Carrot Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  Chapter Four

  When Hannah’s alarm clock went off in her darkened bedroom, she rolled over on her stomach, clamped the pillow over her head, held it in place with her arms, and tried to block out the noise. She wasn’t ready to get up yet, certainly not now, and maybe not ever. She’d just closed her eyes, she was very sure of that, and it couldn’t possibly be time to get up, get dressed, and drive to work. Perhaps the power had gone off in the middle of the night, causing her alarm clock to malfunction. Or perhaps she’d goofed when she’d set it last night. Whatever the reason, she was absolutely certain it couldn’t possibly be four-thirty in the morning.

  She really should check on the time, but that meant she’d have to open her eyes. If she kept them closed, she might be able to drift off to sleep again. Quite clearly it wasn’t time to get up. She wouldn’t be this tired if it were. She assessed her level of exhaustion and decided it had to be two-thirty or three in the morning. If she’d gotten another hour or two of sleep, her eyelids wouldn’t feel as if they’d been weighted down with hockey pucks.

  Hannah gave a little smile under her protective pillow. How much did hockey pucks weigh, anyway? She seemed to remember that she’d looked it up once, and the regulation weight was between five and a half and six ounces. That was the NHL standard. Then there were the blue four-ounce training puck, and the two-pound steel puck that was used to increase wrist strength. There were also hollow, lightweight, orange fluorescent pucks that were used for road hockey and floor hockey. Roller hockey pucks were made of plastic in light, visible colors. They were available in yellow, orange, pink, and green, but red was the most popular color.

  Hannah gave a little groan. Now that she’d recalled almost everything she’d read or heard about hockey pucks, she was wide-awake. And her alarm clock was still ringing. She had to reach out and shut it off. It would wake the neighbors if it continued to ring.

  Her eyes popped open, and Hannah sat bolt upright in bed. Her alarm clock couldn’t be ringing. It didn’t ring. It beeped. Her phone was ringing, and that meant something was horribly wrong. Not even her mother called her before six in the morning!

  Two-thirty. Hannah glanced at the lighted display on her clock as she reached for the phone by her bed. She snatched it from the cradle, her heart beating hard, hoping against hope that it was a wrong number and nothing awful had happened to her family. “Hello?” she croaked, quickly clearing her throat so that she could talk.

  “Hannah?” a young female voice asked.

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Sue Plotnik from downstairs. Is everything all right up there?”

  Hannah glanced around. Everything looked fine, and she was fine, too, if she didn’t count the fact that her pulse was racing. “I’m fine, and everything looks okay. What’s the matter?”

  “We’re not sure. The noise woke us up. Don’t you hear it?”

  Hannah started to ask what noise Sue was talking about when she heard it, a low rumbling and thumping like an unbalanced load of clothing in a washing machine. “I hear it now. What is it?”

  “Phil thought there must be something wrong in your master bathroom. The thumping is loudest when we stand in our bathroom and that’s right below your bathroom.”

  “Hold on and I’ll go check.”

  “Wait!” Sue sounded panicked. “Phil says not to go in there alone. He thinks maybe a burglar tried to get in your bathroom window and got stuck.”

  “That couldn’t be it. Right after I moved in, Bill put locks on all my windows. They only open far enough to let the air in.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll hang on while you go check, and if you’re not back on the line in two minutes, I’ll send Phil up with the extra key.”

  Hannah’s heart was beating hard as she placed the receiver on the nightstand and headed for her bathroom. The door was open an inch or two, and the rumbling noise was loud. She really didn’t know how she’d slept through it, but she supposed that if a person was tired enough, that person could sleep through anything. After a long night of studying when she was in college, she’d slept through a tornado siren. She hadn’t learned about the tornado until the next morning, when she emerged from her apartment to find several large trees uprooted near the entrance to her building.

  Hannah inched the door open and stepped cautiously into the bathroom. The noise was coming from her tub, and it sounded like thunder in the space that was enclosed by tile walls and glass doors that turned the tub into a shower stall.

