Carrot Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  Hannah would have loved to ask Michelle to chop up some broccoli, but she’d already told Andrea the fib about the knives. “How about whisking up the dressing?” she suggested. “If Andrea will gather the ingredients, that is. And while you’re doing that, I need to ask your opinion about something.”

  “What’s that?” Michelle asked, as Andrea brought over the small cooler that Hannah had brought with her.

  “Mike says he doesn’t mind if I investigate as long as we exchange information. He sounded sincere, but I’m not sure.”

  “That’s because you can’t tell with a cop,” Michelle said quickly. “They don’t have to be truthful all the time. I think cop school teaches them how to lie to trick suspects.”

  Both Hannah and Andrea turned to Michelle in surprise. “Do you think Lonnie lies to you?” Hannah asked her.

  “Absolutely.” Michelle gave a little laugh. “Last night he told me that I was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “That’s not a lie,” Hannah said.

  And at almost the same time Andrea asked, “What’s wrong with that? You are.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Michelle smiled at both of them, “but I know that’s not true. Lonnie was lying, pure and simple.”

  “It wasn’t a lie, strictly speaking,” Hannah informed her. “Lonnie just exaggerated a bit to flatter you.”

  Andrea agreed. “Men are allowed to say things like that whether they mean them or not.”

  “But it usually means they want something,” Hannah added.

  “Oh, he did,” Michelle said.

  Andrea and Hannah locked eyes. It was clear that both of them were hoping the other one would ask. But the silence lengthened, and finally Hannah broke down.

  “Okay, I’ll ask,” she said. “Are you willing to tell us what Lonnie wanted?”

  Michelle laughed. “I was wondering which one of you would cave in and ask me. Sure, I’ll tell you what he wanted. Lonnie asked me if he could buy me an engagement ring for Christmas.”

  “But you’ve got two years of college to go,” Andrea pointed out.

  “I know that. I told him it was too soon. And I said that if he still felt the same way next year, he should ask me again.”

  “Smart sister!” Hannah exclaimed, exchanging a high-five with Andrea.

  “But the two years I’ve got left in school aren’t the only reason I didn’t want to get engaged now,” Michelle went on. “There’s someone else I might want to date.”

  “Someone here in Lake Eden?” Hannah asked, hoping that wasn’t the case. Lonnie would be pretty upset if he had a rival he had to face every day in town.

  Michelle shook her head. “Someone at school. And he hasn’t even asked me out yet. But I think he will, and I want to be free to go if he asks me.”

  “That’s probably smart,” Hannah told her.

  “I think so. I don’t want to commit to anyone until I’m absolutely sure. I’m just like you, Hannah.”

  Hannah winced inwardly. What Michelle was admiring as a smart choice might actually turn out to be a flaw in Hannah’s personality. There were some people who simply couldn’t commit to anything. They sat on the fence all their lives, wavering between two choices, and ended up completely alone. Hannah didn’t think that was what she was doing, but she wasn’t completely sure. In any event, this wasn’t the time for deep soul-searching. She needed their opinion of the alliance that Mike had suggested.

  “We got off the track here,” Hannah said. “We were talking about cops and lying. Do you think Mike was lying to me when he promised to give me access to information he learned if I’d do the same with him?”

  Michelle looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. Does he have anything to gain by lying to you?”

  “Of course he does,” Andrea answered the question. “He knows Hannah will play straight with him if she agrees to his deal. But she won’t know if he’s not playing straight with her.”

  “I’ll know,” Hannah said.

  Andrea looked surprised. “How?”

  “My sister’s a member of the sheriff’s wife network. Mike has to report everything he does to Bill, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “And it won’t be too difficult for you to get a look at those reports, will it?” Hannah interrupted her.

  Andrea began to smile. “It won’t be hard at all. Tell Mike yes, and I’ll check the reports so we can keep him honest.”

  Michelle manned the whisk while Andrea handed her the ingredients. Hannah chopped the last of the vegetables and as she was chopping, she thought of something she wanted to ask Andrea.

