Coconut Layer Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  When 20 minutes have passed, melt 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips in the microwave on HIGH for 2 minutes. Let them cool in the microwave for another 2 minutes and try to stir the chips smooth. If you can’t, microwave them again in increments of 30 seconds with 30 seconds of standing time in the microwave until you can stir them smooth.

  Spread the melted chocolate over the marshmallows as evenly as you can with a heat-resistant rubber spatula. Then set the pan on a wire rack to cool.

  When the bar cookies are cool and the chocolate on top has hardened, cut them into brownie-size pieces and serve. If you want to hasten the hardening of the chocolate, slip the pan into the refrigerator for thirty minutes or so, and then take it out to cut the bar cookies.

  Arrange the bar cookies on a pretty platter and serve for a luscious treat. You can store any leftovers in a tightly-covered container, but Lisa and I bet there won’t be any left!

  Yield: Each pan makes approximately 24 bars.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Thank you for dinner, Norman!” Andrea told him as she climbed into Grandma McCann’s car. “I’ll meet you at Darcy’s house.”

  “See you there,” Norman said, opening the back door for Lynne and the front passenger door for Hannah. He climbed into the driver’s seat and followed Andrea out of the Lake Eden Inn parking lot and onto the highway.

  “This is going to be interesting,” Lynne said from the back seat. “I’ve noticed that arc lights play havoc with colors, but it never occurred to me that an arc light might turn some colors into pinkish-orange.”

  “Me neither,” Hannah agreed.

  “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” Norman warned them. “I could be wrong about this.”

  “And that’s why we’re going out there to test it,” Hannah said. “I’m just hoping that you’re right, Norman. A light tan car is a lot easier to find than the pinkish-orange color that Joe Hollenkamp described.”

  “A lot of people drive light tan cars, don’t they?” Lynne asked.

  “Yes,” Hannah answered. “I called Cyril and he said that light tan was almost as popular as white.”

  “But you said Lonnie’s car was dark blue,” Lynne reminded her. “Doesn’t that clear him?”

  “No. Lonnie parked his car inside Darcy’s garage. The car that Joe Hollenkamp spotted was outside. It could have belonged to a couple of kids sharing a six-pack of beer in a place that was off the road. Or someone who needed to catch an hour’s sleep before driving on.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Lynne admitted.

  “And for all we know, Darcy was already dead when Joe spotted that car,” Norman added.

  “It’s confusing,” Lynne admitted, sighing deeply. “I read mysteries, but this one’s got me stymied. There just aren’t any good clues.”

  Norman pulled up next to Darcy’s dumpster in the place where Joe had told them he’d parked. He gave a little polite tap on his horn to tell Andrea that they were in position, and all three of them got out of Norman’s car to peer through the tree branches at Darcy’s garage and Grandma McCann’s light tan car that Andrea had parked here.

  “It’s pinkish-orange,” Lynne said.

  “It sure is!” Hannah reached out to pat Norman on the shoulder. “You were right about the color, Norman!”

  All three of them hurried back to the car. Norman gave another polite beep of his horn, and they heard Andrea’s car start. In a few moments, she pulled out of Darcy’s driveway and took up a position next to them.

  “Was it pinkish-orange from here?” she asked them.

  “It was,” Norman answered her. “Thanks for checking it out, Andrea. And thank Grandma McCann for letting you borrow her car.”

  Andrea waved and drove off, making a U-turn to go back to town. Norman put his car in gear and drove in the opposite direction.

  “Did what we learned tonight help you in the investigation?” Lynne asked Hannah.

  Hannah was silent for a moment, and then she nodded. “Yes, it eliminated several possibilities.”

  They were all silent as Norman drove down the country road. Hannah leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. It was good to have people like Norman, Lynne, and Andrea in her life.

  * * *

  She was swimming in a pool of warm caramel, practicing her stroke for the competition. She knew she had to hurry because the air outside was cold, the caramel would begin to solidify soon and she’d have to get out of the pool.

