by Jessica Beck
“Hello.”
Marty just scowled at us all, including the college kids he’d come to Maple Crest with. As a matter of fact, he looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else at the moment than at the Iron, and I didn’t blame him one bit. They’d come in search of treasure and wealth, and all they’d managed to dig up was tragedy, if Peggy’s story was to be believed.
“I hope you’re all hungry,” Annie said as Kathleen came in last, carefully locking the door behind her. “We’ve got pork roast and pineapple upside down cake for dinner and dessert.”
Gretchen frowned. “I’m sorry, but I can’t stand pork,” she said glumly. “Oh well. At least I can have some cake, unless there’s pork in that, too.”
“Nonsense. I can whip something else up for you. You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
“No, I just don’t like pork,” she repeated.
“How about an omelet?” Annie offered.
“Or I could make you one of my special egg and cheese sandwiches,” I volunteered. “While Annie’s the pro at just about everything else in the cooking world, I’m the king of egg sandwiches around here.”
“That sounds nice,” Gretchen said as she smiled at me, “but only if it’s not too much trouble.”
“It’s no problem at all,” I said as Marty’s scowl turned particularly malevolent when he turned to me. It appeared that he had a bit of a crush on Gretchen, and he wasn’t all that pleased that another man had her attention, even if for only a moment. I just shrugged as I took my place behind the counter while Annie joined the others. She set all of the places as I grated some cheese and started two eggs in a pan. Popping the bread down in the toaster, I worked with practiced ease, since this was my preferred meal most evenings Annie didn’t volunteer to feed me. Was this how it felt for her, mistress of her domain as she prepared everyone’s food? It was nice, I had to admit, not that I ever had any interest in changing places with her on more than an occasional basis. Annie was just serving the others as I finished Gretchen’s sandwich. Her thanks were out of proportion for what I offered her, which managed to make Marty a little angrier still, something I hadn’t been at all sure would be possible earlier.
As we ate, there was very little conversation besides a polite request for salt or pepper or a refill of sweet tea. I’d been hoping for an open discussion, but we might as well have been eating under vows of silence. Kathleen tried to ask them all a few questions, but her inquiries were met with utter quiet, so eventually she stopped even trying.
After we all finished dessert, which was just as amazing as the pork roast had been, Kathleen said, “That was truly outstanding. I suppose we’d better get back to the station, though.”
“Do we honestly have to go back there tonight?” Henry asked. “We’re exhausted. It would be great if we could get our camping equipment out of the van and set up at the park, or somewhere else that’s out of the way.”
“There’s no camping allowed there,” Kathleen said, “and besides, we’re still going through all of your things.”
“Where are we supposed to sleep, then?” Marty asked. “We can’t afford a motel room, even a cheap one. Bones is the money in this operation. The rest of us are just a bunch of broke students.”
“I suppose you could always sleep at the jail,” Kathleen said. “It’s not much, but I can offer you cots and blankets.”
I had a sudden thought. Without even consulting with Annie, I suggested, “Nonsense. They can stay here tonight with me.”
Annie and Kathleen stared at me with the exact same expression of disbelief in their eyes, as though I’d just lost my mind. I knew that I’d just invited one potential murderer into my business and my home, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself.
“Where are we supposed to sleep, on the floor?” Marty asked.
“Hey, don’t be so ungrateful,” Henry replied, perking up from the meal he’d just eaten. “I’ll happily take a spot on the floor, if that’s all you’ve got.”
“Nonsense,” Annie said, getting into the spirit of things. “We have air mattresses and sleeping bags. You can all sleep in the storeroom.”
“Do you really trust us down here with all of your stuff?” Gretchen asked.
“It’s not like we won’t be nearby,” Annie said. “Pat and I just will be upstairs.”
“You two live together, too?” Gretchen asked as she frowned a little upon hearing the news. “I don’t know how you keep from killing each other. Sorry. That was a poor choice of words.”
“No, but sometimes when I don’t want to go back to the cabin, I crash on Pat’s couch. Besides, if I hang around tonight, I’ll be able to make breakfast for everyone tomorrow morning.” She turned to Kathleen. “What do you say? Will that work for you?”
“It will be fine, but I need you all in my office at eight tomorrow morning, and not a minute late. Is that understood?”
“Completely,” Henry said. “Right, guys?”
“I guess,” Marty said.
“It sounds like fun,” Gretchen added.
“Then I’ll see you in the morning,” Kathleen said, and then she turned to me. “May I have a word with you out on the porch, Pat?”
I recognized that look on her face. I was about to get a lecture for a class I hadn’t signed up for. Annie stepped in. “I’ll get you all set up in the back while they are chatting. It’s not much, but at least there’s a bathroom and space to spread out.”
The three students followed her into the back room as I left the Iron, if only for a few moments, with Kathleen.
Before she could start in on me, I said, “Save the lecture, Sis. I know what I’m doing.”
“Really? That seems highly unlikely to me at the moment. What were you thinking, Patrick?”
There was my full first name again. “I doubt spending the night in a jail cell is going to loosen any tongues. Having them here tonight, we might be able to get something out of them. Have you had any luck so far?”
