Chapter Twenty
Lisa was between performances when Delores and Jenny came in. She led them back to the kitchen and smiled as she saw that Hannah had baked more cookies. “Thanks, Hannah. We were getting close to running out.”
“You won’t run out. I’ve got six pans of bar cookies in the oven right now.”
“Great.” Lisa turned to the smiling, brown-haired woman standing next to Delores. “Jenny? This is Hannah.” And then she turned to Hannah. “I told Jenny and your mother we’d have coffee in the kitchen if you weren’t too busy back here.”
“I’m not too busy. Nice to meet you, Jenny. Sit down and I’ll get our coffee.”
“I’ll do it,” Lisa said quickly. “All I’ve been doing is telling stories since we opened. With Marge, Dad, and Michelle here, I haven’t had to wait on a single table.”
“This story was very dramatic,” Delores said, sitting down on a stool at the work island. “Good job, Lisa.”
“It was scary too,” Jenny added, taking the stool next to Delores, “especially the part about her hair floating in the currents.”
Delores gave a slight shiver. “I know. I think I ate two cookies without even knowing I was eating them.” She turned to Hannah. “You were very brave to dive down there, dear.”
“Brave or foolish, I’m not sure which,” Hannah said, accepting a mug of coffee from Lisa.
“Your slaydar makes you do it,” Delores said. And when Jenny looked puzzled she explained. “Slaydar is like radar except you don’t use it to find speeders. Hannah uses it to find murder victims.”
“That’s cute,” Jenny said, and then she frowned slightly. “Or maybe it’s not. It must be frightening to discover murder victims.”
“It’s not all fun and games,” Hannah admitted. “Unfortunately, I can’t seem to stop doing it.”
“I know. I read about you in the paper, Hannah.”
“The Lake Eden Journal?” Hannah asked her.
“No, the Minneapolis Star Tribune.”
“Really?” Delores looked impressed. “When was that, Jenny?”
“It was when Hannah caught Buddy’s killer.”
Hannah went on full alert. Jenny hadn’t said When Hannah caught that keyboard player’s killer, or When Hannah caught that jazz musician’s killer, or even When Hannah caught Buddy Neiman’s killer. She’d said When Hannah caught Buddy’s killer, as if she’d known him. “Did you know Buddy Neiman?” Hannah asked.
“No, but I felt almost like I did. Clay talked about him a lot. He told me he thought there was something very secretive about Buddy. And Clay was right.”
“Clay,” Hannah repeated. “Are you talking about Clayton Wallace?”
“Yes.”
“Then you knew him?” Hannah asked, drawing the obvious conclusion.
“Oh, yes. I was his nurse. And we were . . . friends. Good friends. I love to cook and I used to cook dinner for him every once in a while.”
Hannah remembered the bottle of premium Chianti, and the gift-wrapped box of truffles that Mike said the Minneapolis police had found in Clayton’s house. “Do you like to cook Italian food?” she asked.
“It’s my favorite. It was Clay’s favorite, too. He always brought me a bottle . . .”
Hannah held up her hand. “Let me guess. A bottle of premium Chianti and a box of Fanny Farmer truffles?”
Jenny looked mystified as she nodded. “How did you know?”
“I knew because the Minneapolis police found those two items in his house. Were you planning on having dinner with him right after his trip to Lake Eden?”
“Yes,” Jenny said, and her voice shook slightly. “He was such a nice man and I was hoping that . . .”
Hannah didn’t say anything. She just gave Jenny some time to compose herself. A few moments passed and Hannah waited until Jenny was calm again before she asked the next, very critical question. “You said you were Clayton’s nurse. Where was that?”
“At the Hennepin Eye Clinic. He was so brave and his sense of humor was wonderful. He knew he was losing his sight, but somehow he managed to cope with it. I think that’s why I fell in love with him. And then, after he died, I just couldn’t work at the clinic anymore. There were too many memories and I had to go somewhere else.”
“Of course you did,” Delores said, patting Jenny’s hand.