  She swam to the end of the huge mixing bowl, pushed off from the rim with the wooden spoon that had belonged to her great-grandmother, and switched to the breast stroke. That required a flutter kick with her legs, and she hoped that she’d be able to do it fast enough to keep her afloat.

  The caramel was growing thicker and more viscous. Soon it would be sticky and gluey. When that happened, she wouldn’t be able to move her legs, and she still had to do the backstroke.

  Even though her body was losing the ability to move through the cooling caramel, she somehow managed to cross the mixing bowl. A push off the rim brought her to the final lap in her competition, but she knew her arms and legs would not carry her much longer. She would be stuck here in the caramel just like a fly on a spiral of sticky flypaper. There would be no way she’d be able to pull herself out of the mixing bowl, and she would die here, her fate the fate of the fly.

  “Noooo!” she moaned, and she could feel the tears run down her cheeks. “I have to get out! I have to win! Help me!”

  “Hannah?” a voice called her name. “Hannah, wake up!”

  “Wake?” she mumbled, the word unfamiliar to her. “I have to finish. They’re depending on me!”

  Strong arms wrapped around her and lifted her out of the caramel mixing bowl. Her eyes fluttered open and she blinked several times.

  “Take it easy, Hannah. It was just a bad dream. You’re okay now.”

  “Norman?” Her eyes focused on his face. “What . . . happened to my big mixing bowl?”

  She felt his body shake with laughter and he reached out to stroke her hair. “Your mixing bowl?”

  “I was swimming!” she tried to explain. “All I had to do was do one more lap. But I couldn’t because . . . because it was too sticky.”

  “That must have been one heck of a nightmare!” Norman commented, pulling her a bit closer in his arms. He grabbed a tissue from the box on the bed table and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “Did you . . . hear me?” Hannah asked him, hoping she hadn’t made too much noise.

  “No, Moishe came in to wake me up. He led me up here and you were crying.”

  “Then Lynne’s still sleeping?”

  “I think so. I didn’t hear her get up.”

  “Oh, good. What time is it?”

  “A little after five in the morning.”

  Hannah sighed. She felt terrible for getting Norman up this early. “I’m sorry Moishe woke you,” she apologized.

  “I’m not. It’s freezing in here, Hannah.” He looked over at the window. “Did you open the window?”

  “Yes. I was really warm when I went to bed and I needed to cool off.”

  “Well, I think you cooled off too much. It turned really cold around midnight or so and you’re shivering. I’ll start a fire to warm you up.”

  It didn’t take long for the room to warm once a fire was burning in the fireplace, and the cheerful light seemed to chase away the last vestiges of her dream. “Thank you, Norman,” she said, snuggling down under the covers. “I should probably get up, but it’s so nice and warm in here, I’m getting sleepy again.”

  “Good. Sleep for another hour, Hannah. My alarm’s set for six and I’ll wake you then. And don’t start anything for breakfast. I already told Lynne that I’m taking both of you out to the Corner Tavern for pancakes and sausages.”

  “Perfect,” Hannah said, pulling the covers up to her chin. “Thank you, Norman. You’re wonderful in the middle of the night.”

  “Yo
u’d better not say that to anyone else!” Norman teased her. Then he bent down, kissed the top of her head, and walked out of the room.

  Hannah felt a thump as Moishe landed on the pillow next to her head. She was warm, the fire was cheery, and she was loved. She gave Moishe a pat, settled back on the pillow, and fell asleep with a smile on her face and Moishe purring beside her.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Hannah closed her shorthand notebook with a snap of pure frustration. She was getting nowhere with Darcy’s murder investigation, and she had no idea who she should interview next.

  “Hannah?” Andrea came in the swinging door from the coffee shop. “Lonnie’s here and he’d like to see you, if you have the time.”

  “I have the time. Thanks, Andrea. Give me a couple of minutes to get some cookies for him and then send him back here.”

