by Joanne Fluke
“Exactly. And then I open the cabinet.”
“And I step out, smiling and unscathed.”
“I think you’ll be perfect, Hannah. You’ve got it all down.” Herb glanced at the old-fashioned pocket watch attached by a jeweled fob to his cape. “It’s almost show time. Are you ready?”
“Absolutely.” Hannah waited until they were ready to step through the swinging door and enter the coffee shop before she said what she’d been thinking about all morning. “Don’t worry, Herb. I’ll be perfectly fine as long as you remember to use the collapsible swords.”
Hannah pulled up in front of the one-story brick sheriff’s station at precisely three o’clock. The magic show with Herb had gone perfectly, except for the slight bobble when her left ankle had almost gotten caught in the strap. She’d discovered that it did take some degree of agility to get into the position required to keep from being skewered by the blades, but some of the swords in critical places were indeed collapsible and would only go in as far as her stomach if she sucked it in.
Anything for my partner, Hannah repeated, her mantra for the next twenty-four hours. She’d promised to find an appropriate costume and meet Herb in the parking lot at the fairgrounds a half-hour early so that they could go over things one more time before the competition.
Once she’d pulled her cookie truck into one of the visitor parking spots at the front of the building, Hannah retrieved the cookie box from the back of her truck and walked to the front door. Someone had been busy decorating the walkway with summer flowers, and Hannah admired the perennials that lined both sides of the sidewalk all the way down to the employee parking lot. She was no flower expert, but they looked like nasturtiums to her. In any event, the orange, red, and yellow flowers were cheery and took some of the onus away from walking down this sidewalk to talk about a crime.
Hannah stepped inside the first glass door, waited until it had closed behind her, and waved at the desk sergeant as she opened the second door. Most people didn’t know it, but Bill had told her that the desk sergeant had a button to press that would lock the visitor midway between the two doors. It was a security precaution that had never been used, but if it was ever needed, it could be.
She stepped up to the desk and greeted the sergeant on duty, Rick Murphy. He was Lonnie’s older brother and he was also a detective. “Hi, Rick. What are you doing on the desk?”
“Disability for two more weeks,” Rick said, stretching out his leg and showing Hannah his cast. “I slid into home and got creamed.”
“I remember.” Hannah gave a little grin. The Cookie Jar fielded the only all-female softball team on the Lake Eden city schedule, and her catcher, Rose McDermott, had been as unmovable as a chunk of granite when she’d tagged Rick out.
“You want Mike?” Rick asked, grinning in a way that made Hannah bristle slightly.
Guys will be guys, she reminded herself, and did her best to curb the impulse to take him down a peg or two. “That’s right,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I’m delivering cookies for the detectives’ meeting. I guess you won’t be there, right?”
Rick looked disgruntled as he shook his head. It was clear he didn’t like being chained to the desk, and Hannah took pity on him. She slipped several cookies out of the bakery box and placed them on his desk blotter. “Here you go. They’ll never miss them.”
“Thanks, Hannah.” Now Rick was all smiles. “I think Mike’s in his office. You know where it is, don’t you?”
“Sure. Right next to Bill’s,” Hannah said, reminding Rick ever so nicely that she was the sister-in-law of his boss, the Winnetka County Sheriff, and he’d be wise not to treat her lightly. “I’ll stop in to see Bill first.”
“Okay. You can go on down. I’ll page him and tell him you’re coming.”
Hannah walked down the tiled hallway and stopped at Bill’s office. The door was open and she peeked in, but no one was inside. She went on to Mike’s office, but before she could tap on the door to announce herself, she heard voices. Mike had someone in his office. It might be important and she wouldn’t interrupt him. She’d just sit in Bill’s office and wait for Mike’s visitor to leave.
Bill’s office was the biggest one in the administrative wing, but that wasn’t saying much. The county hadn’t even come close to spending a fortune on accommodating its highest-ranking law enforcement officer. There was a two-window view of the parking lot, one window more than the other offices had, and there was room for three chairs in front of Bill’s desk, rather than two. Since Bill’s office was wider, there was room for an entertainment center with a television set and a conversational grouping of four barrel-backed chairs arranged around an octagonal table. The furniture wasn’t new. When the sheriff’s station was first built, Rod Metcalf had covered the grand opening in the Lake Eden Journal. Hannah remembered reading that every stick of furniture, office or otherwise, had been provided at no cost to the taxpayer. It had come from donations that had been refurbished by the inmates at the St. Cloud Correctional Facility.
As Hannah glanced around Bill’s office, she saw the fine touch of her sister’s hand in several places. A brass ship’s lamp sat on the bookcase in the corner, casting a soft light in what would have been a shadowy corner. There was a photo cube on Bill’s desk containing pictures of Andrea, Tracey, and Bethany. The windows were still outfitted with blinds to block out the glaring afternoon sun, but Andrea had hung curtains on either side of the two windows and tied them together with a valance of the same material. She was about to walk over to look at the framed picture on the wall, which looked like one that Tracey had drawn, when Bill’s secretary, Barbara Donnelly, came in the connecting door.
