Devil's Food Cake Murder (3 page)

“I’m not kidding around.” Hannah began to frown. Now Lisa was winking with one eye and then the other as if she were some kind of blinking traffic signal. Had her business partner suddenly developed a facial tic? “Let’s be serious, Lisa. You know Mother. Just think about what would happen if Mother was behind the counter at Beau Monde and Betty Jackson walked in to buy a dress.”

“I’m sure your mother would do her best to find something that looked good on Betty.”

“Maybe, but if Betty dared to say anything about how Claire didn’t carry much of a selection in her size, Mother would be all over it like a duck on a June bug.”

“But I’m sure she wouldn’t …”

“Yes, she would,” Hannah interrupted. “Mother would say that nobody made anything stylish in Betty’s size and Betty would look a lot better if she lost some weight.”

“Your mother wouldn’t be that mean!”

“Oh, she wouldn’t say it to be mean. It’s just that Mother believes in saying exactly what’s on her mind.” Hannah stopped speaking and stared hard at Lisa, who was making all sorts of strange faces at her. “What’s wrong with you, Lisa?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Lisa,” Delores Swensen answered, coming up behind her eldest daughter and giving her a none-too-gentle tap on the shoulder.

Hannah gasped, whirling around to face the matriarch of the Swensen clan. As usual, Delores Swensen was dressed in the height of fashion. Today she wore a cherry red wool suit with jet black buttons, and a cherry-red-and-black silk scarf draped artistically around her neck. The effect was one of sleek elegance and beauty. No one meeting her for the first time would ever guess that she was approaching her sixtieth birthday.

“Mother!” Hannah gulped, not failing to notice that her mother’s lovely visage was hampered by the scowl between her perfectly shaped eyebrows. The two spots of bright color just below her cheekbones, obviously caused by anger at her daughter, didn’t help, either.

“Yes, Mother,” Delores answered, glaring at Hannah. “Now I want you to explain exactly what you meant when you said I was hypercritical and I had no tact!”

If backpedaling were an art form, Hannah would have been hailed as the next Rembrandt. Hannah had insisted that she’d never intended to hurt her mother’s feelings, and Delores had readily conceded that she wasn’t as practiced as she could be in the diplomacy department. The air was clear again.

“So what shall I do?” Delores asked the daughter who’d only moments before been her nemesis.

“I don’t know,” Hannah replied, not willing to risk a reply that might make her into her mother’s adversary again.

“I hate to back out now, not when I promised Claire, but do you think I should tell her I can’t do it?”

“No. All we have to do is think of someone who can help you.”

“Who?” Delores looked completely mystified. “It has to be someone who’s up on fashion trends. I’m sure Carrie would agree to do it, but she really doesn’t know that much about fashion. We could spare Luanne, but she doesn’t pay that much attention to fashion, either. And it has to be someone who’s got a good eye.”

“A good eye?”

“For size and for what will complement the customer’s shape. For instance, you couldn’t recommend that Laura Vavra dress in something severely tailored. It’s much too harsh a look for her. She’s all gentle curves and swirls. And Rose McDermott has to be careful of large bright flowers. It makes her look like a buffet for a bumblebee.”

Hannah burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. And after a moment, Delores joined in. When the image of Rose and the bumblebees had faded, Hannah turned serious again. “I think maybe I was wrong. You’d be really good at recommending the right dress, Mother.”

“I know. I’d be good at it, but no one would buy it, because I’d say something to spoil the sale. Don’t forget, I have no tact.”

“Maybe I was wrong about that, too.”

“You weren’t wrong. I know that’s one of my failings, but when anyone asks for my honest opinion, I give it. And I don’t mince words. That isn’t a good trait to have if you’re in retail sales.”

“True,” Hannah agreed. “So we need someone with fashion smarts, plenty of tact, and good salesmanship. That really doesn’t sound like anyone I know.”

“I can’t think of anyone, either.”

Mother and daughter turned as the kitchen door opened and Hannah’s sister, Andrea, stepped in.

“Brrr! It’s got to be way below zero with the wind chill.” Andrea walked over to hang her coat on the hooks by the door. “Hi, Mother. Hi, Hannah. I came in for a quick cup of coffee.”

