Peach Cobbler Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “I’ll make it worth his while. I’ve got a package of shrimp in the freezer. You can take it with you when he’s done and he can have a nice treat when he gets home.”

  Hannah started to chortle. “You want to hire my cat as an assassin and pay him off in frozen shrimp?”

  “You don’t have to put it quite that way. But really, dear…I’ve always hated mice and I won’t get a wink of sleep tonight knowing that it’s running around loose.”

  Hannah sighed. That was probably true. The sleeping mind could play all sorts of tricks. Her mother might dream that she was being chased by a giant rodent and really have a heart attack.

  “Hold on and I’ll talk it over with Moishe,” Hannah said, unwilling to cave in too easily and encourage more requests for help from her mother. Coaxing Moishe into his traveling crate wasn’t easy, and listening to him complain as she drove to town wouldn’t be pleasant.

  “You have to talk it over with a cat? For heaven’s sake, Hannah! You’re acting as if he’s your child!”

  “He’s better than a child. Think about it, Mother. Moishe doesn’t ask for an allowance, he eats cold food straight out of the can, he toilet trained himself, and he’s never going to need money for college.”

  There was silence for a moment and then Delores started to laugh. There were times when her sense of humor won out over her oh-so-proper exterior. Hannah was grinning as she turned to her cat, who was sitting on the coffee table grooming his tail. “What do you say, Moishe? Are you in the mood to do a little mouse hunting for hire?”

  As she said the word mouse, Moishe’s ears tipped toward her, swiveling like miniature satellite dishes. Hannah turned back to the phone. “He’s definitely interested,” she reported.

  “Then you’ll come?”

  “Of course I’ll come,” Hannah said, wondering why out of three daughters, a son-in-law, and a whole phone book of friends, Delores always called her when there was a problem.

  “Why is he hissing like that?” Delores asked, leaning down to peer into the cat carrier. “Do you think he smells the mouse?”

  No, he sees you, Hannah thought but she didn’t say it. It was probably best if her mother didn’t know how much Moishe disliked her. “He’s not fond of traveling,” Hannah excused her bristling, hissing pet. And that was a masterful understatement, since her ears were still ringing from Moishe’s non-stop yowls of protest all the way from her condo garage to her mother’s driveway. “Where’s the mouse?”

  “In the guest room. He dashed out of the closet and ran in there. I chased after him and shut the door.”

  Hannah lugged Moishe through her mother’s living room, a pale blue room filled with museum-quality antiques and artwork. It was immaculate, as always. Delores didn’t clean it herself. Marjorie Hanks, Luanne’s mother, came in to polish, dust, wash, and wax every Tuesday and every Friday. In high school science, Hannah had learned that nature abhorred a vacuum and the same could be said for her mother.

  “Is it heavy?” Delores asked, as Hannah set the carrier down in the hallway for a moment to get a better grip.

  “Yes,” Hannah answered, not mentioning that it was one of the more inane questions she’d ever heard. She hoisted her hissing burden, carried him to the guest room door, and set him down again with a grunt. “Okay. He’s ready to go.”

  “He doesn’t look very happy about it,” Delores said, peering in through the grate again.

  “He’ll be okay once I let him out of the carrier, but I’d better supervise to make sure nothing gets knocked over. And I think we should shut the door behind us so the mouse can’t escape.”

  Hannah glanced up at her mother. She was a bit concerned about what would happen when she let Moishe out of his carrier. If Delores was in the room with them, he might just decide to shred her stockings before he hunted down the visiting rodent. “You don’t want to come in with us and watch, do you?”

  “Good heavens, no!” Delores looked horrified. “I’ll go put on a pot of coffee. You can come and get me when it’s over.”

  Chapter Four

  “It just about killed Moishe not to go for that mouse, but he sat there like a miniature statue of the Sphinx and let it run circles around him,” Hannah reported to Lisa as they had an early morning cup of coffee at their favorite table in the back of The Cookie Jar. “I know he wanted it. He was making that excited little ack-ack sound in his throat, the one he always makes right before he pounces on a bug.”

