Cherry Cheesecake Murder (24 page)

Hannah shook her head. “I’ll never tell. Just let me say that it’s something you wouldn’t expect to be in a cookie.” She flipped open the steno pad she’d carried across the street with her and pushed it across the table to Andrea. “Will you take notes?”

“You always ask me to write things down!”

“That’s true, but it’s because you have such good penmanship. If I take notes, my mind gets ahead of my fingers and I have trouble figuring them out later.”

“Okay, I’ll do it. But there’s a price.”

“What is it?” Hannah asked, expecting her sister to demand a whole batch of her favorite cookies.

“I want to know what the second flakes are.”

“No, you don’t. It’s a lot like Mystery Cookies. Once you find out what’s in them, you keep eating, and eating, and trying to taste it.”

Andrea made a big show of putting down her pen and flipping the steno pad closed. “If you won’t cooperate and tell me, then I won’t cooperate and take notes. Your unpaid personal secretary just quit.”

“Come on, Andrea. It’ll just drive you crazy.”

“No, it won’t. Trust me. Once you tell me, it’ll be all over. And then you’ll have perfectly legible notes.”

Hannah glanced at Michelle, who shrugged. “I think she’s got you over a barrel,” she said.

“All right,” Hannah conceded with a sigh. “I’ll tell you. It’s instant mashed potato flakes.”

“You’re kidding! I never would have guessed!” Andrea took another bite, and frowned as she chewed. “Are you sure? I don’t taste instant potato flakes.”

“I’m sure. I mixed up the dough myself.”

“Well, I still don’t taste them. Pass me another couple of cookies. Maybe the last one I ate was missing its potato flakes.”

Hannah and Michelle sat back and watched as the cookies disappeared one by one. Finally, on the last cookie, Andrea gave a nod. “I think I taste them, but I’m not really sure. You don’t have any more, do you?”

“Not here. I’ll make you another batch tomorrow.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Andrea said, picking up her pen and then giving a most unladylike burp. “Sorry about that. Now if one of you will pour me another cup of coffee, we can get this show on the road.”

“Do you really think Sharyn could have done it?” Michelle asked, watching as Andrea wrote her name on the list of suspects.

“I don’t know her well enough to tell,” Hannah said. “It all depends on how jealous she was. It also depends on what she knew.”

“What do you mean,” Michelle wanted to know.

“If she was the jealous type, but she didn’t know her husband was entertaining other women in his Winnebago, she’d have no motive to kill him.”

“I get it,” Andrea said, jotting it down. “And if she wasn’t jealous and she didn’t care if her husband was entertaining other women in his Winnebago, she wouldn’t have a motive, either.”

“Correct. For the purposes of this list, let’s say she was jealous and she knew. That’s a good motive for murder. And now we have to think about the women Dean entertained. They could have spouses or boyfriends who might be jealous enough to kill Dean.”

“Well, I’m off the hook,” Andrea said, taking another sip of coffee. “Bill’s in Miami and everybody knows it.”

Michelle’s mouth dropped open. “You mean you…”

“No!” Andrea interrupted. “But I did go to his trailer to discuss Tracey’s part with him. It’s a good thing Bill’s not in town. He might have gotten the wrong impression and then both of us would be suspects. But Bill’s not here and I’m in the clear.”

“If Bill’s not here, she’s in the clear,” Hannah repeated, and she started to grin. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

“What?” both sisters asked at once, staring at her hard.

“Sorry. I just couldn’t help thinking of O. J.’s trial. That’s what the defense said.”

“But what does that have to do with…”

“Absolutely nothing,” Hannah interrupted her youngest sister. “It rhymed so I thought of it, that’s all. Let’s get back to business here. Can we think of any other women we can link with Dean?”

“Me,” Michelle confessed, guilty color rising to stain her cheeks. “He asked me to come to his trailer right after lunch yesterday. I thought he had work for me, but when I got there, he made a pass.”

“What kind of a pass?” Andrea asked.

“It was silly, really…the sort of thing only a fool would have believed. He put his arm around me and told me I was perfect for a part in his next movie. And he offered to fly me out to Hollywood so I could take a screen test. I guess he thought I’d be so grateful, I wouldn’t mind when he tried to kiss me.”

