Carrot Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

She glanced down at the capsule again, and her decision was made for her. The powder inside was already starting to leak out of the side. It was dissolving from the slight bit of moisture that had gathered in the bottom of the sink and there was no sense saving a dissolved capsule. She poked it down the drain so the frog couldn’t get it, and ran some water to flush it down. That was when she realized that there were no dirty breakfast dishes. It was a cinch that Gus hadn’t washed them. The dishtowel hanging on a rack by the side of the sink was bone dry.

  “No dishes,” Hannah said to the frog, who was looking at her with inscrutable black eyes. The frog didn’t comment, not even a croak, as she opened the refrigerator door. A quick peek inside explained the absence of dirty dishes. There was no food. The only contents were a bottle of Jack Daniels and two cans of beer. There was nothing in the freezer compartment, either, except two trays of ice cubes, the old metal kind with the dividers between the cubes that nobody could pry up if they were filled too full. If Gus had wanted something other than a boilermaker for breakfast, he’d probably walked over to the Eden Lake Store to buy supplies.

  Hannah ran a little more water in the sink for the frog and then she headed across the road to the store. It had been one of her favorite places as a child. The old-fashioned bell on the door tinkled as she pushed it open and stepped in. Some things never changed, and Hannah found that comforting. The interior of the store still smelled the way it always had, a curious mixture of ring bologna, dill pickles in a large jar on the counter, and elderly bananas that had gotten too ripe for anything except banana bread.

  “Hello, Hannah.” Ava Schultz came out from the back, pushing aside the curtain that concealed her living quarters from her customers’ view. A small woman prone to quick movements and rapid speech, she reminded Hannah of a little brown wren, flitting from one part of the store to another and seldom lighting in one place for long. Ava had fashionably cut, perfectly coiffed, dark brown hair without a touch of gray. Delores and her friends were certain that she wore a wig since Bertie Straub, the owner of the Cut ’n Curl, insisted that Ava had never come in, not even once, to have her hair cut, styled, or colored.

  “Hi, Ava.” Hannah walked over to the main attraction, a shiny metal case filled with every available Popsicle flavor. “Anything new since I grew up?”

  Ava gave a little laugh and joined her at the case. “See the three boxes in the middle?” she asked, pointing to them. “Those are Rainbows, Scribblers, and Great Whites.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Of course not. We didn’t have them when you were a kid. All we carried then were the double pops in a variety of flavors.”

  “Rhubarb,” Hannah said with a grin. “That was my favorite.”

  Ava’s mouth dropped open. “They never made rhubarb!” she exclaimed. “You’re pulling my leg, Hannah.”

  “You’re right. I should have known I couldn’t put one over on Winnetka County’s leading Popsicle authority.”

  “I do like to keep up with it,” Ava admitted. “The kids enjoy hearing about the new products, and they’ve got so many nowadays.” She pointed to another box. “Look at those Life-saver Super Pops. From the bottom up, they’re pineapple, orange, cherry, and raspberry. And over here are the Incredible Hulks. They’re part of the Firecracker Super Heroes series. The Hulk is strawberry-kiwi, grape, and green apple. They’ve even got Big Foot. It’s cherry and cotton candy swirled together and shaped like a foot with a gumball. Get it?”

  “Big Foot. Cute. Popsicles have come a long way since nineteen-oh-five when Frank Epperson left his lemonade and stir stick out on the porch and it froze solid overnight.”

  “You remembered!” Ava gave her the same smile a teacher might bestow on a favorite student.

  “Of course I did.” Hannah smiled back. Ava had told her the story enough times. But she wasn’t here to discuss Popsicle history. She had to find out if Ava had seen Gus. “Did Gus Klein come in this morning?” she asked. “They’re lining up for the family reunion picture, and they sent me to find him.”

  “I haven’t seen him since he walked me back here last night after the dance. And before you can ask, it’s not what you think. He just wanted me to open the store so he could get some milk to go with that carrot cake you gave him.”

  “So you opened the store for him?”

