Candy Cane Murder

by Joanne Fluke

“Here you go. A brand new steno notebook.” Hannah handed her sister one from the stash of notebooks she kept in every room. “Do you need a pen?”

  “I have one.” Andrea reached in her purse and pulled out what Hannah termed a “dress pen,” since the barrel was gold and studded with sparkling white stones.

  “Pretty fancy,” Michelle commented, leaning closer to gaze at the pen. “Are those rhinestones, or diamonds?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re rhinestones. It was a present from a client and the house he bought was a fixer-upper.” Andrea flipped to the first blank page and wrote Wayne Bergstrom’s name at the top. “We don’t know the time of death, or the method. What do you want me to write down?”

  “We could list the time I found him,” Hannah suggested, “but I didn’t look at my watch.”

  “I did.” Michelle said. “When you said Santa’s dead, I pressed the button to light the time and it said ten twenty-two.”

  Andrea started to write it down, but Michelle grabbed her hand. “Put down ten-seventeen,” she said.

  “Wait a second,” Hannah was confused. “I thought you said you looked at your watch and it was ten twenty-two.”

  “That’s right. But I always set my watch five minutes ahead. It keeps me from being late to class.”

  “How does it keep you from being late if you know your watch is five minutes ahead?” Hannah asked her.

  “It’s simple. If I start counting on that extra five minutes, I set my watch ten minutes ahead and psych myself out.”

  All was silent as Hannah digested that. It seemed her youngest sibling hadn’t inherited the logic gene.

  “Okay. Ten-seventeen.” Andrea jotted it down. “Do we know what time Wayne left for the parking lot?”

  “Ten after eight,” Hannah responded.

  “Are you sure your watch isn’t five or ten minutes fast?” Andrea teased her.

  “I didn’t look at my watch. I glanced at the clock in Sally’s kitchen as Wayne went out the back door. We can check it to make sure it’s accurate.”

  Andrea flipped to another page and started a list of things they had to do. “Got it. We’ll run out to the inn and check Sally’s kitchen clock tomorrow.”

  “That means Wayne was killed between eight-ten and ten-seventeen,” Michelle pointed out. “That’s a window of just a little over two hours.”

  “When we go out tomorrow, let’s see how long it takes to walk from Sally’s kitchen to that berm,” Hannah suggested. “Even if you’re poking along taking your time, it can’t be more than five minutes.”

  Andrea made another note. “Got it,” she said. “If you’re right, it means that Wayne was probably killed around eight-fifteen, or eight-twenty.”

  “Unless he stopped to talk to someone on the path,” Michelle argued. “You know how people are when they meet each other at a party. They stop and talk for a while. He could have met up with his killer after he talked to somebody.”

  “Good point,” Hannah said.

  “We should get a guest list from Sally and check to see if anyone at the party met Wayne on the walkway.” Merrily winking rhinestones, or diamonds, or whatever they were, Andrea’s pen flew across the page. “It’s a couple of degrees above freezing tonight. If you were dressed for the weather, you could stand there and talk for five or ten minutes without getting cold.”

  Michelle nodded. “But Wayne wasn’t dressed for the weather. Hannah said he was wearing his Santa suit.” She turned to Hannah. “Do you think it was as heavy as a parka?”

  “I don’t know. It looked heavy, especially with all that fur, but I didn’t actually feel the material.”

  “They sell the same Santa suit at Bergstrom’s,” Michelle told them. “I saw a whole rack of them when I was shopping for boots with Mother.”

  “We’ll go out there and check.” Andrea added another line to her To Do page, and then she let Moishe capture her pen and bat it around for a moment.

  “Mother!” Hannah exclaimed.

  “What about Mother?” her sisters chorused in perfect unison.

  “When she calls to read me the riot act for finding another body, I’ll ask her to go shopping at Bergstrom’s and check out the Santa suits. It’s her favorite store at the mall.”

  “And she’ll be so pleased she’s helping us solve Wayne’s murder, she’ll forget all about criticizing you?” Michelle guessed.

