Red Velvet Cupcake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “Okay,” Hannah said, relenting. “Come in then. But I’m warning you that you could be seen. Lisa’s started telling her story, but Jack, or Marge, or Michelle could come into the kitchen at any time.”

  Mike stepped in and glanced around the kitchen. “Can we talk in the pantry? We could shut the door. If someone came in they wouldn’t see me.”

  “That’s okay, I guess.” Hannah led the way, opened the door, and flicked on the light. “Come in.”

  Mike stepped in and Hannah shut the door behind them. “It’s a big pantry,” he said.

  “I know. Lisa and Herb came down here after your detectives searched it last night. She said it took them a couple of hours to put everything back in place. Were they looking for poison?”

  “Not poison. Tranquilizers.”

  “What?”

  “Doc Knight ran more tests and he found traces of a powerful tranquilizer in her system. It was enough to stop her heart.”

  “Then she didn’t drown?”

  “No. She was dead when the car hit the water.”

  “So your guys were searching for tranquilizers when they trashed the pantry last night.”

  “Yeah.” Mike looked a little sick. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I wish I could have come down here with them, but I couldn’t. I was busy with other things.”

  “Things like interrogating me.”

  “Yeah.” Mike sighed again, and then he reached out and wrapped his arms around Hannah. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. You have no idea. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I felt so bad about questioning you that I couldn’t get to sleep. All I kept seeing in my mind was the way you looked at me. Your eyes seemed to say, You betrayed me. And that just about killed me.”

  “It wasn’t a whole lot of fun for me, either.” Despite herself, Hannah moved a little closer. She wasn’t quite ready to forgive Mike, but his arms felt good around her. “I felt like I’d just lost my best friend.”

  “Me, too,” Mike said. “I didn’t want to come and get you last night, but I didn’t trust anyone else to do it. I knew I had to do everything by the book and I hated it. But when Doc gave us the list of her stomach contents and Mayor Bascomb said she was eating one of your cupcakes when he went for a ride with her, we had to bring you in for questioning.”

  “Did you pull the car out of the water yet?”

  Mike shook his head. “Not yet. Earl’s replacing the carburetor on the county tow truck and he’s waiting for parts. He thinks it’ll be ready by late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Then you don’t know if there were any cupcakes left in the bakery box,” Hannah said.

  “We sent a diver down and he found the box. It was in the back seat and it was wedged against the mechanism that raises and lowers the top. It was empty.”

  “So there’s no way to prove that my cupcakes didn’t have tranquilizers in them,” Hannah said, feeling her hopes diminish.

  “I’m afraid not. Either she ate them all or they dissolved in the water. I doubt we’ll ever know exactly what happened.”

  “What else was in her stomach?” Hannah asked, her mind grasping at straws.

  “Doc Knight identified coffee, cream, artificial sweetener, and your cupcakes. That’s it.”

  “She didn’t get that coffee from me,” Hannah said, and her stubborn hopes began to rise again. “Roger didn’t order any coffee to go. And since he didn’t take any coffee, we didn’t give him any cream or packets of sweetener.”

  “How about when she confronted you on the Petersons’ porch?”

  “We didn’t have any coffee there. All we had was Diet Coke for me, regular Pepsi for Lisa and Andrea, and a couple of cans of lemonade for Tracey. When she came in we didn’t offer her anything and she didn’t take anything except the box of cupcakes. Doc Knight didn’t find any Coke, or Pepsi, or lemonade in her stomach, did he?”

  “No, none of those things.” Mike reached out to touch her cheek. “I really don’t like this, Hannah. It doesn’t look good for you. You’re the logical suspect and you did bake those cupcakes. There’s even a witness who saw her eating one. You have to think of some way to prove you didn’t do it.”

  Hannah caught the nuance and she asked the question. “You think I can prove that I didn’t do it?”

  “I hope so. I pray so. Concentrate on doing it, Hannah. I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “Then you don’t think I did it?”

  “I know you didn’t do it. I know it in my heart.”

