Peach Cobbler Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  Hannah sighed and an old saw flashed through her mind. With friends like that, she didn’t need enemies.

  “What’s the matter? You don’t look happy.”

  “Think about it, Andrea. All those friends, the ones who were helping to check out our rivals, were buying their baked goods and paying for them. How much do you think our friends put into the till at the Magnolia Blossom Bakery?”

  “I…don’t know. A lot, I guess. I didn’t think about that.”

  “Lisa and I took in a total of twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents today. We still have to bake, pay our bills, and keep up on the rent while our friends are across the street stuffing their faces at our competitor’s.”

  “Hannah’s right,” Norman said, reaching out to pat her shoulder. “I can see going in there once, just to look around and taste something, but a real friend wouldn’t abandon you the way they’re doing.”

  “That’s what I mean!” Hannah exclaimed. “How many servings of Southern Peach Cobbler do they have to eat to critique it? We’ve been operating in the red ever since Shawna Lee and Vanessa opened their doors and our friends are going to put us right out of business.”

  Andrea was silent for a moment, and then she sighed. “You’re right. But Shawna Lee and Vanessa’s desserts aren’t that good. At least I don’t think they are.”

  Hannah glanced down at Andrea’s plate. She’d only taken one bite of blueberry pie and it was one of her favorites. Another of her favorites, a chocolate cupcake, was intact except for a tiny little nibble mark on the top.

  “Andrea’s right,” Lisa spoke up. “I just tried one of their molasses cookies and they taste like the ones they have at the hospital in the vending machines. I don’t think they’re fresh-baked.”

  Hannah reached for a chocolate chip cookie and tasted it. Lisa was right. The cookie part was dry with no discernible flavor, and the chips tasted more like carob than chocolate. “It’s not the cookies, or the pies, or the cupcakes,” she said, glancing around at the partially eaten pastry.

  “Maybe it’s the Southern Peach Cobbler,” Norman suggested, pointing to the only dessert they hadn’t tasted.

  “Maybe,” Hannah said, and turned to her sister. “Do you know if they serve it hot? Or cold?”

  “Hot. They scoop it out into a bowl, stick it in the microwave to heat it up, and top it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I watched Vanessa do it before she served it to Bonnie Surma.”

  Hannah gave a little whimper. Bonnie Surma was one of her biggest supporters, ordering cookies for her Scout troops, and desserts for every party and group meeting she hosted. And now Bonnie had defected to the Magnolia Blossom Bakery for a bowl of their signature dessert!

  “We should serve it the way they do, or it won’t be a fair test,” Lisa said as she picked up the pan and stood up. “I’ll go heat it and put on some ice cream.”

  Once Lisa left, Andrea reached out to take Hannah’s hand and give it an affectionate squeeze, a rare occurrence for sisters who’d been raised not to be overly demonstrative.

  “What?” Hannah asked, noting the suspicious moisture in Andrea’s eyes.

  “Do you really think you might lose The Cookie Jar?”

  “I hope not, but it doesn’t look good.”

  “Then you’re worried?”

  “Oh, yes. I just don’t want to say much in front of Lisa. She’s about to marry the man she loves. I don’t want her to have to worry about business.”

  Norman slipped his arm around Hannah’s shoulders. And then he said something he’d never said before. “That’s one of the reasons I love you, Hannah. You’re always thinking of other people, even when you’re in trouble.”

  “Bill and I talked before he went back to the station.” Andrea gave Hannah’s hand another squeeze. “If you need to borrow money, we’ll take out a line of home equity on the house.”

  Hannah was so touched it took her a moment to find her voice. “I couldn’t ask you to do that, not when I know that Vanessa can afford to run their business at a loss for a whole year. Don’t even consider it. You and Bill and the kids come first.”

  “I’m not married and I don’t have kids,” Norman said. “I’ve got some savings and I’ll lend you enough to tide you over.”

  “Thank you, but no,” Hannah said forcefully enough to erase all doubt that she’d change her mind. “Both of you are really sweet to offer, but throwing money at the problem won’t help. If our business at The Cookie Jar doesn’t pick up by the end of the month, it’s not going to pick up at all.”

