Carrot Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “He didn’t get an invitation. I don’t have an address for him.”

  There was a story here, and both Hannah and Norman realized it. Like a good, attentive audience, they remained silent and waited for Marge to explain.

  “Gus left Lake Eden over thirty years ago, and no one’s heard from him since. I hired a private detective to try to find him when my mother got sick, but he said Gus probably changed his name, and unless he knew what it was, he couldn’t get a lead on him.”

  “Did you try a search on the Internet?” Norman asked.

  “Herb did. There are some other August Kleins, but not my brother, Gus.”

  “He didn’t tell anyone where he was going?” Hannah couldn’t help but ask.

  Marge shook her head. “He just disappeared in the middle of the night. He was staying with my folks at the time. All he took was a change of clothes and some money from the teapot on the kitchen counter.” Marge must have seen their puzzled looks, because she went on to explain. “The teapot was a gift from one of my great aunts, the ugliest thing you ever saw! None of us drank tea, so we used it for the family bank when we were all growing up. We knew we could take money out when we needed it, and pay it back later, when we could.”

  “How much money did your brother take?” Hannah was curious.

  “We were never really sure, but my father didn’t think it was over a hundred dollars. Nobody ever bothered to count it. They just remembered how much they took so they could put it back.”

  Hannah did some fast figuring. “Bus tickets weren’t that expensive back then,” she said. “Your brother could have gone all the way to the west coast. Or to the east coast, for that matter.”

  “And he would have had seed money when he got there,” Marge informed her. “I know my sister Patsy lent him some money about a week before he left town, and he borrowed some from me, too.”

  “Then his problem wasn’t lack of money.”

  “No. He was living with Mom and Dad, so he didn’t have to pay for rent, or food, or anything like that. I was living there, too. I had a job, but I didn’t leave home until the next summer, when I got married.”

  “Was there any indication that he was going to leave?” Norman asked. “I mean, did he act restless or anything like that?”

  “Not really. To this day, I don’t know why he took off like that. I’ve been thinking about it ever since Lisa and Herb first mentioned having a family reunion, and I couldn’t help hoping that he’d finally come home.”

  There was a moment of silence. Neither Hannah nor Norman was quite sure what to say. Then there was a honk from the street as a car drove up, a shiny new red car with a classic hood ornament.

  “Nice car!” Norman exclaimed, eyeing the new Jaguar with obvious admiration. Then he turned to Marge. “One of your relatives?”

  Marge gave a little laugh. “That’s unlikely. As far as I know, we don’t have any family that rich. Can you see who’s driving?”

  “It’s a guy,” Hannah told her. “Come on. Let’s walk over to see who it is.”

  By the time they made their way to the street, the Jaguar was surrounded by admirers. They walked around to the street side, and Marge’s eyes widened as she saw that her son was sitting in the passenger seat. “Herb?” she gasped. “What are you doing in there?”

  “Hi, Mom. I took a quick run by the house to make sure no more relatives came in while we were at church, and look who I found waiting for us!”

  Herb leaned back so that Marge could see the driver. “He said you probably won’t recognize him, since it’s been a really long time.”

  “Is it…?” Hannah breathed, hardly daring to ask if Marge’s wish had come true.

  “Yes!” Marge was clearly ecstatic as she ran around the car to hug her brother through the open window. “Oh, Gus! I’m so glad you came home at last!”

  VIKING COOKIES

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

  2 cups butter (4 sticks—melted)

  2 cups brown sugar

  2 cups white sugar

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 teaspoon salt

  4 eggs—beaten

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  ½ teaspoon cinnamon

  ¼ teaspoon cardamom (nutmeg will also work, but cardamom is better)

  4½ cups flour

  3 cups white chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli’s)***

  3 cups rolled oats (uncooked oatmeal—I used Quaker’s Quick Oatmeal)

  Melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl, or on the stove in a small saucepan. (It should melt in about 3 minutes in the microwave on HIGH.) Set it on the counter and let it cool to room temperature.

