Cream Puff Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “Last year?” Hannah groaned loudly. “I gained some weight since last year. I can’t get into the dress Mother gave me anymore. It’s way too tight across the…well, you know.”

  “Backside?”

  “Yes, and other places, too.”

  Andrea looked thoughtful as she signed the check and added a tip. She led the way to the door and as she pushed it open, she said, “We’ll have Claire let it out as much as she can and go from there.”

  Not even the soothing décor of Claire’s nicest dressing room could turn Hannah’s ordeal at Beau Monde Fashions into a pleasure. Wallpaper the color of green tea with a lovely rose border could not erase the fact that her dress wouldn’t button.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Claire said, her voice floating in through the louvers of the dressing room door. “Bob and I are really grateful to you as an enabler.”

  “Huh?” Hannah was thoroughly puzzled.

  “The way you helped us tell the congregation that we wanted to get married.”

  “Thanks.” Hannah remembered the morning in church when she’d made the announcement that Reverend Robert Knudson and Claire were planning to be married. She’d certainly overstepped the bounds of friendship by forcing the issue in such a public way, but everything had turned out all right. She was just patting herself on the back, mentally, for a job well done, when she realized that Claire had used the word enabler. “You’re seeing a marriage counselor?” she guessed.

  “A pre-marriage counselor, someone from the synod. It’s recommended when a minister gets married. Anyway…I don’t have any family and…will you be our maid of honor for the wedding?”

  Hannah took a moment to think that over. The old saying, Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride, didn’t apply in her case since she’d walked down the aisle as a bridesmaid five times in the past. “I’d love to, Claire. Thanks for asking me. But you’d better order a larger size dress.”

  “There’s a problem?” Claire glanced in as Hannah opened the door, and not even the soft pink bulb in the overhead lamp could hide her dismay. “Oh, dear!!”

  “What’s wrong?” Andrea asked, coming up behind Claire. Hannah glanced at her sister. Of course Andrea’s dress fit perfectly. She hadn’t gained an ounce since high school.

  “Hannah’s dress is too tight,” Claire murmured, stating the obvious.

  “And how!” Andrea shook her head. “Is there anything you can do?”

  Claire gave a little shrug. “I can let it out, but not that much. They clipped the seams.”

  Even though she wasn’t a seamstress, Hannah knew that meant she was in trouble. “Can you order a larger size?”

  “There’s no time. It takes at least two months for a special order, and your mother’s party is only two weeks away.” Claire thought for a moment and then she turned to Hannah with a hopeful look. “You said you were serving the refreshments. What kind of apron will you be wearing?”

  “See-through lace. Mother ordered them from a catalogue.”

  “Then we’ve had it. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Hannah asked, hoping that Claire had come up with a miracle.

  “Unless I put in inserts.”

  “Can you do that?” Hannah asked her.

  Claire picked up the hem of Hannah’s dress and looked at it. “There’s not much material, and it’s a large print. I’m not sure I can match it.”

  “What does that mean?” Andrea asked, every bit as clueless as Hannah was.

  “It means that I’m a good tailor, but it’s still going to look like we had to enlarge it because it was too small.”

  “Okay,” Andrea said, turning to Hannah. “Hurry up and change back into your regular clothes. I’ve got a plan.”

  Hannah wasted no time in peeling herself out of the dress and handing it out the door to Claire. In less time than it would take her to beat a meringue by hand, not that she ever would, she emerged from the pretty little dressing room, zipping up her parka.

  “I’ll call you later, Claire,” Andrea said, hustling Hannah out the door.

  “What plan?” Hannah asked, turning up her collar as she headed across the parking lot for the back door of her bakery and coffee shop, The Cookie Jar.

  “You’re already on a diet. You told me that, and it’s all to the good. That means we’ve got two whole weeks to firm you up.”

  “Firm me up?!” Hannah uttered the words in the same shocked tone she would have used if her cat, Moishe, had barked to greet her when she opened the door. “Does firming up mean what I think it means?”