  As she prepared a plate of cookies, Hannah hoped that Lonnie hadn’t come to ask her how she was progressing with the murder investigation. If he did ask, she wasn’t sure what she should say. It would be cruel to tell the chief suspect, the man she was convinced was innocent, that she’d gotten nowhere despite the leads that various people had given her. She’d run into quite a few dead ends, but that was about it.

  Once she’d poured coffee for both of them and set the platter of cookies on the work station, Hannah sat down on her favorite stool. She paged through her murder book for the fourth time that day and gave a heartfelt sigh. Everyone, even Mike, said that she was a good investigator, but she didn’t have much to show for it in this case.

  “Hi, Hannah.” Lonnie breezed through the swinging door and came straight to the work station. “Thanks for seeing me. I didn’t want to interrupt your baking, but I remembered something that might possibly help . . . maybe. Anyway, I talked to Michelle, and she told me to get in here and tell it to you.”

  Hannah smiled at him and reached for her murder book. A possible clue? A new suspect? Any conversation overheard that might identify a motive for Darcy’s murder?

  “Michelle’s right,” she told him. “Anything you can remember about that night or the next morning could be very helpful.”

  “Remember the cake that the killer took? When I set it down on Darcy’s dresser that night, the lid flipped up. There was an unopened birthday card with Cassie’s name on it left in the box with the cake. I remember thinking that I’d give it to Cassie the next time I saw her, but I forgot to take it out.”

  “Then you think that the killer took Cassie’s birthday card?” Hannah asked him.

  “I guess so, I don’t know what else to think.”

  * * *

  When Lonnie left, Hannah tried to concentrate on the murder case, but everything she’d learned since she’d come back to Lake Eden was roiling around in her mind.

  “I have to bake,” Hannah said aloud. And almost immediately, she knew that baking was the right thing to do. Baking was structured, step after step, and it freed her mind for whatever thoughts might occur to her.

  What should she bake? Hannah thought about cookies, pies, and breads. Any of those categories would do. But then she realized that what she really wanted to make was cookies, a kind that would organize her mind and set it free to make connections and piece together the facts she’d learned about Darcy’s murder.

  It was like arranging the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into categories by color and shape, before starting to put it together. Perhaps, if she concentrated on arranging the clues in her investigation into categories, the bigger, more important puzzle of Darcy’s murder would come together in her mind.

  Hannah flipped through her recipe book. When she came to her recipe for Snowflake and Ice Cookies she began to smile. Everyone had loved them and she wanted to make them again. She glanced at the ingredients list and went to the pantry to gather the ingredients she needed. Then she stepped into the walk-in cooler to get salted butter and eggs. Once all the ingredients were arranged in order on the surface of the work station, she began to mix up the cookie dough. With every ingredient she used and set aside, Hannah thought of a clue that could possibly help her to identify Darcy’s killer.

  When Michelle had first told her about Darcy’s murder, she’d mentioned how happy Lonnie was that his high school friends, Brian and Cassie, were back together again after they’d managed to weather the tragedy of two miscarriages and the death of their baby girl. Tears came to Hannah’s eyes as she imagined how Cassie must have felt after finally carrying a baby full-term, delivering a healthy baby, and then losing that baby to SIDS. It must have been heartbreaking for Cassie and Brian, and Hannah hoped they’d received plenty of support and counseling from friends, family, and professionals. It was a pity that the tragedy had torn them apart for a while.

  The moment Hannah thought of it, she washed her hands and called Lonnie on his cell phone. “I was just thinking about Cassie and Brian, and I was hoping that someone had referred them to a counselor when they lost the baby.”

  “Cassie went to a psychiatrist. Doc Knight referred her. Brian went with her for a while but when they split up, he stopped going.”

  “Do you think Brian got over it faster than Cassie?”

  “I know he did.” Lonnie’s answer was immediate and definite. “He felt awful, of course, but he didn’t take it quite as hard as Cassie. He got promoted at work and his new job was very demanding. He had to do some traveling, and he told me that being in a different city helped to distract him.”

