Joanne Fluke Christmas Bundle: Sugar Cookie Murder, Candy Cane Murder, Plum Pudding Murder, & Gingerbread Cookie Murder (95 page)

Bertie Straub contributed this recipe. She told me she serves these drinks when her best customers stay late for a “hen party” at the Cut ’n Curl. Mother says she certainly wouldn’t swear this on a stack of Bibles, but there’s a rumor going around that one too many Dimpled Duchess could be responsible for Donna Lempke’s bright orange hair.)

Use a blender to make these drinks. For each person served you will need:

1 ounce
(2 Tablespoons)
amaretto liqueur

4 ounces
(
½
cup)
strawberry ice cream

Zoop up the ice cream and the liqueur in the blender and pour into a fancy stemmed glass.

Bertie says to make certain that anyone who’s had more than two Dimpled Duchesses gets a ride home with someone who hasn’t.

Priscilla Knudson says to tell you that she got tired of buying the expensive “Seasoned Salt” and “Seasoning Salt” that Florence sells at the Red Owl Grocery and she started making her own. She says it’s just as good as the store-bought kind, even better when you consider that you probably have all the ingredients in your spice drawer anyway, and then it costs you nothing to make it.

½ cup table salt

1 Tablespoon celery salt

1 Tablespoon garlic salt

1 Tablespoon paprika

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon onion powder

½ teaspoon cornstarch

½ teaspoon ground oregano

Place the ingredients in a blender and blend for a few seconds. Store in a tightly-covered container
(like the one you saved from the last time you spent money for the store-bought kind.)

You really don’t need a blender to make this, so don’t run out and buy one if you don’t have one. Mrs. Knudson says to tell you that she just puts everything in a one-quart canning jar and rolls it around on the kitchen counter until it’s mixed.

Yield: ¾ cup Season Salt

***NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION***

Jack Herman, Werner’s son, contributed this recipe. Lisa says to warn you not to let anyone make this in your kitchen. Do it outside in a bowl that you can throw away. And for heaven’s sake, keep it outside! Don’t ever let anyone talk you into putting it into your refrigerator!

1 pound chopped liver
(not the type you use for an appetizer, but just any old kind of liver chopped up really fine.)

1 small can very smelly cat food

1 small package Jell-O powder
(Jack says to tell you they like any flavor except grape—Lisa says Jack doesn’t like grape Jell-O either.)

fat from 6 strips of bacon, fried crisp
(You can eat the bacon)

2 cups melted Velveeta cheese
(the original flavor)

Chop the liver, sprinkle the Jell-O over it, mix in the smelly cat food, and add the bacon fat. Drizzle the melted cheese over everything and stir to coat.

Marinate
(Lisa suggested another word)
for a week in a cool place.
(NOT your refrigerator—use a cooler in the woodshed or outside on the back porch.)

Yield: Makes all the bait you need to catch enough catfish for the annual Lion’s Club fish fry.

These conversions are approximate, but they’ll work just fine for Hannah Swensen’s recipes.

Note: Hannah’s rectangular sheet cake pan, 9 inches by 13 inches, is approximately 23 centimeters by 32.5 centimeters.

With The Cookie Jar, Hannah Swensen has a mouthwatering monopoly on the bakery business of Lake Eden, Minnesota. But when a rival store opens, tensions begin to bubble….

As she sits in her nearly empty store on Groundhog Day, Hannah can only hope that spring is just around the corner—and that the popularity of the new Magnolia Blossom Bakery is just a passing fad. The southern hospitality of Lake Eden’s two Georgia transplants, Shawna Lee and Vanessa Quinn, is grating on Hannah’s nerves—and cutting into her profits.

At least Hannah has her business partner Lisa’s wedding to look forward to. She’s turned one of Lisa’s favorite childhood treats into a spectacular Wedding Cookie Cake. But Hannah starts to steam when she finds out that Shawna Lee has finagled an invitation to the reception—and is bringing the Magnolia Blossom Bakery’s Southern Peach Cobbler for the dessert table.

Hannah doesn’t like having the Georgia Peach in the mix, especially when both Shawna Lee and Hannah’s sometime-boyfriend, Detective Mike Kingston, are no-shows to the wedding. Hannah has suspected that Mike is interested in more than Shawna Lee’s baking abilities. So when she sees lights on at the Magnolia Blossom Bakery after the reception, she investigates—and finds Shawna Lee shot to death.

Everyone in town knew The Cookie Jar was losing business to the Magnolia Bakery—a fact that puts Hannah at the top of the initial list of suspects. But with a little help from her friends, Hannah’s determined to prove that she wasn’t the only one who had an axe to grind with the Quinn sisters. Somebody wasn’t fooled by the Georgia Peaches and their sweet-as-pie act—and now it’s up to Hannah to track down whoever had the right ingredients to whip up a murder….

Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek at
PEACH COBBLER MURDER
coming in paperback in February 2006!

Hannah glanced at the clock. She’d unloaded her cookie truck in only ten minutes. The earliest that Norman could arrive was five minutes from now and that was probably optimistic. She went back to her favorite table, but she couldn’t seem to relax. There was something about the bright lights glaring in the interior of the Magnolia Blossom Bakery that made her nervous.

Perhaps there’d been a robbery. The moment the idea occurred to Hannah, her imagination was off and running. If the robbery had happened during the day, the robber might not have realized that all the lights were on. At this very moment, the cash drawer could be open and the Magnolia Blossom Bakery could be minus the day’s receipts. A good citizen of Lake Eden, one who could put aside petty jealousy and hold the welfare of a neighboring business paramount, would check to make sure the cash register at the Magnolia Blossom Bakery was intact.

