Coconut Layer Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  Hannah was surprised at the warning. “But I’m not going to bump into it or anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter. That’s the same car that Donna Summers has. Her husband bought it for her. And she was telling me all the problems she had with the alarm system.”

  “What problems did Donna have?” Hannah asked, moving away from the back of the car as she walked past.

  “The alarm system turns on automatically when you lock the doors with the remote control. And it’s a really sensitive system. If anyone gets too close, the alarm goes off.”

  “Thanks for warning me!”

  “I wouldn’t have known, but Donna warned me. It went off for her once and it set off about a dozen other cars that were parked in the lot. Donna was embarrassed and worried that it might happen again. She took her car out to Cyril’s garage so he could disable the alarm system.”

  “I think we go through this door,” Hannah said, stopping at the interior exit.

  “That’s right. Just go to the center of the quad between the buildings and there are tables for the employees who bring their own lunches.”

  Hannah did as her sister instructed and they found their way to the area that was set aside for employees who wanted to eat their lunches outside. They took a seat at one of the tables, and a moment or two later, the door to the building opened and the workers began to stream out.

  “Good thing we got here when we did,” Hannah commented, watching the employees head for the tables like lemmings heading toward the edge of the cliff.

  “You’re right,” Andrea said, standing up to wave. “Here they come, Hannah. You save the table. I’ll go meet them and bring them over here.”

  “Hey, Hannah. You’re lookin’ good,” Glenn said as Andrea brought the two men over to the table. “Sorry about all the trouble you had in the last couple a’ months.”

  “Yeah, sorry about the trouble,” Donnie echoed, but Hannah noticed that he was eyeing the bag of cookies she’d brought with her.

  “Sit down, guys,” Hannah said, opening the bag of cookies. “I brought something for your break.”

  “And I’ll get coffee for you,” Andrea offered. “Black? White? Sweet?”

  “Black,” Glenn told her.

  “White and sweet,” Donnie said. “I’ll go with Andy and help her carry it.”

  Once Glenn and Hannah were left alone, he gave her an assessing look. “So you probably want to know about Darcy, huh?”

  “That’s why I’m here. She was your shift supervisor, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never knew her very well,” Hannah told him. “Was she a good supervisor?”

  “Uh . . .” Glen winced and shook his head. “Look, Hannah. This isn’t going any further than you . . . right?”

  “Right. So tell me how Darcy did as a supervisor.”

  “She lorded it over us. If we were two minutes and thirty seconds late to punch our time cards, she wrote us up.”

  “Two and a half minutes?” Hannah had trouble believing that anyone would quibble about less than five or ten minutes.

  “That’s right. And Donnie and I got docked an hour!”

  “That must have made you very mad.” Hannah passed the cookie plate to him.

  “Oh, it did! Donnie and I depend on our paychecks to make the rent. We don’t earn that much out here, and a couple of write-ups and you’re not eligible for your yearly raise.”

  “And you and Donnie had a couple of write-ups?” Again, Hannah waited for Glenn to corroborate it.

  “Yeah. One more after that last one and we would have lost our raises.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you for being really mad at Darcy.”

  “Oh, we were mad, all right! And then . . .” Glenn hesitated and gave a little shudder.

  “Then what?” Hannah prompted.

  “Then we came in to work and heard she was murdered. That gave both of us the creeps.”

  Hannah gave what she hoped was an understanding nod and stifled her urge to ask another question. Mike had taught her that once a suspect began to talk, silence was a tool that could prod the suspect into even more revelations.

  “I felt bad about how Donnie and I had hated her for that write-up,” Glenn confessed. “That day at lunch everybody was talking about the murder, so Donnie and I went out to my car and ate our lunch there.”

  “Yeah,” Donnie said, coming up to the table with their coffee. “Some people just shouldn’t be line supervisors, you know?”

  Glenn reached out for a cookie from Hannah’s bag. “That’s right. Some people get a little power and they just lord it over you like they’re better than you are. Darcy was like that.”

  “And she took lots of breaks for herself,” Donnie added. “She was always off flirting with the head shift supervisor. She used to slip him notes and stuff like that.”

  “That’s right,” Glenn confirmed it. “I don’t think she ever hooked up with him, though.”

  Donnie gave a nod. “I don’t think she did, either. He already had somebody a lot classier than Darcy.”

  “The main supervisor is Benton Woodley, isn’t he?” Andrea asked him.

  “Yeah,” Glenn answered her. “Benton’s a good guy. He can be tough, but he’s fair. We talked to him right after we heard what happened to Darcy and he said not to worry about that bad write-up we got.”

  Donnie nodded. “Benton said that every write-up has to go through him, and he’d already thrown that one out.”

  “And that means we get our raise,” Glenn said.

  “Yeah, but I wish we’d known that right away. If we’d known that Benton was on our side, we never would have had to . . .” Donnie gave a little grunt and turned to look at Glenn. “Why did you kick me under the . . .” his voice trailed off and he swallowed hard. “Sorry,” he said to Glenn, and then he clamped his mouth shut.

