Cherry Cheesecake Murder (17 page)

Hannah was sitting at the work island in the kitchen of The Cookie Jar, taking a well-deserved break. She’d just finished making Dean Lawrence’s cheesecakes and they were sitting in state in the walk-in cooler, along with the tray of Jane’s Mini Cherry Cheesecakes that Lisa had made. Both types of cherry delectables would be thoroughly chilled and ready for delivery to Dean’s office in the morning. Hannah would perform that duty. There was no way she would let Lisa come into contact with the seasoned Romeo alone in his fancy Winnebago.

A chuckle escaped Hannah’s throat as she thought of what would happen if Lisa delivered the goodies and the Bad Boy Director made another pass at her. There were some in town who might still consider her a blushing bride, but Lisa was far from innocent when it came to dealing with amorous males. According to Hannah’s youngest sister, Michelle, who’d been Lisa’s classmate at Jordan High, one particular basketball player had ended up benched for a week with a black eye after he tried to get fresh with Lisa on a date. No, Hannah’s concern wasn’t for her partner. Lisa could and would take care of herself. And her concern wasn’t for Dean Lawrence, either. If Lisa was forced to use what Michelle had called her “wicked left hook,” he would deserve that and then some. Hannah’s concern was for Ross and what it would mean for Crisis in Cherrywood if his director got benched for medical reasons.

There was only an hour to go before they could close the shop for the day, and Hannah was anticipating an evening at home with Moishe, a simple dinner of whatever she could find in her cupboards or her refrigerator, and a trial run of a new recipe she’d mixed up while the cheesecakes were baking. It was a type of cookie she knew Lynne would like, modeled after her favorite sandwich, peanut butter and banana on toast. It was the only cooking Lynne had ever done, if you could call toasting bread, spreading peanut butter, and slicing bananas “cooking.” They’d eaten so many peanut butter and banana sandwiches while studying together for finals in college that Hannah hadn’t been able to look at a jar of peanut butter for a full year after she’d left the campus to return home.

Hannah had just finished the last of her coffee and was preparing to rinse out her mug in the sink when the back door opened and her mother breezed in.

“Hello, Hannah,” Delores greeted her eldest daughter. “I have wonderful news!”

“You do?” Hannah took one look at her mother’s delighted expression and smiled right back. It was the first time she’d seen Delores look truly happy since Winthrop’s abrupt exit from her life.

“We finished early and Jared told us it’s absolutely perfect! The nineteen-fifties house is up and running, and I want you to be the first to see it. I value your opinion, dear.”

“Thank you, Mother. I’d love to see it,” Hannah agreed, pleased that her mother had chosen her for the first viewing. “Just let me ask Lisa to hold down the fort while I’m gone.”

A moment later, Hannah was back. She grabbed her coat from the hook by the back door and followed her mother across the parking lot to the rear of Granny’s Attic. She wasn’t even mildly suspicious until Delores opened the back door of Granny’s Attic, and Hannah found Ross Barton waiting for them. Was this another of her mother’s matchmaking attempts? Or had she invited Ross by virtue of his writer–producer hyphenate?

“Hey, Hannah!” Ross looked pleased to see her as she came through the back door and into the small narrow room that Delores and Carrie used for storage. “They made me wait in here for you. We’re supposed to be the first to see it.”

“That’s so you an keep us from looking like fools if there’s something wrong,” Carrie confessed, looking almost as happy as Delores did. “All you have to do is tell us, and we’ll fix it before anyone else sees it.”

Ross gave both older ladies a warm smile. “I’m sure it’s perfect. Can we go in now?”

“Yes, but walk around the side of the building and come in the front way,” Delores instructed. “We want you to get the full effect of the porch and then the living room.” She gave them a sweet smile. “You will indulge me, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Ross said, and led Hannah back out the door. They walked, single file, around the side of the building. It wasn’t until they rounded the corner to the front that Ross spoke. “I can’t believe they got it done so fast. Your mother and Carrie are amazing.”

“Amazing,” Hannah said, although amazing wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Deceptive, perhaps. Maybe even conniving or scheming. And if she wanted to tone it down just a bit, manipulative was always a safe bet. Delores was definitely up to something, but Hannah wasn’t about to get into it now. The less Ross knew about her mother’s machinations, the better. She’d have a private chat with Delores later and find out exactly what was going on.

