A Second Helping of Murder and Recipes: A Hot Dish Heaven Mystery

by Jeanne Cooney

  I nodded and headed for the large painted cupboard at the back of the kitchen. I knew my way around since I’d helped out when the café and adjoining VFW had co-sponsored a benefit dinner-dance during my previous visit.

  “I’m glad ya got here when ya did,” my friend went on to say. “The temperature’s droppin’. The weather’s supposed to get real ugly.” She lingered before explaining, “There’s a storm front in Canada, and it’s headed our way. We might get a fair amount of snow tonight. And the way the wind blows ’round here, snow always means a possible blizzard.” She grimaced. “Another Halloween blizzard. Good thing everyone makes their kids’ costumes big enough to fit over snowsuits.”

  A guilty expression seized her face. “I suppose I should of called and told ya.” She raked her bottom lip with her top teeth. “I just didn’t want ya to cancel your trip. Besides, those weather folks never know what they’re talkin’ about. The storm could very well miss us altogether.”

  She stirred the contents of a large frying pan. “But to be on the safe side, plan on pluggin’ in your car.” She peeked in my direction, her eyes twinkling. “Ya do have a head-bolt heater, don’t ya?”

  I shook my head while placing a stack of mismatched dinner plates on the counter. “No need. My townhouse came with a garage.”

  She chuckled, waving her spoon. “I was just pullin’ your leg anyways.” She drew in a deep breath. “And if ya do have trouble gettin’ it started in the mornin’, I have jumper cables ya can use.” She chuckled some more as she inspected another dish.

  “That reminds me of a funny story.” Margie loved to tell tales. I suspected that back in time, the blood of an Irish storyteller had found its way into her family. “Some big shot from California was here recently to check out the canola plant down the highway there.” She bobbed her head to the north. “And when he saw the cords hangin’ from the grills on all the cars, he decided they must be electric. He told everyone back home he’d never seen such a ‘green’ community.”

  After allowing a snicker over the idea that some people didn’t know that in extreme northern climates, cars had to be “plugged in” to keep the engines from freezing up, Margie got serious again. “But like I said, I should of given ya a ‘heads up.’”

  I dismissed her apology with a wag of my hand. “It’s not your job to keep tabs on the weather for me. I could have checked on it myself. Instead, I listened to music the whole way up here. And because I had no intention of delaying my trip, I didn’t pay any attention to the weather reports earlier in the week.”

  As I spoke, I imagined being snowbound in Kennedy for a few days. In my mind’s eye, I saw a crackling fire, a bottle of wine, a couple of long-stemmed crystal glasses, and a wooly blanket tossed across a braided rug. It actually made me giddy, a condition I apparently failed to mask, as evidenced by the smile that lit Margie’s eyes.

  “You’re thinkin’ about bein’ stranded with Deputy Ryden, aren’t ya?”

  At the mere mention of the man’s name, my cheeks grew warm, and I was positive they were flushing as red as my hair.

  Randy Ryden was a Kittson County deputy sheriff. I’d met him the last time I was in town. We hit it off. Well, not at first, but before the night was over. And since then, we’d talked on the phone twice and had exchanged four or five e-mails. We also went out to dinner when he was in the Twin Cities two weeks ago, visiting his folks. For that date, I shaved my legs and the whole works, hoping we’d end up back at my place, taking our relationship to the next level—the horizontal one.

  I realize that makes me sound sleazy, but believe me, I’m not. It’s simply been a while since I’ve experienced any “intimacy.” The closest I’ve come lately was a month ago, when I spent an evening with “Ben and Jerry,” and a mouthful of Chunky Monkey slipped off my spoon and down the front of my pajamas, making my taa-taas tingle.

  As for my night with Randy Ryden, he got called away before anything happened, though not before inviting me to stay with him when I was in town this go-round. And I planned to do just that. As soon as he returned from western North Dakota.

