Peach Cobbler Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  Hannah took the turnoff into town with grim resolve. Mike had once told her that if he decided to marry again, he’d marry her. He’d also told her that he loved her. The three little words had passed his lips only twice, but Hannah was convinced he meant them. The important question for her had to do with loyalty. If Mike was still at the Magnolia Blossom Bakery, she wanted to know it. Comforting a grief-stricken sister shouldn’t take all night.

  What would she do if she saw Mike and Vanessa, silhouetted against the window, locked in a passionate embrace? Hannah groaned at the thought. She wasn’t the morality police and she didn’t have the authority to rap on the window and shout out, “Put your hands in the air! Step away from the cop! Now!” What she would do was drive quietly away and never tell anyone what she’d seen. But she wouldn’t make the mistake of marrying Mike. If he ever asked her. Which was doubtful if he was still with Vanessa.

  Hannah gripped the wheel tightly as she turned into the alley. She had the urge to fold her hands, shut her eyes, and pray that Mike’s Hummer wouldn’t be there. But not even Reverend Knudson, who was a great believer in prayer, advocated driving that way. Instead Hannah concentrated on the alley itself, keeping her truck rolling smoothly through the freshly fallen snow at the center of the pavement, and looking neither to the left nor the right.

  As Hannah approached the parking lot for the Magnolia Blossom Bakery, something hit the side of her truck. She slammed on the brakes and turned just in time to see a snowball hit the passenger window.

  Hannah peered out into the darkness to see a man in a parka standing at the side of the alley. He was forming another snowball and as she watched he pegged it straight at her windshield.

  “Mike?” Hannah gasped, wishing that an alien spaceship would appear overhead and beam her up. But of course that didn’t happen and when he motioned with his hand, she rolled down her window.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Checking up on Vanessa.” Hannah grabbed the first excuse that flashed through her mind. “I figured that if her lights were still on, I’d offer to make her some coffee, or something.”

  It was a lame excuse made even lamer by the blush that colored her cheeks, but Mike didn’t seem to notice and he reached out to pat her hand. “That’s nice of you, but Vanessa’s okay. She fell asleep on the couch about an hour ago and I covered her up with a blanket. I think sleep’s the best thing for her now.”

  “You’re probably right,” Hannah managed to say despite the ton of guilt that settled on her shoulders. Not only had she been spying on Mike, she’d also lied about doing it.

  “I was just going out for some breakfast before I got ready for work. Do you want to run out to the Corner Tavern with me?”

  “I can’t,” Hannah said without regret. The last thing she wanted to do was manufacture more excuses and tell more lies. “I’ve got to get to work. We’ve got lots of customers, now that…you know. Vanessa’s not going to reopen today, is she?”

  “Not today. She’s not in any shape to do the baking.”

  How hard can it be to open up a package of frozen peach cobbler and stick it in the oven? the mean little voice in Hannah’s head asked. But Hannah didn’t say anything. She knew better.

  “Vanessa says she might not reopen at all. She was only doing it for Shawna Lee. See you later, Hannah.”

  Hannah gave a casual little wave as she drove off, but inside she was shaking. Thank goodness Mike hadn’t put two and two together and realized that she’d been checking up on him, not Vanessa!

  So what had she learned from her spying? Hannah asked herself that question as she parked behind The Cookie Jar, plugged in her head-bolt heater, and unlocked the back door. She’d discovered that Mike had still been with Vanessa at five in the morning, but she had no way of knowing if he’d acted as Vanessa’s understanding friend, or if he’d played another, more romantic role. Hannah wanted to think he’d been the understanding friend and it did make some kind of sense. After all, what man would have the hubris to invite his girlfriend out for breakfast when he’d just finished romancing another woman?

  Hannah flicked on the lights and groaned as the answer came to her. Only one man would have the nerve to do something like that. And that man’s name was Mike Kingston.

  Andrea pushed through the door the moment Lisa unlocked it and shivered as she hung up her coat. “There are times when I hate Minnesota!”

  “What happened?” Hannah asked her.

