Carrot Cake Murder Part 11

"Yes, I do. You see, I dated Gus in high school, long before I met your father."

Hannah came close to groaning. The best thing to do would be to cut her mother off at the pa.s.s, before she could say anymore. "I don't need to know that, Mother. Was the tattoo two crossed bats with a baseball between them?"

"Yes!"

"And it was on the left of Gus's backside?"

"That's right! But how did you...?"

"Three women already told me about it," Hannah interrupted her mother's question. "And there's probably a couple more waiting to catch me alone."

"And they all told you about his tattoo?" Delores looked outraged. "That rat! He told me he loved me! Who were they? I have to know."

"No, you don't. They all found out about the tattoo by accident."

"By accident? What do you mean?"

"One was visiting Marge and walked by his bedroom door when he was dressing, one peeked over the wall in the boys' changing room at the lake, and the other one..." Hannah stopped abruptly. She couldn't mention the princ.i.p.al's office because her mother would be able to identify Rose as the secretary. "He mooned the other one," she settled for saying, only recounting the second part of Rose's experience.

"Likely stories!" Delores gave a little snort. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I knew all along that Gus was a rakeh.e.l.l."

"Is that the same as a bounder and a scoundrel?" Hannah asked, exhausting her Regency Romance vocabulary.

"In a way, dear. It's a matter of degree. But it's water over the dam. It happened years ago, and I don't know why I got so upset."

"I do," Hannah said, before she could stop herself.

"You do?"

"Yes. You wonder how you could have been so naive."

"And gullible. And you wonder how many people know you were that vulnerable back then."

"That, too." Hannah reached out and squeezed her mother's shoulder. Since she'd grown up in a family that seldom showed overt affection, this was tantamount to a hug. "The same thing happened to me when I was in school. But I was older and I really should have known better."

"Really?" Delores gave Hannah's hand a pat, the Swensen family way of returning a hug.

"There was someone in college, an a.s.sistant professor. He said he loved me, and I believed him, but I found out that he was engaged to somebody else."

Delores looked shocked. "That's just awful, dear!"

"It was. It took me a long time to get over it. It's one of the reasons I didn't want to go back to college after Dad died."

"Because he was still there?"

"That's right. He probably still is, for all I know."

Delores gave her a shrewd look. "You don't care enough to find out?"

"Not really."

"You're over it, then," Delores p.r.o.nounced. "The strange thing is, I was sure I was over Gus when I started dating your father."

"But you weren't?"

Delores frowned. "I think I was. And I'm sure it wouldn't have bothered me a bit if your father were still alive. But he isn't. And seeing Gus again brought up old memories."

"I understand," Hannah said. And she did.

"But I almost forgot to tell you something. I talked to Iris Herman Staples this afternoon. She's Lisa's oldest sister, you know."

"I know."

"Well, she remembered some cookies that their mother used to make, and she said they were Jack's favorite cookies. She was just a toddler at the time, but she remembered them. Marge and Patsy did, too. They said their mother used to love those cookies so much, she'd hired Emmy to bake them whenever she had ladies over for meetings."

"What kind of cookies were they?" Hannah asked.

"Patsy said that Emmy called them Red Velvet Cookies. We were eating a piece of Edna's red velvet cake at the time, and they all agreed that the cookies were just like the cake, except that they had more chocolate in the batter and there were chocolate chips inside. They were even frosted with a cream cheese frosting. You've eaten Edna's cake, haven't you, dear?"

"Yes." Hannah thought she knew exactly where her mother's conversation was heading.

"I mentioned the cookies to Lisa, and she looked through her mother's recipe box, but she couldn't find any cookie recipe like that. Jack remembers them, though, and he told Lisa they were the best cookies he'd even eaten."

Hannah couldn't stay silent any longer. "So you want me to try to make a red velvet cookie that tastes like the one Jack remembers?"

"That's right, dear. It won't be too much trouble, will it?"

Hannah felt like laughing, but she didn't. Her mother had no concept of how many batches of trial-and-error cookies she'd have to bake before she found the proper balance of ingredients. And even when she arrived at a cookie recipe that worked, she still had no a.s.surance that it would even remotely resemble the cookie that Jack Herman remembered.

"Dear?"

Hannah gave a tired little sigh and bowed to the inevitable. "I'll do my best, Mother," she promised.

"I asked Edna to write out her recipe for you." Delores handed her a piece of notebook paper covered with Edna's fine, spidery writing.

"Thanks, Mother. This'll help."

"Then you think you can do it?"

"I'll give it my best shot."

"By tomorrow night? It's Jack's birthday, and I think it would be wonderful to surprise him with a batch of his favorite cookies. Unless, of course, you're too busy to bake them."

