Cast Iron Conviction (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

“Timothy. He had to go in a hurry, and he was just apologizing.”

“Huh,” Pat said, losing all interest in the contents of the note once he realized that it didn’t concern our investigation.

Maybe it didn’t, but it still pleased me mightily. “Why don’t you go on in? I have to make a quick call.”

“Fine,” he said as he unlocked the front door.

I grabbed his arm before he could get inside. “Patrick Marsh, don’t even think about opening that packet until I’m finished.”

I could tell from his expression that was exactly what he’d been planning to do. “Okay, but make it quick, or all bets are off.”

I called Timothy the moment Pat was inside.

“Hey, I’m so sorry I missed you,” I said.

“I’m the one who’s sorry. I go off on a wild-goose chase and miss the best meal and company that I’m bound to get for months.”

“I understand completely. Sorry you didn’t have any luck finding out who was stalking us, but I appreciate you pursuing it.”

“I’d do anything for you,” he said. Had his voice always been that deep, or was the phone playing tricks on my ears? Then again, maybe I’d just never listened closely enough to really hear it.

I was about to reply when Pat knocked impatiently on the door’s window. “Are you coming in or not?” I heard him ask loudly from the inside.

“Timothy, I appreciate the apology, but I’ve got to go.”

“Until tomorrow night, then,” he said richly.

“Until then,” I said.

After I hung up, I rejoined Pat, who was standing at the counter holding a long, sharp knife he’d gotten from one of our display cases. “Who was that on the phone?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What are you waiting for? I’m here. Go ahead and open it.”

He frowned at me for a moment, and then he plunged the knife into the plastic, parting it as though it were made of tissue paper.

I crowded closer to him so I could see what Albert had left us.

Hopefully, it would contain all of the clues that we needed to find not only Mitchell Wells’s murderer, but his as well.

It would be the most fitting legacy he could leave us. 

Chapter 10: Pat

“I
don’t believe it. This is an absolute mess,” I said twenty minutes later as I looked up from the pile of notes that Albert had left for us in the hollow tree. “I’m beginning to think that everyone else is right. Prison really messed with the man’s mind.”

Annie dove back into the stack of sticky notes, fast food napkins, discarded envelopes, and other debris from a normal person’s life and pulled out a few random scraps of paper. “Come on. It can’t all be rubbish.”

“Really?” I asked as I pulled out a scrap of my own and read it aloud. “‘Betty’s lying! Mitchell didn’t have any goats!’ How can we take anything the man said seriously?”

My twin sister tried to comfort me. “Are you sure that says ‘goats’? I thought it said ghosts.”

“Does that make any more sense than goats do?” my brother asked me.

“Pat, I’m not saying that he wasn’t a little off, but some of this could still be valuable.”

“Like what?”

“How about if, just for the moment, we ignore what Albert wrote and focus more on who is mentioned in all of this instead? Wouldn’t that at least give us a possible suspect list to go on?”

I hated when my sister made sense like that, especially when I was in the middle of a rant. “Ghosts, Annie? Seriously?”

“Like I said, ignore the content and focus on the names.”

“Okay, I suppose it’s worth a try. How about if I go through them, and you jot down the names of people Albert suspected? Or would you like to do it the other way?” Albert’s handwriting could be haphazard at best, but I’d found a way to decipher most of it.

“Your suggestion is great, goats notwithstanding,” she said as she grabbed a spare pad and pen from the register area. “Fire away.”

“Okay. Well, we can start with Betty Murphy, and maybe the ghosts, too, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“Forget about the ghosts!”

“Sorry,” I said with a grin. Putting the note with the reference to Betty aside, I reached into the pile for the next one. “This one mentions Ollie Wilson.”

“We know that Ollie and Albert didn’t get along, but why would Ollie want to kill Mitchell?” Annie asked me.

“I’m not sure, but Albert must have suspected him for a reason. They had that fight in front of the Iron, and that wasn’t over nothing.”

“Okay, Ollie’s name goes down on our list.”

“I’d still love to know why Albert suspected him,” I said.

“Maybe it’s in the note,” she said as she tapped it with her pencil.

I tried my best to read what Albert had written again, but after a minute, I gave up. “‘The electric was rigged.’ What electric? How was it rigged?”

Annie took the note from me. “Could it be election?”

“Maybe,” I said after studying it again. “Was anyone running for anything when Mitchell was murdered?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to look into that. Keep going.”

“Mitchell Wells could have done it,” I said, reading the next note I found.

“Mitchell? Who was he supposed to have murdered? What other victim are we talking about here besides he and Albert?”

“No, you don’t understand,” I said. “It appears to me that Albert believed that Mitchell might have killed himself.”

“With a dagger to the chest?” Annie asked me skeptically. “It’s not a suicide method I’ve ever heard of before, have you?”

“No, but you said we needed the list to be thorough.”

“Okay,” Annie reluctantly agreed. “Go ahead and write his name down. Mitchell needs to be on the list of people who might have killed him, too. Who’s the next unlucky contestant on this weird game show we seem to be caught in the middle of?”

“Let’s see,” I said as I pulled out a scrap of envelope. “Oh, this is a good one. Harriet Parton’s name is on this.”

“Could that be the rigged election he was talking about earlier?” Annie asked.

