Fudge Cupcake Murder

    'That figures,' Hannah said under her breath, remembering how picky the sheriff had been about rules and procedures. If Sheriff Grant hadn't been the unlucky recipient of a violent death, Lonnie would most certainly have had a reprimand in his file when he came back to work.

    'Read it if you want,' Barbara handed the report to Hannah.

    Hannah took the report from Barbara and skimmed it quickly. Lonnie had written it to chronicle spotting a suspicious car, using his on-board computer to ascertain that it was stolen, and apprehending the driver.

    'See what I mean?' Barbara said, as Hannah handed the report to Norman.

    As far as Hannah could see, this incident report didn't have any bearing on Sheriff Grant's murder. Even if the driver's friend's had wanted to get even for his arrest, they would have come after Lonnie, not Sheriff Grant.

    'This looks pretty straightforward to me,' Norman said, looking up from the document. 'Would you like us to drop this off at the station for you, Barbara? Hannah said you were out on leave.'

    Barbara shook her head and reached out for the file. 'That's okay. I'll take care of it when I get back to work.'

    'But Shawna Lee's spending a lot of time looking for it.' Hannah was confused. 'And you're planning to stay home for at least another week, aren't you?'

    Barbara nodded and an impish grin crossed her face. 'I'm going to let Shawna Lee keep right on looking. If she keeps busy enough, she won't have time to flirt and maybe we'll be saved from another homicide.'

Chapter Twenty-Six

    Hannah's mind was going a million miles an hour as they drove away from Barbara's house. She was so engrossed in her thoughts she only dimly registered the fact that Norman had spoken to her. 'Sorry, Norman. What did you say?'

    'Do you think Lonnie's stolen car report has anything to do with why Sheriff Grant was killed?'

    'I just don't know. Lonnie busted a car thief, and we found car parts in Jamie's room. Cars do seem to be a common denominator here.'

    'And didn't you say that Jamie was killed in an auto accident?'

    'That's right!' Hannah was excited for a moment, but then she went back to being puzzled. 'But how does that figure in?'

    Norman shrugged. 'I'm not sure. There's also the fact that Sheriff Grant was killed in a parking lot filled with cars.'

    'And he was attacked while he was standing by his cruiser,' Hannah added with a sigh. 'I think we're going overboard on this car thing, Norman.'

    'Probably. I just thought that if we could find all the pieces, we might be able to figure out how they fit together.'

    'That makes sense,' Hannah said, turning to smile at him. She was about to throw him a mind-bender. 'But what if some of the pieces are from another puzzle? Won't they only confuse us?'

    Norman thought about that while he waited for the stoplight at the corner of Elm and First to turn green. 'Yeah. I guess they might confuse us. How do we get around that?'

    'I'm not sure,' Hannah replied, feeling helpless in the face of the challenge. 'I think the first thing we have to do is gather more facts. That report from Lonnie was pretty sketchy and it was obvious that he wrote it in a hurry. He probably left out things he thought didn't matter. I have to talk to him and find out everything that happened when he pulled over that stolen car.'

    'That's a good place to start. What do you want me to do while you're doing that?'

    'Develop the film. That's a good place to start, too. Maybe we'll spot something important in the pictures that we missed when we were at Nettie's house in person. And do you think you'll have time to do some research on the Internet?'

    'Sure.' Norman pulled up in back of The Cookie Jar and parked between Lisa's old car and Hannah's cookie truck. 'I wasn't supposed to be back from Seattle yet and Doc Bennett's still filling in for me at the clinic. What sort of research do you need?'

    'It would really help if you could print out the articles that ran in the Lake Eden Journal when Jamie was killed. And do the same thing for the papers in Ann Arbor.'

    'Why Ann Arbor?'

    'Jamie was killed when he was away at the University of Michigan.'

    'Okay. I'll do a search under his name. Would that be Jamie, or James?'

    'Try both. He went by Jamie, but his real name was James just like Sheriff Grant.' Hannah remembered what Norman had said and brightened up a bit. 'You can do a search just by typing in someone's name?'

    'As long as you know where to look.'

    'And you do?'

    'I'm pretty good at it. I can access quite a few public records and that gives me a surprisingly large amount of information.'

    Hannah thought about it for a long moment. What she wanted to ask Norman to do was an invasion of her mother's privacy, and it would make her feel like a rat. But feeling like a rat might be better than feeling like a dope if her gut-level feelings were right and she failed to take steps to protect Delores from a Romeo swindler.

    'What do you need, Hannah?' Norman prompted, when she'd been silent for several moments.

    'Winthrop Harrington the Second.'

    'What?'

    'That's his name. I need you to check him out for me.'

    'Okay. Who is he?'

    'That's what I want to know,' Hannah said, glancing over at Norman. She knew he could be trusted. If she told him this was a private matter, he'd die before he'd mention it. 'I hope I'm wrong, Norman, but he could be a con artist. And the way things are going, he might just become my new stepfather.'

    Halloween morning came in with a yowl, at least ten minutes before Hannah's alarm clock was due to go off. Moishe was hungry and he wasn't the type to suffer his hunger pangs in silence. Hannah pulled on her slippers and shuffled to the kitchen while she was still half-awake. It was best not to be fully alert when one had to boil liver before daybreak.

    Hannah stumbled to the stove and turned the burner on high. She'd set a pot of water at the ready before bed last night. Then she poured a cup of coffee, sipped it until the water boiled, and dropped in the pieces of liver she'd cut up the previous night. When they turned an unappetizing gray color, she scooped them out and put them in a frying pan with oil and the rest of the ingredients.

    In less than five minutes, Moishe's omelet was ready and Hannah scraped it into his food bowl. She checked to make sure the stovetop exhaust fan was on its highest setting, poured herself a second cup of coffee, and sat down at her kitchen table, deliberately turning her back on the culinary creation she'd made for her feline. The scent of liver first thing in the morning made her stomach lurch and roil. If the twinges of nausea she felt were anything like the morning sickness Andrea had complained about, she should have been more sympathetic.

    It didn't take Moishe long to eat his breakfast, about one-fourth the time it had taken her to prepare it. There was something wrong with this equation. Hannah rinsed out the pan she'd used to boil the liver, the frying pan that had held the omelet, and Moishe's bowl, and stuck them all in the dishwasher. It was already partially loaded with dishes from the previous night. There was the pot she'd used to cook the rice, the bowl and top of the food processor she'd used to whip up the egg and pulverize the shell, and the knife she'd wielded to cut up the liver. Once she'd gathered up the implements she'd used to cook Moishe's breakfast and the containers she'd used to store the egg and the rice in the refrigerator, the dishwasher was almost full. Hannah poured in the soap, set it on wash, and stood there shaking her head. This was crazy. She didn't eat breakfast unless she went out and the only dish she used in the morning was her coffee mug. Yet here she was at five in the morning, washing a full load of