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

by Jessica Beck

  “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 th
em. 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.”

  CHAPTER 20: PAT

  As Annie drove us to her cabin in the woods in her pickup truck, I still didn’t feel any easier about our plan. There were so many things that could go wrong with it, and very few that could turn out right, that I decided that the best thing I could do was not to think of it at all. We’d be ad libbing a lot, and most times I preferred a solid plan. As things stood, we had to dance a pretty fine line between being too aggressive with our questioning and being too timid. We’d either alienate all of them, or they’d leave in the morning without us learning a thing that might help our investigation.

  “What’s our plan again?” I asked Annie as we neared her driveway.

  “We need to get them to open up to us,” she said as she suddenly veered her pickup off the road and up a narrow grass lane that looked all too familiar.

  “Why are we going back to the crime scene?” I asked her as we bounced up the narrow path.

  “Didn’t you spot it? The tape has been torn down,” she said as she pointed to one edge, tethered to a tree on one end, while the other end fluttered in the breeze.

  “Kathleen could have released the land,” I suggested.

  “Without taking the crime scene tape with her? Seriously?”

  Annie was right. That didn’t sound like our big sister at all. Kathleen wouldn’t sleep in a bed that was unmade, she was so precise about her life. Leaving something as significant as crime scene tape behind was completely out of character for her, and I knew that her officers would have collected it themselves for fear of our big sister’s wrath.

  “Somebody’s back here, then,” I suggested.

  “That’s what I want to find out,” Annie said as she slowed her progress for a large ditch that crossed the path.

  “Shouldn’t we go back to the main road, call Kathleen, and see what she has to say?”

  My twin sister shook her head. “What if it’s nothing? Do you really want to give her a reason to change her mind about allowing our little slumber party tonight? I have a hunch she’s just looking for a reason to cancel it.”

  “Why should that matter?” I asked.

  “It shouldn’t, but you weren’t the one who talked to her. She was on the edge about allowing us to do this. If we give her the slightest reason to back out, she’s going to do it. I guarantee it.”

  “Fine,” I said, finding it hard to argue with my sister’s logic. “Just take it easy, okay?”

  “Relax. There’s only one way in or out of the dig site, and it’s down this road.”

  “You call this a road?” I asked her as she hit another bump and sent me flying upward.

  “It will do until something better comes along,” Annie said, the grim determination evident on her face.

  “You don’t happen to be armed, do you?” I asked her.

  “No. How about you?”

  “No, ma’am. Do you at least have a tire iron or something stout like that banging around in the bed of your truck?”

  “I took it out two days ago,” she admitted.

  “To change a flat tire?”

  “No, I grabbed it to use as a weapon myself, and then I forgot it on my front porch.”

  “So, we’re defenseless,” I said.

  “Not as long as I’ve got this,” she said, patting the dashboard. “This pickup will protect us. Just wait and see.”

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that,” I said.

  “You worry too much, Pat,” Annie told me as we rounded another corner, getting closer and closer to the site where the students had been digging.

  “Somebody has to balance out the fact that you don’t worry nearly enough,” I said with a weak smile. “Can you at least pull over so I can find a tree branch or something?”

  “Too late. We’re here,” she said, and with that, with one more turn, we were back to the murder scene.

  “What are you hoping to find?” I asked my twin as we looked around the empty clearing.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Is there anything we might have missed before?”

  We both got out of the truck and started walking around the site. While Annie studied the holes that had already been dug, I looked at the old stone foundation where a house had once stood. How had they managed to carve a home out of the woods so long ago using nothing but the natural resources around them? If the same task were to be put to me to achieve today, I was fairly certain that I would die of exposure, starvation, or predators, whichever finished me off first. Then I looked at the small cemetery and realized that the life expectancy back then was nothing to brag about, either. All of
the remaining tombstones were hand-carved stone, the wooden ones having rotted and faded into the ground long before. The names read like a history book, full of birth and death dates far too close together. There were plenty of Blankenships represented, but there were other names as well. Harding, Bless, Davidson, Cash, Jenkins, and Parsons were contributors, too. How many deaths had this land seen over the centuries?

  “Pat, why are you standing there reading tombstones?” Annie asked me as she approached.

  “I’m not quite sure. They just caught my eye for some reason.”

  “What we need to find is something a little bit more recent,” Annie replied. She walked several yards to the tight circle of rocks that had to be where the well had once been, supplying all of the water the homestead had needed. The opening was now covered by a mossy board lying across its top. “Do you think there’s any water still down there now?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “Let’s check and see,” Annie answered as she started to lift up the homemade lid.

  “Do you honestly think anyone would hide their money down there?” I asked her.

  “It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Annie answered. “I’ve been reading up on old homesteaders, and I discovered that they liked to keep their wealth close by. Why should Jasper Blankenship be any different?”

  “When have you had time to read up on anything like that?”

  “I had trouble sleeping last night,” she admitted as we pried off the top together. It had been there so long that the grass and weeds had grown up around three edges of the board, making it difficult to dislodge it without a pry bar. “I finally gave up trying, so I started doing some Internet searches. It’s really pretty fascinating.”

  “I bet,” I said. “Did you happen to stumble across anything more specific than that?” I asked as we finally managed to free the lid.

  “One source said that common hiding places were in the basement, in and around the well, near big trees that served as landmarks, or places like old gardens, cemeteries, even their barns.”