Carrot Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “Mouse delivery for Moishe,” Norman announced, and Hannah opened the door. “I can just drop them off if you’re tired.”

  “Come in and join the party,” Hannah said, opening the door all the way so he could see the assembled crew of Swensens.

  “Good thing you got your second wind,” he said just loudly enough for Hannah to hear him. And then he turned to them. “You came to help Hannah tie squeaky mice to Moishe’s Kitty Kondo?”

  “Not exactly,” Michelle said, laughing. “We were just eating and discussing murder.”

  “Sounds like a good combination to me. Eating what?”

  “Scandinavian Almond Cake,” Hannah told him. “Find a seat, and I’ll get you a piece with your coffee.”

  “Moishe’s purring, Hannah,” Norman remarked, after Delores, Andrea, and Michelle had left. “I can hear him all the way over here.”

  “That’s because Mother’s gone. He probably thought I was punishing him when I let her in the door.”

  “Or he’s just glad everything’s back to normal and you’ve forgiven him for past transgressions. You have forgiven him, haven’t you?”

  “Long before you got here. And long before Mother and the girls got here, too. Thanks to you, that’s one problem solved. Now all I have to do is figure out who killed Gus.”

  “If you’re not too tired, tell me what you’ve got so far.” Norman took a sip of the coffee Hannah had just refilled.

  “I’ve got lots of motives, but not many suspects. Gus wasn’t a very nice person, and there’s a long list of people who had a reason to dislike him, even hate him.”

  “And they are…”

  Hannah grabbed her shorthand notebook and opened it to the suspect page. “I’ll start at the beginning. There are a lot of girls he dated in high school and then dumped for someone else. Mother and Marge made a list. Unfortunately, every single one of them has an alibi.”

  “Okay. Who else?”

  “Bert Kuehn. There’s speculation that Gus was driving drunk and he got into the car accident that killed Bert’s sister, Mary Jo. The official police report states that Mary Jo was driving, but Gus’s high school baseball coach was the first on the scene, and he could have helped Gus put Mary Jo in the driver’s seat.”

  “Did you talk to the coach?”

  “No. He left Jordan High and went to coach college baseball at the University of Michigan. I haven’t had time to track him down yet.”

  “I’ll help you do that before I leave. Anyone else?”

  “There’s the possibility of a robbery gone bad. Gus was flashing around money and telling everyone that he was rich.”

  “But didn’t you say that the money in his wallet was still there?”

  “Yes. Mike thinks the robber might have panicked when he realized he’d killed Gus, and he fled without anything.”

  “But you don’t agree?”

  “Not really. He could have grabbed the Rolex. He wouldn’t have had any way of knowing that it was a fake.”

  “You’re sure the Rolex was a fake?”

  “Positive. Michelle checked with Lonnie before you got here tonight, and he said he talked to the jeweler. It was definitely a fake, and the ring Gus was wearing was paste. Mike told me that it wasn’t unusual for rich people to wear fake watches and jewelry and keep their expensive things in a safe at home. That’s what he thinks Gus did.”

  “But you don’t agree?”

  “No, but I have more information now. Ava told me that Gus charged gas on a gas card that had been canceled by the company for nonpayment. Mother’s going to check with Sally tomorrow to see if the credit card he used to pay for the brunch went through okay.”

  “And Mike doesn’t know about the canceled gas card yet?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m afraid that if he thinks there aren’t any valuables in Gus’s apartment in Atlantic City, he might delay sending someone there to check it out. It wasn’t high on his list of priorities, anyway. It’s really doubtful that someone from New Jersey followed Gus here and killed him.”

  “That’s probably right,” Norman said, but he didn’t look completely convinced. “But a hired killer could have hidden himself in the crowd of people here for the reunion, bided his time, and killed Gus when nobody else was around.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Why? There’s got to be at least a hundred and fifty people at the lake.”

