by Joanne Fluke
“I have something to give you, Hannah. I didn’t want to do it in front of Mike. Andrea said she’s coming in this morning for coffee so I want you to bring her over to Granny’s Attic. Will you do that, dear?”
Hannah was puzzled. What did her mother have for her that she didn’t want Mike to see? “What’s this about, Mother?”
“I’ll tell you when you get to Granny’s Attic. I have to go now, dear. I need to call Michelle and wish her good luck with her play. She’s been rehearsing her cast for a month now.”
“When I talked to her last night, she mentioned that she had a final for her directing class.”
“That’s right. Everyone in the class had to stage a one-act play. They’re performing them today.”
“I’ll text her and wish her success,” Hannah promised. She still didn’t know what her mother wanted to show her, but she knew that asking for the second time would do little good. Instead, she gave her mother a parting hug. “Okay, Mother. Andrea and I will see you later.”
ORANGE FUDGE COOKIES
DO NOT pre-heat the oven yet. This dough must chill before baking.
1 and ½ cups butter (3 sticks, 12 ounces, ¾ pound)
1 ounce unsweetened baking chocolate (I used Baker’s)
1 and ¾ cups white (granulated) sugar
½ cup orange juice concentrate (I used Minute Maid)
2 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork)
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 cups flour (don’t sift it—pack it down in the cup when you measure it)
1 cup miniature chocolate chips (I used Nestlé)
____________________
½ cup white (granulated) sugar in a small bowl for rolling the dough balls
Melt the butter and the one ounce of unsweetened baking chocolate in a large microwave-safe bowl. Heat it on HIGH for 1 minute. Leave the bowl in the microwave for another minute and then check the butter and chocolate to see if it’s melted. If it’s not, give it more time, in 20-second increments followed by 20 seconds standing time, until it is.
Take the bowl out of the microwave and mix in the white sugar. Mix until it’s well combined.
Add the frozen orange juice concentrate to the bowl and mix it in. Mix until it’s thoroughly incorporated.
Let the butter, chocolate, sugar, and orange mixture sit on the counter while you get out the eggs.
Break the eggs into a small bowl or a large glass and whip them up with a fork from your silverware drawer.
Add the eggs to the large bowl with the chocolate mixture and stir them in thoroughly.
Hannah’s 1st Note: Lisa and I use a stand mixer to mix up this cookie dough down at The Cookie Jar. You can do it by hand at home, but using an electric mixer makes it a lot easier.
Sprinkle in the baking soda and salt. Mix until all of the ingredients are well combined.
Add the flour in one-cup increments, mixing after each addition.
Hannah’s 2nd Note: You don’t have to be painstakingly precise when you add the four cups of flour. No one’s going to know if one cup is a little bigger than the next one. Just make sure you mix after each addition of flour.
The dough will be quite stiff after you add the flour. This is exactly as it should be.
Add the miniature chocolate chips and mix them in by hand. Your goal is to get them evenly distributed so there will be chips in every cookie.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least two hours. (Overnight is even better.)
When you’re ready to bake, take the cookie dough out of the refrigerator and let it sit, still covered with the plastic wrap, on your kitchen counter. It will need to warm just a bit so that you can work with it.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.
While your oven reaches the proper temperature, prepare your cookie sheets. You can either spray them with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, or line them with parchment paper. (The parchment paper is more expensive, but easier in the long run. If you use it, you can simply pull the paper over to the wire cooling rack, cookies and all.)
Prepare a shallow bowl by filling it with the half cup white sugar. This is what you’ll use as a coating for the cookie dough balls you’ll roll.
Take off the plastic wrap and roll the cookie dough into walnut-sized balls with your impeccably clean hands. Roll each dough ball in the bowl with the white sugar, one ball at a time, and place it on your prepared cookie sheet—12 dough balls to a standard-sized sheet.
Press the dough balls down just a little so they won’t roll off when you carry them to the oven.
Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you form the dough into smaller dough balls, the cookies will be crisper. If you choose to do this, you’ll have to reduce the baking time. If I roll smaller balls, I start checking the Orange Fudge Cookies after 8 minutes in the oven.
Bake the walnut-sized cookie balls for 10 to 12 minutes or until they’re nicely browned around the edges. The cookies will flatten out, all by themselves. Let them cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheets and then move them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Hannah’s 4th Note: Orange Fudge Cookies freeze well. Roll them up in foil, the same way you would roll coins in a wrapper, put them in a freezer bag, and they’ll be fine for 3 months or so.
Yield: 8 to 10 dozen tasty chocolate-orange cookies, depending on the size of your dough balls.
Chapter Six
“What did you want to give me, Mother?” Hannah asked when they were all seated at the antique, red oak table on the second floor of their mother’s shop.
“It’s this.” Delores pulled out a leather tote bag that was decorated with the initials V.B.
“Tori Bascomb’s tote?” Andrea guessed.
“That’s right. And wait until I show you what’s inside!” Delores drew out a black leather book with the word Appointments written on the outside in fancy gold script.
