Blackberry Pie Murder (A Hannah Swensen Mystery)

by Fluke, Joanne

  “How about jewelry?” It was Jon Walker from Lake Eden Neighborhood Pharmacy, just down the street. Jon must have walked up on his lunch break to hear Lisa’s story.

  “The man had a high school ring and we’re working on identifying the school it came from,” Lisa told them. “I have a photo right here if you want to see it. Why don’t you pass it around? Maybe someone here will recognize the seal.”

  “Smart thinking,” Hannah said under her breath. Lake Eden had quite a few residents who’d come from other towns and cities and perhaps one of them would recognize the seal on the ring.

  As she zested an orange and added the zest to her bowl, Hannah listened for any response from Lisa’s audience. All was silent for a minute or two and then Lisa went on with her story. “He had a diamond embedded in his left front tooth.”

  “Eeeuww!” Hannah heard a woman say, but she didn’t recognize the voice from such a short exclamation.

  “Do you think he was a gang member?” This time Hannah did recognize the speaker. It was her business neighbor, owner of Beau Monde Fashions next door, Claire Rodgers Knudson.

  “Sounds more like a pimp to me, especially if it’s a real diamond! Gang members don’t usually have that kind of cash unless they deal drugs.”

  Hannah recognized the voice and she started to laugh. She couldn’t help it. She laughed so hard, she had to clamp her hand over her mouth so that she wouldn’t be heard by the customers in the coffee shop. The speaker had been Grandma Knudson, grandmother of Claire’s husband, Reverend Bob Knudson, pastor of the Lake Eden Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church. Hannah had no idea how the matriarch of the church knew about pimps, gang members, and tooth jewelry, but she obviously did. There were times when Grandma Knudson surprised them all.

  “Can someone get the diamond out to find out if it’s real?” It was Bertie Straub’s voice again.

  “Norman Rhodes removed it on Saturday. And he’s taking it out to the jewelry stores at the mall to have it appraised.”

  “Do you think it’s real?” It was Grandma Knudson’s voice again.

  “Andrea does. Norman showed it to her.”

  “It’s real then,” Bertie Straub said. “Andrea knows her jewelry. Was it big?”

  “Andrea said it was at least a carat, maybe more.”

  There was a whistle from someone that Hannah couldn’t identify. She didn’t think anyone could identify a whistler.

  And then Grandma Knudson spoke up again. “Pimp,” she said. “I knew it. He probably had one of his pieces steal it and he took it for himself.”

  Hannah cracked up again. Where in the world did Grandma Knudson get her information? It was a very good thing that Reverend Bob wasn’t here to hear her. But Reverend Bob was a regular guy with a good sense of humor. If he were here, he’d probably laugh and that would only encourage his grandmother to be even more outspoken.

  “Hush, Priscilla! You don’t want to let this get back to Bobby. He’d be terribly embarrassed.”

  Hannah clamped her hand over her mouth again as she recognized the voice of the one person who could get away with chastising Grandma Knudson. It was Nola Koenig, who was visiting from Long Prairie, and the two women had been friends for more years than Hannah had been alive.

  “You’re right, Nola,” Grandma Knudson said. “Sometimes my mouth has a will of its own. You folks won’t tell Bob on me, will you?”

  There was a chorus of no’s from the crowd, and Hannah chuckled again. No one would tell on Grandma Knudson. Everyone loved her, and they all enjoyed her outrageous comments.

  “Young lady? Do you have a picture of the man?” Nola asked Lisa.

  “Yes, ma’am. I do,” Lisa answered.

  “I need some copies. Bobby’s driving me back to Long Prairie tomorrow and I’ll have my grandsons put them up all over town. You should do the same thing in the other towns around here, maybe even offer a contest with a prize for the first person who can identify him. Everyone loves contests with prizes.”

  There was murmuring from the crowd again and Hannah heard several people speak up to agree with Nola. Hannah thought it was a very good idea. People did seem to enjoy contests with prizes.

