by Jessica Beck
“Did it arrive?”
“No, I’ll have to check again tomorrow, not that I’m certain that I can ever step foot inside the Iron again after what happened to Chester there.”
“I know how you feel, but don’t blame the Iron for it. It could have happened anywhere.”
“Who would have done such a thing?” Harper asked me, the despair heavy in her voice.
“I wish I knew,” I said truthfully. “How did you find out about it?”
“As a matter of fact, your sister called me,” she said, tearing up again. “I’d been awake half the night trying to sleep after the argument I’d had with Chester, but I’d finally managed to nod off when she called to tell me what had happened.”
There was no way to confirm that, so it was just one more dead end in the line of questioning Pat and I had agreed on ahead of time.
“There you are,” Lydia said as she stormed out onto the porch and found us talking. “People are asking about you.” Almost as an afterthought, she acknowledged my presence. “You understand, don’t you, Annie?”
“Of course,” I said.
Harper frowned at her late boyfriend’s sister, and then she started to hurry down the porch steps, away from the house and the people inside it.
“Where do you think you are going?” Lydia demanded.
“I can’t stay here one minute longer,” Harper said, the tears now heavily flowing.
I craned my neck to see what kind of car she was going to drive away in, but she vanished around the house before I could manage it.
“I warned Chester from the start that girl was overdramatic,” Lydia said flatly. It was odd to see how satisfied she looked concerning Harper’s departure. Did it just mean there would be more attention in her direction, or did she have another, darker reason to be happy about the situation?
“They were getting quite close, weren’t they?” I asked.
“Is that what she told you? Chester was getting ready to dump her. He told me so himself.” Wow, I doubted that I’d ever been that smug in my life.
Could that be true? “When did this happen?”
“He was going to cut her loose last night,” Lydia said.
“Did he go through with it?”
“I assumed that it was as good as done after what he told me yesterday afternoon when he came by to see me. When she showed up here this afternoon like some kind of grieving widow, I began to have my doubts. Either that, or he did as he’d promised and dumped her, but she’s here angling for an inheritance of some sort anyway.”
“They hadn’t been together that long,” I said. “Would Chester have actually rewritten his will in her favor after such a short courtship?” Chester had mentioned leaving ten percent of his accumulated wealth to Harper in the letter he’d written us, but I was wondering if anyone else knew about it, in particular either one of his siblings.
“Who knows? My brother was unpredictable in his best moments, so who can say for sure one way or the other? He had an attorney he used for such things, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since what happened to poor Chester.”
“I’ve met him. He came by the Iron earlier,” I blurted out without thinking about the ramifications of telling her.
“Why on earth would he visit you before he sought me out?” she asked me as she tried to burn holes into me with her stare.
“He wanted directions,” I said lamely. I didn’t believe it, and I was certain that Lydia didn’t, either. It was time to change the subject. “Was that your black Expedition I saw parked out front?”
“Yes, it’s a ghastly beast to drive. I’m going to trade it in for something more practical as soon as I get the chance. I never should have let Chester talk me into getting it in the first place.”
“Why did he care what you drove?” I asked.
“Chester liked to butt his nose where it didn’t belong. Is it any wonder how he met his end?” For one moment, she’d dropped the grieving sister routine and had let her true view of her brother slip. In an effort to salvage what she could, she quickly added, “Everything he did was out of concern for his fellow man, but not everyone accepted him for the way that he was.”
“Were you here when you heard the news?” I asked her, struggling to get another question in before something pulled her away.
“Actually, I was driving back from Charlotte. I spent the night there with friends, and I was making an early start of it returning home. I was so overcome with grief that I had to pull over when I heard the news.”
That was an interesting twist. I decided to get in one more question as quickly as I could, and I knew that I had to make it a good one. Should I ask her about firearms, or about her presence at the Iron the day before? Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to ask her either question. The back door opened, and Franklin stuck his head out, clearly irritated about something. “I thought you came out here to fetch Harper, but when I looked out the window, I saw her driving away in that ridiculous little fire-engine-red Miata of hers.” Without realizing it, Franklin had just answered one of the questions I’d failed to get answered by Harper.
