by Joanne Fluke
Set the bowl with the cranberries and juice on the counter. This will plump the Craisins.
Put the sugar in the bottom of the bowl of your mixer and turn it on LOW speed.
Add the salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and orange zest. Mix them in thoroughly.
Now add the cup of white Karo syrup. Keep the mixer running until everything is thoroughly blended.
Add the beaten eggs. Mix until they’re well incorporated.
Melt the butter, either on the stovetop in a small saucepan, or in a microwave-safe bowl on HIGH 1 minute in the microwave. Let it sit in the microwave for another minute and then stir to see if it’s melted. If it’s not, give it another 20 seconds to finish melting it.
Add the melted butter to your bowl and mix it in.
Drain the Craisins with a strainer, but do not throw away the cranberry juice. Reserve 2 Tablespoons of cranberry juice ( cup) to use in your cookie dough.
Add the 2 Tablespoons of reserved cranberry juice to your bowl and mix it in.
With your mixer running at LOW speed, add the oatmeal in one-cup increments, making sure to mix after each addition.
With the mixer still on LOW speed, add the flour in one-cup increments, making sure to mix after each addition.
Add the Craisins and mix them in.
Finally, add the chopped nuts and mix thoroughly.
Remove the bowl from the mixer, scrape down the sides, and give it a final stir by hand. This dough will be fairly stiff.
Cover the cookie dough with plastic wrap and put the mixer bowl in the refrigerator for at least an hour. (Overnight is fine, too.) This dough will be easier to work with if it’s chilled.
When your dough is thoroughly chilled, preheat your oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position.
Place the half-cup of white sugar in a shallow bowl. You’ll use it to coat balls of cookie dough.
Prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, or lining them with parchment paper.
Roll the chilled dough in 2-inch balls with your fingers. (That’s approximately the size of a golf ball.) Roll the dough ball in the bowl of white sugar to coat it, and then place it on the cookie sheet, no more than 6 balls to a standard-size sheet.
Flatten the sugared cookie dough balls to a quarter-inch thickness with a wide metal spatula or with your impeccably clean palm.
Repeat the process of rolling dough balls, coating them with sugar, placing them on the cookie sheet, and flattening them. They should be 2 to 3 inches apart and a standard-size cookie sheet will hold 6 of these big, delicious cookies.
Bake at 375 degrees F. for 9 to 10 minutes or until slightly brown around the edges. (Mine took the full 10 minutes.)
Remove the cookies from the oven, leave them on the cookie sheet for a minute or so, and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Once the cookies are completely cool, you can store them in a tightly covered container or cookie jar.
Hannah’s 2nd Note: If these cookies start to dry out before they’re all eaten, drop a slice of apple or an orange or lemon peel into the bottom of the cookie jar to make them soft and chewy again.
Yield: 3 dozen large Lunchbox Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies.
Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you want to make these cookies smaller, that’s fine, too. If you decide to roll 1-inch cookie balls, they will bake from between 6 to 8 minutes. If you choose to do this, the yield will be double, from 5 to 6 dozen cookies.
Delores’s Note: I’m really not fond of cranberries, but once Hannah made these cookies with dried blueberries for me. They were simply wonderful, despite the fact that there was no chocolate involved. I told her that she ought to leave out the fruit and try these cookies with chocolate chips someday. I even offered to taste-test them for her!
Chapter Twenty
The lovely lilac-print wardrobe was hers! Delores had insisted on paying for it, and Hannah had left it with Claire, who had promised to make the minor alterations that were needed. Both Hannah and Michelle were smiling as they walked across the parking lot to the back door of The Cookie Jar.
Hannah opened the door, they stepped inside the kitchen, and both of them spotted it at once. A dark green wool coat with a fur collar was hanging on one of the pegs on the wall by the door. There was a scarf draped over the peg, and it had a red and green checkerboard design!
“Our mystery woman,” Hannah said, staring hard at the coat. “Nobody hangs their coat back here except Lisa, Marge, Jack, and Aunt Nancy.”