  “It does.” Andrea braced herself against the wind that almost claimed the little fur hat she was wearing. “I bought a year’s membership at Heavenly Bodies, and it comes with a guest pass. I’ll get you enrolled in my Classic Contours class. That’s a program to discover your ideal shape.”

  Hannah was about to object when she reconsidered. Classic Contours didn’t sound bad, especially if the classic part had something to do with classic art. The women Reubens painted certainly weren’t featherweights. Then there were the Gibson Girls, and no one could describe them as sylphlike, and…

  “Once you discover your perfect shape, you use individual body sculpting to achieve and maintain it. Each one of us has a series of personalized exercises we do.”

  She’d known it was too good to be true. Hannah gave a deep sigh and put away thoughts of well-proportioned, plus-size ladies.

  “Anyway,” Andrea went on. “I’ll call out there and sign you up, and my personal fitness coach will design an exercise program for you.”

  “Uh-oh,” Hannah breathed, giving a little shudder. The phrase fitness coach was not in her vocabulary. Even worse, the phrase exercise program brought back painful memories of mandatory calisthenics in elementary school gym class.

  “Don’t worry. It won’t cost you anything,” Andrea reassured her, completely misinterpreting Hannah’s near-panicked expression. “Roger, my fitness coach, owes me one. I’m advertising his classes on my real estate flyers.”

  “It’s not the money. It’s just that I’m not cut out for an exercise regime. It’s never worked for me before, and…” Hannah stopped and sighed again. She really wanted to tell her sister to forget it, but she knew how disappointed Delores would be if all three of her daughters weren’t wearing the dresses she’d bought for her launch party. Were two weeks of her life too much to give for her mother’s happiness?

  Andrea sensed Hannah’s ambivalence, and she gave her closing argument. “If you exercise every day, use the right machines, and stick to your diet, you’ll be able to fit into your dress before Mother’s party.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do. Just say yes, and we’ll get started bright and early Monday morning.”

  Tomorrow was Sunday. At least she had one day to enjoy before Andrea cracked down the hammer. Hannah had made a solemn promise four years ago, right after she’d embarked upon a jogging regime that had lasted less than a week. She’d vowed to never again throw herself into an activity she knew she wouldn’t complete. It was a waste of time, an assignment in futility, an endeavor that was fated to end in defeat.

  “I love you just the way you are, Hannah.” Andrea reached out to give her a little hug. “But just think of how proud Mother will be when she sees all three of us in the lovely dresses she chose for us.”

  Guilt reared its ugly head, and Hannah groaned. Andrea was pulling out all the stops to close the deal, a tactic she must have learned in real estate school.

  “Yes?” Andrea prodded.

  Hannah felt as if her life was about to pass in front of her eyes, but there was no help for it. She had to make their mother proud. “If you’re sure it’ll work, I’ll do it.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I just wish I’d known all this before we left Bertanelli’s,” she muttered, opening the back door and ushering Andrea in.

  “So you could have ordered your salad without dressing?”
<
br />   “Not exactly.”

  “Why then?” Andrea hung her coat on one of the hooks by the door and settled herself on a stool at the stainless steel work island.

  “So I could have ordered a jumbo pizza for my last meal.”

  Chapter Two

  It was early Monday morning, and there was only one light in her bedroom. That was the way Hannah wanted it. She was dreading the event that was about to take place, and shedding light on it would only make it worse. She’d promised herself she’d never do this, but circumstances had changed.

  Hannah sat down at the dressing table and addressed the large orange-and-white cat reclining at the foot of her bed. “I’m warning you, Moishe. If you say anything at all, you’re history!”

  Total silence greeted her, and Hannah was reassured. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Other people did it, and they seemed to enjoy it. She’d even heard several say that it gave them a lift, made them more aware and alert, more equipped to handle the stresses of the day.

