Cinnamon Roll Murder hsm-16

by Joanne Fluke

  “Hello?” Michelle called out. “Are you okay in there?”

  They waited a moment or two, but there was no answer. Hannah stepped closer and yelled as loudly as she could. “We need someone to open the back door. Can anyone get there to unlock it?”

  The only sounds they heard were the distant sirens of emergency vehicles speeding to the accident site, and the wind whistling through the pines. Inside the locked bus, all was ominously silent.

  Chapter Two

  The two sisters waited breathlessly. Hannah was almost positive that they were thinking the same dire thought. Was everyone dead inside the bus? Or were they so badly injured they couldn’t even call out?

  “I can do it,” a faint voice came from the interior of the bus. “I was riding in the back. Give me a minute and I’ll get there.”

  Several moments later there was the sound of a lock clicking, and the back door swung open to reveal a handsome but haggard-looking man with strips of cloth wrapped around his wrist. The cloth strips were holding a screwdriver in place as a makeshift brace. “Are you doctors?”

  “No,” Michelle answered. “I’ve had first aid training, but that’s about it.”

  “Who are you then?”

  “Two passing motorists who came to help,” Hannah explained as quickly as she could. “It may take the paramedics some time to get to you. The road’s blocked by the wreckage and they’ll have to hike in over half a mile. Is anyone inside badly injured?”

  “No. We’ve all got bruises, but I’m the worst ... unless you count the bus driver. Lynnette made this split for me. She used to work in a doctor’s office.”

  “Lynnette’s a nurse?” Hannah asked.

  He shook his head. “She was in charge of the appointment desk, but she used to help the nurses when they got really busy. You know, hand them things and stuff like that.”

  “Do you think your wrist is broken?” Michelle asked.

  “I don’t think so, but I’m no doctor. I guess I can find out for sure from the paramedics, or the doctors ... if they ever get here.”

  You’re pretty impatient considering the accident happened less than five minutes ago, Hannah thought, but she didn’t say it. He’d been injured and she should make allowances for that. “I’m sure they’ll come just as soon as they can,” she said, giving him a comforting smile. “Two ambulances and a fire truck passed us on the way here.”

  Michelle stepped closer and examined his splint. “Your splint looks just fine. It’s holding your wrist immobile and that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do. You’ll probably need X-rays when you get to the hospital, but you’re fine for now. Just be careful not to bang it against anything or try to use your right arm. You don’t want to risk injuring it further, especially since you play keyboards.”

  “You know me?” he asked, looking pleased.

  “Not personally, but I know your music. You’re Buddy Neiman, the keyboard player with Cinnamon Roll Six.”

  “That’s right.” Buddy gave her a long, assessing look. “So you’re a fan?”

  “I certainly am. Your music is great.”

  “Thanks. Hey ... maybe you want to get together for a drink or something after we play tomorrow night.”

  Hannah held her breath. She hoped Michelle realized that Buddy was trying to pick her up.

  “That would be nice. I’ll be there with my boyfriend and his cousin, Devin. Devin’s your biggest fan, and he’s the one who introduced me to your music. He’s got everything the Cinnamon Roll Six ever recorded, and he plays keyboards with the Jordan High jazz band. He told me he can hardly wait to meet you and tell you how great he thinks you are.”

  Hannah watched the play of expressions cross Buddy’s face. There was disappointment in the fact that Michelle had a boyfriend, regret that he’d asked her to have a drink since she’d assumed he was open to including her boyfriend and Devin, and pleased at the compliment to his musical talent. Flattery must have won out in the end, because he smiled.

  “I’d like to meet your boyfriend and his cousin,” he said, going into fan mode. “Devin sounds like a nice kid.”

  “Oh, he is. He’s pretty talented, too. He’s got a job playing the piano at the Lake Eden Inn during the dinner hour on weekends.”

  Enough chit-chat, Hannah’s mind prodded. Get to what’s important.