“And Mother, Andrea, Tracey, Mike, Norman, Ross, and anyone else who comes in the back door with them.”
“That’s true, but I’m sure I’ve never seen this coat before. How about you?”
Michelle shook her head. “I know I haven’t. It’s pretty and I would have noticed it. Let’s go see who’s out front. It could belong to someone who came in the back way.”
The two sisters pushed through the swinging door and entered the coffee shop. It was crowded with customers, and it took them a full five minutes to get to the front where Lisa was standing, because everyone wanted to wish them luck for the competition that evening. Finally they arrived at the cash register, where Lisa was ringing up sales.
“There’s a green coat hanging in the kitchen. Do you know who hung it there?” Hannah asked her.
“Yes,” Lisa said. “It’s Aunt Nancy’s new coat. Did you get my text?”
“No. My phone’s been in my purse and I didn’t hear it come in. What did you say?”
“I just wanted to tell you that Mayor Bascomb came in to join Stephanie. He had makeup on his cheek, but I could see the red skin right through it. Somebody slapped him really hard.”
“Maybe Stephanie?” Hannah suggested.
“That would be my guess. But it’s okay now. They stayed for my story and then they left.”
“How did they react to the story?” Michelle asked her.
“Stephanie loved it, but the mayor looked a little green around the gills. I don’t think he liked the way I described the murder scene.”
“When is the next performance?” Hannah asked.
“At eleven. I do it on the hour and people start coming in twenty minutes or so before I start. See that table with Bonnie Surma, Donna Summers, Babs Dubinski, and Ava Schultz?”
“I see them.”
“They’ve been here through two performances already and it looks like they’re staying for a third. Dad said they just ordered more Chocolate-Covered Raisin Cookies.” Lisa turned to Michelle. “Are you going to stay for a performance?”
“I don’t think I’d better. You’re too good, Lisa. I’m afraid it would be too much like finding him all over again and I don’t want to go through that twice!”
“Michelle and I will go bake a few batches of cookies,” Hannah told her. “From the size of the crowd in here, it looks like you’ll need them. And Lisa?”
“Yes?”
“When you’re through with your story, will you ask Aunt Nancy to come back to the kitchen? There’s something I need to ask her.”
“About the murder?”
“Yes,” Hannah answered quite truthfully, and then she said something that could be taken in a multitude of ways. “It could really help that she knew the victim as well as she did.”
Hannah and Michelle had just finished mixing up a batch of Peanut Butter Potato Chip Cookies when Aunt Nancy came into the kitchen. “Lisa said you wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” Hannah answered. “Sit down and have a cup of coffee with us. I need to ask you some questions about Chef Duquesne.”
Aunt Nancy sat down at the stainless steel work counter and accepted a cup of coffee from Michelle. “Thank you, Michelle,” she said. “I’m so sorry you had to be the one to find him.”
“So am I,” Michelle replied. “Is that your green coat hanging by the back door?”
“Why yes it is.”
“And that’s the same one you wore the nigh
t of the baking competition?” Hannah asked her.
“Yes, I wore it that night. What is this about, girls?”
“It’s about Chef Duquesne. We know you went up to his room with him on the night he was killed,” Hannah said, going straight to the heart of the matter.
“Oh, dear! I was hoping no one would hear about that!”
“Tell us about it,” Hannah prompted her.
“It was my own fault.” Aunt Nancy looked very upset as she answered. “It was very foolish of me to go to his room. We were the only people in the bar, and Allen said we should go so that the bar could close. I was going to go home, but he invited me to his room. He told me that he had a suite with a living room and he could make coffee. He said he wanted to catch up with my life and tell me about his. And he wanted to hear all about the people we’d known in high school. And I believed him!”
“But that’s not what he wanted?” Hannah asked, already knowing the answer.
“No! Not at all! I should have guessed that it wasn’t the real reason. Allen never was interested in anyone except himself. But I guess I’m gullible. I always tend to think the best of people. I take what they say at face value until they prove otherwise.”
