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

by Jessica Beck

  “I want it. Everything. How much?” he asked as he began scribbling in his checkbook.

  “It’s not for sale,” I said. “If I gave you the impression that it was, I’m sorry.”

  “Nonsense. Everything is for sale. Just give me a number.”

  “I think it’s time for you to go,” I said as I headed for the door.

  He didn’t follow me. Instead, Rob had this incredulous look on his face. “Annie, there’s no sense in doing this dance. I’m hooked. Take advantage of me and name a crazy price you’ll take for the place. Who knows? I might just surprise you.”

  “Sorry, but it’s not going to happen. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to neaten things up. My sister, the sheriff, is coming by any minute, and she hates it when my place is a mess.” That was a complete and utter lie. Not the part about Kathleen not liking me being messy, but as far as I knew, my big sister had no plans to come out to the cabin that evening or any other. Rob didn’t know that, though.

  “Okay. I understand,” he said as he put his checkbook away. “I handled this all wrong. I can see that now. It’s just that I rarely get excited about things these days, and your property is everything I’ve ever dreamed of owning some day. Annie, when I see something I want, I tend to go after it, full steam ahead.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “It’s kind of like the way I felt about you from the moment I first saw you. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

  Rob began to approach me again as he made his request for absolution. Was this fool seriously going to try to kiss me? Why wasn’t I using the stick in my hands to fend him off? The least I should have done was take a step back, but I felt as though I was frozen in place.

  Was I actually going to let him kiss me after what had just happened?

  Whatever spell I’d been under was suddenly broken by my cell phone’s ring.

  It was my twin, but I didn’t want Rob to know that.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got to get this. It’s important. Kathleen, could you hold on a second? You’re on your way? Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

  Pat was still protesting on his end as I ended the call. “I’m sorry, but I really do need for you to go,” I said.

  “I understand,” Rob said. He was clearly disappointed that he hadn’t gotten anything that he’d come for tonight, but that was too bad. I made myself a promise not to let myself get caught alone with him again. He seemed to have some kind of special power over me.

  I walked him to his car, and then I made sure that he actually left before I dialed my brother’s cell number.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  “Since when did I start sounding like Kathleen?” he asked.

  “You don’t, but I needed someone to think that’s who was calling me,” I said. “I’ll explain everything later. What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing much. I just wanted to see if you wanted to grab a bite with me after all.”

  “Thanks, but I’m kind of beat,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’m just going to stay here at the cabin tonight. You’re welcome to leftovers if you feel like trekking out here again.”

  “Tempting, but no thanks. It was just a thought.”

  My brother sounded lonely, and I felt bad about turning his offer down so cavalierly. “You know what? I changed my mind. Where would you like to go?”

  “Nice try, but I know a pity offer when I hear it,” he said with a slight chuckle. “Forget I even called. Have a good night, Annie. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Are you sure? I really don’t mind,” I said.

  “I’m positive. We’ll talk again soon.”

  After he hung up, I was tempted to go into town anyway. I had a feeling my brother was feeling sad about Molly’s declaration. On impulse, I hit redial.

  “Hey, long time no hear,” he said.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to get a bite with me?” I asked him.

  He laughed. “I love you like a sister, but I’ll be fine on my own.”

  “I am your sister, you doof,” I said, repeating my part in the longstanding joke we shared.

  “Good night, Annie.”

  “Night,” I said. I’d made the offer. It was the most that I could do. I started to clean up my cabin’s interior, but I quickly got bored with that. After eating some reheated leftovers and reading a little, I headed off to bed.

  Fifteen minutes later, I climbed down the ladder again and double-checked the locks on the front door.

  After all, in these trying times, a girl couldn’t be too careful.

  On my way back up to my loft, I grabbed the shotgun and took it with me. If anyone tried to surprise me tonight, they’d get the most unpleasant surprise of their life.

  CHAPTER 21: PAT

  After I hung up with Annie for the second time in two minutes, I had to laugh out loud about what a big baby I was being. Normally I loved my single life, living by myself, eating whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and staying up as late as I felt like it watching anything that struck my fancy. Then there were the times like I was going through at the moment, where all I felt was lonely. It would pass, and what’s more, I knew it, but that didn’t make it any easier getting through those moments of gentle despair. On the dark evenings when I was lost in my own thoughts, they always seemed to return to Molly and what I’d missed out on. I’d always thought that there would be time for us to work things out, to finally get things right so that we could be together, but now, apparently, that was no longer a possibility, and the reality of it was that it made me sad. I decided that the best thing I could do for my blues was to give in and wallow in them, at least for the rest of the night. Going through my movie collection, I found the saddest love story I had and put it in the machine. Before I hit the play button, I decided to make a sandwich first, so after I ate a pretty mundane meal, I settled in for the night. I would never tell either of my sisters what I was doing, but guys have feelings, too, and this was exactly what I needed.

