Devil's Food Cake Murder (16 page)

“Yes, I’m all right…at least for now.”

“Of course you are. You’re with Norman.” Delores turned to Norman. “You take care of my little girl now.”

“Little girl?!” Hannah couldn’t stop her incredulous question.

“Sorry, dear, but I do get so worried about you all alone. Andrea’s got Bill, and Michelle’s got those friends of hers living with her at college. But you’ve got no one.”

Norman reached for her other hand, which was resting on the bench seat between them, and gave it a firm squeeze. Hannah knew what that meant. Hannah should remain silent because protesting that she wasn’t lonely would do no good. Her mother would go on in the poor lonely Hannah vein until she’d exhausted the subject.

“Enough, Delores,” Doc Knight said, entering the conversation for the first time. And then, before anybody could say anything else, Dot arrived with their coffee and dessert.

Dot began by filling their cups and spooning on sweetened whipped cream with a little brown sugar sprinkled on the top. Once she’d served coffee to everyone, Delores turned to Hannah. “I wish you could make this for my launch party, dear. Sally’s Cinnamon Supreme Coffee is my very favorite.”

“You’ll like the Pear Crunch Pie, too,” Dot promised cutting four generous pieces and transferring them to dessert plates. “Just try it. It’s one of my favorites.”

Hannah watched as her mother took a dainty bite of the pie. And then she continued to watch as Delores cut off a huge bite and wasted no time slipping it into her mouth. Even though she’d always cautioned her daughters that it wasn’t ladylike to gobble food, Delores was the first to finish both coffee and pie.

“That was marvelous!” she said, smiling at Hannah. “I wish I could have both of them for my launch party.”

“You’re in luck, Mrs. Swensen,” Dot said, reaching into her apron pocket and handing the recipes to Hannah. “Sally said you’d probably want them.”

Hannah bit back a grin. She’d lost count of the number of sweet treats her mother wanted her to make for her book launch party. If Hannah served everything her mother had mentioned, everyone there would go into a sugar coma. And then Mike and Bill would have to arrest her for attempted desserticide!

For long moments the only sounds were the clinking of silverware against cut glass dessert plates. When everyone had finished coffee and dessert, Doc turned to Hannah.

“I suppose you want to know about the autopsy and not wait for Andrea to wheedle it out of me.”

Hannah’s mouth fell open in surprise, but Delores turned to Doc with laughter in her eyes. “Andrea wheedles?”

“Yes, if she can’t get a copy from Vonnie, or take it from Bill’s briefcase when he’s sleeping. You raised some sneaky girls, Lori.”

Lori? Hannah stared at her mother, waiting for the explosion but Delores said nothing. As a matter of fact, she smiled at Doc Knight.

“I tried to set a good example,” she said.

Doc Knight threw back his head and laughed. And then he reached out to put his arm around Delores and give her a squeeze. “That’s my girl.”

His girl? This was too much information for Hannah, who exchanged shocked looks with Norman.

“At least for tonight,” Delores replied, giving him what Hannah could only describe as a come-hither smile.

Immediately, Hannah felt better. Her mother was having fun flirting with Doc Knight. And why shouldn’t she? Hannah had seen her flirt with Joe Dietz and Bud Hauge, to name only a few of the men her mother had dated in the past few months. Hannah was pretty sure they were all just friends. But if they weren’t, she’d simply have to deal with it. If anyone had asked, she would have admitted that it was a bit disconcerting watching her well-over-fifty mother flirt with local men, but Hannah was glad her mother was having a good time.

“What was your estimate of the time Reverend Matthew died?” Norman asked Doc.

“Between twelve and two.”

“But I was there at twelve-thirty and he was already …” Hannah stopped speaking as the light dawned. “You mean early on Sunday morning?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. When you found the body, he’d been dead at least twelve hours, maybe a little longer.”

“But how could you …” Hannah cut off her question as she noticed her mother’s expression. “Never mind. That’s too much information, and we don’t really need to know.”

“Thank you, dear,” Delores said, giving her daughter a grateful glance, and then she turned to Doc. “I have a question for you.”

“Ask away,” Doc said, smiling at her.

“I’d like to know if he got to eat any of that luscious cake Hannah found at the scene…only as a matter of curiosity, of course. And I don’t want to know the details of how you could tell.”

