Coconut Layer Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “Hannah! Hello.” An attractive woman walked in followed by an older man.

  “Kay?” Hannah asked, wanting to be certain that this was Kay Hollenkamp.

  “Yes, and this is my husband, Joe.”

  “Please sit down and have some coffee,” Hannah offered, gesturing toward the empty stools at the work station. “You’ve been in before, Kay?”

  “Many times,” Kay admitted, glancing over at Joe. “But I hope Joe hasn’t!”

  It was a strange thing to say and Hannah was puzzled until Kay gave a laugh. “Joe’s diabetic,” she explained. “And he has to watch his sugar intake. Unfortunately, he loves all things sweet.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah hurried to apologize. “Would you like me to remove the cookies?”

  “I could have one, couldn’t I, Kay?” Joe asked his wife. “I only had one piece of toast this morning.”

  “That’s true,” Kay responded, giving him a sweet smile. “I just don’t want any repeats of the ice cream fiasco.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t do that again,” Joe promised. “It’s just that I started thinking about ice cream and I lost all my willpower.”

  “I know, and I understand. I’m like that around Hannah’s Salted Caramel Bar Cookies.” Kay turned to Hannah. “I told Joe I needed to keep an eye on his sugar intake because I wanted us to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary.”

  “Fat chance!” Joe retorted. “I’m already over fifty, Kay. And not that many people live to celebrate their hundredth birthday.”

  “You will, if I have anything to say about it,” Kay retorted, reaching out to pat his hand. “Have your cookie, Joe, and enjoy it. Because you’re not going to have a second.”

  “I know.” Joe gave a deep sigh and turned toward Hannah. “I don’t know if I should love her for wanting to keep me healthy, or hate her for depriving me of almost all the foods I really like?”

  “You should love me. And I know you do.” Kay smiled at him fondly before she turned to Hannah. “Let me give you a little background while Joe’s enjoying his treat. I work out at the Double Eagle as a cocktail waitress, and Joe usually takes me to work, sits there, listens to the music, and nurses a beer all night. Then we go home together.”

  “Unless she’s on cleanup duty,” Joe interjected. “Then both of us drive. It’s a good job where Kay’s tips are concerned, but it’s not a very upscale place. I’d worry about her if she went there alone five days a week.”

  Kay smiled. “Joe’s very protective. I do appreciate that. There are times when we get some rowdy customers at the Double Eagle.”

  “Like every weekend,” Joe added.

  “True.” Kay gave a little nod. “Anyway . . . I waited on Darcy the night that she was killed.”

  “Tell me about it,” Hannah urged.

  “Well, she wasn’t drinking all that much, but I think she must have taken some kind of drug, because by the end of the evening, she wasn’t making much sense. And she had a huge fight with her fiancé. He got so mad, he left, and that’s when Lonnie, Brian, and Cassie stepped in.”

  “That’s right,” Joe confirmed. “I was sitting at the bar and I saw the whole thing. Darcy and Denny were fighting like cats and dogs. I was afraid the fight would turn violent, and I was almost ready to go over there myself, when Denny stood up and left the table.”

  “He came up to me and asked for the check,” Kay said. “Then he gave me some money, I got his change, and he stomped out of there. Unfortunately, Darcy had ridden with him that night.”

  “So Darcy was left with no ride home,” Joe added.

  “I was really glad when Lonnie told me that he was going to give Darcy a ride,” Kay continued. “Brian gave her a ride a couple of times when he and Cassie were separated, but it might have caused a problem if he’d done it that night, being Cassie’s birthday and all. And I was afraid that Darcy might leave with one of the other guys she’d dated. And a couple of them were . . . well . . .” Kay stopped and looked to Joe for assistance.

  “She dated some guys who weren’t exactly reputable,” Joe said.

  “You put it a lot nicer than I would have,” Kay said with a smile. “Darcy wasn’t known for her wonderful choices in male companions.”

  “Nice!” Joe said, complimenting her. “That was very descriptive, honey.”

  “Thank you. Anyway, once Lonnie stepped in, I knew that Darcy would get home safely. That was a relief. I knew Joe would have taken her home if I’d asked him to, but she wasn’t walking very well and I didn’t want Joe to have to carry her into her house. He slipped on the ice when he was ice fishing and he tore something in his arm.”

  “It was a ligament,” Joe told Hannah. “It’s healing, but Doc Knight told me not to do any heavy lifting or stretching until it heals.”

  “That’s right.” Kay gave a nod. “Joe left right after we closed, and another waitress and I did the cleanup. It usually takes us an hour to an hour and a half to get everything done, so Joe left for home.”

  “Except I didn’t go straight home,” Joe explained. “I knew we were out of bacon and I like bacon and eggs for breakfast, so I drove out to the Quick Stop to buy what we needed.”

  “And while he was there, Joe bought something we definitely didn’t need.”