“I have one more question,” Hannah told her. “How bad was Clayton’s eyesight when he drove the Cinnamon Roll Six here? It’s important.”
“Not bad enough to cause an accident,” Jenny said, sitting up a little straighter. “I can give you his complete diagnosis and his prognosis, but you probably won’t understand it. To put it in layman’s terms, his vision was disintegrating from the center out. That means he had just started having trouble seeing small items in the center of his field of vision.”
Like pills, Hannah thought, her heart beginning to pound faster. “By small items do you mean things like pills?” she asked.
“That’s it exactly. He said he was having trouble putting pills in the proper compartments of his pill box. He said he might need help doing that very soon and I told him to call me any time he needed me.”
“When did he say that?”
“The afternoon he left for Lake Eden. He told me he’d managed to do it, but it had been difficult. And I never . . .” Jenny stopped and swallowed hard. “I never heard from him again.”
“Would you be willing to tell all this to a detective from the sheriff’s department?” Hannah asked her.
“Yes, but . . . I don’t understand. Why does the sheriff’s department want to know about it?”
“Because the Minneapolis police concluded that Clayton’s death was a suicide. And you can prove it wasn’t.”
Quickly Hannah explained about Clayton’s son and how the insurance company wouldn’t honor Clayton’s policy if the cause of death was suicide. Jenny’s eyes flashed with anger.
“Of course I’ll help you clear this up!” she promised. “Clay told me all about the provisions he made for his son, and there’s no way I’ll let the insurance company get away with that!”
Once they’d made some plans and had their coffee and cookies, Jenny and Delores left. Lisa went back to tell her story to the next group of customers, and Hannah was left alone in the kitchen.
“This one just fell in my lap,” she said to absolutely no one as she removed the pans of bar cookies from the oven and slid them onto shelves on the baker’s rack. “I must have done something right because I really lucked out with Clayton.”
Then she poured a fresh cup of coffee, sat down on her stool again, and fervently wished that proving herself innocent in Doctor Bev’s death wouldn’t be as difficult as she thought it would be.
“Once more from the heart, Jack,” Hannah told him. “And remember to keep it simple. All you have to do is tell her you love her and say you want her to be your wife. After that just say, Will you marry me, Marge?”
“But what if I forget her name like I did the last time we rehearsed? It won’t be good if I forget her name.”
“You only forgot because you were nervous.”
“I know, but what if I’m nervous again?”
Hannah thought about that for a moment. “You can work around it. Just say, Will you marry me, my love?”
“That’s good. I can do that. Let’s do it again, Hannah.”
“Okay.” Hannah stood up and Jack got down on one knee. He took her hand and kissed it.
“My dearest,” he began, looking up at her. “I love you so much. You’re so good, and kind, and . . . and sweet. I want you to be my wife. Please be my wife. Will you marry me, my love?”
Hannah was about to tell him what a wonderful job he’d done when she heard two gasps from the doorway that led into the coffee shop.
“Uh-oh!” Jack said, getting to his feet as fast as he could. “We’re busted!”
Hannah swiveled around to see Lisa and Marge standing there with identical expressions of shock and dismay on their faces.
“Jack!” Marge gulped.
“Dad!” Lisa exclaimed, sounding stunned.
If they’d all been acting in a romantic comedy, it would have been hilarious. But this was no comedy and Hannah knew it wouldn’t be romantic for very much longer unless she explained things fast.
“It’s not what you think,” she said. “Jack’s not proposing to me. I’m just helping him rehearse.” She turned to Jack. “Ask her now!”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now!”
“But we’re not through rehearsing.”
“Yes, we are. Do it now, Jack!”
As Jack walked over to Marge, Hannah realized that everything was going to be all right. Marge’s lips were twitching and she was shaking slightly, as if she was holding back laughter. One look at Lisa further reassured Hannah. Lisa was holding her hand over her mouth and her eyes were bright with suppressed mirth.
“My dearest,” Jack said and then he stopped. “Do I have to get down on my knee? This floor is hard and I did it five times already.”
