Chapter Seventeen
The three sisters worked in silence, helping Hannah assemble the casseroles she was making for tonight’s dinner. Andrea opened cans, Michelle chopped onions, and Hannah fried hamburger, enough for four batches of Wanmansita Casserole.
“To tell you the truth, Hannah, I really don’t know what to do about Ronni Ward, either.” Andrea broke the heavy silence that had fallen over them. “It’s just that I thought a complete makeover might help. I shouldn’t have said that about you being jealous.”
“That’s true. You were dead wrong, you know. The sinking feeling in my stomach and the overwhelming urge to wrap my hands around Ronni Ward’s perfectly shaped throat and squeeze couldn’t possibly be caused by jealousy.”
Both Andrea and Michelle burst into laughter, and Hannah joined in. It was a good moment sandwiched in between all the bad things that had happened lately, and all three wanted to savor it for as long as they could.
When they’d quieted down again, Andrea turned to Hannah. “How about a makeover for you, too? I can run and find Bertie and make an appointment, my treat.”
“No, thanks. I don’t think it would help.” Hannah carried the first casserole to the preheated oven and slipped it inside.
“Okay then. How about going out to Heavenly Bodies at the mall with me?”
“What’s Heavenly Bodies?” Michelle asked.
“It’s a new fitness club. Their motto is, We’ll make you look like a star. That’s because of the name. Do you get it?”
Michelle groaned and gave Hannah one of those I-don’t-believe-she-said-that looks.
“We get it,” Hannah answered Andrea. “You know how I feel about fitness clubs. They’d have to open at three A.M. for me to go there before work. And after work, I’m too tired to go anywhere that requires any effort. It would be a waste of money for me to join.”
“But this one’s different. They give you a key to the outside door and you can come in anytime, day or night, twenty-four seven.”
“They have around-the-clock staff?” Michelle looked interested.
“No, but they’ve got an agreement with the guards at the mall to come in to check every hour.”
“That doesn’t sound very safe to me,” Hannah said. “I wouldn’t want to go there by myself at three in the morning, knowing that dozens of other people had keys and any one of them could unlock the door and walk in on me.”
“I wouldn’t feel safe, either,” Michelle added her opinion. “It would be creepy to go to a gym alone at night.”
Andrea shrugged. “Go during the day, then. You could always go on your lunch hour. Lisa would be happy to handle the coffee shop by herself for an hour or so, especially if she thought it was helping you.”
“That’s another point. I don’t think it would be helping me.” Hannah picked up another casserole and slid it into the oven. “I’ve never been able to stick with an exercise program, and there’s no reason to think it would be different this time. I start out just fine, but after a week or so, I start making excuses for not exercising. And then, before I realize what I’m doing, it’s been over a month since I’ve jogged, or used the treadmill, or whatever I planned to do. Besides…” Hannah paused to carry the remaining casseroles to the oven, and when she came back, she plunked down on the stool at the counter and sighed. “Look, Andrea…it doesn’t really matter how cute the club’s name is or the promises they make. Let’s face reality here. We all know I’m never going to look like a star.”
“Well, you are a star as far as I’m concerned!” Andrea looked very serious.
“With me, too,” Michelle chimed in.
“Thanks,” Hannah said. It was nice to get a vote of confidence from her sisters.
“Let’s not talk about makeovers, or fitness clubs, or Ronni Ward anymore, then. It’s just too depressing.” Andrea reached into the briefcase she was carrying and pulled out an envelope. “Let’s talk about murder instead.”
There was perfect silence for a nanosecond, and then both Hannah and Michelle burst into a volley of laughter. Andrea looked slightly puzzled for a moment, and then she began to smile. “I didn’t realize I made a joke,” she said, handing the envelope to Hannah. “I brought these for you.”
“What are they?”
“Crime scene photos. Bill brought them home with him last night, and I scanned them into the computer after he went to bed. I printed them out this morning as soon as he left for work.”
“Thanks, Andrea. These will help me a lot.” Hannah didn’t mention that Mike had offered to give her a set of the crime scene photos. “Did you look at them?”
“No. You know I don’t like gory things. I figured I’d let you look first, and you could show me the ones that aren’t too awful.”
Michelle began to frown. “Wait a second. How did you scan the photos and print them out without looking at them?”