  She didn’t believe it for a second. No good would come of what she was about to do. She’d much rather sit here all day debating the pros and cons of her decision, but she had to get going or she’d be late.

  “Okay,” she said, standing up and addressing Moishe again. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, so here goes nothing.” And then she shrugged out of the robe she was wearing and turned to face the mirror.

  There was dead silence in the room. It was the same silence that followed a terrible disaster, the same eerie stillness that motorists talked about after a multicar pileup on the interstate. It was the total absence of sound that occurred after every catastrophe, and it was even more of a catastrophe than Hannah had thought it would be.

  A generous sprinkling of silvering in the center of her reflection could have spared her this moment. Spidery cracks splitting the glass into irregular shapes and turning her image into a Dali painting would have done the trick as well. Even better, the entire mirror could have fallen forward onto the floor, leaving nothing but an ornamental frame around the paper Delores had chosen for the walls of her eldest daughter’s boudoir.

  “Good grief!” Hannah moaned, echoing Charlie Brown’s famous utterance. She’d known it would be bad, but not this bad. The screaming yellow accents on her black exercise outfit called blaring attention to the extra padding around her middle. Her legs, encased in black tights, looked like stout tree trunks, fully capable of supporting the oh-so-much larger torso than she’d realized she had. She’d chosen to wear black because it was slimming, but there was no escaping the truth. She was stout, like her Grandma Swensen. And although she’d loved her grandmother with every fiber of her being, she’d never aspired to actually look like her.

  “At least no one will see me except a bunch of other women trying to lose weight,” Hannah told the cat, who was bristling slightly as he regarded her with round, unblinking eyes. “I know I don’t look good, but I wish you wouldn’t bristle that way.”

  Moishe made no sound, but Hannah thought the hair on his back smoothed out a bit. It was time for a fish-flavored reward, and then she had to leave. She’d promised to meet Andrea at the Tri-County Mall to go over her exercise routine before class started. Hannah’s plan was to learn the exercises, attend the thirty-minute class, and then drive to The Cookie Jar to help her partner finish the baking for the day.

  It took only a few moments to get ready to go. Hannah turned on the television for Moishe, made sure his food bowl was full to the brim, and checked to make sure he had plenty of water. Then she slipped into her longest jacket, one her grandmother would have called a car coat, grabbed her purse and her car keys, tossed several treats to the cat who was waiting patiently on the back of the couch, and hurried out the door.

  A chill wind whipped her red curls into an even more unruly state than usual. This second week in November was cold, and it smelled like snow was on the way. But something was wrong, and Hannah stopped midway down the outside stairs from her second floor condo to figure out what it was.

  There were no strange noises coming from any of the condos, and the smooth expanse of snow that had fallen during the night was unbroken by human footprints. All the doors and windows in her line of sight were intact, and she didn’t see any evidence of burglary or vandalism. Everything seemed to be perfectly normal, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  There was a faint cyan cast to the landscape, and the wood siding on the condos stood out in sharp relief. The scene reminded Hannah of an old sepia photograph she’d seen of her grandparents’ farm. The color was different. The shadows in the photograph were brown, but the shadows she saw now were bluish-black. They were different than anything she’d ever seen before.

  Blue light. She thought about that for a moment. Was this some kind of natural phenomenon like a meteor shower, or a blue moon? Hannah hurried down the covered staircase and looked up at the sky. She didn’t see anything unusual in the heavens. The only difference between this morning and any other morning was the light. The sky was brighter in the east than it had ever been before.

  A delighted laugh escaped Hannah’s lips. Her mirth took a visible form in the icy air, and the little cloud of vapor that formed reminded Hannah of the balloon above a cartoon character’s head. To carry the analogy even further, the balloon should be filled with a lightbulb to show that she’d figured out what was amiss. Of course things looked different this morning. She was accustomed to leaving her condo at five AM when it was pitch black. On this particular morning she was a full hour later than usual.

