Cream Puff Murder (30 page)

“Do you think he was homeless?”

Frank shook his head. “I didn’t see anything that pointed in that direction. He was clean, his clothes were clean, and he was dressed for the weather. He just sent up red flags for me, you know? I told him to move along, and he went out to the parking lot. I didn’t see him again, and I left at midnight.”

“Is there any way he could have gotten into Heavenly Bodies?”

“That’s what I’m worried about. I should have told Tad about it when he came in at eleven, but I really didn’t think it was important. The guy was gone. That was that.”

“But now you’re giving it a second thought?”

“Yeah. The thing is, people were coming and going for Miss Ward’s birthday party, and that back door was opening and closing a lot. He could have slipped in with one of the guests.”

After Frank had left, Hannah took out her shorthand notebook and added the man in the blue parka to her suspect list. It wasn’t much to go on, but there had to be some reason he’d been hanging around the mall entrance to Heavenly Bodies. Then she closed her notebook and slipped it into her large shoulder bag, the one her mother hated and her fashionable sisters kept trying to replace.

“Ready?” Andrea asked, opening the door partway.

“Ready,” Hannah answered, hoping her coffee would hold out.

She’d gone through five people with tidbits of information for her that had proved to be less than useful. Then Delores and Carrie had come in to tell her that they’d won the karaoke contest at The Moosehead and now had a fifty-dollar credit at the bar. When the door opened and Herb walked in with Mike, Hannah hoped they’d have something interesting to tell her.

“You can go back to baking cookies now, Hannah,” Mike said with a grin that couldn’t have been any wider.

“What do you mean?” Hannah gazed from Mike to Herb and then back again.

“I reviewed the red-light camera photos from the night that Ronni was killed,” Herb explained. “The camera’s mounted by the traffic light at the mall exit, and it catches anybody running the red light to get on the freeway. It shows Mike entering the intersection on yellow at twelve thirty-five.”

“And Ronni was killed between one and two-thirty in the morning,” Hannah said, recalling the time from Doc Knight’s autopsy report.

“That’s right.” Mike gave a little nod. “The only reason the highway patrol didn’t write me up is that I was driving a patrol car.”

“We’re taking the photo out to the sheriff’s department to show Bill,” Herb said.

“And I’ll be back on the case this afternoon.” Mike gave her a little kiss on the top of the head. “You’ve done a good job, Hannah. Write up what you’ve learned so far, will you? I’ll take over now.”

“He actually said that?” Michelle looked outraged.

“He actually did.”

“You’re not going to do it, are you?” Andrea asked, bringing up the rear with Norman as they climbed the steps to Hannah’s condo.

“Do what?” Hannah asked her.

“Write up a report for Mike.”

Hannah turned around as she reached the landing. “Of course I am. But he told me to go back to baking cookies, and reports take time to write. It’ll probably be a week or so before I have the chance to put anything down on paper.”

When she got inside, the first place Hannah headed was the kitchen. She glanced down at the Kitty Valet and let out a whoop of excitement. “Moishe’s out of food again. Now we’ll get to see if the kitty-cam worked.”

Hannah put on the coffee, Norman took the tape out of the kitty-cam, and Michelle and Andrea refilled the food tube on Moishe’s Kitty Valet. In less than five minutes, they were all settled in the living room with fresh mugs of coffee and a box of Lois Brown’s Lemon Cookies that Hannah had brought home from The Cookie Jar, ready to watch the tape from the surveillance camera.

“These are great lemon cookies!” Michelle said, reaching for her second in less than a minute. “There’s a lot of lemon, and that makes them nice and tart.”

“Sometimes I sprinkle them with powdered sugar before I serve them,” Hannah told her. “Does anybody want me to do that?”

There were headshakes all around. It seemed they all liked the tart, lemony flavor.

“Okay, then…let’s get started,” Hannah said, taking a sip of her coffee. “At least we won’t be bored silly. Moishe’s kitty-cam is motion activated. If nothing moves, it doesn’t record.”

“No more hours of closed doors and empty rooms?” Andrea asked her.

“Not unless an ant is crawling across the floor.” Hannah turned to Norman who had the remote control. “Okay Norman. Let’s see what Moishe’s been up to while I’ve been at The Cookie Jar today.”

