by Joanne Fluke
“And she mentioned that lemon was her favorite so you almost had to give her one?”
“That’s exactly how it happened. She spent over six hundred dollars and I figured the least I could do was give her a pie.”
Hannah preened a bit. Her scenario had been correct. “I’m curious, Claire. What were you going to do with three pies anyway?”
The color began to rise in Claire’s cheeks. She looked as guilty as a kid caught going through the lunch line twice. “If I tell you, will you keep it to yourself?”
“Yes, if it doesn’t have anything to do with Rhonda’s murder.”
“It doesn’t. You heard that our church is trying to raise the money for new hymnals, didn’t you?”
Hannah had heard about the hymnal fund the last time she’d catered a Redeemer Lutheran board meeting.
“We had a meeting two Sundays ago to discuss fund-raising ideas. I suggested holding a weekly bake sale on Saturday mornings.”
“I bet they roped you into organizing it,” Hannah guessed, knowing how local church politics worked.
“You’re right. They nominated me and I couldn’t say no, since it was my idea in the first place. And of course I had to contribute something, but I don’t bake.”
“So you bought three of my pies to take to the bake sale?”
“Exactly. I repackaged the two I had left and I didn’t exactly say I’d baked them, but I didn’t say I hadn’t, either. Do you think that’s cheating?”
“Maybe technically, but it was for a good cause and I don’t mind. How much did they sell for?”
“Ten dollars apiece. The bake sale was a huge success, Hannah. Bob was very impressed.”
“Bob who?” Hannah asked. It was a fairly common name in Lake Eden, and she knew at least a dozen local Bobs.
“Reverend Knudson. He asked me to call him Bob.”
Hannah watched the color come up on Claire’s cheeks again and one possible explanation occurred to her. Claire had broken off her long-standing affair with Mayor Bascomb last winter. As far as Hannah knew, Claire hadn’t dipped her toe into the dating pool again, but the pink rising in her cheeks was a dead giveaway. Unless Hannah missed her guess, something new was going on in Claire’s love life. “Hold on a second, Claire. Are you dating Reverend Knudson?”
“Not exactly. But we’re really good friends and I just adore his grandmother.”
A tactless question popped into Hannah’s mind and she asked it before she could stop herself. “But don’t you find him boring after all that time with the mayor?”
“No, not at all. You wouldn’t think Bob was boring if you knew him as well as I do. He has a wonderful sense of humor.”
Hannah hoped she didn’t look as dubious as she felt. Reverend Knudson’s sermons about the wages of sin hadn’t seemed the least bit humorous to her. Of course, the subject matter didn’t leave a whole lot of room for jokes.
“Before you ask, Bob knows all about my affair with the mayor,” Claire interrupted Hannah’s thoughts. “I told him myself.”
“What did he say?” Hannah held her breath. Reverend Knudson had never struck her as the liberal type.
“He said it wasn’t important and I shouldn’t worry about it.”
Hannah blinked. “Reverend Knudson said an affair wasn’t important?”
“That’s right. He’s not as strict and proper as you think he is, Hannah. Bob’s really a lot of fun once you get him out of his clerical garb.” Hannah’s eyebrows shot up at that turn of phrase and Claire started to giggle. She sounded giddy, like a teenage girl, and her eyes sparkled with pure laughter. “I didn’t mean it that way!”
Hannah and Claire were still laughing when Andrea appeared in the doorway, wearing one of the outfits. It was a dark green cotton dress with large gold sunflowers scattered over it. “I’m taking them all, Claire. And I’m wearing this.”
“I’m so glad you like them.” Claire looked pleased. “That dress is wonderful with your coloring.”
“I think so, too. I’m helping Hannah with her catering this afternoon and I need to look my best.” Andrea turned to Hannah. “Why don’t you pick out something else to wear, Hannah? I’ll even pay for it. Our greens clash.”
Hannah felt herself climb firmly on the defensive. It was the old Queen-of-the-Hill battle they’d played countless times before. “You pick out something else. I was wearing my green first.”
