Cast Iron Conviction (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 2)

by Jessica Beck

  “Like what?” I asked her. Maybe we’d be able to get some help from her after all.

  “You know I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”

  “Seriously? The case was closed ten years ago. If we’d asked you last week, you would have been a lot more open with us,” Annie protested.

  “That was before the state reversed itself,” Kathleen reminded her.

  “So, you won’t help us at all?” I asked her.

  “Let’s find Albert first, and then we can discuss what I will and will not tell you two delinquents about what happened ten years ago.”

  “You know, it wasn’t true when you called us that when we were kids, and it isn’t true now,” I said.

  “I know,” she said with a sigh. “I just wish the two of you would try to make my life a little easier instead of harder for once.”

  “What fun would that be?” Annie asked. “So, should we all take your patrol car?”

  Kathleen shook her head. “This isn’t exactly official police business. Why don’t you drive us, Pat?”

  “What’s wrong with me driving?” Annie asked. “Besides the fact that it’s not my car and all.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’d like to get where we’re going in one piece, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Kathleen stopped off at her squad car to collect a high-powered and heavy-duty flashlight. She’d strapped on her firearm inside, and Annie had asked, “How about us? Do we get weapons, too?”

  “What do you think?” Kathleen asked dryly.

  “Hey, I can make the request, can’t I?”

  “You can, and I have just as much right to turn you down.”

  We got into the car, and I turned to my older sister, who had taken the passenger seat beside me, putting Annie in back.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Kathleen asked.

  “A destination might be nice,” I said with a soft smile. “Are we going to Bryce’s, or is there somewhere else you’d rather look first?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Let’s head for Bryce’s place and see if Albert’s there.”

  After getting permission from the owner to check on his cousin, we approached the play cabin in back of the lot, calling out Albert’s name as we neared the front door. “Albert? Are you there?” Kathleen called out in the darkness. I was glad that she’d brought her flashlight with her. Wherever the beam touched leapt into light, and I could easily believe that it would be pretty blinding if it hit your eyes directly after being accustomed to the darkness, but then again, that might have been the plan all along.

  There was no answer at the makeshift door.

  “Albert, it’s us, Pat and Annie,” I said loudly.

  “I already announced our presence,” Kathleen said shortly as she turned the beam in my direction.

  “Maybe as a law enforcement officer, but he knows us to be his friends,” I said. That wasn’t entirely true, but at least he didn’t have any reason to hold any animosity toward my twin and me.

  “Maybe so, but it’s a moot point. He’s still not answering.”

  Our older sister started walking closer to the door, speaking loudly as she approached. “Albert, if you’re there, I’m coming in.”

  Annie looked at me as Kathleen began her final approach. “Should we follow her?”

  “What’s stopping us?” I asked.

  As we joined our older sister, Kathleen played the flashlight’s beam over the inside of the cabin once she cautiously opened the door.

  “Is he in there?” I asked her anxiously.

  “Don’t come any closer,” Kathleen said as she shone the light at us where we were standing a few steps back.

  “Why not? What’s wrong?” I asked her. “Do you see him?”

  “He’s dead, Pat,” Kathleen said, and then she got on her radio and called for backup.

  It appeared that whoever Albert had been after had decided that he’d gotten as close as he was ever going to.

  The killer must have thought that the threat to their freedom had ended, but they didn’t know my twin and me.

  As far as we were concerned, the hunt had just begun.

  CHAPTER 9: ANNIE

  Kathleen went inside by herself for a few moments, and then she came back out looking grim. After taking a moment to compose herself, she turned toward my brother and me. “You two might as well go on home. I’m going to be here awhile.”

  “How did he die?” I asked her. Pat had gotten us into this, but I was fully committed to solving both murders now. It was too much of a coincidence to believe that the person who’d killed Albert wasn’t the same one who’d slain Mitchell Wells ten years earlier.

  “At first glance, it appears as though he was stabbed through the heart,” Kathleen told us.

  “The same as Mitchell Wells was,” Pat said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Kathleen, no disrespect intended, but Annie and I are going to find out what happened to him,” Pat said in a declarative statement that left no room for debate. “We’ll do our best to stay out of your way, but we can’t just let this go.”

  “Patrick, be reasonable. He didn’t want your help when he was alive. Why do you feel obligated to aid him now?”

  “We don’t know for a fact that he didn’t want my help,” Pat said. “The last thing I knew, he was coming to the Iron to tell me what he knew so far, but someone killed him before he could make it there. In my mind, that’s all I need.”

  Kathleen turned to me. “How about you, Annie? Or do I even need to ask where you stand?”

  “He’s my twin brother. I’m not about to let him do this without me.” Our older sister was right. There hadn’t been any need to even ask. Our mother had once asked us as kids if Pat jumped off a bridge, then would I follow? She hadn’t been happy with my resounding yes.

  “I figured as much,” Kathleen said gravely. “Just try to stay out of my hair, okay? And don’t get yourselves killed. I don’t have any spare family lying around. You two are just about all that’s left.”

