by Joanne Fluke
They’d reached the front door, and Hannah opened it. She could hardly wait for Mike to leave. She was sick and tired of everyone telling her how she should spend her time.
“Night, Hannah,” Mike said, and then he pulled her into his arms for a kiss.
Conflicting emotions assailed Hannah. On the one hand, she was irked at Mike for telling her how to run her investigation, her weight-loss program, and her life in general. On the other hand, he was the best kisser in the whole county, perhaps even the whole state. Hannah felt the tingles spread up from her toes and travel all the way to the top of her head. They made the return trip from head to toes as the kiss went on for second after delicious second.
“I’d better let you get some sleep,” Mike said at last, breaking their embrace. “See you soon, Hannah.”
Hannah nodded. She was incapable of further speech. As she closed the door behind him, she thought that perhaps she wouldn’t mind Mike’s high-handedness quite so much if he’d kiss her like that more often!
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hannah refilled the food tube on Moishe’s Kitty Valet and secured the lid. Then she put the sack of cat food back in the broom closet and locked the door. Everything was set. All she had to do was remember to turn on the kitty-cam when she left, and her stockpiling cat would be caught red-pawed.
“All set?” Michelle asked, coming into the kitchen in her winter parka and boots.
“I am. But you really don’t have to go down to The Cookie Jar this early. If you get there by six, that should be plenty of time to help Lisa with the baking.”
“I’m leaving with you. I want to give Moishe plenty of time to hide his food. I bet it’s behind the stove.”
“You’re wrong about that. Moishe can’t fit in back of the stove. Besides, the camera wouldn’t catch that. It’s trained on the living room door. Mike wants to see Moishe leaving the kitchen with the food in his mouth so we can find out which way he goes.”
“Do you really think it’ll work?” Michelle looked dubious as Hannah reached up to flick the red switch.
“Why not? Unless Moishe’s savvy enough to jump up there with a can of spray paint and coat the lens of the camera, we’re going to see him heading into the living room with a load of kitty crunchies in his mouth.”
“Here they are,” Andrea said, pulling three envelopes out of her briefcase and placing them on the table as if she were dealing giant cards in a game of solitaire. She tapped the envelope on her left with a perfectly manicured fingernail. “The crime lab report,” she announced, and then she moved to the middle envelope. “Autopsy. And this…” she tapped the envelope on the right, “…this envelope contains copies of the crime scene photos.”
“Norman and I haven’t had our cookies yet,” Michelle complained. “Let’s start with the crime lab report. Anything else might make us lose our appetites.”
“I think that’s doubtful,” Hannah said. And she watched her youngest sister in amusement as Michelle handed Norman a napkin with two cookies and then took three for herself. If Michelle didn’t start watching what she ate, she’d be joining them in their Classic Body Sculpting class before you could say, Pass the cookies, please.
It was the eleven o’clock lull at The Cookie Jar, the time of day when most people felt it was too late for a midmorning snack cookie and too early for a lunch cookie. Lisa’s husband, Herb, was talking to their sole customer, Earl Flensburg, so that Lisa could join in their crime-solving discussion at the table in the back of the shop.
The crime lab report was short, and everyone listened as Hannah read it aloud. There were no surprises and no clues. Since the gazebo was a public area in a busy spa and gym, there was no useful fingerprint evidence. The hair and fiber evidence was more of the same. The Jacuzzi was used by hundreds of people every day, and there was no telling whether the samples they’d collected were from members, guests, or the killer, who could also be a member or a guest. In short there was nothing found at the scene that provided any clue to the identity of Ronni’s killer.
Andrea sighed. “Well, that was a waste. Let’s go on to the autopsy report.”
“Wait a second,” Michelle said, popping the last bite into her mouth and swallowing. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Hannah handed the envelope to Norman. “You’d better read it. You know all the medical words, and you can translate it into laymen’s terms for us.”
“Okay,” Norman said, taking a final sip of coffee and clearing his throat.