  “That’s really strange, especially because he’s such a good mouser. Do you think the strange surroundings threw him off?”

  “I guess that could have been a factor, but I don’t think so. I’m almost positive he knew he’d be catching that mouse as a favor to Delores.”

  “And he didn’t want to do a favor for someone he didn’t like?”

  “Right. Do you think I’m crazy for attributing such a complicated motive to a cat?”

  Lisa shook her head. “Moishe’s not just any cat. He’s the smartest cat I’ve ever met and it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if you were right. Was your mother upset when he didn’t get rid of her mouse?”

  “She doesn’t know. I told her she didn’t have to worry about the mouse anymore, and I made sure the guest room door was open when we left. I’m hoping it’ll go out the same way it got in.”

  “How about if she sees it again?”

  “She’ll think it’s a different mouse. It’s not like they wear name tags, you know. And that might be enough to convince her to let me come over and set traps.”

  The phone shrilled sharply and Hannah exchanged glances with Lisa. It could be someone with a catering order, but there hadn’t been any catering orders for at least a week.

  “Your mother?” Lisa asked.

  “Mother,” Hannah said at the very same time.

  The two friends and business partners laughed. Then Hannah got up to answer the phone, hoping that the call had nothing to do with reappearing mice. “Hello, Mother.”

  “How did you know it was me?” Delores asked. “It could have been someone with a catering order.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

  “You’re right, and that’s why I called. I was in the Magnolia Blossom Bakery yesterday and it was wall-to-wall people. They’re cutting into your business, aren’t they?”

  “You could say that.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. We tasted their cobbler and it wasn’t anything special. I think that you should make a peach cobbler and give those two a run for their money.”

  Hannah was silent for a moment. The idea of fighting fire with fire appealed to her. The population of Lake Eden in the winter wasn’t large enough to support two bakeries and that meant the Magnolia Blossom had to go.

  “What do you think? Will you do it? The Lake Eden Quilting Society meets tomorrow afternoon and I’m in charge of refreshments. I thought I’d order a pan of peach cobbler from Shawna Lee and Vanessa, and a pan of peach cobbler from you. We can serve them side by side and the girls can compare.”

  “I’ll do it,” Hannah said. She was spoiling for a showdown, just like John Wayne in The Shootist. “This town’s not big enough for the both of us.”

  “The meeting’s at one, so I’ll pick up the cobbler right before I leave Granny’s Attic.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can deliver it.”

  “But isn’t that your busy time?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Oh. Well, maybe we can change that. One other thing, dear…I picked up another package of shrimp for Moishe. He enjoyed it, didn’t he?”

  “There’s nothing left but the empty package.” Hannah told the absolute truth, but not all of it. Moishe had refused to touch the shrimp and Hannah had ended up making shrimp gumbo for tonight’s dinner.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the way he got rid of that mouse!”

  “And I can’t tell you what fun he had,” Hannah countered. That was true, t
oo. She couldn’t tell her mother about the fun that Moishe hadn’t had.

  After Hannah had said good-bye and hung up the phone, she turned to find Lisa staring at her curiously. “Sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhear your part of the conversation. Did your mother just give you a catering order?”

  “Yes, for peach cobbler. She’s ordering one pan from us, and one from the Magnolia Blossom Bakery. The ladies in the Lake Eden Quilting Society are going to compare them.”

  “It sounds like a Bake-Off where the contestants all have to make the same dish.”

  “With one important difference,” Hannah said, looking slightly abashed. “I was so excited at the prospect of facing down Shawna Lee and Vanessa, I forgot that I’d never made a peach cobbler before in my life!”

  “Definitely better,” Andrea said, popping another spoonful of Hannah’s peach cobbler into her mouth. “You won, Hannah!”

  “What do you think, Tracey?” Hannah asked her five-year-old niece, who’d just gotten out of school.

  “It’s yummy.” Tracey nodded so hard, her blond curls bounced. “Can you bake this for my birthday, Aunt Hannah?”

  “Sure,” Hannah promised. Tracey’s birthday was in September and this was February. Tracey would probably change her mind several times in the interim.

