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“Well, I didn’t need any zest, because my Whippersnappers taste nice and lemony without it. Is that a word?”
“Yes. Zest is the yellow part of the lemon peel,” Hannah told her.
“Not that. I was talking about lemony. Is lemony a word?”
“If it’s not, it should be,” Hannah settled that query and moved on toward her objective. “If Michelle and I drop in at Tracey’s party, can we taste your cookies?”
“Sure, but you don’t have to wait until then. Just give me a ride home and we’ll have some. Bethie caught a little cold and I want to check in on her.”
“Good idea,” Hannah said, giving her sister an approving nod. Andrea had been a nervous first-time mom with Tracey, reading every baby care book she could get her hands on, and trying to follow everyone’s advice. Of course that was impossible, but Andrea still felt like a failure as a mother whenever Tracey cried. Finally, in desperation, she’d gone back to work as a real estate agent and hired the best nanny in Lake Eden, “Grandma” McCann, to take care of Tracey.
“Won’t Bill mind if you leave?” Michelle asked her.
“No. He’s already danced with me twice, and that’s all the time he has for me tonight. He’s got fifteen ladies to go.”
“Fifteen ladies?” Hannah asked, glancing at Michelle, who looked every bit as puzzled as she felt.
“I asked Sally for an advance copy of the guest list and Bill and I made up our game plan last night. A sheriff has certain obligations, you know, especially if he wants to serve more than one term. Bill has to play politics and dance with all the important women here.”
“Are you talking about women who are married to important men?” Michelle asked, frowning a bit.
“Not necessarily. Rose McDermott is on Bill’s list. You might not think she’s important, but a lot of local people go into the café. If Rose likes Bill and thinks he’s doing a good 22
Joanne Fluke
job, she’ll mention it and that can influence a lot of people when they go to the polls.”
“You’re right.” Michelle looked thoughtful.
“And then there’s Bertie Straub. She’s not shy about telling her customers down at the Cut ’n Curl who they should vote for.”
Hannah was amused. The next election for county sheriff was over three years away. “So you’re already launching Bill’s campaign?”
“It’s never too early to play politics.” Andrea glanced around the room and spotted her husband, deep in conversation with Mayor Bascomb. “Just let me tell Bill I’m leaving and we can go.”
“Can I go with you?” Michelle asked, when Andrea had left.
“Sure. But I thought Lonnie was bringing you back to my place.”
“He was. But he’s pulling a late shift and it’ll save him a trip.”
“If you go with us, you’re going to have to taste Andrea’s cookies,” Hannah warned.
“I know. But my nose is all stuffed up and I won’t be able to taste much. I’ll just chew and swallow. And then I’ll tell her how delicious they are.”
Hannah wished that she had a similar ailment, hoping she’d be able to lie convincingly. Praising Andrea’s cookies would constitute a lot more than a little white lie, but it would make her sister very happy.
“It smells like Christmas trees out here!” Andrea said, taking a deep breath and expelling it in a cloud of white vapor.
“That’s because we’re walking past a whole grove of blue spruce,” Hannah told her.
They walked in silence for a moment, and then Andrea held out her gloved hand. “It’s snowing again. I just love knowing that every snowflake is different. We learned it in CANDY CANE MURDER
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school. They called it one of nature’s miracles because no two are alike.”
“That’s what they thought back then,” Hannah said. “But then Jon Nelson, a cloud physicist from Kyoto, Japan, found that it’s probably not true for the smaller crystals, the ones that barely develop beyond the prism stage.”
There was another long silence. Hannah was about to tell them more about the physicist from Japan when Michelle almost stumbled over a drift of snow on the walkway.
“Careful,” Hannah warned, and Michelle stopped walking.
“Let’s just stand here for a minute and look at the stars. It feels like you can reach out and touch them, they’re so huge tonight! They weren’t like this last night when Mother had us over for dinner.”
“That’s because it’s darker out here,” Hannah explained.
“Lake Eden has streetlights on every corner, and there are lights in all the houses. If you combine the lumens from the old-fashioned globe streetlights Dick and Sally put in on this walkway and add the lights they have at the inn, it doesn’t add up to a fraction of the output of a single arc light in the parking lot at Jordan High.”
Both Michelle and Andrea turned to look at her and Hannah immediately realized her mistake. She was offering science textbooks when what they wanted was poetry.
“Of course maybe it’s not true,” she said, trying to ameliorate the damage.
“Maybe what’s not true?” Andrea asked, and Hannah could tell she was still upset about the snowflakes.
“All of it. But let’s take the snow crystals first. That same cloud scientist compared the number of possible snowflake shapes with the number of atoms in the universe. It would be impossible for scientists to examine them all.”
“So he really doesn’t know.” Andrea looked very relieved.
“It’s just a theory, right?”
“That’s right.”
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Joanne Fluke
“How about the stars?” Michelle asked.
Hannah stuffed her gloved hands in her pockets. “They could be bigger tonight,” she said, crossing her fingers. “It’s not an absolute certainty. I like to think the stars and the moon react to us when we watch them. That makes the night magical.”
This drew smiles from both of her sisters and Hannah relaxed a bit. She had to remember to curb her impulse to be realistic and practical when her sisters wanted whimsy and romance.
“Uh-oh!” Michelle stumbled again. “I just stepped on something slippery,” she said.
“What?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Hold on a second.” Hannah drew a tiny flashlight from her pocket. “Norman gave this to me the last time I dropped my keys in the snow.” She switched on the light and trained the beam on the walkway. “You were right here and you slipped on … this!”
“What is it?” Michelle asked.
“A miniature candy cane wrapped in plastic.” Hannah held it up so both of them could see it. “It’s one of Wayne Bergstrom’s and he must have dropped it on his way to the parking lot.”
“You seem pretty happy about finding it,” Michelle commented, reacting to the smile on her older sister’s face.
“I am. I know it’s mean of me, but I’m glad he lost it. I wanted to keep the leftover candy canes to try out a new cookie recipe, but he told me he wanted them all back for his next Santa appearance.”
Andrea just shook her head. “Wayne’s such a tightwad. It’s not like he doesn’t have more. And they probably cost him practically nothing. What were you going to use them for?”
“Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies. And now I can’t make them until I buy some candy canes.”
Both Andrea and Michelle gave little groans of dismay and CANDY CANE MURDER