  “And they all get together and talk,” Hannah explained. “Somebody who’s not a relative would be found out in a hurry. I walked through that crowd enough to know everybody asks everybody else about how they’re related, and their background, and the other relatives they know.”

  Norman thought about that for a moment. “You’ve got a point. It would be a lot harder than trying to crash a convention or another event like that.”

  “Back to the suspects,” Hannah said, flipping the page. “There’s Jack, of course. You already know about that. And then there’s the gambling Gus used to do. It could be someone who thought Gus cheated him, someone who carried a grudge all these years. Or it could be someone he borrowed money from and never paid back. Mother told me he was terrible about that. He still owed her twenty dollars from high school when he left Lake Eden for good.”

  “He sounds like someone I’m glad I met only once,” Norman said, shaking his head.

  “Well put!” Hannah complimented him. “But that doesn’t mean he deserved to die.”

  “True. Anybody else on your suspect list?”

  “Ava.”

  Norman looked shocked. “Ava Schultz from the store?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Because of the canceled gas card?”

  “No, Ava didn’t know she’d been cheated until today, when she called in the charges. She doesn’t have the kind of automatic pumps that accept or reject gas cards. She just writes the number on a form, has the person sign it, and calls them in.”

  “Okay, but why would Ava want to kill him if she didn’t know about the canceled card?”

  “Because he didn’t stay with her.”

  “Ava asked him to spend the night?” Norman asked, looking surprised.

  “I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that she was very quick to tell me that when Gus came back to the store with her after the dance was over, it wasn’t what I was thinking. She assured me that the only thing he wanted was to get some groceries.”

  “Maybe that’s all it was.”

  “Maybe, but I added her to the suspect list anyway. A woman scorned is a prime suspect.”

  “So Ava’s still a suspect?”

  “No, I cleared her when Andrea brought me the crime scene photos. Gus is a couple of inches over six feet tall, and Ava’s more than a foot shorter. She’s also much lighter. I don’t think she can weigh more than ninety pounds dripping wet.”

  “That’s about what I’d guess,” Norman said.

  “So there’s no way Ava could stab him in the chest with enough force to kill him…unless she stood on a step stool, of course.”

  “And there was no step stool?” Norman asked.

  “None in the whole pavilion. I know because Patsy was looking for one so she could replace the lightbulb over the back door.”

  “How about if she knocked him down on his back and then stabbed him?”

  “How?” Hannah asked him. “He outweighed her by at least fifty pounds.”

  “Right. Well…you were probably right to take her off the list. She’s a pretty unlikely candidate. Anybody else on there?

  “Just one. And I’m beginning to think this last one is the one who did it.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The unidentified suspect who killed Gus for some unknown reason. I don’t know about you, Norman, but this case has really got me stymied.”

  “You’ll solve it. You always do. Something will happen to put a few of the pieces in place and then t
he rest will follow.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “You’re welcome. Maybe that baseball coach is a piece of the puzzle. Fire up your computer, and let’s see if we can find out more about him.”

  Once the computer was online and Norman was sitting in what Hannah thought of as the driver’s seat, he turned to her. “What’s the name?”

  “Toby Hutchins.”

  “Is that Toby as in Tobias?”

  “I don’t know, and Mother didn’t either. I asked. Before I wrote it down.”

  “Okay, let’s go with Toby. I’m going to load the University of Michigan Web site and see what’s there.”

  Hannah watched while the Web site loaded. “There’s a place to click for athletics,” she said, pointing at the screen.

  “Right. We’ll try that first.” Norman waited, and when the athletics page loaded, he clicked on the link for baseball. Once that page came up, there was another link for history, and then one for coaches.

  “We might have something here,” Norman said, letting the page for baseball coaches load. But when it came up on the screen, he gave a little groan.

  “What is it?” Hannah asked.

  “It only gives head coaches and the years they headed up Wolverine Baseball. Didn’t you say Toby Hutchins was an assistant coach?”

