by Jessica Beck
“I like the new curtains,” I said just before popping another cookie into my mouth. I was spoiling my appetite for dinner, but I didn’t care. Annie’s cookies were a rare treat for me, and that was probably a good thing. Otherwise I’d weigh eight hundred pounds and never make it up the stairs to my own place back in town.
“Thanks. I was thinking of you when I made them.”
“You are truly a multitalented woman,” I said with pride in my twin.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said as she offered the promised milk.
I took a sip, thought about eating another cookie, and then I realized that I shouldn’t. “Are these all for me, or did you want one?” I asked her as I held the container in a protective gesture.
She laughed. “You don’t have to share them with anyone if you don’t want to.”
“I suppose you could have one,” I said grudgingly.
“I like them, but I couldn’t be able to justify depriving you. Now, tell me what you learned at Lydia’s house. I just hope you uncovered more than I was able to find out.”
By the time we were finished compiling our lists into one long treatise, the daylight was definitely waning. As I stood, I said, “Come on, Annie. Let’s head back to the Iron so we can get your car.”
She glanced outside and frowned. “Pat, we have plenty of time before it gets really dark out.”
“Maybe for you, but I’m not as comfortable driving that bad excuse for a road as you are.”
“But I still want to talk about what we’ve come up with so far and where we go from here,” Annie protested.
“We can talk all you want to on the drive back,” I said as I headed for the door. “It’s a shame you don’t have some kind of porch light out front.”
“Oh, really?” she asked in a voice that made me realize that she’d finally done something to combat one of my complaints about her place.
When we got outside, I saw an array of solar-powered landscaping lights illuminating the path from the door to what passed as her parking area. “Those are really pretty,” I conceded.
“Wait until we get to your truck, and then turn around.”
I did as she instructed, and when I pivoted, I saw that she’d put solar lights on the cabin as well. They traced the entire outline of the building’s form, from the base of the porch up one side all the way to the roof crest and then back down again. As I watched them come on, they began to twinkle, providing a sight that would be suitable for anyone’s Christmas card. “Isn’t it a little late in the year for holiday lighting?” I asked her with a grin.
“I’d rather think of it as being early. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
I took in the view as the sun began to set over the lake, sending out shoots of red, gold, and yellow into the evening sky. It was amazing. “I can see the appeal of it,” I replied.
“But not for you, right?”
“Let’s just say I enjoy visiting, but I wouldn’t want to live here,” I said. “Now come on. We don’t have much time.”
“Worrywart,” she said as she stuck her tongue out at me playfully.
“That’s me,” I replied, trying my best, and failing, not to laugh.
“Okay, let’s recap,” Annie said as she started reading from the list we’d just compiled. I glanced over and looked at it for a second, but she quickly chided me. “Hey, I’ll do the reading while you keep watching the road.”
“Got it, boss,” I said.
I’d stared at the list long enough while we’d been creating it that I really didn’t need to see it to know what it said. Still, Annie went on to summarize what we’d found as I drove, carefully studying the perilous path in front of me, but all the while listening to what she had to say.
“Chester’s brother, Franklin, is the first name on our list. He claims that he spoke with Chester over the phone a few days ago but hasn’t seen him in weeks. If we can find someone to dispute that, we might be able to break him. His alibi was a call from his sister, but he could have taken that anywhere, so it doesn’t do us much good. He drives a dark-blue Suburban, which might be mistaken for black in the darkness of early morning, he wouldn’t admit to owning a gun when you pressed him, and finally, he claimed that he wasn’t in the Iron all day yesterday. If either Skip or Edith remember seeing him, we might be able to use it against him. Hey, watch out for that turn. It’s nasty in the dark.”
“I’m being careful,” I said as I overcorrected the truck’s steering. “Keep reading.”
“I’m trying, but it’s getting a little tough to see,” she admitted.
“There’s a penlight in the glove box,” I told her. “Try that.”
She got out the small light I kept there for emergencies, flicked it on, and then she shined it on the page. “Much better. Okay, Bryson Oak is next. He’s long been a rival to Chester in business and in love, and he’s currently dating Chester’s ex-wife, Julia. He said that he was in Glory Landing having breakfast with someone named Nathan Pepper, so we need to track him down and see if that’s true. Bryson drives an Escalade, but we have no idea what color it is, so that’s something we’ll need to find out. He admits to shooting his twenty-two as a teenager but not in recent history. Maybe we should find out if any of our suspects has bought rifle ammo anytime lately?”
“Do you mean besides from us?” I asked as I jerked the wheel sharply to avoid a dark object that had suddenly appeared in front of me.
Annie dropped the penlight. “What happened?”
