by Joanne Fluke
Hannah tried to convince herself that this time, it wasn’t the case, but there was no denying that something was dreadfully wrong. She wished that she didn’t have to walk over to the cooler and find out what was the matter, but she knew she had to do it.
“Michelle?” she called out again, hoping that it was something like a gallon of cream that had broken open and spilled all over the floor, or something that wasn’t or hadn’t ever been human. But even as she wished it, the back of her neck continued to prickle and the cold hollow feeling in her stomach intensified.
On legs that shook slightly, Hannah walked across the floor to the cooler door. She took a deep breath, stepped inside, and peered over her sister’s shoulder to see what had rendered Michelle incapable of speech or movement.
Alain Duquesne was on the floor of the cooler, splayed out on his back like a Cornish game hen ready for the roasting pan. A big piece of Hannah’s Double Rainbow Swirl Wedding Cake was partially smashed next to his body, and the knife he’d used to cut her cake was buried up to the hilt in his chest.
Hannah put her arms around Michelle. “I’m here,” she said. “It’s okay, Michelle.”
The sound of Hannah’s voice seemed to release Michelle from her frozen state and she drew a deep shuddering breath. “He . . . is . . . is he . . . dead?” she asked in a quavering voice that didn’t sound at all like the confident young woman that she was.
“Oh, yes. At least I’m ninety-nine percent sure he is. Let me take you out to the workstation, Michelle. You should sit down. Then I’ll call Mike.”
“Was it . . . suicide?”
“I doubt it. It would be almost impossible to plunge a knife into your own chest and then fall to the floor on your back.”
“Then . . . he was . . . murdered?”
“I believe so.”
“It’s awful!” Michelle gasped, and Hannah was relieved to hear that her sister’s voice was a bit stronger.
“I know,” Hannah said. She took Michelle’s arm and pulled her away toward the door. “Come with me. I’ll get you some water.”
Once Michelle was seated on a stool at their workstation and Hannah had given her a glass of water, Michelle looked up at Hannah again. Tears were forming in her eyes. “It’s awful!” she repeated.
“Yes, it is. It’s always awful when someone is murdered.”
“It’s not that! We’re baking Vanilla and Butterscotch Hopscotch Cookies because Aunt Nancy told us that Judge Duquesne loved butterscotch when he was a kid. And now he’s dead and we’ve lost our advantage!”
Chapter Sixteen
“Oh, Hannah! Not again!”
Hannah gave a deep sigh. She hadn’t really wanted to call Mike, but Michelle was in no shape to talk to him and someone had to do it.
“Yes, but this time Michelle was the one to discover the body.”
“I’ll bring Lonnie with me. He can calm her down before I interview her. You say you preserved the crime scene?”
“Yes. I shut the walk-in cooler door and we’re here in the kitchen at our workstation. The kitchen door’s locked and the next contestant isn’t due to arrive here for another forty minutes.”
“I’ll call Dick and have him guard the kitchen door from the outside, just in case someone tries to get in.”
“Okay.”
“I probably don’t have to say this, but don’t go back inside the cooler.”
Hannah shivered. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”
“And don’t touch anything else until I get there.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know if Michelle touched anything while she was in the cooler?”
“I don’t think she did. She was still holding the cookie sheet with our cookie dough on it when I went in the cooler to see what was keeping her so long.”
“And she would have had to put the cookie sheet down to touch anything else?”
“Yes. She was just standing there like a statue, staring at . . . him. I led her out of the cooler and poured her a glass of water.”
“Did you touch anything in the kitchen?”
“Of course we did. We mixed up the cookie dough we’re making for the competition tomorrow night. Our fingerprints are all over.”
“Hold on a second. Let me pull out of the parking lot. Lonnie and I are in the cruiser and we’re on our way to you.”
Hannah held on to the phone and waited. She heard the squad car accelerate and then there was the sound of a siren. Mike was on his way. Just knowing that made her feel much better.
“All right. We’re on the highway and I’ve got you on speaker phone. Lonnie’s taking notes for me. Did you notice anything unusual about the kitchen when you first walked in?”
“No. Everything was nice and clean, but it always is. And we were the first ones to come in this morning.”
“Was the kitchen locked?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Who let you in?”
“Nobody. Sally gave all the contestants and judges individual keys to the kitchen door.”
“Did anyone else get keys?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Sally if . . .” Hannah gasped and stopped speaking in mid-thought.
“What?”
“When we came in, there were two wineglasses on the counter by the refrigerator. One was half full and the other was empty.”
“Did you touch them?”
“No. We just went straight to our workstation, set the countdown clock for an hour, and got right to work on our cookie dough.”
“You said two wineglasses?”
“Yes. Chef Duquesne must have had someone with him in the kitchen.”
“Perhaps. We’ll have to check for prints. Tell me exactly what you and Michelle did when you entered the kitchen. Step by step, Hannah.”
“Okay. I unlocked the kitchen door and turned on the lights.”
“The lights were off?”
“Yes. There are dim night lights and those were on, but the big banks of fluorescents were off.”