  Something was in there! By the dim nightlight she had plugged in by the sink, Hannah could see a dark blur racing around the enclosure. The glass door was open a few inches, but the dark blur passed by too quickly to identify. It was short and there was a scrabbling noise as it fought for purchase against the slippery sides of the tub. It had to be some kind of animal, smaller than a dog and about the size of…

  “Moishe!” Hannah gasped, sliding the glass door open in time to see her feline rounding the back of the tub and heading for the faucets. He skidded to a stop, gave her a Whatchawant? look, decided it wasn’t something he needed to pursue, and began speeding around the bathtub racetrack again.

  There was only one thing to do, and Hannah did it. She stepped into the tub and cornered him as he passed by the faucets again. “That’s quite enough, Moishe!” she told him in no uncertain terms.

  Moishe studied her expression for a moment or two, and then he jumped out of the tub and ran into the bedroom. Hannah slid the glass door shut and hurried back to the phone. She had some apologizing to do to her downstairs neighbors.

  She had been asleep for all of three seconds when it happened again. Hannah got out of bed and dragged her cat out of the bathtub. She remembered sliding the glass door closed, and that meant Moishe had managed to claw it open. Sterner measures had to be taken.

  This time Hannah didn’t bother to shut the glass door. Moishe would only claw it open again. Instead, she closed the bathroom door and hoped that she wouldn’t run into it when she got up out of the sound sleep she was hoping to get before morning. Unfortunately, it was morning. One glance at the lighted display of her alarm clock told her that it was ten after three. The term hellcat took on new meaning for her as she crawled into bed and attempted to go back to sleep for the hour and minutes that were left before her alarm clock went off.

  She was just drifting off when she heard it, a determined scratching at the bathroom door. That conjured up visions of new paint jobs and perhaps even a new bathroom door in Hannah’s mind. Moishe obviously wanted to run more laps in the Bathtub Grand Prix, and he was bound and determined to claw, bite, or tunnel his way in.

  Hannah gave a little groan and sat up. She’d been awakened from a sound sleep twice in one night by the ungrateful feline she’d taken in from the cold Minnesota winters, kept healthy with regular vet visits, and fed good nutritious food every day. She’d even bought him his own expensive feather pillow, and she let him snuggle under her comforter. She felt betrayed, and that made her angry, but getting annoyed at Moishe wouldn’t solve her problem. She had to calm him down before he found another noisy pastime that would bother her neighbors.

  There was only one action to take, one thing that would manage to calm her hyperactive pet so that he wouldn’t cause trouble. She flicked on the light, shut off the alarm that would sound in a little over an hour anyway, and headed for the kitchen to put on the coffee. She’d pretend it was morning and feed Moishe. And once he was fed, he’d probably nap on the back of the couch. By then it would be too late for her to try to go back to sleep again, so she’d mix up a batch of Raisin Drops, the new cookie recipe her friend Lois Brown had sent her from Phoenix, and bake them when she got to The Cookie Jar.

  RAISIN DROPS

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

  1½ cups raisins (I’ve used regular raisins, and also golden raisins—they’re both good.)

  1½ cups water (right out of the tap is fine)

/>   —————

  3½ cups all purpose flour (don’t sift—just scoop it out and level if off with a knife)

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  —————

  1 cup softened butter (2 sticks, ½ pound)

  1 ½ cups white (granulated) sugar

  3 eggs, beaten

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  —————

  Approximately ½ cup white (granulated) sugar for later

  Hannah’s 1stNote: Hank, the bartender down at the Lake Eden Municipal Liquor Store, suggested that you could soften the raisins in brandy or rum, instead of water. (I used water.)

  Put the raisins and the water in an uncovered saucepan. Simmer them on the stove until all the water is absorbed. (This took me about 20 minutes.)

  Move the saucepan to a cold burner, or on a pot-holder on your counter, and cool the raisins for 30 minutes. (If you’re in a hurry, you can speed up this cooling process by sticking the pan in the refrigerator until the raisins are approximately room temperature.)