  “When Mike interviewed me, he told me that the diamond pinkie ring Gus was wearing was paste, and he thought the Rolex was a fake, too. How about his clothes? Do you think they were fakes?”

  “Are you talking about knockoffs?” Andrea asked.

  Hannah shrugged, unable to place the word. “I don’t know. What are knockoffs?”

  “Designer styles that are copied by other manufacturers, mostly in foreign countries. When Bill and I went to Hawaii, we had a four-hour layover in Los Angeles. The taxi driver took us downtown, and I bought a fake Gucci bag for ten dollars. It even had the logo as part of the brass clasp.”

  “You mean the G and the backwards C?” Michelle asked her.

  “That’s exactly right. It was a clutch, really cute, and it smelled like real leather.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Hannah guessed.

  “Bingo!” Andrea pointed her finger at Hannah. “Of course I knew it had to be hot, or a knockoff. Real Gucci bags sell for anywhere from ten to a hundred times that much. But I liked it, and Bill bought it for me.”

  “What happened?” Michelle asked.

  “Well, the leather smell faded before I even got it home, and the second time I carried it, the clasp fell apart.”

  “Why didn’t you have the clasp fixed?” Michelle asked her.

  “Maybe I should have, but I didn’t feel like going out of town to have it done.”

  “You could have taken it to Bud Hauge’s welding shop,” Hannah told her.

  “No, I couldn’t have. Bill was a deputy sheriff when we got married, and everybody in town thought he’d bought me a Gucci bag. How would it look for a deputy sheriff’s wife to try to pass off an illegal knockoff of a designer bag as the real thing?”

  “It would be bad,” Michelle said.

  “Fodder for the gossip hotline,” Hannah added.

  “Exactly. And that’s why I tossed it in the trash.”

  “Wise move,” Hannah complimented her, and grabbed the bowl with the dressing before Michelle could whisk the daylights out of it.

  “Whoa!” Michelle exclaimed, staring at her oldest sister in shock as Hannah added the dressing to the salad. “Why are you doing that now? We’re not going to set out the buffet for another two hours!”

  “That’s okay. There’s nothing in this salad to wilt. You can dress it hours ahead of time. It’s even a good idea, since it takes that long for the flavors to meld. All you have to do is toss it, cover it with plastic wrap, and stick it in the fridge. Then, when you’re ready to serve, you just sprinkle on the bacon pieces and the salted sunflower seeds, and set it out on the buffet table.” She stopped, took a deep breath, and got back to the subject at hand. “Now, back to Gus’s clothing. Did either of you two fashion experts get a good look at them?”

  “I did,” Andrea said, which was nothing less than Hannah had expected.

  “I didn’t,” Michelle admitted. “When everybody else was crowding around the car, I was saying goodbye to Lonnie in the church parking lot. He had to work, so I went out to the mall with a couple of my friends, and I wasn’t invited to the Inn for the breakfast buffet. Then last night at the dance, Lonnie and I were sitting with Lonnie’s parents, and Rick and Jessica. I saw Gus and I thought he looked really good, better dressed than anyone else there, but I didn’t really get close enough to catalogue his outfit, if that’s what yo
u mean.”

  “Expensive, expensive, expensive,” Andrea categorized, giving a little shrug. “I can’t tell you how much exactly, but I’m sure the two ensembles I saw him wearing cost enough for a down payment on a Lake Eden fixer-upper. I’d bet my real estate license on that!”

  Hannah just stared at her sister. That was good enough for her. Andrea valued her real estate license only slightly below her husband and her children. “Then the clothes were real even if the jewelry wasn’t?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That proves that Gus Klein had some money…or at least he did until he spent it on master tailors, fine material, and shoes even Mayor Bascomb couldn’t afford.”