As Norman read and translated, Hannah found herself holding her breath and hoping that something in the report would exonerate one of her detective “bosses.” Since one way of determining the time of death had to do with internal body temperature, Doc had used some scientific formula that allowed for the heat of the water in the Jacuzzi to come up with a time frame. Ronni Ward had breathed her last sometime between the hours of one and two thirty in the morning. And that meant the trio at the sheriff’s department were still suspects.
“Doc says the blow to Ronni’s head knocked her unconscious and she drowned in the Jacuzzi. He thinks she was in there already, and the killer walked up to the tub and killed her.”
Hannah did her best not to imagine Ronni’s last moments in living Technicolor. There was something really creepy about leaving an unconscious victim to drown.
“Her blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit. That means if she hadn’t been knocked unconscious, she might have passed out on her own.”
“Drunk as a skunk,” Andrea said, but she didn’t sound censorious. Hannah figured that was probably because Ronni was dead and couldn’t cause problems for her any longer.
“There was no evidence of rape, and other than her blood-alcohol level, all of her blood work came back normal. That means no drugs, and no infectious diseases. There was a slight bruising of her lower lip, but it wasn’t serious and Doc’s not sure what it’s from.”
Kissing everybody at her birthday party, Hannah thought, and she looked up to find both of her sisters staring at her. It was clear they were thinking alike.
“The last page is just a listing of physical characteristics.”
“What physical characteristics?” Hannah asked.
“Her height, her weight, the size and weight of her organs, and a detailed description of scars and markings on her body.” Norman slid the report back into the envelope and leaned back in his chair.
“How much did she weigh?” Andrea asked quickly.
Hannah was puzzled. “What difference does that make?”
“It makes a lot of difference to me.” Andrea turned back to Norman. “Look it up for me, will you, Norman?”
Norman nodded and removed the papers from the envelope again. He flipped to the last page and read Doc’s description. “Female in her late twenties identified as Veronica Alice Ward.”
“Veronica?” Michelle repeated, before Norman could read on. “I thought Ronni was her real name.”
“It was a nickname, I guess,” Hannah said, turning to Norman again. “Please go on.”
“Victim was sixty-three inches in height, one hundred and eleven pounds, fourteen ounces in weight.”
“Almost a hundred and twelve!” Andrea exclaimed. “I’m an inch taller and I weigh only a hundred and ten.”
Hannah exchanged glances with Michelle. There was no reason to point out that the majority of Ronni’s weight had been muscle, and muscle was heavier than fat. That would have been cruel. Instead she decided to change the subject.
“Now that we’ve got a window for the time of the murder, it’ll be a lot easier to check alibis,” she said. And then she reached for the third envelope, the one with the crime scene photos, and drew them out to pass around.
To Andrea and Michelle’s credit, neither one flinched when it came to studying the photos. Perhaps they were getting used to seeing pictures of crime scenes. Or perhaps it helped that neither of them had liked the victim.
“Look at this last one,”
Andrea said, passing the photo back to Hannah. “Do you think my flower looks silly?”
At first Hannah thought her sister had flipped round the bend. It was a photo of the back entrance of Heavenly Bodies, and there were two cars parked by the door. Hannah’s cookie truck was on the right, and Andrea’s Volvo was on the left. She studied the photo for another moment and noticed the flower in question. There was a red rose with the stem wound around the radio antenna on Andrea’s Volvo.
“Well, do you? You don’t have to be afraid of hurting my feelings. It’s not like anybody gave it to me for a present or anything. I just put it there when I took Tracey and her friends to the Minnesota Zoo last summer. Hundreds of people go, you know, and I thought it would make it easier to spot my car in the parking lot.”
“I think your rose looks good,” Hannah told her. “Winter’s so bleak, and it’s a bright touch of color.”
“I think it’s nice, too,” Norman said, looking at the photo over Hannah’s shoulder.
“I love it,” Lisa said, giving a little smile. “Sometimes winter seems so endless. It’s like Mom always used to say when I’d complain about how long winter was. When the sun shines and the tulips go up, we’ll all feel a lot better.”
