Illegally Iced (7 page)

I must have grimaced slightly at the medieval allusion of serfs working the land for their lords and ladies.

Harry apparently caught it, and he laughed soundly. “I’m not sure what image your imagination just conjured up, but it was a great way to grow up. I had a wonderful little apartment, and all those acres to explore when I wasn’t in school. It was just about ideal. For me, anyway,” he added as Lynette brought our teas to us.

“Give us a minute before we order anything else, would you?” Harry asked her, and she slipped quietly away. Before she left, though, I caught a glimpse of the way she looked at him when he wasn’t aware of it. The woman was clearly in love, but it looked as though Harry didn’t have a clue. I wasn’t going to bring it up now, but maybe later, if the opportunity presented itself. Jake and Momma both thought that I meddled too much in the lives around me, but how could I just stand idly by while people made mistakes they weren’t even aware of?

“Are you implying that James had a rough childhood?” I asked.

Harry took a deep drink of his tea, killing nearly half of it, and the ever vigilant Lynette brought us two cute little plastic pitchers for our refills. Harry smiled at her as she did, and I thought she was going to explode, but she managed to contain it and went back to her station.

After he’d taken another drink, he said, “When we were kids, we both loved living there, but about the time we hit high school, Jim changed.”

“What happened?” Grace asked him.

“He wrote a report for our English class about his family history. We all wrote our own, but some of the things Jim found out were not good. He discovered the source of his family’s money and power, and he was never the same after that.”

“He took it that hard?” I asked.

Harry nodded solemnly. “By the time we graduated, he’d made up his mind that he never wanted to have anything to do with any of it again, and there was no convincing him otherwise. I talked to him until I was blue in the face, but he wouldn’t change his mind. He was going to give his fortune away and move to the mountains. Heck, I was just about ready to follow him, but Dad was determined that I go away for two years to study horticulture after high school, so that was out as far as I was concerned. I couldn’t bring myself to go against him, especially since I’ve always loved the gardens.”

“Did James actually leave then?” I asked.

“He did after he got tired of fighting them all. Evidently the money he’d inherited on his eighteenth birthday wasn’t really his to give away. It was all tied up in some kind of trust or something like that, and he could get the interest, but not the main chunk of it. The funny thing was he used the money he
did
get from the trust to hire a lawyer to help him do what he wanted to legally.”

“What happened?”

Harry shrugged. “It was tied up as tight as he’d feared.”

“What did he do when he found out he couldn’t touch it?” I asked.

“He got out of here as fast as he could go. He’d been accepted at Stanford on a full academic scholarship, so he left for California and never looked back. At least not right away.” He refilled his tea glass with one of the pitchers, and then asked, “Would you two mind if I eat while we talk? I only have so much time before I have to get back.”

“That sounds good,” I said. “If you let it be our treat. After all, we’re the ones benefiting from this.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Harry said with a reckless smile.

“Anything you’d recommend? We’re hungry, too.”

Harry stared at us for a few seconds, and then he asked, “Do you like meat loaf and mashed potatoes? If you do, don’t order it here. It’s the worst thing on the menu. I don’t know why Kenny even insists on serving it.”

I had to laugh. “Okay, we’ll cross that one off our list. What are you going to have?”

“I always get the hamburger steak with grilled peppers and onions, green beans, and fries. You can believe me when I say that it’s much better than it sounds.”

“I don’t know; it sounds good to me,” I said, and he motioned to Lynette. Grace agreed to try it, and Lynette took our orders. Before we could return to our conversation, she came back with three heaping plates of food.

“That was fast,” Grace said.

“It’s today’s special, so Kenny keeps a lot of it back there,” Harry said.

As promised, it was indeed delicious. The hamburger steak was cooked to a perfect medium-well, and the onions and peppers were wonderful. The beans were clearly homegrown and canned, and the fries didn’t even need catsup they were so good. As hard as it was to ignore the food and focus on our guest, I did my best, sneaking bites as I asked Harry more about James.

