by Jessica Beck
He frowned at me for a moment, and then he plunged the knife into the plastic, parting it as though it were made of tissue paper.
I crowded closer to him so I could see what Albert had left us.
Hopefully, it would contain all of the clues that we needed to find not only Mitchell Wells’s murderer, but his as well.
It would be the most fitting legacy he could leave us.
CHAPTER 10: PAT
“I don’t believe it. This is an absolute mess,” I said twenty minutes later as I looked up from the pile of notes that Albert had left for us in the hollow tree. “I’m beginning to think that everyone else is right. Prison really messed with the man’s mind.”
Annie dove back into the stack of sticky notes, fast food napkins, discarded envelopes, and other debris from a normal person’s life and pulled out a few random scraps of paper. “Come on. It can’t all be rubbish.”
“Really?” I asked as I pulled out a scrap of my own and read it aloud. “‘Betty’s lying! Mitchell didn’t have any goats!’ How can we take anything the man said seriously?”
My twin sister tried to comfort me. “Are you sure that says ‘goats’? I thought it said ghosts.”
“Does that make any more sense than goats do?” my brother asked me.
“Pat, I’m not saying that he wasn’t a little off, but some of this could still be valuable.”
“Like what?”
“How about if, just for the moment, we ignore what Albert wrote and focus more on who is mentioned in all of this instead? Wouldn’t that at least give us a possible suspect list to go on?”
I hated when my sister made sense like that, especially when I was in the middle of a rant. “Ghosts, Annie? Seriously?”
“Like I said, ignore the content and focus on the names.”
“Okay, I suppose it’s worth a try. How about if I go through them, and you jot down the names of people Albert suspected? Or would you like to do it the other way?” Albert’s handwriting could be haphazard at best, but I’d found a way to decipher most of it.
“Your suggestion is great, goats notwithstanding,” she said as she grabbed a spare pad and pen from the register area. “Fire away.”
“Okay. Well, we can start with Betty Murphy, and maybe the ghosts, too, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
“Forget about the ghosts!”
“Sorry,” I said with a grin. Putting the note with the reference to Betty aside, I reached into the pile for the next one. “This one mentions Ollie Wilson.”
“We know that Ollie and Albert didn’t get along, but why would Ollie want to kill Mitchell?” Annie asked me.
“I’m not sure, but Albert must have suspected him for a reason. They had that fight in front of the Iron, and that wasn’t over nothing.”
“Okay, Ollie’s name goes down on our list.”
“I’d still love to know why Albert suspected him,” I said.
“Maybe it’s in the note,” she said as she tapped it with her pencil.
I tried my best to read what Albert had written again, but after a minute, I gave up. “‘The electric was rigged.’ What electric? How was it rigged?”
Annie took the note from me. “Could it be election?”
“Maybe,” I said after studying it again. “Was anyone running for anything when Mitchell was murdered?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to look into that. Keep going.”
“Mitchell Wells could have done it,” I said, reading the next note I found.
“Mitchell? Who was he supposed to have murdered? What other victim are we talking about here besides he and Albert?”
“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “It appears to me that Albert believed that Mitchell might have killed himself.”
“With a dagger to the chest?” Annie asked me skeptically. “It’s not a suicide method I’ve ever heard of before, have you?”
“No, but you said we needed the list to be thorough.”
“Okay,” Annie reluctantly agreed. “Go ahead and write his name down. Mitchell needs to be on the list of people who might have killed him, too. Who’s the next unlucky contestant on this weird game show we seem to be caught in the middle of?”
“Let’s see,” I said as I pulled out a scrap of envelope. “Oh, this is a good one. Harriet Parton’s name is on this.”
“Could that be the rigged election he was talking about earlier?” Annie asked.
“Maybe. We’ll have to see if she was even running for office back when Mitchell was murdered.”
“You know, now that you mention it, she was acting rather strangely in class this evening,” my sister said. “Harriet took off in the middle of the session and didn’t show up again until we were almost ready to eat.”
I nodded, and then I pulled another fragment of paper out. “Wasn’t Sally Tremont in your class tonight as well?”
“As a matter of fact, she left right around the time that Harriet took off,” Annie said.
“Well, surprise, surprise, Albert suspected her, too.”
“Is there anyone in town he didn’t think might have committed the murder?” Annie asked me.
“I don’t know. Let’s see.” As I read more of the notes, I began to separate them into piles, one for each name mentioned. By the time we were finished, we hadn’t added any new names to our master list, but some of the speculations were pretty wild. “That’s it. What have we got?”
“Let’s see. There’s Mitchell himself, and then we have Betty Murphy, Ollie Wilson, Harriet Parton, and Sally Tremont. That makes four folks that Albert suspected, if we discount the suicide theory.”
“I think that’s pretty safe to do at this point,” I said. “So, the next question is, do we try to make sense of his ramblings, or do we throw in the towel and start from scratch?”