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “It could work,” Andrea offered her opinion. “Mother’s hard to distract, but a trip to Bergstrom’s right before Christmas could do it.”

  LEMON WHIPPERSNAPPERS

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

  1 package (approximately 18 ounces) lemon cake mix, the size you can bake in a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan (Andrea used Betty Crocker)

  2 cups Cool Whip (measure this—Andrea said her tub of Cool Whip contained a little over 3 cups.)

  1 large beaten egg (it’s okay to just whip it up in a glass with a fork)

  ½ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar in a separate small bowl (you don’t have to sift it unless it’s got big lumps)

  Combine dry cake mix, Cool Whip, and beaten egg in a large bowl. Stir until it’s well mixed.

  Drop by teaspoon into the bowl of powdered sugar and roll to coat the cookie dough.

  Place the coated cookie drops on a greased (Andrea used Pam, but any nonstick cooking spray is fine) cookie sheet, 12 cookies to each sheet.

  Bake the cookies at 350 degrees F., for 10 minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheets for 2 minutes or so, and then move them to a wire rack to cool completely.

  Yield: approximately 4 dozen light and lovely cookies.

  Hannah’s Note: Andrea showed me the recipe. Carli wrote that this is an old church recipe and that you can use any flavor cake mix in these cookies. She especially likes Lemon Whippersnappers in the summer because they’re simple to make and very refreshing.

  Chapter Four

  “No!” Hannah groaned, categorically refusing to open her eyes. She reached for the snooze button on her alarm clock to shut off its infernal electronic beeping before it could fully wake her, but there was something wrong with her arm. It wouldn’t move! She could wiggle it slightly, but that was all. Had she suffered some type of debilitating injury while she slept? Or was she only dreaming that her arm was partially paralyzed?

  There was only one way to find out and that was to open her eyes. Hannah groaned again and forced her eyelids up and open. In the dim wattage cast by the nightlight she’d bought the last time she’d climbed out of bed in the dark and stubbed her toe, she could see her arm, under the blanket, stretched out on the bed and perfectly immobile. But there was something different about it. Some time during the night it had swelled up to at least three times its normal size. That didn’t bode well!

  Hannah wiggled her fingers, feeling the tingles that accompanied a cut-off blood supply. It was clear her arm had gone to sleep. But why was it swollen? Had she suffered some kind of neurological damage without even waking up?

  As Hannah stared at the limb that had betrayed her while she slept, she saw two small peaks rise up from the vicinity of her armpit. The peaks were attached to a round fuzzy orb and for a moment Hannah was puzzled. Then she gave a startled laugh as she realized what had happened. The peaks and the fuzzy orb belonged to Moishe. The temperature must have dropped below freezing in the middle of the night, because he’d left his usual place at the bottom of her bed to seek warmer climes above. No wonder her arm had gone to sleep! It was buried beneath over twenty pounds of dozing cat.

  “Come on, Moishe…get off my arm!” Hannah rolled over with difficulty and reached across her own body to give him a push. This elicited a protesting yowl, but he climbed off, and Hannah’s arm was freed from its furry burden.

  The first thing Hannah did with her newly restored hand was shut off the alarm. She was awake now, and the urge to slumber for another five minutes was a wee bit ea
sier to resist, especially when she reminded herself that today would be a busy day. Not only did she have cookie and dessert baking to do for her bakery and coffee shop, she’d agreed to cater luncheon at her mother’s regency romance club Christmas meeting.

  Michelle had gone home with Andrea last night and they planned to head out early this morning to take care of several items on the To Do list. They’d start off by driving to the Lake Eden Inn to check the clock in Sally’s kitchen, pick up a copy of the guest list for last night’s party, and time their walk from the kitchen door that Wayne Bergstrom had used to the base of the snow bank where Hannah had found his body. During the afternoon, they’d do a little reconnoitering with their male counterparts. Andrea would pump Bill for information about the investigation, and Michelle would find out what Lonnie knew. The three sisters would compare notes that evening when they met at Andrea’s house for dinner.