Finishing a French fry, I asked, “When did he come back for the last time?”

Harry thought about it a second, and then told us. It was right before he’d first showed up in April Springs asking about the old railroad tracks near Donut Hearts. Had he come straight from the manor to join our little community?

“That’s about when he moved to our town,” I said.

Harry nodded. “Something bad happened here, and he wasn’t about to stay. Besides, he never
was
cut out for life around here. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that he ended up there.” With a wistful tone in his voice, Harry said, “He called me a few times after he left, but he was actually afraid that the phones were bugged on the estate. I told him my cell phone was clean, but he wouldn’t risk it. We were planning on going fishing next summer, but that’s not going to happen now.”

“We know what really happened. When exactly was he locked up?” I asked as delicately as I could.

Harry’s expression hardened, and I saw his hands go white as he clenched them. “Forrest is going to pay for that someday. He thinks it’s over, but he’s wrong.”

From the sound of his words, the threat wasn’t idle, and I was happy not to be Forrest. “He had it done himself?”

“He surely did. Mrs. Pinerush was too sick to fight him on it, and Forrest waited until she didn’t have the strength to oppose him. You saw it for yourselves a little bit ago. She’s a different woman when he’s around, like he’s got some kind of hold over her. The woman’s afraid of her own son. Imagine that, would you? I don’t remember much of my own mother—she died when I was just a kid—but I never would have treated her like that.” He shook himself, as if trying to wipe all of the bad memories away, and then took another bite of his lunch.

“What set it off?” Grace asked.

“James came back to the manor with a piece of paper renouncing his fortune once and for all, but all he got for his trouble was two nights in the loony bin. Pardon me, the state mental facility, that’s the proper name for it these days. They couldn’t keep him, but it was enough to make Jim realize that he wasn’t ever going to be able to give away his fortune, so he just left it with them. He told them that he didn’t want to have anything to do with any of them or their money. Jim even signed over his interest payments to a charity, the Poor Children Among Us. If he couldn’t do any good with the bulk of his money, he was determined to do something with the interest to try to redeem his family’s name and honor.”

“I don’t understand that part of it,” I said. “What business is it of anyone else’s what he did with his inheritance?”

Harry finished his meal and pushed the plate away as he explained, “I don’t get it, either, not completely, but supposedly there’s some kind of iron-clad clause that keeps it in the family forever. If Jim ever did manage to get rid of his share, everyone else would lose theirs, too. The old man who had it drawn up was a big believer in family, even though you couldn’t tell it by the way his people act now.”

A sudden and chilling thought struck me. “Do you have any idea what happens to his share now that he’s gone? Is there any way you can find out?”

“I already know,” Harry said. “When Mr. Pinerush’s sister passed away a few years ago, they were all whispering about it. It all goes back into the family trust, and with Jim gone, that means that a third of it is now Mrs. Pinerush’s money, a third belongs to Forrest, and the last third goes to another one of Jim’s cousins.”

“Do you know who that cousin might be?” I asked. “Was it a man or a woman?”

“It’s a man, but that’s about all I know about him. He was Mr. Pinerush’s sister’s son, and they had a falling-out a long time ago when the kid was just a baby. I guess they’ll have to track him down and tell him that he’s even richer now than he was before.”

“So, he wouldn’t be a Pinerush by name, would he?” Grace asked.

“No. I’m sorry, but I don’t know his name, first or last.” He leaned in for a moment and added softly, “If there’s anything I can do to help you find Jim’s killer, you both should know that you can count on me.”

“What makes you think we’re searching for the murderer?” I asked. Were Grace and I that obvious?

Harry laughed. “I’ve read enough books to realize that you don’t ask the kind of questions you’ve been asking unless you’re hunting down bad guys. Don’t worry; you can trust me.”

I looked at Grace, who nodded slightly, and then I said, “It’s true. We’re going to find his killer if we can.”

