by Jessica Beck
“Harriet Parton and Sally Tremont,” I blurted out before she could say their names.
“How on earth could you possibly know that?” she asked me incredulously.
“Call it a pair of wild guesses.”
“Nonsense. You know something, don’t you?”
I hesitated telling Margaret where I’d gotten my information, even though she’d been so forthcoming with me. “Let’s just say that you’re not my only source.”
Margaret studied me a moment, and then she nodded. “You’re protecting your other informant, much like you’ll protect me. Very good.”
“So, who else might have wanted Mitchell dead?” I asked her.
“Just Ollie Wilson, as far as I could determine at the time.”
“Why would Ollie want to kill Mitchell Wells? I can’t figure that out, either.”
“Didn’t you know? They were cousins, each due to inherit a fortune from their shared grandfather. Only when it was time to settle the estate, Mitchell produced a previously unknown document from Ollie’s father renouncing his share of the inheritance in exchange for a new car.”
“You’re kidding. Why would he do that?”
“Vincent Wilson never was the most astute person in the world. The rumor was that just before the grandfather died and Vincent was getting what we now call dementia, Mitchell tricked him into signing the document. The signature’s witness disappeared soon afterward, and though Ollie fought the claim, he lost everything.”
“If you ask me, Mitchell doesn’t sound as though he was a very nice fellow,” I said.
“He was, in fact, a rapscallion. I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got to share with you. Now, where has that husband of mine gotten himself off to?”
Before she could rejoin Larry, I had one more question for her. “What about Edith? Did she ever have any run-ins with Mitchell that you can recall?”
“Edith? Edith Bost? Your Edith?” she asked me incredulously.
“Yes, our Edith.”
“None that I know of,” Margaret replied.
“Have you heard any rumors about a secret that Edith has been protecting all these years?”
My question clearly displeased her. “Patrick Marsh, if you have a question about your employee, might it not be proper to ask her yourself?”
“I tried to do exactly that this morning.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said good-bye,” I answered. “Edith decided that all of a sudden, she wasn’t feeling very well, though she’d been fine up to that point. Listen, I didn’t mean to offend you with my questions. It’s just that sometimes in these investigations, Annie and I have to step on a few toes in order to get the answers we need.”
She took a moment to think about what I’d just said before she replied. “You’re right. I’m sorry that I reacted that way. You just caught me by surprise.”
“Am I forgiven, then?” I asked her.
Her bright smile told me more than her next words. “Always, my dear boy, always.”
CHAPTER 13: ANNIE
One of my first customers of the day at the grill was Ollie Wilson, a key suspect on our list. Pat hadn’t seen him come in, since he’d been so focused on his conversation with our former schoolteacher and her husband, and I kept hoping my brother would look back at the grill, but he was deep in conversation with Mrs. Wilson and her husband, Larry. What were they discussing that had Pat so intent that he missed every signal I tried to send his way? So much for twin ESP. If it worked at all, Pat was doing an excellent job of ignoring it.
“What can I get you, Ollie?” I asked him.
“I feel like splurging a little today, Annie. I’ll have three eggs over medium, three slices of bacon, and three biscuits to go with them.”
“Would you like three cups of coffee with that order as well?” I asked him.
He reacted in laughter with more than the quip deserved. “No, but maybe three refills will do the trick instead.”
As I wrote down his order and began preparing it, I said, “You seem to be in a pretty chipper mood today.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said as I started frying his eggs in a small stainless-steel skillet after putting three slices of raw bacon on the flat steel surface first. I’d made up some bacon earlier, but that had been for any requests I knew that I’d get for carryout orders. When I had a customer come in and sit down, I liked everything to be as fresh as possible. I could have cooked the eggs in cast iron, but I wasn’t a fan of them cooked that way, and the griddle did a fine job on the bacon. While I loved cooking with cast ironware, I wasn’t a fanatic, despite what some of my customers might have thought about me. “Is it because of what happened to Albert Yeats last night?”
I risked a glance backward and saw that he was scowling. “Now why did you have to go and ruin my appetite by bringing his name up into the conversation?”
“So, does that mean that you’re upset that he was murdered last night?”
There was dead silence behind me, so I turned around to see if he’d even heard me. “Murdered? What are you talking about?”
I turned to look at him before I had to flip the eggs and bacon. “You hadn’t heard about it yet?”
“No. What happened to him?”
“Somebody stabbed him straight through the heart with a knife,” I said.
Ollie took that in, and then he hung his head low and shook it a little from side to side. “Well now, that’s a real shame.”
I flipped the eggs over and then took the press off of the bacon and turned it as well as I said, “I understand you two had some harsh words for each other recently.”
“I don’t even have to ask you where you heard that, do I? Your brother told you.”
“As a matter of fact, he said that you two came to blows, Ollie.”
My customer frowned at me, and then he stood up from his barstool. “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want that breakfast after all.”
