Carrot Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  Hannah’s 3rdNote: This cake is delicious without frosting, or just lightly dusted with powdered sugar. If you want a frosting, try the one below. Start making it 5 minutes before the cake is due to come out of the oven and the frosting and the cake will be ready at the same time.

  CHOCOLATE FROSTING

  ½ cup (1 stick) butter

  3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Hershey’s)

  1/3 cup milk

  1 one-pound box of powdered (confectioner’s) sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Place the butter, cocoa powder, and milk in a medium-size saucepan (The one from before that you didn’t wash.) Bring them to a boil, stirring constantly.

  Remove the pan from the heat and add the vanilla. Stir in the powdered sugar, a half-cup at a time, until the frosting is thickened, but still “pourable.” (If that’s not a word, it should be.)

  Pour the frosting on the hot cake, and spread it out quickly with a spatula.

  Hannah’s 4thNote: Interruptions happen and it’s not always possible to finish the frosting at the same time you take the hot cake from the oven. For that reason I’ve come up with an alternative fudge frosting, one that can be poured over a piping hot cake, a warm cake, or a stone cold cake. Here it is:

  NEVERFAIL FUDGE FROSTING

  ½ cup (1 stick, ¼ pound, 4 ounces) salted butter

  1 cup white (granulated) sugar

  1/3 cup cream

  ½ cup chocolate chips

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  ½ cup chopped pecans (optional)

  Place the butter, sugar, and cream into a medium-size saucepan (You can use the one from the cake that you didn’t wash.) Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Turn down the heat to medium and cook for two minutes.

  Add the half-cup chocolate chips, stir them in, and remove the saucepan from the heat.

  Stir in the vanilla and the chopped pecans, if you decided to use them.

  Pour the frosting on the cake and spread it out quickly with a spatula. If you’re pouring it on a warm cake or a cold cake, just grab the pan and tip it so the frosting covers the whole top.

  If you want this frosting to cool in a big hurry so that you can cut the cake, just slip it in the refrigerator, uncovered, for a half-hour or so.

  Hannah’s 5thNote: Marge says that this cake smells so good, you might have to keep it under lock and key until it’s cool enough to cut.

  Chapter Eight

  “Thanks, Hannah.” Mike snapped his notebook closed to show that their interview was over, but when Hannah made a move to rise to her feet, he reached out to stop her. “Just one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You mentioned that you spent some time with the victim last night at the dance.”

  Through no choice of mine, Hannah wanted to say, but of course she didn’t. “That’s true. I told you I was sitting in a booth with Gus and his relatives.”

  “And they were discussing things they remembered from their childhood?”

  “Right.” Hannah glanced longingly at the cake that sat on the counter. She’d been closeted with Mike in the kitchen of the lake cottage for over thirty minutes. Normally, being closed up with Mike in an isolated cottage at Eden Lake might have been an opportunity for romance, but not today. Mike was all business. He was the detective, and she was the person who’d found the body. There were guidelines to follow, and Mike was following them.

  “Would you like another piece of cake?” Hannah asked, hoping for the diversion of chocolate.

  “No thanks. I gained half a pound yesterday and I’ve got to watch it. But you go ahead if you want to.”

  Hannah sighed. She could have used another piece of Marge’s cake, but she didn’t want to admit it in front of the man who curtailed his calories if he gained an ounce. “I’m fine. Did you have anything else you wanted to ask me?”

  “Just a couple of things. Let’s get back to the conversation you had at the dance last night. From what you told me, it sounds like it was a family discussion that didn’t have much to do with you.”

  “That’s exactly what it was, at least most of the time. Marge tried to include me, and so did Gus, but we didn’t have a lot in common, especially when they started talking about the people they’d known in school.”

  “Did they mention anyone in particular?”

  Hannah shrugged. “A couple of classmates that Mother probably remembers, and some teachers.”

  “And you didn’t know any of the people they mentioned.”

  “Only the ones that still live in Lake Eden. And there weren’t that many of them.”

  “So you weren’t interested?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then why didn’t you make an excuse and leave?”

  “I couldn’t leave, not without asking them all to slide over and let me out. I was in the middle of a six-person round booth with Gus, Patsy, and Mac on one side, and Marge and Jack on the other.”

  “How long did you sit there?”

  “Through two sets of music. That was probably between twenty and thirty minutes.”

  “Well, that’s long enough.”

  Mike gave her one of his famous grins, the kind of smile that made her almost believe that she was the only woman in the world who mattered to him.

  “Long enough for what?” Hannah gathered herself together enough to ask.

  “Long enough to give me your take on the family dynamics.”

  Yellow caution lights began to blink in Hannah’s mind, and warning bells sounded. “What are you asking?”

  “I want your personal take on the victim. How did he get along with his long-lost family?”

  Hannah hesitated. There was no way she wanted to mention the animosity she’d noticed between Jack and Gus. “I think he got along just fine,” she said, “considering that he took money out of the family teapot and skinned out in the middle of the night to disappear for over thirty years. There were bound to be hurt feelings, especially since he didn’t contact any family or friends during the time he was gone.”

