Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder Part 9

"You must be kidding!" Hannah was amused. "Think about it, Norman. You saw Mother in action on Tuesday night. Would she try to set me up with every guy in town if I already had a date for the biggest party of the year?"

Norman shrugged, but he was grinning. "I guess not. Would you like to go to the party with me, Hannah? It'll get you off the hook with your mother."

Hannah wished she hadn't been so flippant. Her big mouth had gotten her into trouble again. Now Norman knew she didn't have a date and he was asking her for one. And she really didn't know what to say.

Norman reached out and patted her hand. "Come on. It'll be mutually beneficial. I'll drive so you can drink all the Dom you want, and you can introduce me to all the people you think I should know."

Hannah thought fast. There didn't seem to be any graceful way out, and going to the Woodleys' party with Norman might not be so terrible. He was funny, he seemed to like her, and it might make her mother back off a little.

"Okay, it's a deal."

Hannah drew a deep breath of relief when Norman escorted her back to the waiting room and Andrea was there. Her sister was seated on the new couch, idly flipping the pages of National Geographic. National Geographic.

"Hi." Andrea gave them a guileless smile. "Did you have a nice lunch?"

"Very nice." Norman smiled and then he turned to Hannah. "The Woodleys' party starts at eight. Shall I pick you up at seven-thirty?"

"Seven-thirty is fine." Hannah saw the startled look that Andrea gave her out of the corner of her eye, and she knew she'd have to do some explaining. "Do you need my address?"

"I've got it. It was nice to meet you, Andrea. Perhaps we'll see you at the party?"

Andrea put on a smile for Norman's benefit. "You will. Bill and I wouldn't miss it for the world. Goodbye, Norman. It was nice to meet you, too."

They walked out to Hannah's truck in total silence, and Andrea got into the pa.s.senger seat. But as soon as Hannah had slid in behind the wheel and closed the door, Andrea reached out to grab her arm. "You were just kidding around, weren't you? I mean, you're not actually going to the party with him him!"

"Yes, I am," Hannah confirmed it.

"But you can't can't!"

Hannah started the engine, glanced behind her to make sure that no cars were coming, and pulled out into the street. "Why not?"

"Because he could be Ron's killer!"

"He's not." Hannah s.h.i.+fted into second gear. "Norman has an alibi. He was treating another patient when Ron was killed."

That seemed to take the wind out of Andrea's sails and she frowned. "Okay. Maybe he's not not Ron's killer, but there's no way you should go out with him!" Ron's killer, but there's no way you should go out with him!"

"Relax, Andrea. It's not like it's a real date or anything. He's just picking me up and we're going to the party together. Norman's very nice."

"No, he isn't. It's not like you to be wrong about people, but this time you really blew it. While you were having lunch and accepting dates with this...this person you think is nice, I hit pay dirt in the storage room. I've got the goods on Norman Rhodes."

"What goods?" Hannah took her eyes off the road for a moment to glance at her sister. Andrea looked very proud of herself.

"I'll show you the minute we get back to The Cookie Jar."

Hannah's eyebrows shot up and she had all she could do to navigate the turn on Third and Main. "You'll show show me? You didn't steal anything from Norman's office, did you, Andrea?" me? You didn't steal anything from Norman's office, did you, Andrea?"

"It wasn't exactly stealing. I know I promised not to take anything, but this was just too good to leave behind." Andrea sat back and gave a smug smile. "I'll tell you this much, Hannah. Mother didn't do you any favors when she introduced you to Norman. And he certainly isn't the man she thought he was!"

Hannah didn't ask any further questions. It was clear her sister wouldn't tell her any more until they'd arrived at The Cookie Jar. She turned into the alley, averted her eyes as she drove past the spot where Ron had breathed his final breath, and pulled into her parking spot.

When they came in the back door, Andrea was grinning like a Ches.h.i.+re cat, and Hannah was beginning to feel very uneasy. She hoped that Andrea had found something trivial, like a patient's complaint that he'd been overcharged, or a stack of unpaid bills.

"Tell Lisa you're back and we need to be alone," Andrea advised as she hung up her coat. "Hurry up. This is important."