“But yours is at least two years old and mine is new. New takes precedence over old.”
Hannah shook her head. “My green stays. The caterer takes precedence over the assistant.”
The two sisters locked eyes, four orbs burning with equal intensity. But after a moment, what would have led to a pitched battle in the past suddenly dissolved into laughter.
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” Andrea said through a volley of chuckles. “You’re the caterer. You win.”
“No, you’re the one who’s pregnant and facing your dragon of a mother-in-law. You win.”
“Really?” Andrea’s smile was as radiant as the sun after a sudden downpour. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, and you don’t even have to buy me a new outfit. I’ll just put it on my almost-maxed-out credit card.”
Ten minutes later and eighty dollars poorer despite the huge discount Claire had given her, Hannah walked out of Claire’s shop. She was wearing her new outfit and it was in her very favorite color, one she’d always despaired of being able to wear. It was a summer-weight skirt and jacket in an odd shade of red that miraculously failed to clash with her hair. Claire had chosen the outfit from her new shipment and it had been worth every penny Hannah had spent. She felt svelte and gorgeous.
“I’ll drive to Rhonda’s apartment building,” Andrea said, hurrying to keep up with Hannah’s longer stride as they walked across the parking lot toward the back door of The Cookie Jar. “You don’t have a hook in the back of your truck and I want to hang my new outfits so they won’t wrinkle.”
“Okay.” Hannah opened the door, walked through the kitchen, and stashed her old pantsuit in the small cubicle that the owner called a bathroom. “Let’s go. I have to be back here by one-thirty.”
“No problem.” Andrea led the way through the coffee shop and out to her car. She opened her car doors with a click and slid under the wheel while Hannah got into the passenger’s seat. “I thought you were going to give me a hard time about wanting to drive.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I drive too fast and I don’t keep my eyes on the road.”
“That’s true,” Hannah said, reaching for her seat belt and buckling it. “It’s a source of wonder to me that you haven’t had an accident.”
Andrea started her engine and pulled out into the street. “If I’m that bad, why are you letting me drive?”
“I’m an eternal optimist. I keep hoping you’ll get better.”
Andrea considered that a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t believe it. There’s some other reason you want me to drive. Come on, Hannah. Tell me what it is.”
“You’re my sister and you deserve another chance?”
“No way.”
Hannah sighed. Andrea was persistent. She’d get it out of her sooner or later. “I love your air conditioning. Mine isn’t working right.”
“I knew there was something!”
Hannah glanced out the windshield and pushed her foot against a nonexistent brake pedal. “Slow down, Andrea. That light’s turning.”
“I’ve got plenty of time,” Andrea argued, whizzing through the intersection. “See? I told you. It was yellow almost all the way through.”
“Tell me when we get there.” Hannah leaned back against the leather seats, reminded herself again that Andrea had never been involved in an accident, and shut her eyes. It was the coward’s way out, but she knew she’d feel a lot safer if she didn’t watch.
Chapter
Twelve
I t was noon by the time they finished canvassing Rho
nda’s neighbors and Hannah was depressed. They hadn’t learned anything of value, but that wasn’t the cause of her depression. Not every lead in a murder investigation panned out and she knew it.
“Are you upset that nobody saw Rhonda leave?” Andrea asked, noticing Hannah’s dejected expression as they walked down the sidewalk and headed toward her car.
“No.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Andrea stopped and put her hands on her hips. “There’s something wrong when your sister looks like she just lost her best friend. Now tell me what it is.”
“I thought I looked good in my new outfit.”
“You do.”
“Then why did all Rhonda’s neighbors tell you that you looked adorable, and then say, And you look very nice too, Hannah.”
“That’s because I’m wearing maternity clothes. You know how people treat you when you’re pregnant.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well I do. I’ve been through it before.” Andrea unlocked the doors to her car and climbed in. She waited until Hannah had buckled her seat belt before explaining, “Pregnant women look like blimps. It’s a fact of life. Rhonda’s neighbors were just saying I looked nice to make me feel better.”