  “What are you going to do if it doesn’t?”

  “Liquidate. We’ll sell the capital assets and I’ll give Lisa her share in cash. She’ll be able to find something else, and even if she doesn’t, Herb’s got a good job.”

  “But that’s just awful! Mother’s got money. She could…” Andrea stopped in mid-sentence after one glance at Hannah’s expression. “Okay. Forget that. There’s no way you want to ask Mother. But family is supposed to stick together and…I don’t know what else to do! If I could figure out a way to get rid of Shawna Lee and Vanessa, I’d do it in a flash!”

  There was a note of panic in Andrea’s voice that worried Hannah. Her younger sister was really upset. “Take a giant step back and wait for the Southern Peach Cobbler. If it’s good, we have cause to worry. If it’s not, we can relax a little. Then the Magnolia Blossom Bakery is just a flash in the pan and our customers will be back when they get tired of inferior baked goods.”

  As if on cue, Lisa appeared bearing four bowls of Peach Cobbler with vanilla ice cream melting in rivulets on the top. “Here you go. I hope you hate it!”

  Hannah laughed. Lisa, who never said anything bad about anyone and seldom criticized anything, was already giving the signature dessert a thumbs-down. “Did you taste it?”

  “I had a bite in the kitchen, but don’t let that influence you. Make up your own minds.”

  Andrea raised the spoon to her mouth and took a bite. “This is really good ice cream.”

  “It’s Bridgeman’s. Taste the cobbler.”

  Andrea spooned up a bite of cobbler and tasted it. She chewed, swallowed, and shrugged. “It’s funny, but I’ve got the strangest feeling I’ve tasted this somewhere before. And before you ask, today’s the first time I’ve ever been in the Magnolia Blossom Bakery.”

  “But what do you think of it? Is it good?”

  Andrea frowned slightly. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s…okay.”

  “Just okay?” Hannah asked, feeling pleased when Andrea nodded. She tried a spoonful for herself and decided that her sister was right. It was generic peach cobbler, acceptable, but no better than that. “What do you think, Norman?”

  “It tastes like the peach cobbler you’d get at a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to order it again.”

  “Then we all agree,” Hannah said, giving a little sigh of relief. “But this place is empty and theirs is full. If it’s not the baked goods, why have all our customers deserted us for the Magnolia Blossom?”

  “Do you think it’s the outfits they wear?” Norman asked.

  “I thought you said you’d never been in there!” Hannah frowned at him.

  “I haven’t, but Vanessa came in for a checkup and she was wearing her work clothes.”

  “I should have mentioned their outfits before. It probably has something to do with it.” Andrea gave a quick little nod.

  “What do they wear?” Hannah asked.

  “Short dresses with full skirts and low-cut necklines. And they bend over a lot when they’re serving customers. That could be one reason most of the men go there.”

  “How about the women?” Lisa asked.

  “The women go where the men go,” Hannah answered. “It’s human nature.”

  “Then there’s the contests,” Andrea went on.

  Hannah frowned. This was the first she’d heard about any contests. �
��What contests?”

  “The ones where you get your order free. If the theme song from Gone With the Wind comes on the loudspeakers while you’re paying, all you have to do is say, Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a darn! and whatever you were about to pay for is free.”

  “I don’t give a darn?” Hannah asked.

  “They changed it because of the kids. Shawna Lee and Vanessa didn’t want them running around repeating the real word.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then they’ve got the flower mug. That’s the contest I won.”

  Hannah groaned. There was a lot Andrea hadn’t told them. “What’s the flower mug?”

  “They serve coffee in white mugs and a couple of them have pink magnolia blossoms painted on the bottom. When your mug is empty, you turn it over to look. If you’ve got a magnolia blossom, your order is free. I didn’t have to pay at all today because my coffee was in one of the magnolia blossom mugs.”

  “Cute,” Hannah said, a trifle sarcastically. “Contests like that are fun for the customers, but they’re expensive for the owners.”

