Chapter Five
Hannah lowered the driver’s window of her cookie truck to enjoy the gentle breeze wafting off the far shore of Eden Lake. Even though the gravel road around the lake was showing wear from the tourists who’d towed heavy boat trailers and campers, she took the ruts at a fast clip to outrun the mosquitoes. She’d been through enough Minnesota summers to know that if she slowed to a crawl, the insects that some people called the Minnesota State Bird would descend on her arm in hungry hordes to gorge on a luncheon of A negative.
It was a perfectly lovely day. The air was scented with a wisp of smoke from a fisherman’s shore lunch and a dampness that reminded her of wet swimming suits tossed over a porch rail to dry. The sun was almost straight overhead. When it reached its apex, the shadows of the tall pines that lined the lakeshore would be at their smallest, no larger than a dark circle on the ground around the tree trunks. It was the final Monday in August, and Hannah was playing hooky with her mother’s blessing, an occurrence that had never happened during her school days at Jordan High. Delores and Carrie were also playing hooky. They’d closed their antique shop to attend the Beeseman-Herman Family Reunion and sent their assistant, Luanne Hanks, next door to Hannah’s cookie and coffee shop. She’d arrived to take charge just as Hannah was about to turn the CLOSED sign on the front door to OPEN, and now Hannah was free to enjoy this lazy end-of-summer day.
Since she was in no hurry, Hannah took the long way around the lake. Attending Lisa and Herb’s family reunion would be fun as long as she didn’t get buttonholed by Gus Klein again. She’d spent quite enough time with him at the dance last night.
Hannah let out a groan as she came around a curve and saw that the public parking lot was full. In addition to the relatives who were staying at nearby lake cottages, it appeared that everyone in town had driven out for the day’s festivities. It wasn’t surprising, considering the size of both families. Lisa was the youngest daughter in the large Herman family. Most of the children had stayed in the area and married into other large families. The same was true for the Beesemans. At last count, over a hundred people had arrived for the reunion.
Since there weren’t any vacant parking spots, Hannah created one of her own. That was the beauty of owning a four-wheel-drive cookie truck. When the proper gear was engaged, her Suburban climbed up the three-foot berm of dirt surrounding the parking lot and found a semi-level spot on top.
Hannah took the time to spray on mosquito repellent, a precaution she’d learned early on in life. Then she retrieved the large box of cookies she’d packed to add to the lunch table. Kids loved cookies, and there were plenty of kids at the family reunion. She held the box with both hands, dug in her heels to walk down the berm, and then hurried toward the picnic tables by the shore where a crowd was gathering.
Loud, merry voices floated up to greet her. Hannah spied Lisa standing on top of a picnic table, holding a cheerleading megaphone to her lips. She was wearing a red T-shirt with the legend FAMILY IS EVERYTHING.
“It’s time for the family portrait,” Lisa called out. “We’re going to have the lake in the background, so line up at the edge of the water behind the two chairs for your host and hostess. That’s my dad, Jack Herman, and Herb’s mom, Marge Beeseman. Norman and Herb will tell you what row you’re in if you can’t figure it out for yourself. We want the tallest in the back and the shortest in the front.”
Hannah set the cookies down on the food table and headed for the shore to watch. She’d heard that Norman had offered to take the group pictures, and perhaps she could help.
“Hannah!”
Hannah knew that voice, and thankfully it wasn’t Gus. “Hi, Mother,” she said, turning to greet the fashionable, dark-haired woman who would die rather than exceed the petite dress size she’d worn in high school.
“Hello, dear.” Delores steadied herself against her eldest daughter’s arm and shook the sand from one white high-heeled sandal. “I wish I hadn’t worn these today, but I didn’t think the beach would be quite this sandy.”
Hannah laughed. “It’s a beach, Mother. By definition it’s sandy.”
“You’re right, of course. But I didn’t think it would be this sandy.” Delores paused for a moment, and then she gave Hannah a smile. “Did you like the surprise we sent you this morning?”
For a brief moment Hannah was puzzled, but then she got it. “You mean Luanne. That was really thoughtful of you, Mother. I didn’t think I’d be able to drive out here until we closed.”
“Anything for my dearest daughter.”
Uh-oh! Warning bells sounded in Hannah’s head. Her mother wanted something…but what?
“I hope you can relax and have a good time today. You deserve a little break, Hannah.”
The warning bells turned into klaxons, and yellow caution lights began to blink on and off. “Thanks, Mother,” Hannah responded. And then, just because she couldn’t resist, she asked, “What do you want?”
Her mother reared back in surprise. “Want? What makes you think I want anything? Just because I called you my dearest daughter and I said I you deserved to relax and have a good time doesn’t mean I want anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Hannah said, backpedaling as fast as she could. “I thought there was something you wanted me to do for you.”