“We had a front porch just like this in Duluth,” Ross said, when they opened the door.

“Everyone had a front porch like this,” Hannah looked around at the addition to Granny’s Attic that had been created by the wizardry of Ross’s studio carpenters. “There’s even a rug by the front door for boots.”

“With boots on it. And they’re from the right time period. My mother had a pair of boots just like that. She told me she wore them in high school.”

Hannah gazed down at the brown suede boots with fur around the tops. If she remembered correctly, those boots had come from her mother’s closet. “So there should be a coatrack, or a hall closet, or something like that when we go through the inside door.”

“Coatrack,” Ross announced as he opened the door to the inside. It was the room that in larger, more expensive houses, would be called a foyer. “It’s perfect, Hannah. The coatrack’s sitting on a homemade rag rug to catch the drips.”

“Of course it is. You’re talking about egg money here. Almost every farm wife used her egg money to buy a loom to make rag rugs. They made the rugs from everything you can think of, including burlap sacks and plastic grocery bags. They sold them to the people in town, and the tourists that came through in the summer.”

“A cottage industry?”

“Rag rugs, hooked rugs with designs on them, and hand-sewn chair pads for wooden kitchen chairs. Everybody had a craft in the fifties.” Hannah stopped at the mahogany door that led to the inside of the house. “Beveled glass, and it’s decorated with ferns and…is that a letter, or a design?”

“It’s a letter T, and it’s perfect. Amy and Jody’s last name is Thompson.”

The hallway sported a wooden staircase that Hannah knew led up to nowhere, and two doors that were placed opposite each other. Hannah chose the one on the left, opened it, and stepped inside. It was a fairly small room and the first detail that caught her eye made her smile.

“What’s got you so amused?” Ross asked.

“The black panther light on top of the television set. My Grandma Ingrid had one just like it.”

“Maybe it is your Grandma Ingrid’s.”

“That’s not impossible. Mother’s got a lot of her things in storage.”

“She’s got a green lava lamp, too.” Ross pointed to the end table where a lava lamp expurgated its bulbous bubbles.

“The only thing that’s missing is a…granny afghan!” Hannah burst into delighted laughter as she saw the crocheted wonder draped over the back of the green tweed couch. It was a granny afghan extraordinaire, done in shades of green and blue, surrounded by black borders.

“Perfect,” Ross said, gesturing toward the couch that was positioned strategically in front of the television set. “There’s room here for three to watch television.”

“Two. Nobody likes to sit in the middle of a couch. There’s nowhere to rest your elbows.”

“Lime green shag carpeting!” Ross exclaimed with a grin. “Your mother and Carrie did a really good job re-creating the nineteen-fifties. They must have done a lot of research.”

Not necessarily, Hannah thought, but she didn’t say it. If her mother wanted everyone to think she didn’t remember the fifties, Hannah wasn’t about to call her bluff.

“This is nice and homey.” Ross looked around at the ivory wallpaper with little green ivy vines marching down in stripes. “There’s even an overstuffed armchair with a pole lamp for reading. If we take out the glass in the window, we can shoot that scene with Tracey reading to Moishe in here.”

“It all looks good to me. Let’s go see how they decorated the formal living room, since you’ll be using it for the cocktail party.”

Hannah headed for the set of French doors that separated the small informal family room from the formal living room. The moment she stepped inside the larger space, Hannah knew her mother and Carrie had produced something that was about as close to perfection as anyone could come.

“Gorgeous,” Ross pronounced, echoing her emotion.

“Yes,” Hannah said, walking around the room in awe. Her mother and Carrie had perfectly re-created the elegant look that had been so popular in expensive homes at the time. The living room floor had a wine red carpet surrounded by a parquet wood border. The drapes were heavy wine-red silk and the walls were covered with ivory flocked wallpaper. There were gilt-edged mirrors in strategic places and several large landscapes in ornate frames.

“The piano’s a nice touch,” Ross said, heading for the gleaming white baby grand that was positioned by the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “We’ll have someone playing it at the cocktail party.”

“No, you won’t,” Hannah said, lifting the lid to find absolutely nothing inside. “It’s just a shell.”

“That’s okay. We’ll mix in the sound later. As long as there’s a keyboard, someone can pretend to play.”