"I'll try, Mother," Hannah repeated, realizing that it would be another night with less sleep than she needed.

"Thank you, dear. Just let me know if there's any way I can help you."

Hannah was about to say there was nothing her mother could do, when she thought of something. "There is one thing..."

"You want me to help you bake?" Delores sounded even more panic-stricken than Andrea had when Hannah had once asked her to listen for the timer and take cookies out of the oven at The Cookie Jar.

"No, Mother. I can handle the baking part. It's just that I need to ask you more questions about Gus. Will you drop by the shop around ten for coffee tomorrow morning?"

"Of course I will."

"Good. I'll try to have a test cookie ready for you to taste. And could you ask Marge to let you into the library later tonight or early tomorrow morning to collect any Jordan High yearbooks you can find with pictures of Gus?"

"I'll do it right after the slide show's over. Marge wants to help you any way she can."

"Thanks. I'd better get going, Mother. I want to mix up some cookie dough tonight and bake it first thing tomorrow morning."

Chapter Twelve.

Hannah wasn't quite sure what to expect when she opened the door to the condo, but when Moishe wasn't there to leap into her arms, she knew what she'd find wouldn't be good. He was hiding again and that meant trouble.

The living room looked fine at first glance. It even looked fine when she walked through it, eyeing anything that could be destroyed by a determined feline. The one remaining couch pillow was intact, and so were the couch, the crocheted throw from her Grandma Ingrid's farmhouse, and the bouquet of silk flowers Delores had given her for her coffee table. Her desk appeared to be fine, but there was something hanging over it, something new, something...

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed, stepping closer. Norman must have had time to deliver the Kitty Kondo because it was standing...perhaps looming was a better word...over her desk.

There was a sound, and Hannah turned to see Moishe sidling into the room. He stepped cautiously closer but stopped short of her, staring at his Kitty Kondo with narrowed eyes. Then he puffed up like a Halloween cat, and the hair on his back stood up. He made a low, growling noise Hannah had only heard him make a few times before, and she knew he was suspicious and fearful of the new piece of furniture that had invaded his living room.

"It's okay. Norman put it there for you," Hannah attempted to explain. "It's a Kitty Kondo, and it's an activity center for cats."

Moishe's ears canted back to flatten against his head, and Hannah knew he wasn't convinced. "Just look at this," she said, stepping up to the carpeted tower and batting at one of the jingling b.a.l.l.s hanging from the pole on the second story. "Isn't that fun?"

Moishe's growl was not an a.s.sent, and Hannah was wise enough to know it. Some less savvy human roommates might have attempted to pick him up and put him on the activity center, but not Hannah. She valued the skin on her arms too much, and she didn't want to arrive at Jack's birthday party tomorrow night covered in Band-aids. Moishe would have to learn to like his new Kitty Kondo gradually.

"Let's go have some tuna," Hannah said, leading the way to the kitchen without checking the rest of the rooms for damage. Moishe had obviously been traumatized by the forest green Kitty Kondo that had invaded his living room, but a whole can of albacore tuna should take his mind off the carpeted intruder.

Two hours later, Hannah slipped on the oversized T-s.h.i.+rt she wore as a summer nightgown and crawled into bed. Moishe had cut a wide berth around the activity center when they walked through the living room on their way to bed, but he hadn't growled or bristled, and that was a good sign.

She certainly hoped the cookie dough she'd mixed up after two failed attempts would work. She'd read through Edna's red velvet cake recipe, balanced the wet and dry ingredients for drop cookie dough rather than a cake batter, and added more chocolate and some chocolate chips. There was no point in using the vinegar and baking soda, since the cookie dough would sit out on the counter and lose its fizz between batches. She couldn't use b.u.t.termilk, either, since she didn't have any in her refrigerator and she certainly didn't want to drive out to the Quick Stop to buy some.

The first batch she'd baked looked fine, but they were too flat and chewy. The second batch solved that problem, but they fell apart when she tried to take them off the cookie sheet. She thought she'd managed to mix up a winner with the third batch, but she was so tired her eyes were beginning to cross. She covered the dough and stashed it in her refrigerator. She'd be risking disaster by baking more cookies tonight. The third batch would have to wait until morning to bake.

"'Night, Moishe," she whispered, reaching out to give her pet a scratch under the chin. Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep to dream of Red Velvet Cookies dancing around the floor of the Lake Pavilion while Frankie and the Frankfurters played the Beer Barrel Polka.

It wasn't morning. It couldn't be morning. But it must be morning, because a rooster was crowing in the living room.

