Apple Turnover Murder, Key Lime Pie Murder, Cherry Cheesecake Murder, Lemon Meringue Pie Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “But…what if she tried to kill him and he killed her defending himself?”

  “That didn’t happen. Doc Knight found no wounds to indicate a scenario like that. She wasn’t physically engaged with anyone that night, and Doc Knight’s conclusions go even further. He didn’t find any evidence of anticipation on her part.”

  Hannah gave a little sigh. Why couldn’t they come right out and say it in plain English? But just in case she was misinterpreting what Mike had meant, she decided to ask for clarification.

  “Are you saying that Willa didn’t know she was in any danger from her killer?”

  “That’s right. The first blow came from behind, and it was fatal. The other blow, the one from the right side, was extraneous.”

  Hannah shivered slightly. “So you were right.”

  “About what?”

  “On Tuesday night when you were talking to Norman at my place, you said you thought the second blow was just for insurance.”

  “That’s right. At that point, she was already…” Mike stopped and sighed deeply. “She was already gone. At least she didn’t see it coming and she didn’t have time to be frightened. This guy is scum, Hannah. I really want to get him.”

  “Me, too,” Hannah replied, letting him take that response any way he wished. It really didn’t make any difference to her which one of them caught Willa’s killer as long as he was tried, convicted, and spent the next hundred years or so in jail.

  KITTY’S ORANGE CAKE

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

  1 box yellow cake mix (1 pound, 2.25 ounces)

  One package (3 ounces) orange Jell-O powder

  (NOT sugar free)

  1 cup orange juice

  1 teaspoon orange extract

  ½ cup vegetable oil

  1 teaspoon orange zest (optional—if you like it super orangey)

  4 eggs

  1 cup semi-sweet mini chocolate morsels*** (6-ounce package—I used Nestles)

  Grease and flour a Bundt pan. (I sprayed mine with Pam and then floured it.)

  Hannah’s 1st Note: You can make this cake without an electric mixer if you have a strong arm and determination, but it’s a lot easier if you use one.

  Dump the dry yellow cake mix in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the orange Jell-O powder. Add the orange juice, orange extract, vegetable oil, and the orange zest (if you decided to use it). Mix all the ingredients together until they are well blended.

  Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition.

  Beat 2 minutes on medium speed with an electric mixer or 3 minutes by hand.

  Fold in the mini chocolate morsels by hand.

  Pour the cake batter into the Bundt pan.

  Bake at 350 degrees F. for 45 to 55 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out dry.

  Cool on a rack for 20-25 minutes. Loosen the outside edges and the middle, and tip the cake out of the pan. Let the cake cool completely on the rack.

  When the cake is cool, drizzle Orange-Fudge Frosting over the crest and let it run down the sides. (Or, if you don’t feel like making a glaze, just let the cake cool completely and dust it with confectioner’s sugar.)

  Orange-Fudge Frosting:

  2 Tablespoons chilled butter (¼ stick, 1/8 cup)

  1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (6-ounce bag)

  1 teaspoon orange extract

  2 Tablespoons refrigerated orange juice

  Place the butter in the bottom of a 2-cup microwave-safe bowl. (I used a glass one-pint measuring cup.) Add the chocolate chips. Heat on HIGH for 60 seconds.

  Stir to see if the chips are melted. (They tend to maintain their shape even when melted, so you can’t tell by just looking.) If they’re not melted and can’t be stirred smooth, heat them on HIGH at 15-second intervals until they are, stirring to check after each 15-second interval.

  Add the orange extract and stir it in.

  Add the orange juice Tablespoon by Tablespoon, stirring after each addition.

  Pour the frosting over the ridge of the cake, letting it run partway down the sides. It will be thicker on top. That’s fine. (And if it’s not, that’s fine, too—you really can’t go wrong with this cake.)

  Refrigerate the cake without covering it, for at least 20 minutes before serving. That “sets” the frosting. After the 20-minute refrigeration, the cake can be left out at room temperature, if you wish.

  Hannah’s 2nd Note: When I bake this cake for Mother, I use both the orange extract and the orange zest. Mother adores the combination of orange and chocolate. Come to think of it, Mother adores ANY combination that includes chocolate.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Are you sure you have time?” Hannah asked Norman once they got back to her condo and Moishe had sampled her mother’s trout dinner and Norman had given him the realistic-looking mouse filled with fresh catnip that he’d picked up at the pet store. “I can search Willa’s desk alone if you want to hurry home to print the pictures you took today.”

  Norman shook his head. He was staring down at Moishe and frowning a bit. “I’ll go with you. I’ve got the time, and you’ll need me to break into Willa’s desk.”

  “That’s true. Do you have a dental pick with you?”

  Norman laughed. “It’s not something I carry around in my wallet. But I’ve got a Swiss Army Knife. There’s bound to be something on there I can use.”

  “Okay.” Hannah filled Moishe’s water dish with fresh water and tossed him a couple of salmon-flavored kitty treats that he probably wouldn’t eat. “Are you ready to go?”

