Cool your cookies on the paper-lined cookie sheets by pulling the paper, cookies and all, over to a wire rack. When the cookies are completely cool, peel them carefully from the paper and store them in an airtight container in a dry place. (A cupboard shelf is fine, just NOT the refrigerator!)
Yield: 3 to 4 dozen sweet and crunchy meringue cookies that are as light as air and that everyone will love to eat.
Chapter Twenty-four
When Mike left, Hannah mixed up a batch of Honey Drop Cookies. She was tired when she sat down on a stool at the workstation to wait for them to bake. As always, baking had helped to clarify her thoughts and she reached for her shorthand notebook, flipped to the suspect page, and was just beginning the process of deciding which suspect to interview next, when Michelle came through the swinging door from the coffee shop.
“Lisa’s telling the story again,” Michelle announced, “and I found out more from Aunt Nancy. She touched base with a couple of friends from her old hometown and she found out that Chef Duquesne’s older brother is a career Navy man and he’s an instructor at Annapolis Naval Academy. I called the academy and found out that he had an eight o’clock class the morning after Chef Duquesne was murdered. There’s no way he could have flown to Minnesota from Maryland, killed his brother, and then flown back in time to teach that class.”
“Good work, Michelle!” Hannah praised her. “I’ll cross him off my suspect list.”
“Who do you have left?”
“No one except Chef Duquesne’s children, if he has any.”
“And the unidentified suspect for an unknown motive,” Michelle reminded her.
“Of course. That’s a given in all murder investigations.”
“Andrea and I took a few minutes to check online for other biographies of Chef Duquesne. Neither one of us found any mention of children.”
Hannah thought about that for a moment. “I guess it’s possible that Doc’s friend at the DNA lab was wrong.”
“He must have been, unless Chef Duquesne had children that no one knew about.”
“He could have had a child that not even he knew about,” Hannah suggested.
“I guess so, but that’s really unlikely, isn’t it?”
Hannah shrugged. “Given his background, it might not be as unlikely as you think!”
Michelle laughed. “You’ve got a point. According to what Aunt Nancy told us, he’s been a womanizer all his life.”
“That’s right. Just think about it for a minute, Michelle. What if Allen Duke got some girl pregnant when he was in high school? If that happened, and the girl’s parents didn’t want her to marry Allen, they might have convinced her to leave town and live with a relative until the baby was born. Then she could have given it up for adoption.”
“That’s certainly possible. And sometimes parents who adopted really young children don’t tell them that they’re adopted.”
There was a knock on the door and Michelle turned to Hannah. “Mother again?”
Hannah shook her head. “It’s not Mother’s knock. And it’s not Norman’s or Mike’s either. I don’t know this knock at all. I’d better go find out who it is.”
Hannah hurried to the door and opened it. She stared at the man standing there in surprise, and then she laughed. “Ross! I didn’t expect to see you before the competition! Come in and have a cup of coffee with us. And try out some of the new cookies I just baked.”
“There’s no way I’ll turn down an invitation like that,” Ross said, pulling her into his arms for a kiss. “Do you know you have flour on your nose?”
“No, but it makes sense. I’ve baked a lot of cookies today.”
“Too bad it’s not powdered sugar.” Ross gave her a look that made the heat rise to her face, and Hannah knew she was blushing. Then he turned to Michelle. “Hi, Michelle. All ready to steal the show tonight?”
“I’m always ready to steal the show. They teach us how to do that in our beginning acting class. But tonight I’ll let Hannah be the star. Those cookies of hers are phenomenal.”
“All of Hannah’s cookies are phenomenal.”
The stove timer rang and Hannah motioned to Michelle. “Pour coffee for all three of us, will you please? I’ll just take these cookies out of the oven and be with you in a minute.”
The Honey Drop Cookies were the perfect color on top, golden brown. They smelled divine as Hannah took the pans out of the oven and set them on the baker’s rack to cool. She didn’t usually bake with honey. It was messy and it didn’t keep as neatly as sugar in her pantry. But Aunt Nancy had promised that this recipe would work like a charm, and it certainly looked as if it had. Hannah could scarcely wait to taste them!
“Great aroma,” Michelle commented as Hannah walked back to the work island and took a stool next to Ross. “They look really good, too.”