“Yes. He had a bite or two.”

“Did the killer eat cake before he murdered Reverend Matthew?” Hannah sat back, waiting for the answer.

Doc gave a little laugh. “I’m a doctor, not a psychic. There’s no way of telling.”

“I’m glad we had pie and not cake!” Norman said, and everyone laughed.

Hannah gave him an approving glance, and then she asked Doc another question. “Do you think I could get a copy of the autopsy report?”

Doc shook his head. “I can’t do that, Hannah. Besides, you don’t need it. Your sister already got a printout from Vonnie.”

Hannah smiled. Andrea was really on the ball. She’d known that Hannah would investigate Reverend Matthew’s murder, and she was already collecting official reports for her. “Before you came to join us, Norman and I were talking about possible motivations for Reverend Matthew’s murder. We decided it could be something current from his return here as a substitute pastor, or something that happened in the past when he went to Jordan High as a senior.”

“Or something completely unrelated to Matthew Walters at all,” Doc suggested a third possibility.

“But how could that be?” Delores asked him.

“Let’s say that someone broke into the church in the middle of the night, not knowing that he was there in the church office. It could have been a botched burglary, and whoever it was didn’t want to leave a witness.”

Hannah immediately thought of Matthew’s cousin Paul. He’d been convicted due to a burglary gone bad. She looked over at Norman, knowing the same thought was running through his mind, and he gave a little shake of his head to remind her they’d decided that Paul wasn’t a viable suspect.

“What would someone break into a church to steal?” Delores asked.

“The collection money?” Doc suggested.

Hannah thought about that for a moment. “That makes sense. The church was packed on Sunday because we held Reverend Bob and Claire’s bon voyage party right after the service. There would have been more money than usual.”

“You’re good at this, Doc,” Delores complimented him.

“Thanks. I should be good at it after all the practice I’ve had.”

“You’ve solved crimes before?” Norman asked him.

“No, but it’s a lot like diagnosing a patient. You add up all the facts, eliminate the diseases that don’t fit the profile, and test for the ones that do. That’s what I’m trying to teach my interns. Marlene’s getting good at it, but Ben still has a ways to go.” Doc reached out for the coffee carafe to pour more for Delores and then offered it to Hannah and Norman before he filled his own cup. “Lori thought you’d want to know about how Matthew got the quarterback job on the Lake Eden Gulls.”

“Please tell me,” Hannah said, flipping to a fresh page in her shorthand notebook and reaching into her purse for her pen.

SALLY’S CINNAMON SUPREME COFFEE

Hannah’s 1st Note: Sally uses a drip coffeemaker to make this coffee. She has a 30-cup pot, but I’ve reduced the recipe to fit in a household drip coffeemaker.

4 whole cinnamon sticks

3 Tablespoons brown sugar, well packed

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup freshly ground coffee (Sally uses French Roast beans and grinds her own)

10 cups water

Place the cinnamon sticks and the brown sugar into the glass (or metal) carafe.

If your coffeemaker uses a filter, place it in the brew basket. Then put the freshly ground coffee and the ground cinnamon inside the basket.

Pour in 10 cups of water and turn on the coffeemaker. Let the water drip through completely.

Remove the carafe with the freshly made coffee and stir it to dissolve the brown sugar. Put it back on the heated pad at the bottom of the coffeemaker. It should sit there for at least 5 minutes so the flavors will meld.

This coffee is best topped with sweetened whipped cream. Use one cup of whipping cream, 2 Tablespoons powdered sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. Whip it up and place it in a pretty bowl so that people can top their coffee with it.

Hannah’s 2nd Note: If you really truly don’t feel like making sweetened whipped cream, you can buy it in a tub or a canister. Although sweetened whipped cream is always better when it’s homemade, this coffee is so tasty, the ready-made sweetened whipped cream will be fine.

To serve, pour the coffee into a serving carafe, or if you’re making just one pot, use the carafe from the coffeemaker. Transfer the cinnamon sticks to whichever carafe you use. This coffee will just get better and better as it sits.

Pour generous cupfuls and top with sweetened whipped cream. If you like, sprinkle a bit of brown sugar over the top of the sweetened whipped cream for an extra treat.

