Candy Cane Murder (3 page)

“It's never too early to play politics.” Andrea glanced around the room and spotted her husband, deep in conversation with Mayor Bascomb. “Just let me tell Bill I'm leaving and we can go.”

“Can I go with you?” Michelle asked, when Andrea had left.

“Sure. But I thought Lonnie was bringing you back to my place.”

“He was. But he's pulling a late shift and it'll save him a trip.”

“If you go with us, you're going to have to taste Andrea's cookies,” Hannah warned.

“I know. But my nose is all stuffed up and I won't be able to taste much. I'll just chew and swallow. And then I'll tell her how delicious they are.”

Hannah wished that she had a similar ailment, hoping she'd be able to lie convincingly. Praising Andrea's cookies would constitute a lot more than a little white lie, but it would make her sister very happy.

 

“It smells like Christmas trees out here!” Andrea said, taking a deep breath and expelling it in a cloud of white vapor.

“That's because we're walking past a whole grove of blue spruce,” Hannah told her.

They walked in silence for a moment, and then Andrea held out her gloved hand. “It's snowing again. I just love knowing that every snowflake is different. We learned it in school. They called it one of nature's miracles because no two are alike.”

“That's what they thought back then,” Hannah said. “But then Jon Nelson, a cloud physicist from Kyoto, Japan, found that it's probably not true for the smaller crystals, the ones that barely develop beyond the prism stage.”

There was another long silence. Hannah was about to tell them more about the physicist from Japan when Michelle almost stumbled over a drift of snow on the walkway.

“Careful,” Hannah warned, and Michelle stopped walking.

“Let's just stand here for a minute and look at the stars. It feels like you can reach out and touch them, they're so huge tonight! They weren't like this last night when Mother had us over for dinner.”

“That's because it's darker out here,” Hannah explained. “Lake Eden has streetlights on every corner, and there are lights in all the houses. If you combine the lumens from the old-fashioned globe streetlights Dick and Sally put in on this walkway and add the lights they have at the inn, it doesn't add up to a fraction of the output of a single arc light in the parking lot at Jordan High.”

Both Michelle and Andrea turned to look at her and Hannah immediately realized her mistake. She was offering science textbooks when what they wanted was poetry.

“Of course maybe it's not true,” she said, trying to ameliorate the damage.

“Maybe
what's
not true?” Andrea asked, and Hannah could tell she was still upset about the snowflakes.

“All of it. But let's take the snow crystals first. That same cloud scientist compared the number of possible snowflake shapes with the number of atoms in the universe. It would be impossible for scientists to examine them all.”

“So he really doesn't know.” Andrea looked very relieved. “It's just a theory, right?”

“That's right.”

“How about the stars?” Michelle asked.

Hannah stuffed her gloved hands in her pockets. “They could be bigger tonight,” she said, crossing her fingers. “It's not an absolute certainty. I like to think the stars and the moon react to us when we watch them. That makes the night magical.”

This drew smiles from both of her sisters and Hannah relaxed a bit. She had to remember to curb her impulse to be realistic and practical when her sisters wanted whimsy and romance.

“Uh-oh!” Michelle stumbled again. “I just stepped on something slippery,” she said.

“What?” Hannah asked.

“I don't know.”

“Hold on a second.” Hannah drew a tiny flashlight from her pocket. “Norman gave this to me the last time I dropped my keys in the snow.” She switched on the light and trained the beam on the walkway. “You were right here and you slipped on…this!”

“What is it?” Michelle asked.

“A miniature candy cane wrapped in plastic.” Hannah held it up so both of them could see it. “It's one of Wayne Bergstrom's and he must have dropped it on his way to the parking lot.”

“You seem pretty happy about finding it,” Michelle commented, reacting to the smile on her older sister's face.

“I am. I know it's mean of me, but I'm glad he lost it. I wanted to keep the leftover candy canes to try out a new cookie recipe, but he told me he wanted them all back for his next Santa appearance.”

Andrea just shook her head. “Wayne's such a tightwad. It's not like he doesn't have more. And they probably cost him practically nothing. What were you going to use them for?”

“Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies. And now I can't make them until I buy some candy canes.”

Both Andrea and Michelle gave little groans of dismay and Hannah was gratified. “If Wayne dropped one, he probably dropped more, especially if he's got a hole in his pocket. Let's keep looking. I don't think it's snowed enough to completely cover them.”

