Strawberry Shortcake Murder

Chapter Sixteen

Lisa stood at her side with the bowl of sweetened whipped cream as Hannah sliced the Hawaiian Flan. It had turned out perfectly, and Hannah smiled as she transferred it to the cut-glass dessert bowls. She sprinkled on a bit of crushed pineapple, spooned some of the golden caramel sauce over the top, and passed the bowls to Lisa, who placed generous dollops of whipped cream on top.

Once they placed the dessert bowls and spoons on the serving tray, Hannah and Lisa took off their aprons and waited for the signal from the stage manager. The red light on the camera that was trained in their direction was off, and Hannah turned to Lisa with a question. “Is your dad watching?”

“He’s in the audience with Mr. Drevlow. He wanted to see me live tonight. Dad thinks we have our own cooking show, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that this was only temporary.”

Hannah glanced over at Rayne Phillips, who was standing in front of a blank blue screen. He was making sweeping gestures at nonexistent storm fronts and Hannah wondered how he knew where to point. Then she saw the monitor that had been set up just out of camera range, showing the computer-generated highs and lows that swirled around on a map of Minnesota. She’d never realized it before, but being a KCOW weatherman actually took some acting ability.

“Are you ready, Hannah?”

“I’m ready.” Hannah smiled as she picked up the tray. “It’s almost showtime. Let’s knock ‘em dead, Lisa.”

When the stage manager gestured to them, Hannah made her way to the news desk, stepping carefully over the cables. Once Lisa had served each of the newscasters, Chuck Wilson turned to Hannah.

“What do you girls have for us tonight?”

Hannah bristled at his choice of words, but she quickly hid it with a smile. She hadn’t been a “girl” for over a decade. “Pineapple custard with caramel sauce. I call it Hawaiian Flan.”

“Looks great.” Chuck dipped in his spoon and the camera zoomed in on him as he took a bite. He smiled, let the creamy sweetness roll around on his tongue for a moment and then swallowed. “This is a real treat, girls.”

Hannah bristled again and she was about to give him a piece of her mind when Lisa stepped in. “Thank you, Chuck. I’m sure it’ll be very popular with our customers at The Cookie Jar. We’re expanding to desserts, and we plan to feature a different one every day.”

“I’ll be there for this one,” Chuck promised. Then he turned to Dee-Dee Hughes. “What do you think, Dee-Dee?”

“It’s heavy and light at the same time, if you know what I mean.” Hannah didn’t think anyone knew what Dee-Dee meant, but she managed to keep the smile on her face. “But something this yummy has got to be loaded with calories. Am I right?”

Lisa stepped in again, and Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. She’d assured Hannah that she was ready for Dee-Dee’s predictable calorie-count question.

“It’s certainly not diet food, but you can’t eat calorie-free Jell-O every night. If you’re that concerned, you can cut the sugar by half in the custard and take only a small portion of the caramel sauce. And you can substitute artificial sweetener for the sugar in the whipped cream.”

“But it’ll still be fattening, won’t it?” Dee-Dee asked.

Hannah bit her tongue. The urge to respond was almost too strong to resist. But before she could open her mouth, Wingo Joes got into the discussion. “Dessert is a time to carb up. If you’re worried about gaining weight, you should exercise to burn it off. I know I’d be willing to get out there and jog ten miles for a slice of this Hawaiian Flan.”

“Me too.” Rayne Phillips nodded and reached over to snag Dee-Dee’s dish. “Don’t worry, Dee-Dee. I’ll save you from yourself. You can’t get fat if I eat your dessert.”

Chuck Wilson cracked up, and Hannah instantly forgave him for calling her a girl. Perhaps he wasn’t such an idiot, after all. Then he turned to the camera, reminded everyone to stay tuned for the “World News,” followed by the third night of the Hartland Flour Dessert Bake-Off. The music came up, the credits started to roll, and the news team pretended to be busy shuffling papers and smiling at each other.

Dee-Dee maintained her pleasant expression until the red light on the camera went off. Then she glared at Rayne Phillips and uttered several nasty expletives that would have gotten the program bleeped off the airwaves.

Hannah was chuckling as she walked back to the kitchen set with Lisa to pack up. Lisa joined in, and they were in a fine mood as they loaded their supplies into boxes and carried them to the shelves against the back wall.

“If there’s nothing else, I’m going to go and sit with Dad and Mr. Drevlow,” Lisa said.

“Go ahead, Lisa. You were great tonight, and I thought your answer to Dee-Dee’s question was perfect.” Hannah reached into the pocket of her apron and handed Lisa an envelope. “Here. This is for you. I’m paying you for all the extra hours you put in this week.”

Lisa looked surprised. “But you don’t have to do that. I put in those hours because I wanted to. I like helping you, Hannah, and I didn’t expect to get paid extra.”

“Then call it a Christmas bonus. You earned it.”

“Okay.” Lisa put the envelope in her pockets. “But don’t pay me any more. I’ll cover for you until the bake-off’s over and you’re through with… with that other thing you’re working on.”

Hannah nodded. Lisa was the perfect employee, and maybe it was time to think about making her a partner. Between the two of them they could keep The Cookie Jar running smoothly, and they might even be able to take alternate vacations during their slowest month.

But when would that be? Hannah thought about it for a moment, her brow creased in through. There was always a party or a social event to cater, and people ate cookies year round. Unless every resident of Lake Eden went on a low-carb diet at the same time, they’d never have a slowest month.

* * *

Hannah had just emerged from the makeup room, where the experts had touched up her lipstick and attempted to tame her flyaway red hair, when Andrea rushed up.