“She said she couldn’t stay one second longer,” Lydia answered dryly.
“Why would she act that way? Lydia, what did you say to her?” Franklin asked, his features growing angry upon hearing the news.
“Me? Nothing, I was the perfect hostess. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Annie. She was standing right here the entire time.”
I nodded. “Harper was overwhelmed by everything, and she told us that she needed to go.”
Lydia offered me a brief smile for corroborating her story, but there was no warmth in it.
Franklin took that in, and then he must have decided not to argue the point. “You need to get in there, Sis. There are folks who came by to pay their respects, and evidently I’m not good enough. They’re asking for you.”
Lydia did her best to hide her smile that time, but I still managed to catch it. She turned to me and said, “Excuse me, Annie, but I must see to this onerous task.”
Funny, but she didn’t look as though she minded at all. “Of course,” I said. I was about to ask Franklin why he hadn’t been happy about Lydia’s responses to Harper, but I never got the chance. As Lydia reached the door, she turned to her last living brother. “Don’t tarry. You need to be there with me as well.”
“Coming,” he said in a grumble, and suddenly I was left alone.
Not for long, though.
Pat came out twenty seconds later, smiling softly.
“What’s so funny?” I asked him.
“You managed to get your suspects to come to you, didn’t you? Please tell me that you learned something that’s going to help us in our investigation.”
“I will if you will,” I acknowledged. “I’ve gotten all that I’m going to get today. We should go somewhere and compare notes.”
“That’s a great idea. Why don’t we use my apartment above the store,” he suggested.
“My place is closer,” I said. Pat liked my cabin in the woods just fine, but at heart he was a city mouse through and through. “Don’t worry, it won’t be dark for hours, and everybody knows that’s when the bears, the wolves, and the deranged lunatics all come out to play.”
“You think you’re funny, but you’re really not,” Pat said.
“Come on, you haven’t seen my place since I got my new curtains,” I suggested.
“Well, I can’t very well miss that, can I?” he asked. “Fine, we’ll go to the cabin, but I’m telling you right now, I’m going to be out of there by dark, no matter what you say.”
“It’s a good thing it’s summer, then,” I said with a smile. “Otherwise it would already be dark. Come on. It will give you a chance to drive that truck of yours down a real country road instead of on the city streets you are used to.”
“I do like doing that,” he admitted.
“We can even throw a bale of hay in back if you want so you can look like a
real cowboy,” I suggested.
“Thanks, but I don’t want to have to wash the bed out to get all of the straw out.”
I knew better than to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. I reined it in after a second, though, and my twin graciously decided not to notice.
We didn’t get the chance to make a clean getaway, though.
Our sister, still dressed in her sheriff’s uniform, was sitting on the tailgate of Pat’s truck when we got there, and from the look of things, she wasn’t happy about being kept waiting.
The problem with that was that we hadn’t been expecting to see her; at least, I hadn’t.
“Did you know that she’d be waiting for us?” I asked Pat as we neared Kathleen.
“It’s news to me. How about you?”
“I’m just as deep in the dark as you are.”
“Then let’s see what she has to say,” Pat said, and then, in a near whisper, he added, “Remember, mum’s the word about what we’re doing.”
“Right back at you,” I replied.
“Hey, Sis,” I said the moment we made eye contact. “Were we supposed to meet you here?”
“For some funny reason, I thought we’d be going to pay our respects as a family,” she admitted.
“Sorry, but we brought fresh cornbread and pineapple upside down cake, and we wanted to get them here while they were still warm.”
“Why do you think I wanted to come with you?” she asked with the hint of a smile. “Now I’ll look like I didn’t care enough to bring them anything and that I’m just there to try to solve Chester’s murder.”
“Would that be so far from the truth?” Pat asked her.
