Plum Pudding Murder (14 page)

“Who is it?” a voice called out.

It was Luanne. Hannah recognized her voice. “It’s Hannah Swensen. I need to see you.”

There was the sound of a lock disengaging and the door was pulled open from inside. The sight that greeted Hannah wasn’t pretty. Luanne stood there swaying slightly, blinking groggily in the beam of sunlight that streamed in from the open door.

“Hannah,” she said, moving back to let her enter. “What time is it?”

“One-thirty.”

Luanne looked stunned. “In the afternoon?” she asked.

“Yes.” Hannah set the bag of cookies down on a coffee table filled with books and papers, and decided to get straight to the point. “What’s going on, Luanne? Mother was worried about you when you didn’t show up for work this morning.”

“This morning? But…but…” Luanne took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “I must have fallen asleep after Nettie came to get Susie. I told myself I was just going to shut my eyes for ten minutes, but I was so tired, I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up. I set the alarm so that wouldn’t happen and I wouldn’t oversleep. But…I must have slept straight through the alarm!”

“And the phone when we all called you. And the doorbell when I rang it five times.” Hannah was aware of a faint electronic beeping coming from the back of the duplex. She recognized the sound as a twin to her own alarm clock at home. “You’d better go shut off your alarm clock, Luanne. It’s still going off. I can hear it. Did you get to bed late last night?”

“Late? I didn’t get to bed at all!” Luanne gestured toward the pile of papers on the table. “I must have gone over it a hundred times, but it just won’t come out right.”

Hannah glanced down at the papers. They were filled with columns of figures that meant nothing to her. “What won’t come out right?”

“The books for the Crazy Elf Christmas Tree Lot. Nothing balances. I just don’t know what to do, Hannah. I added, and re-added, and double-checked every number, but the accounts won’t balance. The only thing that makes sense is that I’m missing something.”

“Like what?” Hannah asked, wondering why Luanne was doing the books for the Crazy Elf Christmas Tree Lot.

“Like…I don’t know. Maybe there’s a bunch of receipts that I don’t have, or some income that’s not listed on the sheets Courtney gave me.” Luanne stopped to wipe the tears from her eyes.

Or maybe there’s something fishy going on with Larry, the Crazy Elf, Hannah thought. Mayor Bascomb’s concerned and he’s pretty sharp when it comes to investments. There might be something really wrong with the books.

“All I know is that if I can’t get the accounts to balance, I won’t get paid. And if I don’t get paid, I can’t buy the dollhouse I promised Susie for Christmas!” Luanne buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know how I did it, but I must have made a mistake. I looked and I looked all last night and I couldn’t find it. I just don’t know what to do.”

“I do.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely.” Hannah picked up the bag of cookies and handed it to Luanne. “Have a cookie. A little chocolate will make you feel much better about everything.”

Luanne opened the bag and took out a cookie. And for the first time since Hannah had come in the door, she smiled. “Chocolate chip. They’re my favorites.”

“Good. These aren’t just any chocolate chip cookies. These are Valerie’s Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies.”

“Chocolate chip pretzel?”

“That’s right. Take a bite and tell me how you like them.”

Luanne took a bite and munched. Then she looked up with another smile, even bigger this time. “They’re really good. I like these a lot better than the plain chocolate chip cookies.”

“So do I. And they came about because I made a mistake.”

“How did you do that?”

“Valerie was a friend of mine in college and I wanted to bake her something special for her birthday. I called her mother and asked her what kind of cookies were Valerie’s favorites, and her mother told me they were chocolate chip and Pizzelles.”

“I’ve heard of Pizzelles. They’re Italian, aren’t they?”

“That’s right. And it takes a special kind of tiny waffle-like iron to bake them. But I was in a hurry, and I thought her mother said Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookies. I wasn’t sure what those were, but I figured I could make them so I crushed up some pretzels and added them to chocolate chip cookie dough instead of chopped nuts.”

“Did Valerie like them?”

“She was crazy about them. And her mother thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. So making mistakes isn’t always a bad thing, Luanne.”

