by Jessica Beck
I looked into her gaze and saw that there was no room for messing around. She was genuinely upset with Annie and me, and if I could fix it, I had to, even if it meant raising her blood pressure a few more points by confessing what my twin and I had been up to. It was, in many ways, the three of us against the world. We’d always been close, but after our folks had died, the bond we’d formed was nearly unbreakable, no matter how hard Annie and I might have pushed it at times.
“I understand,” I answered. “Give me one second.” I turned to Skip. “Hey, I need you up here for a minute.”
He gladly dropped what he was doing and joined me. “What’s up, chief?”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not your chief?” I asked him with a grin. “I’m your boss, and hopefully your friend, but I’m not your chief.”
“Sorry. I guess you’ll have to tell me a few more times,” Skip answered with a smile of his own.
“Take over the front for a minute. I need to speak with my sister.”
“Sure thing. Should I get Annie for you?” he asked.
“Not that sister. That one,” I said as I pointed to Kathleen, who was standing several steps away from the front counter, waiting impatiently for me.
“Okay. Whatever you say, ch…boss…Pat.” He clearly couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to call me.
“Do you mind if we step outside?” I asked Kathleen as I approached her, and then, without waiting for her to reply, I said, “Trust me, it’ll be easier to have this conversation if we don’t have an audience.” The real reason I’d asked her to move our talk outside was because I didn’t want Annie joining us, at least not yet. My twin had a tendency to lead with her mouth sometimes, and Kathleen wasn’t that much better. I’d always been the peacemaker growing up, and I didn’t see any reason for that to change now.
“Fine,” she said impatiently. “We can do it wherever you want to, but we’re going to have this conversation.”
I led her out the front door, and then we both neatly sidestepped the spot where Chester had been murdered just a few days before. I started playing with ideas about how to break the news to Kathleen that Annie and I were digging into Chester’s murder when she did it for me.
“What were you two thinking, Pat?” Kathleen asked, lighting into me before I even had the chance to come up with some kind of defense. “Murder is serious business. I expect something like this out of Annie, but I always thought that you were the rational one of the pair. You don’t have any business digging into Chester’s death. That’s my job, and you should leave it to the professionals.”
She was expecting me to try to mollify her from the beginning, and I even started to do just that when I suddenly stopped in mid-thought. “Kathleen, Chester was murdered right there,” I said as I pointed to the spot. No matter how much I’d scrubbed the area earlier, I had a hunch that it would never be clean enough for me again. “Whoever did it used Annie’s pot for a reason. The killer had to have known that one of us would find Chester’s body. I wish that it had been me and not our sister, but either way, we’re both in the middle of this whether we want to be or not.”
Kathleen’s scowl began to ease. “Is she really taking it that hard? She looks fine to me.”
“Everything is not as it seems,” I said. “Whoever chose this spot did it intentionally. Can there be any doubt in your mind that the killer is the one who dragged us into this? What makes you think that this wasn’t a warning that one of us would be next? When I heard Annie’s cries out here yesterday morning, I rushed out to find her pinned to the floor by a dead man.” My older sister started to say something, but I held my hand up in the air for her silence. To my surprise, she quieted down instantly so I could finish my thought. “I had to pull Chester off of her. I don’t know how many dead bodies you’ve touched in your life, but that was a first for me, and I hope like anything that it’s the last one as well.”
“I understand that it was traumatic for both of you, but that’s still no reason to go out on your own and start questioning my suspects.”
I was keeping the fact that Chester had written us and made the request out of the conversation for the moment, but I planned on bringing it up sooner or later. “Out of curiosity, who was it that complained about us to you?”
“That’s not really relevant,” Kathleen answered curtly.
“Maybe not to you, but it matters to us.”
“Pat, are you really going to speak for Annie as well?”
“About this, I’m fairly confident that we’re in full agreement,” I told her. I kept looking at Kathleen expectantly, hoping that she’d crack and confess the name to me, but she was at least as good at playing things close to the vest as I was.
“Who exactly have you spoken with so far?” Kathleen asked.
I shrugged. “I admit that we’ve had a few innocent conversations, but it’s not like we lined people up and started grilling them.”
“That’s not the way I heard it,” Kathleen replied. “By the time I got inside Lydia’s place, between the two of you, you’d already spoken to everyone I wanted to interview.”
“Is that why you’re so upset, because we beat you to the punch?” As soon as I asked the question, I knew that I’d stepped over the line. I tried my best to withdraw the question, but it was too late.
“No, you prized idiot, I’m angry because you’re interfering with me doing my job!” That statement was loud enough to rattle the windows a little, and I wondered if anyone had heard it inside the Iron.
“Take it easy, Sis,” I said.
“Sheriff,” Kathleen corrected me.
“Okay, Sheriff. When you speak with folks about Chester’s murder, they see your uniform and all that stands for. When it’s Annie or me talking to them, they’re having a conversation with a friend, a neighbor, someone they don’t readily associate with law enforcement. Are you telling me that we could each ask them the same questions and we’d get identical answers?”