  Ten minutes into the movie, my doorbell rang. It was rigged up in back to ring in my apartment above the store, and mostly only folks who knew me realized that it was even there. I hit the pause button, and for one second, I found myself hoping that it was Molly, there to tell me that she’d changed her mind and that she wanted to be with me forever. I nearly tripped going down the stairs, I was so excited.

  When I got there, it wasn’t Molly after all.

  To my surprise, it was Harper Gentry.

  The look of disappointment on my face must have been pretty evident. “Hi,” I said as I opened the door for her.

  “Were you expecting someone else, Pat?” she asked. “I can come back later if you’d like.”

  “I’m surprised you’re here at all after what you said earlier.”

  “I couldn’t very well stay away from the Iron forever, could I?” she asked. “Whether I like it or not, this place is the central nervous system for the entire town.”

  “I’m glad you came. That wasn’t what I was talking about, though. What happened at the park really wasn’t my fault. My sister was worried about me. That’s all that it was.”

  “Was she honestly afraid that I might do something to you?” Harper asked as she stepped in and I closed the door behind her. I wasn’t at all sure that Annie would approve of this meeting, but I couldn’t let my sister’s paranoia rule my actions. Besides, why would Harper want to hurt me? I knew that Annie and I had discussed the possibility that whoever had killed Chester might be coming after us next, but without any apparent motivation, I was having a hard time giving the theory any credence.

  “She has a right to worry about me. It’s the whole twin thing,” I said. “If you’d like to come upstairs, I can make us some coffee.”

  “Would you mind?” she asked. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your evening.”

  “You aren’t,” I answered. “I was just settling in for an old movie.”

  “I love movies. What were you going to watch?
”

  I told her the title, and then she said, “That makes me so sad.”

  “What, that I’m watching a tear jerker by myself?” I asked her with the hint of a smile.

  “No, the movie itself. It’s absolutely tragic, isn’t it?”

  “Most love stories seem to end that way,” I said. Wow, I really was in a somber mood.

  Harper didn’t disagree with me. “I won’t keep you long. I’ve been thinking about Chester, and there are a few things that I’d like to talk to you about.”

  “Come on up,” I said as I led the way up the stairs, through the storage area, and into my apartment.

  “I wasn’t prepared for this. It is really nice,” she said as she took in my living space.

  “What did you expect, an attic?” I asked her, smiling again. There was something about Harper that made me want to impress her, and if I couldn’t do that, I would at least like to be entertaining.

  “No, but this is really quite cozy,” she said as she took her jacket off.

  I headed for my little kitchen and started a pot of coffee. She took a seat at my small banquette, and I put a few cookies on a plate and offered them to her. “Sorry it’s not something nicer.”

  “These are fine,” she said as she took one and nibbled on it. “First of all, let me say that I’m sorry I overreacted at the lake earlier. I panicked a little when your sister came out of the trees like that.”

  “It just about gave me a heart attack, too,” I confessed. “I had no idea she was lurking in the shadows.”

  “You really didn’t, did you?” Harper asked me.

  “Hey, I make it a policy never to lie if I can help it.”

  “That’s rather honorable of you,” she said.

  “Really, I’ve just found that honesty is easier. That way I don’t have to remember any of the lies I’ve told, so there’s nothing to keep straight.”

  She surprised me by laughing at that. “I never looked at it that way.”

  “Feel free to adopt it yourself. Whenever you’re ready to talk, I’ve been told that I am a very good listener.”

  “I have no trouble believing that,” Harper said, and then she frowned. “There are a few things Chester told me within the last week that have me on edge. I wanted to tell someone, and you were the first person that came to mind.”

  “I’m flattered,” I replied. “What did he say?” I asked as I served us both coffee.

  “It’s about his brother and sister,” Harper said. “I’m a little reluctant to share this with anyone else, but if something should happen to me, no one will ever know.”

  “Has there been an attempt on your life, too?” I asked her.

  “No, at least not so far. Still, I’m being really careful until Chester’s killer is caught.”

  “What did you want to share with me? Go on. It’s all right. You can tell me.”

  She frowned for a moment. “He thought they were up to something, but he couldn’t prove anything.”

  “Did he happen to mention anything more specific than that?”

  She bit her lower lip for a few moments before she spoke. It was clear that she was having trouble sharing with me, and I did my best not to do anything to dissuade her from it. After another moment or two, she continued.

  “Chester ordered a new safe for the house. Did you know about that?”

  My sister had overheard something about it, but I decided to play dumb. “Why did he feel that he needed one?”

  “When their mother died, Chester, Franklin, and Lydia were dividing up the assets. Franklin and Lydia took their share in cash, but Chester chose his mother’s jewelry instead. It had more than sentimental value to him, and that’s just the way that he was. Lydia seemed okay with it at the time, but when she blew through her share of the inheritance, she started claiming that Chester had cheated her. She demanded a third of the jewelry, even though she wasn’t entitled to any of it, and Chester flatly refused. She said if she had to, she’d break in and steal her share back herself, and Chester never took her threats lightly, so he ordered a new safe.”