  SALLY’S SUNNY VEGETABLE SALAD

  5 cups chopped broccoli florets

  5 cups chopped cauliflower florets

  2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (the sharper the cheddar the better the salad)

  ½ cup golden raisins (Sally says to tell you she’s used sweetened, dried cranberries as a substitute for the raisins)

  2/3 cup minced onion (Sally uses chopped green onions)

  —————

  ½ cup white (granulated) sugar

  1 cup mayonnaise (Hannah uses Hellmann’s—it’s called Best Foods west of the Rockies)

  2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar (I used raspberry vinegar)

  —————

  6 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled (or ½ cup bacon bits)

  ¼ cup shelled, salted, toasted sunflower seeds

  Chop the broccoli and cauliflower florets into tiny bite-sized pieces.

  Combine the broccoli and cauliflower in a large salad bowl. Add the shredded cheese and mix it up with your fingers.

  Mix in the raisins and the minced onion.

  In a small bowl, combine the sugar, mayonnaise, and red wine vinegar. Mix it with a rubber spatula, or a whisk until it’s smooth.

  Pour the dressing you just mixed over the top of the salad. Toss it, or stir it with a spoon or spatula until the vegetables are coated with the dressing.

  Sprinkle the bacon bits on top.

  Sprinkle the sunflower seeds on top of that.

  Hannah’s 1stNote: You can make this salad several hours before serving. It’s even better that way because the flavors blend. Just toss the vegetables and raisins with the dressing, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate it until your company arrives. Then all you have to do is sprinkle on the bacon bits, and the sunflower seeds, and serve.

  Yield: 12 to 16 servings.

  Hannah’s 2ndNote: I made this for a 6-person dinner party once, and I ended up with about half of the salad left in the bowl. I refrigerated it to see what would happen, and it was every bit as good the next day!

  Chapter Eleven

  Hannah stifled a yawn as she loaded pots and pans into one of the industrial-sized dishwaters at the Thompson cottage kitchen. She had volunteered for the task to free up the other women who wanted to see the slide show that Lisa, Herb, and Norman had compiled from the old family photos that everyone had brought. Hannah had wanted to see the slide show, too, but she knew she was far too tired to keep her eyes open once she was snuggled down on a blanket on the beach, the alternate venue Lisa and Herb had arranged because the pavilion was still roped off as a crime scene. Norman had rented a giant-screen television, the kind they used for huge outdoor events, from a place in Minneapolis, and the men who’d delivered it had helped to run an extension cord from the nearest cottage. Even though she was across the road and up the equivalent of a city block from the festivities, Hannah could hear applause and laughter from the family members gathered on the beach.

  The moths beat themselves silly against the screens as Hannah finished loading one dishwasher and poured in the heavy-duty detergent. Only one more to load and she could go home.

  Hannah yawned again as she rinsed out the crock of a slow cooker and found a place for it on the bottom rack of the second dishwasher. She was short on sleep and long on worries. For one thing, she was still having trouble banishing the thought of that ice pick. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, since she’d found victims who’d suffered more violent and much gorier deaths in the past. But there was something about the fact that the killer might have used one of her grandfather’s Christmas gifts to his customers as a murder weapon that really disturbed her. Perhaps it was because she had an ice pick just like it at home.

  There was another reason Hannah was worried, and it had to do with Moishe. Would she arrive home to find that the cat she’d adopted had shredded every pillow and piece of stuffed furniture in her condo?

  “Hannah?” a voice called out, accompanied by a knock on the wooden frame of the screen door. “I need to talk to you, Hannah.”

  Hannah recognized the voice. It was Ava from the Eden Lake Store. “Come on in, Ava. It’s not locked.”

  “Do you need some help?” Ava walked over to the sink and stared down at a saucepan that was waiting to be scoured.

  “Not really. I’m almost done. What’s on your mind?”

  “There’s something I have to tell you. It’s about Gus.”

  Hannah turned to look at her. Ava appeared extremely upset, and Hannah hoped she wasn’t about to hear a confession! “What is it?” she asked.

  “The Beesemans from Red Wing were in, and she mentioned that they weren’t sure the body they found was really Gus.”

  “That’s right. Marge had some doubts, and so did Patsy.”

