Cherry Cheesecake Murder (13 page)

Mall—Business Cards, Andrea wrote in her perfectly formed script at the top of the small page. Then she paused for a moment, the tip of her pen double-underlining the underline she’d placed at the bottom of the first message.

The pen moved again and Hannah squinted. It was a lot easier to read printing than cursive, but she persevered. Formula, the next note read. Unless Andrea had suddenly developed an interest in higher mathematics, Grandma McCann, Bethany’s live-in babysitter, must have called to remind her to pick up baby food on the way home.

“Uh-oh!” Andrea breathed, and Hannah watched as the next notation took form. Three dozen snacks—room mothers’ meeting today! Andrea underlined the word today three times for emphasis and then she pressed a button on the phone and lifted it from her ear. “Hannah? I’m in deep trouble. Could you possibly…?”

“Sure, if cookies will do it. How about three dozen or so?”

“That’s perfect! But how did you know I needed something?”

“I guess the sister–sister radar must be working,” Hannah said with a shrug.

Andrea frowned slightly and Hannah held her breath. Had she remembered their bedtime reading and Hannah’s ability to provide a word without getting up? But Andrea gave a little shrug and then she smiled. “You’re the best, Hannah. I was going to stop at the Red Owl to pick up some squeezable pimento cheese spread and crackers, but I forgot they’d be closed.”

“That’s okay,” Hannah said, trying not to shudder. Her taste buds lumped squeezable cheese spread in the same category as instant coffee.

Andrea punched another number on her phone and picked up her pen again. She listened for a moment and then she began to smile as the tip of her pen formed a heart on the page.

A moment later, the phone, notebook, and pen were back in Andrea’s neatly organized purse and she was smiling from ear to ear. “Guess what happened?”

“You won the lottery.”

“No, but it’s every bit as good as that. Bill’s phone was unplugged! He didn’t realize it until he got up this morning, and he was an hour late for his first seminar. He stopped by the desk and chewed them out for not giving him his wakeup call, but they said they did and he didn’t answer. They sent a maid up to his room to check it out and she discovered that one of Bill’s pillows had slipped down behind the headboard and knocked his phone cord loose in the middle of the night!”

“So you worried for nothing,” Hannah said, giving her sister a big smile.

“I guess so! I mean, it’s the oldest excuse in the book. You know, I was home all night. There must have been something wrong with the phone, but that’s exactly what happened. At least that’s what Bill told me.”

As Hannah watched, Andrea’s smile faded and she began to chew on her lower lip, something she hadn’t done, to Hannah’s knowledge, since Miss Bruder caught her putting on eye shadow in the girl’s bathroom in fifth grade.

“What do you think, Hannah?” she asked, looking up at her older sister anxiously. “Am I a fool for believing a tired old excuse like that?”

Hannah didn’t even have to think about her answer, since there was only one reply. “Absolutely not,” she said.

“But…what if Bill’s lying to me?”

“What if he is? Do you want to divorce him?”

“No! I love Bill!”

“Then you have to choose to believe him. Maybe he’s lying and your trust will be misplaced, but that’s a whole lot better than not believing him when he’s telling you the truth.”

Andrea thought about that for a long moment. “That makes perfect sense. You’re a wise woman, Hannah.”

“Not really,” Hannah said with a smile. “If I were that wise, I’d be independently wealthy, happily married, and Congress would declare me a national treasure. And so far, I’m none of the above.”

After Andrea had left with the box of cookies for her afternoon meeting, Hannah sat back down at the work island and lingered over the last few sips of coffee in her mug. She could hear faint conversation and an occasional laugh from the coffee shop, but those sounds were perfectly benign. There were no yowls from her thespian tomcat, not even the slightest mew. As far as she could tell, Moishe was behaving perfectly.

“It’s quiet…too quiet,” Hannah recited the line she’d heard in dozens of grade B cowboy movies. The line always occurred right before the Indians attacked, and even though Hannah knew exactly what was going to happen, those four words still put her on the edge of her seat. She felt like that now, just waiting for Moishe to kick up a fuss. Finally, unable to stand the tension any longer, Hannah got up and headed to the coffee shop to see how her furry friend was doing.