Andrea made a strangled sound and covered it with a cough. “Sorry, something was stuck in my throat.”

Stuck in your craw is more like it, Hannah thought and immediately felt mean. She poured more coffee for Andrea by way of apology for what she hadn’t said, and turned back to Michelle. “So what did you do?”

“I stepped away, and told him I was really flattered that he thought I had talent, but the smart move for me was to stay at Macalester and finish college.”

“That was a good way to deal with it,” Andrea said, recovering nicely. “But even though you turned him down, Lonnie could still have heard about it. He’s got a temper, and he was on the set, and…”

“Forget it,” Hannah advised her. “Lonnie would have punched Dean’s lights out, but he never would have killed him. I think it’s safe to assume that he didn’t know about the time Michelle spent in Dean’s Winnebago.”

Michelle looked thoughtful. “You’re right. If Lonnie wanted to kill Dean, he’d do it with his bare hands. He’d never switch guns and take the chance that someone else might get hurt. But I just thought of someone else to add to the list.”

“Who?” Andrea asked, her pen at the ready.

“Lynne. I know she was in Dean’s trailer a couple of times. He mentioned it on the set the other day. And she wasn’t happy that he mentioned it, either!”

“Okay. I’ve got her down. And if Lynne was there, we have to add her husband. His name is Tom, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Hannah said. “You’d better add Erica, too. I’m almost positive I heard her giggling that first morning when I delivered Dean’s cheesecake. And you’d better put down Jeanette, too.”

“Because she’d kill anybody that touched her daughter?” Andrea’s pen flew across the paper and then hovered over the motive column she’d drawn next to the column of names.

“That, too,” Hannah told her.

“But Jeanette might have another motive for killing Dean?”

“Oh, yes. I think I heard her in Dean’s trailer the next afternoon. I’m not positive, but it sounded just like her. I’m surprised Dean didn’t ask the rental company to install a revolving door at the back of his trailer.”

Andrea laughed. “That’s funny. I wonder if there’s anyone in Lake Eden that he hasn’t tried to pick up on.”

“Mother and Carrie?” Hannah suggested, expecting a big laugh.

“Maybe Carrie,” Michelle answered.

“Not Mother?”

“Not Mother,” Michelle said with a grin. “Dean got a little close to her when she was printing out the list of props they collected for him.”

“Uh-oh! What did she do?”

“She elbowed him in the stomach.”

“Hold on!” Andrea held out her hand palm first in the universal signal for stop and wait. “Did you say Mother printed out a list?”

“That’s right.”

“Then she has a computer?”

“She showed it to me last night,” Michelle said. “It’s a really nice laptop, a Pentium four, three-gig processor with an eighty-gig hard drive and a seventeen-inch screen. It’s got firewire and USB ports, and lots of peripherals…scanner, color printer, digital camera, external hard drive backup, you name it.”

Andrea gave a low whistle. “Did you hear that, Hannah? Mother got a computer!”

“I heard,” Hannah said, giving a groan worthy of a hippo mired down in a mud hole.

Michelle glanced from one older sister to the other. “Why is Hannah groaning like that?”

“Because she promised me she’d get a computer when Mother did.” Andrea gave a little laugh. “And Mother did.”

“Okay, okay,” Hannah gave in, although not gracefully. “I’ll talk to Norman right after the movie crew leaves and find out what kind to buy.”

Andrea’s cell phone rang and she put down her pen to answer it. She listened for a minute and then she sighed. “Okay, Lisa. We’ll be right there. Thanks for telling us.”

“Telling us what?” Hannah asked, already starting to gather up the coffee mugs.

“Mike just came in to interview the promising witnesses. When he noticed that we weren’t there, he asked where we’d gone.”

“What did Lisa tell him?”

“That we were here, across the street.”

“Uh-oh,” Hannah groaned. Mike was bound to be suspicious, especially since all three of them had left. “Did he ask Lisa anything else?”

“Yes, he wanted to know what we were doing over here when Lake Eden Realty was closed.”

“And what did Lisa say?”

“She said she didn’t know, that all you’d done was ask her to mind the shop while you went across the street with us.”

