Plum Pudding Murder (21 page)

“Nancy has office hours from eight to ten every morning, so we should be able to catch her.”

“We?” Hannah asked, zeroing in on the plural.

“Yes, we.” Delores stopped cold and looked very apologetic. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I’m going to need you to follow me out to the college and then bring me back here. I have to leave my car in the parking lot.”

“Why do you have to do that?”

“For Michelle. I’m just so scattered this morning, I forgot to tell you,” she said, by way of apology. “And there’s one other thing. Michelle can stay with you, can’t she, dear? I’m having some painting done.”

“Michelle’s always welcome to stay with me, but I thought she wouldn’t be home until Christmas Eve.”

“That was the original plan, but it’s changed. She’s coming in late this afternoon and she needs to borrow my car. I’m going to park it in the college lot and she’ll pick it up after rehearsal this evening.”

“Why is Michelle coming to the community college?” Hannah asked, struggling to make sense of the disjointed facts she’d learned.

“Because she has a part in the Christmas Follies. Don’t you remember that nice poetry professor telling us about it?”

“He’s not nice,” Hannah said, and then she wished she could take back the words. Her comment was sure to elicit a query from Delores. “Of course I remember,” she said quickly, hoping to throw her mother off the track. “Do you know if Michelle’s in a play? Or is it something else?”

“It’s something else. She’s going to sing.”

“I didn’t know Michelle could sing!” Hannah relaxed slightly. Her mother was off-topic and that was all to the good. She wasn’t in the mood to discuss her former relationship with Bradford Ramsey, the Lothario of poetry professors.

“I’m just so proud of her!” Delores continued. “I’d assumed that she couldn’t sing. You certainly can’t, and Andrea’s never been able to carry a tune. That’s why I told you to whisper the words to the hymns in church. It was embarrassing when you girls tried to sing out loud. Everybody in the pew in front of us turned around to look.”

Hannah remembered her mother’s admonishment about singing out loud in church. Delores had never told them why it was preferable for them to whisper, but now she knew why.

“Your father couldn’t sing a note,” Delores said, smiling fondly at some private memory. “He sounded like a dying bullfrog.”

“Have you ever heard a dying bullfrog?” Hannah couldn’t resist asking.

“Of course not. I was just hypothesizing, dear. In any event, I’m fairly certain that Michelle inherited her vocal talents from me.”

I hope not! Hannah thought, remembering the night her mother and Carrie had entered a Karaoke contest. “Is Michelle part of a group?”

“No, she’s doing a song and dance number from a musical that a Macalester graduate wrote. It’s never been performed before.”

“That’s great,” Hannah said, hoping that Michelle’s number would be a huge success. “I can hardly wait to see it.”

“So will you please follow me out to the college, dear? I know you’re busy and I hate to ask, but I tried calling Carrie several times this morning and she’s not answering her phone.”

Maybe she’s still with Mr. Suede Boots, Hannah thought, but she didn’t say it. There would be plenty of time to tell her mother about Carrie’s romance once they learned the identity of the man she was dating.

“And take some chocolate cookies, will you, dear? Nancy might need the endorphins.”

It only took a moment to scoop up a half-dozen Chocolate Highlander Cookie Bars and stack them in one of The Cookie Jar’s distinctive carryout bags. Then Hannah grabbed her parka, told Lisa she’d be back just as soon as she could, and headed out to her cookie truck to follow her mother.

It was snowing lightly as Hannah turned onto the highway behind her mother’s car. Delores immediately increased her speed, widening the distance between them exponentially, and forcing Hannah to tromp on her accelerator just to keep up. What in the world had gotten into her mother? Delores was usually a careful driver who prided herself on the fact she’d never been in an accident, but that claim could change today. Hannah watched, open-mouthed, as her mother fairly flew down the roadway like a winged rodent emerging from eternal damnation.

There was nothing to do except follow and pick up the pieces if something happened. Hannah pushed her cookie truck to the max and hoped that she wouldn’t get a speeding ticket in her effort to keep her mother in sight.