“Are you going to use them for the cookies?” Michelle wanted to know.

“No, I'll buy my own. I just think it would be really funny if we collected them all and gave them back to Wayne at the store tomorrow.”

“Here's one!” Michelle called out, spotting another cellophane-wrapped candy at the side of the pathway. “It looks like he's dropping one every ten feet or so.”

“This is fun,” Andrea commented, rushing ahead to pick up a candy cane. “It's like in Hansel and Gretel, except there aren't any birds or breadcrumbs.”

The walk to the parking lot had turned into a game, each sister trying to find the next candy cane. They had about a dozen when the trail of candy canes abruptly stopped.

“What happened?” Andrea, the current holder of Hannah's miniature flashlight, spread the light around in a circle. “We haven't found anything for over ten yards.”

“How do you know it's over ten yards?” Michelle asked.

“Believe me, I know how far you have to go for a first down. Bill used to play football, remember?”

Neither Hannah nor Michelle voiced any argument to that. Not only had Bill been the best quarterback in the whole county, Andrea had been the head cheerleader at Jordan High.

“Do you think Wayne ran out of candy canes?” Michelle asked Hannah.

“I don't think so. The basket was big and it was over half full when Wayne told me to stuff the candy canes in his Santa suit pocket.”

“The hole in his pocket didn't mend itself,” Andrea pointed out.

“Right. Wayne must have left the walkway for some reason. Let's check the sides of the path. If we can find the point where Wayne veered off, we'll start finding candy canes again.”

Michelle led them back to the point where she'd found the last candy cane. “This is the place,” she said, pointing down to the snowy walkway. “Where do we look now?”

“You and Andrea check your side of the path. If you don't find anything, come back and give me the flashlight so I can check my side. If Wayne is still leaking candy canes, we'll find them.”

“Why wouldn't he be leaking candy canes?” Andrea wanted to know.

“I could be wrong about how many are left. Or maybe he noticed that they were falling out and he put them in another pocket.”

Hannah waited while Andrea and Michelle checked their side of the walkway and came back.

“Your turn,” Andrea said, handing her the flashlight. “We'll wait right here while you check.”

Hannah moved forward with the flashlight, sweeping the beam over the snow. She was about to give up and admit defeat when she spotted four candy canes near the edge of the path.

“I've got some,” she called out and her sisters hurried over.

“Why are there so many here?” Michelle asked, bending down to pick them up. “It looks like they all fell out at once.”

“Maybe he slipped,” Hannah theorized.

“Or maybe he got tired of holding his hand over the hole and decided it wasn't worth it,” Andrea added her take on it. “I don't think he'd do that, though.”

“Why not?” Michelle asked her.

“Because he's too cheap. Every time he dropped one, he'd be adding up how much it cost him. Mother used to say that Wayne had the first nickel he ever made.”

“I remember that,” Michelle said with a laugh. “She told me Wayne pinched it so hard, the buffalo squealed and ran away.”

“Look at this.” Hannah pointed to another candy cane a foot or so away. “The trail picks up again here and keeps going.”

The three sisters followed the candy cane trail to a bank of hard-packed snow the plow had left when Dick had cleared the inn's parking lot after the last snowfall. Behind it and a few feet back was another bank of snow and ice, rising even higher than the first. By the end of a snowy winter there could be several banks lining the perimeter of the lot. When one berm got too high for the snowplow blade to reach and dump, Dick started another snow bank in front of it.

“I see candy canes going all the way up that snow bank,” Michelle said, illuminating them with Hannah's flashlight. “I wonder why Wayne climbed way up there.”

“There's only one way to find out,” Hannah told her.

“Not me.” Andrea pointed down at her high-heeled boots. “That's hard-packed snow and these boots were expensive. I could break off a heel.”

“I can go with you,” Michelle offered.

“No way. Mother just bought you those suede boots and they're going to get ruined.”

“It's okay. I really don't mind.”

“No, but Mother will. And if Mother minds, I'll never hear the end of it. Just stay here with Andrea and I'll take a quick peek.”