“And he proved otherwise?” Hannah prompted her.
“He certainly did! He thought I’d come up to his room with him because I was interested in him as a man.”
“He tried to hit on you?” Michelle asked.
Aunt Nancy’s face turned pink. “Yes. It was terribly embarrassing. I told him that I wasn’t interested in anything like that, grabbed my coat and scarf, and got out of there as quickly as I could. And the more I thought about it, the madder I got that he’d assumed I’d be willing to do something like that!” She stopped speaking, took a deep shaky breath, and looked up at Hannah and Michelle again. “How did you find out about it?”
“Rita, the housekeeper you saw in the hall that night, told Sally about it. Sally’s her boss. And Sally told us this morning.”
“You won’t tell anyone else, will you?”
“No, we won’t,” Michelle promised for both of them. “It’s nobody’s business but yours.”
“How about you?” Hannah asked her. “Have you told anyone else about it?”
“No one except Heiti. And I know he won’t tell anyone.”
Hannah and Michelle exchanged glances. “Heiti is the man who built your bookshelves?” Hannah asked.
“Yes. He could see that I was upset when I came home.”
“You’re . . . living with Heiti?”
Aunt Nancy gave a little laugh. “No, nothing like that. Heiti has an apartment out near the highway. He was at my house, painting the decorative border under the living room ceiling. I asked him if he wanted to go to the competition with me, but he said he wanted to finish the stencils on the border.”
“Stencils?” Michelle looked interested.
“Yes. Heiti does tole painting. He learned it as a hobby. He does a wonderful job and he’s quite an artist. You can buy traditional border stencils at art stores, or you can make your own stencils. Heiti cuts his own stencils and they’re just beautiful! He finished the border around my kitchen ceiling, all sorts of decorative kitchen utensils, and I liked it so much that I asked him to paint one in my living room, too.”
“And he was still there when you got home?” Hannah led her back to the subject at hand.
“Yes. He’d just finished working and he was cleaning his brushes. Heiti saw right away that I was upset so he poured me a glass of sherry and asked me to sit down with him on the couch and tell him all about it.”
“And you did?” Michelle asked.
“Yes. I was so upset, I had two glasses of sherry. And I never have more than one.”
“Did Heiti have sherry, too?” Hannah asked.
“No, Heiti doesn’t drink much. If we go out to dinner, he occasionally has a glass of beer, though.”
“How about wine?” Michelle asked, and Hannah knew that she was also remembering the two wineglasses in Sally’s kitchen.
“He doesn’t care for it. As a matter of fact, he told me that he used to like red wine, but when he got older, it gave him a terrible headache right between his eyes. Don’t they say that the tannins in red wine give some people headaches?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that.” Hannah made a mental note to ask Mike if the police lab had found any fingerprints on the wineglasses. “This is really important, Aunt Nancy. Did you see anyone in the halls or the elevator when you left the inn?”
Aunt Nancy shook her head. “No one except that housekeeper. I was hoping she wouldn’t stop me and ask any questions so I rushed to the elevator as fast as I could.”
“You took the elevator straight down to the ground floor?”
“Yes, and I didn’t see another soul on the way out! In fact, even the bar was closed when I passed by. I guess there might have been someone in there cleaning up, but I wasn’t really looking. I just wanted to get out of there and go home as fast as I could.”
“Where did you park?” Michelle asked her.
“In their parking lot. I was so angry with Allen, I hurried to my car and drove off.”
“Were there any other cars in the lot?”
“Yes, but they’d been there for a while. There was a layer of snow on everyone’s windshield. I know because I had to use my brush to clear mine off.”
“Let’s talk about when you got home,” Hannah said. “You said Heiti could tell you were upset, so he poured you a glass of sherry and you talked about what had happened in Chef Duquesne’s room. Is that right?”
“Yes. Heiti is a wonderful listener. He’s totally nonjudgmental and he really cares about people. He’s just a wonderful, talented, intelligent person.”