  “Oh, I know. Shawna Lee told me they give away almost three hundred dollars of baked goods every day.”

  “A lot of new businesses have contests for the first few weeks as part of their grand opening,” Lisa said.

  “They’re doing it for longer than the first few weeks. Vanessa decided they should have two different contests every day for the first three months and then gradually taper off. She hired a marketing consultant to think up the contests.”

  “Oh, boy!” Hannah breathed. There was no way a small, shoestring operation like The Cookie Jar could begin to compete with the Magnolia Blossom’s unlimited financing.

  Lisa gave a dejected sigh. “We can’t afford to give away three hundred dollars of free baked goods every day. And there’s no way I’m going to serve coffee in a short, low-cut dress and bend over a lot!”

  “No need for that,” Norman spoke up. “Not that it wouldn’t be scenic, but the way to a guy’s heart is through his stomach and your baked goods are a quantum leap better than theirs.”

  “Then what do you think we should do?” Hannah asked, moving a little closer to Norman’s side.

  “Just hang on and don’t do anything.” Norman smiled down at her and then he repeated her personal mantra. “Once the novelty wears off, they’ll be back.”

  Chapter Three

  Hannah unlocked her condo door and braced herself for the onslaught. Her cat, Moishe, had been alone since daybreak and he would be eager for food and company.

  “I’m home!” Hannah announced, pushing the door open and oofing a bit as her twenty-plus-pound, orange and white tomcat jumped into her arms. This was one of the few times she could baby her normally independent feline roommate and she nuzzled his fur with her chin. “Did you miss me?”

  “Yow!” Moishe said, licking her nose.

  Since Moishe was purring with the same intensity as a lawn mower stuck on rough-terrain speed, Hannah knew he’d been waiting for her to come home. She shrugged out of her parka coat, juggling Moishe from one arm to the other in the process, and kicked off the moose-hide boots that had earned her a black mark with the Bambi lovers who’d never come within a mile of a moose.

  “Dinnertime,” Hannah announced, carrying her one-eyed friend into the kitchen and setting him down by his food bowl. Then she headed for the broom closet where she kept Moishe’s food, unlocked the padlock she used to secure the door, and frowned as she noticed the new bite marks at the corner of the narrow wooden door. It wouldn’t be long now. Her food-loving cat had chewed through the veneer on the corner of the door and he was well on his way to demolishing the wood. A lock is only as good as the door. Hannah remembered her father’s words, the wisdom he’d imparted to his customers at Lake Eden Hardware. The padlock had Moishe stymied, but he was smart enough to concentrate his efforts on the hollow-core door. Her cat was remodeling her broom closet by adding his own cat-size passage to the mother lode.

  Hannah estimated she had about a week before Moishe invaded the cat food stronghold. It was time to start thinking about another solution, preferably one that didn’t require an armed guard. She couldn’t really blame Moishe for trying to get at his food. He’d lived on the street, not knowing where his next mouse was coming from, and he’d been half starved when he’d arrived at her door. Even though almost two years had passed since that winter day and his girth had doubled with regular meals and then some, he still went into a panic if he could see Garfield’s picture on the bottom of his food bowl.

  “Kitty crunchies, or braised liver tidbits?” Hannah asked her furry roommate. “Or would you like both?”

  The moment Hannah had given him the third choice, Moishe’s purring intensified to a rumble so loud, she could hear it across the room. Hannah interpreted that to mean that her feline friend wanted both liver and kitty crunchies. She would serve them separately, of course. Moishe fancied himself a gourmet and he didn’t like to mix his dry food with his wet food.

  Once Moishe had gobbled down his liver tidbits and was happily crunching his dry food, Hannah headed for the bedroom to get into her at-home clothes. In the summer they consisted of lightweight pull-on pants in a nondescript shade of gray and one of several oversize short-sleeved T-shirts in her favorite color, bright red. The red color of the shirts clashed with her frizzy red curls, but there was no one except Moishe to complain. And even if cats were color-blind, a fact that she sometimes doubted, he was content with Hannah’s appearance as long as she kept his food bowl full.