Hannah wasn't about to argue. She dashed into the shop, told Lisa to please handle the counter for a couple more minutes, and filled two mugs with coffee. Andrea didn't need the caffeine since she was jazzed enough as it was, but Hannah figured she might need a boost before all this was over. She raced through the swinging door to the back room, set the coffee mugs down on the work island, and slid onto a stool close to her sister's. "All right, Andrea. This has gone on long enough. Out with it."

Andrea was obviously enjoying this moment. She opened her purse with a flourish, pulled out a large manila envelope, and pushed it over to Hannah.

"What's this?"

"Open it," Andrea instructed. "And then tell me again how nice nice Norman is." Norman is."

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

1 cup b.u.t.ter (2 sticks, pound) (2 sticks, pound)3 cups brown sugar *** ***4 eggs, beaten (with a fork is fine) (with a fork is fine)1 teaspoon salt1 teaspoon baking soda3 teaspoons vanilla2 cups finely chopped pecans4 cups flourMelt b.u.t.ter and add brown sugar. Mix well and let cool. Add beaten eggs and mix. Add salt, baking soda, vanilla, and nuts. Mix well. Add flour and mix until flour is thoroughly distributed.Form dough into b.a.l.l.s with your fingers. (Make them the size of a walnut with sh.e.l.l.) (Make them the size of a walnut with sh.e.l.l.) Place them on a greased cookie sheet, 12 to a standard sheet. Press them down with a spatula. Place them on a greased cookie sheet, 12 to a standard sheet. Press them down with a spatula. (Spray it with Pam first, or grease it.) (Spray it with Pam first, or grease it.)Bake at 350 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes. Let cookies set up on sheet for one minute, then remove them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

(There's no problem if your recipe calls for dark brown sugar, or light brown sugar-just mix in mola.s.ses until it's the right color.) (Norman Rhodes adores these, and so does Bill.)Yield: 8 to 10 dozen, depending on cookie size.

Chapter Eleven.

Hannah couldn't say a word. Her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. She stared down at the stack of Polaroids and blinked hard. No, she wasn't imagining things. The images were still there. There were no faces, just pictures of women's torsos, and every one was nude to the waist.

"Hannah?" Andrea reached out to grab her arm. "Are you all right?"

Hannah took a deep breath and nodded. "Who are are they?" they?"

"Dental patients. You can tell where they were taken from the background." Andrea jabbed her finger at the top print. "See that picture on the wall? It's in the room that Norman uses for cleaning teeth. I checked."

"This woman posed for Norman in his dental chair?"

"Make that these women these women." Andrea fanned out the pictures so that Hannah could see. "And I don't think they exactly posed. See the two canisters next to the chair? One is oxygen and the other is nitrous oxide."

"Laughing gas?"

"I studied it in chemistry cla.s.s. If you mix it right, it's an anesthetic. A lot of dentists use it. But if you cut down on the oxygen, it can make you lose consciousness. A couple of whiffs of the increased mixture and these women would have pa.s.sed out cold."

"He knocked them out and took nude photos of them?"

"That's what it looks like to me. When they came to, they wouldn't remember a thing."

Hannah shook her head. "I can't believe that Norman would do something like this. He seems so...normal."

"That's what they always say about perverts. You've heard those interviews on the news. All the neighbors say that they can't believe it, that he seemed like such a normal guy."

Hannah blinked and stared down at the photographs again. She still couldn't believe that Norman could have taken these pictures.

She picked up the stack of Polaroids and rifled through them again. "I wonder if..."

"What is it?" Andrea turned to stare at her sister when Hannah stopped speaking abruptly.

"It's this one." Hannah pointed to the picture. "There's a gold chain around her neck and that pendant...I know I've seen it before."

Andrea grabbed the photo for a second look. "You're right. I've seen it, too. It's a Celtic cross, isn't it?"

"That's right!" Hannah's eyes widened as she recognized the subject of the photograph. "Norman didn't take these pictures, Andrea."

"He didn't?"

"He couldn't have taken them. That's Miss McNally, our seventh-grade math teacher. And she left Lake Eden to get married three years ago."

