Fudge Cupcake Murder

Chapter Thirteen

By the time Sunday morning rolled around, Hannah was frustrated beyond belief. She tried the rest of the tips on the list and Moishe hadn't even sampled his new food. She planned to call Doctor Bob in the morning to see if he had any new suggestions, but for the present, she was stumped. And since she didn't feel like fighting with her stubborn four-footed roommate this morning, she caved in again.

Moishe gave a sound that was half purr, half grateful mew as Hannah filled his bowl with his regular crunchies. But instead of gobbling them up as he usually did, he came over to rub against her ankles.

"You're welcome," Hannah said, pouring her second cup of coffee. "You can go ahead and eat. I'll just sit at the kitchen table and wake up."

As Moishe crunched happily, Hannah's thoughts turned to Sheriff Grant's murder. For the most part she was getting nowhere fast, but one of her questions had been answered. Although Doc Knight had refused to give Andrea a copy of the autopsy report, he answered her question off-the-record. The blow Sheriff Grant suffered to the back of his skull killed him almost instantly.

Hannah's suspect list was growing, although she doubted that any of them had murdered Sheriff Grant. There was Nettie, who had no alibi, and Luanne, who didn't have one either. Then there was Bill, but Hannah refused to add him to her suspect list. It would have been great if they'd been able to track down Bill's second call, but Hannah called every roofing company in the county and found that none of them used telemarketers. Andrea and Tracey drove all over to look for anyone either getting a new roof or having their old roof repaired, and Herb had kept a sharp eye out for roofing trucks on his rounds. They all did their best, but the roofer who may or may not have been working in the Lake Eden area was still anonymous.

After another bracing sip of coffee, Hannah stood up and stretched. It was time to start the day. The Cookie Jar wasn't open on Sundays, but she decided to go in anyway to take inventory of their supplies. Since it was a relatively clean job that shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, she dressed in something appropriate for a funeral, and wore an apron over it just in case.

"You might know it!" Hannah muttered from the top of the stepstool, as the phone in the kitchen of The Cookie Jar began to ring. She waited through three rings, juggling a canister of cocoa in one hand and a bag of flaked coconut in the other, then set them back on the shelf and climbed down. It was almost impossible for her to ignore a ringing phone. It could be an emergency, something she needed to respond to right away. It could be Bill, saying that Andrea had gone to the hospital to have the new baby. It could be Norman, calling from the dental convention, trying the shop because he'd been unable to reach her at her condo. It could be Mike, saying that he'd caught the murderer and Bill was free to come back to work. And it could be a salesman, which was much more likely, even on a Sunday.

Hannah hurried across the floor and grabbed the phone. "The Cookie Jar. Hannah speaking."

"Oh, Hannah! I'm so glad I caught you!"

Hannah gripped the phone a little tighter. It was Andrea and she sounded frazzled. "What's wrong, Andrea?"

"Uh-oh! Just hang on a second, okay?"

Hannah listened to the sound of the open line. She heard soft footsteps and then a bang and a click as a door closed and locked. "Andrea?"

"It's okay. I'm here now." Andrea's voice was not much more than a whisper.

"Where's here?"

"In the bathroom."

"Why are you whispering?"

"Because Bill just came back to the bedroom and I don't want him to hear what I'm saying. Hold on again, Hannah. He's knocking on the door."

Hannah held on. What else could she do? She heard Andrea say something to Bill, but her words were muffled. Then she heard what sounded like running water. "Andrea?"

"I'm still here. I just told Bill you called me and I had to take the phone in here, because I had to… you know. Can you come over early, Hannah? Please?"

Hannah glanced toward the open pantry. She'd just started the inventory and if she stopped now, she'd have to come in early tomorrow morning to finish. On the other hand, she could bring Andrea here and her sister could write things down as Hannah counted them. "I could come early. But why?"

"Bill's cleaning out my closet. I'm trying to be understanding, but he keeps asking me why I'm keeping certain things and I just want to kill him!" There was a whoosh as Andrea took a deep breath and let out again. "It's terrible, Hannah. He actually said I should throw away that wonderful pair of red clogs I bought at the mall last summer."

Hannah remembered the clogs. Andrea had taken advantage of a giant shoe sale and paid only five dollars for them. "But you told me that they hurt your feet when you wore them. You said they practically crippled you."

"I know, but it's just a matter of getting used to them, that's all."

"You mean you have to break them in?"