“It looks like he just took a big mouthful,” Michelle said. She was holding Moishe, and he was purring so loudly they could all hear him. Evidently he didn’t mind being caught in the act as long as he got star billing on Hannah’s television screen.

“But he’s eating it,” Andrea commented, and Hannah thought she sounded slightly disappointed.

The Moishe on the screen swallowed and then moved to the water bowl to take a drink. A moment later, he was back at the food bowl, head buried up to his ears and chewing.

“Maybe he does eat it all!” Andrea said, watching Hannah’s cat eat.

Michelle lifted Moishe up from her lap, held him a moment to judge his weight, and put him back down again. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m almost sure he’s not gaining weight.”

“And he would be if he ate rations for four cats twice a day,” Hannah said, frowning slightly. “Just wait and see what he does when he’s full. That’s probably when he hides the rest of the food.”

Several minutes passed as they all watched Moishe eat. Never had a cat’s dietary habits been so closely observed. At last Moishe pulled back from the food bowl and began to wash his face. This lasted for almost three minutes, and then he ducked his head in his food bowl again.

“The Big Guy’s got a lot of food in his mouth,” Norman observed. “His cheeks are puffed out.”

At first Hannah thought Norman was anthropomorphizing, but Moishe’s cheeks did look fuller. Perhaps that was something a dentist would notice.

“He’s going to the refrigerator!” Andrea sounded shocked. “He doesn’t know how to open the door, does he, Hannah?”

Hannah laughed. “No. He’s a smart cat, but he hasn’t figured that one out yet…at least I don’t think he has.”

Almost in tandem, they all leaned forward as Moishe passed by the front of the refrigerator and ducked into the narrow area between the side of the kitchen appliance and the broom closet. He had to squeeze to get in, but he wiggled his way out of sight in the narrow space.

“That’s where he always loses his duck’s foot,” Hannah said. “And all the times I’ve fished it out for him with the yardstick, he could have gotten it himself!”

“He must be hiding his food back there,” Michelle guessed.

“I hope he doesn’t get stuck!” Andrea exclaimed, and all three of them turned to look at her. “What?” she asked, and a moment later, she gave an embarrassed laugh. “I guess that didn’t happen, since he’s sitting right here on Michelle’s lap.”

A moment later Moishe emerged, and it was Hannah’s turn to gasp.

“What is it?” Andrea asked her.

“He came out headfirst and there’s no room to turn around back there!”

“There must be a hole or something,” Norman suggested.

“Let’s go look,” Hannah said, heading for the kitchen at a trot. She unlocked the door to the broom closet, took out the bag of cat food, and motioned to Norman.

“I see it!” Norman said, leaning in with the flashlight and shining it on the wall near the floor. “There’s the loose board I told you about when I fished out his duck’s foot. The Big Guy’s got a nice little entrance to the broom closet back there. But there’s nothing on the floor. What’s he doing with his food?”

“Putting it back in the bag?” Hannah guessed, looking inside the bag. “It didn’t occur to me before, but I haven’t bought any cat food since Mike gave me the Kitty Valet. This bag should be just about gone by now, but it’s still three-quarters full.”

“You’re right! He’s putting it back in the bag!” Michelle sounded absolutely astonished.

“That’s the only logical conclusion. He eats what he wants and then he puts the rest back where it came from.”

Andrea laughed. “He eats and then he puts away the leftovers. That’s so cute.”

“If you’ve got a hammer and nails I’ll fix that board right now,” Norman offered.

Hannah was about to say yes, when she reconsidered. “Thanks, but I don’t think I want it fixed. Moishe’s playing a game with his new feeder. It keeps him occupied, it’s not hurting anything, and he seems to enjoy it. I’ll just let him do it for a while, at least until he finds something else to intrigue him.”

“I think you’re probably wise,” Norman said.

Andrea nodded. “Me, too.”

“If you keep him from his game, he’s just going to find another one,” Michelle said, “and maybe it’ll be more destructive.”

“One mystery solved,” Hannah said, heading for the coffeepot for a second cup. “Let’s go watch another tape from the mall and see if it’ll shed any light on the second mystery we have to solve.”

