Blackberry Pie Murder (20 page)

Hannah laughed. “You’re probably right, but I’ll show her anyway. I don’t want her to feel left out.” She glanced up at the kitchen clock and gave Michelle a little push toward the living room. “You’d better get a move on if you want to text Lonnie and take your shower before Norman gets here with the food.”

When Michelle left, Hannah cleaned up the kitchen. There wasn’t much mess. She usually rinsed off things after she’d used them so it was simply a matter of placing utensils in the dishwasher and wiping down the counters. She was just thinking about pouring herself something to drink when she heard Michelle coming down the hallway.

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“What can I do to help?” Michelle asked as she entered the kitchen.

Hannah took one look at her youngest sister and blinked in surprise. Michelle was wearing snug white jeans and the tightest pink lace tank top that Hannah had ever seen. “You can go get a sweater to throw over that tank top.”

“But this outfit won’t look good with a sweater.”

“Do it anyway. Mother’s coming.”

“But what’s wrong with this outfit? This top is Lonnie’s favorite. I think it’s the color.”

Hannah just stared at her sister for a long moment and then she sighed deeply. “You think it’s the
color
of the tank top?”

“I know it’s the color. Lonnie just loves me in pink.”

“I see,” Hannah said, sighing again. “Go put on something else, Michelle. If you think the color is the only thing Lonnie loves about that tight pink tank top, it’s because it’s cutting off the circulation to your brain.”

As usual, the pizza was great. Bertanelli’s pizza always was. They’d just taken their first few bites when Hannah’s phone rang.

“It’s got to be Mike,” Norman said, and then he turned to Hannah. “Do you want me to get it?”

Hannah nodded. It was all she could do. She was still chewing her bite of pizza and her mouth was filled with sausage and pepperoni.

“Hi, Mike,” Norman said once he’d picked up the receiver. There was a pause and then he laughed. “Just a lucky guess. We’re all here eating pizza and there’s plenty for you.

Where are you?”

There was another pause. Mike was obviously answering Norman’s question. And then Norman spoke again. “Sure.

Just come on up and we’ll set another plate.”

Once Mike had joined the group, they all ate in silence for several minutes. Then Delores turned to Hannah. “Doc has something to tell you, dear.”

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“Not now, Lori,” Doc said. “We’re eating.”

Delores looked puzzled. “Is it something we can’t discuss while we’re eating?”

“Yes.”

“Then it has something to do with that man Hannah hit?”

Doc looked around the table apologetically. “Sorry,” he told them. And then he reached out to take Delores’s hand.

“This isn’t twenty questions, Lori. And it’s not appropriate conversation for the dinner table. We’ll discuss all this after dessert.”

Hannah turned to smile at him. “How do you know there’ll be dessert?”

“There has to be dessert. You
always
make dessert. And I’ll bet it’s something you want us to test. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” Hannah said. “It’s vanilla ice cream with a new cookie I just made.” She stopped speaking as she heard a familiar sound. It was a loud thump followed by a quieter thump as the cats jumped from her bed to the floor of her bedroom. “Uh-oh!” she said, reaching for the basket of gar-lic bread and closing the lid on the closest pizza box. “Feet up, everybody! They’re coming fast!”

Everyone knew the essentials when there was a call for

“feet up.” Norman finished closing the pizza boxes, Michelle steadied the salad bowl, Lonnie put the cover on the containers with the extra meatballs and the freshly grated moz-zarella, Doc picked up the extra pitcher of iced tea that sat on the table, and everyone grabbed for their drinking glasses or coffee cups. Almost in unison and just in time, they tucked up their feet as the cats came racing into the room with Moishe in the lead and Cuddles chasing him.

There was another thump as Moishe lost purchase with his claws on the carpet and skidded into the table leg.

Whether it was a planned ploy or a simple accident didn’t matter. Hannah had given them enough warning to secure everything so that none of their dinner fell to the floor.

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“No steak this time, Moishe,” Lonnie said, remembering the time his steak has fallen to the floor at Norman’s house and the cats had made off with it.