  “And this Mrs. Beeseman…Betsy, I think her name was…said there wasn’t any way to tell, since Gus hadn’t had any distinguishing marks or scars on him when he left Lake Eden.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well…he did.”

  “He did what?”

  “He did have a distinguishing mark on him.”

  “A scar?”

  “No, a tattoo. It was two crossed bats and a ball, almost like that major league baseball logo they show on TV before every game.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But why didn’t anyone else mention it?”

  “I don’t think anybody else knew.”

  “Not Marge? Or Patsy?”

  “Neither one of them. It was a tattoo in…well…a kind of a private place.”

  Hannah didn’t really want to ask, but she knew she should. “What kind of private place are we talking about here?”

  “Backside private. On the left.”

  “You mean…?” Hannah used her own anatomy to pat the area in question.

  “That’s it. That’s exactly where it was.”

  “And this isn’t just hearsay. I mean, you’re sure this tattoo was…there?”

  “It was there. I saw it with my own two eyes way back in high school.” Ava stopped and looked highly embarrassed. “But it’s not what you’re thinking,” she added quickly.

  “I wasn’t thinking. I was trying really hard not to think.”

  “Good. It’s just that I went over to visit Marge and Patsy one day, and Mrs. Klein told me I could wait up in their room and read some of their movie magazines. So I went up there, and on the way I passed by Gus’s bedroom. The door was open, and he was inside getting dressed. And his backside was to me.”

  “And you saw it?”

  “Yes. That was when I saw it. He didn’t see me standing there, so I hurried on down the hall as quiet as I could be. And I went straight into Marge and Patsy’s room. I’m absolutely positive he didn’t know I was there, and that’s all there was to it.”

  Ava finished her account in a rush, as if she’d rehearsed it several times before delivering it to Hannah. That made Hannah doubt that Ava was being entirely truthful, but she couldn’t prove otherwise and it really didn’t matter in the long run.

  “Thanks for telling me, Ava,” Hannah said. “And if Marge and Patsy knew, they’d thank you, too. It’s one sure way to tell if the victim really was Gus.”

  Ava looked worried. “I’m not going to have
to testify, or anything like that, am I?”

  “I wouldn’t think so. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the murder. It’s just a question of whether he was who he said he was…or not.”

  “Good! I was worried about that, but I thought I should tell you anyway.” Ava headed for the door, but she turned back before she got there. “Thanks a lot, Hannah.”

  “That’s okay. I’m really glad you told me.”

  “So am I, but that’s not it.”

  “Not what?”

  “That’s not what I’m thanking you for. You see, Bill dropped by and paid Gus’s bill out of the money they found in his wallet. So now I’ve got the money, and I don’t have to be worried about that anymore.”

  “I’m glad,” Hannah said, figuring that Bill had pulled some strings to do that. Everyone knew that Ava was on a tight budget and couldn’t afford to absorb many losses.

  “I’m getting a new Popsicle flavor in next week. Drop in and have one on me.”

  “Thanks, Ava. I’ll do that.” Hannah gave her a wave as she went out the door, and then she turned back to her dishwashing chores. At least now she knew how to tell if the body she’d found was really Gus Klein…if he hadn’t had his tattoo removed after he’d left Lake Eden. She’d just finished adding several soup ladles, a bean pot, and two slow cooker crocks to the bottom rack when there was another knock, a very timid knock, on the frame of the screen door.

  “Who is it?” Hannah called out.

  “Barbara Donnelly. I need to talk to you, Hannah.”

  “Come in. It’s open.” Hannah made quick work of stashing a metal spatula on the top rack of the dishwater. She had no idea why Bill’s secretary wanted to talk to her, but perhaps she could pump Barbara for information. “I thought you were at the slide show.”

  “I was, but Norman told me that my pictures of Marge and Patsy at Girl Scout Camp won’t come for another half hour. And I wanted to see you, so I came right over.” Barbara walked to the sink and picked up a scouring pad. “Do you need some help?”