As she pushed open the door, Hannah heard someone speaking in the artificially high voice people tend to use when they’re talking to infants. The source of the sound was Sophie, the wardrobe mistress, but there was no baby in sight. The handsome sweetums Sophie was addressing was none other than Hannah’s cat!

Moishe was holding court at the big round table by the window. He was sitting in the middle of the table, a rumbling, purring centerpiece surrounded by doting admirers. It was no wonder her cat was content. Hannah counted no less than five hands petting him. As she stood there watching, she heard other terms of endearment, sweety love, magnificent fellow, and cuddlewuddles among them. Everyone at the table seemed to be worshipping at the throne of Moishe, and Moishe took it as his due. He was squinting in pleasure and wearing the biggest kitty smile Hannah had ever seen.

“Pushover,” Hannah murmured as she passed by the table, but she wasn’t at all upset. Moishe was a glutton for affection and it was clear that he was having a wonderful time. As long as the kitty fans kept coming in and the fawning continued unabated, bring-your-pet-to-work week might not be the nightmare she’d envisioned this morning.

Lisa was just passing out the box lunches that Sally had sent for the crew and cast when the bell on the front door tinkled and Hannah looked up to see Dean Lawrence. Lynne was with him, holding his arm, and her college friend looked fabulous in a fifties-style sweater dress. Her hair was fashioned in a pageboy style and Hannah came close to hearing the strains of “Love Me Tender,” or “Hound Dog” from a long-dead Elvis as she looked at the sort of girl he would have admired.

“Smell,” Lynne said, holding out her wrist, inside up, the way they used to do when they’d gone shopping and sampled everything at the perfume counter. “Bet you ten bucks you don’t know this one.”

Hannah sniffed and then she laughed. “You lose. It’s Evening in Paris and my grandmother used to wear it.”

“She’s absolutely amazing,” Lynne explained to Dean. “I think her sense of smell is almost as well developed as her taste buds. That’s why she’s such a good cook. All she has to do is smell something and taste it, and she knows what’s in it.”

“Well, I don’t know what’s in that cheesecake, but it’s great!” Dean said, kissing the air next to Hannah’s cheek, and then giving her a little squeeze around the waist. “I knew it would be good just looking at it, but I didn’t think it would be that good.”

“He said it was the best he ever tasted,” Lynne told Hannah.

“That’s right. I’ll want two every day, one in the morning and one right after lunch. Can you do that?”

“Absolutely.”

“There’s something else.” Dean leaned closer and looked directly into her eyes. “It’s a bit of a challenge.”

The warning bells in Hannah’s head began to clang. Whenever something was described as a challenge, it was usually impossible to achieve.

“I want to serve cherry cheesecake at the premiere. The only problem is, we’re doing champagne and finger food. You know what finger food is, don’t you, Lovey?”

“Of course,” Hannah said stifling the urge to plant him a facer, a Regency English term that she’d picked up while catering coffee and cookies at the Lake Eden Regency Romance Club. Planting him a facer meant hitting him in the face and that’s what Hannah felt like doing. In addition to his casual touches that bordered on the intimate, which she didn’t appreciate, Dean was being very condescending. Just because she lived in a small town didn’t mean that she was totally unsophisticated.

“Do you think you can figure out a way to make mini cherry cheesecakes so we can put them on a tray and serve them as appetizers?”

“Maybe,” Hannah said, not at all sure she could do it, but willing to try. “It can’t be my cherry cheesecake made smaller, though.”

“Why not?”

“It won’t work. It all has to do with specific gravity.” When Dean looked at her blankly, Hannah began to smile. She’d snow him with gobbledygook until his eyes glazed over to get even for implying that she was unsophisticated.

“The cheesecake I baked for you is enclosed in a metal springform, with a lubricated underlay for the carrier ingredients. It’s not baked in the traditional slow oven and that means it needs to solidify without granulating. Smaller containers would counter these parameters, and I doubt that experimenting with different media would yield positive results.”

“Oh.”

Dean’s eyes were sufficiently glassy and Hannah decided it was time to back off. “Let’s just say that the cheesecake I make for you is special. If I changed the size, I’d have to change the whole recipe.”

“I can understand that. I really don’t want to share my cheesecake with the general public anyway. Go ahead and bake another kind.”