Andrea stared down at the photo in shock. "Miss McNally is the only one who ever wore a cross like that. Norman's father father must have taken these pictures. What are we going to do?" must have taken these pictures. What are we going to do?"

Hannah's brain s.h.i.+fted gears. "First, we're not going to tell anybody about them. Norman's father is dead. It's too late to do anything to him now. Making this public would just mortify his mother and embarra.s.s the women. "

"That makes sense," Andrea agreed quickly. "Do you suppose Norman knows what his father did?"

"I don't know. Where did you find these pictures?"

"They were in the storeroom. I found them in a little box under a stack of old X-rays. It was filthy back there, Hannah. There must have been an inch of dust on those X-rays and..." Andrea stopped, realizing what she'd just said. "Norman doesn't know about them, Hannah. There was just too much dust. I'm almost positive that stack of X-rays hadn't been touched in at least a year."

Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. Do you think you got all of the photos?"

"I think so. I dumped the box in that envelope and I spent at least five minutes looking for more." Andrea reached out to gather up the photos and turned them facedown. "What are we going to do with them, Hannah?"

"We're going to destroy them. I'll throw them in my fireplace tonight."

"You can't do that," Andrea objected. "You've got a gas log. You're not supposed to burn anything in your fireplace. Maybe we should shred them. I'd do it at work, but Al would ask me what I was shredding."

"Let's try industrial-strength stain remover," Hannah suggested as she slid off her stool. "I used it to clean the rust stains off my bathroom sink and I've got some left in the bottle. It's supposed to take anything off anything."

Andrea followed Hannah to the sink and watched as she poured several inches of stain remover into the bottom of her stainless-steel sink. They dropped in one of the photos and Hannah moved it around with the handle of one of her long mixing spoons. It took a minute or so, but eventually the photo bleached out to white.

"It works!" Andrea sounded surprised. "How did you know to do that?"

"I saw something like it in a movie. Go ahead, Andrea. You put in the photos and I'll stir them around."

In less than five minutes the nude photos had disappeared, leaving perfectly white paper behind. Hannah pulled the plug, ran some clear water over the paper, and dumped the whole mess into the garbage.

"I guess I'd better get back to the office." Andrea glanced up at the clock. "I have to pick up the keys and some flyers before my showing."

Hannah gave her a little hug. "Thanks for all your help, Andrea. You're really a good snooper and I'm glad you found those pictures before Norman or his mother stumbled across them."

"So am I." Andrea gave her a sunny smile and headed for the swinging door. She stopped, her hand extended to push it open, and turned back. "Hannah?"

"Yes?"

"I think you should go to the Woodleys' party with Norman. I was wrong. He's boring, but he really is is a nice guy." a nice guy."

Hannah managed to keep the polite smile on her face as the guest speaker extolled the virtues of Regency England, where men were "gentlemen" and ladies were "ladies in the true sense of the word." The plump, gray-haired lady in her frilly yellow dress, a retired English teacher from Grey Eagle who had written three Regency romances, stated that she was appalled and saddened by the "regrettable lapse of moral fiber" in the youth of today. She ended her speech by suggesting that parents be guided by the strict rules of polite society that had existed "on Albion's sh.o.r.es" at the beginning of the nineteenth century and make an effort to instill "Regency values" in their offspring.

There was a halfhearted smattering of applause when the guest speaker vacated the podium and then the meeting began. As she readied the refreshment table, Hannah wondered what Lake Eden's teenagers would do if their mothers tried to whisk them back to an era with no cars or video games, not to mention the absence of birth control. Matricide would soar, and Bill would certainly have his hands full.

Hannah started the coffee and arranged platters heaped high with Regency Ginger Crisps. She'd researched the period, but there were very few published recipes and none of them had sounded like cookies. She'd even paged through her mother's collection of Regency romances for any mention of desserts, but all she'd found were vague references to "duffs," "fruit compotes," and "seed cakes." Deciding that compromise was in order, Hannah had compiled a list of ingredients that had existed in Regency times and she'd discovered that an enterprising person could have baked ginger cookies. Whether they had actually done it was another question, but it would have been possible.