“Maybe I’ll get roses for all of us,” Andrea said, lifting her briefcase to the top of the table and flipping it open. “Here are the tapes Bill sent for you, Hannah.”
“Videotapes?” Lisa looked puzzled.
“Yes, but they’re not just any videotapes,” Hannah explained. “They’re the Tri-County Mall security tapes of Heavenly Bodies on the night Ronni was killed.”
Lisa’s eyes grew wide. “They caught the killer on tape?” she asked, and Hannah noticed that her voice was shaking slightly.
“Unfortunately, no.” Andrea turned to smile at Lisa. “I know exactly where the security cameras are located. I took pictures of the monitors with my cell phone at the security station. The gazebo that holds the Jacuzzi doesn’t have one. And neither does the pool area, the sauna, or the bathrooms and dressing rooms.”
Lisa nodded. “I can understand about the bathrooms and dressing rooms. That would be an invasion of privacy. But why didn’t they put cameras in the gazebo, and the pools, and the sauna?”
“That’s easy,” Herb said, and everyone turned to look at him. While they’d been talking, Earl Flensburg had left and Herb was standing there with the carafe of coffee in his hand.
“The invisible waitress trick!” Lisa said with a giggle. “Herb refilled my coffee cup, and I didn’t even notice him.”
“Right.” Hannah gave her the thumbs-up sign, and then she turned to Herb. “Why don’t they have surveillance cameras in the sauna, or the pools, or the hot tub?”
“Because the owner’s biggest concern is theft. The exercise machines are expensive, so of course they’ve got cameras in the exercise rooms and the weight rooms. They’ve got them by the exits, too, so they can see if someone tries to leave with something they shouldn’t. But what can you steal from a sauna? Heat? And what can you steal from a pool? Water?”
Hannah had a laugh at her own expense. “It’s obvious, now that you explain it, but I didn’t even think of it that way.”
“Don’t feel bad. Most people wouldn’t. It’s just I’ve been looking into surveillance systems lately.”
“Lisa said you were checking out the red-light camera at the mall for Mayor Bascomb,” Hannah said. “Do you really think he’s going to put in a stoplight with a camera on Main Street?”
“Not after he gets my recommendation, but it’s nice duty for me while it lasts. I’m also looking into smoke and fire detectors. Mrs. Bascomb wants one installed in the new sauna they’re building, but it has to be a special type.”
“What type is that?” Andrea asked, and Hannah wondered if her sister and brother-in-law were thinking about adding a sauna to the new basement recreation room they’d been planning to build.
“It can’t be a heat alarm. If it is, it’ll go off every time someone turns on the sauna. It has to be a flame alarm, or a smoke alarm. Smoke’s the best bet because the redwood benches in a sauna smoke before they burn.”
“I see,” Hannah said. “The smoke detector would pick up the problem sooner than the flame detector.”
“Exactly right,” Herb said. “I’m going to recommend a smoke alarm that’s tied directly to the Lake Eden Fire Department. The minute it goes off, they’re alerted. That’s what they have at Heavenly Bodies. The owner has to pay the fire department a monthly fee to monitor it, but it’s worth it. He had to set it up that way to get insurance. There are a lot of ways people can hurt themselves at a gym.”
“That’s true,” Hannah said, thinking about how Ronni had mixed up drinks at her party and then climbed in the Jacuzzi when everyone left. Was the killer someone who’d stayed behind with her? Or was it someone who’d come in after the partygoers had gone?
“You look worried, Hannah,” Norman said, reaching out to pat her shoulder.
“I’m not really worried. I’m just wondering how we can possibly watch all sixty hours on these tapes.”
“Lisa and I can take six hours,” Herb offered. “We’ll start watching right after dinner, and if we fast-forward, we’ll be through by ten.”
“You don’t mind?” Hannah turned to Lisa.
“Not at all.” Lisa shook her head. “Can we take a tape from the weight room? I just love to see guys straining their muscles and lifting weights.”
