Cast Iron Cover-Up (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 3) (8 page)

“No!” Timothy must have realized that he’d spoken a little louder than was called for. We got the attention of everyone in the Iron, including my patiently waiting diners at the grill. In a lower voice, he added, “I was supposed to meet Carter Hayes in town. He wants to help me clear part of my land, but he never showed up. I gave up on him when he stood me up, grabbed a quick sandwich at home, and then I went straight out to my land and found you two there.”

“Carter claims that was where you were supposed to meet him in the first place,” Pat said.

“You’ve spoken with him about me?” Timothy asked, clearly unhappy about it.

“Don’t blame my brother. We both did, Timothy,” I said.

My boyfriend looked at me carefully before he spoke. “Annie, am I a suspect here?”

“You’d have to ask Kathleen about that,” I said, trying to avoid answering his direct question.

“Trust me, I will, but right now, I’m asking you. Do you think it’s possible that I killed that kid, just for digging a few holes on my property?”

Pat tried to save me from answering by speaking up. “Timothy, everyone who might have been out there needs to be cleared. You own that land. It just makes sense to get your alibi so we can eliminate you.”

Pat had tried to help, but ultimately, he’d only made it worse. Timothy bridled at the word “alibi.” “I’ve already told you the truth,” he said to my brother icily, and then he looked back at me. “Well? Do you think I’m capable of committing murder, Annie?”

“Just about everyone is, given the right circumstances,” Pat tried to add.

Timothy wasn’t having any of it. “Patrick, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear what your sister has to say.”

“Given the right circumstances, yes, I do.” My voice was nearly a whisper as I spoke, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him, no matter what it might end up costing me.

“I’m sorry. What did you just say?” Timothy asked me, though I knew that he’d heard me the first time.

“I said that it’s possible. You
have
to be a suspect, but then in Kathleen’s eyes, I’m sure that I’m one as well.”

“Frankly, I don’t care what your sister thinks, even if she is the sheriff. I understand why she might want to know where I was at the time of the murder, but I didn’t think that you’d have to.” Timothy turned and walked away, not in any particular hurry, but not lingering, either.

“Say something to him, Annie,” Pat said urgently.

“What is there to say? I couldn’t lie to him.”

“At least stop him before he leaves. You can’t let him go believing that you don’t trust him.”

“Pat, I don’t have any choice. He got back earlier than he implied yesterday, it was his land being trespassed on, and we both know how protective Timothy can be about the things he cares about.”

“Including you,” Pat reminded me.

“Maybe before, but it appears that’s changed now.”

“Don’t give up that easily,” Pat said. “He’s perfect for you, and you can’t let our murder investigation get in the way of your life.”

“Then let’s solve this as quickly as we can,” I said. “But know this. I’m not dropping this case, and neither are you. We’ve known from the very beginning that we were going to burn some bridges if we started digging into other people’s lives.”

“I realize that, but I never thought for one second that one of your bridges was going to explode in your face,” Pat said.

“Trust me, I’m not happy about it either, but until I can look Timothy in the eye and tell him that I know he didn’t do it, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Then let’s keep digging, and do it fast,” Pat said.

Chapter 14: Pat

W
e didn’t have time to do any more investigating at the moment, though. As much as I loved running the Iron with Annie, it had a tendency of getting in the way of our unofficial inquiries from time to time. There was a steady stream of customers throughout the rest of the day—both up front where I was in charge and back at Annie’s grill—and we didn’t have much of a chance to even compare notes between the two of us. The college student’s death had understandably made waves in Maple Crest, but not as much as it would have if he’d been local. It wasn’t because anyone cared less that someone had lost their life; it was due more to the fact that no one had known Bones. That made his homicide a little more faceless than if it had been someone who’d lived among us. This was almost like a murder far away in Charlotte or Raleigh, disassociated from our daily lives. The fact that it had occurred on Timothy’s land, and right next to Annie’s, made it newsworthy, but without any real fuel to feed the flames of speculation, it just wasn’t the same. I was still wondering what our approach should be when I was surprised to see all four surviving members of the treasure-hunting expedition show up at the Iron a little before noon.