  “I’ll be ready as soon as I give you this and plug it in.” Norman pulled a box from the bag he’d carried into the condo and presented it to Hannah. “Here’s your new cell phone. I activated it at the store for you.”

  “But…”

  “No buts,” Norman interrupted her protest. “I’ll put it in the charger and plug it in, and it’ll be ready to go tomorrow morning. All you have to do is turn it on to make a call.”

  Norman plugged in the phone and then he walked over to scratch Moishe behind the ears. As usual, Hannah’s feline roommate was sitting on the carpeted ledge Michelle had bought him, staring out the living room window. “He’s definitely losing weight, Hannah. I can almost feel his ribs. He took only one bite of your mother’s trout.”

  “I know. And he’s not interested in treats or catnip, either. He batted that mouse for less than a minute, and then he went back to the window again.”

  “I don’t think he really wanted to play with the mouse at all. He was just humoring me.” Norman waited for Hannah to lock the door behind them, and then he followed her down the outside stairs and took her arm as they walked down the path to the visitors’ parking lot.

  Once they were in Norman’s car and headed toward the exit to her condo complex, Hannah picked up their discussion of Moishe. “I don’t think he’s sick. Dr. Bob says his blood work is just fine. Moishe’s just…preoccupied. He’s focused on something, and I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “I tried to find out for you. I stood there and stared at the place he was staring the whole time you were changing clothes. And I didn’t see a thing except your neighbor’s windows. The shades were down, and absolutely nothing was happening.”

  “Do you think there’s something out there?”

  Norman considered that for a moment. “Call it a hunch, or instinct, or whatever, but I do. And whatever it is must be a lot more intriguing than trout or a catnip mouse.”

  The school parking lot was eerie at night in the glow from the halogen lights that were stationed at intervals to protect the cars of teachers who were working late. Nothing was moving, but there was a large cluster of cars parked at the far end by the football field.

  “What are all these cars doing here?” Norman asked, pulling up next to the back door to the home economics classroom.

  “They’re resurfacing Gull Avenue tomorrow morning. And
since it’s going to be blocked off from midnight tonight until midnight on Saturday, Mayor Bascomb arranged for the residents to use the school parking lot and drive out the back way.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “Lisa told me. Herb’s going on patrol at midnight to knock on doors and ticket any cars on the street.”

  The school loomed large and dark as they approached. Hannah gave a little start as they walked past the motion sensor and the high-wattage light mounted over the back door to Pam’s classroom went on. “Thanks, Norman,” she said.

  “Thanks for what?”

  “For being here. There’s no way I’d enjoy doing something like this alone. I keep thinking about all the bad thrillers I’ve ever seen on television, with big empty buildings and homicidal stalkers.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  “Me, too.” Hannah drew a deep breath and waited for Norman to unlock the door. He’d just started to push it open when she heard what sounded like a crash from inside.

  “What was that?” she gasped, grabbing his hand to hold him back.

  “What was what?”

  “Didn’t you hear that noise?”

  “I heard something, but maybe it was just the air conditioner kicking in.”

  “Jordan High doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

  “Oh. Well…this door leads to the pantry, right?”

  Hannah nodded, although she knew he couldn’t see it. “That’s right. It’s the door Pam uses for deliveries.”

  “Maybe someone stacked something wrong and it fell.”

  “Possibly,” Hannah said, even though she knew that things didn’t fall without provocation. It was one of the principles of inertia. She was sure that Norman knew it, too, but he was trying to reassure her. “Do you think we should go in?”

  Norman considered that for a moment. “Yeah. I’ll go first, and you come right behind me. We’ll leave the outside door open, and if there’s something wrong, you turn and run straight to the car. Take my keys.”

  Hannah was about to object when Norman pressed the keys into her hand. She opened her mouth to tell him that there was no way she’d leave him to face any kind of threat alone when she reconsidered. He wanted to protect her. His ego was at stake.

  “Okay?” Norman prompted for an answer.

  “Okay,” Hannah said, bowing to the centuries-old tradition of letting someone who wanted to be stronger take the lead. And if she were being completely honest with herself, she felt pretty good about it. Norman wanted to protect her. That was the important thing. Whether she needed protection or not was another matter for another time.

  “Lights are to the right of the door,” Hannah said, remembering the last time she’d come in through the back door.

  “Okay.”

  With Norman leading the way, they entered the pantry. Once the lights were on and the area was illuminated with a burst of pseudosunlight from the fluorescent bulbs overhead, Hannah glanced around at the pantry shelves. Everything was lined up just the way she remembered. The spices were at the end, the canned goods arranged by food group on the shelves, and the bulky items like flour and sugar stored at waist height at the other end.

  “Everything looks all right to me,” she told Norman.

  “Me, too.”

  “Let’s go in, then.” Hannah moved up behind Norman as he approached the door to the classroom. “Lights are on the left.”