“Fine by me,” I said as I slid his bill toward him. “You can pay Pat up front on your way out.”
Ollie looked shocked by the notion. “Why should I pay for something I didn’t eat?”
“Let me ask you something,” I said as I plated his eggs, bacon, and biscuits and slid them in front of the spot where he’d just been sitting. “If you hired an architect to design a house for you and then changed your mind about building it, would you get a bill? If that one’s too hard to grasp, how about if you hired a lawyer to defend you, but then halfway through the trial you decided you’d do a better job of it yourself. Is there any doubt in your mind that you’d be getting an invoice for the work she’d put into it up until then?”
“No, I suppose not,” he said, “but that’s different.”
“You’re right there. I went ahead and built the house AND defended you, and now you’re trying to get out of paying for either one of them. You’ve got two choices, Ollie, and I’d be careful about which way you choose if I were you. You can sit down and eat the breakfast I just made for you, happily paying your bill on the way out, or you can leave right now without eating or paying for it. I’ve got to warn you though, that if you do that, you won’t be welcome back here as long as Pat and I are running the Iron.”
Ollie sat down so quickly I was afraid that he might fall off his chair. “There’s no reason to get nasty about it, Annie. I’ll pay. You know I’m good for it.”
“There was never any doubt in my mind,” I said with a bright smile. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No, this is fine,” he said, and then he proceeded to get down to the business of eating his breakfast. There was no more small talk between us, and soon enough he was standing up, his plate mostly clean.
“How was everything?” I asked him sweetly.
“Perfectly adequate, I suppose,” Ollie said.
I treated it as though it was the highest praise I’d ever gotten for a meal. “W
hy Ollie, thank you so much. As always, it was a pleasure serving you.”
Ollie Wilson looked at me as though I’d lost my mind, but I just kept right on smiling as I watched him walk up front and pay his bill.
Twenty minutes later, I looked up to see Sally Tremont approach my counter. A few other folks were already eating their breakfasts, but there was still room for her. “Good morning,” I said. “What can I get you today?”
“Do you have a second, Annie?”
I glanced over at the griddle, which was nearly full. “Not really, but I can still squeeze your order in if you give me a minute or two.”
“I didn’t come here to eat,” she said sharply. “I need to speak with you.”
“Sorry then, these chairs are for customers only at the moment,” I said as I waved my pen in the air.
“Oh, fine,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll have a plain biscuit and a cup of coffee.”
It wasn’t much, but clearly Sally hadn’t come for the food. “Today’s your lucky day, then. You won’t even have to wait for that order,” I said as I grabbed a biscuit from the oven where several were warming. I sliced it open and put it on a plate, and after I delivered it, I flipped a coffee cup and filled it. With the ease that came from a great deal of practice, I wrote out the bill and slid it under her plate. “Will there be anything else?”
“Some conversation would be greatly appreciated,” she said curtly. “And some apple butter,” she added as she glanced down at her naked biscuit.
“Give me a minute,” I said as I slid a cup of apple butter in front of her. I quickly finished the orders I’d been working on, and after they were delivered, I turned back to Sally. As I did, I noticed someone pretending to browse nearby in the home canning section. It was Harriet Parton, and if she’d ever canned a fruit or a vegetable in her life, I’d eat it on the spot. “Okay. That should hold everybody for a while. What can I do for you?”
“It’s about last night,” Sally said.
“What about it?”
“I wanted to tell you the reason that I left in the middle of your class so abruptly,” she said.
“Hey, you paid the full fee. If you didn’t want to stick around for all of it, that was your business, as far as I’m concerned. Besides, you made it back in time to eat.”
“There’s a reason I left,” Sally said darkly. “It was because of Harriet.”
“What about her?” I asked. “If memory serves, you left before she did.”
“No, we left at the same time,” Sally corrected me.
“But you still were the first one who told me that she was leaving.” There was no doubt of that in my mind, because I’d been so surprised that someone would leave class like that, let alone two people.
“That’s because I knew that she was getting ready to go, and I wanted to be away from the class so that I could follow her wherever she went.”
I looked at her oddly. “Sally, how could you possibly know that Harriet was about to leave?”
“Because I knew where she was going,” Sally said smugly.
This was getting interesting. “Meet me over by the back door to the storeroom,” I said, and I topped a few coffee cups as I made my way to some privacy. Once we were alone, I asked her, “How could you possibly have known that?”
“Because I heard her making plans to meet with Albert right before class. She didn’t know that I was listening, so she didn’t try to hide her intentions.”
“Why was she meeting Albert?” I asked her.
“That’s what I was trying to find out.”
“Well, did she?”
Sally frowned. “I have no idea. She lost me.”
It was all I could do not to laugh. “How could she manage that? Maple Crest isn’t that big.”
“I don’t know, Annie! I was tailing her in my car, and I looked away for a moment, but she was gone! I know where she went, though.”
“Where’s that?”