  “Coffee,” Hannah breathed and it was more of a prayer than a statement. She needed caffeine and she needed it now, before Newton’s First Law of Motion, the one about inertia, came into play. A body at rest tended to stay at rest. And applying this principle of physics to her own life meant that if she didn’t get up soon, she might fall under the First Law and just sit on the edge of her bed, staring at the wall all day.

  “Coffee. Coffee now!” It was as close to a cheer as she could come up with in the cold predawn of a December morning, but it served to whet her appetite for the hot, aromatic brew her great grandmother Elsa had called Swedish Plasma.

  Before she had time to think, which would only have served to confuse her, Hannah was on her feet. And then her feet were moving, heading down the hallway toward the kitchen. The coffeepot that had activated automatically five minutes before her alarm clock had sounded was now sitting on the counter with a full carafe of the world’s most popular life-sustaining potion, just waiting for her to imbibe.

  “You, here. Me, there,” she said to the cat who followed her into the kitchen, batting at the ends of the belt she’d forgotten to tie on her robe. Moishe appeared to understand his mistress’s pidgin English because he backed off immediately and took up a position of hope by his empty food bowl.

  Hannah had her priorities straight. It took every corner of her partially alert mind to do it, but she opened the combination padlock on the broom closet, pulled out the forty-pound sack of kitty kibble that Moishe loved, and dumped a full measure into his bowl. She replaced the kibble, replaced the padlock, and then she poured her first cup of coffee.

  “Uff-dah!” she groaned, audibly revealing her Minnesota roots as she sank down on one of the chairs that had come with her Formica-topped breakfast table. She glanced over to see if Moishe was eating and was about to pick up her mug of coffee for that first bracing sip, when she saw something red out of the corner of her eye.

  It was a red scarf tied around the handle of her refrigerator. For several moments Hannah was genuinely puzzled, but then she caught sight of the mixing bowl and utensils washed and stacked on the counter, and everything became clear. When everyone had left last night, at shortly before two in the morning, Hannah had intended to go straight to bed. Unfortunately her mind was still racing and there was no way she could sleep. Instead of wasting valuable time tossing and turning, she’d flicked on the lights in the kitchen and mixed up a batch of cookies. They were experimental, something she’d been planning to try for several months, and the dough was chilling in the refrigerator. That was the reason she’d tied her scarf around the handle of the refrigerator. It was to remind her to take the dough with her when she left for work, so that she could bake it at The Cookie Jar. If the cookies were as good as she expected them to be, she’d serve them at her mother’s club luncheon.

  First things first, Hannah told herself, raising the mug of coffee to her lips. She breathed in deeply, inhaling the antioxidants in the steam that some researcher claimed would save coffee kiosk employees from lung cancer. Hannah thought that would be lovely, but she didn’t believe it for a second. On the other hand, what could it hurt? She’d been inhaling the steam from coffee for years simply because she loved the aroma.

  Another deep coffee-flavored sniff and it was time to enjoy the brew. Hannah was just about to take that first scalding sip when the telephone rang.

  “Mother!” she exclaimed, in the same voice she would have used if she’d skidded off the road and into a ditch. She swallowed fast, taking a sip while she could, and glanced over at her Mother-barometer. Sure enough, Moishe’s fur was bristling and he’d puffed up like a Halloween cat. He’d also begun to make the growling sound, deep in his throat, that meant, Maybe you’re bigger than I am, but I’m gonna shred those pantyhose you’re wearing. It wasn’t a guarantee that Delores Swensen was on the other end of the line, but Hannah’s feline roommate was right a whole lot more than he was wrong.

  Hannah took another sip of her coffee and then she stood up to reach for the wall phone. She sat right back down again, knowing that no previous conversation with her mother had ever lasted less than fifteen minutes, and answered. “Hello, Mother.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Hannah!” Delores gave a deep sigh that was so forceful, it almost tickled Hannah’s ear. “What if I wasn’t me?”