“It was easy. They go face down on the scanner, so that was no problem. And then, when I brought them up on the screen to print them out this morning, I just peeked through my fingers, clicked on them, and sent them to the printer.”
“But they came out face-up, didn’t they?” Hannah questioned her. And then, when both of her sisters turned to look at her in surprise, she asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’ve been using your computer!” Andrea exclaimed.
“Of course I’ve been using my computer. Norman’s been giving me lessons. Mother’s using a computer, for crying out loud! I don’t want to be the only holdout in the family.”
“It’s a matter of pride,” Michelle explained to Andrea.
“No, it’s actually a matter of necessity,” Hannah countered. “I got tired of asking Norman to look up things on the Internet for me.”
Andrea gave a smile of approval. “Well, good for you,” she said. “And speaking of good, those casseroles you put in the oven are starting to smell great. What are they called again?”
“Wanmansita Casseroles. It’s Gary Hayes’s recipe. You remember Gary and Sally, don’t you? They used to live right across the street from Mother.”
“Sally with the apron collection!” Michelle identified her. “You used to take me over there, and she’d let me look at her aprons while you talked about recipes and stuff.”
“That’s right.”
“Wait a second.” Andrea began to frown. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does. I used to get home from school early because I had study hall last period. And I’d take Michelle over to Sally’s with me.”
“Not that. I remember that you went over there. It’s just that Sally and Gary lived right here in Lake Eden. And if they lived here, why does Gary call it a casserole?”
For a moment Hannah was confused, but then she realized what her sister was asking. “You mean, the word casserole, instead of the word hotdish?”
“Yes. Everybody in Lake Eden says hotdish. What’s the difference, anyway?”
“I’m not positive, but I don’t think there’s any difference between a casserole and a hotdish. It’s probably another example of regional dialogue,” Hannah did her best to explain.
“You mean like pop and soda?” Michelle asked.
“Exactly right. Sally said it was an old recipe from Gary’s family, and I think they came from Oklahoma. They must call a hotdish a casserole there. Or it got passed on to another relative who changed the word hotdish to casserole.”
Andrea gave a big smile. “That explains the rest of the name, then. There are a lot of American Indians in Oklahoma, and Wanmansita is probably an American Indian word. I should ask Jon Walker.”
Hannah shook her head. “Jon’s Chippewa, and I don’t believe they got as far west as Oklahoma.”
“Well, what American Indian tribe would it be?”
“It depends on when the recipe was named,” Michelle told her. “And there are lots of Indian tribes in Oklahoma. They’ve got the Delaware, Arapaho, Miami, Iowa, Shawnee, Caw, Creek, Chickasaw, Cheyenne, Cherokee, Witchita, Patawatomi, Peoria, and Osage, plus a couple of others I can’t remember.”
Andrea looked impressed. “How do you know all that?”
“I took a course in Indian Studies last fall, and it was taught by a visiting professor from O.S.U. The names were so intriguing, I remember them. And besides, there’s a mnemonic. It’s Donna Asked Mom In Secret, Can Wally Play Outside? The first letter of each word stands for the first letter of an Indian tribe.”
“But you named more C’s than that!”
Michelle laughed. “You’re right. You have to remember that there are four C’s and two P’s. It’s not as easy as the word HOMES for the Great Lakes.”
“Or Roy G. Biv for the colors of the spectrum.” Hannah added.
“Or Mother Very Eagerly Made Jelly Sandwiches Under No Protest.”
“The planets,” Michelle said. “I never could remember them without that.”
“But now you’ll have to, since Protest is gone,” Hannah reminded her.
“Pluto.” Michelle gave a little sigh. “I forgot all about Pluto.”
“What about Pluto?” Andrea asked.
“It’s not a full planet anymore. It’s been downgraded to a dwarf.”
“Oh, no!” Andrea looked horrified.
“What’s the matter?” Hannah asked her. “You look as if you just lost your best friend.”
“It’s Tracey. I just taught her the planets that way! And now she’s going to get them wrong when she goes in to be tested for her Girl Scout badge.”
“She’s smart enough to remember to leave Pluto out,” Hannah comforted her sister. “Just remind her before she goes to the meeting, or wherever they go to be tested.”
“It’s the school. The scouts are using the auditorium since school hasn’t started yet. And Tracey’s the youngest one going for a badge, and she really wants to get it right.”