  In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. (I stir mine gently with a whisk so that everything’s mixed together.) Set the bowl aside.

  Hannah’s 2ndNote: I used an electric mixer for this part of the recipe. You can do it by hand, but it takes some muscle.

  Cream the softened butter and sugar together until they’re light and fluffy.

  Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until the mixture is a uniform color.

  Take your bowl out of the mixer and blend in the raisins and the vanilla by hand.

  Fold in the flour mixture carefully. The object is to keep the dough fluffy.

  Put approximately ½ cup sugar into a small bowl. Drop dough from a teaspoon (or Tablespoon if you want large cookies) into the bowl of sugar. Form the drops into balls with your fingers and move them to a lightly greased (I sprayed it with Pam) cookie sheet, 12 to a standard-sized sheet.

  Bake the Raisin Drops at 350 degrees F. for 9 to 10 minutes, or until just lightly browned.

  Lois Brown’s Note: I bake just a few at first to make sure there’s the right amount of flour. If they spread out too thin, add another Tablespoon or two of flour. I have been making this recipe for my family for 40 years.

  Yield: 5 to 6 dozen deliciously soft raisin cookies.

  Chapter Five

  Hannah lowered the driver’s window of her cookie truck to enjoy the gentle breeze wafting off the far shore of Eden Lake. Even though the gravel road around the lake was showing wear from the tourists who’d towed heavy boat trailers and campers, she took the ruts at a fast clip to outrun the mosquitoes. She’d been through enough Minnesota summers to know that if she slowed to a crawl, the insects that some people called the Minnesota State Bird would descend on her arm in hungry hordes to gorge on a luncheon of A negative.

  It was a perfectly lovely day. The air was scented with a wisp of smoke from a fisherman’s shore lunch and a dampness that reminded her of wet swimming suits tossed over a porch rail to dry. The sun was almost straight overhead. When it reached its apex, the shadows of the tall pines that lined the lakeshore would be at their smallest, no larger than a dark circle on the ground around the tree trunks. It was the final Monday in August, and Hannah was playing hooky with her mother’s blessing, an occurrence that had never happened during her school days at Jordan High. Delores and Carrie were also playing hooky. They’d closed their antique shop to attend the Beeseman-Herman Family Reunion and sent their assistant, Luanne Hanks, next door to Hannah’s cookie and coffee shop. She’d arrived to take charge just as Hannah was about to turn the CLOSED sign on the front door to OPEN, and now Hannah was free to enjoy this lazy end-of-summer day.

  Since she was in no hurry, Hannah took the long way around the lake. Attending Lisa and Herb’s family reunion would be fun as long as she didn’t get buttonholed by Gus Klein again. She’d spent quite enough time with him at the dance last night.

  Hannah let out a groan as she came around a curve and saw that the public parking lot was full. In addition to the relatives who were staying at nearby lake cottages, it appeared that everyone in town had driven out for the day’s festivities. It wasn’t surprising, considering the size of both families. Lisa was the youngest daughter in the large Herman family. Most of the children had stayed in the area and married into other large families. The same was true for the Beesemans. At last count, over a hundred people had arrived for the reunion.

  Since there weren’t any vacant parking spots, Hannah created one of her own. That was the beauty of owning a four-wheel-drive cookie truck. When the proper gear was engaged, her Suburban climbed up the three-foot berm of dirt surrounding the parking lot and found a semi-level spot on top.

  Hannah took the time to spray on mosquito repellent, a precaution she’d learned early on in life. Then she retrieved the large box of cookies she’d packed to add to the lunch table. Kids loved cookies, and there were plenty of kids at the family reunion. She held the box with both hands, dug in her heels to walk down the berm, and then hurried toward the picnic tables by the shore where a crowd was gathering.

  Loud, merry voices floated up to greet her. Hannah spied Lisa standing on top of a picnic table, holding a cheerleading megaphone to her lips. She was wearing a red T-shirt with the legend FAMILY IS EVERYTHING.