  “You said there weren’t any other serious injuries unless you counted the driver,” Michelle said, almost as if she’d read Hannah’s mind. “What did you mean by that?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “The driver is dead?” Hannah repeated, just to make sure she’d understood his response.

  “That’s what Lynnette said. She went up there to see if he was okay, and when she came back, she told us he was dead. It’s probably why he went off the road in the first place. I’m thinking it must have been a heart attack or something sudden like that. One minute we were traveling along as smooth as silk, and the next minute we were fishtailing across three lanes of traffic and crashing sideways into the ditch.”

  “We’d better take a look at the driver to make sure there’s nothing we can do for him,” Michelle said.

  “Sounds good. Come on in.”

  Buddy held out his uninjured arm, and Michelle hopped nimbly into the bus. It took Hannah a bit longer to get inside, but soon the two sisters were standing at the very back of the bus in the space where the band stored their instruments. The locked cabinets, which had been bolted to the floor, were now hanging upside down over their heads, and they were standing on what looked like a shallow trough, but was really the slightly arched ceiling of the bus.

  It was a bit disorienting. The shadows were deep, the interior illuminated only by two strips of emergency LED lights that had been installed on the floor. Those lights were now above their heads, and Hannah could see that close to a dozen people were huddled against the windows on either side.

  “The back door’s unlocked if anybody wants to get out,” Buddy announced, “but it’s warmer in here.”

  “I think we should all stay here,” an older man spoke up. There were several nods from the group huddled around him, and Hannah could see that he was the leader, unofficially or not. “Better hold onto the pup. He’s so little, we could lose him in the snow.”

  Buddy shrugged. “We’re going to have to lose him anyway now that Clay’s dead. He’s the one who stopped to rescue him. And he’s the one who said he’d find him a home.”

  “Maybe we can take him,” a girl with long black hair spoke up. “He’s so cute.”

  Hannah moved a step closer and saw a tiny puppy face with impossibly big ears peeking out from a blanket on the girl’s lap.

  “You know we can’t take him,” the brown-haired guy sitting next to her said. “We’re on the road all the time.”

  “We can just turn him loose once we get to town,” Buddy suggested. “Maybe somebody will feel sorry for him and take him in.”

  “You can’t do that! It’s cold out there, and you know he was almost frozen to death when Clay rescued him. He’s got to have a warm place to sleep and food to eat. He’s so thin I can feel his little ribs right through the blanket. We’ve just got to find somebody to take him in.”

  “I’ll take him,” Hannah said, surprising everyone including herself.

  “Who are you?” the older man asked her.

  “Hannah Swensen. And this is my sister, Michelle. We spotted the bus in the ditch and we came to see if we could help.”

  “Nice of you,” the man said. “I’m Lee Campbell, the band manager.”

  “Karl Reese. Drums.” A tall gangly redhead with hair almost as curly as Hannah’s spoke up. “And this is my girlfriend, Penny.”

  “Glad to meet you,” Penny said. “Thanks for coming to help us out.”

  The girl holding the puppy gave Hannah a shy smile. “I’m so glad you’re taking this little guy. He’s been through a lot, and he’s really a good puppy.”

  “My wife, the patron s
aint of anything with fur,” the brown-haired man sitting next to her said. “She’s Annie and I’m Tommy Asch. I play sax and clarinet.”

  “Conrad Bergen. Bass,” the guy who looked like the boy next door in so many old movies introduced himself.

  “I’m Eric Campbell,” the guy with long, dark hair pulled back into a ponytail gave them a smile. “And he’s Drake Mason,” he introduced the bald, slightly heavyset guy sitting next to him. “We’re brass.”

  “I’m Cammy.” The girl with an extremely low-cut sweater told them. “I travel with the band.”

  The bleached blonde sitting next to her gave both of them an assessing look to see if they might be competition. “And I’m Lynnette. We help the boys set up and ... uh ... things like that.”

  Hannah was not about to ask what things like that meant. Instead she said, “I understand the driver is dead?”

  “Yeah. I went up there to check on him. He was dead.”