“No,” she admitted reluctantly. “Everybody keeps pleading ignorance except Peggy.”
“You’re holding her at the hospital overnight, aren’t you?” I asked.
“How did you know that?”
“I called and asked them,” I admitted. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
“I hope so, but just in case, your door upstairs has a deadbolt lock on it, doesn’t it?”
“You know that it does.”
“Use it tonight, okay?”
“Kathleen, why would anyone want to hurt Annie and me?”
“I don’t know, but until we get this mess sorted out, keep your eyes open. Tell Annie to do the same, too.”
“Will do,” I said.
“I still think you’re crazy for doing this,” she said with a sigh.
“Really? I couldn’t tell,” I answered with a grin.
“If you do happen to learn anything, call me, and don’t give one thought about what time it might be. I doubt I’ll sleep a wink as it is.”
“You’re welcome to join us,” I said happily. “You know what they say, the more the merrier.” I couldn’t figure out why I was smiling, and then I realized that it was because Annie and I were doing something active rather than waiting for something to happen for us to react to.
“Thanks, but I’d rather sleep in my squad car. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said.
“Don’t make me live to regret this, Pat,” Kathleen said as she took a step off the porch toward her cruiser.
“I’ll do my best,” I replied. “See you in the morning.”
“I fervently hope so,” she answered, which somehow managed to take the smile off my face. I’d known the arrangements I’d proposed had been risky, and I hadn’t given my offer much thought before I’d made it.
Maybe Kathleen was right, but it was too late now.
Annie and I were committed.
I just hoped that neither of my sisters had any reason to regret my impulsive offer later.
; CHAPTER 11: ANNIE
Gretchen and Henry offered to help clean up, while Marty watched them sullenly. I oversaw the operation and found it a good time to chat with everyone. When Henry reached for the soap, though, I knew that I had to intervene. “No soap on the cast iron.”
“Seriously?” he asked. “How do you get it clean?”
“Let me show you,” I said as I gently took his place at the sink. Taking my special nylon scrubbing tool, I ran fresh water in the bottom of the Dutch oven and used the pad to gently work any stuck food loose. There was a bit of onion adhering to the bottom, but it came off quickly, and soon I had the pot in perfect shape again.
“Aren’t you worried about food contamination?” Gretchen asked me as I dried the pot and lid with paper towels.
“It’s essentially a nonstick surface,” I told them. “If there’s anything stuck to it that I can’t get off easily, I boil water in the pot for a few minutes, and that releases everything. The iron is well seasoned, so it works beautifully.”
“What does that mean?” Marty asked, interested despite his nature.
“When I get a new skillet or pot, the first thing I do is to strip it down to the bare metal.”
“By electrolysis?” Gretchen asked. I’d forgotten that she was the true scientist among the group.
“You can use that method, but I prefer soaking it overnight in a vinegar-and-water mixture,” I said. “It’s amazing how much rust that process will remove. Once the pan is free of rust and any past seasoning, it’s time to start over. Do you all really care about this?”
They all assured me that they did. I grabbed the Dutch oven and showed them. “Let’s pretend this hasn’t been seasoned at all. After it’s down to bare metal, I take some olive oil and pour just a little into the bottom. Before I do that, though, I have to dry it thoroughly.”
“I thought you just did that,” Henry said.
“I got the surface moisture off, but rust is cast iron’s biggest enemy. Don’t worry, this won’t take long,” I said as I put the pot and its lid, separately, back into the oven. After I was sure that it was bone dry, I removed both pieces from the heat and set them aside. “We can get started on seasoning now.” I performed each step as I explained it. “After I add a little oil, I take a paper towel or an old cotton cloth, and I rub it into the bottom and sides of the pot until there’s no puddling. This takes several coats, because you can’t rush the process or you get an oil buildup that can trap food or get rancid all on its own. After that, I put the pot on the stovetop and warm it gently until the oil is soaked up.”
“What if it’s got legs on it like this one?”
“Then I do it in the oven,” I told Henry. “On indoor Dutch ovens like this one, the bottom is flat and the lid is domed, so I can heat the pot on the stovetop when I season the inside. Outdoor models have three legs, and the lid has a lip to hold coals in place, so that needs to be done in the oven or over an open fire. Anyway, you repeat this process, slowly adding oil, heating it, and then wiping away the excess once it’s warmed again.”
“How do you know when it’s finished?” Gretchen asked.
“A true cast iron cook will tell you that it’s never finished, but there comes a stage when it’s ready for the final step. This time I rub the entire pot and lid, inside and out, with another thin coat of oil, and I let it bake at around 350 degrees F for an hour. After that time is up, I take everything out, being careful not to burn myself because the iron retains heat for a long time, carefully rub it down again, and then it’s ready to use.”
“I don’t know. It seems like a lot of work to me,” Marty said.
“It might look that way at first, but after you have a well-seasoned skillet or pot, it’s a breeze to keep up with. And the flavors are unbelievable.”
“Aren’t you worried about getting too much iron in your diet?” Gretchen asked me.