  “Right.” Joe gave a guilty sigh. “I was all set to check out at the register when I happened to notice they’d gotten in some Banana Blizzard ice cream. I’m crazy about Banana Blizzard ice cream and the Quick Stop doesn’t carry it very often, but there it was in all its glory.” He turned to Kay. “I had to buy it, Kay. It was practically screaming out my name.”

  Kay laughed. “I know. But Joe . . . two cartons?”

  “I know. I guess I’m just lucky they didn’t have three.” Joe turned back to Hannah. “I got a spoon, too, a really nice, big measuring spoon. I didn’t want to take the ice cream home because Kay might find the empty cartons, so I parked about a mile from our house and ate it in the car.”

  “All of it,” Kay added. “Both cartons in one sitting.”

  “True. And it was soooo good!” Joe gave a sigh that sounded rapturous.

  “And you were soooo sick later,” Kay added.

  “I know. Anyway . . . I sat there and ate that ice cream and stopped to put the cartons in the dumpster outside Darcy’s house.”

  “Her house is a mile from us,” Kay explained. “Since Darcy’s driveway is past the town limit for garbage pickup, Darcy’s father bought a dumpster and left it at the side of the road so the garbage men would pick it up there.”

  “When I got out of the car, I noticed another car parked in front of Darcy’s garage,” Joe went on. “I knew it wasn’t her fiancé’s car. Denny drove a dark blue Lincoln and this car was a really strange color.”

  “What color was it?” Hannah asked, beginning to see why Kay and Joe had come to tell her about this.

  “It was a pinkish-orange, almost the same color as Kay used when she painted our kitchen. The car was a little lighter than that, but not a whole lot.”

  “They call that color melon,” Kay told Hannah. “The man at the paint store said it was a cross between cantaloupe and watermelon.”

  “I’ve never seen a car that color before,” Hannah said, frowning slightly.

  “Neither have I,” Joe agreed. “But just in case you’re wondering, I only had one beer at the Double Eagle and I know what I saw. And right before I climbed back in the car, the front door of the house opened and someone came out.”

  “Could you see who it was?” Hannah asked him.

  “No, I was too far away and some tree branches were in the way. But I didn’t want whoever it was to think I was dumping trash in Darcy’s dumpster, so I drove off before the other person could see me.”

  STRAWBERRY AND VANILLA PINWHEEL COOKIES

  DO NOT preheat oven. Cookie dough must chill before baking.

  1 cup white (granulated) sugar

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

  1 large egg

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  2 and ½ cups all-purpose flour (scoop it up and level it off with a table knife—don’t pack it down in the cup)

  ____________________

  3 Tablespoons strawberry jam

  1 teaspoon strawberry extract

  1 teaspoon red food coloring

  cup (2 Tablespoons) all-purpose flour (that’s in addition to the flour you used earlier)

  ____________________

  Confectioners’ (powdered) sugar for rolling out the dough

  Hannah’s 1st Note: This recipe calls for liquid food coloring. If you use gel food coloring, you won’t need as much because the color is much more concentrated. Just watch the color of the dough when you mix it and stop adding when you think it’s bright enough.

  Hannah’s 2nd Note: Mixing this dough is easy with an electric mixer, but you can also do it by hand.

  Place the sugar in a large mixing bowl.

  Add the softened butter and mix until it’s light and fluffy.

  Add the egg and beat until the resulting mixture is a uniform color.

  Sprinkle in the salt and the baking powder. Mix until they’re thoroughly incorporated.

  Add the vanilla extract. Mix it in thoroughly.

  Add the flour by half-cup increments, mixing after each addition. Continue to beat for another minute after the last half-cup of flour has been added and mixed in.

  Scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl, take it out of the mixer, and set it on your kitchen counter.

  Give the dough a final stir by hand with a mixing spoon.

  Tear off a sheet of wax paper that’s about 2 feet long.

  Wet a kitchen sponge and wring it out in the sink.

  Use the sponge to moisten the spot you’ve chosen to roll out your cookie dough.

  Quickly spread out the wax paper, curled side down so it straightens out, on top of the moist spot on the counter.

  Tear off another sheet of wax paper of the same size.

  Moisten a strip about 2 inches into the bottom (or top) edge of the wax paper already on the counter. You will need to use a second sheet of wax paper and overlap it on top of the first sheet.

  Moisten the area of the bare counter where you want to place the second sheet.

  Spread out the second sheet, curved side down, on your counter.

  Hannah’s 3rd Note: The reason for moistening the counter is to keep the wax paper from sliding around as your roll out your cookie dough. If you have a bread board in your kitchen, you can skip all the instructions for moistening the counter and using the wax paper. Simply get out your bread board and place it on the counter.

  Dust the wax paper (or the bread board) with powdered sugar and spread it out evenly with the palm of your incredibly clean hand.