“Hi, Peggy,” I said as I approached her first. “How are you feeling today?”

“I’m upset about Bones, but at least I know that I’m not losing my mind, so that’s something, anyway,” she said. “When he vanished like that, I was beginning to have my doubts.”

“How long have you been discharged from the hospital?” I asked her.

“It just happened. The doctor wouldn’t release me until I had another interview with your sister. I couldn’t tell her anything new, so she finally agreed to let me go. The first thing I wanted to do was get some of your sister’s excellent cooking after suffering through the food there, so we all headed straight over here.”

“How did you get here?” I asked Henry. “Did you all come in the car?”

“The sheriff released the van back to us around ten this morning,” he told me. “Man, she’s tough, isn’t she?”

“Why do you say that?”

“No disrespect intended, but I
knew
that I was innocent and she still managed to scare me.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally if I were you. She considers it a personal affront that someone committed murder in her jurisdiction,” I said. “What are you all going to do now?”

“I guess we’re hanging around Maple Crest a little longer, since we can’t leave town just yet,” Marty said, “not that I was shocked when the sheriff told us.”

“Don’t misunderstand us. We want to cooperate,” Gretchen added. “After all, Bones was with us. Julian, I should say.”

“Did Kathleen find out his real name?” I asked her.

“The news came in this morning. He’d been fingerprinted for something somewhere along the line, and it popped up in her database. His real name was Julian Valentine Bonetti.”

That explained why the student had gone by Bones. It had less to do with his pre-med line of studies than it did a trifecta of unusual names. “Did she happen to mention if they’d notified his next of kin yet?”

“From what we heard, all that’s left is his father, and he’s on some kind of expedition right now where he can’t be contacted. They’re expecting him back next week, so until then, we’re all supposed to keep it under our hats.”

“I’m kind of surprised your sister didn’t tell you this already,” Marty said snidely.

“You’d be amazed by what she decides not to share with Annie and me,” I answered.

“Pat, I’d love to chat, but I’m so hungry right now that I could eat the bark off of a tree,” Peggy said. “Do you mind if we have lunch?”

“No, of course not,” I said. I had more questions to ask them, but at least my twin sister was going to get a crack at them herself. I knew that Annie wouldn’t let an opportunity to interview so many of our suspects at one time pass her by. I just hoped she’d be able to get more out of them than I’d been able to.

Peggy walked back to the grill, with Gretchen and Marty close on her heels. Henry stayed back, and once the group was out of earshot, he said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d take it easy on Peggy, Pat. I understand that you want to find out what happened, but you need to remember that she’s been through a lot over the past twenty-four hours.”

“I get that,” I said. “How did you happen to find out that she was being discharged?”

Henry smiled. “Actually, your sister told us when she handed me the keys to the van. She’s not really a bad sort, is she?”

“Not if you didn’t do anything,” I said. “If you’re innocent, you won’t find a better advocate to deal with in law enforcement.”

“Yeah, I totally get that,” Henry replied. “Well, I’d better get back to the group.”

“When you’re finished with your lunch, would you mind if we chatted a little more?” I asked him.

“I’m not sure what I could tell you that I haven’t already said,” Henry replied. “You still think one of us did it, don’t you?”

“I don’t know yet,” I answered him honestly. “That’s one of the reasons that I’d like to continue our conversation.”

Henry took a step back. “With me? Do you think I killed Bones?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you believe it’s a possibility, don’t you?” Henry was clearly troubled by the prospect of being one of our suspects.

“If it makes you feel any better, you four aren’t the only people we’re looking at,” I said.

“So you
are
investigating the murder,” Henry said with a frown. “Does your sister know what you’re doing?”

“You’d better believe it. I tell Annie everything,” I said.

“I’m not talking about that sister,” he said.

“Yes, Kathleen is well aware of the fact that we’re doing a little investigating on our own.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, why are you so interested in what happened to Bones?” Henry asked, clearly genuinely curious about our motivation. “He was a stranger to you until we came to town.”