“I thought I saw something,” I admitted.
When I didn’t go on, she asked, “What was it, a deer, a raccoon, or maybe an alien? At least give me a hint, Pat.”
“It was low to the ground, and its eyes reflected back at me when my headlights hit them,” I said.
“I’m guessing that it was just a raccoon. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” I said, loosening my death grip on the steering wheel.
Annie retrieved the light and turned her attention back to the list. “The last thing is that we know Bryson was at the Iron the day before the murder, so he could have swiped my pan.”
“Read on.”
“Harper Gentry is next. She was dating Chester when he died, and she admits that they fought the night before. Whether he was breaking up with her or it was something else, there was definitely conflict there. As for our other questions, she claims she was home asleep by herself, and she drives a bright red Miata, which we both know is a car that no one could ever mistake for a large SUV. On the other hand, she admitted to being at the Iron when the skillet was stolen, so maybe she borrowed someone else’s car and used it to try to run Chester down.”
I was nearly at the end of the drive and couldn’t get there soon enough as far as I was concerned. Annie’s voice had managed to serve as a distraction for me, and it helped hearing the facts laid out so succinctly.
“That just leaves us with Julia Crane and Lydia to discuss. Let’s do Julia first. Does an ex-wife really need more of a motive for murder than that? We don’t know when she saw Chester last or what she drives, but she admitted to going hunting as a little girl, and like most of the rest of our suspects, she claims that she was home alone sleeping at the time of the murder, and we know that she was at the Iron the day before. As for Lydia, if she thought she was going to inherit anything from her brother, she might have killed him out of pure greed. She claims that she saw Chester the afternoon before the murder, and that she was coming back from an overnight visit with friends in Charlotte when she heard the news about his demise.”
“We need to follow up on that and see if she was really where she said that she was,” I said as my tires hit solid pavement again.
“I’d love to, but I never got their names from her.”
“Maybe we can press her a little harder about that and find out,” I suggested as I made my way back to the Iron.
“Maybe. Anyway, as to the rest of our questions, Lydia drives a black Expedition, a
nd I have no idea if she knows anything about firearms or if she was at the Iron the day before the murder.” Annie frowned at our list. “We have quite a few incompletes on here, don’t we?”
“I think we’re doing extremely well, given our limitations,” I said.
“How does Kathleen manage to do it?” Annie asked me.
“Well, for one thing, she has the advantage of having a badge and a gun,” I countered.
“Maybe so,” Annie answered. She was awfully quiet.
“Hey, are you okay?”
She just shrugged. “I guess it’s all just starting to sink in. This time yesterday, Chester was alive and well, and now, less than twenty-four hours later, he’s been dead for most of the day. You just never know, do you?”
I’d had a suspicion that it might take some time to sink in when my twin had first found Chester’s body. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you bunk with me at the Iron tonight? You can have my bedroom, and I’ll take the couch. Shoot, sometimes I sleep out there anyway, so you won’t be putting me out at all.”
“Thanks for the offer, but if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll head back to my cabin. It’s really the only place where I feel at peace with the world, and I need that feeling tonight more than ever. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not. If you need me, I want you to promise me that you’ll call, no matter what time it is. I’m ten minutes away, but if there’s an emergency, I can do it in seven.”
She grinned at me. “Even taking my horrific driveway into consideration?”
“Even then. I wouldn’t brave that drive in the dark for anyone else, but for you, I’ll make an exception.”
“I’m telling Kathleen you said that.”
“Annie, don’t you suspect that she already knows?”
My twin hesitated before answering. “You’re right. There’s no need to add insult to injury.”
We arrived at the Iron, and I parked my truck beside Annie’s Subaru.
There was one problem, though.
Someone was parked on the other side of it, a person I wasn’t all that excited about seeing.
As Annie and I got out of the truck, Molly got out of her car as well and joined us.
“Hi, Molly,” Annie said, and then she glanced at me. “Aren’t you going to say hello, Pat?”
“What brings you by this time of night?” I asked her instead.
Before she could answer, Annie cut in. “No, try again, Patrick.”
“It’s okay,” Molly said, but my twin wouldn’t allow it.
“Thanks for saying that, but I’m trying to housebreak him, so he needs to learn to be cordial.”
“I’m not a puppy in need of training,” I protested.
“That remains to be seen,” Annie said.
I decided to take the path of least resistance. “Hi, Molly. You look good.” As a matter of fact, she looked beautiful to me, gorgeous beyond all description, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that.
“Thanks,” she said as she blushed a little. “Pat, I hate to just barge in unannounced, but do you have a second?”
I didn’t even get a chance to answer before my sister spoke up.