Hannah was almost afraid to ask, but she did. “Did Tori have anything written for the night she was killed?”
“Yes.” Delores turned to the proper page. “The page is divided into time slots from eight in the morning until five at night. And Becky Summers was written in for a five o’clock appointment. After that, there’s a space for evening appointments, but there are no indications of time.”
“Becky?” Hannah was surprised. “I didn’t know Becky had an interest in acting.”
“She doesn’t,” Delores told them. “Becky was helping with the props for the Jordan High class play. Her son has the lead. Tori told me all about it. They need all sorts of old-fashioned props that are difficult to find so Becky’s helping the class locate some period pieces.”
“And you’re helping Becky.” Hannah came to the obvious conclusion.
“That’s right. I’ve already found an old hand pump and I’m currently working on the rest of the rigging for a well. Let me tell you, that’s not easy. Most of the farms around here did away with their old wells fifty or more years ago.”
“It’s very nice of you to help them, Mother,” Hannah said before her mother could go into even greater detail. “Did you happen to talk to Becky to ask her if Tori seemed upset about anything, or if she mentioned any appointments she had that night?”
“Of course I did, dear. Becky met Tori in her office at Jordan High and they talked about the props for about ten minutes. Then Tori said she had to rush home because she had a couple of evening appointments at her studio. She didn’t mention any names and Becky didn’t ask. I did ask Becky if Tori seemed nervous or anything like that, and Becky said that Tori was in a good mood and she appeared perfectly normal.”
“Are there any names written in that space for the evening?” Andrea asked.
“Tricia Barthel is listed for six o’clock. Tori wrote in the time. Tricia has the lead in the play the Lake Eden Players are performing at Thanksgiving. And there’s one more name,” Delores said with a s
igh. “But I don’t think it’ll be of any immediate help.”
“Why do you say that, Mother?” Andrea asked.
“Because the last name listed is M. Dumont.”
The two sisters exchanged puzzled glances and Andrea was the first to speak the thought that had crossed their minds. “I’ve never heard of a Dumont family around here.”
“Neither have I,” Delores admitted, “and that’s why I told you that I didn’t think it would help us. But it’s right here in Tori’s handwriting and she had beautiful penmanship. It’s M. Dumont. There’s no mistaking it. And there’s even a time in front of the name. M. Dumont was due to arrive at Tori’s condo at seven forty-five on the night that she was murdered.”
* * *
When Hannah returned to The Cookie Jar through the back kitchen door, she hung her coat on a hook and headed straight to the kitchen coffeepot to pour herself a decent cup of coffee. Delores had served them herbal tea and Hannah had dutifully sipped it, but she needed something to jolt her into high gear so that she could bake more cookies for Lisa’s remaining afternoon performances.
As she sat down at the stainless steel workstation and took her first sip of strong coffee, Hannah realized that she heard no buzz of voices or friendly chatter drifting in from the coffee shop. Usually, she could hear voices, laughter, and the clinking of coffee cups and spoons. She got up and walked closer to the swinging restaurant-style door, but the coffee shop was silent, as if all the customers had left and the chairs and tables were completely deserted. Had Lisa closed early for some reason? Surely her partner would have called or left her a note if there had been some sort of emergency.
Hannah looked around the kitchen. There was no note on the counter by the phone, nothing at all to explain the silence. She was about to open the swinging door to look when she heard Lisa’s voice.
“There Delores stood, in front of her downstairs neighbor’s door, panting a bit from the exertion of her headlong rush down the narrow staircase. She was here and quite suddenly, she wasn’t sure what she should do.”
Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. Lisa was giving another performance, telling the story of the murder. All of their customers were perfectly silent, no coughing, no clearing of throats, not even the rustling of clothing as people moved in their chairs. Everyone there was so enthralled by Lisa’s rendition of Delores finding the murder victim that they didn’t want to miss a word.
“Delores knew she had to do something. But what? She considered her options. She knew that Victoria Bascomb gave acting lessons in her condo. Could the screams, the sharp bangs, and the crash she’d heard be part of a very realistic rehearsal? She would feel very foolish if she pulled Victoria away from her rehearsal because she’d overreacted. But wasn’t that better than doing nothing if something was dreadfully wrong?”
“I would have knocked,” a male voice said and Hannah recognized Gus York’s nasal twang.
“I’m with you, Gus! Better to feel foolish than to ignore a friend in distress.” The female voice was forceful and Hannah began to smile. Grandma Knudson had been the first customer in the door this morning when Lisa had opened the coffee shop for business and she was still here.
“That’s exactly what Delores did, Grandma,” Lisa said. “She raised her hand and knocked as loudly as she could. But there was no answer.”
Hannah heard several gasps from the audience even though she was sure that everyone there had heard about Tori Bascomb’s murder. Lisa knew exactly how to get the audience involved. Tori Bascomb had been right. Lisa had real acting potential.