  Hannah stepped carefully on the sidewalk between the buildings and took the stairs down to the garage. It was underground, stretching the length of her four-condo building and extending across to serve the four units in the building next door. Hannah hurried down the steps. She had to rush to meet Andrea on time, and as she reached the bottom step, she came very close to running into her downstairs neighbor, Phil Plotnik, who worked nights at DelRay Manufacturing.

  “Whoa!” Phil said, reaching out to grab her arms. “What are you doing here this time of morning? Did you sleep late?”

  “Not really. Lisa’s handling the baking this morning, and I’m meeting Andrea at the mall.”

  “I thought the mall didn’t open until ten.”

  “It doesn’t, but Andrea’s a member at Heavenly Bodies and she’s got a key to their outside door. We’re going to work out before anyone else gets there.”

  Phil looked surprised, but he didn’t say anything and Hannah gave him credit for that. Silence was definitely golden when it came to the topics of losing weight and exercising. In lieu of asking questions or offering his opinion, Phil simply walked her to her cookie truck and opened the driver’s door for her. “Will you be at The Cookie Jar later?”

  “I should be there by the time we open at nine,” Hannah told him, and that was when she noticed that he looked worried. “Is something wrong?”

  “Sue’s been really depressed lately, and I thought I’d stop by this afternoon and get something nice for her.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Phil. But why is she depressed?”

  “I think it’s because she’s dreading the winter cooped up in our condo with Kevin.”

  Hannah tried to remember how old Kevin was. He had been born at the beginning of the winter, and she was almost sure it was two years ago. This meant that Sue and Phil’s son was in his terrible twos. “Kevin just turned two, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, on November third. It wasn’t so hard on Sue when he was little. He slept a lot then, but now he’s really active and Sue has to watch him all the time.”

  Hannah did her best to imagine raising a toddler. It must be difficult to be closeted with the responsibility of a child for twenty-four hours a day. “I’ll bet Sue doesn’t get much free time.”

  “You said it! The only time she has is when Kevin’s napping, and he never naps for long. She gets time for a shower and maybe a quick flip t
hrough the paper before he wakes up, but that’s about it.”

  “How about at night when he goes to bed?”

  “We get an hour alone, just the two of us, and then I have to get ready for work. I’m on the swing shift now. After I leave at nine thirty, Sue’s usually so exhausted she goes straight to bed.”

  Hannah was silent. That didn’t sound like much of a life at all. “She worked at DelRay before Kevin was born, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, in the office.”

  “Did she like it?”

  Phil shrugged. “It was okay and the money was good, but what she really wanted to do was teach. As soon as Kevin’s old enough for school, she’s going to go back to college and get her degree. She’s only got a couple of courses to go.”

  A dim light began to flicker in the back of Hannah’s mind, and in less time than it took her to realize that she had to hurry or she’d be late meeting Andrea at the mall, she had an idea. She wouldn’t mention it now. She didn’t want to raise hopes and then dash them.

  “You can relax, Phil,” she told him. “I’ve got something that’ll perk Sue right up. What’s your schedule like today?”

  “It’s like every other workday. I play with Kevin for a while so Sue can get some work done, and then I sleep from about eight to three.”

  “Can you drop by the coffee shop when you wake up?”

  “Sure. Are you going to make something special for Sue?”

  “You bet. It’s impossible to worry about anything when you’re eating chocolate, and I’m going to come up with a cookie for Sue that’ll cheer her up for the whole week.”

  It was almost bright enough to drive without headlights when Hannah pulled into the parking lot at the Tri-County Mall. She passed Bergstrom’s Department Store, locked up tight until it opened at ten, and headed to the north end of the shopping center where the street door for Heavenly Bodies was located. The parking lot was completely deserted, and Hannah pulled into the space at the right of the door. Andrea wasn’t here yet, which didn’t surprise Hannah. It had taken a blaring alarm clock, several none-too-gentle shakes on the shoulder, and threats of dire bodily harm to get Andrea out of bed when they were in high school.