  “We can do that.” Lisa sounded excited at the prospect. “How about free coffee and cookies for a year to the first person who can identify him?”

  “We’ve got a high-speed copier at the school.” Hannah recognized Charlotte Roscoe’s voice. Charlotte was the secretary at Jordan High. “I know Ken will let me use it if it’s for a good cause. I can run copies of the photo.”

  “Is it gruesome?” Grandma Knudson asked Lisa. “We shouldn’t put it up if it’s too gruesome. Somebody’s bound to complain and then we’ll just have to take it down.”

  “It’s not gruesome at all. It just looks like he’s sleeping or something. Norman was careful about the angle and I think he photo-shopped out anything that looked bad. I’m not quite sure how he did it, but the man looks a lot better than he did when Hannah and I got out of the truck to see what she hit.”

  Hannah shivered slightly. She wished Lisa hadn’t put it quite that way. She could still see the blood and the bruises in her mind.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Charlotte said. “Do you have any pictures of the ring or the tooth with the diamond?”

  “I’ve got both of them,” Lisa said. “Norman took a really good picture of the tooth, and Lonnie took a really good one of the ring.”

  “That’s perfect,” Charlotte told her. “We can put the photo of the man’s face on the top half and the photo of the ring and the tooth side-by-side on the bottom half. Somebody’s bound to recognize one of them.”

  There was a knock on the back kitchen door and Hannah hurried to answer it. She opened the door to see her mother standing there.

  “Shhh! Lisa’s telling her story in the coffee shop.”

  “Okay,” Delores said, reaching out to hug her daughter. “I’m so sorry about that confusion with the check, dear. I had no idea they wouldn’t accept my check. It was a good thing Norman was there.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Where did you go when you left the courthouse? I looked all over for you.”

  “I went to Norman’s house.”

  “Of course you did. I forgot that Moishe was there and it never occurred to me that you’d gone out there with Norman to pick him up. Did you take him home?”

  “No, he was having too much fun playing with Cuddles,” Hannah said, and then she didn’t say another word. She just motioned to a stool at the work island and went to the kitchen coffee pot to fill mugs for both of them.

  “I’m just glad that’s over!” Delores said, plucking a cookie from the plate of Orange Crisps that Hannah had carried to the table. Then she noticed the mixing bowl. “What are you making now, dear?”

  “Chocolate Orange Crisps. It’s the same recipe, but I decided to put miniature chocolate chips in them this time.”

  “These are good, but I think I’d like those even better,” Delores said, finishing one cookie and taking another. “You could put miniature white chocolate chips in them and make another version.”

  “That’s true. The only problem is that Florence doesn’t carry miniature white chocolate chips at the Red Owl. She says they don’t make them.”

  “That’s what she always says when she doesn’t carry something, dear. Everybody knows that. Why don’t you just dump a package of regular white chocolate chips in the food processor and make smaller pieces?”

  “Good idea. I’ll do that with the next batch. Which one do you think you’d like best?”

  “The ones with the miniature regular chocolate chips, dear.”

  “Of course you would,” Hannah said, smiling at her mother. Although it had been a futile attempt, Delores had intended to bail her out and Hannah was sure that her mother would have been perfectly willing to put her house up for collateral. “You’re a confirmed chocoholic, Mother,” she said with a smile.

  “There are worse h
olics to be,” Delores said.

  “That’s not a word, Mother.”

  “Well, it should be! Everything’s a holic nowadays. Besides alcoholics, there are workaholics, and sexaholics, and foodaholics, and shopaholics. I saw a commercial the other day that said if you honk the horn in your car too much, you’re a honkaholic. What’s next?”

  “Textaholics, phoneaholics, and cyberholics, I guess. I’m not going to start worrying about it until they begin talking about cookieholics.”

