“Did she tell you that Boyd was dead?”
“Danielle was in no shape to tell me anything. She just asked me to come over, and once I’d seen Boyd, I called in Bill and Mike.”
“So you found another body.” Delores pronounced the words like a curse. “You have got to stop doing this, Hannah. If you’re not careful, the men in this town will think that disaster hovers over you like a storm cloud.”
“And no one wants to court disaster?”
“That was very clever.” Delores gave a little laugh at Hannah’s joke. “You’ve got a good sense of humor, Hannah. And you can look very attractive if you put your mind to it. I just don’t understand why you haven’t found… “
“Give it a rest, Mother,” Hannah interrupted her. “Don’t you want me to tell you about last night?”
There was a brief silence, and Hannah imagined her mother switching gears. Delores had been all primed for a lecture, but the prospect of hearing some fresh details that she could repeat to her friends was too much for her to resist. “Of course I do. Tell me, dear.”
“He was down on the garage floor next to his Grand Cherokee, and his head was bashed in with a hammer. There was blood all over the place.”
“There’s no need to be so graphic,” Delores objected, but Hannah knew her phrases would be repeated word for word. “Is Danielle taking it badly?”
Hannah bit back a sharp retort. How did her mother think a wife would react when she saw her husband with his skull split open? “She’s in pretty bad shape. She’s got a winter cold, that’s the reason she wasn’t with Boyd at the bake-off, and the shock of seeing Boyd like that was too much for her. Bill took her to the hospital last night.”
“The poor dear! And how about Maryann? She was so close to her brother. Their mother was working, and she practically raised him, you know.”
“Maryann’s in the hospital, too. Mike said she got hysterical when they told her about Boyd.”
“Do you think I should visit them? Maryann’s in my Regency Romance Club, and I sat with her at the last Dorcas Circle meeting.” Delores named two of the dozen or so clubs she’d joined after Hannah’s father had died. “I really don’t know Danielle that well, but I’d like to offer my condolences.”
Hannah cringed at the thought of her mother room-hopping at Lake Eden Memorial, carrying tidbits of gossip back and forth from Maryann to Danielle. “I don’t know if they can have visitors, Mother. Why don’t you just send sympathy cards?”
“Of course I’ll do that. I would have anyway. But cards are so impersonal.”
“Then why don’t you ask some of your clubs to send flowers? I’m sure Danielle and Maryann would appreciate that.”
“That’s an excellent idea. I’ll do it right away. By the way, you looked nice on television last night. I set my VCR, but it didn’t work. There must be something wrong with it.”
Hannah started to grin. There was nothing wrong with her mother’s VCR that a different operator couldn’t fix. “How did you know I looked nice if your VCR didn’t work?”
“Carrie recorded it. When we got home from the bake-off, she brought her tape over and we watched it together. Tracey was just darling.”
“Yes, she was.” Hannah took a bracing gulp of her coffee and wondered how she could end the conversation.
“I still can’t believe that we’ve had another murder in Lake Eden! I think television’s to blame. All that violence is a bad influence. Do they have any suspects yet?”
Hannah crossed her fingers, an old habit that had survived her childhood, and prepared to lie through her teeth. “I don’t know, Mother.”
“Well, let me know if you hear anything. I’ve got to go, dear. I need to call Carrie and ask her to help me with the flowers.”
Hannah hung up the phone with a smile on her face. She’d just stumbled on an excellent tactic to cut her mother’s phone conversations short. All she had to do was give Delores something to do, and her mother couldn’t wait to hang up and get started.
Ten minutes later, Hannah was showered and almost dressed. She glanced at the thermometer outside her bedroom window and shivered. The mercury was hovering under the ten-degree mark. It would be a cold day. She pulled on a pair of clean jeans and opened the closet to choose a long-sleeved pullover. She had plenty of selections. Most of her friends liked to give her gifts with a cookie theme, and she had a whole section of tee shirts and pullovers with legends on the front. Some were witty, others were sweet, and a couple were just plain silly. Hannah settled for a vivid blue one with gold block lettering proclaiming, “Happiness is a Chocolate Chip in Every Bite.”
Hannah shut her closet door and glanced at her reflection in its mirrored surface. She looked tired, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but that couldn’t be helped. She brushed her hair back, clamped it with the gold barrette that Andrea had given her for her last birthday, and headed for the kitchen and the last cup of coffee in the pot.
Moishe hopped off the bed, where he’d been watching her dress, and rubbed up against her ankles as she walked down the hall. Hannah knew that meant his food bowl was empty. again. When she’d taken him in, he’d been a scrawny orange-and-white shadow, but now he weighed in at twenty-two pounds. The town vet, Bob Hagaman, said he was healthy, and that was all Hannah cared about. With his torn ear and one blind eye, she certainly wouldn’t be entering him in any Lake Eden Cat Fanciers’ Club contests.
Once Moishe’s food bowl had been refilled, Hannah left her pet crunching happily and poured herself the last cup of coffee. She still had fifteen minutes before she had to leave for work, and this was her favorite time of the morning. Delores had called, there would be no more interruptions, and she had time to plan out her day.
Hannah sat down at the white Formica table she’d found at the thrift shop and reached for the green-lined stenographer’s notebook that was a twin to the ones in every other room in her condo. There was something wonderful about a blank sheet of notepaper. The lines were there, just waiting to be filled, and the page could turn into anything from a grocery list to the opening of The Great American Novel. The possibilities were endless.
She remembered her very first notebook, the red-covered tablet that she’d carried off to kindergarten with fondness. There had been a picture of an Indian chief on the front, a black line drawing of a regal, chiseled face wearing a feathered headdress.
They didn’t make Big Chief tablets anymore. Hannah knew because she’d tried to buy one recently. It probably had something to do with the new political correctness campaign. If the politicians had their way, the Indian chief on the tablet would now be called a “Native American Community Leader”. In Lake Eden, Minnesota, “Indian” wasn’t a racially biased word. Jon Walker, the full-blooded Chippewa who manned the prescription counter at Lake Eden Neighborhood Pharmacy, had explained that “Native American” was a misnomer. He’d done some research and he believed that his ancestors had come to North America from Siberia and conquered the indigenous people.
Hannah reached for a pen from the cracked coffee mug that had taken on new life as a penholder. Today was going to be a very full day. With her judging duties at the bake-off, her television appearance to promote Mr. Hart’s contest, and her work at The Cookie Jar, there wasn’t going to be a moment to spare.
Hannah wrote the date at the top of the page. Now that Boyd was dead, they’d have to choose another judge for the contest. She doubted that any of last night’s contestants would shed any tears over his death. They might even think that he had deserved his fate, since he’d made such nasty comments about their desserts.
What if one of them was an incredibly sore loser? Hannah chewed on the end of her pen. Was it possible that a contestant or a family member had followed Boyd home, confronted him in the garage, and bashed in his head? It seemed unlikely, but she couldn’t dismiss it summarily. Since all the bake-off contestants were staying in Lake Eden until Saturday night, she’d have plenty of time to check out that theory.
Hannah jotted down a note on the top line, Check Alibis of Contestants & Family. The winner wasn’t a suspect, but she’d investigate the three who’d been eliminated. Boyd’s murder hadn’t been premeditated, Hannah was certain of that. If the assailant had gone to Boyd’s house, intending to kill him, he would have carried his own weapon and not grabbed a hammer from Boyd’s pegboard.
The second line was waiting to be filled, and Hannah wrote down the time frame, Wednesday night 8:30 - 10:00. She thought about it for a moment and then she added, Re-interview Neighbors. Deputies from the sheriff’s
