Chapter
! Four #
“No!” Hannah groaned, categorically refusing to open her eyes. She reached for the snooze button on her alarm clock to shut off its infernal electronic beeping before it could fully wake her, but there was something wrong with her arm. It wouldn’t move! She could wiggle it slightly, but that was all. Had she suffered some type of debilitating injury while she slept? Or was she only dreaming that her arm was partially paralyzed?
There was only one way to find out and that was to open her eyes. Hannah groaned again and forced her eyelids up and open. In the dim wattage cast by the nightlight she’d bought the last time she’d climbed out of bed in the dark and stubbed her toe, she could see her arm, under the blanket, stretched out on the bed and perfectly immobile. But there was something different about it. Some time during the night it had swelled up to at least three times its normal size. That didn’t bode well!
Hannah wiggled her fingers, feeling the tingles that accompanied a cut-off blood supply. It was clear her arm had gone to sleep. But why was it swollen? Had she suffered some kind of neurological damage without even waking up?
As Hannah stared at the limb that had betrayed her while she slept, she saw two small peaks rise up from the vicinity of her armpit. The peaks were attached to a round fuzzy orb 40
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and for a moment Hannah was puzzled. Then she gave a startled laugh as she realized what had happened. The peaks and the fuzzy orb belonged to Moishe. The temperature must have dropped below freezing in the middle of the night, because he’d left his usual place at the bottom of her bed to seek warmer climes above. No wonder her arm had gone to sleep! It was buried beneath over twenty pounds of dozing cat.
“Come on, Moishe … get off my arm!” Hannah rolled over with difficulty and reached across her own body to give him a push. This elicited a protesting yowl, but he climbed off, and Hannah’s arm was freed from its furry burden.
The first thing Hannah did with her newly restored hand was shut off the alarm. She was awake now, and the urge to slumber for another five minutes was a wee bit easier to resist, especially when she reminded herself that today would be a busy day. Not only did she have cookie and dessert baking to do for her bakery and coffee shop, she’d agreed to cater luncheon at her mother’s regency romance club Christmas meeting.
Michelle had gone home with Andrea last night and they planned to head out early this morning to take care of several items on the To Do list. They’d start off by driving to the Lake Eden Inn to check the clock in Sally’s kitchen, pick up a copy of the guest list for last night’s party, and time their walk from the kitchen door that Wayne Bergstrom had used to the base of the snow bank where Hannah had found his body. During the afternoon, they’d do a little reconnoitering with their male counterparts. Andrea would pump Bill for information about the investigation, and Michelle would find out what Lonnie knew. The three sisters would compare notes that evening when they met at Andrea’s house for dinner.
“Coffee,” Hannah breathed and it was more of a prayer than a statement. She needed caffeine and she needed it now, before Newton’s First Law of Motion, the one about inertia, CANDY CANE MURDER
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came into play. A body at rest tended to stay at rest. And applying this principle of physics to her own life meant that if she didn’t get up soon, she might fall under the First Law and just sit on the edge of her bed, staring at the wall all day.
“Coffee. Coffee now!” It was as close to a cheer as she could come up with in the cold predawn of a December morning, but it served to whet her appetite for the hot, aromatic brew her great grandmother Elsa had called Swedish Plasma.
Before she had time to think, which would only have served to confuse her, Hannah was on her feet. And then her feet were moving, heading down the hallway toward the kitchen.
The coffeepot that had activated automatically five minutes before her alarm clock had sounded was now sitting on the counter with a full carafe of the world’s most popular lifesustaining potion, just waiting for her to imbibe.
“You, here. Me, there,” she said to the cat who followed her into the kitchen, batting at the ends of the belt she’d forgotten to tie on her robe. Moishe appeared to understand his mistress’s pidgin English because he backed off immediately and took up a position of hope by his empty food bowl.