  “I got stuck in the school driveway and three boys from Drew Vavra’s basketball squad had to push me out.”

  “But that’s not so awful,” Lisa commented, bringing Andrea a mug of coffee and two cookies without being asked.

  “Yes, it is. It was really embarrassing. Everybody else was driving right in and out again, and I was the only one who got stuck!”

  “So you hate Minnesota in the winter,” Hannah reiterated. “How about the summer?”

  “I don’t like the summer, either. I hate mosquitoes. And those awful June bugs that bash against the screen and scare you half to death. I want to move to…I don’t know where, but there’s got to be someplace better.”

  “There’s no place better,” Hannah told her, feeling a bit like the Lake Eden Chamber of Commerce and the Minnesota Tourist bureau, all rolled up into one.

  “But there must be!”

  “There isn’t.” Hannah shook her head. “Minnesota’s unique. It holds a special place in the lineup of states.”

  “You’re kidding me!” Andrea accused her, but she was clearly interested in what Hannah had to say.

  “I just don’t know how you can even think of moving away from a state where you can warm up your hands by sticking them in your freezer.”

  Andrea, caught in the act of sipping her coffee, set the mug down with a thunk. “What did you say?”

  “I said that in Minnesota, you can warm up your hands by sticking them in your freezer.”

  “That’s what I thought you said. You’re crazy, Hannah!”

  “No, I’m not. It dipped down to twenty below last night. I heard it on the radio. And the freezer in my refrigerator is thirty degrees above zero. That means it was fifty degrees warmer in my freezer than it was outside.”

  “Yes, but…” Andrea stopped, frowning deeply.

  “If I’d come in from the cold, I could have warmed up my hands by sticking them in my freezer.”

  Lisa was so delighted, she clapped her hands together. “I love it! Just wait until I tell Herb!”

  “Okay,” Andrea conceded. “That’s pretty strange. But you said Minnesota was unique. You can do what you said in Alaska.”

  “True, but do they have all the church suppers we have?” Lisa asked, getting into the spirit of things. “I’ll bet there are more church suppers and potluck fund-raisers within driving distance of Lake Eden than there are days of the year.”

  “You could be right,” Andrea said, looking a little more cheerful. “What else?”

  “Rhubarb,” Hannah jumped in. “Do you think they ask, Think the rain will hurt the rhubarb? in any other state?”

  Lisa started to grin. “I’ll bet Minnesotans have more recipes for rhubarb than any other people in the world. I checked my mother’s recipe file when we were working on the potluck cookbook and she had fifty-seven desserts using rhubarb.”

  “And the leaves are poisonous,” Andrea pointed out. “I wonder which lucky person was the first one to say, Let’s eat the stalk, not the leaves.”

  Hannah nodded. “How about the first person to eat an artichoke? I’d love to know how many people tried, and failed. But getting back to rhubarb, do you remember when Carol Becker published the recipe for Rhubarb Custard Cake in the food column of the Lake Eden Journal?”

  “There’s no way I could forget it,” Lisa said with a laugh. “My mother adored that recipe, and she made my father drive out to every deserted farmhouse to bring back their rhubarb. I had to go along to make sure he cut it off the righ
t way. Then Mom and I cleaned it, cut it up, and froze it so we could have rhubarb cake all winter.”

  “We didn’t.” Andrea turned to Hannah. “Why not?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Mother doesn’t like rhubarb. But do you remember the Strawberry Custard Squares I made?”

  “How could I forget? They were so good!”

  “And how about the Peach Custard Squares?”

  Andrea sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “And the Cherry Custard Squares?”

  “Incredible. You made them for Washington’s Birthday, and I didn’t even know he had his own birthday.”

  “What?” Lisa looked confused.

  Hannah explained that people used to celebrate Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays separately back before Presidents’ Day. After that, they had to share birthdays because everybody wanted a three-day weekend.

