Plum Pudding Murder (9 page)

“But why?” Andrea asked her. “I thought that sounded perfectly reasonable.”

“It did and it is. It’s just that the distinction won’t work on Moishe.”

“Why not?” This time it was Mike who asked the question.

“Because Moishe doesn’t recognize the difference between people things and cat things. He thinks he’s a four-legged person in a fur suit. He has no idea that he’s a cat.”

WHITE CHOCOLATE PUMPKIN DREAMS

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

This recipe is from Michelle’s roommate, Susan, and it’s a real winner!

1 cup softened salted butter (2 sticks, 8 ounces, ½ pound)

½ cup white (granulated) sugar

½ cup brown sugar (pack it down in your cup when you measure it)

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

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon nutmeg (freshly ground is best)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon cardamom (or an extra half-teaspoon of cinnamon, but cardamom’s really a lot better)

1 cup canned pumpkin
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(I used Libby’s)

2 cups flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

2 cups (12-ounce package) white chocolate chips

1 cup chopped pecans (measure after chopping)

You can either spray your cookie sheets with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray, or line them with parchment paper. Either way will work fine.

Mix the white sugar with the brown sugar. Stir until the mixture is a uniform color.

Add the sticks of softened butter and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Add the beaten egg and mix it in thoroughly.

Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix them in thoroughly.

Mix in the nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom. (Susan uses pumpkin pie spice instead of the freshly ground nutmeg, cinnamon, and cardamom.)

Measure out one cup of pumpkin and add it to your bowl. Stir it in until the mixture is smooth.

Add the flour in half-cup increments, stirring the batter smooth after each addition.

Add the white chocolate chips. Mix them in and then add the chopped pecans. Stir everything in thoroughly.

Use a teaspoon to scoop out some dough and drop it on your cookie sheet. These cookies will be small, but they spread out when they bake. Place the cookie dough balls 3 to a horizontal row, 4 rows to a cookie sheet.

Bake the White Chocolate Pumpkin Dreams at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 14 minutes, or until they’re firm. (Mine took 13 minutes.)

Remove the cookie sheets from the oven and let the cookies set up for 2 minutes. Then use a metal spatula to remove the cookies from the cookie sheets and transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

When all the cookies are baked and cooled, it’s time to frost them. The following is a wonderful brown sugar frosting that will go well with White Chocolate Pumpkin Dreams.

Susan’s Frosting:

½ cup brown sugar (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

3 Tablespoons salted butter*

1/4 cup milk (I used half and half)

1 to 1½ cups powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (no need to sift unless you have big lumps)

Combine the brown sugar and butter in a saucepan and bring it to a boil on the stove over medium-high heat.

Boil the mixture for 1 minute or until it’s slightly thickened.

Pull the saucepan off the heat and cool the mixture for 10 minutes.

Add the milk (or half and half) and beat the mixture until smooth.

Add the powdered sugar by half-cup increments, stirring after each addition. Keep adding the powdered sugar until the mixture reaches spreading consistency.

Frost the cookies. If you’d like to dress them up a bit, place a half pecan on top of each cookie before the frosting hardens.

Hannah’s Note: I just want to point out that since these cookies are made with pumpkin and pumpkin is a variety of squash, the kids may try to convince you that eating several White Chocolate Pumpkin Dreams takes the place of a serving of vegetables.

Lisa’s Note: Sometimes I don’t have the time to make this frosting, especially when Dad and Herb are standing right there, waiting for the White Chocolate Pumpkin Dreams to come out of the oven. They won’t wait for me to cook frosting, so I just sprinkle the cookies with powdered sugar and serve them that way.

Yield: approximately 6 dozen yummy cookies, depending on cookie size.

M ike was waiting for them when they pulled into the garage and Hannah noted with some amusement that he’d parked in her second spot right behind her cookie truck. It was another example of the rivalry that still existed between the two men. Mike had probably thought that if Norman had to move his car to the guest parking lot once they’d unloaded the tree and carried it upstairs, he probably wouldn’t stay. But what Mike hadn’t known when he’d taken the prime parking place was that Hannah’s neighbors, Marguerite and Clara Hollenbeck, had offered the use of their second spot whenever Hannah needed it.