Hannah had her priorities straight. It took every corner of her partially alert mind to do it, but she opened the combination padlock on the broom closet, pulled out the forty-pound sack of kitty kibble that Moishe loved, and dumped a full measure into his bowl. She replaced the kibble, replaced the padlock, and then she poured her first cup of coffee.
“Uff-dah!” she groaned, audibly revealing her Minnesota roots as she sank down on one of the chairs that had come with her Formica-topped breakfast table. She glanced over to see if Moishe was eating and was about to pick up her mug of coffee for that first bracing sip, when she saw something red out of the corner of her eye.
It was a red scarf tied around the handle of her refrigerator. For several moments Hannah was genuinely puzzled, but then she caught sight of the mixing bowl and utensils washed 42
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and stacked on the counter, and everything became clear.
When everyone had left last night, at shortly before two in the morning, Hannah had intended to go straight to bed. Unfortunately her mind was still racing and there was no way she could sleep. Instead of wasting valuable time tossing and turning, she’d flicked on the lights in the kitchen and mixed up a batch of cookies. They were experimental, something she’d been planning to try for several months, and the dough was chilling in the refrigerator. That was the reason she’d tied her scarf around the handle of the refrigerator. It was to remind her to take the dough with her when she left for work, so that she could bake it at The Cookie Jar. If the cookies were as good as she expected them to be, she’d serve them at her mother’s club luncheon.
First things first, Hannah told herself, raising the mug of coffee to her lips. She breathed in deeply, inhaling the antioxidants in the steam that some researcher claimed would save coffee kiosk employees from lung cancer. Hannah thought that would be lovely, but she didn’t believe it for a second.
On the other hand, what could it hurt? She’d been inhaling the steam from coffee for years simply because she loved the aroma.
Another deep coffee-flavored sniff and it was time to enjoy the brew. Hannah was just about to take that first scalding sip when the telephone rang.
“Mother!” she exclaimed, in the same voice she would have used if she’d skidded off the road and into a ditch. She swallowed fast, taking a sip while she could, and glanced over at her Mother-barometer. Sure enough, Moishe’s fur was bristling and he’d puffed up like a Halloween cat. He’d also begun to make the growling sound, deep in his throat, that meant, Maybe you’re bigger than I am, but I’m gonna shred those pantyhose you’re wearing. It wasn’t a guarantee that Delores Swensen was on the other end of the line, but Hannah’s feline roommate was right a whole lot more than he was wrong.
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Hannah took another sip of her coffee and then she stood up to reach for the wall phone. She sat right back down again, knowing that no previous conversation with her mother had ever lasted less than fifteen minutes, and answered. “Hello, Mother.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Hannah!” Delores gave a deep sigh that was so forceful, it almost tickled Hannah’s ear.
“What if I wasn’t me?”
“Then you’d need to see a psychiatrist, because you’d have an identity crisis.”
“Hannah!”
“Sorry, Mother.”
Delores gave an exasperated sigh that was almost as loud as her previous sigh. “You always say that, and you still answer the phone that way. But I didn’t call to argue with you.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Hannah said, winking at her cat, who was still puffed up several times his size, preparing to take on any predator.
“I’m not going to argue, but I do have a bone to pick with you, Hannah.”
Hannah took another sip of coffee, wisely saying nothing.
Her mother was only mildly upset. If she’d been extremely upset, she would have called Hannah by her first and middle names.
“Bill called me this morning to ask me about Melinda.”
“Melinda who?” Hannah asked, wondering what in the world her mother was talking about.
“Melinda Bergstrom, Wayne’s wife. Surely you remember Wayne Bergstrom. You found his body last night. And you found it practically in front of your sisters!” Delores delivered another sigh that made the phone give an odd little sound that probably meant it had exceeded its decibel level.
“You have got to stop doing this, Hannah Louise!”
Uh-oh! Hannah’s mind shouted out a warning. Delores only used her middle name when she was what her father had called, “loaded for bear.”