Illegally Iced (8 page)

“Don’t get me wrong; I agree, but I think it would be a mistake to put all of our focus on the three of them. Shoot, we don’t even know the name of one of them, unless you can track it down on the Internet. Just for now, let’s forget about focusing on the money. Who do we know in April Springs who might have wanted to see James dead?”

Grace nodded slightly. “I believe that his new apprentice might have had a grudge. James was riding him pretty hard, from what I’ve heard.”

“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

“Suzanne, I hear things,” she said with a slight grin.

“Well, I don’t care what you heard. Murphy Armstrong is no killer,” I said. “And he wasn’t exactly an apprentice, either. James told me that the man worked for him two Saturdays a month learning some blacksmithing basics. That was it.”

“Maybe so, but he wasn’t exactly easy on him.”

“I don’t have the least bit of trouble believing that. James always demanded perfection from himself
and
everybody around him,” I replied. “If that was all it took, it would make Rebecca Link more of a suspect than Murphy.”

“Were they even still dating?” Grace asked. “I knew that James had seen her a while back—and pretty seriously, too—but I thought they’d ended it.”

“They did, but she wanted to get back together,” I told her.

“What did James think about it?”

“He ran hot and cold about the idea until recently.”

“What changed?”

“He wouldn’t say, but from the grin he sported lately, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that he met someone else.”

“You don’t know who it might have been, though, right?”

“Right. All I’m sure of is that it wasn’t Rebecca.”

“Then she goes on our list,” Grace said. “Agreed?”

“Yes, it makes sense.” I reached over and grabbed a small embossed notebook Grace always kept beside her. “Do you mind if I use this for a minute?”

“Go right ahead. I have a dozen more just like it at home.”

“You hoarder, you,” I said with a smile as I opened it and took out the pencil inside.

“Hey, I find something I like and I stick with it.”

“That’s why we’re still friends, right?”

“Yeah,
that’
s it,” she said.

I opened the notebook to a blank page and wrote down the names: Mrs. Pinerush, Forrest Pinerush, Mystery Cousin, Murphy Armstrong, and Rebecca Link. “We already have five names on our list. Who knew that many people might want to see harm come to James?”

“I imagine that we both could come up with a list like that for each one of us if we put our minds to it.”

“Me maybe, but everybody knows that you’re an angel,” I said with a smile.

“You’d be surprised. Then again, you know me better than anyone else, so you probably realize that was a load of hooey the second you said it. I wonder if there’s anyone else we need to add to this?”

“The only way we can find out is to keep digging,” I said. “I can miss a little sleep.”

“I’m game if you are. Where should we go now?”

I thought about it, and then suggested, “How about paying a visit to James’s cabin?”

“Don’t you think Chief Martin has already been there?” Grace asked.

“I’m counting on it. He can catch all of the obvious clues, but I can’t imagine that he got everything there is to learn out of it.”

“Then let’s do it,” Grace said.

By the time we got to James Settle’s place in the woods, darkness was just beginning to touch the sky. It was a rustic cabin, barely bigger than twelve feet by sixteen. The siding was weathered board and batten, overlapping sections that had all weathered into a uniform pleasing gray. I loved it, but it was a far cry from the place Grace and I had visited earlier. How could James have possibly gone from living in a place as elegant as the manor to a place as rustic as this? Then again, I was certain that this cabin had suited him better than the mansion ever had.

“There’s just one problem. We don’t have a key, Suzanne,” Grace said as we walked up onto the porch. I was relieved to see that there was no police tape over the door. Though I knew the murder had happened in town, there was still no assurance that Chief Martin would release James’s place so quickly.

“When I brought James donuts once when he was sick, he told me where to find the key, so unless someone’s taken it, it shouldn’t be a problem.” I looked for the loose board just off the door James had told me about, and after a few false starts, I found it. As it swung aside, I saw the key hanging there. The lock was massive, and clearly hand-forged, as were the door’s large hinges. No doubt James had made them himself.

