Plum Pudding Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “He didn’t like the way the game was going. Everybody’s saying it’s a miracle that the Knicks pulled it off.” Mike reached for one of the cookies Hannah had brought to have with their coffee. He took a bite and looked slightly surprised. “Banana?”

  “Yes. I’m trying out a new recipe for Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies. Lisa just got it from her cousin, Mary Therese. What do you think?”

  “I like them,” Norman replied, finishing the cookie he’d taken when she’d set down the plate. “Banana and chocolate are really good together.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me about that!” Mike smiled at Hannah and then he turned back to Norman. “There was a lot of blood. I was just wondering how long it took him to die.”

  “How much blood are we talking about?”

  “I’d say maybe a quart. The stain on the rug was a little bigger than a basketball. If you spilled a quart of milk it would probably make a spot about that size.”

  “Okay…let me figure this out.” Norman said, claiming the pad of paper and pen Hannah always kept on the table next to the phone. “If I remember the lecture on cardiac output correctly, the adult human heart pumps approximately seventy milliliters with each beat. That means it would take roughly fifteen seconds to bleed out a quart.”

  Hannah had heard quite enough. This latest topic bordered on the macabre. “Stop right there,” she said, giving both men a stern look. “If you want to eat cookies and talk about dead bodies and quarts of blood, I’m going in my bedroom to watch television.”

  “Sorry,” Norman said, looking apologetic.

  “I didn’t know you had a television set in your bedroom,” Mike said, not looking in the least bit contrite.

  “I don’t. I just wanted you to stop talking about it, that’s all.”

  “Okay, we’re through here.” Mike stood up, slipped his notebook in his pocket, and glanced over at her Christmas tree. “Are you going to decorate that? It looks kind of bare with just the lights, especially with those wires on the wall and…what are those wires doing there anyway?”

  “Moishe,” Hannah said by way of explanation.

  “You’re afraid he’ll tip over the tree?”

  “I know he’ll tip over the tree. He’s already done it once…before dawn this morning.”

  Mike turned to look at the guilty party who was sitting on the back of the couch washing his face. “It’s time to talk turkey, Big Guy.”

  “Don’t say turkey,” Hannah said with a grin. “He knows that word. It’s one of his favorite entrees.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk tough. How’s that?” Mike walked around the couch, sat below her errant feline, and lifted Moishe down to his lap. “That’s Mama’s Christmas tree over there in the corner,” he told Moishe, who actually seemed to be listening. “You have to leave it alone. You’ve got your Kitty Kondo to climb. Uncle Norman bought it just for you. The Christmas tree is Mama’s toy. You’ve got all your own toys to play with.”

  Moishe looked up at Mike and for several long seconds, they stared at each other. Then Moishe opened his mouth and gave a little yowl.

  “Good,” Mike said. “I’m glad you understand. And because you promised to be a good boy, I’m going to bring you a brand new toy the next time I come over.”

  Moishe yowled again, and Hannah was willing to testify that he’d understood every word Mike had spoken. Perhaps the cop-to-cat talk had been a success and her Christmas tree would be safe from feline attention.

  “Gotta go,” Mike said, giving Moishe a scratch under the chin. “Remember what I said, Big Guy.”

  Norman stood up and followed Mike to the door. “I’ll see you out,” he said. “There’s something I need to tell you. It’ll only take a minute or two.”

  The men went out and Norman closed the door behind them. That caused Hannah’s curiosity to go on high alert. It wouldn’t be right to listen to their private conversation. That would be snooping. But she thought she saw a smear of dirt on the rug very close to the door. One of them must have stepped in some slush and failed to wipe it off on the mat she kept outside her front door.

  Armed with a napkin from the coffee table, Hannah hurried over to blot the rug. She wasn’t quite sure where she’d seen the dirt, but if she blotted the whole area by the door, she couldn’t miss it.

  It was simply a coincidence that she could make out every word they spoke. At least that’s what Hannah told herself. She certainly wasn’t trying to overhear their conversation.

  “I didn’t exactly accuse your mother of shoplifting,” Mike said.

  “I know. Hannah told me.” Norman said. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m almost positive Mother paid for all those things she bought at the mall. I’ll check on it when the bills come in. I always go over there and help her with her online banking.”

  “That’s good enough for me. I was just worried when I saw all those shoes. I mean…why would your mother buy six pairs of shoes?”

  “Because she’s dating someone and she’s trying to impress him,” Norman explained. “She probably bought a lot of new dresses, too.”

  “So who’s the lucky guy?”

  “We don’t know. They were in a booth at Sally’s with the curtains drawn and all we could see was their feet.”

  Mike laughed and Hannah noted he sounded amused. “What did you do? Crawl around on the floor?”

  “No, Hannah dropped her purse. We had to kneel down to pick up the things that fell out.”

  “That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember she does that the next time I’m in one of those curtained booths.”

  Hannah began to frown. The next time? That meant Mike had been in one of Sally’s curtained booths before!

  “Anyway, now I know why Mother’s been too busy to go out to dinner with me lately.”

  “Do you think it’s serious?”

  “I don’t know. Hannah does.”

  “Why does Hannah think it’s serious?”