Both cats paused for a moment to stare up at the tabletop and then they raced off again. Hannah heard them go into the laundry room and she turned in her chair to watch as they came out and barreled back down the hallway to her bedroom.

“Is that it?” Delores asked when there were two thumps from the bedroom as the cats jumped back on Hannah’s bed.

“Once more,” Norman said, still holding the pizza boxes.

“I was watching Cuddles and I saw that crazed look in her eyes. She’s not ready to give up the chase quite yet.”

“And I noticed Moishe’s tail,” Hannah added. “It was flicking at the very tip and that always means at least one more circuit around the food table.”

“You’re both right,” Delores said, tucking her feet up again. “I just heard two thumps from Hannah’s bedroom.”

When the cats barreled into the living room the second time, Cuddles was in the lead and Moishe was chasing her.

They raced around the table, barely missing the legs of Hannah’s standing salad bowl, and then they exited the room.

“Are we done now?” Delores asked.

“As far as Moishe is concerned we are,” Hannah replied.

“His tail stopped flicking.”

“And Cuddles looked tired instead of crazed,” Norman added. “I think we can eat the rest of our meal in peace.”

Delores looked over at Doc and gave the little giggle that Hannah found both surprising and endearing. It was the joy-ful laugh of a woman in love and she was glad that her mother had found someone who could make her so happy.

“This may sound crazy,” she told Doc, “but every time we go out to the Lake Eden Inn for dinner, I miss the cat races.”

Hannah laughed. “Sorry, Mother. The feline speedway is only open at Norman’s house and my place.”

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“She actually tucked her feet up the last time we had dinner out there,” Doc told them.

“Simple reflex,” Delores explained. “One of the cooks dropped something in the kitchen and I heard it.”

“Back to the pizza,” Norman said, opening the boxes and placing them in the center of the table again.

“I think I’ve had enough,” Delores announced, turning to Doc. “You’re almost ready for dessert, aren’t you?”

“Not yet. I haven’t had a piece of the Hawaiian pizza yet.

I wouldn’t want to eat a whole pizza like that, but it’s nice for a change.”

“Oh, I just thought we were all through and we could have dessert. Or maybe we could talk before dessert while our dinner settles.”

“The rest of us are still eating, Mother,” Hannah said, knowing precisely what was on her mother’s mind. Her great-grandmother had always said that curiosity killed the cat, but in this case, it was almost killing the mother!

Delores looked as if she really wanted to ask them to hurry and finish so that she could hear Doc’s news for Hannah. She even opened her mouth to start talking, but before she could reopen the subject, Doc popped a cherry tomato from his salad into her mouth. “We’ll talk about it later, Lori.”

Everyone laughed and so did Delores, but only after she’d eaten the tomato. “Thank you, dear,” she said to Doc. “That was much more delicious than a sock stuffed in my mouth and it had exactly the same effect.”

Fifteen minutes later, when almost all of the pizza had been eaten and everyone had eaten dessert and said they thought that Hannah’s new cookie was one of the best they’d ever had, Michelle cleared the table. Hannah made a fresh pot of coffee, and they carried it to the table.

“We’re through with dessert,” Delores said as soon as Michelle had refilled their coffee cups. “Tell us, Doc.”

Doc turned to Hannah. “The first part is interesting, Han-BLACKBERRY PIE MURDER

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nah. Marlene managed to isolate that stain on the man’s shirt. It’s blackberries.”

“Really!” Hannah exclaimed. “I didn’t expect that. I wonder where he got a stain like that.” As everyone began to speculate, she listened with one ear as her mind raced through the possibilities. She’d check with Rose at the café to see if she’d made blackberry pie on Friday. And she’d check with Florence at the Red Owl to see if any of the pre-packaged bakery pies she carried were blackberry or if she carried fresh blackberries in her produce department. “Is Marlene sure it’s blackberry and not some other kind of berry?”

“She says she’s ninety percent certain. It has to do with acidity, color, and sweetness. She tested for pH value, color density, and brix.”

“Brix?” Mike looked puzzled.

“It’s a measure of sweetness. Marlene used a refractometer to test for that. She always hedges her bets, so when she told me she was ninety percent sure, that means we can be ninety-nine percent sure.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Hannah said. “It’s got to be blackberries.”