  “Time for my dinner,” Hannah announced, entering the kitchen again. She was wearing her winter at-home outfit, a cardinal red long-sleeved sweatshirt with matching drawstring pants. “Are you going to be a pest if I have a Klondike Salad?”

  Moishe regarded her with the most innocent of expressions, as if he had absolutely no interest in what she was doing as she took a can of red sock-eye salmon from the cupboard and opened it. Hannah harbored no illusion that his disinterest would last any longer than the first whiff of fish-scented air that reached his nostrils. Moishe loved salmon, especially the most expensive kind the Red Owl Grocery had to offer.

  True to form, Moishe was rubbing against her ankles before Hannah had drained the salmon. She scraped off the silver skin to save for him, along with the soft column of backbones. Then she flaked the salmon into a salad bowl and put a small bag of frozen green peas in the microwave. While the peas were cooking, she grated a quarter of an onion and added it to the salmon. Then she peeled and chopped two of the hard-boiled eggs she always kept as a staple in the refrigerator, cooled the cooked peas by immersing them in ice water, and added everything to her bowl. Mayonnaise was next, mixed with a little sweet pickle juice for flavor. A few grindings of pepper from her pepper mill and her salad was finished.

  Hannah carried her salad to the living room and took her favorite seat on the couch. Moishe, merely to be friendly of course, jumped up to sit right next to her and leaned over so that his nose was only inches from her bowl.

  “I wonder why they call it Klondike Salad,” Hannah mused, picking up her cat and moving him a safe distance away. “I guess it’s because a lot of salmon comes from Alaska.”

  Hannah savored every mouthful and Moishe watched her do it. This went on for several minutes until Hannah couldn’t stand seeing Moishe track her fork from the bowl to her mouth and then back again one more time. She got the scraps she’d saved for him and put them in a bowl on the coffee table. She was just sitting down again when her phone rang.

  “Is it Mother?” Hannah asked the cat whose tail had suddenly swelled into a bush. Moishe wasn’t fond of Delores Swensen and he’d shredded several pairs of her panty hose to prove it. As the phone rang again, Moishe’s hackles rose and he arched his back like a Halloween cat. It was definitely her mother, Hannah decided, and she reached for the phone. “Hello, Mother,” she said.

  “Hannah! I’m so glad you’re hom
e!”

  Delores was breathing hard, in loud little gasps, and Hannah went on instant alert. “Are you all right?”

  “No! Something horrible happened and I’m still reeling in shock! I came within an inch of having a coronary!”

  The mother who was not known for understatement sounded truly panic-stricken, and Hannah’s pulse sped up to crisis rhythm. This could be a real emergency. “What happened?”

  “There was a mouse in my hall closet! I just went to hang up my coat and it…it ran right over my foot! You’ve got to help me, Hannah!”

  “I see,” Hannah said, although she didn’t. What did her mother expect her to do? Drive over and chase the mouse out of her house? “Don’t panic, Mother. A mouse can be a nuisance, but it can’t hurt you.”

  “I know that. It’s just that it touched me! You don’t know how that makes me feel, Hannah. My skin is just crawling!”

  “I’m sorry it upset you, Mother. Do you still have that package of traps Dad kept in the garage?”

  “They’re on the shelf, but I just can’t bring myself to use one. Mousetraps are so cruel.”

  “Not if you bait them right. Put a little glob of peanut butter right in the center of the bait tray so the mouse’s neck is in the right position. Then when he nibbles, the bail snaps forward and…”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Delores interrupted her daughter’s description. “I refuse to use mousetraps, Hannah. They’re inhumane.”

  “Whatever you say, Mother. But you said you wanted my help. What do you expect me to do?”

  “I thought you could bring Moishe over here and he could take care of the problem. It’s only a few miles and you told me he was a good mouser.”

  “You want Moishe to catch your mouse?” Hannah couldn’t believe her ears. The woman who thought mousetraps were inhumane preferred letting Hannah’s mean feline killing machine loose on her tiny rodent?