“Of course not,” she admitted, much to her credit. “That still doesn’t mean that you have any right to interfere with what I’m doing.”
“Frankly, I don’t see how it could,” I answered.
“Pat, are you being intentionally dense right now, or are you just yanking my chain?”
“Neither one,” I said quickly. “I’m just trying to help you see how this could be a good thing, for you and for the investigation.”
Kathleen’s smirk was one that I was well familiar with. “This I’ve got to hear.”
“There are a few ways that you can look at it if you take a step back from the situation. One, the questions we ask have no impact on your investigation, so basically no harm, no foul. Two, we get answers that you couldn’t, and you learn more about the murder case with our assistance than you would have without it.”
“How about the third possibility?” she asked me.
“What’s that?”
“You ask questions, they get suspicious, and then they all clam up before I even get the first query out of my mouth.”
“What happened, Sheriff? Did someone refuse to speak with you?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “That doesn’t mean that I got anyone’s full cooperation, though, and I attribute that directly to the fact that you and Annie were sniffing around my suspects before I had a chance to interview them for myself.”
I could sympathize with her for feeling that way, but I didn’t buy that it was a possibility. “Do you honestly think that the only reason anyone stonewalled you was because they’d already spilled their guts to Annie or me? Take my word for it. It didn’t happen. Would you like to know what we were able to find out?” I knew that Annie wouldn’t be too pleased with me for admitting to our big sister what we’d been up to, but what else could I do? I just hoped that she understood why I’d done it.
“How can I listen to your results in good faith? I don’t know anything about your interview methodology, and I can’t even
be sure that someone didn’t feed you a lie to convince you of their innocence. This world is much more complicated than yours.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t you dare take offense at what I’m saying,” Kathleen replied. “All I meant was that running the Iron and overseeing a murder investigation are two entirely distinctive things, and they take completely different skill sets.”
“I’m not so sure about that. In the end, it all boils down to people skills, don’t you think? If there’s anything that qualifies Annie and me to do what we’re trying to do, it’s the fact that we know these people like you can’t. We’ve seen them in this store at their best and, more importantly, at their worst. We have insights into how the minds of the people of Maple Crest think that you can’t have. Regardless of whether it’s right or wrong, when they see you, they think law enforcement officer, and when they see Annie and me, they think friends.”
“I have friends in this town, too,” she protested, though I knew that her limited circle of acquaintances was a sore point with her.
“I’m not denying it, but you wear a uniform, and you know as well as I do that means folks act differently around you. Why won’t you take our help for what it’s worth? What could it possibly hurt? We’ll be sure you get full credit if we solve this case instead of you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She got up in my face, and her words were scalding when they reached me. “Is that what you think? Patrick, you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought you were, and that’s saying something. I couldn’t give a flip in the wind who finds Chester’s killer, and that’s the truth. What I don’t want, what I couldn’t live with, is the idea that you two root around into something where your noses don’t belong, and one of you gets hurt or even killed. How could I ever forgive myself if something happened to either one of you?”
It was a softer side than I was used to seeing of my older sister, and it touched me a great deal. “We’re being careful, Sis. Honest.”
“What makes you think that Chester wasn’t being just as cautious?” she asked me softly.
“There’s one big difference that I can think of right off the bat,” I said. “Chester didn’t have you watching his back.” It was time to tell Kathleen about the letter Chester had written Annie and me before he’d been murdered; I didn’t feel as though I had any choice. “Chester asked us to do this for him, Kathleen. How could we say no?”
My older sister looked shocked. “How exactly did he do that? What did he do, contact you through a Ouija board?”
“No, it was something much more concrete than that. He wrote us a letter. The man knew that someone was after him, and he pleaded with us to find his killer. You might be able to ignore something like that, but Annie and I can’t. If you have to lock us up to keep us from digging into his murder, then so be it, but that’s the only way you’re going to get us to back off, no matter how much we both love you.”
Kathleen was silent for a long time as she processed the things I’d just told her. After a full minute, she said, “I need to see that letter.”
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I was saved from making a decision, at least for that moment, when Annie walked out the door, her grill station abandoned so she could see what was keeping her brother and sister outside so long.
I knew that the ride was about to get considerably more bumpy.
CHAPTER 18: ANNIE
“What’s the big discussion out here about?” I asked as I saw my brother and older sister facing off on the front porch of the Iron. I turned to Pat and asked him, “Did you break down and tell her about what happened last night?”
“No, he didn’t.” Turning away from me to face our brother, Kathleen asked him, “Pat, what happened last night?”
“It was nothing,” Pat said, trying to get me to shut up about what had happened with Molly. Like that was going to happen.
“Molly dumped him,” I said simply.
“I didn’t know they were even going out,” Kathleen said.
“They weren’t. That’s probably why it stung so much,” I replied.
“Molly is not the topic of our conversation,” my brother said with real conviction. “Chester Davis is.”
“Chester? What about him?” I asked, wondering what my brother had told our older sister about what we’d been up to lately.
“Drop the act, Annie,” Kathleen said. “Pat spilled it all. I know everything.”
