Fudge Cupcake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  Hannah did her best not to sigh as she reached out and took the handwritten card. Hawaiian Pot Roast was her mother’s favorite recipe and Hannah had eaten enough of it to last her a lifetime.

  “I was in a rush when I copied it. You can read it, can’t you?”

  Hannah glanced down at the recipe and nodded.

  “It’s not too late to get it in the Lake Eden cookbook, is it, dear?”

  Hannah wavered. Saying it was too late would be a handy excuse and it was theoretically true, since the deadline Hannah had given to the other contributors had come and gone. But if she said it was too late to her mother, Delores would never let her hear the end of it. In the interest of family peace, Hannah was obliged to include it.

  “It’s not too late,” Hannah said, earning a smile from her mother.

  “Thank you, dear. I know I should have turned it in sooner, but I’ve been so busy lately with Bill’s campaign and the store. And now I’d better run. We’re expecting a shipment of Chippewa artifacts and Jon Walker promised he’d stop by to see if he could tell if they’re authentic.”

  Delores gave a little wave and ducked out the back door. Granny’s Attic was the next building over and she could dash across the parking lot. Hannah waited until the door had closed behind her mother and then she glanced down at the recipe. “Four cups of sugar?”

  Lisa came into the kitchen just in time to hear Hannah’s comment. “Is that Rose’s coconut cake recipe?”

  “No, it’s Mother’s Hawaiian Pot Roast.”

  “And it’s that sweet?”

  “Enough to make your teeth ache. Mother wrote it out for me and she wants it in the cookbook. Do you think that I should…”

  “No,” Lisa interrupted, shaking her head. “She’ll never forgive you if you don’t include it.”

  “You’re right. I’ll reduce the sugar, but I can’t make too many changes. If Mother doesn’t recognize her own recipe, I’m going to be on her kill-now-and-bury-later list for the rest of my life.”

  Chapter

  Two

  T

  he last of the customers had left, the front door of The Cookie Jar was locked, and Hannah and Lisa were in the kitchen, mixing up the cookie dough for the following day. Lisa tore off a strip of plastic wrap to cover a batch of Chocolate-Covered Cherry cookies and glanced up at the clock. “Hannah?”

  “Hmm?” Hannah retrieved the chocolate she’d melted for her batch of Black and Whites and added it to her mixing bowl.

  “It’s getting late and you’ve got class tonight. Why don’t you go home now?”

  Hannah glanced over at her petite partner and smiled. “You’re still a teenager and you’re trying to mother me?”

  “I’m not trying to mother you. And I won’t be a teenager much longer. I’m turning twenty next month.” Lisa drew herself up to her full five feet, two inches, but her stern effect was spoiled by the fact that one bouncing brown curl had escaped from her health department mandated hairnet.

  Hannah gave her bowl a final stir and reached for the plastic wrap. “Maybe I will. But if I do, I’ll come in early tomorrow and do all the baking before you get here.”

  “Deal!” Lisa held out her hand and Hannah shook it. “Do you want me to help you with your class tonight? Herb’s tied up until nine, but Marge said to call her anytime and she’ll come over to sit with Dad.”

  “That’s okay, Lisa. I can handle it.” Hannah knew that Lisa liked to stay at home with her father whenever she could. Jack Herman had Alzheimer’s and Lisa had turned down a college scholarship to stay home and be with him. Things were a bit easier now that Lisa was engaged to Herb Beeseman, Lake Eden’s security and parking enforcement officer. Herb’s widowed mother, Marge, had dated Lisa’s father in high school and she seemed to enjoy spending time with Jack so that “the children” could go out.

  Hannah had just finished stashing her bowl in the walk-in cooler when there was a knock on the back door. She walked over to answer it and found Beatrice Koester standing there, shivering in the cold. “Hi, Beatrice. Come in.”

  “Hi, Hannah. Lisa.” Beatrice stepped into the warm kitchen and smiled. “I can only stay a minute. Ted’s waiting for me in his truck.”