  “Because she saw the waitresses deliver a bottle of champagne to their booth. And Mother was wearing red sandals with really high heels.”

  “Hmmm.” Mike was silent for a moment. “Hannah’s probably right,” he concluded. “How about you? Are you okay with that?”

  “I’m fine just as long as he’s not after her money. You always hear these stories about good looking guys cheating widows out of their retirement money. And look what happened to Hannah’s mother. Delores almost got caught in a scheme like that.”

  “True. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to try to find out who the guy is. We were going to drive past Mother’s house and take down his license number if we saw his car. But then we found Larry’s body and you said you needed to take our statements, so we came straight here.”

  “I’ll take a run past your mother’s on my way back to the station,” Mike offered.

  “But it’s out of your way.”

  “So what? You’re a friend and I like your mother. I wouldn’t want to see anyone take advantage of her.”

  Hannah backed away from the door and began to clear the table. Norman would probably be in any second and she didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping. But all the while she was carrying in coffee cups and stashing them in the dishwasher, she was wondering when Mike had been in a curtained booth at the Lake Eden Inn, and who his dinner companion had been.

  BANANA CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

  Preheat oven to 400 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

  2 sticks (1 cup, ½ pound) softened butter

  1 and ½ cups powdered (confectioners) sugar

  ½ teaspoon lemon extract

  ½ cup mashed banana (1 medium)

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2 cups flour (pack it down when you measure it)

  6-ounce package semi-sweet mini chocolate chips (that’s one cup)

  Hannah’s Note: This is a lot easier to do with an electric mixer.


  Beat the softened butter and the powdered sugar together until they look light and creamy. There’s no need to sift the powdered sugar unless it’s got big lumps. If you do end up sifting it, make sure you pack it down in the cup when you measure it.

  Add a half-teaspoon of lemon extract and mix it in.

  Peel the banana and break it into chunks. Mix them in until they’re thoroughly mashed and the powdered sugar and butter mixture is smooth again.

  Sprinkle in the baking powder and salt, and mix them in thoroughly.

  Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing after each addition. When the cookie dough is thoroughly mixed, take the bowl from the mixer and set it on the counter.

  Mix in the chocolate chips by hand. You’ll want them as evenly distributed as possible.

  Line your cookie sheets with foil and spray the foil lightly with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray.

  Use a teaspoon to drop cookie dough 2 inches apart on the cookie sheets, no more than 12 cookies to a sheet. (I used a 2-teaspoon size cookie scoop to make small cookies. I’ve also used a 2-Tablespoon size cookie scoop to make larger cookies.)

  Use a metal spatula or the palm of your impeccably clean hand to flatten the cookies.

  Bake the cookies at 400 degrees F. for 8 to 10 minutes, or until they’re golden on top. Remove them from the oven and let them sit on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Then pull the foil off and transfer cookies, foil and all, to a wire rack to cool completely.

  Yield: Makes approximately 3 dozen large or 5 dozen small cookies.

  Mary Therese’s Hint: (She wrote it out on the recipe card she sent to Lisa.) Be sure the butter is soft. I leave it out overnight. If you like bananas, you can use 2 medium bananas mashed, but you may have to add a little more flour.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When the alarm went off at four in the morning, Hannah sat up and rubbed her eyes. It had been an uneasy night filled with images of Larry prone on the rug at Elf Headquarters haunting her sleep. She hadn’t really liked him all that much, but he hadn’t deserved to be murdered.

  It was time to get up, get dressed, drink all the coffee in the pot to wake up enough to drive, and go to The Cookie Jar to bake a zillion cookies. Once people heard that Larry Jaeger had been murdered and that she’d been there with Norman to discover his body, The Cookie Jar would be packed with curious customers.

  Hannah thrust her feet into slippers and headed straight for the kitchen. A cup of coffee would perk her right up and get rid of that not-enough-sleep syndrome that usually plagued her in the morning. This morning it was even more severe than usual, perhaps because she’d stayed up until almost eleven with Norman, trimming her Christmas tree.

  She was halfway down the hall when she heard a thumping from the living room. There was also a low rumbling noise that sounded a bit like a growl. At first she was hard-pressed to identify the origin, but as her steps brought her within a few feet of the living room, she heard a series of sounds she’d heard before. It was an ack-ack sound, a bit like the words GI’s in World War II had used to describe antiaircraft rounds going off in the distance. Except that this sound wasn’t in the distance. It was in her living room. And the ack-ack in question wasn’t coming from military weaponry. It originated deep within her feline’s throat and it was a prelude to a leap, a pounce, and then, at least in Moishe’s mind, the happy crunching of avian bones.

  Hannah rounded the corner at the run, just in time to see orange and white fur in motion. Her cat appeared to be leaping straight up near the far corner of the room, and Hannah knew what that meant. It was a death rattle for Great-Grandma Elsa’s birds, those lovely red cardinals and snow white doves that were fashioned from…

  “Uh-oh!” Hannah groaned. And then, as she caught sight of the carnage that had been wreaked upon her living room rug, she uttered a phrase that would surely have been bleeped on network television. There were white and red feathers everywhere, along with several bird feet that had been fashioned from wire and yarn. Five black beads that had served as bird eyes sat upon her coffee table, and Hannah almost chuckled despite the scene of utter devastation. There were bird’s eyes on her bird’s-eye maple coffee table. That coincidence seemed pretty funny until she remembered that Great-Grandma Elsa had dyed the feathers and handcrafted the cardinals and doves herself. And now her great-great-grandcat, Moishe, had destroyed them.