  “That’s what Mother said.”

  “This is a dead end, then.” Norman went back to the original screen. “At least we know he lived in Ann Arbor at one time. Maybe there’s something about him in the local papers.” A few moments later, he asked, “Do you want to try the Ann Arbor News? Or the University paper, Michigan Daily?”

  “Let’s try the Michigan Daily. Mother was pretty sure he coached there.”

  Norman pulled up the Web site and did a search for Gus’s high school baseball coach. There were several mentions in sports coverage, but then Norman’s search took them to another page.

  “Uh-oh,” Hannah breathed as she saw the heading on the page. Toby Hutchins was dead and had been for three years now. He’d been killed in a boating accident. According to the obituary, there were no survivors and no one to contact. “Another dead end,” she sighed. “Literally.”

  “Let’s try the Atlantic City yellow pages,” Norman suggested.

  “For Toby Hutchins?”

  “No, for Gus’s nightclub. I want to find out if Mood Indigo actually exists.”

  It didn’t take long to pull up the Yellow Pages and find the address for Mood Indigo. Norman printed it out, along with the phone number, and glanced at his watch. “Too late to call,” he said. “They’re an hour later than we are, and they’re probably closed by now.”

  “What are you doing now?” Hannah asked as Norman typed something in and started loading another Web page.

  “Making reservations. Maybe someone at Mood Indigo knows why Gus came back to Lake Eden.”

  “You’re going to fly to Atlantic City?” Hannah was dumbfounded.

  “Why not? Doc’s filling in for me tomorrow, anyway. I’ll drive to the airport, catch the red-eye, sleep on the plane, and get there before noon.”

  “But don’t you have to go back home to pack a suitcase?”

  “Not really. I’ll pick up what I need at the airport.”

  “How about clothes?”

  “I’ve got what I’m wearing, and I can pick up another shirt. If Gus’s nightclub really is as fancy as he claimed it was, it’ll probably have a dress code. I’m just glad I’ve got my suit hanging in the car, and I can take off for the airport from here.”

  Hannah just stared at him for a moment as the gears in her brain whirred and then meshed. Pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, and she reached out to hug him. And then, because that wasn’t enough, she placed a big kiss on his lips.

  “Wow!” Norman said when she released him. “If I’d known that flying to Atlantic City would affect you that way, I would have done it a long time ago!”

  “That’s not it,” Hannah said, still slightly breathless from the way Norman had returned her kiss.

  “Then what is it? Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

  “Remember the suitcase on the bed?” she waited until Norman nodded. “And the empty closet at Gus’s cottage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the linen suit hanging in the Jaguar?”

  “Of course I remember. I’m the one who climbed the fence at the impound lot. But what does that have to do with me?”

  “Gus didn’t unpack and hang up his clothes, because he knew he wasn’t staying. And he hung his linen suit in the car when he changed clothes for the dance because he was planning on leaving later that night.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Everything adds up. Ava told me he gassed up his car before he even found out which cabin was his. That tells me he was planning to take off again before Ava opened up in the morning.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “There’s the pill I saw him take at the dance. He said it was an antacid, but I described it to Jon Walker and he thought it was a type of amphetamine. Gus wanted to be alert so he could drive back to Atlantic City. That’s why he bought all those candy bars and snacks. He told Ava they were for his breakfast, but they weren’t. That’s why he bought the disposable cooler, too. And made his ham and cheese sandwiches at the bar in the pavilion. He was going to take them with him in the car and drive all night.”

  Norman thought about it for a moment. “That does make sense. But why did he want to leave after only one day? The reunion doesn’t end until Saturday night.”

  “My guess is that he never planned to come to the reunion in the first place. He just saw the posters Lisa and Herb hung on Main Street and thought it was a handy excuse. He came for another reason.”

  “To see his family?”