  “They’ll never do that in Lake Eden, dear. Your cookies are too good.” Delores glanced over at the bowl again. “Haven’t you stirred that cookie dough enough to make a test batch? If you do it now, I could critique them for you.”

  Hannah laughed. “Okay. Just let me scoop out enough for a pan and I’ll stick them in the oven.”

  “How long do they have to bake?”

  “Ten to twelve minutes. And they have to cool for five or you’ll burn your tongue.”

  “Not five. Two and a half, dear. When they come out of the oven, just stick them in the walk-in cooler and they’ll take only half as long to cool down enough to eat.”

  Hannah laughed. “It would hurt the texture of some cookies, but not these. Good idea, Mother. I didn’t even think of that.”

  “It’s because I’m hungry. I came straight here on my lunch hour and I didn’t stop to eat.”

  “Necessity is the mother of invention,” Hannah said, quoting her great-grandmother Elsa.

  “And invention is the mother of . . .” Delores stopped speaking and began to blush slightly. “I can’t finish that one. I always cringed when your great-grandpa Swensen said it.”

  Hannah was puzzled. She couldn’t recall her great-grandfather saying anything about invention. “I don’t remember that one.”

  “Of course you don’t. I asked great-grandpa Swensen to stop saying it when you were old enough to understand the words. And he did. He was a good man, Hannah.” Her mother stopped speaking and looked pensive. “I wonder what he’d think if he knew his grandson was dead and he learned that I was getting married again.”

  Uh-oh! Guilt rears its ugly head, Hannah thought. Mother’s feeling guilty about marrying again. And then she said the first thing that came into her head. “Great-grandpa Swensen used to have a saying for that, too. I remember him saying it when Shep died.”

  “Shep was the German Shepherd they had for years and years. I remember when he died, but I don’t remember what Great-grandpa said. What was it, dear?”

  “ ‘Life is for the living. Let’s go out and rescue another dog.’ ”

  “That’s . . .” Delores stopped and swallowed hard. “That’s a very good sentiment to remember, dear. I’m very glad you did.”

  “Me, too.” Hannah scooped up the last cookie and put it on the cookie sheet. “Okay, Mother. Gird your loins. You’re about to perform another taste test for me.”

  Delores gave a little laugh. “It’s a grueling job, but someone has to do it. Hurry up and bake them, dear. I don’t want to get fired as your taste-tester for not performing my duties.”

  ORANGE CRISPS

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

  1 cup melted butter (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound)

  2 cups white (granulated) sugar

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking soda

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

  2 and ½ cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

  1 cup chopped nuts (measure AFTER chopping—any nut you like will do—I used walnuts)

  Zest from one orange (zest is the finely grated orange part of the peel)

  2 cups GROUND dry oatmeal (measure BEFORE grinding—I used Quaker’s Quick 1-Minute and zooped it up in my food processor with the steel blade)

  Melt the butter in a large microwave-safe bowl on HIGH for one minute. Let it sit for a few seconds and then stir it to see if it’s melted. If the butter has not melted, heat it again in increments of 20 seconds until it’s melted.

  Let the butter cool to room temperature.

  Add the white sugar to the butter and beat until the mixture is thoroughly incorporated.

  Mix in the vanilla extract, salt, and baking soda. Mix well.

  Stir in the beaten eggs.

  Add the flour in half-cup increments, mixing after each addition.

  Mix in the chopped nuts. Try to distribute them evenly. You want some in each cookie.

  Add the zest from one orange and mix it in thoroughly.

  If you haven’t already done so, measure your oatmeal and grind it with a food grinder, or in a food processor with the steel blade until it’s the consistency of coarse sand.

  Add the ground oatmeal to your bowl and mix it in. (If you’re not using an electric mixer, this will take a little muscle since the resulting dough will be fairly stiff.)

  Roll walnut-sized dough balls with your hands and place them on a cookie sheet sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, 12 cookie balls to a standard sheet. You can also line your cookie sheets with parchment paper and spray that if you’d prefer.