“Hi, Hannah. Rick called me from the front desk to tell me you were here. Bill got held up in the parking lot. He’s just giving the new class of checkpoint volunteers their letters of certification. They’ll be out there this weekend, so don’t drink and drive.”
“I won’t.” Hannah opened the box of cookies and held it out toward Barbara. “Would you like a cookie before the guys eat them all?”
Barbara smiled and reached in the box. “Thanks. Bill ought to be back here before long. Do you want me to turn on the TV for you?”
“No, thanks. I’ve been talking to people all day, and I could use a little peace and quiet.”
“How about some coffee?”
“I’d better not. I’ve been drinking it since five this morning, and I’m a little coffeed out.”
“Okay. If you need anything, just open the door and stick your head in my office.”
After Barbara had gone back to her office, Hannah took a seat in one of the barrel-backed chairs. It was more comfortable than she’d thought it would be and she leaned back and closed her eyes. That was when she heard voices from the office next door. Mike’s office. The conversation had been inaudible only moments before, but now it was getting louder.
Hannah moved closer to the wall the two offices shared and took up a position by the bookcase. This could be interesting.
“I’m not going to take you off the case!” It was Mike’s voice, and he punctuated the sentence with what sounded to Hannah like his fist thumping the top of his desk with considerable force. “You don’t get to pick and choose the cases you work on. You’ll do your job like everyone else!”
“But I went out with Willa a couple of times!”
Hannah began to frown. She wondered if that was before or after Lonnie had started to date Michelle.
“So what if you dated her?” Mike asked.
“Well, how would you feel?”
“I wouldn’t feel. That’s the difference between us. And until you stop empathizing with the victim, you won’t make a good detective.”
“But…how do I stop?”
“For one thing, you call her the vic, or the victim. And if that sounds too hardhearted to you, you call her Miss Sunquist. You never use her first name.”
“What good will that do?”
“It’
ll help you to depersonalize her. Every time you feel those emotions welling up and attempting to cripple you from doing your job, you tell yourself, The only thing I can do for her now is catch her killer and make him pay.”
Hannah leaned against the bookcase, her heart beating hard. Had she accused Mike of being callous when all he was trying to do was depersonalize Willa so that he could do his job?
“That all makes sense,” Lonnie said, after a long moment of thought. “But I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Sure you can. Stop concentrating on her, and start focusing on that lousy excuse for a human being who robbed her of the rest of her life.”
“Yeah.” Lonnie sounded thoughtful. “I can see how that’d work.”
“Atta boy! You’ve got the ability to be good, Lonnie. All you have to do is put the empathy on hold and dial up the determination to catch the perp.”
“Right. I think I can do that. There’s just one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If you keep your emotions on hold all the time, don’t you get kind of…jaded and cynical?”
“Absolutely. You’ve seen cynical cops, and believe me you don’t want to be one! But I’m not telling you to keep your emotions on hold indefinitely. The only time you have to push that hold button is when you’re working, or when you’re thinking about how to run the case. I wouldn’t be able to have any kind of personal life at all if I shut down my emotions all the time.”
“Does that mean you felt bad about Will…” Lonnie stopped and cleared his throat. “Sorry. I forgot for a second. So you felt bad about the victim, too?”
“Of course I did! But I knew that if I got too empathetic while I was the only cop there, I wouldn’t be able to assess the crime scene analytically and pick up on any clues that her killer might have left behind. Do you get it?”
“I think so.”
“Do you know what I did when I finally got home last night at four in the morning?”
“No. What?”
“I took my emotions off hold. I had to decompress, so I put on my favorite jazz album and I poured myself a brandy. I drank it down, and then I stood under a steaming shower until the hot water ran out.”
“Did it help?”
“Yeah. I felt clean when I got out, almost like I washed away all the dirtbags and scum I have to deal with on a daily basis. And then I put on my sweats and walked barefoot to the living room and stared at the new picture I hung over my couch.”
Hannah drew in her breath sharply. Mike had said he was going to hang her picture over his couch.
“It’s a beautiful picture, and it makes me feel good to look at it,” Mike went on. “And then I told myself, There’s good in the world. All you have to do is look and you’ll see it.”
Hannah swallowed hard. She’d never seen this side of Mike before.
“What’s so interesting about my law enforcement books?” a voice asked, and Hannah turned toward the doorway. Bill was standing there, staring at her curiously.
“I was looking at this one.” Hannah grabbed a heavy book at random. “I’ve always been fascinated by…” She glanced down at the title. “Fingerprint analysis in the eighteenth century.”
“Did you open it?”
Hannah shook her head. “Not yet. I was going to, but you came in, and…”
“Open it now. I want to see the expression on your face.”
Hannah opened the book and frowned as she began to page through it. “But it’s blank!”
“Right. Mike gave it to me when I was sworn in as sheriff.”
“But why would Mike give you a blank…” Hannah stopped speaking and groaned instead. “There was no fingerprint analysis in the eighteenth century!”
“Right again.” Bill glanced down at the box of cookies she’d set on his desk. “Are these for the detectives’ meeting?”
“Yes.”
“What kind are they?”
