Cast Iron Conviction (The Cast Iron Cooking Mysteries Book 2) (19 page)

Chapter 25: Annie

S
ally looked behind her toward the empty parking lot. “Is it true what you just told Harriet?” she asked us.

“Which part?” I asked her. Pat and I were doing our best not to make her angry. She’d gotten the drop on us, and it was up to us to figure out how to get out of this particular deadly jam.

“Is your sister really coming back?” Sally asked heatedly, pointing the knives at us and jabbing them to emphasize her question.

“It’s true,” Pat and I said in nearly perfect unison.

Sally seemed to consider that. “Then let’s go inside, shall we? Go on. I’m standing right behind you, so don’t try anything cute. One of you might be able to make a break for it, but I’m sure to get the other. Think about that for one second. Is your freedom worth your twin’s life?”

“We’ll cooperate,” I said. I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to Pat because of me, and I was certain that he felt the same way. Sally had found the perfect way to control us, not through threatening us directly, but by menacing our twin.

Pat unlocked the door, and I could see his gaze dart around, looking for something to use as a weapon in case we could distract Sally long enough to act without jeopardizing each other. It would be tricky, but we couldn’t just let her kill us without at least putting up a fight. “Go on. Step all the way back to the grill.”

I thought about grabbing a cast iron skillet, or even trying to use a trivet to attack her, but like a good girl, I’d put everything away. If we survived this, I promised myself that I wouldn’t be as fastidious in the future.

“What do you want from us?” Pat asked her once we were near the storeroom door. “We don’t have any real proof of anything.”

“These cuts are proof enough,” Sally said as she held up her bandaged hand. “That was clever of you. I’m sure if your sister has that blade analyzed for DNA, mine is going to show up. The blood ties me to the knife, and the knife ties me to the murders.”

“You’re the one who followed us in the park, aren’t you?” I asked, trying to buy us a little more time. “How did you know what we were doing?”

“I’d been following Albert around, trying to figure out how much he knew, when I heard him mention it to your brother. I would have grabbed the evidence myself, but you got to it before I could. What did it say, exactly? Did it name me as the killer?”

“It was all gibberish,” I said flatly.

“You’re lying,” Sally snapped.

“If you don’t believe us, there’s a copy of everything upstairs in my apartment,” Pat said.

Why would he tell her that? What possible way could that be to our advantage? And that’s when I remembered his walking stick, the one I’d tripped over earlier on my way out of the bathroom. Was that the weapon he wanted to use to defend us? It might just work after all. If Sally had pulled a gun on us, it would have been dicey, but unless she was an expert at knife throwing, the heavy wooden stick might give us the advantage that we needed.

“I want to see it for myself,” she said.

“Stay right here and I’ll go get it for you,” Pat volunteered. No doubt he was planning on coming back with some kind of weapon, if not the stick, then something even deadlier.

“Not a chance,” Sally said.

“What am I going to do? You’ll be holding my sister hostage.” He looked over at me and said, “Sorry, Annie.”

“No apologies needed. It’s a good plan,” I said.

Sally wasn’t buying it, though.

“We’ll all go together,” she said as she jabbed the knives in our direction. “March.”

As we headed upstairs, I wondered what Pat might be planning. As for me, I was intent on grabbing that walking stick and using it on Sally before she could cut either one of us. I just hoped that my twin, in his enthusiasm to save us himself, didn’t do anything to wreck my plan.

As we walked up the stairs, I lagged enough behind to let Pat go ahead of me. I couldn’t risk him being stabbed as I lunged for the walking stick. If Sally managed to get me, that was something that I could live with, but not him. It was time to try to distract her. “You left the note in the tree about Ollie, didn’t you?”

I glanced back and saw her smile. “You found that, did you? I was hoping that you would. I couldn’t match what Albert had left you, but I took a shot. How did I do?”

“You failed pretty miserably at it,” I said, doing my best to get her angry so she’d slip up.

“So you say,” she said curtly, “but who’s got the upper hand right now?”

“At the moment,” Pat said, understanding what I was trying to do.

“For the rest of time, as far as you two are concerned,” Sally said snidely. If there had been any doubt in my mind before about her intentions, they had just evaporated. Sally meant to kill us, and it was up to my twin brother and me to stop her.

“At least satisfy our curiosity. Why did you kill Mitchell and Albert?” I asked her, trying to distract her.

“Do you even have to ask? Mitchell rejected me and cheated Ollie out of his inheritance. If I couldn’t have him, I was willing to settle for Ollie, but not poverty. There was no way that he was going to walk away from the ruin he created unscathed.”

“And Albert?” my twin asked.

“He was getting too close to the truth, and what was worse, you were both starting to listen to his ravings. I knew that if I didn’t do something, and quickly, either one of you or your older sister would figure out what happened ten years ago, and I was right, too. Nothing I did stopped you! When you ignored the final knife warning, I knew that I was going to have to kill you both to get any peace at all.”

We were almost at the top of the steps, and I prayed that Pat would let me carry out my plan. If ever there was time that we needed some of that fabled twin ESP, it was right now.

“There’s just one last thing that you failed to take into account, something that’s going to be the end of you,” I said as Pat passed the walking stick and I neared it.