  He was helping in the oil fields. Not working with oil but doing law enforcement stuff. The oil boom had caught the police out there off guard, so cops from around the region were lending a hand. Until he got back, which he expected would be the following afternoon, I’d bunk in one of two rooms above the café. Margie rented them out to short-term guests. It was Kennedy’s answer to the Holiday Inn.

  “Margie, I’ll admit I like the guy, but that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.” In truth that’s all I could say without getting tongue-tied and overheated. I couldn’t help it. Randy Ryden was tall, dark, and handsome, with a large portion of strong thrown in for good measure. He had a build that reminded me of rugged mountains—the kind I wanted to climb all over. And more importantly—or at least as importantly—he was genuinely nice, not something I was used to. “As I’ve told you countless times, my track record with guys isn’t great. So I’d rather not jinx myself by talking about what’s not going on between Randy and me.”

  Margie’s smile remained in place as she poured two cups of coffee and handed me one. “Well, if ya don’t wanna share your secrets with me, that’s your business, I suppose. But it seems kind of cruel since I nursed ya back from the brink of death.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. I had a concussion, nothing more. I was hardly at death’s door.”

  I did my best to sound nonchalant, but my chest tightened as I spoke. I guess I still was “working through the psychological aftermath” of nearly being killed the last time I was here. At least that’s how my therapist had explained my on-going battle with anxiety.

  That’s right. I see a therapist and have for some time. Even so, I remain pretty messed up. Makes me wonder about people who’ve never sought counseling. Kind of scary, huh?

  “Well, if ya won’t spill your guts,” Margie playfully whined as she retrieved a Tupperware container from the fridge, “how about fillin’ ’em with a little somethin’?” She tugged at the plastic lid. “I know ya hate sweets.” Believe me, she was being facetious. I was—and happily remain—addicted to sugar. “But you’ll like these. The recipe’s from Michelle Pierre, a friend of a friend down in St. Paul. It’s for the best banana bars ever.”

  I grabbed a bar and bit into it, savoring every moist yellow morsel and ignoring the likelihood that Margie was using these sweet treats to weasel information out of me—information of the romantic variety. It was a risk I was willing to take considering my love for baked goods. Especially Margie’s baked goods.

  See, Margie was not only a hot dish wizard, she was an award-winning baker. She’d won lots of county-fair ribbons over the years and, at my insistence, had finally entered a dozen different desserts in this year’s Minnesota State Fair. She walked away with three firsts, five seconds, and four thirds. That’s right. Twelve for twelve her first time out.

  Despite that, she’d cast off her success by saying, “Well, I sure as heck didn’t deserve this many ribbons.”

  I, in turn, had argued that she was the best baker around, and with my penchant for sweets, I counted myself an expert on the subject. I also begged her to quit being so modest.

  To that she’d thoughtfully replied, “Well, maybe you’re right. I’m gettin’ arthritis, and I don’t deserve that either, so maybe—just maybe—it all evens out.” I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.

  “Margie,” I said, my mind returning to the here and now, “how did . . .” My voice trailed off. I’d planned to ask her how these incredible bars had “fared” in the state ribbon competition but got distracted by another anxious feeling.

  And despite being in Margie’s warm kitchen, I shivered.

  Chapter Three

  Birds have tiny brains. Still, they know when to fly away, whether it’s
to avoid danger or inclement weather. People aren’t that smart.

  At least not my old boyfriend, Boo-Boo. He’d been calling me again. He didn’t seem to understand that he should fly away—far, far away—even though I’d urged him to do so repeatedly.

  I guess I shouldn’t be too critical though. While able to sense doom and gloom easily enough, I, too, have failed to respond appropriately at times. Case in point, my disastrous relationship with the aforementioned small-brained professional baseball player, whose idea of a great double-header was having bleached-blonde twins do him simultaneously.

  Even before I learned of that particular peccadillo, the warning signs flashed and screeched like red lights and whistles at a train stop. Yet I refused to take heed. So a little more than a year ago the heartbreak express ran right over me when I opened the door to Boo-Boo’s Chicago hotel room. I’d planned to surprise him midway through his road trip. And “surprise” him I did. I also surprised the two women in bed with him—the previously noted and surgically enhanced twins.