  “Washington’s probably spitting cherry pits at Johnson right now,” Hannah quipped. And then because Andrea looked puzzled, she added, “Lyndon B. Johnson was president when they declared Presidents’ Day a holiday. They rationalized it by claiming that Washington’s birthday was under the old-style calendar and it could have been on February eleventh, instead of the twenty-second. That meant people were confused about when to celebrate it, so they lumped Washington and Lincoln together.”

  “You’re so smart, Hannah.” Andrea looked envious. “Sometimes I feel like a fool when you know all the answers and I don’t.”

  “I don’t know all the answers. And don’t put yourself down like that,” Hannah said, prompted by her sister’s unusual candor. “You’re a lot brighter than you think you are.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. How many other people pass the real estate broker’s exam the first time they take it?”

  “Not many. But that’s my work. I’m supposed to do well at that. I still can’t spell possessions. I know you quizzed me on it, Hannah, but I still have to write down belongings or personal property so I don’t have to use it.”

  “But you know that belongings and personal property mean almost the same thing, and that’s just as good.”

  “I do know how to spell lutefisk. You can’t get out of grade school in Minnesota without knowing that.”

  They all laughed at that, including Andrea. And they were still laughing when the phone rang. Lisa hurried to get it and a moment later, Hannah turned to Andrea. “It’s Herb.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “She gets a glow, just like you do when you’re talking to Bill.” Hannah stopped and turned to her sister with an inquiring expression. “Do I get a glow when I’m talking to anyone? Like Norman? Or Mike?”

  Andrea thought about it for a moment and then she shook her head. “I don’t think so. At least not that I’ve noticed.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Hannah said with a sigh. Either her sister was unobservant, which would be highly unusual, or she wasn’t head over heels in love the way Lisa and Andrea were.

  “You can cross Vanessa off your suspect list,” Lisa called out, hanging up the phone and hurrying back to the table. “That was Herb calling from the airport. A clerk at the airline check-in counter remembered her right away when Herb showed her picture. He said he watched her walk all the way up the ramp to the plane.”

  “I’ll bet he did,” Andrea said, not looking pleased at all. “There isn’t a man alive who doesn’t watch Vanessa. And the same went for Shawna Lee. They had all the men in this town acting like complete fools.”

  Hannah went on red alert. Her sister, one of the most trusting wives in Lake Eden, was jealous. And if Hannah hadn’t known that Andrea’s every second was accounted for during Lisa and Herb’s wedding and reception, she might have added family to her suspect list.

  “Oh! No! It’s not possible!” Andrea gasped, clamping her hand over her heart. Her face turned as pale as the snow that decorated the branches of the pine across the street, and she looked ready to pass out in her chair. She was staring out the window and both Hannah and Lisa turned to see what had frightened her so badly. But all they saw was a deserted Main Street with snow piled on either side of the road.

  “What is it?” both Hannah and Lisa asked in tandem, reaching forward to steady Andrea.

  “Across the street! Shawna Lee!”

  “Shawna Lee’s dead,” Hannah reminded her sister, taking Andrea’s hands and rubbing them between hers. “There’s no way you could have seen Shawna Lee.”

  “I know that. It was just…” Andrea stopped and took a huge gulp of air. “For a second there, I thought that I saw her walking outside the Magnolia Blossom Bakery.”

  “That must have been Vanessa. She came in last night,” Hannah told Andrea, still patting her sister’s hand.

  “She’s back?” Lisa asked, looking surprised.

  “For a while. Mike talked to her and she said she doesn’t know whether she’s staying or not.”

  “Well, she nearly gave me a heart attack! She looked exactly like Shawna Lee,” Andrea stammered, taking a deep gulp of air. “For a split second there, I thought I was seeing a ghost!”

  Hannah was silent, deep in thought. Then her eyes narrowed as she faced her sister. “You saw Shawna Lee a lot when you went out to the sheriff’s station?”

  “Yes. She always made a big fuss over me, asking about when the baby was due and things like that. I think she was trying to get on my good side so I’d recommend her…”

  “Never mind,” Hannah truncated that train of thought. Everybody knew that Shawna Lee was an expert at playing politics. “And you met Vanessa several times?”

  “More than several. Al asked me to show her our book of business properties for sale. I tried to talk her out of buying the building across the street. I really did.”