“You can park behind Marguerite and Clara’s car,” Hannah told Norman.

“Perfect.” Norman pulled into the adjacent spot. “It’ll be easier to unload the tree from here. Your spot is right next to the post.”

As they got out of the car, Hannah turned to look. Norman was right. If he’d parked in her second spot, the one behind her cookie truck that currently held Mike’s cruiser, they would have had to work around one of the big concrete pillars that held up the garage.

“I’ll take it from here,” Mike said, walking over to the driver’s side of Norman’s car.

Norman walked around the back of the car and stood by the passenger door. “I’ll get it on this side,” he said.

Hannah watched as the two men worked in tandem. Norman loosened the rope from his side and threw it over the top of the car to Mike, who untied it and tossed it back. They did this a half-dozen times before the rope was off and her tree was free.

“Your side or mine?” Norman asked.

“Yours. There’s more room over there. We’ll pull it off and stand it up. Then you take the top and I’ll take the base, and we’ll carry it up the stairs.”

“Wait a second,” Norman gestured to Hannah. “There’s a tree stand in the backseat on the floor. Will you get it out and loosen the screws? We’ll put your tree in the stand down here and then we’ll carry it upstairs. You won’t have as many needles on your rug that way.”

“Thanks!” Hannah said, opening the back door to retrieve the tree stand. As her mother and sisters were so fond of telling her, Norman was a real find. Most men wouldn’t have given her living room rug a second thought, but he was always planning ahead to make her life easier.

The tree stand was a challenge as they soon discovered. There were four long screws protruding into the center ring that could be cranked in or out to tighten the base of the tree in the stand. At the present, they were in all the way and it took longer than Hannah thought it would to loosen them. Both Norman and Mike knelt down to help and the three of them turned the cranks until their wrists were sore.

“Is that in far enough?” Hannah asked, pointing to her screw.

Norman looked over at what she’d done and nodded. “It looks good to me. Just let me work on this last screw for a minute and I’ll see how much room we’ve got.”

“When you’re through, we can try to put the tree in.” Mike straightened up and rubbed the small of his back. “I don’t like this tree stand.”

Norman looked up from his crouched position on the garage floor. “Neither do I, but this was the best they had. The problem was, I didn’t know if Hannah had one and I didn’t want to spoil the surprise by asking.”

“It’s a good thing you got it,” Hannah told him. “I have the one down at the shop, but that’s it.”

“You’d think that with cell phones that do practically everything except pack your lunch, somebody could come up with a better design.” Mike looked down at the tree stand. “This one’s been around since I was a kid.”

“There was another kind, but I thought it looked even worse,” Norman told them. “It has a sharp spike on the bottom and you’re supposed to lay the tree on its side and drive the spike into the base with a hammer.”

Mike looked confused. “How are you supposed to do that?” he asked. “If you try to pound in the spike, the tree will just scoot across the floor. And even if you hold it with one hand, you need both hands to pound in the spike.”

“You’re right.” Norman said. “You need one hand to hold the spike at the center of the trunk. And you need the other hand for the hammer.”

“Then it must take two people to use that kind of tree stand,” Hannah suggested.

“I think it would take three people,” Norman corrected her. “Have you ever tried to hold a board steady while someone else hammers a nail into it?”

“I have,” Mike told him. “My brother and I used to put up fencing around my mother’s vegetable garden to keep out the rabbits. Other people used chain link, but our mother wanted a green picket fence with two inches between the pickets. I was the youngest so I used to be on the outside holding the picket while my older brother drove the nail to hold the strip of wood that attached them. Every blow knocked me back, even though I braced myself. And when I tried to anticipate and jump forward to meet the hammer blow, my timing was off and that didn’t work either.”

Once Norman had decided that the center ring was large enough for the tree trunk, Hannah held the stand in place while the men took the tree down from the top of Norman’s car and attempted to insert the trunk into the ring.

“It won’t go down,” Mike stated the obvious. “It’s catching on those branches at the bottom.”