“Well…now that you mention it…” Delores gave an elaborate shrug. “You could find Marge’s brother Gus for me. No one’s seem him since the dance last night. When he didn’t show up for the family picture, they sent me to find him. But my shoes…” she glanced down at the stylish sandals. “They’re just not suitable for trying to locate someone. You know what I mean, don’t you, dear?”
Caught like a rat in a trap, like a fly on a sticky spiral of flypaper, like a deer in the headlights, like a moth fluttering helplessly against…
“Hannah?”
Delores interrupted her mental chain of similes, and Hannah focused on the here and now. Delores had wanted something, and now she knew what it was. “Okay, Mother.” she said, bowing to the inevitable. “I’ll go find Gus for you.”
Nothing was ever easy. Hannah gazed around the small lake cottage. The only living creature inside was a small green frog hopping determinedly from the bedroom closet toward the kitchen alcove. Unless Gus had met a witch who’d turned him into the Frog Prince, he wasn’t here. And since his Jaguar was still parked in the driveway, he’d gone somewhere on foot. But where? Eden Lake was far from being the largest body of water in Minnesota, but it would still take several hours to walk around the perimeter searching for him.
The frog gave a croak, and Hannah watched as he hopped up on the counter and into the sink. He landed next to what looked like a green-and-white capsule, and Hannah picked it up just in case it was something that could hurt him. There were markings, probably indicating the manufacturer, but they were so blurred Hannah couldn’t read them.
There was no pill bottle on the counter, and the bathroom medicine cabinet had been empty and standing open when she’d checked the bathroom. She didn’t know where the pill had come from, so she couldn’t put it back. She supposed she could wrap it in plastic and toss it in the open suitcase that Gus had left on the bed, but the green-and-white capsule appeared to be a twin to the over-the-counter antacid she’d seen Gus take at the dance last night, and that meant it was probably expendable.
She glanced down at the capsule again, and her decision was made for her. The powder inside was already starting to leak out of the side. It was dissolving from the slight bit of moisture that had gathered in the bottom of the sink and there was no sense saving a dissolved capsule. She poked it down the drain so the frog couldn’t get it, and ran some water to flush it down. That was when she realized that there were no dirty breakfast dishes. It was a cinch that Gus hadn’t washed them. The dishtowel hanging on a rack by the side of the sink was bone dry.
“No dishes,” Hannah said to the frog, who was looking at her with inscrutable black eyes. The frog didn’t comment, not even a croak, as she opened the refrigerator door. A quick peek inside explained the absence of dirty dishes. There was no food. The only contents were a bottle of Jack Daniels and two cans of beer. There was nothing in the freezer compartment, either, except two trays of ice cubes, the old metal kind with the dividers between the cubes that nobody could pry up if they were filled too full. If Gus had wanted something other than a boilermaker for breakfast, he’d probably walked over to the Eden Lake Store to buy supplies.
Hannah ran a little more water in the sink for the frog and then she headed across the road to the store. It had been one of her favorite places as a child. The old-fashioned bell on the door tinkled as she pushed it open and stepped in. Some things never changed, and Hannah found that comforting. The interior of the store still smelled the way it always had, a curious mixture of ring bologna, dill pickles in a large jar on the counter, and elderly bananas that had gotten too ripe for anything except banana bread.
“Hello, Hannah.” Ava Schultz came out from the back, pushing aside the curtain that concealed her living quarters from her customers’ view. A small woman prone to quick movements and rapid speech, she reminded Hannah of a little brown wren, flitting from one part of the store to another and seldom lighting in one place for long. Ava had fashionably cut, perfectly coiffed, dark brown hair without a touch of gray. Delores and her friends were certain that, she wore a wig, since Bertie Straub, the owner of the Cut ’n Curl, insisted that Ava had never come in, not even once, to have her hair cut, styled, or colored.
“Hi, Ava.” Hannah walked over to the main attraction, a shiny metal case filled with every available Popsicle flavor. “Anything new since I grew up?”
Ava gave a little laugh and joined her at the case. “See the three boxes in the middle?” she asked, pointing to them. “Those are Rainbows, Scribblers, and Great Whites.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Of course not. We didn’t have them when you were a kid. All we carried then were the double pops in a variety of flavors.”
“Rhubarb,” Hannah said with a grin. “That was my favorite.”
Ava’s mouth dropped open. “They never made rhubarb!” she exclaimed. “You’re pulling my leg, Hannah.”
“You’re right. I should have known I couldn’t put one over on Winnetka County’s leading Popsicle authority.”
