Cast Iron Will (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 1)

by Jessica Beck

  “Until we unmask who killed Chester, everyone is a suspect from my point of view,” I said firmly.

  “Even me?”

  I shrugged my shoulders slightly and offered her a brief smile. “Even you. I hope you don’t take it personally.”

  “I’ll try not to,” she said, answering with a slight grin of her own. Harper was closer to my age than Chester’s, and if I hadn’t been so hung up on Molly, I might have considered asking her out in the past. Maybe some time in the future, after she had a chance to get over losing Chester and my heart had a little time to heal, there might be something there to pursue.

  A moment later, Harper stood. “Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I just had to get that off my chest.”

  “I appreciate you stopping by. Let me walk you out.”

  “Thanks, but I can manage on my own,” she said as she started for the stairs.

  “I insist,” I said with a smile, and I followed her to the back entrance, let her out, and then locked the Iron up again for the night.

  I wondered what Annie would make of my conversation with Harper. I could wait and tell her in the morning, but then I decided to give her a call immediately. If she was sleeping, her ringer would be off, so there was no danger in waking her.

  As I suspected, her ringer was off, and my call went straight to voicemail. I hung up without going into any detail in a message and decided that I’d bring her up to speed in the morning.

  When I turned the movie back on, I found that I’d lost all interest in the interim, so I shut everything down and called it an early evening myself.

  Detecting, I was discovering, was getting to be a tiring process.

  I couldn’t imagine how Kathleen did it on a full-time basis, and I realized that I was discovering a whole new level of respect for my big sister.

  CHAPTER 22: ANNIE

  “Before you get mad at what I’m about to tell you, at least give me a chance to explain first,” my brother Pat told me the next morning when I came into the Iron bright and early. He’d been up for a while from the look of things, and something was most definitely on his mind.

  “What did you do?” I asked him as I prepped my workstation at the range.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said in protest. “Well, I suppose if you look at it one way, I did, but I didn’t see any way around it. Maybe you could have come up with a better way to handle it, but I couldn’t.”

  “Just spit it out, Pat.”

  “Harper showed up here last night after you left,” he said simply.

  I counted to six until I could keep my temper in check. As many times as I’d tried in the past to count to ten, I never seemed to make it, so I’d ended up shortening it. “She came here. To the Iron. When you were alone.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “I thought the entire reason you had to meet her at the lake was because she couldn’t come back here where Chester was murdered.”

  “That’s what she told me at the time,” Pat explained.

  “So, what changed in such a short amount of time?”

  “She said that since the Iron was such an integral part of the community, she’d have to get over it sooner or later. It all made sense, the way she explained it to me.”

  “Did she tell you what the urge to talk to you was about?”

  “That’s the thing,” Pat said with a frown. “Chester told her a great deal about his situation before he died, and she wanted to share it with me in case something happened to her. Over the course of thirty minutes, she managed to mention at least something about everyone on our list of suspects.”

  I glanced at the clock and saw that Edith and Skip were both due in shortly. “Make it dance, Brother. We don’t have all morning, so tell me what she said.”

  “Okay, here’s the short version. Chester suspected his brother and sister, and in particular Lydia. She wanted some of her mother’s jewelry after trading it to him for cash earlier when they first settled their mom’s estate. That explains the part about the safe you overheard at the grill. Apparently Chester didn’t completely trust his attorney anymore, so there might be something fishy about their relationship. She even mentioned Bryson and Julia.”

  “What did she say about them?”

  “Evidently Chester thought they might be conspiring together to hurt him.”

  “They have alibis, though, if we can ever manage to confirm them,” I reminded him.

  “Harper told me that she thought alibis were only for guilty people.”

  “It’s a natural enough reaction, given the fact that she doesn’t have one,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ve told you everything that I know. Now it’s your turn.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You promised me last night that you’d bring me up to speed on what was going on with you,” Pat said.

  “I was kind of hoping that you’d forgotten that.”

  “Well, I didn’t, so it’s time to come clean, Sis.”

  I took a deep breath, and then I knew that I couldn’t put it off any longer. “Rob came by the cabin last night.”

  “What? That was pretty brazen, given the fact that you didn’t invite him.”

  When I didn’t say anything, my brother stared at me with an accusation in his glance. “You did, though, didn’t you? Here you’ve been chiding me about meeting with Harper by myself, and you were doing the exact same thing with Rob Benton. What happened?”

  “I’m still not sure, to be honest with you. It was kind of weird,” I told him. After I conveyed everything that had happened between the attorney and me, with the notable exception that I’d almost kissed him for no apparent reason, I finished up by saying, “After the way he was acting and based on what Harper told you, we need to look at him a little harder.”

  “Agreed. Sis, don’t ever do that again. Okay?”

  I shrugged. “I wish I could make you that promise, but I’m not honestly sure that I can.”

  “Well, at least you’re not lying to me,” he said. “So, where does that leave us?”

  “We have information from a few sources that we’re not sure we can really trust, so in a way, I’m more confused than ever. How does Kathleen do this?”