“Well…not in your case. But…”

“And maybe the mistake isn’t yours,” Hannah interrupted her with a possible explanation. “Eat a couple of cookies. Then go wash your face, brush your teeth, and get dressed in fresh clothes. When you come back out, I want you to gather up all your paperwork and ride with me to the Crazy Elf Christmas Tree Lot.”

“But…why?”

“Because I have to deliver cookies and you have to go talk to Courtney. I’m willing to bet she forgot to give you some important piece of information that’ll balance those books.”

“But what about my job at Granny’s Attic? I’m already over five hours late!”

“I’ll call and explain while you’re getting ready to go. They’ll be so glad you’re all right, they won’t mind at all if it takes you another half hour or so to get there.”

CHOCOLATE CHIP PRETZEL COOKIES

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

1 cup softened butter (2 sticks, ½ pound)
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2 cups white (granulated) sugar

3 Tablespoons molasses

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork)

2 cups crushed salted thin stick pretzels (measure AFTER crushing) (I used Synder’s)

2 and ½ cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

1 and ½ cups semi-sweet (the regular kind) chocolate chips

Hannah’s 1st Note: If you can’t find thin stick pretzels in your store, you can use the mini regular pretzels. Just make sure that any pretzels you use are SALTED.

Hannah’s 2nd Note: This dough gets really stiff—you might be better off using an electric mixer if you have one.

Mix the softened butter with the sugar and the molasses. Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy, and the molasses is completely mixed in.

Add the vanilla and baking soda. Mix them in well.

Break the eggs into a glass and whip them up with a fork. Add them to your bowl and mix until they’re thoroughly incorporated.

Put your pretzels in a zip lock plastic bag. Seal it carefully (you don’t want crumbs all over your counter) and place it on a flat surface. Get out your rolling pin and run it over the bag, crushing the pretzels inside. Do this until there are no large pieces and the largest is a quarter-inch long.

Measure out two cups of crushed pretzels and mix them into the dough in your bowl.

Add one cup of flour and mix it in. Then add the second cup and mix thoroughly. Add the final half cup of flour and mix that in.

Measure out a cup and a half of chocolate chips and add them to your cookie dough. If you’re using an electric mixer, mix them in at the slowest speed. You can also put the mixer away, and stir in the chips by hand.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) cookie sheets. You can also line your cookie sheets with parchment paper, if you prefer. Place 12 cookies on each standard sized sheet.

Hannah’s Note: I used a 2-teaspoon cookie disher to scoop out this dough at The Cookie Jar. It’s faster than doing it with a spoon.

Bake the cookies at 350 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes or until nicely browned. (Mine took 11 minutes.)

Let the cookies cool for two minutes and then remove them from the baking sheets. Transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Yield: Approximately 5 dozen chewy, fairly soft chocolaty cookies that are sure to please everyone.

This recipe can be doubled if you wish.

Hannah’s Note: These cookies travel well. If you want to send them to a friend, just stack them, roll them up like coins in foil, and cushion the cookie rolls between layers of Styrofoam peanuts, or bubble wrap.

A cold wind wrapped itself around Hannah’s neck and she turned up her collar. The thermometer mounted outside the kitchen window of The Cookie Jar had hovered around the minus ten mark when she’d left to deliver her cookies. From the way her cheeks stung from the cold, she was willing to bet that it had fallen another couple of degrees since then. Not to mention wind chill. She didn’t even want to think about wind chill. Anyone who’d grown up in cold country knew that it was the apparent temperature felt on exposed skin due to the wind. The degree depended on both air temperature and wind speed, and Hannah was willing to bet that an actual ten below on the thermometer easily translated to twenty below when it came to the exposed skin of her neck!

Hannah had just left Luanne at Elf Headquarters, and she was headed to the Crazy Elf Cookie Shop to deliver her wares. They’d stopped at the toy shop so Luanne could talk to Courtney and tell her the bad news about the trial balance, but the elf who was manning the register had told them that Courtney had an appointment to have her hair done and she wouldn’t be back for at least thirty minutes, perhaps longer. Rather than leave Luanne there to wait for Courtney, Hannah had asked her to walk along to Larry’s trailer.

