Key Lime Pie Murder (31 page)

“I will. I promise,” Hannah said, wondering if she remembered how to do it or whether she’d have to look for the instruction sheet.

“All right, then. I’ll see you in the…” Norman stopped speaking and started to frown. “Look at Moishe! He sees something outside that window. I’m sure of it!”

“Me, too. Or maybe he just hears another animal or a person. Whatever it is, it’s out there and he’s reacting to it.”

They moved together to the window. Hannah stared out into the darkness, but she saw nothing moving. “Do you see anything?” she asked.

“No, but maybe it’s something small that we’re not noticing, like a field mouse or a snake.”

“That must be it,” Hannah agreed, moving away from the window again and leaving her cat to keep watch.

“Where were we?” Norman asked her, walking to the door again.

“You were about to kiss me goodnight.”

“I was?”

“Oh, yes. At least twice.”

Norman chuckled and pulled her into his arms. And then he exceeded her suggestion by at least a half-dozen kisses. When he let her go and opened the door, Hannah swayed slightly on her feet. Norman definitely knew how to kiss!

Hannah stepped out onto the landing with him, and they were just sharing a final kiss when she heard voices below.

“Sorry,” Michelle called out. “We didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

Hannah turned to see Michelle coming up the stairs, followed by Andrea. Both of them were grinning, and Hannah knew they’d seen her kissing Norman.

“I was just leaving,” Norman said, heading down the stairs. “I’ve got pictures to print tonight.”

“Will you let me know how the one you took of Tracey and me turns out?” Andrea asked.

“It’ll be great. You’re remarkably photogenic, and so is Tracey. And that one of you should be really good, Michelle. You’re photogenic, too.”

Perhaps her two sisters weren’t aware of the omission, but Hannah was. As Norman went down the stairs and her sisters climbed up, Hannah gave a little sigh. She was always the odd sister out. If there was something she was not, it was photogenic, and everyone who’d ever tried to take her picture knew she was about as far from camera-friendly as a person could get. The picture Norman had taken of her at The Cookie Jar, the photo that had won first prize in the photography exhibit and now hung over Mike’s couch, had been nothing short of remarkable, a stroke of good fortune that might not happen again in her lifetime.

As she opened the door and ushered her sisters in, Hannah thought about the picture of her that Norman had taken this afternoon. It would also be remarkable, but in the negative sense of the word. The purple dress would clash spectacularly with her red hair.

“What’s wrong, Hannah?” Michelle asked, as they entered the living room.

“Just thinking,” Hannah said, leaving it at that. There was absolutely nothing she could do to change the picture of her that Rod would run on the front page of the Lake Eden Journal on Sunday. The deed was done. The dress had been worn. And if she could somehow rewind her day to the point where Marge, Jack, and Lisa had spread all the dresses out on the work island and asked her to pick one, she’d probably choose the purple taffeta all over again. It had been worth it to see the smile on Lisa’s dad’s face.

“So there was something out there, after all!” Hannah gave Moishe a scratch behind his ears and a chicken-flavored treat for hearing Michelle and Andrea drive in and watching for them to come up the stairs.

“He heard us?” Michelle sounded amazed.

“He heard something, and that’s good enough for me. Coffee?”

It was a silly question to ask a family of coffee drinkers, so Hannah didn’t wait for an answer. She just went to the kitchen and put on the coffee. Then she sliced the rest of Sue Plotnik’s orange cake, arranged it on a plate, and carried everything out to the living room, where Andrea and Michelle were waiting for her.

“So what brings you out tonight?” Hannah asked Andrea.

“You said you’d tell me everything you found out later. This is later.”

Hannah took a huge swig of her coffee, even though it was only a few degrees short of scalding. She was too low on sleep, too high on caffeine, too much had happened today, and her brain was spinning too fast. She needed a minute or two of downtime to recover, or she’d never be able to keep things straight.

“Give me just a minute,” she said, putting her coffee down and heading for the bathroom sink. Splashing cold water on her face might help. It wouldn’t help as much as a full eight-hours’ sleep, but it might be enough.

The cold water was a shock, and she relished it. Perhaps she should have offered to take the late shift at the Lake Eden Historical Society Booth tonight. Then Bernie No-No Fulton could have pitched at the bull’s eye and dunked her awake.