It didn't take long for the meeting to conclude and Hannah was relieved to see that the guest speaker had slipped out the door. That was good. The woman seemed to know a lot about the Regency period, and Hannah hadn't relished being exposed as a fraud. Most of the club members weren't that serious about authenticity. They liked to read Regency romances and talk about them, but club meetings were primarily an excuse to get out of the house and share gossip and refreshments with their friends.

The moment the gavel descended, there was a sc.r.a.ping back of chairs and a headlong rush toward the refreshment table. Hannah was ready. She had tea and coffee, both "leaded" and "unleaded," and her best silver platters heaped high with cookies. As she poured steaming beverages into bone-china cups-blue flowers for the decaf and pink flowers for regular-Hannah thought about the phone call she'd received from Bill before she'd left the shop. The homeless man, whose name was "Blaze," was no longer a suspect. Reverend Warren Strandberg had picked him up just after Claire had seen him and taken him to the Bible Church soup kitchen for breakfast. At the time of Ron's death, Blaze had been scarfing down pancakes with scrambled eggs in front of the reverend, several church volunteers, and some of his homeless peers.

"These are simply marvelous, Hannah." Mrs. Diana Greer-son, wife of the local bank president and social climber par excellence, held a cup of herbal tea in one hand and nibbled on a cookie in the other, her pinkie extended.

"I'm so glad you like them, Diana." Hannah motioned toward the platter. "Do have another."

"Oh, I couldn't. I eat like a bird, you know."

The thought of a vulture tearing greedily at a carca.s.s flashed before Hannah's eyes. The last time she'd catered an event that Diana had attended, she'd caught her dropping at least a half-dozen Date Delights in her purse.

While Hannah poured and offered coffee or tea to the women in Lake Eden, she kept a sharp eye out for her mother. Before she'd even reached kindergarten age, she'd discovered that Delores had a barometer face. If her eyes snapped, a storm of criticism was imminent. If her lips turned up, their encounter would be sunny with compliments. If there was a crease between her perfectly plucked eyebrows, a rain of judgmental questions was about to fall. Even a bland expression meant something. It warned of sudden change, and Hannah knew that she had to be prepared to either s.h.i.+ver under her mother's icy censure or bask in the warmth of her approval.

Hannah filled a cup with regular coffee for Sally Percy, the wife of Andrea's boss, and glanced at the end of the line again. What she saw made her relax for the first time that day. Her mother was standing in line with Carrie Rhodes, and both women smiled widely when they caught her eye. Hannah knew immediately that Norman had announced their plans to go to the Woodleys' party together. It was the old case of "I know, you know, and I know you know."

As the line snaked slowly past her, and Hannah concentrated on exchanging pleasantries with everyone she served, she noticed that Delores and Carrie seemed to be having a slight difference of opinion. They weren't arguing. It was much too friendly for that. But Hannah heard faint strains of "But I'd like to, really. This is so good for Norman" from Carrie, and "No, she'd never accept it from you" from Delores. Then Carrie's voice wafted down to Hannah, "I'll order the corsage. What type of flowers does she like?" And Delores answered, "She adores sunflowers, but those wouldn't do at all. How about orchids?"

By the time Delores and Carrie had arrived at Hannah's station by the coffee urns, they were both wearing identical "cat that got into the cream pot" smiles, a very useful phrase that Hannah had picked up while paging through her mother's Regency romances. Carrie took a cup of herbal tea, Delores selected black coffee, and then Delores leaned close. "We just came from Beau Monde and Claire told us you bought a new dress for the Woodleys' party."

"That's right, Mother." Hannah wasn't surprised that her mother knew about her recent purchase. It was almost impossible to keep secrets in a town the size of Lake Eden.

"I'd like to buy it for you, dear. Let's call it an early birthday present."

Hannah was surprised. Her mother usually wasn't this generous. "That's very nice of you, Mother, but my birthday's in July and that's over eight months away."

"All right then, Christmas. I'm just so pleased that you bought something in the 'first stare of fas.h.i.+on,' dear. Claire said it looked divine on you and everyone knows that Claire has exquisite taste. You must let me reimburse you. I insist."