“We might be better off with a clean slate all around,” Annie said. “First, let’s see if we can figure out what each person’s connection to Mitchell was.”
“I have another question. Should we focus on Mitchell’s murder, which happened ten years ago, or should we look into Albert’s, which just occurred this evening? Won’t the clues be a lot fresher in Albert’s murder?”
“No doubt, but that’s probably where Kathleen will be spending most of her time,” Annie said. “I’m not saying that we can’t look into both, but I honestly believe that whoever killed Albert is the same person who murdered Mitchell Wells.”
“Okay, you make a good point,” I said. “What should we do with this mess?”
“We can’t just turn it over Kathleen,” Annie replied.
“I don’t see why not. What can she possibly get out of it that we can’t?”
“I’m not saying that we don’t give it to her. I just think that we should copy it all first.”
“By hand?” I asked her. “It will take hours to figure his handwriting out, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of patience.”
“We have a copier in back, Goofball,” Annie reminded me. “I can have these copied in five minutes, and then we can give them to our big sister with clear consciences.”
“Are we going to tell her that we’ve got a set of our own?” I asked her.
“I don’t see what purpose that would serve,” she said. “Do you?”
“Not particularly, especially since they’re so unhelpful.”
“Then it’s agreed. I’ll get started on making copies,” Annie volunteered.
“What should I do while you’re doing that?”
“Try to figure out how we’re going to approach this mess tomorrow.”
“Couldn’t I make the copies instead?” I asked her. Frankly, I didn’t know where to begin our investigation into a ten-year-old murder.
“Nope. I called it first,” Annie said with a grin.
By the time she rejoined me up front, I hadn’t made the slightest bit of progress in my assigned task. Annie asked, “Have you been able to come up with anything yet?”
<
br /> “I’d rather sleep on it, if you don’t mind.”
My twin sister laughed at me. “I thought you might. Why don’t you keep these safe in the meantime?” Annie asked as she handed me a neatly stacked set of papers.
“I can do that. Would you like me to drop those off at Kathleen’s?”
“No, you’re already home. I’ll do it on my way to the cabin.”
“You could always crash here if you’d like,” I offered.
“Thanks, but you know me; I’d rather be home. No offense.”
“None taken. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You bet you will,” she said.
Before she could go, though, I said, “Annie, be careful, okay?”
“I always am, little brother,” she replied with a grin.
I called Annie half an hour later, and she picked up quickly. “Is something wrong, Pat?”
“No, I just wanted to make sure that you made it back to the cabin all right.”
“Listen, that’s really sweet and all, but I’m a grown woman. You don’t need to check up on me.”
“Believe me, I know to the minute exactly how old you are,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean that I can stop worrying about you. I’ve grown kind of fond of you over the years, and I’d hate for anything to happen to you now.”
“Right back at you. Like I said, I’m fine. In fact, I’m pretty worn out. Teaching those classes always take it out of me, you know? I think I’m going to take a quick shower and then go straight to bed. Tomorrow’s going to get here before either one of us knows it.”
“Wait a second. What did Kathleen say about the notes you turned over to her?” I had a sneaking suspicion that my twin had forgotten, or even neglected to make her delivery. “You did give them all to her, didn’t you?”
“Oh ye of little faith. Of course I did. She was grateful, and more than a little surprised, which kind of ticked me off, if you want to know the truth. I’m not entirely sure that she trusts us to do the right thing.”
“Well, we did make copies first before she even saw them,” I said.
“Hey, whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Yours, Sis. Always yours.”
“That’s more like it. Now, unless there’s anything else, I’m going to go now. Sleep tight. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Bright and early,” I said.
After we hung up, I was glad that I’d called her. I normally didn’t worry that much about either one of my sisters, but when there was murder afoot, I was justifiably paranoid about both of them. While I knew that both of my siblings were more than able to take care of themselves, I still felt overprotective as their brother.
While my concerns weren’t always overtly appreciated, I knew that deep down, both Annie and Kathleen were happy that I was so concerned about each of them.
At least that’s what I told myself as fell asleep that night, trying my best not to dream of murder, and failing miserably.
CHAPTER 11: ANNIE
“How was your night?” Pat asked me as I walked into the Iron the next morning. He was already hard at work restocking our inventory. “Did you have any trouble sleeping?”
“It took a while, but I finally managed to get a little rest,” I said. I didn’t want my twin brother to know that I’d been restless all night because of Albert’s murder. It might not have bothered Kathleen as much, but I wasn’t a seasoned law enforcement officer. Talking to someone and then having them die on me was just about more than I could handle. The odd thing was, when I was busy living my life during the day, I didn’t focus on it, but in those dark and forlorn moments before sleep finally came, the enormity of what had happened had asserted itself. There would be no more daybreaks for Albert Yeats, or sunsets, either. His time had been stolen from him, and I wasn’t going to let that happen without consequences for the thief. “How about you?”
“Probably the same as you, I imagine,” he admitted. “You should have called me; we could have talked about it.”