Once they’d stepped inside Elf Headquarters, Hannah had presented Larry with a whole Minnesota Plum Pudding, and a mixed bag of Frosted Ginger Cookies, White Chocolate Pumpkin Dreams, and several squares of Fudge-Mallow Cookie Bars. Then she’d introduced him to Luanne, explaining that Luanne was doing some work for Courtney.

Of course Larry had wanted to know about the work Luanne was doing, and Luanne had explained about the trial balance and how she couldn’t seem to get it to come out right. Larry had offered to take a look to see if he could spot her error, and Hannah had left after arranging to meet Luanne at the cookie truck when both of them were ready to leave.

A few hardy souls, bundled up in parkas and knitted caps pulled down low over their ears, were on the paths, but the tree lot was largely deserted. Hannah wasn’t surprised. It was cold and turning colder. Her fingers felt numb inside the leather gloves she wore and she thrust them into her pockets. Her nose was numb too, and it felt like a stubby icicle sticking out from the middle of her face, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. She increased her pace, fairly flying down the path, and arrived at the Crazy Elf Cookie Shop breathless.

It was warm inside! Hannah took a deep gulp of heated air and headed for the front of the shop. She said Merry Christmas to the bear before he could say it to her, and she heard a startled gasp of laughter from the direction of the counter.

“Hi, Hannah!” Krista Donnelly greeted her as she reached the front of the line that wasn’t. “Did you bring us more cookies?”

“I did, but you might not need them. It’s cold out there this afternoon and I don’t think anybody’s going to venture out.”

“It won’t be cold for long. The boys just went out to light the gas heaters. We’ll be turning on the lights in twenty minutes or so, and that’s when the crowds start to come in.”

“Can you spare someone to help me unload my cookie truck?”

Krista gestured toward two boys who were unpacking cases of supplies behind the counter. “Go out to Miss Swensen’s truck and bring in the cookies.”

“It’s open,” Hannah told them, “and you can leave it that way. After you carry the cookies inside, there’s nothing to steal.”

Once the boys had left and Krista had settled her at a stool with a hot cup of coffee, Hannah leaned close to ask some questions. “Do you know Larry’s fiancée?”

“Courtney?” When Hannah gave a nod, Krista went on. “She’s the head elf.”

“I thought Larry was the head elf.”

“No, Larry’s the crazy elf. Courtney’s the head elf who keeps him on track.”

“What does that mean?”

Krista glanced around, but the only customers in the cookie shop were sitting at a table in the far corner, well out of earshot. She turned back to Hannah and said, “Courtney’s really serious about making a go of the business. That doesn’t mean that Larry isn’t, but she’s all business all the time, and he knows how to have fun.”

“Example?” Hannah asked her.

“Right after we close down for the night, Larry takes us all on the Yule Log. Courtney stands there and watches, but you just know she thinks Larry ought to shut off the electricity and save money.”

“I see.” Hannah drew the obvious conclusion. “So the elves don’t like her very much?”

“They think she’s okay, but they’d like her a lot better if she’d let Larry do some of the things he talks about at the elf meetings.”

“What things?”

“Like the free Christmas tree he was going to give to every elf. Courtney thought that was too expensive so she talked him into charging us half price. It’s still a good deal, but not as good as if we’d gotten it for free.”

“That’s true.”

“And then there was the big party for the elves and their families that Larry was going to hold on Christmas Day. He was going to hire a caterer and everything, but Courtney convinced him that they couldn’t afford it.”

Hannah’s mind flew through the possibilities. It was obvious that Courtney wanted Larry to curtail expenses. Perhaps she was thinking of their future together and she was worried she was marrying a spendthrift. Or perhaps she had a vested interest in the success of the Crazy Elf Christmas Tree Lot. “Do you know if Courtney owns a share of the business?”

“She owns fifty percent. Her husband started a whole chain of tire stores and when he died, he left Courtney all his money. That’s how she met Larry. Larry was waiting in his lawyer’s office to sign some papers and she came in for the reading of her husband’s will. They hit it off and started dating, and then they got engaged and she invested her money with him, and that’s how everything started.”