  “Thanks for understanding, Sis,” Pat said gravely, and then he turned to me. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Shouldn’t we hang around a little longer until someone else shows up?” I asked him.

  “I don’t see why we should. We’re not getting anything else out of Kathleen tonight,” he replied.

  I swatted him with my hand. “Don’t be an idiot. I’m not leaving our big sister here alone with a dead body. What are you thinking?”

  “It’s all right,” Kathleen said, clearly amused by me coming to her defense. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, it’s not. Sis, are you okay?”

  “I’ve seen dead bodies before, you know,” Kathleen said grimly.

  “Maybe so, but is it ever something you get used to?” I shuddered a little. “I hope you don’t. That would be a sad day, wouldn’t it?”

  “Thanks for asking, Annie,” Kathleen said softly.

  “Hey, I care, too,” Pat protested. “I just tend to get a little tunnel vision sometimes.”

  Our sister offered him a gentle smile. “I understand. How could I not? I’m the same way myself. Go on, you two. I’ll be fine.”

  Kathleen might have actually believed it, but I could see the pain in her eyes, and I knew that Pat and I weren’t about to leave until her reinforcements showed up. My brother was normally more thoughtful than he was being at the moment, but I decided to cut him a little slack. After all, he’d been trying to help someone, who had then been murdered before his assistance could be accepted. If the roles had been reversed, I would probably have acted the same way myself.

  It didn’t take long for Kathleen’s people to start showing up on the scene. Once the first team started arriving, she nodded in our direction as she began to bark out orders, and I knew that it would be okay for us to leave.

  Once we were back at the car, Pat climbed into the driver’s seat, looked at me for a second, and then said, “Sorry about the way that
I acted before.”

  “How’s that?” I asked as I buckled my seatbelt.

  “You know what I’m talking about. I didn’t even think of our sister’s well-being when she found Albert’s body. What’s wrong with me, Annie?”

  “Nothing that a good blow to the head wouldn’t fix,” I said with a smile. “Don’t worry about it, Pat. I had your back.”

  “And Kathleen’s, too. I’m lucky to have you in my life, Annie. I know I don’t say it nearly enough, but it’s true nonetheless.”

  My brother’s lapse must have shaken him more than I’d realized. “Pat, it’s okay. Stop beating yourself up about it.”

  “Okay, I’ll try.”

  “So, where are we going now?” I asked him as he drove with clear purpose.

  “Where else? We’re going to go see if Albert had a chance to stash anything for us in that hollow tree he mentioned,” he said.

  As we arrived at the park, I asked him, “You don’t happen to have one of Kathleen’s big flashlights lying around in your trunk, do you?”

  “No, but I have this,” he said as he took out his cellphone.

  “I don’t get it. Are you going to call someone who actually owns a flashlight with it?” I asked him.

  “No, this is better.” He tapped a few times on his screen, and suddenly, he was holding a bright light in his hands.

  “That’s neat,” I said. “You’ve got to show me that app later.”

  “Will do,” he said. Holding his phone in front of us like some kind of modern techno torch, Pat led the way to the hollow tree. The park had been locked, but there was extra parking just outside the gate, and that was where we’d left his car.

  “What makes you think anything’s going to be there?” I asked him as we walked onward in the dark. It was quite a different walk than it would have been if we’d had any daylight. What was normally a warm and inviting stroll at noon had suddenly taken on a rather ominous feel to it. While the light from Pat’s cellphone was bright enough to see by, its depth didn’t reach that far, leaving shadows all around us. I tried my best not to focus on the shapes that I swear I could see crouching on the edges of our light, so I was doing my best to strike up a conversation with my brother to allow me to forget all about my nerves.

  “What choice do we have, Annie?” he asked me. “If the killer found his notes in the cabin after Albert was murdered, then we’ll never see them. If they were still there, then Kathleen has them now, and the odds of us ever getting a look at them ourselves is also negligible. Our only hope is that Albert left them for me where he said he would.”

  In the following silence, I heard a twig snap behind us. “Is somebody back there? Pat, shine your light and see if anyone’s there.”

  He swung his cellphone around in the darkness, but neither of us could see anyone, or anything, back there. “It was nothing,” Pat said reassuringly.

  “Nothing doesn’t snap a twig in the dark,” I said, still staring backward for some sign that someone was following us.

  “It was most likely just a squirrel,” he said.

  “Listen, you might be a city boy, but I live in a cabin in the woods, remember? Trust me; that was no squirrel.”

  “Annie, don’t lose it on me. Get a grip, okay? We’re almost there.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I tried to focus my hearing on what was behind us instead of searching for the path in front of us. That explained why I didn’t realize it when Pat stopped suddenly, and I bumped into him hard, causing him to drop his cellphone and thus extinguishing our light, if only momentarily.

  “Watch it, Annie,” Pat said as he retrieved his portable torch.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Why did you stop, anyway?”

  “We’re here,” Pat said as he played his light up onto the hollow tree.

