Cherry Cheesecake Murder (31 page)

“Mother?” Hannah started out tentatively, but only after she’d replenished her mother’s supply of German Chocolate Cake Cookies.

“Yes, dear.”

“Michelle says you’ve got a new computer.”

“Yes, I do. Norman helped me order it and he hooked it all up for me.”

“Why didn’t Norman tell me?”

“Because I asked him not to. I was going to surprise you the next time you came over, but I forgot to tell Michelle that it was a surprise. It’s an amazing machine, dear, much better than a typewriter.”

“So,” Hannah proceeded gingerly down the path she’d chosen, “you use it for word processing, then?”

“That’s right. And Norman installed a mail program for me.”

A mail program. Hannah digested that bit of information and then she went for another bite. “You’re connected to the Internet?”

“Not yet. Norman says to wait until the cable company has a special on their high-speed line. That’s when you can get free installation. He told me I wouldn’t be happy with a dial-up connection. It’s just too slow.”

“I see,” Hannah said, relaxing slightly. Delores wasn’t connected to the Internet, and that meant she couldn’t be having a cyber romance with a handsome, ballroom dancing Englishman she’d met online. “Is that mail program Norman installed for later when you have e-mail?”

“No, it’s for snail mail. I learned how to make labels and I’m keeping our master address list of customers for Granny’s Attic. Would you believe that Carrie and I were hand-addressing all our sale notices? Now all I have to do is print out labels, and we can just stick them on.”

“That’s a real time-saver.” Hannah still wasn’t completely satisfied. Nothing Delores had told her explained her mother’s sudden obsession with Regency terms. “Have you been doing a lot of reading lately?”

“Not as much as I’d like, dear. Running Granny’s Attic is a full-time job, even with all three of us. And after I get home, it’s all I can do to grab a bite to eat, switch on my laptop, and work for a couple of hours.”

“Work?” Hannah zeroed in on her mother’s last statement. “What are you working on?”

Delores glanced at the clock on the wall. “Oh, just a little hobby of mine. You wouldn’t be interested. I’d better run, dear. I left Carrie at the shop all alone. She’ll need my help.”

“But you’re not open for business,” Hannah pointed out.

“I know, but there are still things to do.” Delores stood up, shrugged into her coat, and headed for the door. “Inventory, straightening up, things like that. Later, dear.”

Hannah stared at the door that closed behind her mother, but there were no answers written on the white paint that covered the wood. Delores had a secret and she was guarding it carefully. Hannah figured that it would come out sooner or later, but in the meantime her curiosity was killing her.

“Hannah?” Lisa pushed open the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the coffee shop and glanced in at her partner. “Mike’s here to see you and I told him I’d check to see if you were busy. He says he needs to ask you some questions.”

“What a coincidence!” Hannah said with a grin. “I’d like to ask him some questions, too.”

“Shall I go out and lead the lamb to the slaughter?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t put it quite that way to the lamb.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.” Lisa went through the swinging door, but she turned around to stick her head back into the kitchen again. “If we’re betting on who gets the most questions answered, my money’s on you.”

“Thanks, Hannah.” Mike picked up the mug of coffee that Hannah had poured him and took a big gulp. “This would be a whole lot easier if Bill hadn’t gone to that convention. I’m working a double shift most days.”

“Filling in for Bill as acting sheriff, plus heading up Dean’s murder investigation?”

“That’s right. I got four hours’ sleep last night and I considered myself lucky.”

If you’d just swallow that silly pride of yours and let me help you, you’d get more sleep, Hannah thought, but of course she didn’t say it. She also didn’t commiserate too much. She’d had less than four hours’ sleep herself, but she wasn’t about to tell Mike the identity of the person with whom she’d had a late date!

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“You do?” Hannah felt a little tingle of alarm. Had Mike heard about her dinner with Ross?

“You’re thinking that if I’d accepted your offer to help with the investigation, I wouldn’t be so overworked.”

“Mmm,” Hannah said, settling for the most noncommittal reply she could come up with on short notice.

“It’s not that I don’t want your help. I do. It’s just that I can’t ask for it. You know?”

“Not really.”

“Winnetka County Sheriff’s Department regulation four-eighteen, subsection B says, No civilian shall be recruited into an official investigation without insurance, bonding, compensation commensurate with duties, and deputization.”