  “Of course I did. A customer’s a customer, even after midnight. He bought his groceries, and then we had a drink together and waited for the cars to clear out of the parking lot. He said he hid your cake behind the bar and he was going back to eat it as soon as no one else was around. I think that was so he wouldn’t have to share. We went to school together, you know. Gus never was any good at sharing, not even in kindergarten.”

  Hannah thought about that for a moment. On the one hand, she was pleased that Gus liked her Special Carrot Cake so much that he hadn’t wanted to give any away. On the other hand, she’d given him a half-dozen pieces, and he could have given one to Ava.

  “Anyway,” Ava went on, “he got the milk and some other groceries.”

  “Food for breakfast?” Hannah guessed, remembering the empty refrigerator.

  “Not what a normal person would eat for breakfast, but that didn’t surprise me. Gus was never what you’d call a normal person. From little on, he had his own style, you know?”

  “What did he buy?” Hannah was curious.

  “Sliced ham, bread, Swiss cheese, a half-dozen little packages of potato chips, and ten Milky Ways, the old-fashioned kind with the milk chocolate, not the dark. The last I saw Gus, he was heading back to the pavilion with his cooler and his sack of groceries.”

  “Cooler? What cooler?”

  “Guess I forgot to mention that he bought one of those disposable coolers. I asked him why he needed a cooler when there was a refrigerator in his cottage, and he said it wasn’t working right.”

  Hannah frowned. When she’d checked the cabin, the refrigerator had been working just fine. The ice cubes in the trays hadn’t melted, and cold air had rolled out of the door when she’d opened it. Why would Gus lie to Ava about it?

  “He was supposed to come back to pay me for the groceries this morning,” Ava went on, “but he never showed.”

  Ominous music began to play in the recesses of Hannah’s mind. It sounded like a cross between Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and the soundtrack of a bad horror movie. But she didn’t have time to think about that now. “What time was it when Gus left here last night?”

  “A little after one-thirty. I got ready for bed, that takes about ten minutes, and I looked at the clock before I turned off the lights. It was a quarter to two.”

  Hannah reached reflexively for her steno pad, the kind she used for murder cases, but she quickly thought better of it. This was nothing more than a missing person, someone who hadn’t shown up for the family reunion picture. Gus hadn’t left for good, his car was still here, but he could have found a warmer, more hospitable place to sleep than the single bunk in his unheated lake cottage. There had been at least five dozen women at the dance last night. One of them might have thought a good-looking, middle-aged man like Gus was irresistible, especially since he wore expensive designer clothes and sported a Rolex watch and a diamond pinkie ring. Lake Eden women didn’t meet many men who drove Jaguars and flashed around money at every opportunity. Gus could have asked one of the women for a late date, and she could have accepted. Then he could have waited with Ava until no one was around, gone back to collect the carrot cake, and walked to the woman’s cottage bearing gifts of what appeared to Hannah to be picnic fixings.

  The more Hannah thought about it, the more sense it made. Perhaps Gus and his lady friend had decided to skip the group photo this morning, and they were sitting at her kitchen table right now, eating a ham and cheese sandwich, and sharing the carrot cake…

  “…or not,” Hannah muttered under her breath, and then she turned to Ava. “I’d better get going. They’ll be ready to take that p
hoto soon.”

  “I hope you find Gus. If you do, will you do me a favor?”

  “What?” Hannah asked, knowing better than to promise blindly.

  “Right after they snap that picture, grab Gus by the ear and march him back here to pay his bill. You can tell him I said that groceries don’t grow on trees, not unless they’re apples that is.”

  Chapter Six

  There was only one logical place to look, and Hannah headed straight for it. The Lake Pavilion was clearly deserted. The sandy parking lot was empty of cars and contained only a crumpled cigarette pack, the remnants of what had once been a blue and white bandanna, and a neatly clipped coupon for a two-fer breakfast at Paula’s Pancake House.

  As she approached the entrance to the white clapboard structure, Hannah felt an odd prickling at the back of her neck. She’d experienced that sensation before, and it had preceded something unpleasant, something bad, something like discovering a body. She told herself that Gus was fine and she’d find nothing but the debris of a party inside, but her feet dragged a bit as she approached the front entrance.