“Probably not, but I wanted to at least look neighborly while I was doing it. Next time something like this happens, give me a call before you two decide to go without me, okay?”
“We will, but I sincerely hope that it never happens again,” I said quickly before Pat could answer.
“But if it does, you’ll be our first call,” my twin chimed in.
“What’s it like in there?” she asked, clearly hesitant about getting our impressions, though it was just as obvious that she was dying to know.
“It’s pretty dreary, actually,” I answered. “Wouldn’t you say so, Pat?”
My idiot brother nodded, and then he echoed one word from my description. “Dreary.”
Kathleen looked at him strangely, and then she glanced at me. “What’s up with him?”
“He’s been eating my pineapple upside down cake,” I said. “You know how weird he gets when he’s hopped up on sugar. For him, it should be listed as a controlled substance.”
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” Pat protested, but Kathleen and I both just grinned at him. In a few seconds, he conceded, “Okay, maybe you’re both right, but that stuff has always been dangerous around me.”
“Well, wish me luck,” Kathleen said as she got off Pat’s lowered tailgate.
She was two steps away when Pat asked, “Wouldn’t ‘happy hunting’ be more appropriate?”
Kathleen turned to look at him. “Is that really called for?”
“Like I said, ignore him. It’s just the sugar talking,” I said.
Kathleen shrugged for a moment, and then she headed for the front door.
Once she was out of earshot, I asked my twin, “What was that about?”
“You told me to play it low key.”
“Not comatose, though,” I protested. “No more monosyllabic answers, okay?”
“Make up your mind, Annie. You either get the life of the party, or the mysterious loner. There’s no happy medium for me.”
“Fortunately our older sister knows that as well as I do,” I answered. “Pat, if we’re going to keep lying to Kathleen, even if they are all going to be sins of omission, you’re going to need to get better at it, and fast, too.”
“You’re not so great, either,” he mumbled in protest.
“Maybe not, but at least I’m better than you,” I replied, and then I chuckled to ease the sting of what I’d just said to him. “Let’s go compare notes.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Pat said, and he started driving in the direction of my home in the woods.
CHAPTER 13: PAT
“Hey, you might want to slow down a little. You’re going to ding up your precious truck if you’re not careful,” Annie said with a grin as I tried to navigate the bumpy and unpredictable road that led from the main highway to her cabin in the woods.
“You need somebody to deliver more gravel out here,” I said as my truck bounced around a little on the rough path to her place. The driveway, if you cared to call it that, led up a steep incline, and part of the passageway edged narrowly close to a dropoff that I would hate to be forced off of.
“I don’t have any problem with it,” she said. “You just have to know how to drive it, that’s all.”
“Are you trying to discourage anyone from visiting you all the way out here in the middle of nowhere, Annie?” I asked her as I avoided another patch of bad road. At least I could see her cabin in the distance, nestled by a lake that our great grandfather had commissioned to be built when he’d first come to the area. My sister’s place looked safe and snug in the distance to me, but I wasn’t about to stay until dark. There was no way that I was going to risk driving this obscenity called a road in the dark without a navigator.
“It’s worked fine so far,” she admitted. “Pat, we see people all day long, six days a week at the Iron. When I come out here, I’m pretty certain that I’m going to be left alone, and that’s the way that I like it.”
“I’m beginning to see why no men have attempted to take you out lately,” I said as I hit another rough spot. I drove a pickup, and I was nervous about the driveway; what chance did a potential suitor have if he owned a more reasonable vehicle for the twenty-first century?
“If the road to my cabin is enough to ease a man’s ardor, then he isn’t the right guy for me, anyway,” she said. I had to admit that she had a point. My sister made no bones about her lifestyle choices, and anyone who wanted to date her had to pass this gauntlet and more before getting the chance.
We made it at last, and I pulled into a spot of trampled grass in front of her place. I shut off the engine, and then I asked her, “You don’t have your car here, so you’re going to have to drive back on that road in the dark after I take you back to the Iron. Are you certain that this was a good idea?”