  Remove HALF of the cookie dough from your mixing bowl and place it on the wax paper. (Just guestimate half. No one will complain if it’s not precisely half.)

  Form the cookie dough into a ball and then pat it out like piecrust with your hands.

  Dust the top of your flattened cookie dough with more powdered sugar and spread it out with your hands.

  With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle that is approximately 1/4-inch thick.

  Cover the vanilla cookie dough with wax paper.

  Roll the dough up into a loose roll.

  Place the loose roll in a Ziploc plastic bag, seal it, and put it in your refrigerator.

  You’re through with the vanilla part of your cookie dough for the present. Now it’s time to mix up and roll out the strawberry part of your cookie dough.

  Place approximately 3 Tablespoons of strawberry jam in a microwave-safe bowl. (You don’t have to be exact at this point.)

  Leave the jam jar on the counter.

  Heat the bowl of jam on HIGH for 10 seconds.

  Check the bowl with the jam. If there’s 1 Tablespoon of liquid, you have enough. If there’s not, add more jam to your bowl and melt that for 10 seconds in the microwave. (The object is to get 1 full Tablespoon of jam liquid.)

  Once the melted jam has produced 1 full Tablespoon of jam liquid, add it to the vanilla dough in your mixer bowl, put it back in the mixer, and turn the mixer on LOW speed.

  There will be some solid parts of the jam left in the small bowl you used. Add them to the jar of strawberry jam, stir them in, put the lid on the jar, and put it in the refrigerator.

  With the mixer running on LOW speed, add the strawberry extract to the bowl. Mix it in thoroughly.

  Again, with the mixer still running on LOW, add the red food coloring to your bowl. Mix that in thoroughly.

  Add the cup of all-purpose flour and mix that in.

  Once the dough is thoroughly mixed, shut off the mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and take it out of the mixer.

  Give the strawberry dough a final stir by hand with a mixing spoon.

  Repeat the instructions for preparing the counter for rolling out the dough.

  Remove the strawberry cookie dough from the mixing bowl and form it into a ball.

  Pat the dough ball down like piecrust, dust it with powdered sugar, and use the rolling pin to roll out another rectangle that is approximately ¼ inch thick.

  Cover the strawberry dough with wax paper.

  Roll the strawberry cookie dough into a loose roll, place the roll in a Ziploc plastic bag, seal the bag, and put it in the refrigerator next to the vanilla dough roll.

  Chill both halves of your pinwheel cookie dough for at least 2 hours.

  After your cookie dough has chilled for 2 hours, tear off another sheet of wax paper and spread it out on the counter. If you’re using a bread board, spread the wax paper out on the bread board. You will use this piece of wax paper to wrap up your pinwheel dough roll once the vanilla and strawberry cookie dough are combined.

  Dust the wax paper (or the bread board) with powdered sugar. This will hold the cookie roll you’re about to make.

  Carefully, try to unroll just a bit of the vanilla roll. If the dough breaks off, it’s still too cold to unroll. Let it warm in your kitchen for another 10 or 15 minutes and then try again.

  When the vanilla dough is warm enough to unroll, unroll it.

  Carefully, peel off the top sheet of wax paper.

  Now unroll the strawberry dough.

  Peel the top sheet of wax paper from the strawberry roll.

  Hannah’s 4th Note: You will now have 2 unrolled sheets of cookie dough, the vanilla and the strawberry, stretched out side by side on your kitchen counter.

  Here comes the tricky part:

  Grasping the strawberry dough by the corners of its wax paper, carefully slide it so that the long side of the strawberry dough rectangle is right next to the long side of the vanilla dough rectangle.

  Still grasping the corners of the wax paper, flip the strawberry dough over on top of the vanilla dough so that the strawberry dough is nestled on top of the other with no wax paper between them.

  Okay, THAT was the hard part. The rest is easy.

  If the edges of the dough are uneven, trim them with a sharp knife. Use the pieces of dough you’ve trimmed for patches if there are any holes.

  Working from the long side of the rectangle, use your impeccably clean hands to roll up the dough so that the dough forms a nice, tight log. This will create a spiral pattern when you slice the log into cookies.

  When your cookie dough log is rolled, rub it with powdered sugar, turning it so the entire outside surface of the log is coated with the sugar.

  Tear off another, longer sheet of wax paper. Roll your cookie log up in the wax paper. Twist the ends to keep the roll from coming undone.

  Place the roll in a Ziploc plastic bag, seal the bag, and set it on a piece of cardboard or a flat tray. Then place it in the refrigerator for another 2 hours. (Overnight is fine, too.)

  Hannah’s 5th Note: At th
is point, you can even freeze the spiral cookie dough log. Just place it, wax paper and all, into a large Ziploc freezer bag. It will keep in the freezer for a month or two. The day before you’re planning to bake your cookies, take the roll out of the freezer and thaw it in the refrigerator overnight. Then all you have to do is cut it into cookies and bake it.