  When the butter is cool, mix in the white sugar and the brown sugar.

  Add the baking powder, baking soda, salt, eggs, vanilla, and spices. Make sure it’s all mixed in thoroughly.

  Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing after each addition. Then add the white chocolate chips (or pieces of white chocolate if you cut up a block) and stir thoroughly.

  Add the oatmeal and mix. The dough will be quite stiff.

  Drop by teaspoons onto a greased (or sprayed with nonstick cooking spray) standard-sized cookie sheet, 12 cookies to a sheet.

  Flatten the cookies on the sheet with a greased metal spatula (or with the palm of your impeccably clean hand.) You don’t have to smush them all the way down so they look like pancakes—just one squish will do it.

  Bake at 350 degrees F. for 11 to 13 minutes or until they’re an attractive golden brown. (Mine took the full 13 minutes.)

  Cool the cookies for 1 to 2 minutes on the cookie sheets and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

  Yield: 10 to 12 dozen delicious cookies, depending on cookie size.

  These freeze well if you roll them in foil and put them in a freezer bag.

  Hannah’s Note: These cookies will go fast, even frozen. If you want to throw the midnight freezer raiders off the track, wrap the cookie rolls in a double thickness of foil and then stick them in a freezer bag. Label the bag with a food your family doesn’t like, (something like BEEF TONGUE, or PORK KIDNEYS, or even LUTEFISK—it works every time.)

  Chapter Two

  Hannah stopped just inside her condo door and stared around her in shock. There had been a blizzard in her living room! Her wall-to-wall carpeting, normally a dark green color that she’d chosen because it reminded her of a lush green lawn, was covered with fluffy white snowflakes. Except it wasn’t snow, and it wasn’t flakes. And there was the empty couch pillow cover to prove it. Hannah picked up the cover and read the tag listing the contents. What she’d thought was snow was really the “unidentified fibers” CostMart used as stuffing in their decorator sofa pillows.

  “Moishe?” she called out, realizing that her orange-and-white feline roommate was nowhere in sight. He hadn’t hurtled himself into her arms as he usually did when she came in the door, and that meant he was probably responsible. The pillow was a bit wet on the corner, from kitty saliva no doubt, and at least two paws’ worth of claws had shredded the fabric to pull out the faux snow. The male companion who shared her home and her bed knew he’d done wrong and he was hiding somewhere, waiting for her to get over her initial shock and anger before he showed himself.

  At least the pillow stuffing was easy to collect. Hannah got a garbage bag from the broom closet and began to fill it with the fluffy white balls. As she bent, retrieved, and stuffed, she thought about the very few times that Moishe had misbehaved.

  A month or two after he’d decided to set up residence with her, Hannah had forgotten to empty his litter box when she cleaned the condo. Moishe had given her a one-day grace period, but the following night, when she’d come home from work at her bakery and coffee shop, she discovered that he’d accomplished the task himself and the litter was scattered all over the floor. At that late stage, it had been impossible for Hannah to tell whether h
er fastidious feline had gotten in to scratch it out, or whether he’d tipped the pan to dump it out and then righted it again. It didn’t really matter in the giant scheme of things. She’d never needed another reminder to empty Moishe’s litter box.

  A more serious infraction had taken place a month or two after the litter box incident. Moishe had taken an immediate dislike to Hannah’s mother, and he’d snagged several pairs of her real silk and really expensive pantyhose before Delores had decided that Hannah should visit her, rather than the other way around. Hannah liked to think that her kitty’s dislike of Delores came from an effort to protect her from her mother’s not-so-gentle reminders that she was over thirty, her biological clock was ticking, and she was still single. Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps Moishe simply didn’t like the perfume Delores wore, or the pitch of her voice, or any of a hundred other things.