Hannah groaned. The last thing she wanted to do was put on her boots and her coat, and walk across the street to make sure no burglar had invaded her competitor’s bakery. But basic decency demanded she do so, and she liked to think of herself as a basically decent person. Hannah stuffed her still-aching feet into her boots and slipped into her parka coat, zipping it up all the way. She scrawled a note to Norman:
Across the street at Shawna Lee’s—maybe a burglary?
and
taped it to the outside of the back door. And then she hurried around the side of her building to see if there was a problem with the Magnolia Blossom Bakery.

The wind had teeth, and shards of ice pelted Hannah’s face as she left the protection of her building. She turned up the collar of her parka coat and held her hand up to shield her eyes as she dashed across Main Street. She ducked under the pseudo-Jeffersonian portico of Lake Eden Realty and peered in the plate glass window of her cobbler challenger.

Andrea’s description hadn’t done the Magnolia Blossom Bakery justice. It was gorgeous and Hannah would be the first to admit it. The magnolia tree mural the Minneapolis artist had painted was spectacular, all the tables and chairs matched, and everything was new and shiny. The color scheme was incredibly appealing and everything Hannah saw fit in perfectly. The homemade decorations at The Cookie Jar couldn’t hold a candle to the decorator embellishments at Shawna Lee and Vanessa’s Bakery.

Hannah sighed. She didn’t like feeling second-rate, even in the category of decorations. Comforting herself with knowledge that at least her baked goods were better, she took another, less envious and more appraising look, and came to the conclusion that absolutely nothing was out of place. The cash register drawer was pushed in, there were no signs of vandalism, and everything looked ready and set to go for business in the morning. But something about the bright lights really bothered her, and she felt she should check further. Even though there wasn’t much petty crime in Lake Eden, it was possible that a group of teenagers had waited until Shawna Lee had left and then broken in to steal whatever pastry they could find in the kitchen. The lights were on in there, too. She could see them blazing through the diamond-shaped window in the swinging door.

Hannah wished that Norman were with her, but no cars had driven past and he was probably still doing what they not so jokingly called “mother duty.” She didn’t relish going inside to check out someone else’s kitchen, but she couldn’t
just stand here and do nothing. She tried the front door, hoping it would save her a trip around to the back, but it was locked securely. If pastry bandits were to blame for turning on the lights, they must have entered and left by the back door.

“Shawna Lee?” Hannah called out, knocking loudly on the front door. When that didn’t work, she balled up her fists and hammered loudly, doing her best to wake anyone who might be sleeping upstairs. No one was home. She was certain of it. Only the dead could sleep through the racket she’d made. Hannah pushed that very unwelcome thought aside and decided she’d have to go around to the back.

Keeping a sharp eye out for broken or pried windows, or any other signs of unauthorized access, Hannah walked around the side of the building. Everything looked secure, but a glance in the kitchen window made her frown. There was a colorful pink and green box on the counter and the label read,
Betty Jo’s Frozen Peach Cobbler, a division of Macon Foods.
Shawna Lee had claimed that her Southern Peach Cobbler was made from an old family recipe. Maybe that was true, but it was Betty Jo’s family recipe, not Shawna Lee’s.

Hannah’s gaze moved toward the ovens and what she saw made her frown deepen. A pan of peach cobbler was upended next to the open oven door. It was a mess, a jumble of sliced peaches and biscuit topping strewn over a puddle of sticky juice on the white tile floor. Had Shawna Lee simply dropped the pan as she was taking it from the oven? Or was there a more sinister reason for the baking disaster?

A glance at the other kitchen window gave Hannah an unwelcome answer to her question. There were two round holes in the glass, and each hole was surrounded by a spider web of cracks. She was no expert, but they looked like a couple of bullet holes to her!

Hannah swallowed hard as she pressed her nose against the glass and held her breath so it wouldn’t fog up. Was that a shoe she saw peeking out from behind the work counter?

There was the wise thing to do and the foolish thing to do. Hannah knew the wise thing would be to call for help, or
wait for Norman, or do anything other than go into the kitchen to check it out by herself. But the time it took to do the wise thing could spell the difference between life and death for whoever was wearing that shoe.

Maybe the best thing to do is nothing at all,
the not-so-nice side of Hannah’s psyche whispered in her ear.
What difference would it make if you just went back to The Cookie Jar and pretended you hadn’t seen that shoe? Who would know?

“I’d know,” Hannah answered out loud, accepting the burden of her own good character. It didn’t matter what she thought of Shawna Lee personally. If her cookie competitor was hurt or in trouble, Hannah had a responsibility to do what she could to help.

Once she’d made up her mind, Hannah moved quickly. She raced to the back door, fully prepared to kick it in if that’s what it took, but when she turned the knob she found it unlocked. She pushed the door open, praying that the two holes she’d seen weren’t bullet holes, the shoe behind the counter had no foot in it, and the peach cobbler on the floor meant nothing more than a slip of an oven glove. But where was Shawna Lee? And why hadn’t she shut the oven door and cleaned up the mess?

“Uh-oh,” Hannah gasped, skidding to a stop as she rounded the corner of the kitchen counter. Shawna Lee was down on her back on the tile floor and there was a huge blossom of what looked like dried strawberry syrup on the bib of her white chef’s apron. There was also a neat hole in the middle of the blossom and Hannah knew that there was no point in continuing to contaminate what was surely a crime scene. Shawna Lee had been shot in the chest and anyone with an ounce of brains could see that she was dead.