Hannah dug in with her heels and her hands, and started to climb up the bank of snow. It was a good eight feet tall with fairly steep and slick sides, and the ascent wasn't easy. She slipped a couple of times, but she kept going until she'd pulled herself up on the top. She opened her mouth to make a joke about being King of the Hill, a reference to the children's game they'd played in the winter every recess in grade school, but then she saw what was on the other side and the joke died a quick death on her lips. There was a figure spread-eagled on the snow at the base of the berm. It was Wayne Bergstrom and he'd obviously been pushed. Making snow angels wasn't in his repertoire.

“Anything there?”

Michelle's voice floated up to her, and Hannah swallowed with difficulty. She took a deep breath, expelled it in a cloud of white, and croaked out one shaky word. “Yes.”

“You sound really funny,” Andrea commented. “Are you all out of breath?”

Hannah knew
she
wasn't the one who was out of breath. Wayne Bergstrom was, but she couldn't quite manage to say anything that sarcastic.

“Hannah?” Michelle sounded worried. “Are you okay?”

“I'm okay,” Hannah choked out the words and took another deep breath. Andrea was right. The air did smell like Christmas trees. The stars and the moon seemed bigger too, illuminating the figure at the bottom of the far side of the snow bank in an intensely cold blue light. Everyone said you couldn't see color at night, but Hannah's mind filled in the colors. He was wearing red velvet and white fur, and there were candy canes scattered all over around him.

“Hannah?” Andrea asked again, and Hannah knew she had to say more. She didn't want her sisters to be so worried about her they'd try to climb the berm and see what she was seeing.

“Santa's dead,” she said, seemingly capable of only two-word responses.

“You mean Wayne?” Andrea asked.

“Right.” Hannah brushed the snowflakes, no two alike, from her sleeve. And that seemed to do the trick because the dam broke and the words rushed out. “Go back to the inn and get Bill and Lonnie. I'll stay and guard the crime scene until they get here.”

“H
e is just the sweetest kitty in the world!” Andrea-crooned, scratching Moishe under the chin. The moment they'd entered Hannah's living room, the twenty-something-pound, orange-and-white cat that Hannah had found shivering on her doorstep over two years ago, had made a beeline for Andrea and climbed up in her lap.

Hannah just smiled, deciding not to burst her sister's bubble and mention the fact that she was holding a canister of salmon-flavored treats that Moishe adored, and doling them out to him every time he nudged her with his head.

By tacit agreement, they hadn't discussed Wayne Bergstrom's death. It didn't seem to be an appropriate topic of conversation when they stopped by to check on Bethie and Tracey, and pick up the plate of cookies Andrea wanted them to try. Hannah had pulled Grandma McCann aside to fill her in, but the three sisters hadn't mentioned Wayne's name on the trip to Hannah's condo complex, either. Perhaps it was simply an attempt at avoidance. If they didn't mention it, it might go away. Or perhaps it was a delaying tactic and all three of them wanted to enjoy their time together for a little while longer before discussing such a gruesome topic. Hannah figured they'd have coffee first, a little fortification with a mug of Swedish Plasma was in order while they tasted Andrea's cookies, and then they'd talk about Wayne Bergstrom and the distressing sight she'd seen from the top of the snow bank.

“The coffee should be ready soon,” Hannah said, craning her neck to see if the carafe was full. It wasn't, and she glanced at the plate of cookies that Andrea had baked. The cookies were pretty, a nice rich yellow with powdered sugar on the tops. They
looked
good, but looks didn't count for everything when it came to baked goods.

“I hope Bill isn't late,” Andrea said, frowning slightly. “He told me he thought they'd be here by midnight to take our statements, but something could happen to delay him.”

“If he's really late, you can catch a nap on the couch,” Hannah told her.

“Or share the guest room with me,” Michelle offered. “It's a king-size bed.”

Andrea shook her head. “I don't think I could sleep, not after what I saw tonight!”

“What
who
saw?” Hannah begged to differ. “You didn't see anything.”

“No, but you told me about it. And I have a very active imagination. There's something really awful about Santa being dead.”

“
Wayne
being dead,” Michelle corrected her. “Don't think of him as Santa and it won't seem so bad. Think of him as that old skinflint department store owner who wouldn't approve you for a Bergstrom's credit card so you could charge that luggage you wanted for your honeymoon.”

Andrea blinked. “You're right. And that
does
help. Not that he deserved to die, but I really didn't like Wayne at all.” She turned to Hannah. “Do you think that's really bad of me?”