“Then we’ll have to cut them off.” Norman turned to Hannah. “Do you have a pruning saw?”

Hannah shook her head. “I don’t have any gardening tools. All that’s done by the grounds crew and it’s part of my monthly maintenance assessment.”

“You’ve got to have some kind of a saw,” Mike said. “Most homeowners do. We can use anything.”

“Like what?” Hannah asked him.

“Hand saw, crosscut saw, coping saw, keyhole saw, or even a hacksaw,” Norman told her. “We’ll take anything at this point.”

Hannah was at a loss. She knew what all those saws were. She’d worked summers in her father’s hardware store. But she didn’t own any of them. “How about a Ginsu knife?” she asked. “I got it from a TV commercial, and it said it could cut through frozen vegetables. Maybe it would cut through a tree branch?”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll make a call and get a pair of bolt cutters. That should work on the bottom branches.”

While they waited for Lonnie Murphy to arrive with the bolt cutters, Hannah opened the storage area over her carport and took out the box of her grandmother’s ornaments. She’d never used them, and this was the perfect time. None of her sisters had wanted them. Andrea had ornaments from Bill’s family, Michelle was still living at home and didn’t need them, and Hannah had become the beneficiary by default.

“What’s that?” Mike asked, watching Hannah retrieve the box.

“Christmas ornaments. They belonged to my grandparents.”

“Are they glass?” Norman asked her.

Hannah tried to remember. She recalled delicate blown glass baskets filled with purple glass grapes. There were also glass strawberries with curved stems that made their own hangers, and huge silver and gold balls that had seemed as big as balloons to her as a child. The only ornaments that weren’t glass were the ones that her Great-Grandma Else had made. They were handcrafted birds that perched on the tree branches.

“I think most of them are glass,” she said.

“If you use any of the glass ones, put them on branches near the top,” Norman told her.

“Because of Moishe?”

“Right. I made the mistake of putting a glass ball on a branch near the bottom of my tree. Cuddles thought it was a toy.”

“Did it break?”

“No, but it could have. Now the only things I have hanging from the bottom two branches are plastic ornaments.”

“I thought you said Cuddles didn’t bother your tree,” Hannah reminded him.

“She doesn’t, not anymore. That ball just intrigued her, I guess. It was really shiny and it probably acted as a mirror. And Cuddles loves to bat at her reflection in the mirror.”

Hannah thought about putting the box of ornaments back in her storage area, but she really wanted to see her family’s Christmas keepsakes again. She’d compromise by using the ones that wouldn’t break and hanging only one of each glass ornament on the upper branches where Moishe couldn’t reach them.

“Here comes Lonnie,” Mike said as a police cruiser came down the ramp of the parking lot. He gave a wave and Lonnie pulled up to them.

Lonnie rolled down his window. “You need these?” he asked, handing the bolt cutters out the window to Mike.

“I don’t need them. You need them.” Mike stepped back so that Lonnie could get out of the cruiser. “Trim the bottom branches off the Christmas tree so it’ll fit in the tree stand.”

“And this is the police emergency the dispatcher called me about?” Lonnie asked, grinning at his boss.

“Yes, it is. Your supervisor was down on the floor of Hannah’s garage and his knees were getting sore. Your knees are younger. You do it.”

They watched as Lonnie made short work of trimming the lower branches of the tree. Then Mike held it in place while Norman, Lonnie, and Hannah tightened the screws to hold it securely.

“All done,” Lonnie said, getting to his feet.

“Not quite,” Mike told him. “Now you’re going to help us carry it up the stairs to Hannah’s condo. I’ll take the top, you take the bottom, and Norman will take that box of ornaments.”

“And Hannah will take the bag in the trunk,” Norman added, clicking his remote to open it. “I picked up some mini-lights and a few ornaments.”

A few moments later the procession moved up the outside staircase to Hannah’s condo. Mike was in the lead with the tip of the tree, Lonnie followed behind him, Norman was next carrying the big box of Swensen family ornaments, and Hannah brought up the rear with a plastic red and green bag that said CRAZY ELF on both sides in four-inch high block letters.