that I’m not entirely sure how Lydia and Franklin will take us showing up after what happened this morning, so I’d rather not give them time to dwell on it before we get there.”

  “Nobody blames the pair of you for what happened to the man,” Jack said, slightly scolding me. “It was bad luck, and bad luck alone, that the two of you found him. Everyone in town knows how fond Chester was of both of you.”

  “Funny, but he never told either one of us that while he was still alive.”

  “Isn’t that the way of the world? Most folks are uncomfortable heaping praise on their friends, but I’ve never been one of them. You and your sister are beloved in our little town, and we should tell you that more often than we probably do.”

  “Thanks, Jack. We’ll see you over there.”

  “Until then,” he said, and then the connection was broken.

  Annie was just sliding two different cast iron skillets into the oven. “What did he say?”

  “For starters, he wants to eat whatever you’re willing to bring,” I said.

  “Jack has had a fondness for my food since he moved to town,” she said with a partial smile. “I was talking about the get-together tonight.”

  “It’s at Lydia’s place, and according to Jack, it’s already started,” I said.

  “Of course it has,” Annie replied. “She wouldn’t want Franklin upstaging her. Who knows? Someone with money might show up. I hear that she’s always on the lookout for husband number four.”

  “Take it easy on her,” I chided my sister. “After all, she just lost a brother.”

  “I’m fully aware of that fact, but we can’t forget that she is still one of our suspects, Pat,” Annie reminded me. “I feel everyone’s pain, and I realize that only one of our suspects was the one who actually killed Chester, but I can’t be soft on any of them until we know for sure. This is going to be harder than I first thought. How are we going to grill these people without arousing their suspicions about our motives?”

  I thought about the question for a few moments before I spoke. “We can’t just ask questions and demand answers like Kathleen does. We have no official status in the case, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t hold different conversations with each of our suspects, and if our questions happen to be important to our investigation, then so much the better.”

  “What do we need to ask each of them, then?”

  “Tell you what. We’ve got time while the cornbread and cake are baking,” I said as I pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen I’d tucked into my pocket earlier to write our list of suspects down on. “Let’s make a list.”

  By the time the food was out of the oven and on cooling racks, we were ready to approach our suspects. While we’d been waiting for both items to bake, we’d written down a series of questions, and while I wanted to know the answers to each of them from everyone we were about to speak with, I had no idea how I was going to go about it. The questions, in no particular order, were as follows:

  When was the last time you saw Chester alive?

  Where were you at the time of the murder (in other words, what’s your alibi)?

  What kind of car do you drive?

  Do you own any firearms?

  When was the last time you were in the Iron (to account for stealing Annie’s cast iron)?

  Easier said than done, but we had to at least try.

  Finally, Annie judged her baked goods cool enough to transport, so she put them in containers with built-in covers we normally used for to-go orders, and we were on our way to Lydia’s place in my Toyota Tundra pickup truck. Annie had wanted to take her Subaru Forester, but she was low on gas, so the driving was up to me while she held the fruits of her labor on her lap. There were a great many cars parked in front of Lydia’s place by the time we got there, and I had to park the truck halfway down the block. I left myself plenty of room to give us a quick escape, just in case someone resented the hard questions my sister and I were about to ask.

  “How should we go about this?” I asked Annie before we reached the front steps of the mansion where Lydia was currently residing. I’d heard that she’d gotten it in her third and last divorce, though I doubted very much that it was going to be her final one. She’d moved up each time she’d married, always reaching for just a little bit more than she already had.

  “I thought we’d just ask our questions and go,” my sister replied.

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to stand for us just grilling them. We have to work our questions into the conversation. Ideally, no one will even realize that they are being interrogated.”

  “I like that idea in theory, but I’m not sure how we’re going to go about it in practice. I’ve got the feeling that whoever we speak with is going to feel as though we’re ganging up on them.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking the same thing, too,” I told her. It was the central flaw to our plan that I’d recognized myself, but I didn’t like the only way there was to correct it, so I’d kept shoving it down into my thoughts. Ultimately, though, I didn’t see any other way to handle things, so it was time to bite the bullet and say aloud what both of us were thinking. “Annie, what do you think about the idea of us splitting up once we’re inside? Not only can we cover more ground quicker, but we can also alleviate the issue of folks feeling that it’s two against one.”

  “I really don’t see that we have any choice,” Annie answered. “As much as I love you, little brother, you can really cramp my style sometimes.”

  “Are you ever going to let me forget what happened before our senior prom?” I asked. “I didn’t realize you and Clark Jenkins were making out in the hall closet when I went to get my coat.”

  “That’s not where we started,” she protested, “but Clark heard footsteps, and he always was kind of skittish.”

  “It’s time to let that one go, Sis,” I said.

  “Fair enough. Not another word.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Do you mean that?”

  “Of course not,” she said with the hint of a laugh in her voice. “Now, how should we divide our victims up? Strike that. I didn’t mean that the way it must have sounded.”

  “I know that,” I said. “How about if you take the men, and I’ll handle the women?” This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen, but I knew Annie well enough to realize that she’d never take my first suggestion, if out of sheer spite if nothing else.

  “Okay, that sounds fine by me,” she said, shocking me enough to make me nearly drop the cornbread, which I’d been ordered to carry while she transported the cake.

  “Seriously? You’re picking this moment to go along with my suggestion?”

  Annie laughed. “Don’t try to play me, Patrick. If you want the men, you need to ask for them.”

  “No, I’ll gladly take three of our suspects over having just two. That dramatically improves my odds of trapping the killer myself.”

  Clearly she hadn’t considered that possibility. To be honest, neither had I. “You know, you’re right,” Annie said. “The guys will probably be more willing to share with you than they will with me, and I know for a fact that the women aren’t going to talk to you without being able to resist the temptation to bat their eyes at you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, feeling my cheeks heat slightly from blushing. “You’re just trying to grab the lion’s share of our suspects for yourself.”