  Last night the pavilion had looked majestic, a gleaming white edifice in the moonlight with its open shutters spilling out warm yellow light into the humid blanket of summer darkness. Music had set up joyful vibrations in the walls, the wooden booths, the old chrome-and-black plastic barstools, and the revelers themselves, causing laughter and loud voices to peal out in a cacophony of raucous gaiety. Today it was…Hannah paused, in both mind and step, attempting to think of the word. Sad. The word was sad. The white paint was peeling, the shutters were warped from exposure to the elements, and there were a half-dozen brown beer bottles leaning up against the front of the building like tipsy sentinels. The party was over. Everyone had left. All that remained was the abandoned pavilion with its curling shards of paint.

  Hannah tried the front door, but it was locked, just as she’d thought it would be. She knocked, calling out for Gus, but there was no answer. Someone else might have gone back to find Lisa or Herb to get the key, but Hannah had been born and raised in Lake Eden, and she knew all about the Lake Pavilion. In a town where Lover’s Lane was regularly patrolled, and the parking lot at the rear of Jordan High was peppered with arc lights, the Lake Pavilion was the sole haven for teenage couples seeking privacy.

  The shutter was at the back of the pavilion, the third from the corner. Hannah found the proper one, tugged on the padlock that had been rigged to open, and removed it. Gaining access to the pavilion was as easy as her high school friends had told her it was. She lifted the shutter and propped it open with the stick that was attached to the side of the window frame. The opening was a bit above waist height, but she managed to swing one leg up and over the sill. A moment later, she was sitting on the sill with both legs hanging down inside the building, preparing to push off with her hands and jump down.

  She landed awkwardly, which wasn’t surprising. She’d never been the athletic type. Since the shutter was at the back of the pavilion, not visible from the road, she left it open for illumination.

  All was quiet within. The interior had an air of abandonment, and the only sign of life Hannah heard was the buzzing of several flies that had been trapped inside. As a child she’d believed that if she recorded the high-pitched buzzing of house flies and played it back ever so slowly, she’d hear tiny little voices saying things like, “Dig in. Hannah spilled strawberry jam on the kitchen table,” and “Watch out! Her mother’s got a flyswatter!”

  A phalanx of giant trash barrels sat against the wall. Several were close to overflowing with plastic plates from the dessert buffet and Styrofoam cups with the remnants of coffee. Another barrel was marked with a familiar symbol, and it contained bottles and cans for recycling.

  Hannah wrinkled up her nose. There was an odd combination of scents in the air, a spicy sweetness from the dessert buffet, the acrid scent of coffee that had perked too long in the pot, the lingering fragrance of perfumes and colognes, and the stale odor of spilled beer and liquor. Those smells were ordinary, what you might expect in a place where a large party had been held. But there was another scent under it all, cloying and sharp, and slightly metallic. It reminded Hannah of something unpleasant, something bad, something…but she didn’t want to think about that now.

  She fought the urge to dig in, to start picking up paper napkins, cups, glasses, and bottles, and stuffing them into the appropriate trash barrels. She reminded herself that Lisa and Herb had organized a crew of relatives to clean the pavilion this afternoon, and nobody expected her to do it. Her number one priority was to find Gus so that they could take the family picture.

  A light breeze swept across the shaft of sunlight that streamed through the open window, setting dust motes twirling. As Hannah watched, several more flies buzzed by the beam of sunlight on their way to the mahogany bar against the far wall. The top of the bar was empty except for a brown grocery sack and a white, disposable cooler. It was obvious that Gus had been here. Perhaps he’d been so tired, he’d forgotten his groceries and his cooler.

  Fat chance! Hannah’s rational mind chided her. He wanted those groceries. He asked Ava to open the store after hours for him. There’s no way he would have forgotten them when he left.