  “Before what?” Hannah asked, honing in on the opening that Donnie had given her.

  Glenn mumbled a word that Hannah would never have used in front of her nieces, and sighed loudly. “Cat’s out of the bag, I guess. I’d better tell you before you think it’s even worse than it is.”

  “Good idea,” Hannah said, giving him an approving smile. “Tell us what happened, Glenn.”

  Glenn picked up his coffee cup and took a big swig, and Hannah had the suspicion that he wished it were something stronger. “Well . . . it was lunchtime on the last day of our shift and Donnie said I should get us something to eat and he’d run out to the car to get something he’d forgotten.”

  “And he caught me before I could put Darcy’s hood down,” Donnie said, looking very guilty. “It was just I was so mad, you know? I mean, I thought we’d lost our raise because of that witch and I wanted to get back at her somehow. I didn’t think Glenn would go along with it, so I thought I’d do it myself. And then, if she asked him if he’d done it, he’d tell her that he didn’t know anything about it.”

  Glenn went on with the confession. “But I caught him and I asked him what he thought he was doing. He told me it didn’t make up for what she’d done, but he fixed her car so it wouldn’t start when she came out of the supervisors’ meeting after her shift. ”

  “I was just so mad, I had to do something,” Donnie said. “And . . . well . . . it was something.”

  Glenn gave a little laugh. “Donnie could never get a job as a mechanic. If I hadn’t helped him, he would have flunked auto shop in high school.”

  Donnie grinned, his good humor restored. “He’s right. All Darcy would’ve had to do was lift the hood and she could have seen what was wrong right away.”

  “What was wrong?” Hannah asked him.

  “I unhooked her battery cables so her car wouldn’t start,” Donnie admitted. “I just wanted to bug her, you know?”

  Hannah turned to Glenn. “Did you or Donnie hook the battery cables up again?”

  Glenn shook his head. “Donnie was so proud of himself, I didn’t want to spoil his fun. But I
pointed out a way of making sure that even if Darcy or anyone else hooked up those cables again, her car still wouldn’t start.”

  “What did you do?” Andrea asked him.

  “I took a fuel pump fuse out of the fuse box.” Glenn looked very proud of himself. “And with that fuse missing, Darcy’s car wouldn’t start even if she had the smarts to hook the battery back up.”

  “That sounds pretty sophisticated,” Hannah commented. “Did you just pick a fuse at random? Or did you know which one to remove?”

  Glenn gave a little smile. “I knew which one. My dad had this SUV, just like Darcy’s, and I learned how to fix it when something went wrong. I kept it running my whole senior year. And that meant he let me borrow it anytime I wanted.”

  Andrea gave him an admiring look. “You must have passed your auto repair class with flying colors.”

  “Oh, I did. I got an A.”

  “The only one he ever got,” Donnie told them. “Glenn was really proud of that A.”

  Now that the mystery of Darcy’s car was solved, it was time to get down to some hard questions. Hannah took a deep breath and asked the first one that popped into her head. “Where were you guys the night that Darcy was murdered?”

  “We had dates with two girls from Holdingford,” Donnie said immediately. “It turned out pretty good.”

  Glenn smiled. “Sure did. We ended up going back to their place and . . . well . . . you don’t really need to know any more than that, do you?”

  Hannah shook her head. “Nothing except what time you got home that night?”

  “It wasn’t night,” Donnie told them. “We got home just in time to change clothes and go to work.”

  “And we weren’t late,” Glenn added, and then he started to frown. “You don’t think that we . . . I mean . . . we wouldn’t have done anything to really hurt Darcy! We didn’t hate her that much!”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.” Hannah hurried to reassure them. “Have another cookie, both of you, and I’ll tell you the real reason I’m here.”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice,” Glenn said, reaching into the bag. “You gotta try these, Donnie. They’re peanut butter.”

  “Sounds good,” Donnie said, getting a cookie for himself. He took a bite, began to smile, and then looked up at Hannah again. “You said you’d tell us the real reason you’re here. What is it?”

  “You worked with Darcy,” Hannah told them. “And so did everybody else on your shift. You two strike me as being pretty good judges of people.”

  Glenn looked pleased at the compliment. “Yeah, we’re pretty good at figuring people out.”

  “That’s why I needed to see you. Can you think of anyone who worked here who might have hated Darcy enough to kill her?”

  Hannah and Andrea were silent as the two men thought about Hannah’s question. Finally, Glenn gave a big sigh. “A lot of people got irritated with her, especially when she was being a bit . . .” he stopped to search for another word, “. . . especially when she was being a pain in the neck. But I don’t think any of them would actually hurt her.” He turned to Donnie. “How about you? Can you think of anybody?”

  Donnie thought about that for a minute, and then he shook his head. “A lot of people didn’t like her, but nobody would have done something like that!”

  “Did Darcy ever get anyone fired?” Andrea asked them.

  “Yeah! There was one guy that got fired right after we started here, but Donnie and I ran into him a while ago. He told us that getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to him ’cause he got a new job that paid a lot better.”