"Not exactly. Clogs are wood. They don't break in. But my feet will adapt."

Hannah wanted to say that feet shouldn't have to adapt to shoes; shoes should adapt to feet. Andrea was crazy if she thought otherwise, but Hannah resisted the urge to tell her so. It wasn't a warm, supporting comment to make to a sister who was beginning to resemble the Goodyear blimp.

"So can you pick me up early, Hannah? I just don't know how much more of this closet cleaning I can handle."

"Sure," Hannah said, not wanting to deny Andrea anything at this stage of her pregnancy. "Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?"

"I can be ready in less time than that. Just hurry, Hannah. He's driving me nuts and I'm afraid I'll say something I'll regret later. I do love him, you know."

"I know."

Hannah hung up to the sound of a toilet flushing. Andrea was obviously pulling out all the stops to convince Bill that she'd had to take the phone in the bathroom.

"There's Mother," Andrea said, nudging Hannah as they walked into the lobby of the Jordan High auditorium. Even though they arrived a half-hour early, the Lake Eden Regency Romance Club was already there in full force.

Hannah glanced in the direction of Andrea's gaze and caught her mother's gesture. "Uh-oh. She wants us to come over."

"We might as well do it," Andrea said with a sigh, taking a step in her mother's direction. "She probably wants to criticize your outfit."

"What's wrong with my outfit?" Hannah looked down at her navy blue dress and shoes.

"Nothing, but Mother'll find something. Do you want me to head her off at the pass?"

"That would be great. Do you think you can?"

"Of course. Just watch."

Hannah watched as Andrea sailed up to their mother and whispered something in her ear. Delores looked surprised for a moment and then she smiled from ear to ear, an unusual expression at a funeral. There was another volley of whispered conversation and then the two parted, and Andrea came back to Hannah's side.

"It's so crowded, I thought I was going to get bowled over before I got back here. Mother says hi. Let's go talk to some other people before she remembers what she wanted to talk to us about in the first place."

Hannah glanced out over the crowd and spotted Beatrice Koester. "There's Beatrice and Ted. I want to ask him about his mother's cupcakes."

"The ones with the secret ingredient?"

"Right. Just stick behind me and I'll run interference." Hannah led the way across the crowded lobby, clearing a path for her sister. Beatrice looked as she always did, neat as a pin in a charcoal gray dress with a white collar. Ted, however, was tugging at the sleeves of his suit and Hannah was sure he'd rather be wearing his coveralls and towing a car on his flatbed.

"I'm glad you're here, Ted," Hannah said, once she'd greeted Beatrice and made sure that Andrea had engaged her in conversation.

"Why's that?" Ted frowned slightly and his heavy eyebrows almost touched.

"I've been trying to figure out that recipe for your mother's cupcakes."

"Beatrice has been working on it at home and I've never had so many bad cupcakes shoved down my throat. I finally had to tell her to knock it off."

"Oh," Hannah said, biting back a smile at the mental image Ted's words had created. Beatrice was a small woman, barely five feet tall, while Ted topped six feet and looked as if could eat a whole cow for breakfast. "I thought it might help if you could describe your mother's cupcakes for me."

"Chocolate. And when you bit in, it wasn't all air. You know what I mean?"

"I think so. They were heavy?"

"I'll say!" Ted gave a little grin, exposing one silver-capped tooth. Hannah remembered Norman saying he'd like to recap it in something that looked like real tooth enamel. "A tin of her cupcakes probably weighed as much as an air filter."

Hannah had the insane urge to laugh, but she asked another question instead. "What else do you remember about them?"

"The frosting. Best fudge frosting I ever ate. My mother was some cook!"

"I'll bet she was," Hannah said, wondering if she'd ever have a child who'd say that about her. "Was there anything really unusual about the cupcakes? Something you haven't mentioned?"

Ted thought for a moment and then he nodded. "Yeah. The paper cups were gold foil and she had them sent from a place in Chicago."

Before Hannah could even think about asking another question, the doors to the auditorium opened and people began filing inside. The Koesters got in line with the other mourners, but Andrea grabbed Hannah's hand and tugged her around to the side door so that they could avoid the crowd.

Someone, undoubtedly Digger Gibson, Lake Eden's funeral director, had arranged for soft organ music to play over the auditorium speaker system. Hannah recognized "Largo." Digger had played the same piece at her father's funeral and it brought back depressing memories. "I hate funerals," she sighed.