“All right. What did you do once you’d turned on the lights?”
“I waved at the . . .” Hannah stopped and gasped again. “Oh, Mike!”
“What?”
“There’s a security camera in the kitchen! Sally asked Dick to install it the minute she learned the competition would be held at their restaurant. When we came in the first day, she told everyone it was there for their protection.”
“Protection?”
“Yes. The Food Channel paid for added security to make sure that every contestant got the same length of practice time in the kitchen and the integrity of their ingredients were preserved.”
Mike laughed. “In other words, no one could sneak into the kitchen in the dead of night and put salt in the sugar canister?”
“Something like that, I guess. But the important thing is that there’s a security camera. You’ll be able to find out who came into the kitchen with Chef Duquesne.”
“Yes, if that person didn’t know about the camera and didn’t disable it in some way.”
Hannah sighed. “You’re right, of course. I’m just not thinking clearly right now. I was just so happy about the way our practice time was going, and then Michelle found him, and . . . everything got . . . crazy here.”
“I know that, Hannah. You’re under a lot of pressure right now and it’s getting to you. And the fact that your sister found Chef Duquesne’s body must be almost worse than if you’d found it yourself.”
“That’s right!” Hannah was a bit shocked. She hadn’t thought that Mike could be that perceptive. “How far away are you now?” she asked.
A scant second after she asked the question, there was a knock on the kitchen door and Hannah felt herself begin to panic. “Someone’s here!” she told him.
“Yes. It’s me. Let us in, Hannah.”
Hannah’s legs were trembling as she hurried to the door and opened it for Mike and Lonnie. “I’m so glad you’re here!” she said, feel
ing almost giddy with relief. Now that she didn’t have to be the strong older sister any longer, she could sit down on a stool and think about something, anything other than the celebrity chef who had been killed and how defenseless and pathetic he’d looked on the floor of the cooler. She had to think about something positive like how much she loved Ross, but that brought forth worries about the wedding itself and how she could manage to juggle her time so that she could do justice to the Food Channel competition, her wedding, her new husband, her business, her family, and the murder that she felt compelled to investigate.
Tears began to form in Hannah’s eyes and she blinked them back. There was no reason to cry like a baby even though her tightly controlled world had gone into a tailspin. She would get everything done and nothing would be shortchanged. That’s what she’d done in the past, and there was no reason why she couldn’t do it again.
Hannah looked down at the recipe in front of her on the counter. There were blotches of tears on the paper and the ink was beginning to smear. That was when she realized that tears were running down her cheeks, but before she could wipe them away with the back of her hand, someone handed her a tissue.
“Thanks, Mike,” she said, managing a smile.
He sat down on the stool next to her and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Things getting to you, Hannah?”
“I guess so.”
“I can’t blame you. There’s a lot going on in your life right now. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know . . . okay?”
“Okay.” Hannah looked up at him, but tears threatened to fall again and she quickly looked away. “Just a nervous reaction, I guess,” she tried to explain.
“Sure. I understand. How about a cup of coffee from Sally’s buffet? I’ll go get some for both of us.”
“Coffee would be good,” Hannah said quickly. “I take mine . . .”
“I know how you take it,” Mike cut off her explanation. “I’ll bring a couple of Sally’s cookies to go with it. They’re not as good as yours, but they’ll do.”
Hannah felt herself smile as he walked toward the kitchen door. She felt better, a lot better, and more in control. If this emotional roller coaster that she seemed to be on was normal for people who were in love, she just hoped the ride would smooth out soon!
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hannah asked Michelle as she pulled up in front of their mother’s house.
“I’m okay. And if I’m not, I will be as soon as I finish painting that last wall in the dining room. Andrea’s showing the house tomorrow afternoon and I want everything to be perfect. Besides . . . I think the best thing I can do is to keep busy. That’s what you always do, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” Hannah did something quite uncharacteristic in her normally undemonstrative family. She reached out with both arms and gave her youngest sister a hug. “Come out to the condo the minute you finish.”
“I will. What are you going to do when you get home?”
“Bake.”
“Before you call Ross?”
“Yes. I need to calm down before I talk to him. If I call him right away, I’m afraid I’ll start crying.”
“And beg him to come home to you?”
Hannah gave a deep sigh. Michelle had done it again. She’d unerringly hit the nail right on the head. “Yes,” she admitted. “I might do something like that.”
“Are you going to bake the competition cookies again?” Hannah shook her head. “No. That is, not exactly. I don’t want to make them the way we did this morning. I want to change the recipe around and make it different somehow. It’s just . . . wrong to do things the way we did them this morning.”
“Because you didn’t like the result?”
“That’s right. If we do things exactly the way we did them this morning, it’ll be too . . . evocative.”
“Because it reminds you of what happened this morning?”
“Yes. And I don’t want those memories hanging over my head when we bake tomorrow night for the judges.”
“Good. Everything you said makes sense to me. I know I’d be more comfortable if we changed things around. One thing for sure . . . I don’t want to step inside that walk-in cooler again!”