LOIS BROWN’S LEMON COOKIES

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

½ cup softened butter (1 stick, ¼ pound)

¾ cup white (granulated) sugar

1 egg, beaten (just whip it up in a glass with a fork)

1 Tablespoon lemon zest
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2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

12/3 cups flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

½ cup milk (I used whole milk)

Topping:

¼ cup lemon juice

¾ cup white (granulated) sugar

Hannah’s 1 st Note: These cookies are wonderfully lemony and quite tart. You may want to sprinkle them with powdered sugar before you serve them to those who like them sweeter.

Beat the butter and the sugar together until they’re light and fluffy.

Add the beaten egg, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Mix it all up together.

Mix in the baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix well.

Mix in half of the flour and half of the milk. That’s approximately a cup of flour and a quarter cup of milk. (You don’t have to be exact—just eyeball it.)

Stir everything all up, and then add the remaining flour and the remaining milk. Mix well.

Drop by teaspoons onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Make these cookies small, about the size of a cherry. If you make them too large, they’ll spread out on the cookie sheet and crumble when you remove them.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 14 minutes. (Mine took 13 minutes.)

Hannah’s 2 nd Note: I use parchment paper because then I can just slide it onto a wire rack after the cookies come out of the oven.

While the first pan of cookies is baking, mix up the topping.

Heat the lemon juice just a bit in the microwave. (The sugar will dissolve more easily if the juice is warm.) Add the sugar and stir it all up. Place the topping next to your wire cooling rack, along with a pastry brush.

When the cookies come out of the oven, remove them to a wire rack with a piece of foil placed under it or, if you’ve used parchment paper, just pull the paper with the cookies from the cookie sheet and onto the wire rack.

Brush the topping onto the hot cookies. The faster you do this, the quicker the topping will dry into a glaze.

Yield: Approximately 4 dozen cookies, depending on cookie size.

Hannah’s 3 rd Note: This recipe can be doubled.

“N o dialogue, no story, no lights, no music,” Hannah said with a sigh. “No wonder these tapes are so boring.”

“You forgot no action,” Norman reminded her, his finger on the fast-forward button. They’d watched the first third of the tape, and so far the Snack Shack was in shadows and absolutely nothing had happened. “There’s nobody in there to…whoa!” He stopped as the door opened and the lights clicked on. “Here we go! It’s show time!”

“It’s Ronni,” Hannah identified the blonde who walked to the far end of the room and took several small bottles from behind the counter. “And that’s diet green tea. This must be when she starts drinking Green-Teanis.”

Michelle looked puzzled. “I wonder why she didn’t change out of her exercise outfit for the party.”

“Maybe she didn’t have anything tighter,” Hannah offered her opinion.

“That wasn’t nice!” Andrea chided her.

“Maybe not, but I bet you were thinking the same thing.”

A shade of pink very much resembling the pink of the pillow shams in Hannah’s guest room started to appear at Andrea’s neckline. It moved slowly up to the top of her cheeks, and Andrea gave a guilty sigh. “You’re right,” she said. “I was.”

“Here comes the rest of the party,” Norman said, pointing at the screen. “Mike’s got your cream puffs, Hannah.”

Hannah watched Mike come in, carrying her tray of cream puffs. She noticed that he’d stuck a candle into each puff, but the platter was covered with plastic wrap. He set it behind the counter, where no one could see it, and gave Ronni a big kiss on the lips that lasted a lot longer than Hannah wanted it to. Then the partygoers began to file in, and Mike took a proprietary place at Ronni’s side with his arm around her waist.

“Mike’s acting like the host,” Andrea said, and then she glanced over at Hannah. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Yes, but…oh look! There’s Mayor Bascomb!” Andrea sounded grateful that something else had come up on the screen.

Before much more time had passed, the room was filled with people. Someone had contributed a case of beer, and others drank soft drinks or concoctions from the blender that one of the sheriff’s deputies was manning behind the counter.

“Lonnie,” Michelle breathed, and Hannah turned to glance at her youngest sister. Michelle looked worried, and Hannah wondered if she feared that Lonnie would give the birthday girl the same kind of greeting that Mike had. But instead of heading over to greet Ronni, he gave a little wave in her general direction and got himself a beer from the case at the end of the counter. Then he started talking to a couple of other deputies who were there, and Hannah saw Michelle visibly relax.