“Is that a word?”

“Commensurate? Yeah, it means…”

“Not that,” Hannah interrupted him. “I know what commensurate means. I was talking about deputization. I don’t think it’s a word.”

“It must be a word. They used it in the official department regulations.”

Hannah bit her tongue rather than say what was on her mind. Mike had a lot to learn about regulations and the overworked secretaries who usually wrote them for their bosses. A mistake in word usage could multiply from county to county, and from state to state, until it was as rampant as gophers running wild on a golf course.

“I was really tempted to deputize you, but I thought it would be overstepping my bounds as acting sheriff.”

“You silver-tongued devil, you!” Hannah murmured under her breath, smiling despite herself. If Mike had deputized her, she would have worked her sleuthy fingers to the bone for him. But he hadn’t. And he’d only mentioned it because he was trying to sweet-talk her into giving him the information she’d gathered.

“So what did you find out?” Mike asked, validating Hannah’s conjecture.

“Not much,” Hannah said, but she knew she had to give him more than that so he’d give her something in return. “From what I’ve heard nobody liked Dean all that much.”

“Who do you like for the murder?”

“At first I liked Connor. He had a good motive, but it turns out that he couldn’t have done it. He wasn’t at Granny’s Attic that afternoon.”

“Right. His name isn’t on Frances’s list. Who else?”

Hannah drew a big breath of relief. Since Mike had eliminated Connor, he hadn’t bothered to run a background check. Connor’s prison days would remain his secret unless he chose to tell someone. “I thought maybe Sharyn had found out about Dean’s extracurricular activities and lowered the boom. I even entertained the thought that Tom Larchmont might have done away with Dean because he was a lousy husband for his niece, Sharyn.”

“Nope. I cleared them both. They alibi each other, and an independent third party swears they never left their chairs between takes.”

Hannah made a mental note. There was no need to ask Sophie about the fight she’d overheard between Tom and Lynne since Mike had cleared Tom. “How about Lynne, herself? She was certainly in a position to switch the revolvers.”

“She was, and she was my prime suspect when Ross told me that she wanted to direct. But I searched her myself right after the murder and she didn’t have the prop gun anywhere on her.”

Anywhere on her? Hannah bit back an amused chuckle. Lynne was a gorgeous leading lady and she couldn’t blame Mike if he’d enjoyed his search just a little more than he should have. “So who do you like for Dean’s murder?”

“Jared’s a possibility.”

“Jared? Why do you think he did it?”

“Remember when I told you someone saw him straightening some flowers on the desk?”

“I remember.”

“Well, he had the opportunity to switch the revolvers. I watched the tapes of the rehearsals and one of the cameramen caught Jared blocking the drawer with his body. If he’d had another working and loaded revolver, he could have switched them.”

“I agree,” Hannah said, “but why would he do that? As far as I know, he didn’t have a grudge against Dean. And even if Burke was the intended victim, Jared doesn’t have a reason to want him dead, either.”

“Maybe he does and we just don’t know about it yet.”

“You could be right,” Hannah said. “I’ll ask around about him and see what I can dig up. In the meantime, why don’t you concentrate on your other suspects.”

“Okay,” Mike said, giving a weary sigh. “I’ll go back to work and you can go back to your baking.”

“I’m all through. Have a couple of my new cookies and tell me what you think.”

Mike bit into a cookie and his frown disappeared. “These are good, Hannah. Do you have a name for them yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I think you should call then Angel Kisses. They’re light and sweet.”

“Good idea. Have another.”

Mike finished four more cookies and when he turned to go, he was smiling, especially when Hannah pressed a bag of Angel Kisses in his hand and told him to share with his deputies.

When the door closed behind him, Hannah popped a cookie into her own mouth. Mike had gotten such a lift from the chocolate, he was all fired up and ready to catch Dean’s killer. Maybe a dose of her own medicine would work to inspire her, too.

ANGEL KISSES

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F., rack

in the middle position

(That’s two hundred seventy-five degrees F., not a misprint.)