  “Did you try to find a pulse?” Michelle asked her.

  “Do I look like an idiot? Sure I tried to find a pulse. There wasn’t any, and he wasn’t breathing either. I’ve got some medical training, you know.”

  Of course you do, Hannah’s mind replied. You know how to say “Doctor will see you at ten on Thursday, Mrs. Smith. Please let us know twenty-four hours in advance if you can’t keep your appointment.” But instead of voicing her thoughts, she asked, “Do you mind if I take a look, Lynnette? Sometimes those pulse points can be very difficult to find, especially if the patient is comatose. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I’m sure you know what you’re doing. It’s just that if I don’t check to make certain, I could lose my license.”

  “Oh. Well ... sure! That’s different. Have at it.” Lynnette dismissed her with a wave. “No way I’m going up there again. Clay looked really creepy.”

  Wonderful! Hannah’s mind replied. I can hardly wait to see what you think is creepy. But of course she didn’t say a word. She certainly wasn’t looking forward to a trip to the front of the bus. It would be a test of agility because she’d have to walk in the metal trough that formed the high part of the upside down ceiling, but she wanted to spare her sister the sight of the dead driver. She turned to Michelle and chose her words carefully. If Michelle thought she was needed, she’d come along even if the prospect was daunting. “I’ll go check on the driver. You stay here and see if you can help anyone else.”

  “No way. I’m going with you.”

  “But you don’t have to ...”

  “Yes, I do.” Michelle insisted. “I don’t want to lose my license either.”

  The trip up the nonexistent aisle wasn’t easy. The way Hannah assessed it, they had two choices. They could walk upright, putting one foot directly ahead of the other and risk losing their balance, or they could straddle the very center of the ceiling and walk with their feet spread out several feet apart. Hannah opted to straddle the steepest part of the ceiling and they preceded forward, small step by small step, with their arms extended out from their sides for balance.

  Michelle waited until they were out of earshot and then she tapped Hannah on the arm. “What license are we in danger of losing if we don’t do this?”

  “Uh ...” Hannah thought fast. “I think that would be our Good Sense license. I’m willing to bet that Lynnette didn’t even know how to check for a pulse.”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  The two sisters made their way toward the front of the bus. The dim glow from the strips of LED lights was cold and blue, and everything, even ordinary things like bus windows and shades, seemed eerie and unreal. Most of the bus seats had fallen open into a reclining position, and hung above their heads flapped out like giant prehistoric bats.

  When they reached the front, Michelle glanced around. There was no one slumped by the walls or spread out on the ceiling that was now the floor. “I don’t see the bus driver. Where is he?”

  “There,” Hannah answered, pointing upward at the driver still strapped in his seat above them.

  For a moment neither sister said a word. They just stared at the driver, suspended by his seat belt, with one arm dangling down so far the fingers almost touched their heads. His mouth was open as if in surprise, and he appeared to be regarding them fixedly with his sightless eyes.

  Michelle shivered, and then she turned to Hannah. “Lynnette’s right. He’s creepy,” she whispered.

  “No argument here,” Hannah replied, taking Michelle’s arm and turning her around. “Let’s go.”

  “But ... shouldn’t we check for a pulse?”

  Hannah was about to point out that the driver’s neck was twisted at an impossible angle and no one could live with his neck turned halfway around like that, but Michelle looked shaken enough as it was. If Michelle wanted her to feel the dead driver’s wrist for a pulse, she’d do it.

  She was about to reach up for the driver’s wrist to search for signs of life she knew weren’t there when Buddy hailed them from the back of the bus.

  “Come on back! The paramedics just arrived!”

  Chapter Three

  “Is everybody okay back there?” Hannah asked as she turned onto the highway.

  “We’re fine,” one of the wives responded. Hannah wasn’t sure which wife it was since there were two married couples riding in the back of her cookie truck. They were part of the group that Doc Knight’s interns had asked her to take to the hospital, since there were only a few vehicles available and the ambulances were transporting the more seriously injured.