  “I heard that the victim and Jack Herman were buddies at Jordan High. Did they appear to be friendly last night?”

  Uh-oh! Hannah kept her expression carefully blank. Someone Mike had interviewed must have told him about the animosity between Jack Herman and Gus.

  “Hannah?” Mike prompted.

  Hannah conducted a lightning-fast inner debate and decided not to mention the fact that there had been some sort of problem between Jack and Gus. “I already told you, there were hurt feelings all around. And hurt feelings lead to resentment. The conversation I heard was polite, if that’s what you’re asking. But most of the time I wasn’t personally involved, so I wasn’t paying close attention.”

  “Do you think you would have noticed if there was any overt hostility?”

  “Nobody came out and threatened anybody, if that’s what you mean. And there certainly weren’t any punches thrown, or anything like that.” Hannah told herself she wasn’t really being untruthful. After all, Jack hadn’t threatened Gus, and they hadn’t gotten physical. “When I found Gus, there was blood on his shirt,” she said, deliberately steering the conversation away from Jack Herman. “Was he shot?”

  “No.”

  “Then what was the murder weapon?”

  “We’re not sure yet. Doc Knight said it was something long, thin, and sharp, like an ice pick or an awl. You didn’t touch anything, did you?”

  “I know better than that! It was clearly a murder scene. The only thing I did was feel for a pulse on the side of his neck.”

  “Then you didn’t move him?”

  “No.” Hannah switched gears again. “I did notice one thing I thought might be unusual, especially now that you tell me it was a stabbing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There wasn’t very much blood, and I thought stabbing victims bled a lot.”

  “Not in this case. Doc Knight explaine
d it to me. He said that if there are multiple stab wounds and the first few aren’t fatal, the victim bleeds. In this case there was only the one wound, and death was almost instantaneous. Stab wounds don’t bleed unless the victim is alive and his heart is still pumping. Gus died so fast, he didn’t have very much time to bleed.”

  Hannah’s stomach lurched, but she didn’t want to let on that Mike’s explanation had made her queasy. “I see. I really hope it wasn’t my grandfather’s.”

  “What wasn’t your grandfather’s?”

  “The ice pick. If it was an ice pick, that is.”

  Mike looked a bit dazed. “You think the murder weapon belonged to your grandfather, personally?”

  “No, not that. He gave them away at his hardware store for Christmas one year.”

  Mike flipped open his notebook and jotted that down. “Do you know who got them?”

  “Almost everyone in town. People still had iceboxes in those days, and they chipped ice off the block for cold drinks.”

  “But everybody’s got refrigerators now. Why would they still have ice picks when they’re not needed anymore?”

  “Ice picks come in handy for all sorts of things. I’ve got one in my kitchen drawer at home, and I just used it to poke another hole in a leather belt.”

  “Yeah, that would work. I bought a leather punch when I went down a size last year. I didn’t want to replace all my belts, so I poked another hole and made them smaller.”

  Hannah nodded, hoping he wouldn’t guess that the hole she’d punched with her grandfather’s ice pick was to make her belt larger.

  “So what you’re telling me is that there are a lot of similar ice picks floating around, and anyone in town could have one.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how many are left now. That was a long time ago, and they had wooden handles. My grandfather had them painted red and green for Christmas, and the name of his hardware store was stamped on in gold. If the handles broke or splintered, people probably threw them away. But if they were still in good shape, a couple of them could have wound up out at the lake cottages.”

  “Okay,” Mike said, snapping his notebook shut again. “There’s not much help there.”

  “Probably not. Did you find Gus’s wallet?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because if you didn’t, the motive could be robbery. Gus was flashing money around all night.”

  “Someone else mentioned that,” Mike said, not saying where he’d gotten his information. “We recovered the victim’s wallet. It was still in his pocket. And it contained a little over two hundred dollars.”

  “Good!”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he owed Ava for the groceries he bought last night, and now she’ll get her money. It’s interesting that robbery wasn’t the motive, though.”

  “We can’t rule it out. It’s possible that the thief didn’t intend to kill him, and fled when he realized what he’d done.”

  “Or he was after something other than money. Gus was wearing a Rolex and a diamond pinkie ring last night. When I found him, I didn’t notice if he still had them.”

  “We recovered both of them, and Bill had the guys in robbery take a look. The pinkie ring’s a fake. Everybody agrees it’s paste. They’re still not sure about the watch, so we’re having a jeweler take a look at it.”

  “Why would Gus wear a fake ring?” Hannah asked him.

  “Lots of rich people do. They keep the real jewelry locked in a safe and wear paste rings and fake watches.”

  “Why bother to buy the real stuff when you’re never going to wear it?”

  “Search me. Some people buy expensive jewelry as an investment. It’s probably more interesting than buying a lot of stocks or bonds.”

  Hannah shrugged. “Maybe. So you think that Gus has a safe at home filled with real jewelry?”

  “That’s my guess. We’ll have someone check it out when we get a minute. In the meantime, we’re treating this like a routine homicide.”

  Was homicide ever routine? Hannah doubted it. But she chose not to argue the point with Mike. “Any suspects?” she asked instead.