  “I was wondering the exact same thing last night,” I said as the back door opened. Edith came in, slipping her umbrella into the stand we kept in back.

  “Is it raining out?” I asked her as I peered out the window. If it was even sprinkling, I couldn’t see it.

  “No, but the chances are good around two p.m., so since that’s when I clock out, I thought it might be better to be safe than sorry.”

  I hadn’t had time to comment on that when Skip walked in. He was holding a large box in his arms. “Am I the last one in again? Man, you guys need to learn to take it easy and chill out.”

  “Is that how you justify coming in late?” my brother asked him with a grin.

  “When was two minutes early ever late?” Skip asked him with a smile. “You should see what I’ve got for my corner today.” He found an empty space at the front counter and opened the box. “I’m really pleased with the way these turned out.”

  Skip was one of the craftiest people I knew, so it was hard to tell what he’d come up with, but chances were that it was at least as good as he was promising. With more flourish than the occasion probably called for, Skip reached into the box and pulled out the first piece, an elegant vase with the most fascinating glaze on it that I’d ever seen. Golds, blues, and greens sparkled as the light hit different parts, and I wondered how he’d managed to come up with such a lovely effect.

  “You’re right,” I said as I took it from him and turned it around and around in my hands. “How did you do that?”

  “I have no idea,” he said with a grin. “Not really. I have a theory, but I can’t check it until Sunday when I’m glazing the next round of my creations. It’s really something, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I said as I tri
ed to hand it back to him.

  “Keep it,” Skip said with a grin, his face beaming with pride that I’d liked his work.

  “I can’t do that,” I said as I tried to give it back to him again.

  “Come on, Annie. Think of it as a present,” he insisted.

  “How about if I pay for it, but I only give you what I’d pay with our store discount?” I countered.

  “I can live with that,” Skip said, and I reached into my wallet and paid him seventy percent of the price he’d stickered onto it. “That way we’re both happy.”

  “If you’ll excuse me, the day’s mail will be here any minute, so I have to get ready for it,” Edith said, and she disappeared into her little section of our world, a domain where she had full authority.

  “I’ve got boxes to unpack,” Skip said after he restocked the shelf on his own corner.

  “There’s more?” Pat asked him.

  “Not this run. I was talking about the truck from MDP we got in yesterday.”

  “Good,” Pat said. “I’ll give you a hand in a minute.”

  Skip tapped his watch and grinned. “Tick tick tick, boss,” he said.

  Pat laughed as Skip disappeared in back.

  “Where does that leave us with our investigation?” Pat asked me quietly after we were alone again, though I knew that it wouldn’t last long.

  “Where else? We keep digging into Chester’s murder after we close for the day, but if any of our suspects come our way, it wouldn’t hurt to take a stab at asking them a few questions. I’ve got a feeling that if we keep applying pressure, one of them’s bound to crack sooner or later.”

  “The real question is which one, though,” I said.

  “I wish I knew,” Pat said as he headed up front to get his register ready to serve our customers, while I retreated to my grill where I needed to do the same thing.

  The first thing I did was whip up some dough for English muffins. They were easier to make than most folks realized, and I loved the hard, crisp crust they developed when I cooked them in a cast iron frying pan on top of the range. They were one of my favorites, so I made enough dough so I could sneak one or two myself if things got slow. As that dough was rising, I got started on the biscuit dough next. After that, it was time to stock my little fridge with eggs, bacon, and other goodies I’d need to have on hand. Once that was all set, I needed to make lunch, so the first thing I did was preheat the oven to just under 300 degrees. I’d gotten a good deal on stew beef, so I browned the meat in some olive oil after coating the pieces in flour, using a couple of my old cast iron Dutch ovens. Next I added broth, water, carrots, potatoes, onions, peas, and spices to the mixtures. After everything was in the pots, I gave it all a good stir to make sure that it was incorporated, and then I added a slurry made from cornstarch and water to thicken the gravy. I poured that mixture on top of each meal, and then I covered the pots with their matching heavy lids and slid them into the oven. Some of my Dutch ovens had legs on them, but I reserved those for cooking outside, like I did in my classes. The flat-bottom ones were perfect for the oven. In four hours, the meals would be ready to eat, and in the meantime, as they simmered away, they would fill the Iron with the homespun aroma of how many of our grandmothers used to cook.

  Pat called out to me just as I closed the oven door, “Are we ready to open for the day?”

  “You betcha,” I said, and he unlocked the front door.

  It was time for a little normalcy in our lives, in spite of the murder that had happened so close by. Life did indeed go on, and there was no better way for me to handle things than to fire up my burners, my griddle, and my ovens and feed anyone who happened to wander by.

  I served a fair number of people breakfast, but none of them happened to be on our list of suspects. Was it wrong that this made me a little sad? I hadn’t even had the chance to sample the English muffins myself. As expected, they’d been a hit with my diners. No worries; I could always make more, something that gave me great comfort.