“Everything?” I asked as I looked at Pat intently. Sometimes my twin had a problem saying no to our big sister, a problem that I’d never encountered myself.
“She knows we’ve been asking questions and why, but she doesn’t have any of the details yet,” Pat explained. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t keep her in the dark about it. I told her about the letter, too.”
“Fine,” I said, trying to come to grips with the fact that the sheriff, who also happened to be our sister, knew that we were digging into a murder case that we had no right to investigate. “I get it.” I wasn’t all that happy about the change in circumstances, but I’d known from the beginning that this moment was inevitable.
I just wasn’t all that crazy about it happening now, particularly while the Iron was still open for business.
“Pat was just about to give me the letter you got from Chester,” Kathleen said to me, and then she turned to our brother. “Where is it, Pat?”
“I’ve got it,” I lied. I knew that Pat’s copy was inside, but I wasn’t about to get into this with Kathleen just yet. Had he even told her that there were two copies of it?
“Listen, I don’t care who has it, I just want to see it for myself.”
“Okay. We’ll hand it over in one hour and twenty-seven minutes,” I said after I looked at my watch.
“Think again, Annie. You’ll give it to me right now,” Kathleen insisted.
“Not without some background information first,” I said. “You need to hear what we’ve done before you read it. Otherwise, you’re going to dismiss everything we have to offer.”
“I could always just lock you both up and make you give me the letter,” she told me, and then she stared hard at Pat. Kathleen was no idiot; she knew that if one of us was going to break, it would be our brother. She didn’t know him as well as I did, though. I couldn’t imagine him going against what I’d just told her unless someone else’s life was at stake.
“Pat, you need to do the right thing,” the sheriff said.
He looked at me, and then he shrugged at her. “Sorry, but Annie’s right. We don’t have time to get into it right now, and you need to hear what we have to say before you see the letter Chester wrote us. If you feel the need to lock us up, then go ahead, but I’ve got to warn you, if you do that, we’re not going to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner.”
“That’s five months away,” Kathleen said. “I’ll worry about it when it happens.”
“Well then, how about our big Labor Day picnic? You can’t come to that, either, if you put us both in jail,” I retorted.
Kathleen studied him closely for a moment before replying. “You two think you’re cute, don’t you?”
“We’ve been told that we’re both reasonably attractive, yes,” he answered with a grin. “Face it, Kathleen. The only way we’re going to cooperate is if you give us a little something, too.”
“Besides, Chester wrote that letter to us, not to you,” I chimed in. “Technically, we don’t even have to let you see it.” I thought it was a perfectly valid point given the circumstances, but evidently my siblings agreed that it was not.
“There’s no reason to get snippy about it, Annie,” Pat said.
“She’s threatening to throw us in jail, and you’re calling me snippy?”
“I’m just saying,” Pat said, “no matter what, she’s still our big sister.”
“Fine,” Kathleen said out of frustration. “I’ll give in this time, but the second you lock the front door and send everyon
e else home, the three of us are going to have ourselves a long talk.”
“Looking forward to it,” I said as I hurried back inside. I’d left my station unmanned, something I almost never did, and I knew that I needed to get back to it fast. I was still glad that I’d gone outside; it was hard to tell what Pat would have told Kathleen if I hadn’t been there to stop him.
I was happy with where we’d left things, but that joy quickly dissipated when I saw who walked into the Iron and headed for my grill an hour later.
Lydia and Franklin were visiting, and from the expressions on their faces, it didn’t appear to be a friendly call.
“We’ll take two specials, whatever you’re serving,” Lydia said as they sat down at the nearly deserted line of stools twenty minutes before we were due to close for the day. We were having one of our usual lulls, so at least there weren’t many other diners there to eavesdrop on our conversation.
“Today, it’s chicken,” I said.
“I don’t know. I’m not that big a fan of chicken,” Franklin said. “I think I’d rather have a cheeseburger instead.”
“Must you make everything complicated?” Lydia asked her brother.
“I don’t want the chicken, Lydia. Live with it,” he snarled. I pitied Chester watching them bicker his entire life. It must have been a nightmare for the good-natured man growing up.
“Fine. You may as well make it two cheeseburgers, instead,” Lydia said.
“Just because I’m getting a burger doesn’t mean that you have to,” Franklin snapped.
“I honestly don’t care what I have,” Lydia said, and then she looked at me. “No offense.”
“Why should I take offense?” I asked as sweetly as I could muster. I’d mastered the art of being agreeable with disagreeable customers a long time ago. My lack of sincerity with the miniscule percentage of the population that didn’t love what I offered seemed to generally go unnoticed by those I was conning, so I made a game of being as friendly as humanly possible to the rudest batch of people that I faced. If nothing else, it usually tended to throw them off their games, if they even noticed what I was doing. “Two cheeseburgers, coming right up.” They hadn’t mentioned any sides, and I declined to suggest them. Those might take more time, and I didn’t want them in the Iron when my sister returned. She’d think that we’d enticed them there or something equally ridiculous.