  Hannah took a moment to wave to Ted, owner and operator of Lake Eden’s salvage yard. Ted waved back, but he looked disgruntled. He probably wanted to get back to work. Hannah shut the door and turned back to Beatrice. “Technically we’re closed, but if you want some cookies we can get them for you.”

  “Thanks anyway, Hannah. I just came to bring you a recipe. I know it’s late, but I was going through some of Ted’s mother’s things and I just found it.”

  “For the Lake Eden cookbook?” Lisa asked.

  “Yes. It’s for her Fudge Cupcakes. Ted just loves them and they’re really good. I asked Mother Koester for the recipe more times than I can count, but she kept forgetting to give it to me.”

  “I’m glad you finally got it.” Hannah said with a sympathetic smile. “Some people really hate to share recipes and I’ll bet Ted’s mother was one of them.”

  “That’s what I thought, but Ted said I was wrong, that his mother really forgot to bring it all those times she came to visit. Of course, Ted’s mother could do no wrong.”

  Hannah bit back a smile. She hadn’t known Ted’s mother, but it sounded as if she could have been the inspiration for quite a few bad mother-in-law jokes.

  “Is it too late to put in the cookbook? Now that Ted’s mother is gone, he thinks it would be a fitting memorial to her.”

  Hannah reached out and took the recipe. There was no way she could refuse Beatrice when she looked so worried. “It’s not too late. I’ll see it goes in.”

  “Oh, thank you, Hannah! But there might be a little problem.”

  “With the recipe?” Hannah glanced down at the handwritten card.

  “Yes. Just look at the list of ingredients.”

  Hannah read the list of ingredients aloud. “Unsweetened chocolate, sugar, butter, flour, milk, and…uh-oh.”

  “What is it?” Lisa asked.

  “It says, Add one-half cup secret ingredient.”

  “I love recipes like that!” Lisa clapped her hands. “It’s always something nobody can guess. What is it this time?”

  Hannah shrugged and so did Beatrice. Lisa glanced from one to the other and then she caught on. “It doesn’t say?”

  “You got it.” Hannah turned to Beatrice. “Did you ever taste the cupcakes?”

  “Yes, and they were wonderful! Alma made them for Ted every year on his birthday, but she wouldn’t let me watch her.”

  “What did they taste like? Describe them to us.”

  “Well…” Beatrice drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. “They were really good dark chocolate, and they were heavy, not like one of those light cake mixes. They didn’t rise much like those pretty rounded cupcakes you see in magazines, but that was okay because Alma mounded up the fudge frosting on top and you got even more that way. She said they were supposed to have dimples for the frosting.”

  Hannah laughed. She couldn’t help it. That was a great way to explain a cake that hadn’t risen as far as you’d expected, and most people, Hannah included, wouldn’t mind a bit as long as the frosting was good. “Can you describe the frosting?”

  “Yes, I can. It was fudgy and just a little chewy and it melted in your mouth. I always thought that if you heated it, it would make a perfect fudge sauce for ice cream.”

  “Sounds good. Think back to the cupcakes. Was there any kind of hidden or subtle flavor that you can remember?”

  “Not really, but…” Beatrice stopped speaking and frowned slightly.

  “But what?” Lisa urged her.

  “They had a…a sort of German flavor.”

  “A German flavor?” Hannah thought about all the chocolate cakes she’d eaten. “Was it like German Chocolate Cake?”

  Beatrice shook her head. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Do you t
hink it had sauerkraut in it?” Lisa asked. “My mother used to make a chocolate cake with sauerkraut.”

  “I know it wasn’t sauerkraut. I make that cake myself.” Beatrice gave a little sigh. “It was sweet and tangy at the same time, like one of those good German tortes. You know the kind I’m talking about. They’re really rich and even if you’re full to bursting, you just want to keep on eating until they’re gone.”

  “No wonder you wanted the recipe!” Hannah smiled to set Beatrice at ease. “What do you think, Lisa? Can we figure out Alma’s secret ingredient?”