  “So you can’t think of anyone that might have killed Darcy?” Hannah asked her final question.

  “No,” Glenn answered. “Not unless it was someone she used to . . . uh . . . date.”

  “Yeah, Darcy ran around a lot, if you get what I mean,” Donnie followed up. “I guess I can understand somebody killing her if they were in love with her and she ditched them for somebody else.”

  “Do you know anyone like that?” Andrea asked.

  Both men shook their heads. “Not really,” Glenn told them. “Darcy played the field and I don’t think anybody was ever dumb enough to fall in love with her.”

  A bell sounded and Glenn and Donnie got up. “Time to get back to work,” Glenn said.

  “Take the cookies,” Hannah told them. “I’ve got more where those came from.”

  Both men were wearing big smiles as they walked away with the bag of cookies and when they had left, Hannah gestured to Andrea.

  “Did you get what you needed?” Andrea asked as they exited the building and headed back to Hannah’s cookie truck.

  “I think so. At least I got two new suspects to add to my list.”

  “Two?” Andrea asked as she climbed into the passenger seat. “Who are they?”

  “Benton and Danielle.” Hannah turned the key, put her cookie truck in gear, and headed out of the parking lot.

  “I can understand Benton, especially if Darcy was trying to pick him up. But why do you suspect Danielle?”

  “Because Danielle has been dating Benton for quite a while now. And Glenn and Donnie mentioned notes that Darcy had written to Benton. What if Danielle read one of those notes?”

  Andrea looked shocked. “Do you really think Danielle would be jealous enough to kill Darcy?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m going to go to see Danielle this afternoon to find out where she was on the night of Darcy’s murder.”

  CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCK COOKIES

  Preheat oven to 350°F., rack in the middle position.

  The following recipe can be doubled if you wish. Do not, however, double the baking soda. Use one and a half teaspoons if you double the recipe.

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

  2 cups white (granulated) sugar

  3 Tablespoons molasses

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  1 teaspoon baking soda

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

  2 cups crushed salted potato chips (measure AFTER crushing) (I used regular thin unflavored Lay’s potato chips)

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

  1 cup peanut butter chips (I used Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips)

  1 cup white chocolate chips or vanilla baking chips (I used Nestlé Vanilla Baking Chips)

  Hannah’s 1st Note: 5 to 6 cups of whole potato chips will crush down into about 2 cups. Crush them by hand in a plastic bag, not with a food processor. If you use a food processor, they will crush too much and end up being too fine. If you crush them by hand, they will end up being the size of coarse gravel.

  Mix the softened butter with the white sugar and the molasses. Beat them until the mixture is light and fluffy, and the molasses is completely mixed in.

  Add the vanilla and baking soda. Mix them in thoroughly.

  If you haven’t already done so, break the eggs into a glass and whip them up with a fork.

  Add the whipped eggs to your bowl and mix them in until everything is thoroughly incorporated.

  If you haven’t yet crushed your potato chips, place them in a closeable plastic bag. Seal the bag carefully. (You don’t want crushed potato chips scattered all over your kitchen counter.)

  Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you crush the potato chips too much, you won’t have the right texture or crunch in your cookies.

  Place the sealed bag on a flat surface and crush the chips inside with your fingers. Don’t stop until the pieces are the size of coarse gravel.

  Measure out 2 cups of crushed potato chips and mix them into the dough in your bowl.

  Add one cup of flour and mix it in.

  Add the second cup of flour and mix thoroughly.

  Add the final half-cup of flour and mix that in.

  Measure out one cup of peanut butter chips and add them to your cookie dough. If you’re using an electric mixer, mix
them in at the slowest speed. You can also take the bowl out of the mixer and stir in the chips by hand.

  Measure out one cup of white chocolate chips or vanilla baking chips. Stir those into your dough.

  Cover your mixing bowl with a clean towel or a sheet of plastic wrap. Let your cookie dough sit on the counter while you prepare your cookie sheets.

  Spray your cookie sheets with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. Alternatively, you can line the cookie sheets with parchment paper.

  Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you use the parchment paper, leave a little extra paper at the top and the bottom. That way, when your cookies are baked, you can pull the paper, baked cookies and all, over onto a wire rack to cool.

  Drop the cookie dough by rounded teaspoons onto your cookie sheets. You can fit 12 cookies on each standard-size sheet.

  Hannah’s 4th Note: Lisa and I use a 2-teaspoon cookie scoop at The Cookie Jar. It’s faster than doing it with a spoon.

  Bake your Chips Off The Old Block Cookies at 350°F. for 10 to 12 minutes or until they are nicely browned. (Mine took 11 minutes.)

  Let the cookies cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheet and then remove them with a metal spatula.

  Transfer the warm baked cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.

  Yield: Approximately 5 dozen crunchy, salty, and sweet cookies. Kids love these cookies.

  Hannah’s 5th Note: Be sure to tell your cookie-eating guests that there are peanut butter chips in these cookies.