  I wasn’t sure why I recalled that horrid day now, while standing in Margie’s kitchen. It might have been that the anxiety snaking through me was similar to what I felt back then. Or maybe any thought of snakes automatically triggered recollections of Boo-Boo.

  Back in Hot Dish Heaven the door opened to Barbie Jenson, the editor of The Enterprise, the local weekly newspaper. She was also Margie’s best friend, though a decade or so younger. During my last visit, I’d gotten to know her and was quite fond of her. She was different from Margie. Not as motherly. More outrageous. More worldly. Unlike Margie, who’d never strayed far from home, Barbie had lived in St. Paul for years, where she was a newspaper reporter. She only moved back to the valley to raise her children and care for her aging parents. Her kids were now grown and gone and her parents, deceased.

  “Oh, good, you made it.” Barbie spoke on a harried breath while strutting to the kitchen, her tight jeans swishing as her chubby denim-clad legs brushed against each other. “I’ve got something to tell you both.” She pulled me to her bountiful bosom for a cursory hug complete with air kisses. If I was not mistaken, Barbie was a bit bigger these days. “You won’t believe what just happened.” Her voice was a combination of shock and awe, matching her appearance perfectly. With full lips, arched brows, and spiked maroon hair, Barbie always came across as shocked or in awe.

  Margie filled a cup with coffee and handed it to her. “Calm down and take a seat. You’re as excited as a sugared-up ten-year-old. A very well-endowed ten-year-old.”

  Barbie ignored the comment, but Margie was right. Barbie filled her Minnesota Gophers’ football jersey with absolutely no room to spare. She was a defensive line coach’s dream.

  “I can’t sit,” Barbie said. “I’m too keyed up.” She sipped her coffee and frowned. “Then again, this may help.” She raised the cup. “It’s so weak it might actually lull me to sleep.”

  It was Margie’s turn to frown. “Ya don’t hafta drink it, ya know.”

  Barbie set the cup on the prep table. “Well . . .” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Despite the chill in the air, her feet were bare in backless UGG slippers. “You know how I have to listen to the police scanner for my job and all?”

  I didn’t say anything, but in truth, Barbie would have found a way to listen to the police scanner if unemployed and living under a bridge. Barbie, you see, was nosy. Extremely nosy.

  In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I, too, had been called “nosy.” Many times by many people, including the deputy I was presently lusting after, as well as by Barbie herself. Not that she had ever said anything to my face. Oh, no. She had, however, made a notation to that effect in her reporter’s notebook—the one she so carelessly left in her open purse.

  “Anyhow,” Barbie said, “a little while ago I heard the radio dispatcher call Sheriff Halverson, telling him to get out to the Kennedy piler.”

  I pointed at her. “I think I passed that on my way into town.”

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

  I considered the question. “Since I’d never seen a piler before, everything seemed out of the ordinary.”

  “Oh, too bad.” She eased her expression and circled toward Margie, her voice rising excitedly. “I drove out there right away and arrived just after the sheriff. A few deputies followed me in. Some state troopers too.” She flailed her arms in typical fashion. Barbie employed numerous body parts whenever she spoke. “Things were so chaotic. People were running every which way.”

  “And?” Margie posed the word as a question.

  “You won’t believe it.” With palms up, Barbie paced. “You simply won’t believe it.”

  “Spill it,” Margie groused. “Then I’ll tell ya if I believe it or not.”

  Barbie clamped her mouth shut. She wasn’t about to “spill” it. She possessed information that neither of us had. And while undoubtedly eager to share it, she’d do it slowly, in drips, like a coffee maker in the morning, when you’re dying for that first cup. It’s what made Barbie a different type of storyteller from Margie, who pretty much blurted out everything all at once, her mouth overflowing most of the time.