“Uh-oh!” she groaned, watching helplessly as Delores swerved on a patch of ice. Her father had done most of the driving in bad weather. Did Delores know how to steer out of a skid? Hannah had her answer several heart-pounding seconds later when the heavy sedan Hannah’s father had bought only six months before he died stabilized and resumed a normal course. Hannah managed to avoid that very same patch of ice, and she hoped that her mother’s reaction time was keen this morning. Delores was weaving in and out of traffic, kicking up the light coat of powdered snow that covered the asphalt and sending it airborne to shower against Hannah’s windshield.

There was no way Hannah was going to risk life and limb to keep up with her mother. She slowed to a comfortable pace and made her way to the college, turning in at the parking lot just in time to see her mother exiting her car.

“Wait up!” she called out, pulling into the space next to her mother’s car and jumping out. “Why the big hurry? You took some chances out there on the highway.”

To Delores’s credit, she looked quite contrite. “I know,” she said. “I shouldn’t have driven so fast. It’s just that I was worried about how Nancy would take the news, and I wanted to be the one to tell her.”

Hannah reached in to grab the cookies, locked her truck, and scurried to catch up with her mother. “Why were you so worried about Nancy? Does she know Larry Jaeger?”

“Oh, my yes! You’ve heard her radio program, haven’t you?”

“A few times, yes. I don’t usually listen to talk radio, but she has some good advice to give.”

Delores pulled open the door to Stewart Hall and they stepped inside. She took a moment to take off her gloves and slip them inside her pocket. “You must have heard her mention the Lunatic. She talks about him on almost every show.”

“The Lunatic,” Hannah said with a smile. “The worst husband a girl ever had. He taught Dr. Love everything she knows about what a husband should never do in a marriage.”

“That’s right.”

“She’s really funny when she talks about him.” Hannah recalled several instances when she’d laughed out loud over the stories Dr. Love told on the air. “He’s her ex-husband, isn’t he?”

“He was her ex-husband.”

It didn’t take Hannah more than the time it took to take three steps to draw the obvious conclusion. She stopped cold and grabbed her mother’s arm. “Don’t tell me that the Lunatic is…”

“Lunatic Larry Jaeger,” Delores confirmed it. “And that’s why I want to be the first one to tell her.”

ORANGE JULIUS COOKIES

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

2 and ¼ cups flour (don’t sift—pack it down in the cup)

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon baking soda

2 sticks (8 ounces, ½ pound) softened butter

½ cup white (granulated) sugar

½ cup brown sugar

1 beaten egg

3 teaspoons grated orange zest (that’s the orange part of the peel)

12-ounce bag white chocolate morsels (2 cups) (I used Nestle’s Premium White Morsels)

Prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam (or another nonstick cooking spray.) You can also use a parchment-lined cookie sheet if you prefer.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking soda. Stir well and set aside.

In another bowl, beat the softened butter, white sugar, and brown sugar.

Add the beaten egg to the bowl with the butter and the sugars. Stir it all up. Then stir in the grated orange zest.

Stir in the flour, salt and baking soda mixture and mix well.

Stir in the white chocolate chips.

Drop by teaspoonfuls on a prepared cookie sheet, 12 cookies to a standard-size sheet. Flatten the cookies in a crisscross pattern with a fork, the way you’d do for peanut butter cookies.

Bake the cookies at 350 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes. (Mine took 11 minutes.)

Leave the cookies on the cookie sheet for a minute or two, and then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Yield: 5 to 6 dozen cookies, depending on cookie size.

Hannah’s Note: Delores thinks these cookies taste just like the drinks from the Orange Julius stand at the mall.

“D elores!” Dr. Love was clearly pleased when she saw who was knocking on her office door. “And Hannah, too! Come in. What brings you out here so early this morning?”

Dr. Love started to rise to greet them, but Delores waved her back down to her chair. “You’d better sit down, Nancy,” she said. “I have some bad news for you.”

Hannah saw Dr. Love’s posture stiffen. It was clear she was bracing herself. “What is it?” she asked.

“Larry Jaeger is dead. Someone murdered him last night.”

There was a moment of disbelief. Hannah could see it on Dr. Love’s face. And then an expression replaced it, an expression that Hannah didn’t understand, but could only be described as profound relief.

“Well, that saves me a whole lot of trouble!” Dr. Love said.

There was a moment of absolute silence. Both Hannah and Delores were at a loss for words.