“Are you okay?” Michelle asked when she came back into the living room.

“No, but I’m better. I haven’t seen you since this morning, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

Hannah turned to Andrea. “And I haven’t seen you since right after the judging, but you didn’t have time to talk then. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. Here’s what I learned today that neither one of you knows about.”

Hannah started at the beginning and told them about climbing in the magic cabinet and overhearing the two cowboys talking.

“And they really thought Tucker tried to kill the clown?” Andrea asked.

“They sounded as if they meant it to me! According to them, it’s a rivalry over the owner’s daughter, Brianna. She used to date Curly, the clown, before Tucker joined the show.”

“I heard that one of the clowns was hurt at the rodeo,” Michelle said. “But the girl who told me about it thought it was an accident.”

“That’s because it looked like an accident. It happened during the Brahma bull riding competition. The two cowboys thought Tucker got thrown on purpose to put Curly in danger.”

Andrea began to frown. “But wouldn’t that be hard to do?”

“I don’t know enough about rodeos to know. But they sounded so convincing, Norman and I went to see Curly in the hospital.”

Both sisters put down their coffee mugs and leaned forward. “What did you find out?” Michelle asked.

“I asked Curly some questions, but he was on a ventilator so he couldn’t talk. I had to use questions he could answer by nodding and shaking his head. He nodded yes when I asked him if he thought Tucker tried to kill him. And he nodded yes again, when I asked him if he’d been looking into Tucker’s background. Then I asked him whether he’d found anything that would make Curly want to kill him, but the sedative Doc Knight gave him knocked him out before he could answer.”

“You have to talk to him again.” Andrea looked worried. “If Tucker tried to kill him once, he’ll try again.”

“If Tucker tried to kill him,” Michelle pointed out. “We don’t know that for sure. All we know is that Curly thought he did.”

“You’re both right. Doc Knight said he’d call me when Curly’s out of surgery, and I’ll go right out there to talk to him again. But that’s not all that happened today. After Norman and I came back from the hospital, we went to the food court to grab a bite to eat. I saw Mary Adamczak there.”

“Oh, good!” Andrea said, looking relieved. “I went to her house this afternoon, but she wasn’t home.”

“Right. Well, both Marys were at the food court.”

Andrea looked puzzled. “Both Marys?”

“Mary Lou Adamczak and Mary Kay Adamczak. Mary Lou is the one who won all the first place ribbons. Mary Kay is her daughter-in-law. Since Mary Lou hurt her stirring arm, Mary Lou used her recipe and entered the baked goods contest for the first time this year. She won an honorable mention, and they’re all delighted about it.”

“Cross her off the list as a suspect?” Michelle asked.

“That’s right. And we can cross off Mr. Hicks, too. Marge Beeseman knows the family, and Mr. Hicks has been in a wheelchair for the past two months. He broke his leg, and he still can’t stand on it. Since I saw Willa’s killer running away, there’s no way it could have been him.”

“It’s not Lyle Mortsensen, either,” Michelle said.

“Who?” both Hannah and Andrea asked, a half-beat apart.

Michelle laughed. “You two sound like you have an echo. Lyle Mortensen is the home ec student Willa flunked.”

“Right.” Hannah pulled out her notebook and wrote down his name. “And where was he when Willa was killed?”

“In Minneapolis watching Toxic Thompson trounce the Racine Ripper.”

“Huh?” Hannah just stared at her youngest sister.

“It’s professional wrestling. Lyle’s dad works with Toxic’s father, and they go to every match. The kids went along this time. There’s no way Lyle could have killed Willa. They didn’t get back here until midnight.”

Hannah looked down the list of suspects and zeroed in on another name. “I’m waiting for more information, but I think Gordon Tate is out.”

“Who?” Michelle asked.

“Willa’s former boyfriend. He’s an archaeology professor at Tri-County, and he’s been on a dig in Mexico. Norman’s trying to communicate with him by e-mail.”

“So he’s out of the country and he couldn’t have done it?” Andrea asked.

“I’m waiting for confirmation on that. He’s not eliminated, not until we know for sure he didn’t fly back here, but it’s really unlikely.”