  “Everybody’s a suspect until we start weeding them out. It all depends on where they were at two this morning.”

  “That’s the estimated time of death?”

  “Doc Knight puts it between one and three. And since Ava says he left her place after one-thirty, and he had time to eat a piece of your carrot cake and drink some milk before he died, we’re asking everyone where they were between two and three in the morning.”

  “I was home at two-thirty,” Hannah said, before he could ask, “and I can prove it.”

  Mike gave a little laugh. “Moishe’s testimony doesn’t count, Hannah. We don’t speak cat down at the sheriff’s station.”

  “Actually…it does count.” Hannah was a bit disappointed that Mike hadn’t drawn another conclusion about her middle-of-the-night companion. Or maybe she was pleased that he trusted her. She couldn’t quite decide which. “Moishe was chasing around inside my bathtub, and Sue Plotnik called to ask me if everything was all right.”

  “I guess that clears you. There’s no way you could have stabbed the victim, and driven home in time to take the phone call.”

  “Well that’s a relief!” Hannah said, but Mike didn’t react to her sarcasm. He just stared at her with a frown that knit his reddish-blond eyebrows.

  “Why was The Big Guy chasing around inside your bathtub? Do you have mice?”

  “No. And that could be part of the problem, right along with the fact that I can’t find the Animal Channel on my new cable lineup.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been gone a lot lately, and Norman thinks Moishe’s bored. When I came home from church yesterday, he’d ripped open one of my couch pillows and scattered the stuffing all over the rug.”

  “Maybe he needs a playmate. Why don’t you ask Norman to bring Cuddles over to visit?”

  “That would probably help, but Cuddles is up in Duluth this week, vacationing with Marguerite and her friend.”

  “Oh. Well…maybe I should drop by for a little cop-to-cat talk. I could tell him about bathtub noise abatement and willful destruction of couch pillows.”

  “Anytime,” Hannah said, smiling at Mike’s description.

  “Anything else you want to know about the murder?”

  Hannah blinked several times. Was she hallucinating, or was Mike actually offering to give her information?

  “Hannah?”

  “Actually…yes. It’s been bothering me, and of course I didn’t look. What was in that disposable cooler on the bar?”

  “A bread wrapper with six ham and cheese sandwiches inside.”

  Hannah was puzzled. “You mean…already made?”

  “Right. He must have put them together right there at the bar and stashed them in the cooler. I can’t figure out why he’d do that, though.”

  “He told Ava that the refrigerator in his cabin wasn’t working right,” Hannah offered. “But I opened it when I went to the cottage to look for him, and it felt cool to me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure. The ice tray was still frozen solid.”

  “Maybe it was cutting on and off. The old ones do that sometimes. The water in the ice cube tray would freeze right back up again, but he might not have wanted to take the chance with a ham and cheese sandwich, especially with mayo.”

  “There was mayonnaise?”

  “Mayo and mustard.”

  The light dawned, and Hannah nodded. “I get it,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Get what?”

  “That’s one of the reasons he came back here, to use the mayo and mustard in the kitchen refrigerator.”

  “You know there was some in there?”

  “Yes. We ran out of cream for the coffee, and I went to the refrigerator to get another carton.”

  “And you’re sure he didn’t buy
the mustard and mayo at the store?”

  “I’m almost certain. Ava’s the type to keep a running tab in her mind, and she named everything he bought last night. She didn’t say a word about mayonnaise and mustard.”

  Mike laughed. “So he took those from the pavilion refrigerator. That’s pretty cheap for a man who flashes money around and wears a Rolex and a diamond pinkie ring.”

  “A Rolex that could be a fake and a diamond made out of paste,” Hannah reminded him.

  “That’s true, but I already explained that. And that suit he was wearing didn’t come cheap. Maybe he just forgot the mayo and the mustard. And then, when he started making his sandwiches, he looked around for some.”

  “Maybe,” Hannah said, giving in because fighting about it would be useless. Perhaps that was what had happened. She had no reason to think otherwise.

  “Okay.” Mike gave her a warm smile. “Since you found the body, you don’t need copies of the crime scene photos, do you?”

  Hannah’s mouth dropped open. What was Mike talking about?

  “I can call you with the highlights from the autopsy report when it comes in.”

  “That would be nice,” Hannah said carefully, still not sure why Mike was being so cooperative. She had a sneaking suspicion she’d be better off not asking, but she couldn’t resist. “Why are you volunteering all this information?”

  “Because you’re going to get it anyway, one way or the other. There’s no sense in trying to keep you from sticking your nose in my case, is there?”

  Hannah thought about that for a moment, and then she shook her head. “No. Lisa already asked me to help catch the killer so all the relatives can relax and enjoy the reunion again.”

  “Okay, then. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’d rather have you share any information you learn with me. That way we won’t be working at cross-purposes. And the only way you’ll share with me is if I share with you. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” Hannah said, surprised that she could even find her voice to speak. Mike was actually sanctioning her sleuthing! Or was he? This could be some sort of a trick. She’d have to ask Andrea and Michelle what they thought of his proposal.