“Thanks for coming clean with me. You won’t regret it.” Harry gave us his cell number, and I gave him mine in return.

“Even if you don’t need my help, do me a favor, would you?” Harry asked as he stood.

“If we can,” I said.

“No matter what happens, call me and tell me if you ever find out what really happened to Jim, would you? It might not help me sleep at night, but it’s worth a shot. We might not have been close at the end, but he was my brother in all the ways that ever mattered, and I won’t be able to let this go until I know his killer is caught.”

“We will,” I promised.

As he walked out of the diner, I saw him say something to Lynette, and then leave.

“What do you make of all of that?” Grace asked me.

“It’s almost too much to take in all at once, isn’t it? Why don’t we head back to April Springs? We can discuss it along the way, and maybe even figure out what we should do next.”

“That’s a deal,” Grace said as she grabbed the check.

“I’ll split it with you,” I said.

“Thanks, but I just got a nice bonus, so I’ll pick this one up and you can get the next one.”

I knew better than to try to argue with her. “Thanks.”

It turned out that neither one of us had to pay, though. When Grace approached Lynette with the bill, she shook her head. “Thanks for trying, but your bill is taken care of. Harry already got it.”

“That’s not fair. He promised us that
we
could pay,” I said.

She just laughed. “You are beating your head against the wall if you think that will ever happen. It’s best just to accept his kindness and move on.”

“At least thank him for us,” Grace said as she put her money away.

“That I can do. You ladies have a nice day.”

“You, too,” I said.

As we got into Grace’s car and headed back to familiar territory, I couldn’t help thinking that Harry knew more about James’s recent past than he was letting on. Even with that cautionary feeling, I still believed that we could trust him.

I just hoped that I was right.

CHEESY FRITTER BALLS

When I first saw a variant of this recipe for fried rounds I wasn’t at all sure about it, but after I added and subtracted some of the listed ingredients and converted the recipe into one for dropped fritters, these tasty treats have found a good home with me and my family.

INGREDIENTS

Mixed

• 1 egg, lightly beaten

• 1 cup cottage cheese, drained

• 2 tablespoons sugar, white granulated

• ¼ cup half-and-half

Sifted

• ¾ cup flour, unbleached all-purpose

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• 1 teaspoon nutmeg

• Dash of salt

• Canola oil for frying (the amount depends on your pot or fryer)

INSTRUCTIONS

In one bowl, beat the cottage cheese, half-and-half, and the egg together. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing well until you have a smooth consistency.

Drop bits of dough using a small-sized cookie scoop (the size of your thumb, approximately). Fry in hot canola oil (360 to 370 degrees F) 1½ to 2 minutes, turning halfway through.

Yield: 10–12 fritters

CHAPTER 5

“Suzanne, maybe we should move our investigation to Pinerush,” Grace said as she started to head home.

“Do you think there’s a chance we’ll get anything out of them that we didn’t learn today?” I asked her. “James was killed in the park across from my shop, but I’m still not convinced that the murderer could be somebody from our town.”

She quickly glanced at me and then asked, “You don’t have any idea how much we’re talking about here, do you?”

“A couple of million, I guess.”

“More like a hundred million plus,” she replied.

I couldn’t help whistling softly at the news. “Maybe you’re right. That’s a
lot
of money, and that means a pretty strong motive, but I still think we’ll have more luck digging into James’s life in April Springs. After all, he wasn’t a threat to anybody in Pinerush. I’ve got the feeling that the stay in the mental ward was enough to make him want to do his best to forget about ever trying to give away his fortune again.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Think about it. Instead of getting a new attorney to keep fighting them after he was released, James ran away to April Springs and most likely did his best to put all of that behind him. I never had any idea that he came from money, and I knew him just about better than anyone else in town. Those three folks who inherited already had more money than they could ever know what to do with. There was no reason to kill him and risk going to jail.”

“That’s not how it works sometimes. With some folks, the more they have, the more they want. I still think that we should keep them all in mind as suspects,” Grace said.