  “It’s time for the family portrait,” Lisa called out. “We’re going to have the lake in the background, so line up at the edge of the water behind the two chairs for your host and hostess. That’s my dad, Jack Herman, and Herb’s mom, Marge Beeseman. Norman and Herb will tell you what row you’re in if you can’t figure it out for yourself. We want the tallest in the back and the shortest in the front.”

  Hannah set the cookies down on the food table and headed for the shore to watch. She’d heard that Norman had offered to take the group pictures, and perhaps she could help.

  “Hannah!”

  Hannah knew that voice, and thankfully it wasn’t Gus. “Hi, Mother,” she said, turning to greet the fashionable, dark-haired woman who would die rather than exceed the petite dress size she’d worn in high school.

  “Hello, dear.” Delores steadied herself against her eldest daughter’s arm and shook the sand from one white high-heeled sandal. “I wish I hadn’t worn these today, but I didn’t think the beach would be quite this sandy.”

  Hannah laughed. “It’s a beach, Mother. By definition it’s sandy.”

  “You’re right, of course. But I didn’t think it would be this sandy.” Delores paused for a moment, and then she gave Hannah a smile. “Did you like the surprise we sent you this morning?”

  For a brief moment Hannah was puzzled, but then she got it. “You mean Luanne. That was really thoughtful of you, Mother. I didn’t think I’d be able to drive out here until we closed.”

  “Anything for my dearest daughter.”

  Uh-oh! Warning bells sounded in Hannah’s head. Her mother wanted something…but what?

  “I hope you can relax and have a good time today. You deserve a little break, Hannah.”

  The warning bells turned into klaxons, and yellow caution lights began to blink on and off. “Thanks, Mother,” Hannah responded. And then, just because she couldn’t resist, she asked, “What do you want?”

  Her mother reared back in surprise. “Want? What makes you think I want anything? Just because I called you my dearest daughter and I said you deserved to relax and have a good time doesn’t mean I want anything.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah said, backpedaling as fast as she could. “I thought there was something you wanted me to do for you.”

  “Well…now that you mention it…” Delores gave an elaborate shrug. “You could find Marge’s brother Gus for me. No one’s seen him since the dance last night. When he didn’t show up for the family picture, they sent me to find him. But my shoes…” she glanced down at the stylish san
dals. “They’re just not suitable for trying to locate someone. You know what I mean, don’t you, dear?”

  Caught like a rat in a trap, like a fly on a sticky spiral of flypaper, like a deer in the headlights, like a moth fluttering helplessly against…

  “Hannah?”

  Delores interrupted her mental chain of similes, and Hannah focused on the here and now. Delores had wanted something, and now she knew what it was. “Okay, Mother.” she said, bowing to the inevitable. “I’ll go find Gus for you.”

  Nothing was ever easy. Hannah gazed around the small lake cottage. The only living creature inside was a small green frog hopping determinedly from the bedroom closet toward the kitchen alcove. Unless Gus had met a witch who’d turned him into the Frog Prince, he wasn’t here. And since his Jaguar was still parked in the driveway, he’d gone somewhere on foot. But where? Eden Lake was far from being the largest body of water in Minnesota, but it would still take several hours to walk around the perimeter searching for him.

  The frog gave a croak, and Hannah watched as he hopped up on the counter and into the sink. He landed next to what looked like a green-and-white capsule, and Hannah picked it up just in case it was something that could hurt him. There were markings, probably indicating the manufacturer, but they were so blurred Hannah couldn’t read them.

  There was no pill bottle on the counter, and the bathroom medicine cabinet had been empty and standing open when she’d checked the bathroom. She didn’t know where the pill had come from, so she couldn’t put it back. She supposed she could wrap it in plastic and toss it in the open suitcase that Gus had left on the bed, but the green-and-white capsule appeared to be a twin to the over-the-counter antacid she’d seen Gus take at the dance last night, and that meant it was probably expendable.