Herb laughed. “Not a good idea. If there’s a cute guy working out, she’ll want to watch it three or four times. And then we’ll never get any sleep!”
“Herb!” Lisa said sternly, but then she blew it by giggling. “Okay. If my husband doesn’t think I should watch handsome men in the weight room, you can give us the hallway. That ought to be perfectly innocuous.”
The bell on the door tinkled, and Lisa shot to her feet. “Noon rush,” she said, motioning to Michelle.
Lisa said good-bye to Herb while Michelle took her place at the cash register. Then Lisa tied on a serving apron and started to wait tables. The bell was ringing now in a steady cadence.
“My house. Six tonight,” Norman said, getting to his feet. “I’ll take the tapes with me and set up three or four viewing rooms.”
“I can stop somewhere and bring takeout for dinner,” Hannah suggested.
“There’s no need. I’ll make a big bowl of that egg salad you liked. We can have ours on lettuce with sliced tomatoes. Everybody else can have sandwiches.”
“I’ll bring something for dessert.”
“That’s fine. Make it something they can eat while we watch the tapes. We’ll try to get through as many as we can tonight.”
“If we don’t finish, I can always take some home to Grandma McCann,” Andrea offered. “She can watch some during the day while Bethany’s napping and Tracey’s in school.”
“Good idea. I’ll see if I can get Doc Bennett to watch a couple for me tonight. When he came into the clinic this morning, he said there was nothing he wanted to watch on regular television and it was pretty sad to have to judge his bedtime by the number of One Eight-Hundred Dentist commercials he’d seen.”
Hannah chuckled at that. “I’d ask Mother and Carrie, but they’re going out to The Moosehead tonight. Maybe we can ask them tomorrow if they’re in a good mood.”
“Maybe,” Norman said as he closed the briefcase and snapped it shut. “Bring Moishe with you tonight. Cuddles is home now.”
“She got the mouse at your dental clinic?”
“Yes, she did. She’s a good hunter.”
“You found the carcass?”
“I found part of it. She’s a good eater, too.”
Hannah laughed. She knew exactly what Norman meant. Moishe often left her select mouse parts to let her know that he appreciated living with her.
“See you tonight,” Norman said, turning toward the door.
“Norman?” Hannah gave him her most winning sm
ile. “Will you do something just for me?”
“That depends on what it is.”
“This time please write down the recipe for your egg salad. It’s the best I’ve ever tasted.”
NORMAN’S EGG SALAD
4 cups peeled and chopped hard-boiled eggs.*** (That’s about a dozen extra large eggs—measure after chopping)
1/2 cup crumbled cooked bacon (make your own or use real crumbled bacon from a can—I used Hormel Premium Real Crumbled Bacon)
1 Tablespoon chopped parsley (it’s better if it’s fresh, but you can use dried parsley flakes if you don’t have fresh on hand)
1/4 cup grated carrots (for color and a bit of sweetness)
4 ounces cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise (I used Best Foods, which is Hellmann’s in some states)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (or 1/2 teaspoon freshly minced garlic)
1/2 teaspoon onion powder (or 1 teaspoon freshly minced onion)
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste
Peel and chop the hard-boiled eggs. Add the crumbled bacon, the parsley, and the grated carrots. Mix well.
Put the cream cheese in a small bowl and microwave for 30 seconds on HIGH to soften it. If it can be easily stirred with a fork, add the sour cream and mayonnaise, and mix well. If the cream cheese is still too solid, give it another 10 seconds or so before you add the other ingredients.
Stir in the garlic powder and onion powder.
Add the cream cheese mixture to the bowl with the eggs and stir it all up. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste, and chill until ready to serve.
Serve by itself on a lettuce leaf, as filling in a sandwich, or stuffed in Hannah’s Very Best Cream Puffs for a fancy luncheon.
Yield: Makes approximately a dozen superb egg salad sandwiches.
Chapter Twenty-Four