Hannah drew a deep breath. She hated to ask the next question, but someone had to find out the extent of Aunt Nancy’s relationship with Heiti and whether Heiti could have been so angry with Chef Duquesne’s treatment of Aunt Nancy that he’d decided to take revenge. “It sounds like you’re very fond of Heiti,” she said with a smile.
“Oh, I am!”
“Are you fond enough of him that you think you could grow to love him?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but . . .” Aunt Nancy paused and then she nodded. “You’re right, Hannah. I think, perhaps, that I could grow to love him. I look forward to spending time with him because he’s such a remarkably fascinating man.”
“Tell us about him,” Michelle said.
“I’m not sure where to start. Heiti worked for years at an aerospace company as an engineer. He was their troubleshooter. Sometimes they sent him to other aerospace companies as their expert. He was very well paid and he never married or had a family, so he saved most of his money and invested it. He did so well with his investments that he could afford to take early retirement when he was fifty.”
“That’s really wonderful!” Hannah said, wondering if she’d ever be able to retire. “What did he do then?”
“He moved back home to help his parents until they decided that they wanted to go into a senior living complex in Florida. He helped them sell their house and move there. And that’s when Heiti decided that he wanted to do all the things he’d never had the time or the energy to do while he was working for the aerospace company.”
“Things like tole painting?” Michelle asked.
“Yes. And designing gadgets to make people’s lives easier. He’s working on something right now, but he won’t tell me what it is until he builds it and tests it to see if it’ll work.”
“He really sounds like an interesting man,” Michelle commented.
“Yes, he does,” Hannah added. “I can understand why you’re so intrigued by him. And it sounds as if he enjoys spending time with you. Do you think that Heiti’s interested in you romantically?”
As Hannah watched, Aunt Nancy’s cheeks turned pink, and it took her a moment to respond. “I . . . I don’t know, Hannah. He may be, although he’s n
ever said so to me.” She paused again, and took a deep breath. “In a way, I hope he is interested in me romantically. Heiti would make a wonderful companion, and I think we could be very happy together.”
“Did Heiti seem as upset as you were when you told him about what Chef Duquesne had done?” Hannah asked.
“Oh, yes! He was very upset! He said that somebody ought to teach that man the proper way to treat a lady like me, and . . .” Aunt Nancy stopped speaking in midsentence and her eyes widened. “Oh, dear!” she gasped. “Surely you don’t think that Heiti could have driven out to the Lake Eden Inn and . . . and . . .”
Hannah knew that she was walking on eggshells. It was clear that Aunt Nancy was horrified by the notion that Heiti might have had anything to do with Chef Duquesne’s murder. She had to reassure Aunt Nancy and keep her from alerting Heiti until after they had time to question him.
“Of course we don’t think Heiti had anything to do with it,” she said, reaching out to pat Aunt Nancy’s shoulder. “I was just exploring the possibilities. He doesn’t sound like a man who would do anything like that.”
It was time to change the subject, and Hannah decided on another tack. “Did you know that Sally waited on you when you were in the bar?”
“No, but I remember what you said about the housekeeper telling her boss that I was upset when I left. Is Sally her boss?
“Yes, she is. Sally is also the head chef and co-owner of the Lake Eden Inn with her husband, Dick. Dick was behind the bar the night you were there.”
“I liked Sally. She was nice. I didn’t meet Dick because we sat at a table.”
“Right. Now, let me tell you something that you may really like about Sally. Did you know that Chef Duquesne slipped a twenty-dollar bill to Sally after the second round of drinks and asked her to put vodka in your hot lemonade?”
Aunt Nancy looked completely shocked. “No!”
“Well, he did. And of course, Sally would never do that!”
“And Sally didn’t put anything except hot lemonade in your drink,” Michelle picked up that part of the story. “Sally would never do anything like that. She told us that you looked like the kind of lady who would have ordered vodka if you’d wanted it and she wasn’t about to pour anything for you that you hadn’t ordered yourself.”