I slid the key in, and the door opened easily.

“Well, at least it won’t be hard to search,” Grace said as soon as we walked inside the tight quarters. “It’s kind of small, isn’t it?”

“You
could
think of it as cozy,” I countered.

“We’re not selling it as real estate. Let’s call it what it is,” Grace said with a smile. As she searched the wall for a switch, I said, “Don’t bother. James used kerosene lamps for his lighting at night.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Grace answered. She loved her luxuries, and her idea of roughing it was not having room service at a fine hotel.

I lit the kerosene lamp so we wouldn’t be caught by the pending darkness, and it was enough to throw a soft yellow glow into the room. A massive fireplace anchored one end, and the other had a simple bed and dresser. Between them, there was a kitchen on one side and a small table and two chairs on the other. There was a sofa and a small desk near the fireplace, and bookcases were present in just about every other open spot.

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.

I pointed outside to the outhouse, and her dismay blossomed.

“Suzanne, this is like some kind of twisted time machine.”

“I never said that James wasn’t a bit of an odd bird,” I answered. “He believed this cabin matched his attitude, and who are we to dispute it? I’ll take the desk and you search the rest of the place.”

“That shouldn’t take either one of us very long,” she said.

I opened the desk drawers and started examining the papers inside. There was a small bound notebook inside one, and I opened it and scanned it quickly. It was part “to do” list, part reminder, and part journal. I wondered if it might lead to any insights into James’s life—and more importantly, who might want to kill him. I couldn’t easily decipher his chicken-scratch handwriting in the flickering yellow light, so without conscious thought, I tucked it into my purse. There would be time to examine it later, but for right now, I needed to finish searching his desk. On top of the stack of papers in the second drawer, I found a greeting card with a large red heart on the front, broken once, but now secured again with tape. Inside, it said,

James, You NEED to FORGIVE me. I CAN’T go on like this. I MEAN IT.

Rebecca’s name was scrawled at the bottom.

“Grace, you’ve got to see this.”

I handed her the card and watched her expression as she read it. “Wow, did she just threaten him at the same time that she was asking for a reconciliation? The girl’s a little volatile, wouldn’t you say?” Grace put it down and took a quick photo of it with her phone.

“She might think she’s just being passionate, but if you ask me, I believe she’s just a little bit crazy. Wow, James picked a real winner there, didn’t he?”

“I can see why he wanted to get away from her,” she said as she looked past the card into the open drawer.

Grace plucked something out of it, and I protested, “Hey, that’s my job.”

“You can read it when I’m finished,” she said with a smile.

“At least let me read it over your shoulder.”

“Fine,” she said, and we both moved closer to the light. This was written in thick pencil on a plain sheet of notebook paper, and the force of some of the writing had been so intense that the paper was actually torn in a few places.

James, enough is enough. I’m not your whipping boy. Back off, or you’ll regret it.

“Wow, James seemed to bring out the emotions in people, didn’t he?” she said as she got a snapshot of that as well.

“I’ll say,” Suzanne answered. “I wonder why the police chief didn’t take these when they searched the place?”

The door must have opened while we’d been reading, because I hadn’t heard a thing. It was a testament to James’s skill in making hinges that moved so effortlessly as well as the engrossing reading.

“He didn’t take them because he hasn’t seen them yet,” Chief Martin said with a heavy tone in his voice. “What are you two doing in here? You’re both directly interfering with an active police investigation. You realize that, don’t you?”

“We thought you’d already come and gone,” I admitted.

“So, that gives you the right to just break in here? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I knew about the key,” I explained, “and James expressly invited me to use it whenever I wanted.”

“I suppose you have proof of that?” he asked.

“No, but think about it. I knew where the key
was,
didn’t I?”

“Suzanne, you both need to leave, and I mean right now.” There was no room for play in his voice, and I knew that he was serious.

“We’ll be glad to,” I said. “Be sure to check out the card and the letter on top of the desk, though.”

“I’ll conduct my own investigation, thank you very much.”