Yield: Serves 5 because everyone will want a second cup.

Hannah had to hunt for the pen she’d dropped in her purse only moments before. The roomy interior of her saddlebag-type purse reminded her of a claw arcade game. You operated the steam shovel to grasp a prize from the jumble of items in the glass box. Sometimes you lucked out and managed to get what you wanted. Other times you came up with a prize you could easily live without. This time Hannah was lucky, and she drew out the pen she wanted on the very first try.

“Ready?” Doc asked her.

“Yes.”

“When Matthew came to school at Jordan High, he tried out for the football team and made it as an alternate quarterback. Hugh Kohler was the regular quarterback and had been for the past two years. I saw a couple of the games. The kid was good.”

“So Hugh Kohler was the quarterback and Matthew was second string?” Norman asked.

“For the first three games. But everything changed when Coach Telleson took the whole team on a camping trip at Eden Lake. It was the weekend before the big homecoming game, and they were supposed to bond together as a team. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.”

“What happened?” Hannah asked him.

“The first thing Coach Tellson had them do was gather firewood. They could go in groups or individually. He said later that he did it to see which boys worked best together and which boys preferred to go it alone. I asked him why, and he told me that it would help him make decisions about which boys to play in certain positions.”

“Okay,” Norman said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “What did he say about Matthew?”

“He said that Matthew went off alone, and so did Hugh. Hugh’s younger brother, Adam, stood there for a minute and then he went off alone, too. The same for Matthew’s cousin, Paul.”

“Paul was there?” Hannah was surprised. Grandma Knudson hadn’t mentioned that he’d played football.

“Paul was on the junior varsity team. I don’t think he got in more than a few minutes of playing time, but any boy who wore a uniform was there.”

“Tell them about the other boys,” Delores prompted.

“Except for Matthew, Hugh, Adam, and Paul, all the other boys paired up, or went in groups of three or four.”

“And that told the coach something about football?” Delores sounded as dubious as Hannah felt.

“That’s what Coach Telleson said. When the boys came back, he watched the amount of wood they brought, and made certain assumptions from that. He explained what these assumptions were at the time, but I don’t remember now. It probably didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

“Did Matthew bring back much wood?” Hannah asked.

“He brought back more wood than anyone else, but he came back late.”

“There was a time limit?” Norman asked the question before Hannah could.

“Yes. They had to be back in fifteen minutes. Coach Telleson said the groups started coming in first after they’d been out for thirteen minutes. The paired boys were next, then Paul, and then Adam. Matthew arrived at the twenty-minute mark.”

“How about Hugh?” Hannah asked the obvious question.

“He didn’t come back at all. They found him a ways away, in a stand of birch with a broken leg.”

“Tell them what happened,” Delores urged.

“Hugh said he’d seen Matthew go down the same path, so he’d gone a different way to an area where he thought there’d be more firewood. When he saw that there wasn’t any, he went back to the path that Matthew had taken, hoping that Matthew had left some wood. A little ways down the path, he found the perfect log for the campfire. He headed straight for it and that’s when he fell in a deep hole that was hidden by fallen leaves and broke his leg in two places.”

Hannah was already a step ahead of Doc’s story. “And Hugh blamed Matthew?”

“That’s right. He thought Matthew had dug a deep hole, filled it with fallen leaves to camouflage it, and placed a perfect log just beyond it as bait. And that prompted a real rift in the team. Hugh’s best receiver pointed out that the hole had been there for a while since there were decaying leaves and mud at the bottom from the rain they’d had at the beginning of the week.”

“So Hugh apologized and all was well?”

“No. A couple of the boys had seen Matthew going down that path. They knew that part of Hugh’s story was true. And the hole had been filled to the top with leaves. That probably wouldn’t have happened naturally. Even if Matthew hadn’t dug the hole itself, he might have filled it with leaves and baited it with the log.”

“You said there was a rift,” Hannah pointed out. “Does that mean some of the boys believed that Matthew was innocent?”

“Yes. Coach Telleson did, for one. He told me that Matthew didn’t have it in him to be that mean. And some of the older members of the team agreed with him. The split was about fifty-fifty, but the accusation was almost forgotten when Matthew played brilliantly in the homecoming game and the Gulls beat the Browerville Tigers twenty-eight to three.”