"Me, too," Andrea echoed the sentiment and motioned Hannah into the back row of seats on the left side of the auditorium. "You take the second seat and I'll take the aisle. That way we'll have this row to ourselves."

Hannah moved sideways to take the second seat. "Only until someone asks us to stand up so they can squeeze past us."

"That won't happen." Andrea sat down in the aisle seat and pointed to the seatback, which was only an inch shy of touching her stomach. "Since I'm so big, no one can squeeze past me. And there's no way they'll have the nerve to ask me to get up and move out into the aisle."

Hannah bit back a grin as she put her purse down on the empty seat next to her. It seemed that pregnancy had some perks. She was about to say that when Sean and Don, the twins who ran the gas station and convenience store out on the highway, came in the side door and took the seats directly in front of them.

"Hi, Andrea. Hannah," either Sean or Don greeted them. Hannah couldn't tell them apart since they were wearing suits instead of their Quick Stop shirts with the names embroidered over the pockets.

"Hi, Sean," Hannah said, deciding that guessing was worth it since she had a fifty percent change of getting it right.

"I'm Don. He's Sean."

"You win some and you lose some," Hannah muttered under her breath. "Sorry, guys. You know I can't tell you apart. Who's minding the store?"

"We're closed," the other twin said, the one whose name, Hannah now knew, was Sean. "We figured we should come to the service to prove we weren't mad at Sheriff Grant."

"Mad?" Hannah's ears perked up.

Don nodded. "He told us we couldn't sell those little cordial chocolates anymore. Sean explained that we never sold them to kids, but Sheriff Grant said it didn't matter, that if they had one drop of alcohol in them, we needed a liquor license.

"And they were our best selling candy," Sean complained.

"I don't think we would have minded so much," Don went on, "but he walked over to the shelf, loaded them all up in a box, and confiscated them."

"And we could have returned them for credit,” Sean added.

"Is that legal?" Hannah asked, glancing over at Andrea.

"I don't know." Andrea gave a little shrug and then her eyes narrowed. "I bet you guys were really mad."

"We were steaming," Don admitted, evidently not realized he'd just given them a motive for murder.

"Yes, we were." Sean looked a little sheepish. "I wanted to go out to the station and demand them back, but Don stopped me."

"I told him it wasn't smart to make a county sheriff mad. And then, when we found out Sheriff Grant had been murdered, I was really glad I'd stopped Sean from going out there."

"I was glad too," Sean added, standing up to let some people into their aisle.

While the twins were busy making small talk with their new seatmates, Andrea nudged Hannah. "Did you get that?"

"I did and it's a motive… sort of. I wonder which twin was working on Monday night? And I wonder what the other twin was doing?"

"I'll ask around," Andrea promised. "I know a couple people who can tell them apart."

"Good. So what did you say to Mother to make her forget about criticizing me?"

"Oh, that." Andrea gave a nonchalant shrug. "I just told her that if the baby was a girl we were going to use her name."

Hannah's eyes widened. "But I thought you told Bill's mother that if you had a girl, you'd use her name."

"I did."

"But…" Hannah stopped speaking and sighed. "Okay. I know you think it's a boy, but what happens if it's a girl? You can't use both names. Mother and Regina would be all upset over which one you put first."

Andrea shook her head. "Relax, Hannah. I know it's a boy. I had the test. Just don't tell anyone, okay? Bill's old-fashioned and he wants to be surprised."

The service was long and Hannah shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It seemed everyone who had known Sheriff Grant wanted to give some sort of eulogy. Hannah felt sorry for Nettie Grant, who had to sit through it all and be gracious. Why did people feel they had to share so much? Hannah could care less that Sheriff Grant had once helped Lydia Gradin get her car out of the ditch in the middle of a snowstorm.

"I'm glad the casket's closed," Andrea leaned over to whisper to Hannah. "Otherwise it looks like dead people are just sleeping and they might get up any minute."

Hannah didn't want to mention why an open casket would have been impossible. She'd seen Sheriff Grant right after his demise and there was no way that Digger could work a miracle of that magnitude with putty and makeup.

It seemed as if the line of people who were waiting to sing Sheriff Grant's praises in life would never end. Hannah glanced at her watch and saw that over an hour and a half had passed. She was almost ready to nudge Andrea and ask her to pretend that she'd gone into labor so that they could leave, when Digger went to the podium.

"We all loved Sheriff Grant and I know some of you have been waiting for quite a while to give your remembrances of him, but out of courtesy to his widow, I'll ask you to be seated so that we can conclude the service."