“It’s true that my levels are slightly elevated, but my doctor isn’t too concerned about it, so neither am I. As a matter of fact, he’s taken one of my outdoor cooking classes, and now he cooks with cast iron himself. That’s enough about me, though. How did the five of you get together?”
“We were recruited,” Henry said. “I suppose in a way, this is all my fault.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Gretchen said, touching his shoulder lightly, something that made Marty’s perpetual frown deepen even further. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“If I hadn’t found that journal in the first place, and the map that Jasper Blankenship drew in it, Bones would still be alive, and Peggy wouldn’t be in the hospital right now.”
“How did you happen to stumble across it in the first place?” Pat asked from off to one side. He’d been so quiet that I’d nearly forgotten that my brother was there.
“I was logging in a box of old papers and journals that someone had donated to the college. Folks do that sometimes rather than just throw them out, something we greatly appreciate. Anyway, I have to add a description to every piece we keep, so I started leafing through Jasper’s journal. There was a crudely drawn sketch in it, but there weren’t any points of reference to show where it might actually be. Age hadn’t been kind to the paper, so it was difficult to make out what it represented. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the location of the X on his map seemed to have been changed a dozen times over the years. Evidently Jasper had a habit of burying his stash of money in one place for a while and then digging it up again and moving it later.”
“What I don’t understand is why his family didn’t use the map to get the money for themselves,” I asked.
“We speculate that Jasper not only hid his money, but he stashed his journal away somewhere where it wasn’t easy to find, too. The man was clearly paranoid. Reading his journal is a pretty clear indicator of that, not to mention his odd sense of humor.”
“Did he say how much he buried?” Pat asked.
“There are hints among the prose, but it was a lot, that much we’re sure of. Could this be a wild goose chase? Of course it could be. Jasper might have dug it up himself and spent it without anyone else knowing about it, or someone else could have discovered it between now and then and not told anyone about finding it. Bones was in the library doing some research on something else while I was doing a little digging myself, and we started talking. We’d had a class together a few years ago, not that we were friends exactly. I filed the journal away, after making copies of it for myself, and I kind of forgot about it until he approached me a month later offering to finance an expedition. I suggested we recruit Peggy, and the others built from there.”
“We knew each other from our freshman year in the dorm,” Gretchen said.
“I had a class with Bones, too,” Marty volunteered.
“So, between the five of you, you had a historian, an archeologist, a cartographer, a mining engineer, and the pre-med student who financed the trip. It sounds like he was pretty thorough assembling his group.”
“Only the map turned out to be useless,” Marty said with a snarl. “I could roughly identify the areas of some of the Xs he’d drawn once we were on the site, but then it became trial and error.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t have a metal detector with you,” Pat asked. We sold a basic model at the Iron, though it was currently out of stock.
“We had one, but something happened to it after the first hour we used it,” Marty allowed. “Bones was getting us another one, but in the meantime, we started digging at every X we could find.”
“We haven’t had much time on the site, though,” Gretchen said, “so we still don’t have any idea if anything’s buried there or not.”
“It hardly matters at this point, does it?” Henry asked. “We’re down to three people, and we can’t even access the land. All I want to do now is head back to school after we collect Peggy.”
“Aren’t you worried about Bones?” Pat asked him.
“Of course I am, but there’s nothing I can do for hi
m now,” Henry said. “He’s either okay, or he’s not, but either way, it’s beyond anything I can do for him. You’re right, though. We should at least try to find him before we go.”
“That begs the question of how reliable Peggy is,” I said gently.
Henry didn’t like the implication. “She doesn’t lie, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Never?” Marty asked. “She’s not a saint, Henry.”
“Be very careful, my friend,” Henry said to him, showing a cold anger I hadn’t seen before.
“Didn’t you get the memo? I’m not your friend,” Marty said just as icily.
“Boys, behave yourselves,” Gretchen said.
The moment of tension passed, and I was about to ask a follow-up question when there was a knock at the front door. The entire town knew we were closed, so who could be knocking this late?
It was our older sister, Kathleen, and she looked pretty grim as Pat and I let her into the Iron.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“Could you and Pat step outside for a second, Annie?”
I turned to the kids. “We’ll just be a minute.”
They clearly wanted to know what was going on, but it was just as obvious that our older sister was in no mood to share with them.
Once we were outside, Kathleen said, “We found Bones.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I asked her. There was no other way the discovery would upset her so much.
“Yes.”
There it was, short and to the point. Peggy had been right after all.
“Where did you find him?” Pat asked.
Kathleen looked at me a moment before she spoke. “He was at your place, Annie.”
I couldn’t believe it! “I thought one of your people checked my cabin out.”
“She did, but she neglected to look in the pond.”
“Bones drowned? After dragging himself through the woods, why would he go into the pond?”
“There’s another scenario that’s more likely than that,” Pat said.
Kathleen nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. Bones never made it out of the woods alive. Someone took his body and threw it into the pond long after he was dead. We’ll be able to confirm that theory when they perform his autopsy. If there’s no water in his lungs, then he didn’t drown.”