  “How about Cassie? Did she go with Brian?”

  “No, she stayed home for the final two months of her maternity leave.”

  “That must have been depressing!”

  “Yeah. I think that’s one of the reasons they broke up for a while. Brian thinks the only thing that got her through her depression was the shrink she saw three times a week. He said the pills helped, but he was glad when she didn’t have to take them anymore.”

  “What kind of pills?”

  “Oh, they tried all sorts of things until they found something that worked for Cassie.”

  “Cassie still takes pills?”

  “I don’t think so. When she came back to Brian, she was back to being the same old Cassie. She laughed again. They had fun again. And you can tell they love each other. Cassie even told Brian that they ought to try to have another baby.”

  When Hannah ended the call, she went back to work on her cookies. She prepared the cookie sheets and began to fill them with the cookies that had made such a big hit with everyone who’d tasted them. And all the while she was working, she thought about Darcy and the fact that she’d been pregnant.

  When her Snowflake and Ice Cookies were ready to bake, Hannah slipped the cookie sheets inside her industrial oven, went to pour herself another cup of coffee, and took a seat at the work station.

  As her cookies baked, Hannah’s mind was buzzing with questions. Most of them fell into the category of What if. Kay Hollenkamp had said that she was glad Lonnie had volunteered to take Darcy home because it might have caused a problem with Cassie. And Lonnie had said Brian had hung out at the Double Eagle after Cassie had left him. Both Lonnie and Kay had said that Darcy seemed drunk, although she hadn’t had that much to drink at the Double Eagle. When Cassie had taken her to the ladies’ room, was it possible that Darcy had confided to Cassie that she was pregnant? Was Cassie jealous of the fact that Darcy was having a baby and Cassie wasn’t?

  Was all this far-fetched? Hannah knew it was, but since she hadn’t yet interviewed Cassie and Brian, she decided she’d better do that as soon as possible. Cassie had gone back to her job at CostMart, and Hannah knew that their office employees were given a full hour off for lunch. One glance at the clock on the kitchen wall told her that it was a few minutes past eleven in the morning. There was no reason why she couldn’t go to see Cassie at lunch and ask her some pertinent questions. Cassie could know something that could lead Hannah to the killer.

  There was a knock at the door and Hannah rushed to answer it. Norman w
as here and she would run the idea past him. She wouldn’t take Norman with her when she interviewed Cassie, since they’d be talking about personal things that Cassie might not want to mention in front of Norman. It was time for some girl talk with Cassie. Hannah would call and arrange to meet Cassie for lunch. And if the cookies she had in the oven right now turned out well, she’d even take Cassie a little care package to facilitate their talk.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Hannah pulled into the parking garage at CostMart at five minutes to noon. She parked where Cassie had told her to park, got out of her cookie truck, picked up the bakery box she’d filled with cookies, and walked toward the employee entrance. She was early, but it would give her time to gather her thoughts before Cassie came out.

  Hannah’s thoughts turned to Norman. He’d looked concerned when she’d made the phone call to Cassie inviting her to lunch, and she hadn’t invited him to go along. Perhaps she should have explained her reticence. She thought Cassie might speak more freely if there wasn’t a man present.

  “Hi, Hannah!” a voice said, and Hannah whirled around.

  “Hello, Cassie. Am I late?”

  “No, I’m early, so I came out here to wait for you. I’ve been standing here for a couple of minutes and I saw you drive in. I guess you want to ask me about the night that Darcy was killed. Is that right?”

  “That’s right. Lonnie told me everything that he remembered, but I need a more complete picture. And he said that you weren’t drinking that much.”

  “I wasn’t. Did Lonnie tell you that he brought me a birthday cake?”

  Hannah smiled. “Yes, and he said that it was your favorite.”

  “He’s right. I just love your Coconut Layer Cake. I think it’s the lemon icing that gets to me. I love lemon and coconut together. You really ought to try that in a cookie.”