“Maybe so, but it happened on land that belongs to a friend of ours, not to mention the fact that it also abuts Annie’s, and then someone had the audacity to dump the body in her pond. Are you honestly all that surprised that we’d take an active interest in what happened to Bones, I mean Julian?”

“If you call him that, nobody will know what you’re talking about,” Henry said with the hint of a grin, despite the serious nature of our conversation.

“Bones it is,” I said.

“Who else are you looking at as suspects?” Henry asked me.

“I’m not sure that I’m ready to share that information with the general public yet,” I said, hedging my bets.

“We’re not exactly casual observers here, Pat. We have a stake in this as well.”

“I understand that, but I still think it would be better if we kept our list to ourselves, at least for the time being.”

“Okay, I can respect that, but listen, if there’s anything that we can do to help you find the killer, all you have to do is ask. The four of us have a bigger stake in this than you do.”

“Even if helping us means that you end up implicating someone in your group?” I asked him.

Henry frowned at the thought as he stared at his companions, who were all watching us at the moment.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“But if it does?” I pressed him a little harder.

“When all is said and done, I want to know what really happened to Bones. No matter what.”

“And if Peggy or Gretchen did it, you’ll help us catch them?”

“Hey, it could have just as easily been Marty,” Henry said.

“Why do you believe that?”

“I’m just saying, we all had the opportunity to sneak back to where Bones was and clobber him, but that means that someone else did, too. We were pretty spread out that day looking for the outside parameters of our digging zone. Anyone could have whacked Bones with that pickaxe, including a perfect stranger to us.”

“I understand that, but then motivation becomes the question, doesn’t it?” I asked him. “Who else had a reason?”

Henry shook his head. “That’s all that I’ve been able to think about since Peggy found Bones’s body. What if he found the hoarded money while the rest of us were off other places? Someone could have spotted him getting it, confronted him about it, and then killed him for it.”

“That sounds like an awfully big coincidence to me, that someone just happened along at exactly the right time.”

“Not if they’d been watching us from the woods all along,” Henry said softly.

“Do you have any reason to suspect that was the case?” I asked him.

“We saw some signs that someone might have been out there. You know, a tree branch snapping, a light we couldn’t explain at night, that kind of thing. I had the creepiest feeling that someone was keeping tabs on us, waiting and hoping that we’d find something. If that’s the case, we’ll never find the real killer.”

“There’s another possibility that you haven’t considered in that scenario,” I reminded him.

“What am I missing?”

“One of your crew could have been secretly watching just as easily. If Bones made a discovery, would he necessarily tell any of you about it?”

Henry pondered that for a few moments, and then he shook his head. “Maybe not. Since his dad was financing the trip, he might have felt entitled to keep the money all for himself.”

“What would happen if one of you caught him taking it?”

“There would be trouble, there’s no doubt about that,” Henry said.

“So, the question remains, who might have done it?”

“I still don’t think any of us murdered him,” he said.

“I can understand you feeling that way,” I replied, “but until we learn something that eliminates one or all of you as suspects, we have to keep digging.”

“I get that,” Henry said, and then he stuck out his hand. “Are we still good?”

“We are,” I said, shaking it.

“Excellent. Then if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat.”

“I’d recommend it,” I said with a grin. I didn’t think that Henry was the killer, though I’d been surprised before. Still, I liked him, and I hoped fervently that he wasn’t playing me for a fool.

Chapter 15: Annie

“W
hat would you like to eat?” I asked Peggy as she studied the menu. “I’ve eaten hospital food before myself, so I know that you must be famished.”

“You have no idea,” she said with a grin. “What’s good today?”

“Would you be surprised if I told you that everything I serve is delightful?” I asked with a grin of my own, which was my usual response to the query. “But if you’ve got the appetite for it, the beef ribs are particularly good today. They include a side of baby carrots, new potatoes, peas, onions, and green peppers, all simmered for hours in one of my cast iron Dutch ovens.”

