Cast Iron Cover-Up (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 3) (11 page)

Chapter 19: Annie

A
s I drove my pickup truck back to the Iron, I couldn’t keep from wondering where Carter could have gone. “Pat, I don’t like the fact that he just cleared out like that. It sounds as though he has money, since Darrel admitted to paying him earlier, so whether he grabbed that treasure from Bones or not, he could be anywhere now.”

“That’s true, but let’s consider what we know about the man,” my brother said. “He’s the true definition of a miser. Can you see him using
any
money he didn’t have to spend on a bus ticket or even a hotel room? If he can get away with it, his time on the road isn’t going to cost him a dime.”

“Even if he’s hiding from the law or a murderer? Wouldn’t it be worth everything he had to save his own life?” I asked him.

“You know as well as I do that old habits are the hardest ones to break sometimes.”

“Okay, even if that’s true, where could he hide around here for free?”

“That’s what I keep asking myself,” Pat said. “Maybe we’ll get a hint in his trash.”

“I hope so, because we’re running out of options, and Kathleen is nearly out of time. If those four kids leave town and go back to school, her chances of solving Bones’s murder drop dramatically.”

“Should we be focusing on the kids instead, then?” Pat asked. “If Carter really is missing, chances are good that he’s going to stay that way. With those four kids, though, we know they’ll be gone shortly. Maybe we should focus on them instead.”

“I’d love to,” I said as I pulled up to the Iron’s parking lot. During regular business hours, I never parked so close to the front, but we were closed, and for what it was worth, it would be getting dark soon. I didn’t relish walking very far to get to my truck, even with the glare of the lights out front casting shadows all around us. “I’m getting a little hungry. How about you?”

“I could eat,” Pat admitted, “but shouldn’t we go through the trash first?”

“That depends. Would you rather do it on a full stomach or an empty one?” I asked as I reached in back and pulled out the garbage bag.

“Empty,” Pat said quickly. “That way we can wash up when we’re through and concentrate on our food instead of the task ahead.”

“Fine,” I said as my brother unlocked the front door, walked inside, and then locked it back behind us. “Where should we do this?” I asked.

“How about out back?” Pat suggested.

“In the storeroom?”

“No, in the back near the fire pit,” he said. After looking up into the sky, he said, “We still have a little light left.”

I didn’t relish having Carter’s trash spread out inside the Iron myself, and I didn’t even live there full time. “Sure. That works for me.”

He looked relieved at my acceptance. Once we were out back, I opened the bag and spread its contents out on the ground carefully while Pat grabbed one of the big trash bins we kept there.

“What’s that for?”

“As we eliminate items, we can put them here,” he said.

“I like it. Does it have a fresh bag inside?”

“Skip changed it when we closed this afternoon,” Pat said. “It should be empty.”

Once we confirmed that it was, we started picking the parts of Carter’s trash out of the pile that had no apparent significance to us. By using this process of elimination, I hoped that when we got down to the nitty gritty, we’d be able to find something, anything, that would help us track Carter Hayes down.

Once we’d examined and then discarded frozen pizza boxes, dirty paper plates, empty tissue boxes, and an assortment of other detritus of Carter’s life, we were left with precious little. The only things remaining were a few wadded-up pieces of notebook paper, a section torn from our local phone book, and a clipping from the town newspaper. I studied them each in turn but realized that the light had faded faster than I’d thought it would. “Can we at least take this stuff inside?” I asked my brother. “I can barely read most of it.”

“I don’t see what it could hurt,” Pat said as he put our remaining clues into another clean garbage bag. “I’m going to wash up in the outdoor sink before we go in, if you don’t mind.”

“Why would I mind? I’m right behind you,” I said. We’d had the sink installed originally to help during my outdoor cast iron cooking classes, but it had proved to be handy in many other ways as well. After our hands had been thoroughly scrubbed, we walked back into the Iron to see whether we’d finally hit pay dirt or if this was just another dead end in a long line of failures.

“That was one colossal waste of time,” I told Pat as we went through the final bits of paper we’d kept out of the trash. “Nothing in that mess was the least bit helpful.”

“Annie, most of what we do in our investigations leads to dead ends,” my brother reminded me. “It’s not like the movies where the perfect clue shows up at precisely the right moment in time. We have to keep working to find anything we can use.”

“In the meantime, where do we look next?” I asked him.

“Short of driving around Maple Crest searching for Carter, I think we have to focus on the suspects whose whereabouts we know.”

“I’m not talking to Timothy about Bones’s murder anymore,” I said emphatically.

“I could do it myself,” Pat offered.