  Luckily, the two couples had escaped with minor scrapes and bruises. One of the husbands had a cut on his leg that might require a couple of stitches, and the other husband had suffered a blow to his head and would be watched for several hours for signs of a concussion. The wives had scrapes and bruises, but their injuries were minor. They had been on their way to the Tri-County Mall to see a movie when they’d come upon the accident and been unable to avoid becoming part of the massive pileup.

  “How about you, Buddy?” Hannah asked. The keyboard player had the most serious injury in her little group of what Ben Matson, one of Doc’s interns, had called the “walking wounded”.

  “I’m okay, except those cinnamon rolls are driving me crazy. Usually we stop somewhere on the road, but we were supposed to have dinner out at the Lake Eden Inn before our practice.”

  “All he had was some of my vegetable chips,” Lynnette, the final member of Hannah’s group reported. She was completely uninjured, but she was riding along so that she could rejoin the rest of the band at the hospital.

  “We were going to have dinner at the food court out at the mall,” one of the husbands told Hannah, “so we’re pretty hungry, too. How long until we get there?”

  “No more than fifteen minutes. I have to make a quick stop to drop off the puppy, and then we’ll go straight to the hospital. We’ll get you all something to eat from the vending machines just as soon as we get there.”

  “Forget the dog, just get us some food,” Buddy said, sounding more than a little petulant. “I want one of those cinnamon rolls right now.”

  Hannah shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. The cinnamon rolls are part of an order that’s been bought and paid for. But I do have some cookies in the back. How about a couple of Triplet Chiplets?”

  “What are those?” one of the wives asked.

  “Cookies with three kinds of chips. These have white chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and milk chocolate chips.”

  “Too bad that white chocolate’s not peanut butter chips,” Buddy complained.

  Well it’s not, and there’s not a lot I can do about it at this late date, Hannah thought, but she snapped her mouth tightly shut and reminded herself that Buddy had been in an traumatic accident. It was true that his injury wasn’t life threatening, but he was probably afraid that his wrist was broken, and that might end his musical career.

  “Try one. You’ll like them,” Michelle said, just as Hannah pulled into L
isa and Herb’s driveway. “Hannah’s going in with the puppy, but I’ll stay here and find all the extra cookies she has in the back. Then you can choose the ones you want to try.”

  “Hannah! What are you doing... oh! How precious!” Lisa held out her arms to take the puppy.

  It was precisely the reaction Hannah had been hoping for. She stepped into her business partner’s warm kitchen and put the puppy into Lisa’s waiting arms. “This poor little guy was on the band bus when it went into the ditch. He was part of that accident on the highway. Someone was holding him and he’s not hurt.”

  “Thank goodness for that! I know all about the accident. Herb got a call about twenty minutes ago, and he left to go out there to help transport people to the hospital.” She looked down at the puppy with a concerned expression. “Are you sure he’s not hurt?”

  “I’m sure. One of the paramedics checked him out. I think he’s really hungry though. The driver of the band bus found him shivering in the cold and stopped to pick him up. The wife of the bass player wrapped him in a blanket and held him. They were going to take him to a shelter.”

  “Were?” Lisa asked, carrying the puppy to Dillon’s dog bed, tucking the blanket more securely around him. She opened a can of dog food, put some into a bowl, stirred in some chicken broth to thin it, and heated it in the microwave. “So does he belong to anybody?”

  “No. That’s why they were going to take him to the shelter. And when they told me that, I said I’d take him. I don’t know why I did that. I have no idea if he’ll get along with Moishe. And even if he does, he’ll be alone all day in the condo while I’m at work. And since I’m on the second floor, I can’t even have a doggy door.”

  “I have a doggy door,” Lisa said, stirring the bowl of warm food and picking up the puppy again. She nestled the little guy in her lap, dipped her finger in the bowl of food, and let him lick it.

  “I know you have a doggy door, but I didn’t come here to ask you to take me off the hook. I can try it and see how it goes. I just need you to babysit while I take some of the accident victims to the hospital to get checked out.”