“I…don’t understand,” Delores ventured at last.

“Of course you don’t.” Dr. Love gestured. “Sit. You probably think I’m in shock.”

That’s exactly what Hannah thought. She exchanged a glance with her mother, who made a gesture with her hands. Hannah interpreted instantly and she set the bag of cookies on Dr. Love’s desk.

“Chocolate?” Dr. Love asked with a small smile.

Hannah nodded. “Endorphins. Mother thought they might help if you were upset.”

“How sweet!” Dr. Love smiled at Delores and then she turned back to Hannah. “Do you really believe that chocolate is a cure for anxiety, grief, and depression?”

“Maybe not, but it can’t hurt,” Hannah said, turning to her mother. It was time for Delores to take the lead in the conversation.

Delores caught on immediately. It was time to open the Larry Jaeger discussion. “I’m so sorry about your ex-husband,” she said, reaching out to pat her friend’s hand.

“He’s not. He’s not my ex-husband.”

“You mean you weren’t married to Larry Jaeger?” Hannah asked, slipping easily into question mode.

“Oh, I was!” Dr. Love reached for a cookie. “And I’m still married to him…or at least I was married to him right up until the moment he died. You see, we never divorced.”

“Because you couldn’t stop loving him?” Delores asked, sensing a romantic tragedy in the making.

“No, it’s because I couldn’t find him. I wanted to divorce him fifteen years ago, right after he left me high and dry, but I needed his address to serve him with papers.”

“How awful for you!” Delores breathed.

“It wasn’t one of the happier times of my life,” Dr. Love agreed. “Since I was only months from graduating from college and I didn’t have the money for a quickie divorce in another state, I simply let it go. I always thought Larry would turn up somewhere and I’d hear about it, and then I’d serve him with papers and divorce him.”

“But what if you’d met someone else you wanted to marry?” Delores posed a dilemma.

Dr. Love gave a little shrug. “Then I would have been forced to do something. But I didn’t meet anyone I wanted to marry, so there wasn’t any rush to divorce Larry.”

“Did you hear from him during those fifteen years?” Hannah asked.

“Never.”

“No calls? No letters? No e-mail?”

“Nothing. It was like he’d dropped off the face of the earth.”

“And he didn’t tell you where he was going?” Delores asked.

“I didn’t even know he was going! It was a total shock to me. We were having trouble in our marriage, but I didn’t expect him to vanish.”

“What kind of trouble?” Delores asked her.

“What kind do you want?” Dr. Love gave a rueful chuckle. “He was dishonest, disloyal, and he couldn’t hold down a job.”

“That must have been frustrating for you,” Hannah said.

“It was. I was working part time as a secretary at the college and taking a full load of classes. Whenever Larry got fired, I’d have to increase my hours so we could pay the rent. And then there was Brenda.”

“Brenda?” both Hannah and Delores asked at once.

“Brenda lived in the apartment next door. She had an inheritance from her grandmother and she didn’t have to work like the rest of us.”

Hannah had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She thought she knew where this story was heading. “So Brenda was home all day?”

“That’s right. I think it all started when Larry lost his job at the carpet store. He told me he went out looking for work every day, but several people I knew said he was spending his afternoons at the Indian Casino with Brenda.”

“Gambling?” Hannah asked, remembering how Larry had kept track of the score of the basketball game while he’d discussed her cookie order and wondering whether he’d bet on the outcome.

“Larry loved to gamble and he was pretty good at it. That was the unfortunate thing. It was a game to him, like playing with Monopoly money, and he started believing that he couldn’t lose.”

“Did Brenda finance his gambling?” Delores asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that when I got home from a three-day graduate seminar on Marriage and the Family at another university and opened our apartment door, every stick of furniture was gone. The only thing that was left was the pink plush teddy bear Larry won for me at a carnival when we were newlyweds. It was sitting on a huge pile of my books in the corner, and there was a note pinned to its chest.”

“What did the note say?” Delores asked, clearly heartsick for her friend.

“It said, I left your clothes in the closet.” Dr. Love gave a little chuckle that sounded bitter to Hannah. “I still get mad when I think about it. And that’s one story about the Lunatic that I’ll never tell on the air.”