Cast Iron Conviction (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 2) (6 page)

Chapter 9: Annie

K
athleen 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?”