  “Where are the jewels now?”

  She shrugged. “They must still be in his smaller safe, as far as I know. You might want to ask your sister about that. If any of them are gone, I’d look harder at Lydia.”

  This was interesting, and it added a new motive for Chester’s sister if it were true. I had more questions for Harper though, since she was in such a talkative mood. “Is there anything else?”

  She nodded. “Chester had a few close calls recently, one with a car and the other with a gun.”

  “I know all about both of those events,” I said as I poured the coffee the moment the percolator shut off.

  “You do?” She seemed surprised by the admission.

  “Chester told Annie and me,” I said, not getting into the details of the letter and its codicils. I wanted to keep this a fact-finding mission and not a fact-sharing one.

  “That’s good to hear. I was hoping that he’d talk to someone about them, and I’m glad that he chose you and your sister,” she said. “Anyway, he kept wondering if Franklin or Lydia might be behind the accidents. They were both under the impression that they were the main beneficiaries of his will, so it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility that one of them decided to speed things up.”

  “As far as you know, are the two of them going to inherit anything?” I asked. I knew that Franklin and Lydia were going to get twenty-five percent of the estate each and that Julia and Harper were getting ten percent cuts, but what I really needed to know was if Harper was aware of the details of the will herself.

  “I don’t know anything about that, and Chester didn’t tell me,” she admitted. “The will has been sealed until a week after he’s been cremated, so we won’t know for sure for several days. As things stand right now, only his attorney knows, and he’s not saying. That’s my next point, actually.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Chester was beginning to wonder about Robert Benton. I’m not entirely certain that he trusted him anymore.”

  I knew that Chester had been ambivalent about his attorney from the letter we’d received, so Harper was just confirming what we’d read in the dead man’s missive. “Did he happen to say why not?”

  “I couldn’t get him to admit anything more than that,” she said. “You know how Chester was. His left hand didn’t know what his right hand was doing half the time, and I didn’t feel right about pressuring him for more information.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “I’m just not sure what I can do about it.”

  She put her coffee cup down on the table and looked directly into my eyes. “I’m not at all certain, either. Chester said that I could trust you, though, and that I should help you in any way that I could. I’m doing that right now, based solely on his instructions.”

  “I’m beginning to think that he gave us more credit than we deserve,” I admitted.

  “Just don’t forget about him,” she said, and I could see tears beginning to form in her eyes before she quickly brushed them away. “And don’t let your older sister put it on the back burner until no one cares anymore.”

  “Trust me, that’s not going to happen,” I said as I patted her hand. “Did he implicate anyone besides his siblings to you?”

  She frowned for a moment, and then Harper said, “The truth was that he was also worried about Bryson and Julia. I don’t know if he was just being paranoid, but he thought the two of them might be conspiring together to hurt him.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I’m not sure, but what if Chester never changed his will? He was married to Julia at one time, so greed could be a motive for her as well if she inherits the lion’s share of his estate. As for Bryson, he was always upset that Chester was a better businessman than he was. He had motives of his own.”

  “Those two are in the clear,” I told her, instantly regretting my words.

  She
perked up at the news. “Seriously? How can you know?”

  “Until we learn any differently, they both have alibis for the time of the murder,” I confessed, “but I don’t know much beyond that.” In truth, I really didn’t. In fact, I’d just given one of my suspects valuable information about two other people who had aroused our suspicions. Wow, I really did have a lot to learn about investigating murder.

  Did she look a little disappointed when I told her the news? I couldn’t really tell, but I believed that I’d seen something in her eyes for one brief moment. Maybe she’d wanted Chester’s ex-wife to be his killer. If she did, the reaction was perfectly understandable. “That’s good, then, isn’t it? It narrows the field quite a bit.”

  Was she actually including herself in the list of suspects? I was about to ask her to clarify what she meant when she added, “Based on what Chester told me, it has to be either Lydia, Franklin, or Robert Benton.”

  “I’m still not convinced that the attorney should be included in the list,” I said. “What possible motive could he have had? I doubt that he’ll gain anything by Chester’s death.”

  “Unless there’s something motivating him besides greed,” she suggested.

  “I’m willing to admit that I might be wrong about him, but I do agree that Lydia and Franklin should be looked at closely.”

  “Do they have alibis of their own, do you know?”

  “I believe my sister is still looking into them,” I answered. It wasn’t exactly a lie. At least that’s what I told myself.

  “Alibis are funny things, aren’t they?” she asked me.

  “How so?”

  “I would think that only the guilty people would have them.”

  “I’m not sure that it’s that simple,” I said. “It’s perfectly reasonable for most folks to have a corroborating witness to their location without it causing any suspicion.”

  “At six in the morning?” she asked. “I know I don’t have anyone who could prove that I was home alone, asleep. Does that make me a suspect in your mind, or not?”