  Hannah glanced at the deflated pillow casing. The litter box message and her mother’s shredded stockings had been easy to interpret. This message was not so obvious. Did it mean that Moishe had suddenly developed an aversion to pillows? Although she’d never been to veterinary school, she didn’t think it was common for cats to develop pillowphobia. Had Moishe objected to her color scheme for couch accessories and decided to let his preferences be known? The wine-colored pillow was intact, but he’d quite literally beaten the stuffing out of the light green pillow. Perhaps the light green color had reminded him of some traumatic incident in his kittenhood?

  “Ridiculous!” she murmured under her breath. If there was a message in Moishe’s pillow bashing, it probably had something to do with what was inside the pillow. Hannah let her imagination run wild. It was possible that a colony of bugs originating from the country that exported CostMart’s unidentified pillow fibers had hatched.

  Hannah glanced down at the fibers she’d tossed in the garbage bag. She didn’t see any bugs. Could they be tiny, almost microscopic insects that would flutter around harmlessly for a day or two and then disappear? Or were they some type of science fiction worm that would invade her body, take over her mind, and…

  A small pathetic sound brought Hannah out of her late-night horror movie scenario. Moishe was inching across the rug toward her, clearly unsure of her reaction but unable to stay away any longer from the mistress he loved. His expression was wide-eyed innocence, and it seemed to say, What happened to that pillow? You don’t think I did that, do you? He reminded Hannah of her niece, Tracey, who’d come out of the kitchen at The Cookie Jar with chocolate smears on her face, insisting that she’d given a half-dozen chocolate chip cookies to a poor starving man who’d knocked at the back door.

  “It’s okay,” Hannah said, cutting straight to the chase. “I know you shredded that pillow, and I’m not mad at you. I just wish I knew why you did it.”

  Moishe gave as close to a shrug as a cat could give, hunching his shoulders forward and then back. His tail flicked once and his eyes opened wide. Hannah thought he looked thoroughly bewildered. Perhaps he didn’t know why he’d done it either, and she reached down to pick him up.

  The moment she lifted him up into her arms, he began to purr. Hannah nuzzled him and gave him a little scratch behind the ears in the spot he loved. He licked her hand to show that he was grateful for her forgiveness. At least she thought it was to indicate that he was grateful. It could also have something to do with the fact that she’d packed up the leftover cookies and probably smelled like butter.

  “Just let me finish up here,” Hannah said, placing him on the back of the couch so that she could pick up the last few clumps of pillow innards. She tied the bag shut, placed it by the door so she’d remember to carry it out to the Dumpster when she left for the evening, and beckoned to Moishe, who was watching her intently. “I bet you’d like lunch. I know I would.”

  After a quick survey of the pantry and cupboards, Hannah turned to her cat again. “How about Salmon Cakes?”

  “Yowwww!” Moishe said.

  Hannah took that as approval and she selected a small can of red salmon from the pantry. She opened it and dumped it into a strainer, removing the soft backbones and the dark skin for Moishe. Once she’d thoroughly drained the fish and flaked it, she cut the crusts from two slices of sourdough bread and tore it into small pieces. She’d just added the last few ingredients to the bowl when Moishe gave another yowl.

  “Can’t wait, huh?” Hannah glanced down at her pet. By some miracle, or perhaps it was a deliberate trick, her twenty-three-pound cat managed to look half-starved. If it was a trick, it was a good one. Hannah just wished that she could emulate it when she tried to wriggle into the bronze silk dress she planned to wear to the dance at Lisa and Herb’s family reunion tonight.

  Moishe gave another yowl, and it sounded so pathetic that Hannah surrendered and dumped the salmon bones and skin in his food bowl. While her cat attacked it with the same ferocity he would have shown to a small, furry rodent, she gave her bowl a final stir. She was just shaping the mixture into cakes about the size of a hamburger patty and preparing to fry them in butter when the phone rang.

  Hannah turned to look at her pet. He’d lifted his head from the last of the salmon and was staring at the phone balefully. As it rang again, his ears went back and flattened against his head. The hair on his back began to bristle, and a low growl, more doglike than catlike, rumbled from his throat.