As we were leaving, he called out to me, “Is this why you called me earlier? Were you actually asking for my permission? And why are you both so dressed up? I know Jake’s out of town, so why are you wearing a dress, Suzanne?”

“Hey, a girl can choose to look pretty whenever she wants to without a man having to be involved in the decision,” I said. I was trying to deflect his original question, seeing the kind of mood he was in at the moment. I’d considered going ahead and telling him the truth about why I’d called him, but I wasn’t sure how much information I should volunteer. The journal in my purse felt red-hot and I knew instantly that I should turn it over to him, but if I did that, we might miss a golden opportunity to investigate a little more. I didn’t plan to keep it forever anyway; I was just going to search through it tonight and mail it to the chief tomorrow anonymously. Maybe I was playing a little fast and loose with the law, but there was no way that my curiosity would let me turn it over before I had a chance to do more than just glance at it.

Grace and I were almost outside when he asked, “What was that telephone call about, then? Why were you calling me?”

I didn’t have any choice now. As I turned to face him, I said, “I shouldn’t have to explain it to you, Chief. You already contacted James’s next of kin.”

He was clearly puzzled by my response. “True. He had a contact card in his wallet with a phone number, and I had Lincoln call it and give them the bad news,” he admitted. “They haven’t come to identify the body yet, though.”

“And that’s all that you know?” I asked. Wow, Grace’s Internet search had been more effective than the April Springs police investigation.

I knew that he wasn’t going to like what I was about to tell him, but I had to share the information nonetheless. “We were going to Pinerush, and I wanted to touch base with you first.”

“What were you doing there, and why would you need my approval?”

It was time to come clean with all that Grace and I had discovered. Well, most of it anyway. “It turns out that James Settle wasn’t his real name. At least not all of it.”

The chief looked surprised by the statement. “Do you mean that it was an alias?”

“Sort of. His full name was James Settle Pinerush, so we went to see his family so that we could pay our respects. It’s just the polite thing to do,” I added.

As I’d figured, Chief Martin didn’t like that one little bit. “Admit it. You were both snooping. You two are digging into this mess, aren’t you?”

“Like I said, we went to Pinerush to offer our condolences,” I repeated.

“And nothing else?” he asked as he studied us both.

“We might have asked a few questions about James’s life when he lived there.”

The police chief was clearly unhappy with that. “What did they say?”

“It sounded like a nightmare, to be honest with you. His aunt and her son had him committed to a mental institution when he tried to give his share of their fortune away, and the second he got himself free, he came here to live in April Springs.”

“They told you all of that?” The chief of police looked amazed by what we’d discovered so far.

“We might have also picked up a few things off the Internet,” I said casually, holding Harry’s name back unless I absolutely had to rat him out. He’d most likely lose his job if the Pinerushes found out that he’d talked to us, and I couldn’t have that on my conscience.

“Let me guess. They were after his money themselves. How much are we talking about?”

When I told him, he just shook his head. “We all know that people have been killed for a lot less than that.”

“True, but they can’t be your only suspects. If they left James alone, he wouldn’t have bothered them again. From what we heard, being locked up was enough to cure him of his desire to be a philanthropist for a lifetime. He came here for a fresh start. The money didn’t interest him one bit, either keeping it or giving it all away.”

“How can you say that with any certainty?”

“Look around you, Chief. Does this strike you as a place a man worth many millions would live? He didn’t even keep the interest after his stay at the hospital ward. Every bit of it went to the Poor Children Among Us. It pays to feed poor kids around here instead of off somewhere in the world.”

“I know. I manage to give them some myself every now and then.”

It was another side of Chief Martin’s heart, which Momma claimed was strong and true. I rarely saw many glimpses of it myself, but this was a sure sign that he at least had a sense of what was right. It was a point for him that I tallied a little reluctantly. Slowly but surely, I was warming up to the man, and I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the change in our status. “So, if he cared anything about money, I doubt he would have lived here.”