  “But I always make you a Jell-O Cake for your birthday,” Andrea reminded her, sounding a bit hurt.

  “I know, Mommy. And that’s what I want for my regular birthday cake. Your Jell-O Cake is my very favorite. But I was wondering if maybe, since it’s my birthday, I could have two desserts.”

  “Well…I think that might be arranged,” Andrea said.

  Hannah noticed that her sister was all smiles again. She’d long thought that her niece would make a great candidate for the diplomatic corps and now she was even more convinced.

  Every chair at the back of the coffee shop was filled for this important taste testing. Lisa had called in Hannah’s most ardent fans. Lisa’s husband-to-be was there, of course. And once Herb had learned the purpose of Lisa’s urgent summons, he’d stopped at the community center library to pick up his mother, Marge Beeseman, and Lisa’s father, Jack Herman.

  “Here comes Daddy!” Tracey called out as Bill Todd, the new Winnetka County Sheriff, came in the front door. Sheriff Todd was accompanied by his former partner and the man who made Hannah’s pulse approximate a ragged drumroll, detective Mike Kingston.

  “Are we too late?” Mike asked.

  “Just in time,” Lisa said, dishing up two more bowls. Correctly interpreting that Hannah had been rendered momentarily speechless by the warm smile of greeting Lake Eden’s most-wanted bachelor had given her, Lisa told both men to pull up chairs by Delores and Carrie, who’d dashed in from Granny’s Attic next door. Winthrop Harrington the Second, Hannah’s mother’s significant other, sat between Delores and Carrie, and Norman, who’d dropped in between dental appointments, completed the roster of taste testers.

  “You’re here to compare our peach cobbler with the peach cobbler they serve at the Magnolia Blossom Bakery,” Lisa repeated the instructions Hannah had given the others. “We need to know if you think it’s better, the same, or not as good.”

  “Like anybody’s going to say it’s not as good with Aunt Hannah sitting right here,” Tracey said “Sorry, Mommy. I know we’re supposed to give our honest opinion, or it won’t help. Hi, Dad.”

  “Hi, sweetheart.” Bill pulled his chair in next to Tracey and gave her a kiss. Then he accepted his bowl from Lisa and dug right in.

  “Yours is better,” Mike said, after taking only one bite. “Their peaches are too mushy.”

  “That’s exactly what I was going to say,” Bill added. “Theirs taste like canned, but yours taste like fresh. Where did you get fresh peaches in February?”

  “I didn’t. They’re frozen. The trick is not letting them thaw all the way before you bake them.”

  “I must remember to tell my cook that technique when I return to England.” Winthrop gave Hannah a cordial smile. “It’s brilliant, my dear. And your peach cobbler is simply exquisite.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said in her best effort to be gracious. Winthrop had been the soul of geniality at their infrequent meetings, but she just couldn’t seem to warm up to him. She still missed her father and seeing Delores with anyone else was a jolt.

  “I think your spices are just right, dear,” Delores offered up her opinion.

  “Perfect,” Carrie agreed. “Their cobbler has so much cinnamon, you can’t even tell you’re eating peaches. It could be…practically anything at all.”

  “Soda crackers,” Jack Herman said, winking at Lisa.

  “What?” several in the group chorused.

  “Soda crackers,” Jack Herman repeated. “Lisa’s mother used to make something called ‘Mock Apple Pie.’ It used soda crackers and there wasn’t an apple in it.”

  Hannah noticed that Lisa, Marge, and Herb all turned to smile at Jack warmly and that made her feel good. The experimental drug-testing program was working. It wasn’t a cure. He still had Alzheimer’s and nothing could change that. But his memory had improved and it was no longer such a struggle for him to communicate.

  “You know that recipe, don’t you, Hannah?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t think so. But apples are available all year in Minnesota. Why would anyone want to make a mock apple pie when they could use real apples?”

  “Just to see if they could,” Norman answered promptly. “It’s like training a dog to walk on his hind legs. It’s not that he can do it well…it’s that he can do it at all.”