“What’s that?” Sally asked as she leaned forward.

“This,” I said as I grabbed the heavy stick and swung it out at her head. The blow was glancing instead of direct, as I’d hoped. If my plan had worked, it would have killed her on the spot, or at the very least, knocked her unconscious.

It did neither, but it did manage to at least push her back enough to send her tumbling down the stairs, both knives flying from her hands as she fell. If Sally had used only one knife, she might have been able to grab the rail and stop her fall. As it was, she hit the back of her head with a satisfying thunk as she landed in a heap below us.

“Nice work,” Pat said.

“Thanks,” I answered as I scrambled down the stairs. “Get those knives.”

Pat rushed past me and managed to get to one of the knives, but Sally somehow managed to grab the other, despite her fall.

I saw it moving toward my brother in slow motion, and with every ounce of energy I had, I threw the walking stick at her with everything I had.

Unfortunately, I missed.

Chapter 26: Pat

A
nnie’s throw might have missed its mark, but it still managed to make Sally change the trajectory of the knife in her hand. The blade missed me by less than an inch, and as she tried to swing around for another chance at me, I grabbed her free hand with both of mine, discarding the knife I held in favor of pinning her down.

“Pat, are you all right?” Annie screamed as she nearly tumbled down the stairs herself.

“I’m okay. Get both knives.”

She did as I instructed, and once Sally was disarmed, she gave up all of the fight that was left in her. “Annie, go get one of the climbing ropes off the shelf.”

“Are you going to be okay while I do?”

“Just go!” I hadn’t meant to snap at her, but I was just beginning to realize how close I’d come to being skewered like the others.

Annie fetched the rope, and I tied Sally up so tightly that it would take one of her favorite knives to cut her free. I didn’t care if it cut off her circulation for good. Her attempt at committing a third murder had destroyed any chance that she had of getting compassion from my twin sister or me. Once Sally was secure, I still didn’t want to take my eyes off of her. “Call Kathleen, would you?” I asked nicely. “By the way, I’m sorry I yelled at you before.”

“You were entitled,” Annie said with a grin. Sally slumped forward, and I wasn’t even sure that she still had the power of speech. She was beaten, and she knew it.

After Kathleen cut her free and cuffed her, she led Sally away to her squad car. Once the double murderer was locked up in back, Kathleen said, “I don’t know how you two managed to get out of that mess, but you did it.”

“It was mostly teamwork,” Annie said.

I grinned in response. “You hit her high, and I hit her low. She didn’t stand a chance.”

“Really?” Kathleen asked. “Because it seems to me that both of you nearly joined her list of victims.”

“The important thing to remember is that she came looking for us, Sis. We didn’t seek her out.”

“And yet she still managed to consider you both big enough threats to eliminate.”

I shrugged. “Is it our fault that she overheard us as we figured out that she was the real killer?”

I told her about the Band-Aids on Sally’s hand, and she nodded. “That’s good to know. Are you two okay?”

I looked at Annie, who nodded. “We’re fine,” I said.

“Good. Why don’t you meet me downtown so I can take your formal statements? This police report is going to be a great deal more thorough than the one for Mitchell Wells’s murder, I can promise you that.”

“Would it be okay if we stopped off at the bank on the way first?” I asked her. “We still need to make our deposit for the day.”

Kathleen chuckled. “You two couldn’t live without this place, could you?”

“Maybe we could, but we wouldn’t want to,” Annie said, a sentiment I heartily agreed with.

“Fine. I’ll see you soon.”

“Well, that was closer than I would have liked,” Annie said on the drive to the bank. “I thought you were going to grab your walking stick before I could get to it.”

I grinned at her. “I never even thought about it,” I admitted.

“But you had a plan of your own, didn’t you?”

She knew me better than anyone else in the world. “If you hadn’t made your move when you did, I was going to get my old softball bat and take a swing at her. In hindsight, I like your plan better.”

“I don’t know if you could call it a plan, exactly,” she said with a grin.

“Whatever you want to call it, it worked.” I parked in front of the bank. “Are you coming?”

“No, I’m fine right here,” she said.

“I’ll be right back.”

I was heading for the door when it opened and Molly Fennel came out, nearly running into my arms. “Pat, I was just on my way to see you.”

“What’s going on? Did you hear about what happened already?” The confrontation had just been completed, but I wouldn’t have put it past our small town getting the word out already.

“No. What happened?”

“Sally Tremont killed Mitchell Wells, Albert Yeats, and then she tried to kill Annie and me, too.”

Molly threw her arms around me. “How terrible.”

I had to admit that for one moment, it felt good, but I was with someone else now. I broke free and said awkwardly, “Thanks.”

“Pat, I can’t believe that I almost lost you. I’ve made a horrible mistake. Would you take me back?”

I didn’t even have the chance to answer her when I heard someone cough behind me.

It was Jenna Lance, there to make her deposit for the day as well.

“Am I interrupting something?” Jenna asked as she looked at Molly and me standing so close together.

And in that instant, I had no idea what to say or do.

But then, one glance back at Jenna told me all that I needed to know.

“We were just saying good-bye,” I said, and then I left Molly and walked toward her.