“Here, Jack,” Marge said, grabbing a towel from the counter and tossing it to him. “Use the towel to cushion your knee.”
“Thanks, Marge.” Jack positioned the towel, got down on one knee, reached up to take Marge’s hand and kissed it. “I love you so much. You’re so good, and kind, and sweet. I want you to be my wife. Please be my wife. Will you marry me, my love?”
Marge reached down with her other hand and helped Jack to his feet. Then she smiled and kissed him. “Of course I’ll marry you,” she said.
“Lisa?” Jack turned to his daughter. “Is it okay with you?”
“It’s perfect with me, Dad,” Lisa said, going over to give him a hug. “Herb and I were wondering when you’d get around to it.”
Hannah had just finished mixing up her last batch of cookies, Oatmeal Raisin Crisps this time, when there was a knock on the back door. She crossed the room and pulled the door open to reveal someone she’d never expected to see.
“Mike!” she exclaimed.
“Hi, Hannah,” Mike said, standing there obviously ill at ease. “Is there anyone with you in the kitchen?”
“No.” Hannah remembered how hard and cold he’d looked last night when he’d questioned her. He didn’t look like that now, but perhaps he was playing good cop today. “You don’t have an audience this time around. Should I invite some people so that you can arrest me in front of a crowd?”
Mike looked pained as he shook his head. “Don’t be like that, Hannah. I know last night was bad for you, but I was just doing my job.”
“I think that’s what they said in Nazi Germany!”
“Hannah . . . can you please forget last night for a minute? I’m sorry about what happened. I really am. But I had to follow the rules and do my duty.”
“And you’re not doing your duty now?”
“No. It’s exactly the opposite. I shouldn’t be here. I could be fired for being here. It’s against every rule in the book. So I’m not here, okay? You can’t let anyone know I’ve been here. I could be brought up on charges if anyone sees me here.”
Hannah had the urge to slam the door in his face, but she thought better of it. Mike was here for a reason and unless she was drastically mistaken, it wasn’t to try to fool her into incriminating herself.
“Hannah? Please. Can I come in?”
“Okay,” Hannah said, relenting. “Come in then. But I’m warning you that you could be seen. Lisa’s started telling her story, but Jack, or Marge, or Michelle could come into the kitchen at any time.”
Mike stepped in and glanced around the kitchen. “Can we talk in the pantry? We could shut the door. If someone came in they wouldn’t see me.”
“That’s okay, I guess.” Hannah led the way, opened the door, and flicked on the light. “Come in.”
Mike stepped in and Hannah shut the door behind them. “It’s a big pantry,” he said.
“I know. Lisa and Herb came down here after your detectives searched it last night. She said it took them a couple of hours to put everything back in place. Were they looking for poison?”
“Not poison. Tranquilizers.”
“What?”
“Doc Knight ran more tests and he found traces of a powerful tranquilizer in her system. It was enough to stop her heart.”
“Then she didn’t drown?”
“No. She was dead when the car hit the water.”
“So your guys were searching for tranquilizers when they trashed the pantry last night.”
“Yeah.” Mike looked a little sick. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I wish I could have come down here with them, but I couldn’t. I was busy with other things.”
“Things like interrogating me.”
“Yeah.” Mike sighed again, and then he reached out and wrapped his arms around Hannah. “I’m so sorry, Hannah. You have no idea. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I felt so bad about questioning you that I couldn’t get to sleep. All I kept seeing in my mind was the way you looked at me. Your eyes seemed to say, You betrayed me. And that just about killed me.”
“It wasn’t a whole lot of fun for me, either.” Despite herself, Hannah moved a little closer. She wasn’t quite ready to forgive Mike, but his arms felt good around her. “I felt like I’d just lost my best friend.”
“Me, too,” Mike said. “I didn’t want to come and get you last night, but I didn’t trust anyone else to do it. I knew I had to do everything by the book and I hated it. But when Doc gave us the list of her stomach contents and Mayor Bascomb said she was eating one of your cupcakes when he went for a ride with her, we had to bring you in for questioning.”