Hannah knew that Andrea was trying to spare her feelings. She appreciated the effort, but it wasn’t working. Usually Hannah didn’t mind when people complimented Andrea lavishly and then threw her a bone to be polite. Today it had gotten to her. It was a rerun of high school and the comments their teachers and friends had made when they saw tall, gangly Hannah with beautiful and dainty Andrea.
“You’re taking things too personally,” Andrea chided her gently. “I think it’s because you’re on a diet. That’ll get anyone’s spirits down.”
Hannah realized that Andrea was right. “I hate it when you’re more mature than I am.”
“So do I. Being mature isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.” Andrea started the car and pulled out from the curb. “Is there anywhere else you want to go? We’ve got almost two hours before we cater.”
“Let’s go out to the Quick Stop.”
“Why?” Andrea asked.
“I want to pick up a toy for Suzie Hanks, and then I thought we could drive out to see Luanne’s mother. Norman found out that she cleaned the Voelker place for Rhonda.”
“She could know something,” Andrea mused. “Cleaning ladies notice all sorts of things. But we don’t have to go out to the Quick Stop first. My place is closer and I’ve got a whole bag full of toys I picked out for Suzie.”
“Tracey’s things?” Hannah asked, knowing that Andrea had given Suzie cartons of clothing and toys that Tracey had outgrown in the past.
“No, they’re new. The toy store at the mall had a huge sale last month.”
“If they’re new toys, you’d better have some sort of excuse for giving them to Suzie. You know how Luanne and her mother are about accepting anything they think is charity.”
“You’re right. I’ll say they were Tracey’s. After all, they could have been hers. She had so many toddler toys she didn’t even get a chance to play with them all.”
“You’re devious, Andrea.” Hannah turned to smile at her sister. “And you’re generous, too. I’m really proud to be your sister.”
“Thanks, but I’m not that devious, at least not more than any other real estate professional. And I’m proud of you, too.”
“All this for Suzie?” Marjorie Hanks gasped as she looked inside the shopping bag Andrea and Hannah had toted into her small cabin. She was a short but compact woman in her fifties with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. “Are you sure Tracey can’t use any of these?”
“She cleaned out her closet herself,” Andrea said, pulling out a pink velvet teddy bear dressed in fake fur with a string of fake pearls around its neck. “Tracey especially wanted Suzie to have this. You know how girls are when they reach a certain age. She thinks pink is too young for her.”
Marjorie picked up the bear and stroked its soft fur. “Suzie will love it. I’ll give it to her the minute she wakes up from her nap. But isn’t this one of those new bears like they have in the toy store out at the mall?”
“It can’t be,” Andrea stated with what sounded like complete sincerity, “unless they reissued them, or something like that. One of my friends gave it to Tracey for a christening gift.”
Hannah figured it was time to step in before Andrea dug an even deeper hole. “I need to ask you about Rhonda, Mrs. Hanks. I’m investigating her murder and Norman told me that you cleaned the Voelker place for her.”
“That’s right. I did. I’m sorry the job’s over. It was one of the best I ever had.”
“But wasn’t it a lot of work?” Andrea asked, jumping in to help with the questioning.
“The only hard part was the first day. Rhonda warned me that her great-aunt had been in a wheelchair since nineteen-eighty, and she said the place was a real mess. It sure was! That companion Mrs. Voelker had living with her didn’t do much in the way of cleaning.”
“It must have taken you a long time to whip it into shape,” Hannah commented.
“Not that long. All I had to clean was the ground floor. Rhonda said the attic was bare and the basement could stay the way it was. And I had Freddy and Jed to help me. They were out there doing some other work for Rhonda and they hauled out all the heavy trash bags.”
“What sort of work were they doing?” Hannah was curious.
“Handyman things. They did a real good job replacing some of the glass in the windows.”
Andrea nodded and returned to her first line of inquiry. “But the place wasn’t hard to keep up once you’d cleaned it the first time?”