  “We can try. They sound different than the fudge cupcakes that my mother used to make, but I’ve got some ideas already.”

  “Great.” Hannah turned back to Beatrice. “Was the cupcake smooth? Or did it have chunks of things inside?”

  “No chunks. It was smooth and it tasted almost like eating a chocolate bar.”

  “That helps,” Lisa said, nodding quickly. “It eliminates most of the solid things you might add to the batter like nuts, coconut, and chopped fruit.”

  “True, but it doesn’t eliminate anything that’s finely ground, pureed, or melted,” Hannah argued.

  Beatrice looked very distressed. “I’m sorry I brought this whole thing up. If Ted wasn’t so all-fired set on having his mother’s recipe in the cookbook, I’d tell you to just forget it.”

  “No way!” Both Hannah and Lisa spoke at once. There was a very brief moment of silence and then all three women burst into laughter.

  When they’d stopped laughing, Lisa spoke up. “We’ll figure it out, Beatrice. Hannah and I love a good mystery and at least this one doesn’t involve a dead body.”

  “Only my mother-in-law,” Beatrice quipped. And then she looked slightly shocked at her own humor. “I’m really glad Ted wasn’t here to hear that!”

  Hannah gave her hair a final brush and glanced in the mirror one last time. From the neck down, she looked very “teacherly” in her navy blue pantsuit and white blouse. From the neck up, it was another story. The humidity had been high today and her hair was a riot of unruly red curls. Hannah pulled it back, secured it all in the silver clasp her youngest sister, Michelle, had bought from one of her artist friends at Macalester College, and flicked off the light in her bedroom.

  “I won’t be late,” Hannah promised, reaching down to pet Moishe as he followed her down the hall. “I’m just going to the school to be what I was going to be before I became what I am now.”

  Moishe gave a little yowl and stared up at her. Maybe it was her imagination, but he looked simply stupefied by the explanation she’d just uttered and Hannah burst into laughter. “Sorry. That was confusing. I’ll be teaching an adult cooking class at the school and then I’m going out to dinner with Mike. Don’t worry. I’ll leave you with plenty of food.”

  Hannah was still chuckling over her sentence structure as she hurried down the stairs. She was looking forward to her date tonight with Lake Eden’s most popular unmarried man. Mike Kingston had moved to Lake Eden just over a year ago, recruited from the Minneapolis Police Department by Sheriff Grant to head up the Winnetka County Detective Division. Since Mike was Bill’s partner, both Andrea and Bill favored him for the position of brother-in-law. Delores liked Mike, but she’d teamed up with Carrie to push Norman, and Michelle, Hannah’s youngest sister, liked both of them. So did Hannah and that was why she couldn’t choose one over the other. Perhaps it was just as well that neither man had proposed. Sharing her life with someone who didn’t use a litter box might be nice, but Hannah didn’t really want to give up any of her independence.

  Twenty minutes later, Hannah drove into the school parking lot. She was early and it was deserted. She pulled up as close to the home economics classroom as she could, grabbed her box of supplies, and headed for the delivery entrance. When Jordan High had been designed, the architect had put in an outside door for ease in delivering kitchen equipment and supplies. The regular teacher, Pam Baxter, had given Hannah a key when she’d agreed to take over the night cooking class. Instead of learning cake decoration, as Pam had originally planned, Hannah’s class would be testing all the recipes that had been submitted for the Lake Eden cookbook.

  Hannah stepped inside and flicked on the lights, blinking like an owl caught in the beam of a searchlight. The multiple overhead lighting fixtures were bright enough to turn night into day. When her eyes adjusted, Hannah set her box on a counter. Pam Baxter’s pantry contained all the staples, but she’d brought the special ingredients her class would need for the recipes they were testing tonight. One of the ingredients was a package of sweetened dried cranberries for the cookies Hannah had just created. Since they were made from cranberries and cranberries grew in a bog, she planned to call them Boggles.