  I was just about to transition from breakfast to lunch, since the stew was finished and ready to serve seven minutes ahead of time, when someone spoke up from behind me. “Excuse me. Are you Annie Marsh, by any chance?”

  “I am,” I said as I turned to see a rail-thin older man with a large salt-and-pepper mustache looking at me. “How may I help you?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say no to a plate of whatever it is that smells so wonderful coming from that oven,” he answered with a smile as he took one of the empty seats at the bar.

  “I can make that happen. Would you like sweet tea or coffee with your lunch?”

  “Tea would be great.”

  After I dished him up some of the stew and served it, along with his drink, I said, “Surely you didn’t come here asking for me by name because of my reputation as a cook.”

  “That might not have been the original reason that I came in, but if this tastes a third as good as it looks and smells, I’ll be back.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “It’s what I can do for you, actually,” he said, and then he took a bite. The man lingered over it so long that I was beginning to wonder if everything was all right.

  “Is it too heavy on the bay leaves?” I asked him. I tended to like it in stews myself, and sometimes I used a little too much of it for other people’s tastes.

  “It’s perfect. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that Ruth made this herself.”

  “Should I be jealous of Ruth?” I asked him with a slight grin. I liked this man. Despite his slender profile, it was clear that he was someone who enjoyed his food, which made him a man after my own heart.

  “Sadly, she’s been gone seven years come September,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You made me smile in her honor today, and that’s something worth cherishing.” He took another bite, and then he said, “I understand you and your brother were looking for me yesterday.”

  “You’re not Nathan Pepper, are you?”

  “I am,” he said. “And you’re looking for an alibi for Bryson Oak, aren’t you?”

  I hadn’t planned on being so obvious about it, but there was no way that I was going to beat around the bush with this man. I liked him too much. “Was he with you?”

  “He was indeed,” Mr. Pepper said. “I’ve been making him wine and dine me for a month before I’ll sell him property that I want to get rid of for more money than it’s worth.” He seemed to take a great deal of satisfaction out of that declaration. “You won’t tell him I said that, will you?”

  I grinned at him before I spoke. “Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”

  He took another bite and then another. “I told the sheriff, and now I’m telling you. Bryson may not be my favorite fellow, but he didn’t kill your friend.”

  “Kathleen was looking for you, too?” I asked him. That was news to me.

  “Yes, I got back into town, and half a dozen folks told me that three people were looking for me from Maple Crest, so I thought I’d save you all the trouble of coming back to Glory Landing and find you instead.” He took the remnants of his biscuit and dropped it into his nearly empty bowl, and after giving it a few moments, he scooped it up again with his spoon, savoring the liquid-soaked bread. “If I had any room, I’d order another, but I’m about to burst as it is. Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back now that I know that you’re here.”

  He grabbed his wallet and started to pay me, but I stopped him. “My brother takes the money up front.”

  “Fair enough,” he said as he stood, and then Mr. Pepper polished off the last of his tea and grinned. “Thank you, my dear, for the food as well as for the memories.”

  “You’re most welcome,” I said, smiling at the man as he approached my brother and paid for his lunch. Customers like him were what made my job worthwhile, and I hoped to see him again. He’d lightened my load and brightened my day, something I never got enough of.

&n
bsp; As I served more stew throughout the rest of our lunchtime, I managed to grab a small bowl for myself, as well as one for Pat, and a pair of biscuits, too. Edith never ate my food, preferring to bring her own from home, and Skip was an enthusiastic, if sporadic customer, but my brother and I always ate our lunches at the Iron, though rarely together. Even after our meal, there was still some stew left by the time we were ready to close for the day, and I delighted in the thought that my brother and I would have leftovers to share.

  I was starting to clean the griddle, a task I performed several times over the course of the day, when I saw my sister come in through the front door. She was gnawing on her bottom lip, so I knew that something was troubling her.

  I just hoped that it wasn’t anything that Pat or I had done.

  She said something to my brother, and after he called Skip over to take the front, the two of them approached me in back at my grill.

  What on earth was going on now?

  CHAPTER 23: PAT

  “Annie, do you have a second?” I asked my twin as Kathleen and I approached. The sheriff had started to tell me something about the case, but I’d insisted that we include Annie. I didn’t even think that Kathleen was all that surprised by my request.

  “I’m just cleaning up,” Annie said.

  “Can it wait?” Kathleen asked.

  “You bet it can. Pat, there are only a few stragglers here. Why don’t we close up early?”

  “I have a better idea,” I said. “Put your Closed sign on the bar and I’ll have Skip finish checking folks out. That way we can all go upstairs where we’ll have a little privacy.”

  “I’d rather talk on the back porch,” Kathleen suggested.

  I didn’t want to say no to her again. “Even better.” After Annie put up her sign, I signaled to Skip that we’d be out back. The three of us stepped through the back door, through the small storage space, and out into the day. Edith had been right; it had been raining for a few hours, and water dripped off the back porch roof in a steady trickle.