  Another group of flies with the same destination in mind flew in and headed straight for the bar. If this kept up, Lisa and Herb would never get the insects out in time for the slideshow they’d scheduled for tonight. Hannah hurried to the kitchen, soaked a rag with water, and grabbed a bottle of cleanser. They’d set out the dessert buffet on the bar last night, and it was apparent that whoever had wiped it down hadn’t done a good job. She’d clean it thoroughly right now so that no more flies would come in.

  Hannah had almost reached her goal when she noticed something. She stopped abruptly and peered down at the floor. The flies weren’t the only insect group attracted to this particular locale. There was a line of black carpenter ants streaming toward the bar and disappearing behind it. They must be looping around because there was a returning line of ants and they were carrying morsels of something. Carpenter ants seldom foraged for food during the daylight hours, but their scouts must have discovered something tasty enough to call out the troops.

  Hannah moved closer and let out a groan when she saw what had attracted the ants. They were retrieving sweet crumbs from a piece of her carrot cake. It had been dropped, frosting-side down, and mashed to a pulp by someone’s heel!

  For a brief moment, Hannah was livid. Gus had dropped a piece of her Special Carrot Cake and stepped on it. What a waste! But then she spotted something sticking out from behind the bar, something that looked like a shoe, on a foot, attached to a leg that was presumably connected to a person who was on the floor behind the bar. Hannah set the bottle of cleanser on the barstool as the ominous organ music that had been playing in her mind increased in volume, until the crashing chords almost deafened her.

  “Oh, murder!” she breathed, hoping that her words weren’t prophetic. But she recognized the shoe, the rich buttery leather that shouted designer footwear with an exorbitant price tag. And the trousers. They were part of an expensive suit that had probably cost more than she made all week in The Cookie Jar. She’d seen the outfit last night at the dance, and she knew precisely who had been wearing it.

  Hannah took a bracing breath and made her feet move forward. Gus had come back to the pavilion to eat his cake, but he’d only enjoyed a bite or two before disaster had struck. And now, as Hannah stood there staring, he was lying face up on the floor with a bloodstain resembling a peony in full bloom on the front of his shirt.

  Stabbed, or shot, Hannah’s rational mind told her, but she ignored it. It didn’t really matter what the murder weapon was. Gus was dead…or at least she thought he was dead.

  Hannah tore her eyes away from the sight and focused on the area around Gus Klein’s body. Pieces of her carrot cake were scattered on the floor, and the ants didn’t seem to mind that there was a dea
d body in the middle of their picnic. Except for the cake and the ants, the floor was perfectly clear. Whoever had killed Gus had left nothing resembling a clue behind.

  She shut her eyes, praying that she’d experienced a slight delusional episode, perhaps from lack of sleep. Then she opened them again to find that nothing had changed. Gus was still on the floor exactly where he’d been before, and there was no doubt in Hannah’s mind that he was dead. His chest was perfectly motionless, and any fool could see that he wasn’t breathing.

  You should check anyway, the rational voice in her mind prodded her. Think about how guilty you’d feel if he were still alive and you didn’t call for help.

  “Right,” Hannah said, swallowing hard. The last thing she wanted to do was touch another dead body, but the voice was right, she’d never forgive herself if Gus were still alive and there was something she could do for him.

  Hannah glanced around. There was no pay phone in the pavilion. She patted her pocket. No cell phone, either. She’d left it at home again. That meant she couldn’t call for help, so there was no need to…

  So you can’t call. So what? Ava’s got a phone, and your legs aren’t broken. If he’s still alive, you can hustle yourself right over to the store and call from there.

  “Okay, okay,” Hannah answered the inner voice that sounded a whole lot like her mother’s. “I’ll check.”

  She swallowed again, took a deep breath for courage, and knelt beside Gus. She reached out with one hand to feel the pulse point at the side of his neck.

  Nothing. Hannah pressed a bit harder. Still nothing. He was dead, all right, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. She wanted to find something to cover him so the flies that were buzzing around couldn’t gather. But that would be the wrong thing to do since she wasn’t supposed to touch anything. Gus Klein hadn’t stabbed himself in the chest so hard that he’d fallen backwards. This was a murder scene, and she had to call…

  “Hannah?”