Hannah breathed a big sigh of relief when a final tribute had been uttered and the service ended. After a reminder that there would be a brief ceremony at graveside, Hannah and Andrea slipped out of the row and headed for the parking lot.

"Are you okay?" Hannah asked, unlocking the passenger door so that Andrea could get into the cookie truck.

"I'm fine. I just don't want to go to graveside, that's all. That always depresses me and I just read an article that said a mother's emotions can affect her unborn baby."

"Okay," Hannah put her truck in gear. "I'll have to hurry and take you home then. I need to go out to the cemetery."

"But why?"

"I need to check the crowd. The killer might be there."

"You think?" Andrea looked surprised.

"It's Mother's idea. She saw it in a movie."

Andrea shrugged. "It's worth a try. Go ahead, Hannah. I'll wait in your truck and watch for anyone who drives in and lurks around."

"Thanks, Andrea." Hannah put the truck in gear and drove out of the parking lot. "I can always use another pair of eyes."

"I know, and it's going to cost you."

"I figured that," Hannah said, gesturing toward the rear of the truck. "I've got a couple of dozen cookies back there."

"What kind are they?"

"Surprise cookies. They were Lisa's idea and they're leftovers from the meeting I catered last night."

"What's the surprise?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise." Hannah reached back to get one of the bags and handed it to Andrea. "Taste one and tell me if you like them."

Andrea bit into the cookie and smiled. "This is good, Hannah, and I love the chewy part in the middle. Is it a chocolate-covered nut?"

"It could be. Try another one. Lisa put at least a half-dozen different surprises in the middles."

"Mmm," Andrea bit into another cookie. "This one tastes like some kind of nougat. I like these, Hannah. They're fun because you don't know what you're going to get. How do you make them?"

"Bridge mix."

"What?"

"Bridge mix. You've had it before, Andrea. It's mixed kinds of chocolate candy in a bag. They've got it down at the Red Owl."

"I know exactly which candy you mean."

"Lisa says if they're out of bridge mix, you can use those miniature candy bars they have for Halloween. All you have to do is cut them up into pieces."

"Good idea," Andrea said, taking another cookie. "Did you decide on your cookies yet, Hannah?"

"What cookies?" Hannah pulled up to the gates of Brookside Cemetery and parked outside the wrought iron fence. She could see Sheriff Grant's grave in the distance, but no one was there yet. The mourners were probably still at the school, paying their respects to Nettie.

"The cookies you're going to bring to the Halloween party."

"Not yet," Hannah said, mentally adding the Halloween cookies to her list of things to do. "Are you sure you want to stay here by yourself?"

"I'm sure." Andrea clutched the bag of cookies a little tighter. "I should be able to see the back of the crowd from here. Make sure you stand on the other side of the grave and then we'll have it covered."

"Good idea. Anything else?"

"Yes. Do you think you can duck out before they say the final prayer? I don't want to be here when they lower the casket. I just hate that part."

"Me, too," Hannah said, knowing that Andrea was thinking about their father and reaching out to give her a hug.

Surprise Cookies

Do NOT preheat the oven-dough must chill before baking

1 cup melted butter (2 sticks)

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 beaten eggs (just whip them up with a fork) 1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 Tablespoons water (or coffee, if you have some left over from breakfast)

3 cups flour (no need to sift)

1 package bridge mix or assorted chocolate candies ***

4 to 5 dozen walnut halves (or pecan halves)

*** If I can't find bridge mix, I like to use chocolate wafers or Hershey's assorted miniature candy bars cut into four pieces. You can even use full size chocolate candy bars if you cut them up into small pieces.

Melt the butter and mix in the sugars. Add the beaten eggs, baking soda, salt, vanilla, and water (or coffee). Add-the flour and mix thoroughly. Then chill the dough for at least an hour (overnight is fine, too).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

Scoop out a tablespoon of dough and form it around a chocolate wafer (or a piece of cut up candy bar). Place a walnut half (or pecan half) on top and place it on a greased baking sheet, 12 cookies to a standard sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees F. for 10 to 12 minutes, or until nicely browned. Cool on cookie sheet for two minutes and then transfer the cookies to a wire rack.

Yield: 8 to 10 dozen, depending on cookie size.

(When I use Hershey's miniatures, Mother always tries to guess which cookies have the Krackles bars inside. If she gets one with a piece of Mr. Goodbar, she passes it to me.)