“I’ll have something for you to test in a couple of days,” Hannah promised, hoping that she hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew. “If it works out, maybe you can use it in the cocktail scene. That would be a good tie-in with the movie, wouldn’t it?”

“In the…yes! Yes, it would! The audience would see those little beauties being passed around by the waitresses. And then, when they came out to the lobby after the movie, they’d get to actually taste them! That’s a wonderful idea. I’m so glad I thought of it!”

Oh brother! Hannah mouthed as Dean walked away. He’d taken her idea and claimed it as his own in less than twenty seconds. That had to be some sort of a record, even for a director with an ego as big as a double-wide pole barn.

MOCK TURTLE COOKIES

Do Not Preheat Oven—Dough Must Chill Before Baking

1½ sticks chilled butter (¾ cup)

2 cups flour

¾ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli’s semi-sweet)

1 egg, beaten

approximately 3 dozen Kraft Caramels (the soft kind that’s individually wrapped—they’re about a half-inch square)

Cut the butter into 12 pieces and place them in a work bowl. With two forks, mix in the flour, powdered sugar, and salt. Continue mixing until the dough is crumbly.

Hannah’s Note: You can also do this in a food processor with the steel blade the same way you’d mix piecrust. It’s a lot easier that way.

Melt the chocolate chips in a small microwave-safe bowl (I use a glass measuring cup) for 40 seconds on HIGH. Stir them to see if they’re melted. (Chocolate chips may maintain their shape until they’re stirred.) If they’re not melted, microwave them in 20-second intervals until they are.

Add the melted chips to the dough mixture. Stir (or process, if you’ve used a food processor) until the chocolate is mixed in and the crumbly dough is a uniform color. Beat the egg in a small cup or bowl and add it to the work bowl. Mix it in (or process with the steel blade) until a soft, piecrust-type dough results.

Divide the dough into four equal parts. Tear off four pieces of wax paper about a foot and a half long. You’ll use these to hold your dough when you roll it out. Turn a piece of wax paper so that the long side faces you and place one piece of dough in the center. Using your hands, roll the dough into a log that’s approximately 12 inches long and ¾ inch thick. Do the same for the three remaining pieces of dough.

Wrap the rolls in the wax paper you used to roll them and put them into a freezer bag. Freeze them for an hour or two until firm. (Overnight is fine, too.)

When you’re ready to bake, take out the dough and let it warm up on the counter for fifteen minutes. Then preheat the oven to 325 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

Unwrap a roll of dough and cut it into ¾ inch pieces with a sharp knife. Place the pieces cut side down on a greased, or parchment-covered cookie sheet, 12 pieces to a standard-sized sheet.

Unwrap 6 caramels and cut them in half. I find this is easiest if you dip the blades of your kitchen scissors in water and then cut the caramels with the scissors.

Press a half caramel into the center of each chocolate cookie. Be careful not to press it all the way to the bottom. (If the dough is still too cold to press in the caramels, let it warm up a bit more and try again.) Make sure your caramels are surrounded by cookie dough and won’t melt over the sides of the cookies when they bake.

Bake each pan of cookies at 325 degrees F., for approximately 15 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Let the cookies cool for a minute or two on the pan and then remove them to a wire rack to complete cooling.

When all the cookies are baked and cooled, spread foil or waxed paper under the wire rack containing the cookies and prepare to glaze them. (I use extra-wide foil because it’s easy to crimp up the edges and make it into a disposable drip pan.)

Chocolate Glaze:

1/3 cup water

1/3 cup light corn syrup (I used Karo)

1 cup white (granulated) sugar

11/3 cup milk chocolate chips (8 ounces—I used Ghirardelli’s)

Approximately 6 dozen pecan halves

Measure out the chips and put them in a small bowl so they’re ready to add when it’s time.

In a saucepan, combine the water, corn syrup, and white sugar. Place the saucepan on high heat, and STIRRING CONSTANTLY, bring the contents to a boil. Boil for 15 seconds, still STIRRING CONSTANTLY, and pull it off the heat.

Dump in the chips, all at once, and poke them down until almost all of them are covered by the hot syrup mixture. Let the saucepan sit on a cold burner (or on a pad on the counter) for 2½ minutes.

Gently stir the mixture with a whisk (a fork will also work) until it’s almost completely smooth. Be careful not to whisk in air, or you’ll get bubbles.