  “I know.”

  “I pointed out everything that was wrong with it, but she still insisted on buying it.”

  “You did your best,” Hannah said. “Forget about that. There’s something else I need to get straight. Just a second ago, when you went all green around the gills…you really thought you saw Shawna Lee?”

  “I did! Ever since Shawna Lee got her hair cut like Vanessa’s, they’ve looked like twins. I know Vanessa’s taller and I could have told the difference if they’d been standing right beside each other, but…but they weren’t.”

  Hannah was quiet for so long that Lisa reached out to nudge her. “What are you thinking, Hannah?”

  “That maybe Andrea’s not the only one who can’t tell the difference between Shawna Lee and Vanessa if they’re not standing right next to each other.”

  There was a long, silent moment when no one spoke. And then Andrea broke the silence. “You mean you think that someone killed Shawna Lee because they thought she was Vanessa?”

  RHUBARB CUSTARD CAKE

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the center position.

  1 package (1 lb., 2.25 oz.) lemon cake mix

  3 to 4 cups peeled cut-up rhubarb***

  1 cup white (granulated) sugar

  2 cups whipping cream or Half ’n Half (I use Half ’n Half)

  Sweetened whipped cream for a topping

  Prepare the inside of a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan by spraying the bottom and sides with nonstick cooking spray and then dusting it with flour. Shake off excess flour.

  Mix the cake according to the package directions.

  Pour the batter into the pan you prepared.

  Spread out the rhubarb on top of the batter.

  Sprinkle the top of the fruit with the sugar.

  Cover the sugar with the cream or Half ’n Half.

  Bake at 350 degrees F. for 45 to 60 minutes. (Mine took 50 minutes.)

  This cake won’t “set up” exactly like a regular cake—the fruit and custard will sink to the bottom and have the consistency of a thick pudding, or a trifle. The top half of the cake will be like a regular cake.

  Cool the cake completely in the pan. Cut it into squares, put them in wide desser
t bowls, and top each serving with a generous dollop of sweetened whipped cream, or ice cream.

  This pudding cake is good served warm, room temperature, or chilled.

  STRAWBERRY CUSTARD SQUARES

  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

  1 cup flour (no need to sift)

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ½ cup chilled butter (1 stick, ¼ pound)

  2 Tablespoons whipping cream (1/8 cup)

  ½ cup flour (not a misprint—you’ll use 1½ cups in this part of the recipe)

  ½ cup white (granulated) sugar

  3 cups sliced strawberries***

  TOPPING:

  ½ cup white (granulated) sugar

  1 Tablespoon flour

  2 eggs, beaten (just whip them up in a glass with a fork)

  1 cup whipping cream

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or strawberry if you have it)

  Spray a 13-inch by 9-inch cake pan with nonstick cooking spray.

  In a small bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in the half cup of butter until the resulting mixture looks like coarse sand. (You can do this in the food processor with a steel blade if you like.) Stir in the cream and pat the dough into the bottom of your cake pan.

  Combine the ½ cup flour and the sugar. Sprinkle it over the crust in the pan and put the sliced strawberries (or other fruit) on top.

  Topping: Mix the sugar and flour. Stir in the eggs, cream, and vanilla (or other extract). Pour the mixture over the top of the fruit in the pan.

  Bake at 375 degrees F. for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned. Cool on a rack, and then refrigerate.

  Serve warm or chilled, with sweetened whipped cream or ice cream for a topping.

  Yield: 10 to 12 dessert squares.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Hello, you’ve reached the Rhodes Dental Clinic. If this is a dental emergency and you need to page Dr. Rhodes, please press one. If this is a nonemergency call and you’d like to leave a message on the doctor’s voice mail, please press two. If you need to make an appointment to see Dr. Rhodes for a consultation, please press three for our automated appointment desk. If you have a fax to transmit, please press four. If you’d like our mailing address, please press five. For handy tips to reduce tooth pain while waiting to contact Dr. Rhodes, please press six. To repeat these options, please stay on the line.”