“Now on to something more serious.” Doc took another swallow of his coffee. “Your mother was right, Hannah.

What I have to tell you does have to do with the man you killed. Would you like to discuss it in private?”

Hannah thought about that for a moment and then she shook her head. Everyone here was either a relative or a friend. “That’s okay,” she said. “You can tell all of us whatever it is.”

“Something about the autopsy report was nagging me over the weekend,” he began, “so I got out the photos of the damage to your truck and compared them with my descrip-tions of the injuries.”

Hannah leaned forward slightly. She could feel her heart rate increase and she felt a flurry of excitement run through 168

Joanne Fluke

her. Was Doc about to tell her that she hadn’t killed the man after all? She wanted to ask, but Doc started speaking again.

“I found three sites of trauma that didn’t line up with the damage to the front end of your truck.”

“Exactly what do you mean?” Mike asked, looking almost as hopeful as Hannah was.

“Our John Doe suffered a massive blow to the cranium, causing several fissures of the frontal bone.” Doc noticed Delores’s puzzled expression and clarified. “That’s the front part of the skull, Lori. And fissures are fractures. At first, I thought that contact with the front bumper of Hannah’s truck was the cause of the injury, but this particular trauma was not consistent with the other injuries that were caused by the collision.” He stopped as he noticed several other puzzled expressions. “Sorry. I’ll try to put it more clearly. These injuries were too severe for the speed that Hannah was traveling. There was also the location of the fractures. They weren’t consistent with the other injuries I attributed to the impact.”

“Something else hit him before Hannah did?” Mike asked, taking the words right out of Hannah’s mouth.

Doc nodded. “Some
thing
or some
one
. I spent most of the afternoon examining him again, and that’s the conclusion I reached.”

“Then I
didn’t
kill him?” Hannah finally managed to ask.

“Let me finish, Hannah. There’s more.”

Hannah clamped her mouth shut. Doc would tell her exactly what he meant eventually. It was difficult to wait, but she would let him tell them in his own precise way.

“There were two other injuries that were not consistent with the configuration of Hannah’s truck. Both were on the left side of his face, one on his chin and one on his cheek.

They were approximately the same size and shape as the configuration of a man’s hand clenched into a fist.”

“He was in a fight?” Delores guessed.

“That’s the conclusion I drew.”

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“But the fight didn’t cause the man’s death, either?” Hannah asked, hoping that she was wrong and that someone else had delivered the fatal blow.

“That’s correct, Hannah.”

“How about the shape and configuration of the fist?”

Mike asked. “Is there any way to identify the man who fought with him from the pattern the blows left on his face?”

“No. The problem is that there was nothing distinctive about the marks that were left. I can tell you with some certainty that the person who fought with our John Doe was right-handed, but that’s about it. And it may be possible for me to eliminate suspects by the size and shape of their fists if their fists are unusually small or unusually large, but that would be as close as I could come. There is one thing, though.”

“What’s that?” Lonnie asked, and Hannah noticed that he had already pulled out his notebook and pen and he was taking notes on what Doc told them.

“The person who delivered the blows to our victim wore a ring at least part of the time.”

Hannah felt her interest pique. “Part of the time?” she asked.

“Yes. One blow was delivered while he was wearing the ring. The indentation is clear. The other blow was delivered without the ring and with a bare fist.”

“A one-two punch?” Lonnie suggested, and then he explained to Michelle, “That’s one punch with the right hand and the other with the left hand.”

“No,” Doc said, and he sounded very certain. “Both blows were delivered with the same fist, the right one. My guess is that the ring slipped off with the first blow. But the man didn’t stop fighting to pick it up. He delivered a second blow that was even harder than the first blow. It did some very serious damage.”

“How serious?” This time Delores was curious. “You told Hannah that the fight didn’t kill him.”

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“It didn’t, but it did cause the inter-cranial hemorrhaging to intensify.”

Hannah sat up a little straighter. This was new! “What inter-cranial hemorrhaging?” she asked him. “You didn’t mention that before.”