  “Well, I know it in my mind. Somebody else killed Doctor Bev. It wasn’t me. It’s really not fair that I’m going to have to try to prove my innocence by catching the real killer.”

  “I agree. It’s not right. Our justice system isn’t supposed to work that way. But you won’t be the only one trying to find out who really killed Doctor Bev. I’ll be working on it, too.”

  “But will they let you do that?”

  “Not officially, but that won’t stop me. It won’t stop anyone else in the department either, but you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “How about Bill? Does he think I did it?”

  “Of course not. Bill knows what we’re doing . . . unofficially, of course. Everyone’s on your side, Hannah. We’re just following the rules as far as the paperwork goes, but what we do on our own time is our personal business.”

  Hannah began to feel much better. The pendulum was still swinging lower and lower over her head, but there were people who believed in her innocence.

  “Did Doctor Bev take tranquilizers?” Hannah asked, remembering how Clayton Wallace had taken an accidental overdose of his heart medication.

  “No. I’m way ahead of you there. I sent Lonnie and Rick out to her suite at the Inn to check. Roger let them go through everything she had there, and he gave them permission to go through all of his things, too. They didn’t find any tranquilizers and Roger said he’d never seen her take anything like that.”

  “I guess you already know that I don’t take them either. And I don’t have any in my possession here or at my condo.”

  “I know that. I’m sorry, but we had to check.”

  “That’s okay if it helps to clear me. How about the tranquilizers themselves? Were they some kind of over-the-counter thing?”

  “Doc Knight says no. They were a class A narcotic and they’re only available by doctor’s prescription.”

  Hannah looked at him dubiously. “Legally yes, but I’ll bet you can buy them on the street.”

  “I’m sure you can, but not here in Lake Eden. We do have an occasional drug dealer, but it’s usually small stuff. This drug was powerful. Doc Knight says it isn’t something you’d take to get high. If you tried it for kicks, it would just knock you out. And he also told me that Doctor Bev had enough in her system to stop her heart. There was no water in her lungs, Hannah. She was dead before she hit the water.”

  “Did you check Doctor Bev’s background to see if she ever had a prescription for the drug?”

  “We checked on that the minute Doc Knight told us the name of the drug. No doctor she’s ever had wrote a prescription like that for her. We came to the end of the trail on that one, Hannah.”

  “Okay. Let’s talk about the coffee. Is it possible to hide the taste of the drug if it was dissolved in the coffee?”

  “We asked Doc Knight that. He said yes. The artificial sweetener she used has a slightly bitter taste. So does the drug. If her coffee tasted bitter, she probably assumed it was from the sweetener.”

  “Do you know where she got the coffee?”

  “Not yet, but we’re working on it.”

  “How about the cup it came in? It might have some residue, or something. Did you recover that?”

  “No. Her coffee cup wasn’t in the car. And since we didn’t find it, there’s no way to test it for any residue. Not only that, her car was a convertible and the cup would have been submerged in water. Chances are that even if we’d found it, there wouldn’t be any residue left.”

  Han
nah took a moment to mentally add up the facts of the case. Doctor Bev had consumed an overdose of powerful tranquilizers. Doc Knight had identified the drug in her stomach contents, which consisted of coffee, creamer, artificial sweetener, and Hannah’s cupcakes. The drug wasn’t necessarily baked into the cupcakes. It could have been in the coffee, the cream, or the artificial sweetener. “So the evidence against me is all circumstantial at this point?”

  “That’s right. But you did have a motive, the means, and the opportunity.”

  “Not the means,” Hannah corrected him. “I didn’t have the drug.”

  “That’s difficult to prove.”

  “Right.” Hannah shivered slightly. People had been convicted on circumstantial evidence, but she didn’t want to think about that. If she did, she might have another nightmare like the one she’d had last night.

  “You shivered,” Mike said, holding her tightly. “What’s the matter?”