“Not really. As far as I know, there's no rule of etiquette that says you have to like somebody just because they're dead. If you didn't like them alive, you probably won't like them after they're dead, either.” She paused to crane her neck again and gave a sigh of satisfaction. “The coffee's ready. I'll go get it and then let's taste your cookies.”

“Oh!” Andrea looked very nervous. “I really hope you like them. They're the first cookies I've ever made by myself.”

Hannah made quick work of gathering what they needed in the kitchen. The topic of Wayne's death had come up earlier than she'd expected. When she came back with a tray containing three mugs of coffee and cream and sugar for Andrea, she set it down in the center of the table and reached for one of Andrea's cookies before she could take the coward's way out and claim that she was too full from Sally's Christmas party buffet.

Family love knows no bounds
, she said to herself, but the words that came out of her mouth were different. “These look wonderful,” she said, taking a leap of faith and biting into one of her sister's cookies.

Hannah was well aware that both Andrea and Michelle were watching her like hawks as she chewed. And swallowed. And smiled.

“Good!” she said, doing her best not to sound too surprised. “I like these, Andrea!”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Hannah said and took another bite. “How about you, Michelle?”

Michelle gave her the same look Hannah imagined a prisoner being led to the gallows would wear. But she managed to smile as she obediently took a cookie and bit into it. There was a moment of silence and then an expression of total surprise crossed her face. “These are
good
, Andrea!”

“Well, don't look so shocked.” Andrea gave a little giggle. “Carli told me that everybody in her family liked them.”

“They're wonderful,” Hannah said, finishing her first cookie and reaching for another. “And you actually made them all by yourself?”

“Well…” Andrea faltered a bit and then she shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“What does
that
mean?” Michelle wanted to know.

“I didn't do it entirely by myself. Grandma McCann showed me how to preheat the oven and put them on the cookie sheets. But that was only for the first couple of times. After that, I did it by myself.”

Even though they weren't an overly affectionate family, Hannah couldn't help it. She reached out to give her sister a hug. “Good for you! Are you going to give me the recipe, or is it a big secret?”

“It's not a secret, and it's really easy. They take only four ingredients.”

“You're kidding!” Hannah was amazed. The cookies had a light but complex lemon flavor. They were soft and a bit chewy inside, and the outside was almost crunchy.

Andrea went on. “I think that's why Carli sent me the recipe. She remembers the bake sales the cheerleaders used to have to raise money for uniforms.”

Hannah remembered them too. When she discovered that Andrea and her friend, Janie Burkholtz, were buying Twinkies at the Lake Eden Red Owl to sell at the fund-raising bake sales, she started baking homemade cookies for them.

“What are the four ingredients?” Michelle asked.

“A package of lemon cake mix, two cups of Cool Whip, an egg, and powdered sugar.”

Lemon cake mix! Of course!
Hannah felt like rapping the side of her head with her knuckles for being so dense. Andrea had told them she hadn't used zest or lemon juice, but the cookies were still lemony. The flavor had to come from somewhere and making cookies from lemon cake mix should have occurred to her.

“That's all there is,” Andrea continued. “Just the four ingredients. Any more and I probably couldn't have done it.”

“Well, you did it very well,” Hannah told her, pouring them all more coffee.

“Thanks. I'm going to try chocolate next. Maybe I could even mix in a few of those tiny chocolate chips. That might be good.”

Hannah just stared at her sister. This was a whole new side of Andrea she'd never seen before.

“And then I was thinking of doing white cake mix with some kind of cut-up fruit like cherries or apricots. Why are you staring at me like that?”

“Because that's how great recipes are developed. You start with something basic and branch out. Sometimes it can be as simple as running out of one ingredient and substituting something else.” Hannah passed the plate of cookies to Michelle. “We've got three left, one for each of us. And then we'd better get down to business.”

“You're going to figure out who killed Wayne?” Andrea asked, taking her cookie and making short work of it.

“I don't even know if anyone did…yet,” Hannah reminded her. “It was night, he was at the bottom of the berm, and I was at least eight feet above him. I guess it's possible he slipped and broke his neck.”

“But why was he up there in the first place?” Michelle asked.

“He could have climbed up to enjoy the view,” Andrea suggested. “What was it like up there?”