When they’d finished exploring the formal living room and spotted the desk that would be used for the suicide scene, Hannah and Ross headed back out to the hallway to open the second door.

“It’s straight out of The Student Prince,” Hannah breathed, eyeing the bedroom with its delft blue walls, white curtains, and white furniture. “Is this Amy’s room?”

“Yes. See that cushion on the dormer window?”

Hannah nodded. It was the only jarring note in the room. The cushion was bright orange.

“That’s for Moishe. Amy bought it so he’d have a spot to sit and watch the birds. Her father threw it in the trash because it didn’t match the rest of her room, but Jody retrieved it and gave it back to her on the day of their father’s funeral.”

“Sounds like a nasty man.”

“He was.”

Hannah stopped for a moment and then she began to frown. “Who’s playing the father in the movie? I haven’t met him yet.”

“And you won’t. The father is done entirely in voice-over. I wanted it that way for impact. We never get to see him, therefore we can’t find anything about him to like.”

“Interesting,” Hannah said.

“I just hope it’ll work. It’s always a gamble, casting villains. If they overplay the evil, they can be almost comical. And if they’re a bit too nice, the audience sympathizes with them. That’s why I decided to try a more radical approach. The father appears only in Amy’s mind. That should make him larger than life, more menacing, and totally unsympathetic. It also gives me an escape hatch, because it’s the father in her mind, not the real father.”

Hannah thought about that for a minute, and then she smiled. “It sounds like good reasoning to me. But I’m not a filmmaker and you are.”

“I just hope it’s not too hokey. If it is, it’ll be a simple matter to take out all but the most critical scenes and cast someone quickly.”

“When will you know?”

“By dailies on Friday night. Do you want to come out and watch them with me? Sally’s got us set up in the bar.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Hannah said, thoroughly fascinated by the concept.

“Okay. Let’s go tell your mother and Carrie what we think.”

“Fine. I think it’s fantastic, but you’re the producer. What do you think?”

“I think it’s fantastic, too.”

“You really think it’s that good?” Delores asked, her eyes sparkling in excitement.

“I do. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d been dressing sets all your lives.”

“Thank you!” Carrie looked just as delighted as Delores did. “We did work very hard on it.”

“And you finished it ahead of schedule. Do you know how rare that is in the movie industry?”

Both Delores and Carrie shook their heads and then Delores cleared her throat. “Since you like your sets so much, I have a favor to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“Invite Hannah out to the inn for dinner tonight. I just know she’s not going to eat right.”

Really, Mother! You’re about as subtle as a ballerina in hip waders! Hannah thought, but she didn’t say it. It seemed as if her mother had given up on Norman and Mike as likely candidates for sons-in-law, and was now concentrating all her efforts on Ross.

“My pleasure,” Ross said, slipping his arm around Hannah’s shoulders and giving her a little squeeze. “And after dinner, I’ll have dailies of Moishe for her to see. How about you two? Would you like to join us?”

Delores shook her head. “That’s very nice of you, but no thanks. They’re having a sale at the mall tonight and I promised Carrie I’d go shopping with her.”

“We can go shopping another time,” Carrie declared.

“But how about the sale? It’s twenty percent off.”

“I’d probably buy something I didn’t need anyway. And I’m certainly not going to turn down such a nice invitation. Come on, Delores. Let’s go see that footage of your grandcat,”

“My grandcat?” Delores exclaimed, turning to give Carrie a dirty look. “How about Norman? Don’t you have to fix dinner for him?”

“Norman can fend for himself tonight. I’m going, Delores. How about you?”

“Oh. Well…all right,” Delores conceded, looking none too happy about it as she turned to Ross. “Thank you, Mr. Barton. We’d love to join you for dinner.”

“It’s Ross. And I’m very glad you’re coming.” Hannah glanced at Ross in surprise. He sounded as if he actually meant it. “Shall I pick you all up at seven?”

“No need for that,” Carrie said, exchanging another look with Delores. “I’ll drive and we’ll bring Hannah with us.”

Hannah choked slightly and covered it with a cough. It was the battle of the mothers and it seemed as if Delores had met her match. Less than two minutes ago, her mother had practically pushed her into Ross’s arms, and now Carrie had placed her in the position of co-chaperone.