  “Well, first of all,” Barbie said, her words measured, “as you know, the shacks at the pilers aren’t guard shacks, but scale houses, with a scale along the ground on each side of them. One scale weighs the trucks on their way in. The other weighs them on their way out.”

  “Okay, so the pilers have scales.” Margie was growing impatient. “And chickens have wings, but they still can’t fly. So what?”

  “So . . .” Barbie examined her short, black-polished fingernails. She wasn’t about to let anyone, not even her dear friend, rush her. She wanted to toy with us. Hold us in suspense. She couldn’t help herself. It was the reporter in her. I probably would have done the same. “Beneath each scale—underground—there’s an area where the mechanical workings are located. You know, the sensors that make sure the trucks are getting weighed accurately.” She moved on to scrutinize her thumbnails.

  Meanwhile, Margie checked the schoolhouse clock that hung high above the sink. “I swear if ya were any slower at tellin’ stories, Barbie, ya’d be talkin’ backwards.”

  Barbie raised her eyes. “To access that underground area, called the scale pit,” she said to me alone, apparently punishing Margie for her petulance, “you have to climb down what looks like a square manhole.” She formed “Ls” with the fingers on both her hands.

  Margie blew a wayward wisp of hair from her face while trudging to the stainless-steel refrigerator. She dug around inside until she found the decorative tin she obviously wanted. Grabbing it, she kicked the door closed with her heel and made her return.

  Apparently sensing that Barbie was nowhere near the end of her tale, Margie was providing us with sustenance. She pulled off the canister cover, dropped it on the prep table with a clang, and tilted the container our way. The two of us snatched what smelled like chocolate-covered peanut butter cups. “Barbie doesn’t like Banana Bars,” Margie informed me, “but she loves these Peanut Butter Bars.”

  Barbie lifted her chin. “I wouldn’t say I dislike Banana Bars. I just don’t understand why anyone would make something out of rotten fruit.”

  Margie set a fist to her hip. “That recipe calls for regular bananas, not overripe ones.”

  It didn’t matter. Barbie was on a roll. “And another thing. What’s the deal with lutefisk? Yeah, I’m Norwegian, but still . . . eating dried fish that was soaked in lye? Really?”

  She went on, but I zoned out. Not intentionally. It’s just that the sweet smell of milk chocolate and sugar-laced peanut butter had filled my head and overtaken my senses. While the Banana Bars were great, these were incredible. After only a couple bites, the fret residing in my stomach had been evicted, and my i
nsides were inhabited by the warmth of homemade goodness and memories of childhood.

  In my mind, I saw my mom in the kitchen of our old Victorian house in southern Minnesota. She was baking peanut butter cookies that she partially dipped in chocolate shortly after they came out of the oven. While only allowing me to dip a few, she would let me lick the dipping pan clean.

  “I’ve gotta get back to cookin’.” Margie punctuated the sentence by slapping the metal prep table, bringing my reverie to a noisy conclusion. “So, Barbie, either get to the point about what happened at the piler or point yourself on out of here.”

  “Okay, okay,” Barbie mumbled, her mouth full of the sweet and sticky peanut butter mixture. “You’re kind of grouchy, aren’t you?”

  “No, just busy. I don’t have time for all this lollygaggin’.”

  Truth be told, Margie did sound grumpy, or at least exasperated, but I figured it wasn’t my place to say anything. I was just a visitor. What’s more, she was preparing to feed close to a hundred people, a daunting task. So I kept my mouth shut other than for the occasional bite of my dessert bar.

  As for Barbie, she finished her bar and brushed her empty hands together. “Okay, Margie, I’m sorry.” Plainly, she wasn’t. There wasn’t an ounce of remorse in her tone. “I just thought you’d want to hear the whole story. But if you don’t care about facts . . .”

  Margie raised her eyes to the ceiling, as if she might discover some much-needed restraint there. Or absent that, a club good for clobbering her friend. She also tapped her foot in a steady rhythm that played out her annoyance. Yes, Margie could express a lot without saying a word.