“Did you pull the car out of the water yet?”
Mike shook his head. “Not yet. Earl’s replacing the carburetor on the county tow truck and he’s waiting for parts. He thinks it’ll be ready by late tomorrow afternoon.”
“Then you don’t know if there were any cupcakes left in the bakery box,” Hannah said.
“We sent a diver down and he found the box. It was in the back seat and it was wedged against the mechanism that raises and lowers the top. It was empty.”
“So there’s no way to prove that my cupcakes didn’t have tranquilizers in them,” Hannah said, feeling her hopes diminish.
“I’m afraid not. Either she ate them all or they dissolved in the water. I doubt we’ll ever know exactly what happened.”
“What else was in her stomach?” Hannah asked, her mind grasping at straws.
“Doc Knight identified coffee, cream, artificial sweetener, and your cupcakes. That’s it.”
“She didn’t get that coffee from me,” Hannah said, and her stubborn hopes began to rise again. “Roger didn’t order any coffee to go. And since he didn’t take any coffee, we didn’t give him any cream or packets of sweetener.”
“How about when she confronted you on the Petersons’ porch?”
“We didn’t have any coffee there. All we had was Diet Coke for me, regular Pepsi for Lisa and Andrea, and a couple of cans of lemonade for Tracey. When she came in we didn’t offer her anything and she didn’t take anything except the box of cupcakes. Doc Knight didn’t find any Coke, or Pepsi, or lemonade in her stomach, did he?”
“No, none of those things.” Mike reached out to touch her cheek. “I really don’t like this, Hannah. It doesn’t look good for you. You’re the logical suspect and you did bake those cupcakes. There’s even a witness who saw her eating one. You have to think of some way to prove you didn’t do it.”
Hannah caught the nuance and she asked the question. “You think I can prove that I didn’t do it?”
“I hope so. I pray so. Concentrate on doing it, Hannah. I’ll help you any way I can.”
“Then you don’t think I did it?”
“I know you didn’t do it. I know it in my heart.”
“Well, I know it in my mind. Somebody else killed Doctor Bev. It wasn’t me. It’s really not fair that I’m going to have to try to prove my innocence by catching the real killer.”
“I agree. It’s not right. Our justice system isn’t supposed to work that way. But you won’t be the only one trying to find out who really killed Doctor Bev. I’ll be working on it, too.”
“But will they let you do that?”
“Not officially, but that won’t stop me. It won’t stop anyone else in the department either, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
“How about Bill? Does he think I did it?”
“Of course not. Bill knows what we’re doing . . . unofficially, of course. Everyone’s on your side, Hannah. We’re just following the rules as far as the paperwork goes, but what we do on our own time is our personal business.”
Hannah began to feel much better. The pendulum was still swinging lower and lower over her head, but there were people who believed in her innocence.
“Did Doctor Bev take tranquilizers?” Hannah asked, remembering how Clayton Wallace had taken an accidental overdose of his heart medication.
“No. I’m way ahead of you there. I sent Lonnie and Rick out to her suite at the Inn to check. Roger let them go through everything she had there, and he gave them permission to go through all of his things, too. They didn’t find any tranquilizers and Roger said he’d never seen her take anything like that.”
“I guess you already know that I don’t take them either. And I don’t have any in my possession here or at my condo.”
“I know that. I’m sorry, but we had to check.”
“That’s okay if it helps to clear me. How about the tranquilizers themselves? Were they some kind of over-the-counter thing?”
“Doc Knight says no. They were a class A narcotic and they’re only available by doctor’s prescription.”
Hannah looked at him dubiously. “Legally yes, but I’ll bet you can buy them on the street.”
“I’m sure you can, but not here in Lake Eden. We do have an occasional drug dealer, but it’s usually small stuff. This drug was powerful. Doc Knight says it isn’t something you’d take to get high. If you tried it for kicks, it would just knock you out. And he also told me that Doctor Bev had enough in her system to stop her heart. There was no water in her lungs, Hannah. She was dead before she hit the water.”