“Heavens no! All I had to do was dust and vacuum and that was it…except for the bedroom.”
“The bedroom?” Hannah’s interest rose. “What did you have to do in there?”
“Dust and vacuum, clean the bathroom, and change the sheets on the bed. I know Rhonda had her own place in town, but she stayed out there some nights. Now I don’t want you to repeat this to a soul, but I think Rhonda had overnight company, if you know what I mean. There were always at least four dirty towels on the floor and once I found a razor in the wastebasket. It was right on top of one of those little travel bottles of aftershave.”
“What kind of razor was it?” Hannah asked, hoping for something distinctive that she could track down.
“Just one of those blue disposable kind you can buy a dozen to a bag at CostMart.”
“How about the aftershave? Do you remember the brand?”
“Sure do. It was Old Spice and I almost kept the bottle because it was kind of cute. Suzie loves to pick dandelions and I was thinking I could use it for a little vase on her table.” Marjorie paused for a moment and then she frowned. “Is it important?”
“It could be,” Hannah told her. “If we had it, the crime lab could dust for fingerprints. The man who spent the night with Rhonda might be able to tell us something about her murder.”
Marjorie shivered slightly. “Or he could’ve killed her. Now I wish I’d saved the bottle and the razor, too. They’d be evidence. But I just tossed them into a garbage bag and carried it out to the trash can.”
Hannah frowned slightly. She’d unwittingly sent evidence off to the dump and so had Marjorie Hanks.
“Don’t worry about it,” Andrea jumped in. “Hannah can catch Rhonda’s killer without those things.”
Hannah turned to give her sister a startled glance. Either Andrea was just attempting to make Mrs. Hanks feel better, or she really had confidence in Hannah’s abilities. Unfortunately, Hannah didn’t feel all that confident. With the exception of the fact that they now knew Rhonda’s boyfriend was real and not just gossip, they were still back at square one.
“Thanks, Mrs. Hanks. You’ve helped a lot.” Hannah put on her brightest smile. “Norman told me he hired you to clean his office. I’m really glad you got a new job.�
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“So am I. Doctor Rhodes said he’d pay top dollar, and he promised us a discount anytime we need our teeth fixed. He even said he’d hire me to clean that new house he’s building for you.”
“It’s not for me,” Hannah corrected her. “It’ll be Norman’s house, not mine.”
Marjorie shrugged. “Whatever. I’m willing to bet you’ll change your tune by the time it’s ready. You can’t find a nicer man than Doctor Rhodes.”
There was nothing Hannah could say to argue with that, so she kept mum. She did, however, shoot her sister an entreating look and Andrea took over the conversation. After they’d discussed how bright Suzie was and how she was already learning her numbers, Hannah and Andrea headed back the way they’d come on Old Bailey Road.
“That was good, wasn’t it?” Andrea asked, zipping out to the highway and driving toward town. “I mean, we learned something.”
“Yes. We already suspected that Rhonda had a boyfriend, but now we know it for sure.”
“Because of the aftershave?” Andrea asked, pulling out to pass a truck loaded with lumber.
Hannah reached down to make sure her seat belt was fastened securely. “Unless Rhonda preferred the scent of Old Spice to all the expensive perfumes she sold down at the drugstore, there’s a man in the picture.”
After Hannah loaded up the last box of cookies, Andrea glanced down at her watch. “We’ve still got twenty minutes and I really don’t want to get there early. Could we run next door to Granny’s Attic? Mother said Luanne found an antique rosewood cradle at an estate sale last weekend. She thinks it would be perfect for the new baby.”
“Good idea. I want to check with Mother and Carrie anyway. They were going to ask around and try to find out who Rhonda’s boyfriend was.”
Hannah locked up her truck and the sisters walked across the parking lot to their mother’s shop. The back door was unlocked for the convenience of customers who parked in the rear, and they made their way past boxed acquisitions and some pieces of old furniture.
“Norman’s right. They need more storage space,” Hannah muttered as she came perilously close to tripping over a three-legged table.