“It wasn't what I'd call a scenic vista. The only thing I could see from the top was the snow bank behind it and the cars in the parking lot.”

“Okay.” Michelle gave a quick nod. “Then maybe he had to…you know. And he didn't want to walk all the way back to the inn.”

“So he climbed up a slippery eight-foot snow bank instead of just ducking behind a handy tree?” Hannah asked her.

“Never mind. It was a dumb idea,” Michelle admitted.

“Wait a second,” Andrea looked thoughtful. “Maybe he didn't climb up there. Maybe somebody dragged him up there and pushed him down the other side to kill him.”

“Why go to all that trouble when you could just shoot him, or stab him, or club him to death right there on the path?” Hannah asked the pertinent question.

“Because the killer was afraid somebody might come along and catch him? Or…oh, I don't know. Let me find out if it was an accident. Bill should know by now.”

“You're going to call Bill?” Michelle asked as Andrea took her cell phone out of her purse.

“No, I'm calling Sally.”

“Sally at the inn?” Michelle followed up with another question.

“That's right. She can tell me if Vonnie Blair's still there at the party.”

“Doc Knight's secretary,” Hannah said, beginning to get an inkling of what her sister was doing. “And if Vonnie's still there, it's probably not murder. Is that right?”

“You got it.”

As Andrea punched in the number, Michelle turned to Hannah. “Maybe you got it, but I didn't get it.”

“It's simple. If Doc Knight thinks it's murder, Bill will ask him to rush the autopsy. Doc knows how important it is and he'll do it right away. And since Doc has such awful handwriting, he'll call Vonnie on her cell phone and ask her to come out to the hospital to type up the transcript of the autopsy tonight.”

Michelle's puzzled expression smoothed out and she looked very impressed. “Wow. Andrea's devious.”

“She gets it from Mother,” Hannah explained. “Mother can think of the most roundabout ways to get the latest gossip.”

“Thanks, Sally,” Andrea said, and snapped her cell phone shut. And then she looked over at them. “It's murder. Vonnie left with the paramedics who transported Wayne to the hospital. Doc Knight must have been able to tell right away.”

 

As usual, Andrea was the scribe. Not only did she have good organizational skills, she also had the neatest handwriting of the three sisters. Michelle's had deteriorated when she'd gone off to college. After two years at Macalister, her notes were cryptic, filled with abbreviations that only she could decipher. Hannah, on the other hand, tended to print whenever she wrote something she hoped to read later.

“Here you go. A brand new steno notebook.” Hannah handed her sister one from the stash of notebooks she kept in every room. “Do you need a pen?”

“I have one.” Andrea reached in her purse and pulled out what Hannah termed a “dress pen,” since the barrel was gold and studded with sparkling white stones.

“Pretty fancy,” Michelle commented, leaning closer to gaze at the pen. “Are those rhinestones, or diamonds?”

“I'm pretty sure they're rhinestones. It was a present from a client and the house he bought was a fixer-upper.” Andrea flipped to the first blank page and wrote Wayne Bergstrom's name at the top. “We don't know the time of death, or the method. What do you want me to write down?”

“We could list the time I found him,” Hannah suggested, “but I didn't look at my watch.”

“I did.” Michelle said. “When you said Santa's dead, I pressed the button to light the time and it said ten twenty-two.”

Andrea started to write it down, but Michelle grabbed her hand. “Put down ten-seventeen,” she said.

“Wait a second,” Hannah was confused. “I thought you said you looked at your watch and it was ten twenty-two.”

“That's right. But I always set my watch five minutes ahead. It keeps me from being late to class.”

“How does it keep you from being late if you
know
your watch is five minutes ahead?” Hannah asked her.

“It's simple. If I start counting on that extra five minutes, I set my watch ten minutes ahead and psych myself out.”

All was silent as Hannah digested that. It seemed her youngest sibling hadn't inherited the logic gene.

“Okay. Ten-seventeen.” Andrea jotted it down. “Do we know what time Wayne left for the parking lot?”

“Ten after eight,” Hannah responded.

“Are you sure your watch isn't five or ten minutes fast?” Andrea teased her.

“I didn't look at my watch. I glanced at the clock in Sally's kitchen as Wayne went out the back door. We can check it to make sure it's accurate.”