  “Mother?” Hannah asked him, already knowing the answer. There was only one person in the universe who got such a negative response from her cat. Surprisingly, mostly because she didn’t believe in ESP or any of its cousins, Moishe was right more times than he was wrong. It was probably Delores. Hannah reached for the phone, lifted it out of its cradle, and answered, “Hello, Mother.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Hannah!” Delores gave her standard reply.

  “Do what?” Hannah asked, even though she knew exactly what her mother meant.

  “Say Hello, Mother before you really know who it is. What if it was someone else?”

  “Then I’d be wrong.”

  “Yes. And you’d feel very foolish, wouldn’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well!” There was a long pause while Delores considered it. Finally, she spoke. “You’re right. You wouldn’t. But I really wish you’d just say hello like a normal person.”

  “I know you do.” Hannah felt a little niggle of guilt for annoying her mother. “It’s just that I can’t seem to resist.”

  Delores sighed so heavily, it sounded like a little explosion in Hannah’s ear. “You do it because you know it bothers me, don’t you?”

  “In a way. It’s become almost like a game. I say, Hello, Mother. You say, I wish you wouldn’t do that. And I say, Do what? And then you give me a reason not to answer the phone that way. It’s what we always do before we really start to talk.”

  “So it’s our own private greeting? A mother-daughter ritual?”

  “That’s exactly right.” Hannah nodded even though she knew her mother couldn’t see it. There were times when Delores was amazingly perceptive.

  “Then we’d better continue to do it, dear. Rituals are important. They’re patterns for us to follow to bridge awkward moments.”

  “That’s extremely insightful, Mother.”

  “Thank you, dear. I’ve been researching the English Regency period and the number of formal traditions they practiced was truly amazing. Did you know that the dress a debutante wore to be presented at court had to follow strict guidelines? And her curtsy had to be just so?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “And did you know that the number of removes at a formal dinner was dictated by the family’s social status?”

  “No. What are removes?”

  “They’re similar to courses, dear.”

  Hannah nodded. Unlike some Regency conventions, this one was aptly named. When a meal was served formally, the server removed the plates from the previous course before presenting the next. And sometimes the plate or bo
wl had a cover that was removed with a flourish. “Are you doing this research for your Regency Romance Club?”

  “Only partially, dear. And that reminds me…we’re thinking about serving high tea as a fundraiser. Do you think you could help us with the pastries?”

  “Sure. Have you set a date?”

  “Not yet, but it won’t be before Christmas. I’ll do more research on exactly what they served and how it was presented. Perhaps, if they had scones in Regency times, Sally could make some of hers.”

  It was clearly going to be a long conversation. Hannah stretched out the phone cord, put a frying pan with butter on the burner, and turned on the heat. “I didn’t know Sally made scones.”

  “Today was her first batch. She served them to us at brunch, and they were delicious.”

  “You went out to the Lake Eden Inn for brunch?” Hannah tipped the pan so the butter would melt faster.

  “Yes, with all the relatives who arrived early for the reunion. Carrie and I were standing there talking to Marge after you left the church, and Gus practically had to invite us.”

  “Gus York? Or Marge’s brother, Gus?”

  “Marge’s brother. He asked Marge to recommend a good place for brunch, and then he invited us all.”

  “That was nice of him.”

  Delores gave a little snort that Hannah could hear clearly over the receiver. “It was the least he could do. He practically broke Marge’s heart when he left town in the middle of the night. And Marge’s mother and father never stopped hoping that he’d come home. He was the youngest, you know.”

  “Why did he leave in the first place?” Hannah asked, holding the phone between her neck and her shoulder and cranking her head to the side so it wouldn’t fall as she got her plate of uncooked salmon cakes and carried them over to the stove-top. She dropped them into the frying pan and stood back slightly to avoid being splattered by the sizzling butter.