Delores and Hannah exchanged glances. Hannah’s glance said, Andrea knows more about fashion than any other woman in Lake Eden. With the possible exception of you, of course.

And Delores’s glance said, She’s got tact and she’s a super salesman. Bill always said she could sell kitty litter to a nomad.

“What?” Andrea asked, reacting to the long glance that her sister and mother exchanged and the nods they gave to each other.

“Coffee,” Hannah said, fetching it quickly and settling her younger sister on a stool at the stainless steel workstation.

“And new business,” Delores declared, taking the stool directly across from Andrea.

“Cookies?” Andrea queried.

“Chocolate,” Delores suggested.

“Coming right up.” Hannah wasted no time in placing a half-dozen Brownies Plus cookie bars on a plate and serving her mother and sister.

“I’m so glad you’re here, dear,” Delores said, reaching out to pat Andrea’s hand.

Andrea looked wary. “Why? What’s going on?”

“The opportunity of a lifetime. How would you like to increase your wardrobe by twelve Beau Monde dresses in the next two weeks?”

Andrea’s wariness quickly turned into suspicion. “What do I have to do? Kill somebody?”

“Not at all.” Delores gave her a wide smile. “Just listen carefully. I’ve got a real deal for you!”

Hannah had no doubt that Andrea would take their mother up on her offer, and Andrea proved her right. Once Hannah’s sister had agreed to join their mother at Beau Monde and help to deal with Claire’s customers, Delores got up from her stool.

“Sorry, dears,” she said, heading toward the door. “I really have to run now. Carrie’s expecting me to cover her lunch break, and I’m already five minutes late.” By that time, she’d arrived at the door, but she made no move to turn the knob. Instead, she turned back to address Hannah. “I probably should have saved one of those cookie bars for her. You know how much she loves your cookies. Every time I bring her something you baked, it puts her in a good mood. But you know how much I love chocolate. Those cookie bars were so marvelous, I just couldn’t seem to stop eating them.”

Hannah knew a hint when she heard one and this one was blatant. “I’ll box some up for you and Carrie,” she said obediently, getting up to do just that. “Will a half-dozen do?”

“Oh my, yes. Carrie will be thrilled that you thought of her.”

“Right,” Hannah said, flipping one of her bakery boxes open and lining it with a sheet of wax paper. She arranged six Brownies Plus cookie bars in the bottom, covered them with another piece of wax paper, and secured the lid.

“Thank you, dear,” Delores said, accepting the box that Hannah handed to her. She opened the door, stepped out, and closed it again behind her.

“Well…that was unusual!” Andrea commented the moment their mother was gone.

“What was unusual?”

“I didn’t expect to get a new wardrobe this week, especially now that the Gantz sale fell through.”

“That’s too bad,” Hannah commiserated, knowing that Andrea always felt bad when she lost a real estate sale. “Did the buyers change their minds?”

“No. The buyers still want it, but Margaret and Fred pulled it off the market this morning.”

“But why? I thought they could hardly wait to move off the farm and live in a high rise apartment in the Cities.”

“That’s right, but Fred ended up hating apartment living. He told me it was light all the time outside the windows, even in the middle of the night. And he said the traffic noise was awful, even worse than the time the bobcat came down and spooked his horses.”

“How about Margaret? Was she disappointed, too?”

“Not as much as Fred, but she said she was looking forward to living at ground level again. She didn’t like the elevators.”

“I can’t blame her for that. I’m not crazy about elevators, either. I keep wondering what I’m going to do if it gets stuck between floors and I have to go to the …” Hannah stopped speaking as Andrea’s cell phone rang.

“That’s Bill,” Andrea told her, glancing at the display. “I’d better get it. He never calls me unless it’s important.”

Hannah walked over to the counter to give Andrea some privacy while she talked to her husband. This could take a while, and she had baking to do.

“It happened last week and they just got around to notifying you now?” Andrea asked as Hannah plucked the acetate-covered page for Butterscotch Bonanza Bars out of the three-ring binder that they kept for current recipes. While Andrea listened to her husband’s answer, Hannah went to work melting butter in the microwave and measuring brown sugar for one of her very favorite treats.

“Well, I guess Winnetka County must be on the bottom rung of their ladder,” Andrea commented, and Hannah could tell that her sister was miffed. Andrea always reacted badly if she suspected that her husband, Bill, the sheriff of Winnetka County, was being slighted by big city law enforcement. “What does the Minneapolis P.D. expect you to do about it now?”