“Did you check Doctor Bev’s background to see if she ever had a prescription for the drug?”
“We checked on that the minute Doc Knight told us the name of the drug. No doctor she’s ever had wrote a prescription like that for her. We came to the end of the trail on that one, Hannah.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about the coffee. Is it possible to hide the taste of the drug if it was dissolved in the coffee?”
“We asked Doc Knight that. He said yes. The artificial sweetener she used has a slightly bitter taste. So does the drug. If her coffee tasted bitter, she probably assumed it was from the sweetener.”
“Do you know where she got the coffee?”
“Not yet, but we’re working on it.”
“How about the cup it came in? It might have some residue, or something. Did you recover that?”
“No. Her coffee cup wasn’t in the car. And since we didn’t find it, there’s no way to test it for any residue. Not only that, her car was a convertible and the cup would have been submerged in water. Chances are that even if we’d found it, there wouldn’t be any residue left.”
Hannah took a moment to mentally add up the facts of the case. Doctor Bev had consumed an overdose of powerful tranquilizers. Doc Knight had identified the drug in her stomach contents, which consisted of coffee, creamer, artificial sweetener, and Hannah’s cupcakes. The drug wasn’t necessarily baked into the cupcakes. It could have been in the coffee, the cream, or the artificial sweetener. “So the evidence against me is all circumstantial at this point?”
“That’s right. But you did have a motive, the means, and the opportunity.”
“Not the means,” Hannah corrected him. “I didn’t have the drug.”
“That’s difficult to prove.”
“Right.” Hannah shivered slightly. People had been convicted on circumstantial evidence, but she didn’t want to think about that. If she did, she might have another nightmare like the one she’d had last night.
“You shivered,” Mike said, holding her tightly. “What’s the matter?”
“The thought that I could be convicted for something I didn’t do is even more terrifying than finding Doctor Bev. I just hope I don’t have a nightmare about that tonight. Last night’s dream was bad enough!”
“Tell me about it.”
“It started when I dove down to the car and Doctor Bev tried to get me to sit in the passenger seat. I wanted to leave, to go back up to the surface, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from moving closer and closer to her. Then she grabbed me and I couldn’t get away. She moved some things off the passenger seat and shoved me into it, and then she locked the seat belt. That was when I knew I was going to die down there at the bottom of Miller’s Pond with her.”
Mike rubbed her back. “I’m sorry I put you through this, Hannah. You really have no idea how guilty I feel. If I could think of some way to wipe last night out of existence, I would. You did a brave thing by trying to rescue Doctor Bev. And you got rewarded by having me haul you in for questioning. Life wasn’t very fair to you yesterday.”
“True.” Hannah’s mind kept going back to the dream, back to the point where Doctor Bev had pulled her into the passenger seat. She’d reached out with her wavy arm and pushed the thermos off the seat and . . .
Hannah gave a little gasp and Mike patted her back. “What is it?” he asked.
“The thermos!”
“What thermos?”
“The thermos in my dream. There must have been one on the passenger seat for real or I wouldn’t have dreamed it. I’m almost sure there was. I think it was one of those silver ones with a screw-on cap. I might have knocked it off the seat when I unlatched the seat belt and pulled Doctor Bev out of the car.”
“I’ll send down a diver,” Mike said, pulling out his cell phone and dialing the sheriff’s station. “If there’s a thermos, there may be contents left inside. And if there are contents, Doc Knight can test them.”
Hannah listened while Mike made the call. When he hung up, she opened the pantry door. “You’d better go before anyone knows you’re here.”
“You’re right,” Mike said, walking across the kitchen with her and opening the back door. “I’ll let you know what happens when the diver comes up,” he said. “If we’re lucky, they’ll find the thermos and it’ll clear you completely.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Hannah said, repeating one of her Great-Grandmother Elsa’s favorite expressions. And then she went back to the stainless steel work island with a smile on her face to shape and bake the Oatmeal Raisin Crisps.