“She will,” Michelle said with a smile. “But I thought Tracey was a Brownie Scout, not a Girl Scout.”
“She is, but Bonnie Surma got a special exception for Tracey to study for her badges early. And it’s a really big deal this year because one of the ladies from national is coming to award the badges.”
“Tracey will be fine. Don’t worry,” Hannah reassured her sister again, and then she picked up the envelope and removed a file that was inside. “Let’s go over the crime scene photos together.”
“Don’t look,” Andrea instructed Michelle.
“What do you mean, don’t look? It’s not like I’m a child, you know. You don’t have to protect me from the ugly side of life.”
“You’re too young to know anything about the ugly side of life. The ugliest thing you ever saw was the stuffed boar’s head that hung over Grandpa and Grandma Swensen’s couch!”
“I thought that boar’s head was cute! All that bristly hair sticking up. He looked like a character in a cartoon. But getting back to the ugly side, I bet I’ve seen more ugly things than…”
“That’s enough, girls!” Hannah interrupted, stepping in with her best big-sister-in-charge voice. “If you don’t stop squabbling, I won’t let you taste the new cookies I brought.”
There was complete silence for a moment, a phenomenon that deeply gratified Hannah. She hadn’t lost her big sister touch.
“New cookies?” Michelle was the first to speak.
“Yes. I made them for Jack Herman’s birthday party tonight. Lisa’s mom used to make a similar cookie years ago.”
“Do they have chocolate?” Andrea wanted to know. “I’m going to need chocolate if I’m going to look at anything the least bit gory.”
“They’ve got plenty of chocolate. There’s chocolate in the cookie dough and more chocolate chips inside. And there’s cream cheese frosting, too.”
Michelle gave a little whimper of anticipation. “Cream cheese frosting is my very favorite. Sometimes I make up a batch and spread it on soda crackers.”
“Is that good?” Andrea asked her.
“Yes, but make sure you buy salted soda crackers. Then you lay them out with the salt side down and frost the other side. You can spread it between two graham crackers, too. Or two chocolate cookie wafers. That tastes almost like Oreos.”
With peace restored and cookie hunger kindled, Hannah wasted no time opening her box of Red Velvet Cookies and giving each of her sisters a sample. While they were tasting her newest creation, she paged through the crime scene photos. Since nothing was really gory, she left them all in the pile.
When she was finished censoring the stack of photos, Hannah almost called out, You can look now, the phrase her father had used on Christmas morning when they sat by the Christmas tree, eyes tightly shut, until he brought in the presents that had been too large to wrap. But the photos she held in her hand weren’t presents. They were grim reminders of what could happen when the sanctity of human life was violated.
“I’m ready with the photos,” she said instead.
“These are great cookies, Hannah!” Andrea complimented her, wiping her fingers on a napkin. She picked up the stack of photos, examined the one on top, and then she handed it to Michelle.
“Yuck!” Michelle commented.
“My cookies are yuck?” Hannah, who hadn’t noticed the photo pass from hand to hand, was clearly astounded by Michelle’s remark.
“Not your cookies. They’re absolutely fantastic, and they remind me of red velvet cake. I meant this photograph. He was stabbed, right?”
Hannah nodded. “Keep your eye out for something unusual that I might have missed, or anything that doesn’t fit with the way you remember the pavilion from the night of the dance.”
“But you were right there,” Michelle pointed out. “You found him. You saw everything with your own two eyes. How could you have missed something?”
“Hannah was probably in shock,” Andrea reminded her. “Finding a dead body isn’t fun.”
“Okay. You’re right,” Michelle said, taking the next photo from Andrea and examining it.
Nobody said anything for at least five minutes, an unusual occurrence when the three Swensen sisters got together. But Hannah was busy watching her younger sisters, and Michelle and Andrea were absorbed in examining the photos. Finally the last one was placed facedown on the counter.
Andrea gave a big sigh. “I didn’t see anything unusual,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure that everything looked just the way it did when I left the dance.”
Michelle gave a little nod. “I agree. I’m sorry we didn’t learn anything new, Hannah.”
“So am I, but I did learn one new thing.”
“You did?” Andrea looked surprised.
“What is it?” Michelle asked.
“Everything was exactly as I remember it. And that means one of two things. Either being in shock doesn’t affect my memory, or I’m getting much too used to finding murder victims!”