There was another long pause while Andrea listened, and Hannah took that time to stir in the brown sugar. This was a simple recipe, easy to make, and it was delicious.

“They broke into a Kenwood mansion?” Andrea sounded shocked, and Hannah turned to look at her. Her sister’s face was flushed and she gave a little shake to her head. “But all those people have state-of-the-art security systems.”

Bill’s response caused Andrea to groan. “Well, it’s not going to do them much good if they forget to set it! Where is this place?”

Andrea nodded at Bill’s answer. “I know exactly where that is. It’s a corner lot with a great view of Lake of the Isles shoreline with Raspberry Island off to the right. The house is a Tudor, five-bedroom, four-bath, single family dwelling, with river rock steps leading up the bank to house level, and an eight-foot evergreen hedge all around it. You enter through a gate in the hedge.”

Bill said something and Andrea sighed. “You’re absolutely right. The hedge hides the lower story from the street and that’s perfect for a burglar. There’s a delivery door at the side, and that’s probably how they got in.”

Hannah was surprised that Andrea knew so much about the house. She was well aware that Andrea did her homework and personally checked out every house for sale in the area surrounding Lake Eden, but Minneapolis was quite far afield.

Bill must have asked the same question that Hannah was pondering, because Andrea gave a little laugh. “It’s just a coincidence, honey. We looked at that place when I was in real estate college. I remember how shocked I was at the asking price, especially because there are only a couple of houses in Lake Eden that would go for over five figures. This one had an asking price of two point three, and it’s probably worth more now.”

Hannah whistled. She couldn’t help it. Two point three million dollars was a whole lot of money, probably more than she’d make in a lifetime. The same was true for most people in Lake Eden, with the possible exception of Mayor Bascomb, who had family money to invest, and Del Woodley at DelRay Manufacturing.

“Do you have a list of stolen goods?” Andrea asked her husband. And then she pulled a notebook and pen from her purse and wrote down what her husband told her.

While Andrea was writing what appeared to be a lengthy list, Hannah stirred eggs and vanilla into the sugar and butter mixture and took out another bowl for the dry ingredients. She mixed the flour with the baking powder and the salt and made sure they were well blended. She added them to the bowl with the brown sugar, butter, and eggs, and mixed everything up with a wooden spoon. Then she added chopped walnuts and gave the batter a final stir.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Andrea said, giving a little laugh. “It’s called rose cut because it looks like a flower. It was a popular cut way back when. And it’s almost three carats?”

Hannah divided the contents of her bowl into three batches. She added the butterscotch chips to Bertie’s batch and spread the batter in the bottom of a nine-inch by thirteen-inch pan she’d lined with heavy duty foil. Since she’d tripled the recipe, Hannah mixed semi-sweet chocolate chips into the second batch and white chocolate chips into the third. Personally, she preferred these yummy cookie bars plain. The butterscotch flavor from the ingredients was absolutely delicious all by itself. But several of their customers were crazy about white chocolate chips, and she knew they’d be delighted with the combination of white chocolate and butterscotch. There were also those who wouldn’t dream of ordering anything without dark chocolate, and the third batch she’d made was bound to please them.

“How many diamonds did you say were around it?” Andrea asked. And then, as Hannah watched, her sister’s eyes widened. “Sixteen! It’s just loaded with diamonds! Did they tell you what it’s worth?”

Hannah carried the three pans she’d filled to the oven and slipped them in. She turned just in time to see her sister gulp a little air.

“That’s incredible, all right!” Andrea said. “But if the diamonds add up to almost four carats, it sounds reasonable.”

Andrea listened for a moment and then she laughed. “You’re right, honey. It doesn’t sound reasonable. No ring should be worth that much money. How did they get it?”

Hannah poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down on a stool across from her sister. Some people might not be able to read upside down, but Hannah was well schooled in the art. When she was growing up, she’d helped her sisters with their reading lessons. The three sisters, Hannah, the oldest, Andrea, the next in line, and Michelle, the youngest, had gathered in Hannah’s room to go over their assignments for the next day. At that time, Hannah had found that reading upside down made their homework sessions shorter and increased her sleep time.