  “The thought that I could be convicted for something I didn’t do is even more terrifying than finding Doctor Bev. I just hope I don’t have a nightmare about that tonight. Last night’s dream was bad enough!”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It started when I dove down to the car and Doctor Bev tried to get me to sit in the passenger seat. I wanted to leave, to go back up to the surface, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from moving closer and closer to her. Then she grabbed me and I couldn’t get away. She moved some things off the passenger seat and shoved me into it, and then she locked the seat belt. That was when I knew I was going to die down there at the bottom of Miller’s Pond with her.”

  Mike rubbed her back. “I’m sorry I put you through this, Hannah. You really have no idea how guilty I feel. If I could think of some way to wipe last night out of existence, I would. You did a brave thing by trying to rescue Doctor Bev. And you got rewarded by having me haul you in for questioning. Life wasn’t very fair to you yesterday.”

  “True.” Hannah’s mind kept going back to the dream, back to the point where Doctor Bev had pulled her into the passenger seat. She’d reached out with her wavy arm and pushed the thermos off the seat and . . .

  Hannah gave a little gasp and Mike patted her back. “What is it?” he asked.

  “The thermos!”

  “What thermos?”

  “The thermos in my dream. There must have been one on the passenger seat for real or I wouldn’t have dreamed it. I’m almost sure there was. I think it was one of those silver ones with a screw-on cap. I might have knocked it off the seat when I unlatched the seat belt and pulled Doctor Bev out of the car.”

  “I’ll send down a diver,” Mike said, pulling out his cell phone and dialing the sheriff’s station. “If there’s a thermos, there may be contents left inside. And if there are contents, Doc Knight can test them.”

  Hannah listened while Mike made the call. When he hung up, she opened the pantry door. “You’d better go before anyone knows you’re here.”

  “You’re right,” Mike said, walking across the kitchen with her and opening the back door. “I’ll let you know what happens when the diver comes up,” he said. “If we’re lucky, they’ll find the thermos and it’ll clear you completely.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Hannah said, repeating one of her Great-Grandmother Elsa’s favorite expressions. And then she went back to the stainless steel work island with a smile on her face to shape and bake the Oatmeal Raisin Crisps.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was a knock at the back door, but before Hannah could cross the kitchen to answer it, Andrea rushed in. “Hannah!” she exclaimed, sinking down on a stool at the work island.

  “Hi, Andrea.” Hannah pulled the last sheet of cookies out of the oven and slid them onto the baker’s rack. “Want coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I’m excited enough as it is. Have you got anything chocolate?”

  “We’re a bakery. Of course I’ve got something chocolate. You’ve got a choice between Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies, Black and Whites, or Triplet Chiplets.”

  “I’ll take the Triplet Chiplets. Then I’ll get chocolate three ways. Just wait until I tell you what happened with the furniture!”

  “What furniture?” Hannah plucked three Triplet Chiplet cookies off the rack and delivered them in a napkin. “Milk?”

  “That would be good. Doctor Bev and Roger’s furniture. They just finished delivering it.”

  “Of course. I forgot all about it. Roger asked you to meet the delivery truck.”

  Andrea accepted the glass of milk and took a sip before she nodded. “It’s gorgeous, Hannah. Just wait until you see it!”

  “The furniture and not the delivery truck?”

  “Right. White leather. Can you imagine? It’s just incredible against the midnight blue carpet. One piece is a twenty-two-foot curved sectional with four built-in recliners. That’s in front of the biggest flat-screen I’ve ever seen, even bigger than the one Mayor Bascomb bought for the Super Bowl. And the couches they bought to go in front of the fireplace are unbelievable! They’re the kind you see in old movies, the ones without arms that you could sleep on if you wanted to. Shrinks use them . . . you know.”

  “Chaise lounges?”

  “Yeah. Just like that. And the bed is up on a pedestal and it looks like something a queen would sleep in. Come with me right now. You’ve just got to see it! And the dome’s in now so we can go out and look at the things they bought for the rooftop garden. Don’t say no, Hannah. I need to take some pictures and post them on our website.”