“She knew I was onto her, so she slipped away so she could kill Albert Yeats!”
“Hang on, Sally. Do you have any proof of that?”
“What do you mean?”
Was she being this dense on purpose? “Did you see her go into the kid’s cabin where we found his body? Did she have a knife in her hand as she was going inside? Was there blood on her when she left? You know, actual proof.”
“No. Of course not. But I know that she did it nonetheless.”
I shook my head. “You believe that she did, but you don’t know. Why would she kill him, Sally?” That really was the heart of the matter. Motive was significant, and I couldn’t think of one for Harriet.
“Because she killed Mitchell, and Albert was about to unmask her as the real murderer.”
“Again, where’s your proof?”
Sally looked at me indignantly. “What are you, a police officer all of a sudden?”
“No, but there has to be more evidence than you’ve provided me so far to get me on your side.”
Sally shook her head violently. “I don’t know why I even bothered coming here in the first place.”
“For my biscuit and coffee, perhaps?” I asked softly.
“Humph.”
Sally stormed off, grabbing her bill on the way after only nibbling around the perimeter of her biscuit and without touching her coffee. She was still frowning as she presented my brother with her bill at the register in front. I knew that some folks found it odd, but I focused on making and serving the food, while Pat took their money. It was a system that had worked out just fine for us, and no one had tried to get away without paying yet, if I didn’t count Ollie.
I was heading back to my spot at the grill when Harriet hurried over to me. “What did that evil woman just tell you about me?” she hissed.
“How do you know that Sally was talking about you?” I asked her.
“Please. Don’t try to protect her, Annie. She killed Albert Yeats, and now she’s trying to blame it on me. I just know it.”
Funny, Sally had just said the same thing about Harriet. I decided to ask her the same question I’d just stumped her nemesis with. “Do you have any proof of that, Harriet?”
“No, she was too crafty doing it, but I know it nonetheless.”
Was this what Kathleen put up with in the course of her investigations? I kind of doubted it. No one would dare speak to a sheriff the way they’d both just spoken to me.
“Bring me some proof, and I’ll help in any way that I can,” I said.
Harriet shook her head, mimicking Sally’s move, and left me, no doubt to continue trailing Sally, who in turn thought that she was watching Harriet.
If there hadn’t been a murder involved, it was almost funny enough to be amusing.
There was no danger of that happening, though. I wasn’t about to laugh at anything related to Albert Yeats’s murder, but I had to wonder if it were possible that both women were wrong. Either way, I couldn’t wait to tell Pat what I’d learned, but there was no time at the present, since another wave of breakfast diners came in through the front door. It appeared as though I was going to have my hands full for quite some time.
It was one of those rare days where we were never overwhelmed yet still managed a slow and steady flow of customers trickling in throughout the entire time we were open. Pat and I barely had time to exchange more than a smile, and I couldn’t wait until we closed the doors for the day so I could bring him up to date on what I’d learned. I had the feeling that he had a few things to tell me as well, and it took everything I had to stay at my post at the grill until closing time.
A little after my regular lunch crowd was gone, I was surprised to see Timothy Roberts walk in the front door. Oh, no. There was a frown on his face. Was he going to cancel our date? I’d found myself looking forward to it, probably more than I should have, but from his expression, I got a feeling that it wasn’t going to happen; not tonight, at any rate.
“You’re not breaking our date tonight, are you?” I b
lurted out as soon as he was close enough.
“What? No. Of course not. What would make you ask me something like that?”
I felt relieved, and then I found it odd that I’d put so much stock into it. “I don’t know. There was something about your expression that made me think you were about to deliver some bad news.”
“Annie, I could break both legs and my right arm and still make it tonight,” he said with a grin.
“But not both arms?” I asked him lightly.
“What can I say? I’m a lefty. I’d be lost without it,” he answered. “I came by to apologize again for skipping out on you last night.”
“It was kind of odd,” I admitted. “What exactly happened?”
“I was just putting out the fires when I saw someone creeping around the edge of the building, spying on me. When I tried to see who it was, they vanished.”
“Wow, they must have been fast for you not to catch them.”
He looked a little sheepish as he admitted, “I would have been fine if I hadn’t stepped on my own shovel. I’m just lucky it whacked my shoulder and didn’t give me a black eye.”
I caught myself after the first giggle escaped, but not in time to keep him from hearing it. “Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, you sound really sorry,” he said with a smile. “Anyway, they drove off. I tried to follow in my truck, but by then, I was too late.”
“Who do you think that it might have been?” I asked him.
“Beats me. It could have just been kids out messing around for all I know.”
I stopped smiling. “But you don’t think so, do you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“If you thought that it was innocent, you wouldn’t have kept trying to find them.”
“You know me too well,” he said after whistling under his breath softly. “I really hate that I missed those ribs.”
“They’re in the fridge, if you want me to heat them up for you.”
“That sounds great, but I’m going to pay for them,” Timothy said as he pulled out his wallet.