“No!” I hadn’t meant to be so forceful with him. In a gentler voice, I continued, “Pat, you could show me videotape of Timothy hitting Bones with that pickaxe and I still wouldn’t believe it. If he did it, it’s going to be up to Kathleen to prove it, because as far as I’m concerned, he’s off our list of suspects, now and forever.” I could see Pat frowning slightly, so I added, “Does it make sense to handle him that way? Of course not. Timothy had the opportunity, anybody near the site had the means with that tool lying around, and as to motive, anger and even greed works for just about everyone as well. Nevertheless, we’re dropping Timothy’s name from our list, and if you don’t agree with me, then you can keep looking without me, brother or not.”

Pat looked at me for a few seconds before he spoke again. “Are you finished? Did you get that all out of your system?”

I couldn’t help myself. I grinned in spite of what I’d just said. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I feel much better now. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t mean everything that I just said. You know that, don’t you?”

“I get it. I’m good with dropping him if you are. That still leaves us with five viable suspects, and our big sister happens to be monopolizing the four we need to speak with at the moment.”

“Why don’t I call her and see what’s going on with them?” I suggested.

“What are you going to say? I have a feeling that Kathleen’s not going to let us speak with any of them.”

“I have the same feeling, but what could it hurt to try?” I dialed her number, and to my surprise, she picked up almost immediately.

“I was just about to call you,” Kathleen said when she realized that I was on the other end.

“Why? Did you get a confession out of one of them?”

“Hardly,” Kathleen said, and I could hear the defeat in her tone of voice. “I was hoping you and Pat had been able to come up with something I could use, because frankly, I’m all tapped out.”

“We still can’t find Carter, Timothy has been exonerated for no other reason than he’s my boyfriend, and we can’t do anything else without talking to your four students.”

“They aren’t my students, at least not much longer,” Kathleen said. “Marty is making noises saying that I can’t keep any of them much longer, and he’s right. Sometimes I curse the Internet. It makes everyone believe they are experts in the law.”

I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Did you already let them go?”

“No, but it’s going to happen soon enough. The only reason I’ve been able to stall them this long is by lying to them, something you know that I hate to do.”

“What did you tell them?” I asked her. Kathleen was a stickler when it came to the truth.

“I said that Ginny Bost had the key to the evidence locker where their driver’s licenses are being held, and she won’t be back in town until morning. They bought it, so then I had to send Ginny away with the key so that technically, I wasn’t lying to them. She didn’t mind, but it makes my crew even lighter. If I were a criminal, right now would be the perfect time to commit a crime wave in Maple Crest.”

“Let’s just keep that to ourselves, then, shall we?” I asked her. “Are you housing them at the police station again tonight?”

“No, they’ve already told me that they won’t stand for that again,” Kathleen said.

“We made the offer before, but I’m willing to make it again. Pat and I could take them tonight, and while they’re with us, we can press them a little harder,” I offered.

“I doubt they’d be any more tempted to sleep on the floor of your store than they would be staying with me at the station.”

I had a sudden thought. “They don’t have to. You could bring them all out to my cabin. They’ll love it out there, compared to their other choices.”

“Annie, I’m still not keen about you and Pat being alone with them out there in the middle of nowhere, and you know it.”

“You could always come, too,” I offered.

“Where would I sleep, under the stars? There’s not enough room for six people as it is, and besides, I’m not their favorite person on the planet at the moment.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll make it work,” I said. “I’ll even feed them. If you present it in the right way, they might even be eager to come out to my place. We can have a fire, and I’ll even cook something in my Dutch oven over the coals. What do you have to lose at this point?”

“I hate to admit it, but you’re right. I need to do
something
before I let them waltz out of town like a murder was nothing. Are you sure that you and Pat are up to this?”

“We’ll be fine,” I said, volunteering my brother yet again for something dangerous. It was a safe thing to offer; I knew that he’d have my back, regardless of the level of danger we might be putting ourselves in.

“I don’t suppose I have any choice. Let me ask them, and then I’ll get back to you.”

“Thanks, Kathleen.”

“You’re even crazier than you seem thanking me for this. I’m putting both of you in jeopardy, Annie, and you know it.”

“No worries,” I said. “Besides, you’re just a phone call away if we happen to stumble across any clues.”

“Don’t you forget it, either,” she said.

After she hung up, Pat asked, “What did she say? Did she go for it?”

“You heard enough of that from my end of the conversation to put all of that together?” I asked him in amazement.

“I think so. You’re proposing that we have a slumber party at the cabin, you’re going to cook outside on an open fire, and then we’re all bunking inside in sleeping bags. By morning’s light, with any luck, we’ll have the killer isolated, and then the rest of us all live happily ever after. What could possibly go wrong with a plan like that?” he asked me with a broad grin.

“When you put it that way, I have to admit that it does sound a little insane,” I said as I started scrounging in the freezer for something to make for our meal later.

“If you can think of a way to say it that it doesn’t sound reckless, I’d love to hear it,” Pat said.

“Hush and get some vegetables together. We’ve got a big meal to prep.”

“I’ll do it after I get a snack first,” he said. “I’m hungry right now, and it appears I’m going to have to wait a bit before I get my supper.”