  “Then you’d need to see a psychiatrist, because you’d have an identity crisis.”

  “Hannah!”

  “Sorry, Mother.”

  Delores gave an exasperated sigh that was almost as loud as her previous sigh. “You always say that, and you still answer the phone that way. But I didn’t call to argue with you.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Hannah said, winking at her cat, who was still puffed up several times his size, preparing to take on any predator.

  “I’m not going to argue, but I do have a bone to pick with you, Hannah.”

  Hannah took another sip of coffee, wisely saying nothing. Her mother was only mildly upset. If she’d been extremely upset, she would have called Hannah by her first and middle names.

  “Bill called me this morning to ask me about Melinda.”

  “Melinda who?” Hannah asked, wondering what in the world her mother was talking about.

  “Melinda Bergstrom, Wayne’s wife. Surely you remember Wayne Bergstrom. You found his body last night. And you found it practically in front of your sisters!” Delores delivered another sigh that made the phone give an odd little sound that probably meant it had exceeded its decibel level. “You have got to stop doing this, Hannah Louise!”

  Uh-oh! Hannah’s mind shouted out a warning. Delores only used her middle name when she was what her father had called, “loaded for bear.”

  “I’d love to stop doing it! It’s not like I enjoy finding murder victims, or anything like that. I only climbed up on that snow bank because we were curious and I didn’t want them to do it.”

  There was silence for a moment. Delores was thinking it over. “Well…” she said finally, “that’s good. It’s good that you were sparing your sisters’ sensibilities. That’s an admirable quality.”

  Hannah came very close to gasping out loud in surprise. She’d never gotten off so easily before. It was best to change the subject now, while she was still ahead of the game.

  “Thank you, Mother. Now about the luncheon today, I need some sort of a timeline.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re having quiche and it’s best if it’s warm. How many awards will you be presenting before you want me to serve lunch?”

  “Let me see…three of our members are getting their five-year manor houses. They’re darling little miniatures of English Manor Homes. I found them in a catalogue and ordered them from London.”

  “Will there be speeches after you present them?”

  “No, dear. They’re limited to thirty seconds to thank us. But there will be three more presentations. Carrie’s getting her ten-year curricle with a matched pair.”

  Hannah knew her mother was talking about a carriage pulled by two horses. “
To put in front of her manor house?” she guessed.

  “Exactly. Since she’s the oldest living member, I told her she could have one minute to speak.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said, hoping her mother wouldn’t use that particular phrase. Carrie Rhodes, her mother’s friend and partner in the antique business, wouldn’t appreciate being called the oldest living member. And come to think of it, did that imply that the Lake Eden Regency Romance Club also had members who were dead?

  “Did you hear me, Hannah?”

  Her mother’s voice pulled her back from contemplating whether one had to be alive to be a member of an organization, and Hannah was quick to apologize. “Sorry, Mother. I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “I asked you if you’d have enough quiche so that Norman could eat with us. He’s coming to take pictures of the award ceremony on his lunch hour.”

  “Of course. I always have extra. You know that, Mother.”

  “And you did remember that I asked for a vegetarian alternative?”

  “I did. We’re having two kinds of quiche, one vegetarian and the other with meat.”

  “How about dessert? Did you manage to come up with something authentic to the time period?”

  “I think so. I call them Regency Seed Cakes. They had oranges back then, didn’t they? I seem to remember someone talking about a greenhouse-type room with fruit trees.”

  “That would have been an orangery, dear. It was like a solarium with exotic plants and trees. Most of the expensive mansions had them.”

  “Good. Well, these are a little like lemon poppy seed cake, except that they’re cookies made with oranges and poppy seeds.”

  “They sound wonderful, dear!”

  I hope so, Hannah thought, but she didn’t want to worry her mother by telling her the Regency Seed Cakes were last night’s invention and she hadn’t had time to test them yet. It was much safer to say nothing and change the subject. “What time do you want me to serve the quiche, Mother? If you can give me an estimate of the time, I’ll make sure they’re still warm.”