  Hannah began to frown. “Isn’t that a little invasive? It’s Roger’s furniture and I think you should ask him before you do something like that.”

  Andrea stared at her in bewilderment for a moment and then she laughed. “Oh, no wonder you thought that! I forgot to tell you. Roger’s going to sell the penthouse furnished. He says he doesn’t want to live there now that Doctor Bev is gone. He was so sad when they delivered the furniture that he could only stay a minute or two. He’s a broken man, Hannah. I think he really loved her.”

  “Hmmm.” Hannah made the most noncommittal sound she could think of. It seemed almost inconceivable that Roger hadn’t seen the nasty side of Doctor Bev, but she supposed it was possible.

  “Come on.” Andrea stood up and jammed the one cookie that was left into her pocket. “Let’s go!”

  Hannah grabbed her purse. “Okay, but that chocolate’s going to melt in this heat.”

  “What chocolate?”

  “The chocolate in the cookie you just put in your pocket.”

  “Oh. You’re probably right.” Andrea removed the cookie from her pocket and gave a little shrug. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll eat it on the way to the car.”

  Since the Albion Hotel was only a block and a half away, it took only a minute or two before Andrea was parking in the reserved area of the parking garage. “Come on, Hannah,” she said, getting out of her car and brushing cookie crumbs off her skirt.

  Hannah smiled in amusement as she followed her sister into the lobby and across the floor to the private elevator that would take them to the penthouse. “How did you know where to put the furniture if Roger wasn’t there?” she asked.

  “The delivery guys had a diagram and a man they called an executive account specialist drove in from Minneapolis to help. I really didn’t have to do anything except watch and lock up when they were finished.”

  “So Roger never saw the penthouse with the furniture they chose in place?”

  Andrea shook her head. “He said he couldn’t bear to see it, and that’s when he told me to keep the penthouse on the market and sell it furnished, that it would show better that way.”

  “I guess that’s true.” Hannah followed Andrea into the elevator and watched her press the button for the penthouse. “I know it’s crazy, but this elevator makes me nervous. It shakes a little.”

  “I know. I’m not that fond of it, either. But they inspected it and it’s perfectly safe
.”

  “What if the power goes out?”

  “There’s a generator that’s supposed to kick in and take over if the main power fails.”

  “You said it’s supposed to kick in. Do you have doubts?”

  “Yes. The generator is old and Roger’s having it replaced with a new one in a couple of days, but for now all we have is the old one.”

  “How about fire? You’re not supposed to use elevators in case of fire, are you?”

  “No, but there’s a staircase. It’s like Sally’s old staircase that the servants used when the Inn was a private mansion. This one was for the maids and there’s a landing on every floor. The maids used it to carry up the linens when the Albion was first built. It’s right off the hallway by the regular elevator.”

  “There’s no hallway on the penthouse floor. Where’s the door to the staircase?”

  “In the kitchen. You probably didn’t notice it, because it looks just like another pantry door.”

  “Interesting,” Hannah said as the elevator doors opened onto the foyer. They stepped into the living room and she gasped at the array of expensive furniture. Doctor Bev hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said they’d spent the entire weekend shopping!

  Andrea heard the gasp Hannah gave when she turned toward the living room fireplace. “I forgot to tell you about the grand piano. It’s a Steinway.”

  “Did Doctor Bev play?”

  “No, and neither does Roger. It’s just decoration.” Hannah was almost speechless. She’d never seen such luxury before. She’d always known that Roger and his father had money, but this was way over the line between sumptuous and conspicuous consumption.

  “What do you think so far?” Andrea asked, after Hannah had seen the master bedroom with the furniture fit for royalty, the master bath with an indoor Jacuzzi that could have seated eight, and the gourmet kitchen that contained every piece of culinary equipment that a celebrity chef might desire.

  Hannah was silent for a moment, trying to think of the right words. Andrea was obviously impressed with the furnishings and she didn’t want to hurt her sister’s feelings. “It’s a real showplace,” she said at last.