  Hannah turned to look at her feather-seeking missile, but he was no longer in the room. He’d vanished in a puff of cat dander, leaving one white feather floating slowly down to settle on top of the television set.

  Cleanup and then coffee? Or coffee and then cleanup? It was no contest for Hannah. She averted her eyes from the avian massacre, turned on her heel, and stepped into the kitchen to get away from it all.

  “I heard,” Lisa said as Hannah walked into the kitchen at The Cookie Jar.

  “Jake and Kelly?”

  Lisa nodded and went to pour Hannah a cup of freshly brewed coffee. She carried it over to the stool Hannah had taken at the stainless steel workstation, and gave a little sigh. “I don’t suppose you got a chance to…”

  Before Lisa could finish her question, Hannah reached into her purse, pulled out the envelope, and held it up. “He must have been expecting us, because it was right there on the table next to the door.”

  “Thanks,” Lisa said, taking the check and carrying it over to the file she kept for accounts receivable. The concept of accepting a check that had been so close to a murder victim might bother her a bit, but it was clear that it wouldn’t deter her from depositing it.

  “What do we have to bake today?” Hannah asked as she sipped her coffee.

  “Everything. They’re going to come through the door in droves. But you don’t need to worry. I’ve got a good start on it. How about a little chocolate to get you going?”

  “Sounds good to me. What do you have?”

  “Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies, German Chocolate Cake Cookies, Desperation Cookies, and a few Frosting Splatters.

  “Frosting Splatters?” Hannah picked up on the cookie name she didn’t recognize. “What are those?”

  “They’re something my mother used to make when she had leftover frosting. All you do is take out a splatter of soda crackers, tip it salt-side down, and…”

  “Hold it.” Hannah held up her hand. “What’s a splatter?”

  “That’s what my Mom called four soda crackers in a sheet. They used to come in the box that way, remember?”

  “I do, but I’ve never heard them called a splatter.”

  “I think it was Mom’s word, a combination between split because that’s what you do to them before you eat them and platter because they’re flat.”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  ‘I don’t think they come in splatters anymore. Or if they do, Florence doesn’t have them down at the Red Owl. The only crackers I could get were individual soda crackers in sleeves, but I’m still calling them splatters.”

  “I’d like to try a couple of Frosting Splatters.”

  Lisa hurried to the counter and came back with three Frosting Splatters. One was a soda cracker topped with German Chocolate Cake Cookie frosting, another was covered with the Mocha Frosting they used on their Cappuccino Cookies, and the third cracker had the frosting from Chocolate-Covered Cherry Cookies.

  “See how the salt cuts the sweetness?” Lisa asked, as Hannah finished the first Frosting Splatter.

  “I do. It works perfectly.” Hannah made short work of finishing the other two.

  “So you’re all ready for baking?”

  “I am.”

  “Good. I got talked into something last night and I’m hoping you’ll approve. I said we’d make a dozen Christmas cookies for each family that benefits from Christmas For All.”

  “What’s Christmas For All?” Hannah asked.

  “It’s a group that provides a family Christmas for kids whose parents can’t afford a celebration. The men dress up like Santa and they deli
ver food and presents on Christmas Eve.”

  “I like that. We should definitely provide cookies.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say when your mother called me last night.”

  “My mother called you?”

  “That’s right. She said you weren’t home from dinner with Norman yet, so she was calling me. That must have been when you were discovering…uh…Larry.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Anyway, your mother and Carrie are involved.”

  Hannah frowned. “They don’t have anything to do with the food, do they?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Thank goodness for that!”

  “What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

  “Mother cooks only when the restaurants are closed, and she alternates between two entrees, Hawaiian Pot Roast and EZ Lasagna.”

  “How about Carrie? Doesn’t she cook either?”

  “Carrie cooks. She cooked for Norman until he moved out.”

  “Was that one of the reasons Norman moved out?”

  “I’m fairly certain it was. Carrie thinks it’s her mission in life to influence people’s diets. And she believes in a low-salt, low-fat, no-taste menu that’s laden with powdered food supplements and rich in exotic vegetables that no one in Lake Eden grows in their gardens.”

  “Oh. Well then…maybe it’s good that your mother and Carrie just provide the baskets to carry the food.”

  “It’s very good.” Hannah got up from her stool and carried her coffee cup over to the sink. “Let’s get started.”

  “Okay. Everybody who comes in is going to ask what you saw when you found Larry’s body.”

  “You’ll tell them?” Hannah asked, hoping that Lisa would be the storyteller again this time and that she could hide out in the kitchen.

  “I will, but you have to describe everything for me. We can do it while we’re baking. If we don’t get busy and bake at least a hundred dozen cookies this morning, we’re going to run out.”