“I do like to keep up with it,” Ava admitted. “The kids enjoy hearing about the new products, and they’ve got so many nowadays.” She pointed to another box. “Look at those Lifesaver Super Pops. From the bottom up, they’re pineapple, orange, cherry, and raspberry. And over here are the Incredible Hulks. They’re part of the Firecracker Super Heroes series. The Hulk is strawberry-kiwi, grape, and green apple. They’ve even got Big Foot. It’s cherry and cotton candy swirled together and shaped like a foot with a gumball. Get it?”
“Big Foot. Cute. Popsicles have come a long way since nineteen-oh-five when Frank Epperson left his lemonade and stir stick out on the porch and it froze solid overnight.”
“You remembered!” Ava gave her the same smile a teacher might bestow on a favorite student.
“Of course I did.” Hannah smiled back. Ava had told her the story enough times. But she wasn’t here to discuss Popsicle history. She had to find out if Ava had seen Gus. “Did Gus Klein come in this morning?” she asked. “They’re lining up for the family reunion picture, and they sent me to find him.”
“I haven’t seen him since he walked me back here last night after the dance. And before you can ask, it’s not what you think. He just wanted me to open the store so he could get some milk to go with that carrot cake you gave him.”
“So you opened the store for him?”
“Of course I did. A customer’s a customer, even after midnight. He bought his groceries, and then we had a drink together and waited for the cars to clear out of the parking lot. He said he hid your cake behind the bar and he was going back to eat it as soon as no one else was around. I think that was so he wouldn’t have to share. We went to school together, you know. Gus never was any good at sharing, not even in kindergarten.”
Hannah thought about that for a moment. On the one hand, she was pleased that Gus liked her Special Carrot Cake so much that he hadn’t wanted to give any away. On the other hand, she’d given him a half-dozen pieces, and he could have given one to Ava.
“Anyway,” Ava went on, “he got the milk and some other groceries.”
“Food for breakfast?” Hannah guessed, remembering the empty refrigerator.
“Not what a normal person would eat for breakfast, but that didn’t surprise me. Gus was never what you’d call a normal person. From little on, he had his own style, you know?”
“What did he buy?” Hannah was curious.
“Sliced ham, bread, Swiss cheese, a half-dozen little packages of potato chips, and ten Milky Ways, the old-fashioned kind with the milk chocolate, not the dark. The last I saw Gus, he was heading back to the pavilion with his cooler and his sack of groceries.”
“Cooler? What cooler?”
“Guess I forgot to mention that he bought one of those disposable coolers. I asked him why he needed a cooler when there was a refrigerator in his cottage, and he said it wasn’t working right.”
Hannah frowned. When she’d checked the cabin, the refrigerator had been working just fine. The ice cubes in the trays hadn’t melted, and cold air had rolled out of the door when she’d opened it. Why would Gus lie to Ava about it?
“He was supposed to come back to pay me for the groceries this morning,” Ava went on, “but he never showed.”
Ominous music began to play in the recesses of Hannah’s mind. It sounded like a cross between Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and the soundtrack of a bad horror movie. But she didn’t have time to think about that now. “What time was it when Gus left here last night?”
“A little after one-thirty. I got ready for bed, that takes about ten minutes, and I looked at the clock before I turned off the lights. It was a quarter to two.”
Hannah reached reflexively for her steno pad, the kind she used for murder cases, but she quickly thought better of it. This was nothing more than a missing person, someone who hadn’t shown up for the family reunion picture. Gus hadn’t left for good, his car was still here, but he could have found a warmer, more hospitable place to sleep than the single bunk in his unheated lake cottage. There had been at least five dozen women at the dance last night. One of them might have thought a good-looking, middle-aged man like Gus was irresistible, especially since he wore expensive designer clothes and sported a Rolex watch and a diamond pinkie ring. Lake Eden women didn’t meet many men who drove Jaguars and flashed around money at every opportunity. Gus could have asked one of the women for a late date, and she could have accepted. Then he could have waited with Ava until no one was around, gone back to collect the carrot cake, and walked to the woman’s cottage bearing gifts of what appeared to Hannah to be picnic fixings.
The more Hannah thought about it, the more sense it made. Perhaps Gus and his lady friend had decided to skip the group photo this morning, and they were sitting at her kitchen table right now, eating a ham and cheese sandwich, and sharing the carrot cake…
“…or not,” Hannah muttered under her breath, and then she turned to Ava. “I’d better get going. They’ll be ready to take that photo soon.”
“I hope you find Gus. If you do, will you do me a favor?”
“What?” Hannah asked, knowing better than to promise blindly.
“Right after they snap that picture, grab Gus by the ear and march him back here to pay his bill. You can tell him I said that groceries don’t grow on trees, not unless they’re apples that is.”