“Actually . . . now that I think about it . . . I’m not sure I’m entirely happy with the way the cookies looked. There wasn’t enough color difference between the butterscotch part and the vanilla part.”
“That’s true, especially after your super-colorful wedding cake. The colors on the cookies were kind of blah.”
“Right. Think about this for a minute, Michelle. Who’s the principal player here? The vanilla cookie, or the butterscotch cookie?”
“The butterscotch, of course. The vanilla’s very good, but it’s just vanilla.”
“Precisely. So why are we teaming the really good butterscotch cookie with the good, but not spectacular, vanilla cookie?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think we should team them at all.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” Hannah gave her a smile. “Let’s make Butterscotch Sugar Cookies. If we do that, we’ll have two advantages over the way we made them this morning.”
“We won’t have to roll the dough and assemble it, and we won’t have to chill the rolls in the walk-in cooler?”
“Exactly. We’ll save a ton of time, and that means we can make something else to go with the butterscotch cookies.”
“Ice cream?”
“That’s a good idea, but I’ve never made ice cream before. Have you?”
“No.”
“Ross and I were talking about it this morning and he thinks we should serve a coffee drink with the cookies.”
“But not plain coffee, right?”
“Right. We’ve done that before, although it can’t hurt to brew a pot and leave it behind at the judging table. They seemed to like that when we did it before.”
“I’ve got it!” Michelle gasped, looking very excited. “White chocolate cocoa!”
“Like the white chocolate cocoa that Lisa makes?”
“Yes, but slightly different. Most coffee drinkers like mocha. And that’s chocolate and coffee. Why can’t we put white chocolate and coffee together and call it White Chocolate Mocha?”
Hannah thought about that for a moment. “There’s no reason why we can’t do that. Of course, we’ll have to try it to make sure it works.”
“That’s easy. I’ll make it tonight just as soon as I get back to your condo.”
“And I’ll go right home and make the Butterscotch Sugar Cookies. We can try them both together and see what we think.”
“Okay. I’ll be out as soon as I paint that wall. It shouldn’t take me more than an hour.”
“That’s perfect. I should have some of the cookies baked by then since the dough doesn’t need to chill.”
“’Bye, Hannah. I love you.”
“’Bye, Michelle. I love you, too.”
There was a smile on Michelle’s face as she turned to go into their mother’s house. It was mirrored by the smile on Hannah’s face as she drove away toward the freeway and the road home.
Hannah sat down on the couch in her living room and reached for the phone. Her first two pans of cookies were in the oven and she could hardly wait to sample them. She dialed Ross’s cell phone number and sipped from her cup of coffee as she waited for him to answer.
“Hannah!”
Ross sounded surprised to hear from her, and Hannah smiled. At least this time, when something important had happened, she’d remembered to call him. “Yes, it’s me. Are you busy?”
“I’m never too busy for you. Do you realize that this is the first time you’ve called me at work?”
“You’re right. It is. I’ve got something serious to tell you, Ross.”
“Is it about the wedding?”
“No.”
“Then everything’s okay with that?”
“Yes, it is. It’s about Chef Duquesne.”
“The head jud
ge?”
“Yes. Michelle found him in Sally’s walk-in cooler this morning when we went out to the Lake Eden Inn to practice. He was on the floor, dead.”
“Poor Michelle! Is she okay?”
“I think so, but it was a shock. How did you feel about him, Ross?”
“I had no quarrel with him. He was fine with P.K. and me when we did our interview with him in New York. And he was nice to you when you baked our wedding cake. He was really too tough on some of the other contestants, though.”
“How about the Food Channel film crew? Did they like him?”
“Not personally, but he made for a good show. If all the judges are nice, there’s not much controversy. Duquesne provided controversy in spades.”
“What was his personal life like?”
“I don’t know. I only saw him once outside of the competition. He was in the bar when I walked through at the hotel in New York. It looked like he was trying to pick up one of the female . . .” Ross stopped and cleared his throat. “Wait a second. You wouldn’t be asking me all this unless . . . was he murdered?”
“Doc hasn’t made it official yet, but I’m pretty sure he was.”
There was silence for a moment and then Ross sighed. “I can’t say that I’m totally surprised. His comments to some of the contestants were a little out of line. I felt really sorry for Brooke Jackman that night in New York. He was really tough on her. And then, when you told me about what Gloria Berkeley did, I figured they deserved each other.” Ross paused and cleared his throat. “Are you okay, Hannah? I can come home early if you need me.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay.” And, the moment she said it, she realized that she was. “Michelle will be here really soon. She just stopped off at Mother’s house to paint a wall.”
“Are you sure? I can ask for time off.”
“No, you don’t have to do that. Michelle and I will be fine. Just maybe . . . possibly . . . come here early tonight?”
“I’ll see you at the condo at five. I love you, Hannah.”
“I love you, too,” Hannah said, and she was smiling as her kitchen timer began to ring and she hurried to take the first two pans of Butterscotch Sugar Cookies out of the oven.