“Delores knocked again. And again. Someone must be there. The sounds she’d heard had come from Victoria Bascomb’s condo. Was there a reason why her friend wasn’t answering the door? Should she use the key that Victoria had given her for emergencies?”
“Yes,” several voices chorused.
“No way,” a male voice objected, and Hannah recognized Mike’s official tone. “She should call the authorities immediately.”
“And that’s exactly what Delores did,” Lisa continued the story. “She called the sheriff’s office for help. She spoke to you, Mike.”
But before she could continue telling the story, Mike’s voice broke in.
“She spoke to me, but she didn’t listen to my advice. She asked me to stay on the line and she told me she was going in. And then she stopped listening to me. And that’s when Lonnie and I rolled.”
Hannah’s lips lifted in a smile. There was nothing that Mike hated more than someone refusing to listen to him.
“Delores knew what Mike would tell her, so she put the cell phone in her pocket and used her key to unlock the door.”
There were several more gasps and Hannah knew that Lisa had them on the edges of their chairs. Since she’d heard Lisa’s story once this morning, she ceased to listen and headed for the recipe book to bake more cookies for the crowd that was bound to grow larger and larger as the day wore on.
Hannah paged through their laminated recipe book, but nothing struck her fancy. She should bake something different, something new. She thought about it for a moment and then an idea popped into her head. Everyone loved their meringue cookies. Perhaps it was time for a new variety.
She walked to the pantry and stared up at the shelves, searching for inspiration. She’d never made a meringue cookie with coconut. And there was a bag of dried pineapple pieces. Coconut and pineapple were wonderful together. Since all of their meringue cookies had the word angel in the title, she’d call these cookies Tropical Angels.
Less than thirty minutes later, Hannah was slipping the second batch of her new creation on the revolving racks in her preheated industrial oven. Once she’d finished, she set the timer and headed straight for the kitchen coffeepot to pour herself a pick-me-up cup of hot caffeine. She was just about to sit down on a stool at the stainless steel work island when someone knocked on the back door.
Hannah smiled as she hurried to open the door. She recognized that knock. Norman was here.
“Coffee?” she asked.
Norman nodded as he hung his coat on the rack by the door. “That would be good. It’s cold out there.”
Hannah set a mug of coffee in front of the stool where Norman always sat. “How about trying my newest cookie? I’m calling them Tropical Angels.”
“You won’t have to twist my arm for that!” Norman gave a little laugh. “I missed lunch today.”
“Problems?” Hannah went to the bakers rack to fill a plate with some of the Tropical Angel Cookies she’d already baked.
“You could say that. Hal McDermott broke his appliance again, and I . . .”
“Hold it!” Hannah interrupted him. “I think you told me once, but I forgot. What’s an appliance?”
“In Hal’s case, it was a partial. You’ve heard of a bridge, haven’t you?”
Hannah squelched the urge to remind him of the Mississippi River Bridge that was only a few miles away from Lake Eden, and simply nodded. She knew what a bridge meant in dental parlance.
“Well, Hal broke his and there were sharp edges. I had to remove it, file the sharp edges, and make him a temporary.”
“Hal’s broken it before, hasn’t he?” Hannah set the cookies in front of Norman and took the stool across from him.
“Oh, yes. He keeps crunching ice. He says it’s a habit he’s had for years and he just can’t seem to stop doing it. This is the second time he’s broken it this month. I’ve been patching it up, but this time I had to send it back to the lab.”
“How long will that take?”
“At least a week.”
“So Hal won’t have teeth for a week?”
Norman shook his head. “He’ll have teeth, but they’re temporary.”
“That’s good.”
“It could be. But unless the ice machine in their restaurant breaks down, that temporary I made won’t survive much more than a day or two at the most.” Norman reached out for a cookie and took a bite. Then he bega
n to smile. “These are good, Hannah. They taste like a vacation in the tropics. Your name for them is perfect.”
“Thanks,” Hannah said, smiling back. “It’s probably the coconut and dried pineapple. They taste like a tropical drink.”
“A piña colada. Back when I was still drinking, that used to be one of my favorite drinks.”
Hannah remembered the day, several years ago, when Norman had told her why he no longer touched a drop of alcohol. “Should I warn you when I put liquor in something I bake?”
“No need. Alcohol in food doesn’t bother me. I just don’t want to drink it straight. And that reminds me . . . do you have any beer at your place?”
“You want to drink beer?”
“Not me. But I would like you to try a recipe I got from one of my former dental school colleagues. He’s a cook and he sent it to me online.”
“What is it?”
“Beer muffins. He says he makes them every time he puts up a pot of chili.”
“That sounds interesting. Do you have the recipe with you?”
“No, but I can forward his email to you. Or I can bring it when we come over tonight.”
“Send it to me and I’ll look at it on my phone. Then I’ll pick up what I need at the Red Owl and make your beer muffins for dinner tonight.”
“Great!” Norman looked delighted. “The recipe’s easy and it just sounded good to me. Thanks, Hannah. I can hardly wait to taste them.”