“So who do we have who’s still in the running?” Michelle asked.

“The new boyfriend we don’t know about, the one she got all dressed up for,” Hannah said.

“But who is he?” Andrea asked.

“I don’t know. And then there’s the burglar, the one who broke into the office at the fairgrounds.”

“And we don’t know who he is either,” Michelle reminded them. “I talked to Lonnie about it tonight, and he told me there’s been no break in the case. How about the picture I showed around this morning to the 4-H kids? Did any of them tell you anything?”

“Yes. One of the kids came to see me today with his parents. I can’t tell you who they were, because I promised to keep it confidential. It seems the boy saw Willa with a cowboy from the rodeo on Monday night and again on Tuesday, shortly before she was murdered. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a good look at the cowboy’s face.”

“Do you think the cowboy is the boyfriend she got all dressed up for?” Andrea asked.

“Could be,” Hannah said, squelching her desire to correct her sister’s sentence structure. “Or it could be the boyfriend is someone else entirely. That’s still up for grabs.”

“How about Willa’s apartment?” Michelle reminded them. “Did you find anything interesting there?”

Andrea sighed. “Not much. The only thing was a florist’s card she saved. It said, Yesterday and Today, Tomorrow and Forever.”

“It was stuck in a hardcover copy of Gone With The Wind, along with an orchid that probably came from a corsage,” Hannah added. “It must have been important to her, or she wouldn’t have saved it.”

“I ran into Pam and she said she gave you the keys to the school so you could search Willa’s desk,” Michelle said. “Do you want us to help you do it?”

“It’s already done. Norman went with me.” Hannah made a unilateral decision not to tell them about the car they’d outrun. They’d only worry, and that would do no one any good.

“The only thing we found that was the least bit interesting was a little photo album,” she went on, retrieving it from her purse and handing it to Michelle.

“I’ve got one exactly like that, except it’s black,” Andrea commented, looking over Michelle’s shoulder.

Hannah bit her lips to keep silent. Now was not the time to point out that one thing could not be exactly like another with a difference. “Take a look at the last picture.”

“There’s Willa in a white satin gown,” Michelle identified it. “It looks almost like the one I wore for the evening gown competition. But it’s only half there. Somebody cut off Willa’s date. You can see his arm around her, but the rest of him is missing.”

“Willa probably did it,” Andrea said, sounding very certain.

“But why would she do that?” Michelle asked.

“It’s simple. Remember when I went to the Junior prom with Benton Woodley?” Andrea waited until they nodded, and then she continued. “After we broke up, I cut him out of our prom picture. Willa could have done something like that.”

“I agree,” Hannah said, “but I think it’s her wedding picture and she cut off Jess Reiffer. I certainly couldn’t blame her for that!”

The total shock on both of her sisters’ faces made Hannah groan. “I didn’t tell you that Willa was married?”

Two heads shook in tandem, and Hannah went on. “And you don’t know that she sold Mother the silver champagne glasses from her wedding?”

Again the two heads, one blond and one light brunette, shook in tandem.

“Or that Willa spent four months in jail in Oregon?”

The heads started to shake again, but then Michelle spoke up. “When did you learn all this?”

“Today. If one of you will get me another mug of coffee, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Tell me why we’re doing this again,” Hannah said as Andrea pulled up in front of “Digger” Gibson’s mortuary.

“We’re doing it because the flower shop at the mall is closed,” Andrea explained. “And if we come in without flowers, they’ll think we’re just trying to pump them for information about the identity of the cowboy who was seen with Willa on the night she was murdered, and whether Tucker really attempted to kill Curly or not.”

“We are trying to pump them for information.”

“I know that and you know that, but we don’t want them to know that.”

“And what happens if they ask us who the flowers are for?” Hannah posed another question.

“We’ll have a name by that time.” Andrea sounded very confident as she opened her car door. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

“I just don’t believe she’s doing this,” Hannah groaned, watching as her sister walked up the sidewalk and rang the bell to Digger’s apartment over the mortuary.

“Neither do I. You know what to do when we get to the hospital, don’t you?”

Hannah nodded. “You and Andrea will keep the charge nurse busy, and I’ll get a look at the patient list. Lake Eden isn’t that big. We’re bound to know somebody in the hospital.”