“Maybe. We’ll have to see if she was even running for office back when Mitchell was murdered.”

“You know, now that you mention it, she
was
acting rather strangely in class this evening,” my sister said. “Harriet took off in the middle of the session and didn’t show up again until we were almost ready to eat.”

I nodded, and then I pulled another fragment of paper out. “Wasn’t Sally Tremont in your class tonight as well?”

“As a matter of fact, she left right around the time that Harriet took off,” Annie said.

“Well, surprise, surprise, Albert suspected her, too.”

“Is there anyone in town he
didn’t
think might have committed the murder?” Annie asked me.

“I don’t know. Let’s see.” As I read more of the notes, I began to separate them into piles, one for each name mentioned. By the time we were finished, we hadn’t added any new names to our master list, but some of the speculations were pretty wild. “That’s it. What have we got?”

“Let’s see. There’s Mitchell himself, and then we have Betty Murphy, Ollie Wilson, Harriet Parton, and Sally Tremont. That makes four folks that Albert suspected, if we discount the suicide theory.”

“I think that’s pretty safe to do at this point,” I said. “So, the next question is, do we try to make sense of his ramblings, or do we throw in the towel and start from scratch?”

“We might be better off with a clean slate all around,” Annie said. “First, let’s see if we can figure out what each person’s connection to Mitchell was.”

“I have another question. Should we focus on Mitchell’s murder, which happened ten years ago, or should we look into Albert’s, which just occurred this evening? Won’t the clues be a lot fresher in Albert’s murder?”

“No doubt, but that’s probably where Kathleen will be spending most of her time,” Annie said. “I’m not saying that we can’t look into both, but I honestly believe that whoever killed Albert is the same person who murdered Mitchell Wells.”

“Okay, you make a good point,” I said. “What should we do with this mess?”

“We can’t just turn it over Kathleen,” Annie replied.

“I don’t see why not. What can she possibly get out of it that we can’t?”

“I’m not saying that we don’t give it to her. I just think that we should copy it all first.”

“By hand?” I asked her. “It will take hours to figure his handwriting out, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of patience.”

“We have a copier in back, Goofball,” Annie reminded me. “I can have these copied in five minutes, and then we can give them to our big sister with clear consciences.”

“Are we going to tell her that we’ve got a set of our own?” I asked her.

“I don’t see what purpose that would serve,” she said. “Do you?”

“Not particularly, especially since they’re so unhelpful.”

“Then it’s agreed. I’ll get started on making copies,” Annie volunteered.

“What should I do while you’re doing that?”

“Try to figure out how we’re going to approach this mess tomorrow.”

“Couldn’t I make the copies instead?” I asked her. Frankly, I didn’t know where to begin our investigation into a ten-year-old murder.

“Nope. I called it first,” Annie said with a grin.

By the time she rejoined me up front, I hadn’t made the slightest bit of progress in my assigned task. Annie asked, “Have you been able to come up with anything yet?”

“I’d rather sleep on it, if you don’t mind.”

My twin sister laughed at me. “I thought you might. Why don’t you keep these safe in the meantime?” Annie asked as she handed me a neatly stacked set of papers.

“I can do that. Would you like me to drop those off at Kathleen’s?”

“No, you’re already home. I’ll do it on my way to the cabin.”

“You could always crash here if you’d like,” I offered.

“Thanks, but you know me; I’d rather be home. No offense.”

“None taken. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You bet you will,” she said.

Before she could go, though, I said, “Annie, be careful, okay?”

“I always am, little brother,” she replied with a grin.

I called Annie half an hour later, and she picked up quickly. “Is something wrong, Pat?”

“No, I just wanted to make sure that you made it back to the cabin all right.”

“Listen, that’s really sweet and all, but I’m a grown woman. You don’t need to check up on me.”

“Believe me, I know to the minute exactly how old you are,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean that I can stop worrying about you. I’ve grown kind of fond of you over the years, and I’d hate for anything to happen to you now.”

“Right back at you. Like I said, I’m fine. In fact, I’m pretty worn out. Teaching those classes always take it out of me, you know? I think I’m going to take a quick shower and then go straight to bed. Tomorrow’s going to get here before either one of us knows it.”

“Wait a second. What did Kathleen say about the notes you turned over to her?” I had a sneaking suspicion that my twin had forgotten, or even neglected to make her delivery. “You
did
give them all to her, didn’t you?”

“Oh ye of little faith. Of course I did. She was grateful, and more than a little surprised, which kind of ticked me off, if you want to know the truth. I’m not entirely sure that she trusts us to do the right thing.”

“Well, we did make copies first before she even saw them,” I said.

“Hey, whose side are you on, anyway?”

“Yours, Sis. Always yours.”

“That’s more like it. Now, unless there’s anything else, I’m going to go now. Sleep tight. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Bright and early,” I said.

After we hung up, I was glad that I’d called her. I normally didn’t worry that much about either one of my sisters, but when there was murder afoot, I was justifiably paranoid about both of them. While I knew that both of my siblings were more than able to take care of themselves, I still felt overprotective as their brother.

While my concerns weren’t always overtly appreciated, I knew that deep down, both Annie and Kathleen were happy that I was so concerned about each of them.

At least that’s what I told myself as fell asleep that night, trying my best not to dream of murder, and failing miserably.