“Would you like to go out on the lake with me later?” Hannah asked Sally’s head housekeeper.
“The lake?” Rosa began to frown. “Thank you for asking me, Hannah, but . . . I don’t go anywhere near the water.”
It was a strange answer, and Hannah was puzzled. “Why not?”
“I am . . . do not know how to swim and . . . and the lake reminds me of my . . . my father.”
“Your father?”
“Yes.” Rosa looked so upset, Hannah was almost sorry she’d asked. “My father loved to fish and he took me along when I was a little girl. The wind came up, the boat tipped over, and . . . my father lifted me back in the boat, but he . . . he drowned.”
“Oh, Rosa!” Hannah reached out to pat Rosa’s shoulder. “What a terrible thing to happen!”
“Yes. I miss my father, Hannah. And I do not even walk on the dock. I don’t go anywhere close to the lake. I can look at it through the window, but I never get any closer than that.”
“Did it happen here at Eden Lake?”
Rosa shook her head. “No, but it is the same for all the lakes. They frighten me and I begin to cry.”
“I’m sorry I made you sad by asking,” Hannah apologized.
” No, it is all right, Hannah. It happened years ago, but I will always feel this way about lakes.”
Hannah was thoughtful as she said goodbye to Rosa and walked on down the hallway. What Rosa had told her made one thing very clear. Rosa could not have taken a boat out on the lake to kill Sonny.
When Hannah got to the kitchen, she went straight to the pantry to gather up the ingredients for Lonnie’s brownies and her new cookie recipe. The supplies in the pantry were neatly organized in groups, and as she inspected the nuts, she smiled when she spotted a large bag of roasted and salted Macadamia nuts, right next to the walnuts! She had been prepared to use a substitute for the Macadamia nuts, but Sally had saved her the trouble. Now she could use Lonnie’s favorite nuts in his birthday brownies.
Once the ingredients were arranged in the order she needed them, Hannah propped open her Murder Book and crossed Rosa’s name off her suspect list. Then, as she measured and added ingredients to her large mixing bowls, she thought about her three remaining suspects.
The first suspect who was still on Hannah’s list was the suspect who always had a place on her list, the unidentified suspect with an unknown motive. Since she had no idea who that could be this time around, Hannah flipped the page to the next suspect. It was Lily, and Hannah read what she’d written about Lily.
Rosa had told Hannah the story of how Lily had found her fiancé in bed with the blonde and thrown her out in the hall without her clothes or her room key. It was obvious that Lily had been hopping mad, and that her fiancé had cheated on her was certainly enough to provide a motive for murder. There were other factors that also made Lily a prime suspect. Lily had been raised around fishing boats. She even towed her own boat behind her wherever she went. She had grown up working in her father’s flagship sporting goods store, where she could have gained a working knowledge of firearms and how to use them. Lily was a perfect suspect.
Hannah added another ingredient to her mixing bowl and stirred it in. But was Lily the killer? Could she have followed her fiancé back to the far end of Eden Lake and cold-bloodedly murdered him? Could Lily become so disillusioned that she’d execute the man she’d once promised to marry?
It was possible. Hannah knew that. A woman scorned could be very vindictive. She didn’t want to believe that Lily, someone she liked, had actually murdered Sonny, but it was definitely possible.
The brownie batter was smelling so good, Hannah was tempted to dip her finger into the batter and try it. She barely managed to resist that urge, and hurried to prepare the pans for baking. She’d already set Sally’s industrial oven for three hundred fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and it had come up to temperature.
Hannah divided the brownie batter between the pans as evenly as she could. Then she slipped them into the shelves in the oven, set the timer for the required baking time, and poured herself a cup of coffee before starting to mix up the cookies.
As she sipped the bracing brew, Hannah thought about Lily’s life. It couldn’t have been easy growing up without her mother. But how had it affected Lily? Did it cause her to lose her trust in the people she loved?
This kind of pseudo-psychological speculation was getting her nowhere, and Hannah knew it. She flipped to the third suspect in her book and read what she’d written about Lily’s mother, Janette.
She’d written down the things that she learned when Sally brought Janette to the kitchen. Andrea had written her results when she’d called the St. Cloud office of the sporting goods store. They’d told Andrea that Janette had worked for them on the day that Sonny was killed. That, in itself, should be enough to clear Janette, but Hannah decided to double-check. Rosa had mentioned that Janette often took the daily books home from various locations and worked on them in her home office. While it was undoubtedly true that Janette had worked for the St. Cloud store on the day that Sonny had been murdered, was Janette actually on location at the store itself?
A mouthwatering scent was beginning to come from the oven, and Hannah breathed it in and smiled. She could hardly wait to taste the brownies. She planned to frost them with her favorite fudge frosting once they cooled, but she could do that later. Right now she needed to mix up and bake the recipe Craig had given her. She mixed the cookie recipe while she was waiting for the brownies to come out of the oven. Once they had, she formed the cookies and filled the cookie sheets.
The cookie sheets went into the industrial oven. Then she sat down at the kitchen table to enjoy a rejuvenating cup of coffee. Once everything she’d made, baked, and frosted was finished and on the bakers rack, she was exhausted. Perhaps she should go out on the lake to recharge her batteries by getting some fresh air and sunshine.
POTATO CHIP AND CRANBERRY COOKIES
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.
Ingredients:
1 and ? cups salted, softened butter (3 sticks, ? pound, 12 ounces)
1 and ? cups white (granulated) sugar
2 egg yolks (save the whites in a covered, refrigerated container and add them to scrambled eggs in the morning)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 and ? cups all-purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)
1 and ? cups finely crushed salted potato chips (measure AFTER crushing)
1 and ? cups finely chopped walnuts (measure AFTER chopping)
1 cup dried cranberries (you can use the cherry flavored if you like)
? cup white (granulated) sugar for dipping
Approximately 5 dozen walnut or Maraschino cherry HALVES for decoration