  If your dough is too sticky to roll, place the bowl in the refrigerator for thirty minutes and then try again.

  Once the dough balls are on the cookie sheet, press them down with the tines of a fork in a crisscross pattern (the way you’d do with peanut butter cookies.)

  Bake at 375 degrees F. for 10 minutes. Cool the cookies on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

  Yield: 6 to 7 dozen delicious cookies, depending on cookie size.

  CHOCOLATE ORANGE CRISPS

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

  Follow the instructions for Orange Crisps EXCEPT:

  Reduce the cup of chopped nuts to one-half cup of chopped nuts.

  Add one cup of miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips (a 6-ounce bag) right after you mix in the chopped nuts. Then proceed as directed.

  Yield: 7 to 8 dozen delicious cookies that Delores adores.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Ibet you’re glad to get home,” Michelle said as she drove down the ramp to the underground garage and parked in Hannah’s space.

  “I’m more than glad. I’m relieved, too. It’s been a long day.”

  Hannah gave a little sigh as she got out of the car. They still had the loaner car that Lonnie had gotten for her from his father’s garage. They would be driving it for a while. The authorities had released Hannah’s cookie truck, but it had some front end damage. Mike had surprised her by picking it up on Saturday afternoon and taking it in to Murphy’s Motors to be repaired.

  Michelle led the way up the outside staircase with Hannah following behind her. When they reached the landing, she stopped and turned to face Hannah. “You’re excited, aren’t you?”

  “About coming home, you mean?”

  “No, about the grand prize. Mr. and Mrs. Purvis and the boys delivered it this afternoon. I handed them my key and Mrs. Purvis came into the coffee shop to bring it back. I gave her some cookies as a thank you. I hope that’s all right.”

  “It’s fine.” Hannah smiled slightly. “The grand prize,” she repeated, her smile growing a bit wider. “So much has happened in the past three days, I forgot all about it. I wonder what it is.”

  “You’ll find out in a minute. Do you want to catch, or shall I?”

  “There’s nothing to catch. Norman’s bringing Moishe back around seven tonight. I told him I’d fix him dinner.”

  “I’ll help,” Michelle said, unlocking the door and stepping inside. “Come on, Hannah. Let’s go see your prize.”

  The first place Hannah went was the kitchen. Nothing new there. Her old refrigerator was still in place, and so was the stove and the dishwasher. The grand prize wasn’t a fancy new kitchen appliance.

  “I don’t see anyth
ing in here,” Michelle said, gazing around the living room.

  “You’re right,” Hannah said, realizing that her old television set and stereo were still in place.

  “Maybe we’re just not seeing it,” Michelle suggested. “It could be something small.”

  Hannah shook her head. “It’s not small. They told me it would take at least three Jordan High football players to carry it in and set it up. And he said it had to be plugged in.”

  “Well . . . where is it?”

  “Let’s check the guest room. Maybe it’s a new bedroom suite with a night light built into the headboard or something like that.”

  Hannah opened the door to the room Michelle used when she visited. “It’s not that,” she said, stepping into the room and gesturing toward the bed and dresser.

  “You’re right. Same old, same old,” Michelle said, and then, when she realized what she’d said, she added, “Not that I don’t like the furniture in here. The mirror’s nice and big and the bed is very comfortable.”

  Hannah chuckled slightly. Her baby sister was nothing if not considerate. “It’s Mother’s old bedroom set and you know it.”

  “I know, but what I said is true. The bed is comfortable and the mirror’s big. Do you think they could have put whatever it is it in the guest bathroom?”

  “It’s a tiny bathroom. It wouldn’t take three football players to carry in anything that could have fit in there. They couldn’t even get in there, at least not all three at once.”

  “A new toilet?” Michelle suggested. “They’re really heavy. And a new toilet has to be set up and hooked to the plumbing. Maybe that’s what Ken meant when he said it had to be plugged in.”