“If I’d known that you were awake, I would have. Who knows? Maybe it would have helped,” I said, but I knew that I wasn’t very convincing.
“Probably not, though. The only thing that’s going to do either one of us any good is tracking down the killer and making sure he pays for what he did,” Pat said somberly.
It was odd seeing my twin brother like this. Morose wasn’t quite the word that fit his mood, though that was clearly part of it. Determined was another that was close. Intent might be the best way to describe him at the moment, but I wasn’t exactly sure that fit, either. Maybe it was a combination of all three. “How do we get started, Pat? We can’t exactly shut the place down so we can investigate, or can we?”
“No, it would probably cause more problems than it would solve. Think of it another way. At least we have that much going for us.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“We don’t have to close our doors. You know as well as I do that just about everyone who lives in Maple Crest comes in here every day. We need to keep an eye out for our suspects, and when one of them comes into the Iron, we need to take advantage of the situation.”
“That might be a little tricky,” I said. “We don’t even know the right questions to ask anyone.”
“That’s true enough. I spent some time last night when I couldn’t get to sleep going over Albert’s notes again.”
“Did you have any more luck than we did before?” I asked.
“No. In fact, they made even less sense than before, if that’s even possible.”
“Then we’re just going to have to wing it,” I said.
“I suppose we can bring Albert’s name up with everyone who comes in and just see what happens. We can also try to nonchalantly ask them for their alibis, though I don’t know how that’s going to fly,” Pat said, and then he paused for a long moment before he spoke again. “Annie, there’s something else I should tell you before anyone else shows up.”
“What is it? You know that I can’t stand the suspense.”
Pat let out a deep sigh, and then he said, “We missed something before, but this time around, I saw someone else’s name in Albert’s notes that hasn’t been mentioned so far. I wasn’t sure that I should even tell you about it. It’s highly prejudicial, and besides, it just doesn’t make any sense. Still, I owe it to you to tell you everything, no matter how trivial it might seem.”
“Now I’m really dying to hear what you discovered.”
“Edith’s name came up,” Pat said flatly.
“Our Edith? When? How?”
“I found a reference to her in one of Albert’s notes that we missed the first time through. It was scrawled in the middle of a diatribe against someone else, so it was easy to miss.”
“Patrick Marsh, you’re stalling. What did it say?” It must be really bad, or my brother wouldn’t be dragging his feet like he was.
“Albert wrote that Edith had her own reasons to want to see Mitchell Wells dead.”
“Did he happen to say why?” I asked, clearly as shaken by the news that our postmistress might be involved in the murder as my brother was.
“He wrote something about the fact that secrets can’t stay secrets forever, no matter how many people you have to kill to try to bury them.”
Just hearing the words sent chills down my spine. “What secrets do you suppose he was talking about?” I asked him as I moved a little closer.
“I wish I knew. I double-checked everywhere else, but that was it.”
“Do you mind if I take another look at them myself?” I asked.
“Be my guest. They’re upstairs on my nightstand.”
“I’ll be right back.”
I found the notes just as promised, and then I walked back downstairs to rejoin Pat. He was right. The note referring to Edith was on top of the stack, and it was just as cryptic as my brother had sworn.
“What do you think?” Pat asked as me as I frowned at the photocop
ies in my hands.
“I don’t know. I’m sure Albert had his reasons to include Edith’s name among his list of suspects, but the reference to a secret is beyond me.” Pat nodded in agreement, and then he started getting the cash register ready for the day’s business.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. “We’re not finished with this yet.”
“Annie, we might be investigating two murders, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to be open and conducting business as usual soon, either. Our customers need us.” As my brother finished reloading the cash register with money for the day’s transactions, he said with a wistful nostalgia in his voice, “I know a lot of people have switched to debit and credit cards, but I hope that cash never completely goes away. There’s something about making change and actually handling the money that makes it real to me, you know?”
“I agree with you, but I’m not too concerned about the advances of the modern banking economy at the moment,” I said, perhaps a little too harshly. “Pat, what are we going to do about Edith?” Just as I said it, I looked up and saw the woman in question standing at the front door a moment before she knocked. Neither Edith nor Skip had keys, so they had to wait for us to let them in. “Then again, we could always just ask her point blank,” I said as I moved toward the door.
“What are we going to say, ‘Did you kill Mitchell Wells and Albert Yeats?’ That’s a tough question to bounce back from, Annie.”
“I was thinking about being more subtle than that,” I said softly, and then I opened the door and let her in. “Good morning, Edith.”
“I’m not at all sure what’s good about it. Did you hear about Albert Yeats?” she asked us.
“We were there when Kathleen discovered the body,” I said.
“Oh, I hadn’t heard that. How dreadful for you both.”
Pat asked softly, “Did you know Albert very well?”
“Not intimately, but our paths crossed on occasion.”
“When exactly was the last time that you spoke with him?” I asked her. It was an important question, and there was no better time to ask it.