  “Samuel Johnson. But it wasn’t a dog,” Hannah countered, remembering the story of the woman preacher and bristling slightly.

  “Tracey has that book, but there’s nothing in it about dog training,” Andrea said, looking confused.

  “What book?”

  “Sam Johnson and the Blue Ribbon Quilt. It’s a picture book Mother gave her. It’s about a man who loves to quilt.”

  Hannah and Norman locked eyes. The message that flashed between them was clear. Neither one of them wanted to embarrass Andrea by explaining that they’d been referring to Dr. Samuel Johnson, not a character in a children’s book. Hannah was fairly certain that the closest their eighteenth-century literary figure had come to quilting was to sleep under one.

  “Sounds like a good book,” Hannah said, because the silence that greeted Andrea’s remark was deafening.

  “I liked it a lot when I was little,” Tracey spoke up. Then she picked up her bowl and turned to Lisa. “Can I have seconds, Aunt Lisa? It’s really good!”

  Lisa scooped more cobbler into Tracey’s bowl and went around the table with second helpings. When she reached Bill, he watched while she broke the crust with the tip of her serving spoon and lifted it out to top the peaches in his bowl. “What’s the topping? It tastes a little like something I’ve had before.”

  “It is,” Hannah said with a laugh. “It’s a variation of the topping on your mother’s coffee cake. I tried to think of what qualities I wanted, and that was the first taste that popped into my mind.”

  “Is that how you come up with new recipes?” Carrie wanted to know.

  “Yes. I always start out thinking about what it should be and go from there. I decided that this topping should be halfway between a sugar cookie and a sweet biscuit.”

  “That’s exactly what you got,” Marge said, plunging her spoon into the topping and smiling as it gave a satisfying crunch. “It’s just perfect, Hannah. Really.”

  “Let’s start the poll,” Herb suggested, taking out the small notebook he carried in his pocket to write down the license plate numbers of cars that failed to observe city traffic regulations. The first time a plate number appeared in Herb’s notebook, the owner got a warning. But if the plate number reappeared, Herb issued a ticket. “The three categories are better, the same, or not as good?” He turned to Lisa for confirmation.

  “That’s right.
Let’s start with you, Herb. What did you think?”

  “Better. I’ll mark myself down.”

  “Mike?” Lisa continued, going around the table in order.

  “A lot better.”

  Mike looked over at Hannah with a smile. Hannah smiled back politely, hoping he hadn’t heard her heart thudding in her chest. Mike might think that flattery could get him everywhere and perhaps it could with most women, but Hannah wasn’t about to melt down into a little puddle of gratitude every time he decided to pay attention to her.

  “If theirs is a one, Hannah’s is a ten,” Bill said.

  “Much, much better,” Delores said, turning to smile at Hannah. “The quilting club ladies are going to just love it, especially when I tell Regina that you got the idea for the topping from her coffee cake. It’s good of you to give her credit, dear. Some people wouldn’t, you know.”

  Hannah basked in her mother’s approval. It didn’t come that often and when it did, she enjoyed it immensely. Then she noticed that Delores had cleaned her bowl until it was practically spotless. For the woman who believed that it was polite to leave a few morsels on her plate, this was high praise indeed!

  One by one, Lisa went around the table and Herb jotted down the answers. The unanimous result was no surprise to anyone. Hannah’s peach cobbler won, hands-down, over Vanessa and Shawna Lee’s signature dessert.

  “You might know it,” Bill said, as his cell phone chimed. He glanced down at the readout on the screen and frowned. “We’ve got to run, Hannah. There’s a three-car pileup out on the interstate.”

  That was the signal to break up the party. Winthrop left along with Bill and Mike, and Delores and Carrie pushed back their chairs.

  “We left Luanne to run the store,” Carrie explained, “and she hasn’t had her break yet.”

  “Thanks for coming.” Hannah smiled at both of them. “I’ll see you out.”

  Lisa put her hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Sit. I’ll walk your mother and Carrie to the kitchen and give them the bowl of peach cobbler I set aside for Luanne.”