“Don’t worry about me. I could drive that lane blindfolded,” she said.
“Do me a favor and never ever prove that to me, okay?” I felt like kissing the ground when I got out of my truck.
“You’ve got to admit that it’s worth a few frayed nerves for that view,” Annie said as she pointed to the vista.
I took in the cabin’s rustic, Adirondack-style exterior, the trees surrounding it, and the lake just a few dozen feet from her doorstep. In town, it hadn’t looked as though the sun was anywhere close to setting, but out here, where the mountains formed boundaries that reached well up into the sky, it appeared to be much later than my watch proclaimed. Annie must have caught me glancing at the time. “Don’t worry, Pat. It’s a lot easier driving down the hill than it was coming up.” She looked back at her surroundings once more, and then she let out her most contented sigh.
“You really do love it up here, don’t you?”
“What’s not to love? My nearest neighbors are deer, rabbits, ducks, and squirrels. The great outdoors is a constantly changing scene that is vastly more entertaining that anything television could ever offer. I have my solar panels to give me all the power I ever need, a fully stocked wood shed to keep me warm and cook my food, and an outhouse that is perfectly suitable for my needs. I don’t pay for water or electricity, and I’ve never had to call a handyman since I’ve lived out here by myself.”
“You would have been perfect for life a few centuries ago,” I said. “Don’t you long for modern conveniences, Annie?”
&n
bsp; “No thanks. My life suits me just fine,” she said. “Let’s go inside. I made some cookies you’re going to love.”
“Oatmeal raisin?” I asked hopefully. They were my favorite, and Annie knew that better than anyone else in the world.
“Would I dare offer you any other kind?” she asked me with a grin.
“How did you bake them in that wood-fired monstrosity of an oven?” I asked her as we headed for the front door.
“My oven here works great, but I don’t do much baking in the heat of summer. I made these back at the Iron,” she said as she patted her oversized purse.
“Are you telling me that you’ve had them all along and are just now offering them to me?” I asked as I reached out for the goodies.
“I was holding them back in case I needed an extra incentive to get you to come out to my place,” she said lightly as she offered me the small Tupperware container.
I popped the lid off and took a deep breath. The four cookies housed inside smelled like Eden to me, with hints of cinnamon and nutmeg mixed in with the baked oats, raisins, and dough. I took a bite of the first cookie, and then I embraced the explosion of flavor I experienced. “Now all I need is a glass of cold milk, and I can die a happy man.”
“My fridge has some chilling just for you,” she said as she took her key and unlocked the front door. When folks heard that my sister lived in a cabin, they usually assumed that it was made from logs, not studs cut from them. The original cabin at this location had been made of spruce logs indeed, cut and dried on the property, but a devastating lightning strike had reduced the entire place to a pile of scorched rubble. Our mom and dad had undertaken to rebuild on the same site—having my twin sister’s love for the outdoors in equal portions to hers—but they chose conventional framing this time around. The cabin was twelve feet by sixteen and offered everything that Annie needed. There was an open area as we walked in sporting a small living space filled with a couch and two chairs. There wasn’t exactly any room inside for any dividers, so her kitchen and shower segued from that space, with the ceiling of that section lower to accommodate the sleeping loft above. Annie’s wood-burning stove offered a single heat source for the entire interior that also supplied the hot water for dishes as well as heating a jug full of water for her shower. It also provided a cooking surface on top, as well as an oven beside the firebox. To top things off, the door where the firewood went was partially made of glass, offering her a nice view of the flames as they burned. It hadn’t been cheap, and it weighed a ton, but it had been worth it. Her shower and sink were walled off into a small enclosed space, and a ladder led to the top of the loft, an area that would have made me claustrophobic to sleep in despite the skylight just over her pillow. Downstairs, full front and back porches bracketed her living space to complete her home. I had more room in my loft apartment than she had in the entire footprint of her place, but neither one of us would have traded what we had for the life the other one led.