“Good girl!” Hannah said, breathing a bit easier. She hadn’t asked Lisa to lie for them before they’d left and that omission had been deliberate. There was no way she’d put her young partner in that position. Lisa might agree to bend the truth a bit if it was crucial, but she hated to lie. And even more important, to Hannah’s way of thinking, was the fact that Lisa was an extremely unaccomplished liar. No one would ever accuse Herb Beeseman’s new bride of having a poker face. Lisa’s countenance told the whole story. If she was angry, her eyes blazed and her color was high. If she was nervous, her hands shook and she licked her lips anxiously. If she was sad, her eyes welled up with tears and she sniffled without realizing it. If Hannah had asked her to lie for them, Lisa might very well have done it, but her voice would have trembled and she wouldn’t have been able to meet Mike’s eyes. Perhaps those two signs of a less than truthful statement might have escaped someone else’s notice, but Mike was a master interrogator and there was no way he would have missed it.

“So what do we say when we get back?” Michelle asked.

“We say…” Hannah mind whirled into high gear. She thought for a moment and then she started to grin. “We tell the truth. That’s bound to throw him off the track.”

“What!” Andrea gasped.

Michelle didn’t say anything. She was too shocked to do more than stare at her older sister.

“That’s right,” Hannah said, visibly warming to her idea. “We tell Mike the truth. We say we were over here talking about Dean’s murder and speculating on who might have done it. And then, when Mike wants to know if we questioned any of his witnesses, we tell him the truth and say no. We also add that it’s one of the reasons we came over here to talk about the murder.”

“Why?” Andrea looked confused.

“Because we knew he wouldn’t want any of the witnesses to overhear us talking about Dean. And there were so many people in The Cookie Jar, there wasn’t any place for a private conversation.”

“Brilliant!” Michelle complimented her.

“It certainly is.” Andrea gave a little smile. “And we’re not even lying. The only thing we’ve done is talk about it, and there’s no crime in that…is there?”

“I don’t think so,” Michelle said, turning to look at Hannah for the final word.

“I hope not.” Hannah handed the thermos to Michelle, took the notebook Andrea handed her, and stuffed it into her saddlebag-style shoulder purse. “So far, all we’ve done is gossip and if that’s a crime, Mike will have to lock up half the people in Lake Eden!”

DOUBLE FLAKE COOKIES

DO NOT preheat oven—dough must chill before baking

This recipe is from Lisa’s cousin, Betty Harnar. Betty’s cookies are slightly different than the ones we make at The Cookie Jar, so if you don’t like them blame us. If you love them the way the folks in Lake Eden do, please give Betty all the credit.

1 cup melted butter (½ pound, 2 sticks)

3 eggs

1 ½ cups white (granulated) sugar

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon coconut extract (if you don’t have it, you can use vanilla)

1 ½ cups flour (no need to sift)

2 cups instant mashed potato flakes

1 cup coconut flakes, firmly packed

¾ cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts (measure AFTER chopping)

approximately ½ cup white sugar in a bowl for later

Melt the butter. Set aside to let it cool a bit. Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and whip them up for a minute. They don’t have to be fluffy, just thoroughly mixed. Pour in the sugar and stir it up. Add the cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and coconut extract. Mix well. Stir in the melted butter and then add the flour. Mix until the flour is thoroughly incorporated.

Measure out two cups of mashed potato flakes and mix them in. Add the coconut flakes. (If you’re like me and you don’t like stringy coconut, chop it up in a food processor with the steel blade before you add it to your bowl.) Stir in the chopped nuts and mix thoroughly.

Cover the dough tightly and refrigerate it for at least 4 hours. Overnight is even better.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the center position.

Form balls of cookie dough, 1 inch in diameter, with your hands. Roll the balls in granulated sugar and place them on a greased (I used nonstick cooking spray) cookie sheet, 12 to a standard-sized sheet. Flatten them a bit with a metal spatula or the heel of your impeccably clean hand.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes, or until cookies are golden around the edges. Cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes and then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yield: Approximately 8 dozen, depending on cookie size

Mother likes these best as sandwich cookies. I spread one cookie bottom with chocolate frosting and sandwich another cookie on top. (The bottoms should be together, making the cookie sandwiches slightly convex.) Bertie’s customers down at the Cut ’n Curl like them best if the sandwich filling is raspberry jam. I think that’s because the chocolate melts if they eat them under the hair dryers.