  “Got it.” Norman flicked on the lights in the classroom, and both of them immediately saw the reason for the noise that Hannah had heard. One of the chairs near the door to the hallway was tipped over on its back.

  “Somebody was here,” Norman said.

  “Somebody or something,” Hannah added. “Hold on.”

  Since she’d used this classroom only months ago for her adult class, Hannah remembered where the kitchen utensils were kept. She pulled open a drawer near the first kitchen pod, pulled out a rolling pin, and handed it to Norman. A moment later, she had a second rolling pin in her hand. “Okay. Let’s make sure we’re alone in here.”

  With both of them walking the rows of desks, it didn’t take long to discover that they were, indeed, the only occupants of the home economics classroom. The intruder, if there’d been one, had left.

  “All clear,” Norman said, putting down his rolling pin. “We don’t need these anymore.”

  “Not right now, but I think I’ll keep mine handy until I go shut that outside door.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Okay. Take your rolling pin with you. On your way back, you can drop it off on the counter in kitchen number one.”

  While Norman shut the outside door, Hannah checked the classroom door to the hallway. It was shut, but not locked. She opened it, rolling pin at the ready, and went out to look down the hallway. Even by the dim lights that were left on at night, she could see that it was completely deserted. By the time she went back in and closed and locked the door behind her, Norman was back and they headed for the desk that Willa had used under the windows.

  “Let me see what kind of a lock it is,” Norman said, tugging on one of the drawers. It slid open, almost knocking him back, and both of them just stared at it.

  “Pam said Willa always locked her desk,” Hannah said.

  “Well, it’s not locked now.” Norman pulled out the drawer beneath the one he’d opened, and then he tried the drawers on the other side. They all slid open, even the long, shallow center drawer.

  “Do you think someone broke in?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. I don’t see any scratch marks, and all the wood is intact.”

  “But Pam told me there was only one key. And Willa had that.”

  “Where it is now?”

  “I don’t know. Mike told Pam to change the locks on her basement apartment because Willa’s keys weren’t recovered from the crime scene.”

  Norman thought about that for a moment. “Then I guess we can assume that the killer has them, the killer threw them away and someone else has them, or someone found Willa before you did and took her keys.”

  “You forgot one.”

  “One what?”

  “One other possibility. Willa could have lost her keys earlier in the day and someone found them.”

  “But how would that someone know to come here and look through her desk?”

  That stymied Hannah for a moment, but then she recovered. “Maybe Willa’s name was on her key ring. Or maybe someone stole her keys from her purse for some reason.”

  “What reason? She wasn’t wealthy, there probably wasn’t anything valuable in her desk, and why would they go to the trouble of snatching her keys without taking her whole purse? It’s a dead end.”

  “It’s a cul-de-sac,” Hannah corrected him. “You just turn around and go back to something you passed by before.”

  “And that is….?”

  “The killer or the person who found Willa’s body before I did.”

  “My money’s on the killer,” Norman said.

  “Mine, too. Let’s search the desk and get out of here. I’m getting a really bad feeling, and it’s getting harder and harder to convince myself that it’s all in my imagination.”

  They were silent for long moments as they went through the desk. Norman started with the drawers on the right side, and Hannah took the drawers on the left. Norman found Willa’s college transcripts, some lesson plans she’d written for Pam, and a whole folder of recipes. Hannah found printouts of e-mail messages from Gordon Tate, confirming meetings at the campus coffee shop, dates for dinner, or simply hello-how-are-yous. The tone of the messages was more friendly than intimate, and Hannah could understand why Pam had doubted the passion in Willa and Gordon’s relationship.

  They reached for the center drawer and smiled as they met there. They’d both finished their side drawers at the same time.

  “Only one place left,” Norman said.

  “I know. So far, we’ve struck out. Let’s hope there’s
something here.”

  And there was something. They both saw it at the same time. Sitting in the exact center of the otherwise empty center drawer was a small album with a red enamel cover. The cover had a word stamped in gold on the front, and both of them bent down to read it. It said, “Photos,” in script so fancy it was almost indecipherable.

  “After you,” Norman said.

  “Thanks.” Hannah reached for the album and opened it. The first photo was a picture of an older couple leaning against the fence of a corral. “They’re probably Willa’s parents,” Hannah said.

  “And that must be a favorite horse,” Norman guessed when Hannah turned the page.

  “Right,” Hannah said, flipping to the next picture. It was Willa astride what appeared to be the same horse. There were several similar pictures, one of the older man they’d identified as Willa’s father on another horse, and one of the older woman standing in front of a stove.

  “Nice ranch,” Norman commented as Hannah flipped through several photos of the house, pastures, and horse barn. And then they came to the last photo.

  “What in the world…?” Hannah stared down at the picture of Willa in what she assumed was her wedding dress. There was no veil, but it was certainly fancy enough to wear to a wedding. It was a professional photo of the happy couple, and Willa did look happy. But the groom who had stood at her side was missing, cut cleanly off with a scissors.