“They’re Cappuccino Royales.”
“Coffee and chocolate?”
“Yes. Mike tasted a couple at the coffee shop today. I think he’s hoping they’ll make his detectives energetic and euphoric at the same time.”
“Will they?”
“I don’t know, but Bertie Straub tried one and she said she got jazzed up from the coffee and happy from the chocolate. She was going to take some back to the Cut ’n Curl, but she was afraid the chips would melt under the hair dryers.”
Bill looked interested. “How many cookies are there?”
“A little less than ten dozen,” Hannah answered, subtracting for the cookies she’d given Rick and Barbara.
“That should be enough,” Bill said, opening the box and grabbing a sample cookie. “Since I’m the boss, I’d better taste one before I give them to my staff.”
“Of course. Any caring boss would do the same.”
Bill finished the cookie in three bites and reached for another. “Just to make sure they’re all alike,” he explained, eating his second cookie.
“That’s very wise of you. Quality control is important.”
Bill finished eating and picked up the box. “I’m going to go make sure everyone gets two cookies before I take the rest to the meeting. We’re working five assault and batteries from a bachelor party that got out of hand, one stolen horse, two missing gerbils from a kindergarten classroom, three grand theft autos, two B and E’s, and a murder. And that means we could all use a little energy and euphoria around here.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Here we are, Moishe,” Hannah announced, turning into Norman’s driveway. “You’ve never been invited to dinner before, have you?”
Moishe didn’t deign to answer. She’d heard him prowling around in the back of her cookie truck, and he was obviously content to be riding, untethered, with her.
“Just in case you’re interested, Norman ordered mixed grill for you,” Hannah told him, not expecting an answer.
“Rrrrow?” Moishe surprised her by responding. And since the latter part of his yowl ended on a higher note than the beginning, she decided that it was a question.
“That’s right. Mixed grill. Sally’s making it for you. I’ve had it, and it’s delicious.”
This time there was no response, and Hannah concentrated on negotiating the rutted driveway. The spring rains had softened the hard-packed dirt under the gravel, and heavy trucks delivering building supplies had done the rest of the damage. Just as soon as the house was completely finished, Norman would have it graded and paved.
“Here we are,” Hannah said, pulling to a stop as close to the front door as the circular driveway allowed. “You’ve never been here before, so come on up and let me put on your leash.”
But before Hannah could coax her cat to move forward, there was a tap on the window. It was Norman. He must have been watching for her to pull up.
“I’ll take the Big Guy,” Norman offered, opening one of the doors at the back of her truck and scooping Moishe into his arms. “All dressed for dinner, I see,” he said to the cat that was purring like thunder.
“What do you mean?” Hannah asked, totally confused. “He’s not dressed at all.”
“Yes, he is. He’s wearing his harness and that’s got a black tie.”
Hannah groaned all the way into Norman’s foyer. “Great mirror,” she said, noticing the oval glass that hung by the built-in coat rack they’d designed together.
“Of course it’s a great mirror. You picked it out.”
“I did?” Hannah was surprised. She didn’t remember looking through catalogues for mirrors.
“Remember the Bette Davis festival they were running on television?”
“Of course. We must have watched at least four films that night.”
“Five including Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, but who’s counting? But there was a mirror in one of the movies that you said would be perfect for the foyer of our dream house.”
Hannah was impressed that Norman had remembered. But then
she had a disturbing thought. “You didn’t buy it from one of those expensive movie memorabilia auction houses, did you?”
“No, Luanne found it at an estate sale in The Cities, and the mothers gave it to me at cost. I had to have it resilvered, but it was worth it.”
Hannah was smiling as she followed Norman to the den. Just being in the house they’d designed together made her happy. She was still smiling as she stepped into the den, but the moment she saw what Norman had done to furnish it, her smile increased by several hundred lumens.
“Gorgeous!” she breathed, taking in the total effect. Norman’s den was elegance and coziness combined. It was comfort food for a weary soul who’d worked hard all day and wanted to relax in an oasis of ease. It was the kind of room that made you feel at home the moment you stepped through the arched doorway and onto the muted plaid carpet.
Once she’d experienced the total effect, Hannah took note of the individual touches. There was a beautifully polished oak bar that ran along one wall and barstools with dark green leather seats that resembled tall captain’s chairs. There was a window behind the bar that would look out over the fruit trees that Norman would eventually plant.
The other end of the large room contained a home theater with a giant television screen that slid up when it wasn’t in use. The television could be seen from the two leather recliners that were positioned as front row seats, the conversational grouping of six chairs in the main room, or the bar area at the opposite end of the room. Even though she wasn’t a sports fan, Hannah could imagine sitting at the bar, eating snacks and watching the Vikings play.
“I ordered a couch to go under the windows,” Norman gestured toward the series of tall, narrow windows that marched across one wall, “but it hasn’t come in yet.”
“This whole room is incredible,” Hannah said, not quite sure which area to explore next. And then she noticed that Norman was heading toward a spiral staircase that was built close to one wall. It was so narrow only one person could use it at a time and it rose up past a series of round windows that faced the side yard, leading to…