  In a few seconds, we’d see if Albert had left us anything, or if this was just a dead end. Either way, I was ready to get out of that park. I normally loved being in the woods, whether it was in the bright light of day or the full darkness of night, but that was on my home turf, land that I knew better than any other living person. Here, I was as lost as anyone else, surrounded by unfamiliar shapes and shadows, each one more intimidating than the last.

  “Well? Is it there?” I asked Pat as he studied the tree’s bark, trying to find Albert’s hiding place.

  “Hang on. I don’t see anything…wait! Here it is!”

  Pat reached in and pulled out a small packet wrapped in plastic and duct tape, holding it triumphantly once he’d recovered it.

  “What exactly is it?” I asked him.

  “I’m guessing that when we unwrap this, we’ll find all of Albert’s notes about Mitchell’s murder.”

  “I just hope they help us find out who killed him, too,” I said. “Are we going to open it now?” I wasn’t keen on the idea. I knew that Pat thought I was just being jumpy, but I knew better. Someone was out there. There was no doubt in my mind.

  Just because I hadn’t seen them didn’t mean that they didn’t exist.

  “I thought we’d take it back to the Iron and check everything out there,” Pat said.

  “That works for me,” I agreed.

  The trip to the car in the darkness seemed to take forever, but we finally made it back. I hadn’t realized that I was holding my breath until we were safely inside and all of the doors were locked.

  Pat noticed my sudden relief. “It’s not like you, getting spooked in the woods like that,” he said.

  “You might think I’m crazy, but I’m telling you, someone was out there with us,” I said.

  I expected Pat to laugh at me, but instead, he started the car and pulled it out until it faced the gate and put his high beams on. “Well, whoever it was is long gone,” he said.

  “Does that mean that you believe me?”

  “Annie, I shouldn’t have laughed at you. Your instincts in the woods are a whole lot better than mine. If you say that someone was out there, then I’m going to believe you.”

  It felt good getting my brother’s endorsement, but it made me realize that perhaps I had been jumping at shadows after all. “You know, now that I think about it, I could have been wrong,” I admitted.

  “It doesn’t do us any good thinking that,” Pat said as he pulled the rest of the way around and drove toward the Iron. “It won’t hurt either one of us believing that someone is always looking over our shoulders. After all, we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.”

  “Is there another body that I don’t know about?” I asked him.

  “Not that I know of, but aren’t two enough? Whoever we’re looking for is extremely dangerous, and we can’t ever forget it. Even though the murders occurred ten years apart, I know in my gut that the same person committed both crimes.”

  “There’s no worry that we’re going to forget about a killer,” I said.

  When we got back to the Iron, Pat parked near the front door, something that I was extremely grateful for. I was halfway up the steps when I noticed that something was taped to the window of our front door.

  What was this all about?

  I got to it before Pat could reach it, and saw in the dim light we left burning in the Iron all night that it was addressed to me.

  “What is it?” Pat asked me.

  “I don’t have a clue. Let me see,” I said as opened it.

  It was from Timothy.

  “Dear Annie,

  Sorry I took off on you so abruptly like that, but as I was putting out the fires, I saw someone creeping around the side of the Iron. I tried to see who it was, but they ducked into the brush beside the building and managed to lose me. By the time I got back for my well-earned dinner, you were already gone. Imagine my grief at that! Seriously though, call me when you read this. I can’t wait for our date!

  Timothy”

  So, he hadn’t gotten cold feet after all.

  “Who was it from?”

  “Timothy. He had to go in a hurry, and he was just apologizi
ng.”

  “Huh,” Pat said, losing all interest in the contents of the note once he realized that it didn’t concern our investigation.

  Maybe it didn’t, but it still pleased me mightily. “Why don’t you go on in? I have to make a quick call.”

  “Fine,” he said as he unlocked the front door.

  I grabbed his arm before he could get inside. “Patrick Marsh, don’t even think about opening that packet until I’m finished.”

  I could tell from his expression that was exactly what he’d been planning to do. “Okay, but make it quick, or all bets are off.”

  I called Timothy the moment Pat was inside.

  “Hey, I’m so sorry I missed you,” I said.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry. I go off on a wild-goose chase and miss the best meal and company that I’m bound to get for months.”

  “I understand completely. Sorry you didn’t have any luck finding out who was stalking us, but I appreciate you pursuing it.”

  “I’d do anything for you,” he said. Had his voice always been that deep, or was the phone playing tricks on my ears? Then again, maybe I’d just never listened closely enough to really hear it.

  I was about to reply when Pat knocked impatiently on the door’s window. “Are you coming in or not?” I heard him ask loudly from the inside.

  “Timothy, I appreciate the apology, but I’ve got to go.”

  “Until tomorrow night, then,” he said richly.

  “Until then,” I said.

  After I hung up, I rejoined Pat, who was standing at the counter holding a long, sharp knife he’d gotten from one of our display cases. “Who was that on the phone?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What are you waiting for? I’m here. Go ahead and open it.”