“I’ll take two helpings,” she said as she shoved the menu aside.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be more than happy to serve you anything you’d like, but if you might take the suggestion, start out with one order. If you’re still hungry, the second will be hot.”

“Sure. That sounds good. Do you have any bread to go along with it?”

“I’ve got spicy cornbread and a cheddar chive bread that I’m particularly proud of, both made right here in my kitchen.”

“I can’t decide, they both sound so good,” she said.

“How about a slice of each?” I offered.

“Sold.”

I nodded, and then turned to the others. “How about you three?”

“That all sounds wonderful to me,” Henry said.

Gretchen nodded. “Make it three.”

I turned to Marty. “Care to make it four?”

He frowned as he shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll have a burger.”

“I can do that,” I said. I should have known from his demeanor alone that Marty wasn’t the get along/go along kind of guy. It didn’t bother me in the least that he’d have to wait for his meal. I served the others immediately, and I caught Marty staring at Gretchen’s plate. “It’s not too late to change your order, you know.”

“No, I’m good,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” I said as I grabbed a hamburger patty and threw it onto the griddle. While it was cooking, I asked him, “What would you like on it?”

“Drown it in catsup and it will be fine with me,” he said.

“You can handle that yourself,” I said as I put a full bottle in front of him. It pained me enough to have my food desecrated in that manner, but I refused to do it myself. If he wanted it that way, that was his prerogative, but at least my hands would be clean. I used only the finest quality of everything I served at the grill. It might as well have been a tough old bull for all of the taste he was going to get out of it, but sadly, I didn’t have any tough old bull on hand at the moment to use as a substitute.

As Henry, Peggy, and Gretchen ate, I studied Marty for a moment. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look all that happy about being here.”

“Do you say that to all of your customers?” he snapped at me.

“Just the ones who look miserable,” I answered with a smile.

“The truth of the matter is that I want to leave this dump the second your sister lets me,” he said.

“I can’t address your problems with Maple Crest, but if you don’t want to eat in here, I can make it to go and you can eat out in the parking lot.”

Gretchen frowned at Marty before she spoke. “I’ve told you before that you need to behave yourself, Marty.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

It was amazing to get any apology out of him at all. He really must have had a thing for Gretchen to stoop so low as to tell me he was sorry about anything.

“He didn’t want to come in the first place,” Gretchen explained to me.

“Really? Then why did you?” I asked Marty, though I was fairly certain of the answer. It was pretty clear from where I was standing that Gretchen herself was the main reason he’d come, despite the possibility of buried treasure.

“I didn’t think there’d be much use for my specialty, given the state of that map,” he said, “and I was right. If we’d been looking for a shipwreck, I might have been needed, but using a cartographer for the map Blankenship left was like using a cannon to kill a fly.”

“You helped determine the exact site, though. That was important,” Gretchen said, obviously trying to buoy his spirits. Was there a little interest on her part as well?

“Any one of you could have done that just by walking the property,” he said. “The well’s there, and so is the foundation of the original house, not to mention the family cemetery. The place might as well have had searchlights marking it.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Gretchen said.

I turned to flip his burger and toast the bun I was about to serve it on, and when I looked back, Gretchen was patting his shoulder. I glanced over at Henry and Peggy to see what they thought of this development, but they might as well have been someplace else. They seemed to only care about each other, and I had a hunch that if Peggy had killed Bones, Henry would have helped her hide the body without a single bit of hesitation. Pat and I hadn’t considered the possibility that two of them could have been working together, but it was something that I needed to mention to my brother later.

“Did any of you see anything out of place yesterday at the site?” I asked them.

“What do you mean?” Henry asked.

“Was there anything odd or unusual? In particular, was there something there that shouldn’t have been there, or maybe there was something that
should
have been there that was gone? Anything might help, no matter how big or small.”

“Somebody was watching us from the woods,” Gretchen said softly.

“What? Why didn’t you say anything to me about it?” Marty wanted to know.

“I saw him, too,” Henry said. “At least I think it was a guy.”

“I didn’t see anyone,” Marty said. “Did you?” he asked Peggy.