3 egg whites (save the yolks in the refrigerator to add to scrambled eggs)

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

½ teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup white (granulated) sugar

2 Tablespoons flour (that’s 1/8 cup) approximately 30 Hershey’s Kisses, unwrapped (or any other small chocolate candy)

Separate the egg whites and let them come up to room temperature. This will give you more volume when you beat them.

Prepare your baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper (works best) or brown parcel-wrapping paper. Spray the paper with Pam or other non-stick cooking spray and dust it lightly with flour.

Hannah’s note: These are a lot easier to make with an electric mixer, but you can also do them by hand with a copper bowl and a whisk.

Beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar, vanilla, and salt until they are stiff enough to hold a soft peak. Add the cup of sugar gradually, sprinkling it in by quarter cups and beating hard for ten seconds or so after each sprinkling. Sprinkle in the flour and mix it in at low speed, or fold it in with an angel food cake whisk.

Drop little mounds of dough on your paper-lined cookie sheet. If you place four mounds in a row and you have four rows, you’ll end up with 16 cookies per sheet.

Place one Hershey’s Kiss, point up, in the center of each mound. Push the candies down, but not all the way to the bottom. (You don’t want the chocolate to actually touch the parchment paper.) Drop another little mound of meringue on top of the candy to cover it up.

Bake at 275 degrees F. for approximately 40 minutes, or until the meringue part of the cookie is slightly golden and dry to the touch.

Cool on the paper-lined cookie sheet by setting it on a wire rack. When the cookies are completely cool, peel them carefully from the paper and store them in an airtight container in a dry place. (A cupboard shelf is fine, just NOT the refrigerator!)

Yield: 3 to 4 dozen cookies with a nice chocolate surprise in the center.

It was a noon meeting of the sisters and it was taking place in the small coffee room at Bertie Straub’s Cut ’n Curl beauty parlor. Thankfully the owner, the biggest gossip in Lake Eden, was watching Honey apply Tracey’s makeup and the sisters had the coffee room all to themselves.

“Did you ever see so many flamingos in your life?” Andrea asked, glancing around at the flamingo lamp standing in a corner, the wastebasket with a rather rotund pink flamingo painted on the side, the wallpaper with bright pink flamingos flapping their wings and marching in parallel lines around the room, and the mirror peppered with flamingo decals in various hues of pink.

“Bertie said this place used to be called The Flamingo Hair Salon before she bought it,” Hannah explained. “She threw out a lot of the decorations, but she saved some for back here.”

“The seller didn’t want to take the decorations with her?”

“I guess not. Maybe she figured they’d compete too much with the real thing.”

Andrea looked puzzled for a moment. “She moved to Florida?”

“That’s right. Here comes Michelle.”

Michelle, the last to arrive for their designated rendezvous, rushed into the back room. She pulled out a white vinyl-covered chair with a pink flamingo painted on the back. The chair was old and there were cracks in the flamingo, with yellow foam stuffing peeking through them. “I’ve never been back here before,” she said, sitting down at the pink Formica-topped table.

“That’s a blessing,” Andrea quipped, pulling out her dark glasses and putting them on.

“Why did you do that?” Hannah asked her.

“To tone down the pink. The only thing that’s not a flamingo in here is that.”

Hannah and Michelle looked where Andrea was pointing. It was a wicked-looking machine standing in the corner, with wires hanging down from a metal hood.

“What is it?” Michelle asked.

“I think it’s an old-fashioned permanent wave machine,” Hannah told her. “They used it to do marcelled hair.”

“What’s marcelled hair?”

“A marcel was a hairstyle back in the nineteen-thirties. They also called it a finger wave. You know what a wave is, don’t you?”

Michelle nodded. “Dad’s hair was wavy when he put hair oil on it. Mother liked it that way.”

“But Dad didn’t,” Andrea broke in. “He said it felt greasy.”

“So did a marcel. The waves were all perfectly lined up and they were sharp and even all over the head. Think about the early pictures you’ve seen of Joan Crawford and Mae West. They wore marcelled hair.”

“How did the machine work?” Andrea wanted to know.

“See those metal rods hanging down on cords from that hood?” Both of her sisters nodded and Hannah continued her explanation. “I’m not a hundred percent positive, but I think the operator wound hair around those metal rods. The wires led to the power source and when the operator turned on the machine, electricity heated the hair and curled it.”