  Five minutes later, Hannah was ready to teach. Her name was written on the blackboard in the unlikely event there were students who didn’t know her, stacks of recipes were ready to be dispersed to the five groups that would bake at the five kitchen workstations, and the sign-in sheet was displayed on a clipboard at a desk in the front row. The only thing missing was Hannah’s class and she had over an hour before her students would arrive.

  Hannah sat down at the desk, but it didn’t feel right. Perhaps she’d been wise to change her career plans. She was a lot happier in front of an oven than she was behind a desk. She got up and walked to one of the workstations. She’d put the extra time to good use by mixing up a batch of Alma Koester’s Fudge Cupcakes without the secret ingredient. Once she’d tasted them, Beatrice might be able to tell what was missing.

  Boggles

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.,

  rack in the middle position

  2 cups melted butter (4 sticks)

  2 cups brown sugar

  2 cups white sugar

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  1 teaspoon salt

  4 eggs—beaten

  2 teaspoons vanilla

  ½ teaspoon cinnamon

  ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

  4 cups flour

  3 cups sweetened dried cranberries (Craisins or another brand) ***

  3 cups rolled oats (uncooked oatmeal)

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Melt butter in large microwave-safe bowl. Add sugars and let cool a bit. Add eggs, baking powder, baking soda, salt, vanilla, and spices. Add flour and mix. Then add the cranberries and oats and mix everything up. The dough will be quite stiff.

  Drop by teaspoon onto a greased cookie sheet, 12 to a sheet.

  Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12-15 minutes. Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Remove to rack until cool.

  Yield: 10 to 12 dozen, depending on cookie size.

  These freeze well if you roll them in foil and put them in a freezer bag.

  Chapter

  Three

  H

  annah had just finished frosting the cupcakes when she heard someone approach in the hallway outside her classroom door. Perhaps it was Mike and he was early.

  “Is my nose wrong, or do I smell chocolate?”

  Hannah sighed as she recognized the voice. Then she put a friendly smile on her face and turned toward the doorway. Sheriff Grant had never been one of her favorite people, but he was a good customer at The Cookie Jar and it was wise to be friendly to the man who was Bill and Mike’s boss. “Your nose is right. I’m trying out a recipe for the Lake Eden cookbook.”

  “It sure smells good.” Sheriff Grant moved closer to the counter and Hannah noticed that he was listing toward the cupcakes at approximately a forty-five degree angle.

  “Would you like to taste one?” Hannah offered. “I think they’re cool enough.”

  “That’d be great! I haven’t had anything to eat since lunch and I need to stick around until Kingston gets here. Got some paperwork for him to pass out.”

  Hannah packaged up four of the cupcakes. She knew Mike was teaching a self-defense class in the room next door. “Do you want to leave the paperwork with me? I
can make sure he gets it.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll just wait in the parking lot and catch him when he drives in.” Sheriff Grant accepted the package Hannah gave him with a smile. “Thanks, Hannah. This is really nice of you.”

  “Maybe not,” Hannah replied with a grin.

  “What do you mean?”

  “These cupcakes are an experiment and I haven’t even tasted them yet.”

  “Do you want a report on how I like them?”

  “That would be great,” Hannah said with a smile. “You’re a brave man, Sheriff Grant.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “For all you know, they might be poisoned. After all, my brother-in-law is running against you in the election.”

  When Hannah’s students arrived, she divided them into five groups, one group for each workstation in Jordan High’s home economics room. Then she set them to work testing pastry recipes. One group had the cookie recipe she’d developed, another was baking a pie, the third group was in the process of making a cobbler, the fourth group had a tea bread recipe, and group five was baking a coffee cake.

  “What is it, Hannah?” Beatrice came rushing over when Hannah motioned to her.

  “I baked a batch of cupcakes before class. I need you to taste one and tell me what you think.”

  Beatrice took a cupcake from the plate Hannah offered. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment and then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Hannah. These aren’t like the ones I remember.”

  “I know. I made them plain, without the secret ingredient. I thought you might be able to tell what’s missing.”