“No, not at the site. I did nearly hit a gray pickup truck when I pulled out onto the road to get help, though.”

I wanted to know about this mysterious watcher, but I had to address Peggy’s observation first. “Did you say gray?”

“Yes, there’s no doubt in my mind. He was so close to me that I nearly hit him, and I had the feeling that he’d been parked off to the side of the road just waiting for me to come out.”

Timothy drove a gray truck, but then so did a great many other folks in the area. Well, not a great many exactly, but I did know of at least four other trucks that matched that general description. “Was there anything else unusual about it?” I asked her. “Think hard. It could be important.”

“The rear bumper had a bunch of stickers on it,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t get a good look at who was driving it. It could have been Elvis for all I know.”

“Do you remember any of the stickers?” Her description still didn’t eliminate every other gray truck in town, but it was getting closer.

“Sorry. All I caught was something about lumber.”

I felt my skin grow icy. “Could it have been ‘Lumberjacks Do It In The Woods’?”

“I don’t know. It might have. Like I said, I only saw it for a split second.”

I had a feeling that it had indeed been Timothy. If it had been, though, why had he been waiting for her to leave the site? To collect the body and move it, perhaps? Or was there some other, simpler explanation? If there was, I didn’t have a clue what it might be. Whether I liked it or not, it was something else that I’d have to discuss with Pat. “Let’s get back to whoever was watching you from the woods,” I said. “Were you able to get any impressions about who it might possibly be?”

“I didn’t get a good look at whoever it was, and besides, I don’t really know anybody around here,” Gretchen said.

“I’m not asking you to make a positive identification,” I said. “Just tell me anything that stands out in your mind.”

“Well, I know for a fact that he wore glasses,” Gretchen said. “I’m pretty sure that I saw some reflections off his lenses.”

“I didn’t see that,” Henry said.

“That doesn’t mean that it’s not true,” Gretchen said defensively.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Henry added.

“Henry, you say that you didn’t notice whether he was wearing glasses or not, but did you see anything specific?” I asked him.

“No, at first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. By the time I decided that I was seeing something more than shadows, whoever was there was gone. I looked around and saw a little trampled grass later, but that’s about it.”

“And you didn’t see fit to tell the rest of us about it?” Marty asked as I slid his finished burger in front of him. Much to my dismay, he emptied half the catsup bottle on it, and I couldn’t even bring myself to watch him take a bite.

“I said something to Bones,” Henry said. “He decided that there was no use panicking everyone else with it, so I kept my mouth shut.”

“I guess that makes you an accessory, doesn’t it?” Marty asked hotly.

“Marty!” Gretchen scolded him openly. “That’s uncalled for.”

“It’s true, though, isn’t it?” Marty asked defiantly. “If Henry had told the rest of us about what he’d seen, maybe we could have been more vigilant, and none of this would have ever happened.”

“Based on your logic, that makes me an accessory, too, then,” Gretchen said softly.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said.

“It’s still true, though. If Henry failed because he kept what he’d seen to himself, then so did I. At least he told Bones. I didn’t even do that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Henry said as he patted Gretchen’s shoulder, something that both Peggy and Marty weren’t happy with.

“Thanks for saying that,” Gretchen told him.

Henry smiled at her, and then Peggy spoke up. “The fact of the matter is that none of us were responsible for what happened to Bones. The only person who bears any blame is the one who murdered him with that pickaxe.”

I didn’t want to point out that those folks weren’t exactly mutually exclusive, but I decided that there was enough conflict going on at the moment as it was. Maybe there was a way we could play them off each other, but I wasn’t about to pursue that until we’d eliminated all of our other suspects. A thought occurred to me after considering Gretchen’s observation that the watcher had been wearing glasses. So far, the only person involved who wore spectacles on a regular basis that I knew of was Carter Hayes. He’d been awfully glib about throwing Timothy under the bus when we’d questioned him earlier.

I wondered how he’d react if we told him that we suspected that he’d been keeping tabs on the treasure hunters since they’d first arrived.