  Hannah shook her head. “I really doubt that. If he’d wanted to reconnect with his relatives, he would have stayed for the whole reunion. My guess is that Gus came for a purpose. And he must have accomplished it before he hung that linen suit in his car and took that pill to keep him awake.”

  “Okay,” Norman said, standing up and giving Moishe a scratch behind the ears before he headed to the door. “I’ll find out why he came here. And I’ll check out his apartment to see if he really had a safe with watches and jewelry.”

  “Be careful,” Hannah warned, feeling strangely bereft as he pulled her into his arms for a hug.

  “I will be. Where’s your cell phone?”

  Hannah got her purse and rummaged around until she found her cell phone in the bottom. “Here it is,” she announced, handing it to him.

  “The battery’s low,” Norman said, turning it on and pressing some buttons that emitted squeaky sounds.

  “Moishe likes those sounds,” Hannah said, noticing that her cat had perked up his ears. “It probably sounds like a mouse symphony to him.”

  Norman laughed as he shut the phone and handed it to her. “Put it on the charger tonight, and don’t forget to take it with you tomorrow. I’ll call you when I get to Atlantic City, but you have to remember to turn your cell phone on so it’ll ring.”

  “I will. I’ll charge it up the second you leave, and I’ll take it with me when I go to work tomorrow. And I’ll turn it on and leave it on in my purse.”

  “Good. Don’t forget. And be careful, Hannah.”

  “I will be.”

  “Do you promise?”

  Hannah smiled. Norman really did care about her. “I promise,” she gave her word.

  “If you figure out who killed Gus before I get back, don’t take any chances. And whatever you do, don’t go after his killer alone. Call Mike and make sure he’s got your back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you promise, Hannah?”

  It was a much harder promise, but Hannah could see how much it meant to him. “I promise, Norman,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The coffee was on, Moishe’s
food and water bowls were filled, and she’d checked to make sure the little locks that Bill had installed on every window were engaged. All she had to do was wash her face, brush her teeth, put on the oversized T-shirt she used for a nightgown in the summer, and crawl under the covers.

  “Come on, Moishe,” Hannah said, picking him up from his perch on the penthouse floor of his Kitty Kondo. “It’s getting late, and I really need to…”

  She was interrupted by a knock on the door, three sharp raps that she thought she recognized. A second later, there was a second series of similar raps.

  “…answer the door,” Hannah finished her sentence, and put Moishe back on the penthouse floor. “Who’s there?” she called out, even though she thought she knew.

  “It’s Mike. I need to talk to you. You’re still up, aren’t you?”

  No, I’m sound asleep! Hannah felt like saying, but of course she didn’t. What she said was, “I’m up. Hold on a second, and I’ll get the door.”

  “Thanks, Hannah.” Mike stepped into her living room. “I figured you were still up. I saw Norman driving out.”

  “Did you talk to him?” Hannah asked, hoping that he’d say no. Norman was a law-abiding citizen. If Mike had asked him where he was going, Norman would have told him.

  “I just waved. I was in a hurry to get over here.”

  “Is there a break in the case?” Hannah asked, sending up silent thanks to her lucky stars that Mike had been in a hurry.

  “Nothing new.” Mike did a double take as he saw what was on the wall by her desk. “What’s that?”

  “Moishe’s new Kitty Kondo activity center. Norman installed it yesterday.” Hannah stopped and thought fast. She didn’t want to make Mike feel bad for not thinking of getting one for Moishe. “Thanks to the Animal Channel number you gave me, and his new activity center, Moishe’s not destroying things anymore.”

  “Great! I’ve got something for him in the cruiser. I’ll go down and haul it up here before I leave. I just stopped by to ask you if you learned anything I should know about.”

  “Actually…yes,” Hannah said, leading him over to the couch. And then, because she was a good hostess, she asked, “Coffee?”

  “Thanks, but I’m all coffeed out. I think it’s because I’ve been drinking the swill at the station. But I wouldn’t mind something sweet if you’ve got it.”