Hannah rolled over and pulled the covers over her head, but that didn't help. The rooster kept right on crowing. Except it wasn't exactly crowing. It was more of a chirping sound, like a cricket on steroids, or a frog croaking in a falsetto, or a mouse being terrorized by a...

Hannah's eyes popped open. Her mind was working so hard to identify the origin of the sound she was hearing, it had awakened her. And it was the middle of the night. At least she thought it was the middle of the night. It was certainly dark enough to be the middle of the night.

There it was again, a sort of a high-pitched squeak. Perhaps it was a mouse being terrorized by a cat! "Moishe?" she called out, flicking on the light.

Moishe was nowhere in sight. He wasn't on the bed, and he wasn't in it, either, because there was no lump under the covers. He wasn't in the bedroom at all. The chirping had stopped, and Hannah knew that meant she had to get up. She gave a tired sigh as she pulled her slippers out from under the bed and put them on. It was a warm summer night, and she didn't need to protect her feet from cold floors. But her slippers were washable, and she did need to protect her feet from any tangible evidence of rodent carnage that might be scattered in her path.

There was nothing in the hallway. Hannah was careful as she walked. And there was nothing in the living room except...

Hannah stopped short as she spotted Moishe sitting proudly on the second floor of his Kitty Kondo. He was practically grinning at her, but not so widely that he might drop the prize in his mouth. It was a furry gray mouse with a string attached, and Hannah knew that string had been tied to the pole of kitty toys when they'd gone to bed. Moishe must have gathered his courage and gone up there in the middle of the night to get his prize. And he must be chewing on it right now, even though she couldn't see his jaw working, because it was making a new sound, an electronic beeping sound that seemed to be coming from her bedroom.

Realization dawned and with it, Hannah groaned. The beeping was coming from her alarm clock. It was time to get up and face the morning. She'd had a full four-hours' sleep, and that was all she was going to get.

There was a soft hissing sound from the kitchen, and Hannah sniffed the air. The last of the water had gone into her coffeemaker's basket and it was dripping down through the coffee grounds to join the fresh brew that awaited her in the carafe.

"I should have taught you to shut off the alarm clock," Hannah said, addressing her courageous hunter.

As Hannah turned to go back to the bedroom to shut off her alarm, Moishe made a sound that she took for agreement, but he didn't open his mouth. It was clear he wasn't about to give up his prey for an early-morning conversation.

It didn't take long for Hannah to shower and dress, and she drained the last of her first mug of coffee as she walked down the hallway to the kitchen again. There she found Moishe still staring at the food in his bowl, the toy mouse held tightly in his mouth. "Can't have your mouse and eat it, too?" she asked, pointing to the food bowl.

Moishe made another pathetic closed-mouth sound, and Hannah took pity on him. "I tell you what...why don't I tie the mouse back on the pole, and you can catch him again later? That way you'll have twice the fun." With that said, Hannah reached for the mouse, and surprisingly, Moishe let her have it. As she headed for the living room to tie it back on the pole, she wondered if he'd really understood her and opted for twice the fun, or whether the food in the bowl had simply won out over the nonfood in his mouth.

She had time for one more cup of coffee. Hannah poured her last cup and leaned against the counter to sip it. Once she finished her coffee, all she had to do was retrieve the cookie dough, find her car keys, pick up her purse, and go out the door.

The phone rang, and Hannah mentally corrected herself. All she had to do was answer the phone, pick up the cookie dough, find her keys and her purse, and go.

"h.e.l.lo," she said, answering normally since Moishe wasn't bristling.

"Hi, Hannah. You were up, weren't you?"

It was Norman, and Hannah laughed. "Of course I was up. I have to be at work in thirty minutes. I'm glad you called, though. I wanted to thank you for putting up Moishe's Kitty Kondo."

"You're welcome. I didn't think you'd mind if Sue from downstairs let me in."

"I don't mind at all!"

"Good. I think it's going to take a while before the Big Guy gets used to it. He made himself scarce while I was installing it, and when I tried to coax him closer, he hid under your bed."

"He's a faster learner than you think. You should have seen him this morning playing with that mouse on the pole. He managed to get it loose, and he looked really proud of himself."

"Great! I'll pick up some replacement toys the next time I'm out at the mall. The girl at the pet store said her cats tear up at least one toy a week."

"Thanks, again," Hannah said. "You're the most thoughtful person I know."

There was a silence, and Hannah knew Norman was a bit embarra.s.sed by her compliment. "Well, you are," she told him.

"Thanks. You threw me off balance there and I almost forgot the reason I called. It's number fifty-seven."

"Number fifty-seven?"