Mike laughed. “In other words, no one could sneak into the kitchen in the dead of night and put salt in the sugar canister?”
“Something like that, I guess. But the important thing is that there’s a security camera. You’ll be able to find out who came into the kitchen with Chef Duquesne.”
“Yes, if that person didn’t know about the camera and didn’t disable it in some way.”
Hannah sighed. “You’re right, of course. I’m just not thinking clearly right now. I was just so happy about the way our practice time was going, and then Michelle found him, and . . . everything got . . . crazy here.”
“I know that, Hannah. You’re under a lot of pressure right now and it’s getting to you. And the fact that your sister found Chef Duquesne’s body must be almost worse than if you’d found it yourself.”
“That’s right!” Hannah was a bit shocked. She hadn’t thought that Mike could be that perceptive. “How far away are you now?” she asked.
A scant second after she asked the question, there was a knock on the kitchen door and Hannah felt herself begin to panic. “Someone’s here!” she told him.
“Yes. It’s me. Let us in, Hannah.”
Hannah’s legs were trembling as she hurried to the door and opened it for Mike and Lonnie. “I’m so glad you’re here!” she said, feeling almost giddy with relief. Now that she didn’t have to be the strong older sister any longer, she could sit down on a stool and think about something, anything other than the celebrity chef who had been killed and how defenseless and pathetic he’d looked on the floor of the cooler. She had to think about something positive like how much she loved Ross, but that brought forth worries about the wedding itself and how she could manage to juggle her time so that she could do justice to the Food Channel competition, her wedding, her new husband, her business, her family, and the murder that she felt compelled to investigate.
Tears began to form in Hannah’s eyes and she blinked them back. There was no reason to cry like a baby even though her tightly controlled world had gone into a tailspin. She would get everything done and nothing would be shortchanged. That’s what she’d done in the past, and there was no reason why she couldn’t do it again.
Hannah looked down at the recipe in front of her on the counter. There were blotches of tears on the paper and the ink was beginning to smear. That was when she realized that tears were running down her cheeks, but before she could wipe them away with the back of her hand, someone handed her a tissue.
“Thanks, Mike,” she said, managing a smile.
He sat down on the stool next to her and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Things getting to you, Hannah?”
“I guess so.”
“I can’t blame you. There’s a lot going on in your life right now. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know . . . okay?”
“Okay.” Hannah looked up at him, but tears threatened to fall again and she quickly looked away. “Just a nervous reaction, I guess,” she tried to explain.
“Sure. I understand. How about a cup of coffee from Sally’s buffet? I’ll go get some for both of us.”
“Coffee would be good,” Hannah said quickly. “I take mine . . .”
“I know how you take it,” Mike cut off her explanation. “I’ll bring a couple of Sally’s cookies to go with it. They’re not as good as yours, but they’ll do.”
Hannah felt herself smile as he walked toward the kitchen door. She felt better, a lot better, and more in control. If this emotional roller coaster that she seemed to be on was normal for people who were in love, she just hoped the ride would smooth out soon!
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hannah asked Michelle as she pulled up in front of their mother’s house.
“I’m okay. And if I’m not, I will be as soon as I finish painting that last wall in the dining room. Andrea’s showing the house tomorrow afternoon and I want everything to be perfect. Besides . . . I think the best thing I can do is to keep busy. That’s what you always do, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” Hannah did something quite uncharacteristic in her normally undemonstrative family. She reached out with both arms and gave her youngest sister a hug. “Come out to the condo the minute you finish.”
“I will. What are you going to do when you get home?”
“Bake.”
“Before you call Ross?”
“Yes. I need to calm down before I talk to him. If I call him right away, I’m afraid I’ll start crying.”
“And beg him to come home to you?”
Hannah gave a deep sigh. Michelle had done it again. She’d unerringly hit the nail right on the head. “Yes,” she admitted. “I might do something like that.”
“Are you going to bake the competition cookies again?” Hannah shook her head. “No. That is, not exactly. I don’t want to make them the way we did this morning. I want to change the recipe around and make it different somehow. It’s just . . . wrong to do things the way we did them this morning.”