“I was just leaving,” Annie said as she kissed my cheek, and then she whispered in my ear, “Don’t blow this, Pat!”
“Call me when you get home,” I told her, pretending to ignore her earnest advice.
“Sure thing.”
Without another word, Annie got into her car and drove off, leaving Molly and me standing there alone in the moonlight.
“Would you like to come up?” I suggested, never dreaming for a second that she’d agree. Since we’d broken up the last time, we hadn’t spent much time together, and none of it had been alone.
“That would be nice,” she answered, surprising me.
As I unlocked the side door of the Iron for us, I couldn’t help wondering what had brought her here and what was so urgent that it couldn’t wait until morning.
It looked as though I was about to find out, though.
CHAPTER 14: ANNIE
I wished that Pat could have seen his own expression when he realized that Molly was there at the Iron waiting for us. That boy was smitten like I’d never seen him with any other woman that had ever been in his life, and she clearly felt the same way about him. Why in the world they couldn’t work things out was beyond me, but I wasn’t going to interfere. I knew if Pat heard me say that, he’d throw back his head and laugh, because he’d always thought that I was a bit of a Nosy Rosy, but he had no idea just how much I wanted to intervene in his love life.
As I drove back to the cabin, I wondered about the list that we’d just compiled. I had to admire my brother’s ability to get information out of our suspects. I was afraid that my contributions were light compared to his, and he’d even taken on one of my suspects for me! I was going to have to step up my game if I wasn’t going to let him leave me behind in the dust. I knew that it wasn’t really a competition, but there were times as a twin that everything was a battle.
Traffic was fairly light, though I noticed that someone was behind me the entire time I drove back to my place. Was it just my imagination, though, or was someone really following me? I kept glancing back in my rearview mirror to see if I could make out the type of vehicle back there, but the car’s headlights were indistinguishable from any other to me. If I were an automobile expert, I might have been able to tell from the distance between lights and their height off the ground, but alas, my abilities did not lie in that direction.
The truth would be known soon enough, anyway. If someone were following Pat home, they’d have an easy time blending in with other traffic, but no one else lived along my extensive driveway once I left the road, so if anyone was trying to sneak up on me, they’d have a devil of a time doing it.
I pulled into my drive, headed up a hundred yards, and then I pulled my Subaru over in the only spot wide enough to accommodate it without risking plummeting over the side of the mountain. After shutting off my headlights, I kept watch in my rearview mirror, waiting for something to happen.
I sat there until I was just about ready to give up on the whole thing when headlights finally appeared on the main road. Whoever was driving was going at a pretty sedate pace now.
Had I lost them? If I had, it must mean that whoever it was wasn’t familiar with where I lived.
Then again, maybe they knew perfectly well where I’d been heading and had held back long enough to allow me to get home so they could proceed without being noticed.
I still couldn’t make out the vehicle as it paused at my driveway entrance, but I could tell two things about it: it was big, and it was darkly tinted. That described many of our suspects’ modes of transportation, but I couldn’t help feeling that whoever was back there had killed Chester, no matter how irrational it was to believe that, given the lack of actual facts.
And then the headlights started to turn into my drive! Had I hidden myself well enough where I currently sat? If whoever was back there was intent on harming me, I’d inadvertently given them the perfect setup. After all, how much effort would it take the big SUV to pin me against the mountain and then deal with me at the driver’s leisure? I was seriously rethinking my original plan when the headlights illuminated the inside of my car.
Clearly, I’d only thought I was out of sight where I’d parked, but the high beams of the car behind me clearly showed me that I’d been wrong.
What should I do now? Should I stand my ground and hope for the best, give up the hope that I’d been unseen and speed to the cabin, where I had the means to defend myself, or should I abandon my car altogether and take off on foot? No one knew my land better than I did, and I fully realized that I could probably lose my own siblings in the woods that surrounded my cabin. Someone who hadn’t explored every nook and cranny of my land as I had didn’t have a prayer of finding me once I made up my mind to disappear.
The decision was made for me befo
re I had to act. The lights suddenly swung away as the driver did a U-turn and headed back the way they’d come.
I suddenly felt that I had to follow whoever it was, but there wasn’t room for me to turn around!
So I did the only thing that I could do.
I started the engine and jammed my car into reverse, hoping that I could stay on my drive until I got to the main road. As I drove the hundred yards backward, trying to balance my need for speed with the desire to get there in one piece, I fought the steering wheel as though it were alive in my hands. Nearing the road, I felt my front left tire start to slip over the edge, and I realized that I’d cut things a little too fine. Staring back toward where the cabin stood in the distance, I managed to overcorrect just as I came to the end of my driveway.