“There you are! Let’s duck in here where we can be private.” Andrea pulled her inside the ladies’ room. “Lucy’s not here. I’ve looked everywhere. I even asked Bill if she was hanging around the sheriff’s station, and he told me he hadn’t seen her all day.”

Hannah felt her stomach drop with a sickening lurch. She’d really expected Lucy to show up at the bake-off. “Maybe she’s just late?”

“Maybe.” Andrea didn’t look very convinced. “I’ve been thinking about it, Hannah. What if Lucy went home and discovered that her secret drawer was empty? If she thought the police were after her, she could have skipped town.”

Hannah hadn’t thought of that before. “That’s possible, but it doesn’t explain why she didn’t keep her appointment with Norman this morning.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t. Maybe she’s just running late. How about Gil Surma? Did you find out anything interesting?”

Hannah took a moment to fill her in, and she could tell that Andrea was shocked when she mentioned the steroids. “I didn’t believe it either, at first. But Gil said that Boyd was very upset about it.”

“I guess it’s possible,” Andrea admitted. “I just don’t like to think that it could happen in Lake Eden. Gil didn’t know which boy it was?”

“Boyd put it in the form of a hypothetical. He never mentioned the player’s name.”

Andrea sighed. “Well, at least we know he’s a basket ball player. How many boys are on The Gulls?”

“Twenty.”

“That many?”

“Yes. Gil said that basket ball is Jordan High’s most popular sport. Boyd had five boys on the A Team. They’re the starters. And all the starters have substitutes. That’s ten. Then there’s a B Team and a C Team with five boys on each. We’ve got our work cut out for us, Andrea.”

“I guess. Did you get a list of names?”

“Gil said he’d get it from Charlotte and drop it off at The Cookie Jar in the morning.”

Andrea frowned as she considered how to deal with this new set of facts. “How are we going to find out which player it is? If we call them and ask, we’ll get twenty denials.”

“I know. Actually, I’m not even sure that this has anything to do with Boyd’s murder. It could be a coincidence.”

“It’s no coincidence. The father of the player murdered Boyd before his son could be kicked off the team.”

Hannah was surprised. Andrea sounded very sure of herself. “Do you really think that’s a strong enough motive for murder?”

“Absolutely. High-school basketball is a serious sport in Lake Eden.”

“But would a father go that far?”

“Of course he would. Remember that mother in Texas who killed her daughter’s rival for the cheerleading squad? That wasn’t even half as important as basketball.”

Hannah thought about it for a moment. “The player’s father could have followed Boyd home from the bake-off and tried to convince him not to suspend his son. That would explain the argument that Mr. Gessell heard.”

“And arguments can escalate into full-scale fights. We know that Boyd had a hair-trigger temper. What if the player’s father did, too?”

Hannah had to admit that the scenario made sense. “I guess it could have happened that way. The father could have picked up the hammer and struck out at Boyd in a rage. Maybe he didn’t actually intend to kill him, but he did. And then, when he realized that Boyd was dead, he hightailed it out of there.”

Andrea jumped up and down in excitement. “We did it Hannah! We know who Boyd’s killer is!”

“Not quite yet.” Hannah reached out to restrain her overexuberant sister. “We may know why, but we don’t know who. Get out there and look for Lucy. If you find her, hang on to her until after the show.”

“Okay but what if Lucy won’t tell us who’s in those pictures?”

Then we’re up the creek, and we’ve wasted a lot of time, Hannah thought. But she didn’t say it because that would be tempting fate. “Don’t worry about that now. Just concentrate on finding Lucy. I’ll get it out of her, one way or the other.”

* * *

Rudy, one of the cameramen, caught Hannah as she was about to take her place behind the judging table. “Hey, Hannah. That Hawaiian Flan you made was great.”

“How do you know?”

“Wingo got a phone call right after the broadcast and left his dish on the news desk. I snagged it before he could get back.”

“Good for you.” Hannah gave him a smile. She liked Rudy. He’d explained about the cameras and how she could tell when they were on. She motioned toward one of the huge cameras that were lined up on the set. “Why are these cameras different from the one you use?”

“They’re line-feed. See these cables?”

Hannah spotted the heavy black cables that snaked across the floor. “Where do they go?”

“To the mobile control booth in the production truck. That’s where Mason is during the show. He watches the feed from these cameras on monitors and calls for the camera angles through headsets. He’s the one who decides which fee to broadcast.”

“That sounds like a very difficult job.”

“It is. This is a live show, and he has to make fast decisions. When he calls a shot, it’s broadcast right away.”

Hannah was interested. What she knew about television production could be contained in a thimble with room to spare. “What does your camera do?”

“I shoot the montages we run during the judging. My camera’s called a roving cam, and it’s self-contained. It records on three-quarter-inch tape, and we edit it down later.”

“Edit it down?”

“I shot four hours of footage for tonight’s montage, and it’ll run less than three minutes.”

“That’s an awful lot of tape for a couple of minutes.”

“We always shoot more than we need. That way the editor can pick and choose. I shoot tape of the contestants arriving, the audience filing in, even the wrap parties out at the inn.”

That information gave Hannah an idea. If Rudy shot four hours of tape every day, he could have gotten a picture of the killer and his cuff links. She still intended to get the killer’s name from Lucy, but what if she’d skipped town a Andrea had suggested? They needed a contingency plan. “What happens to all the tape that isn’t used?”

“The outtakes?”

“If that’s what you call them. Do you throw them away?”

Rudy laughed. “At KCOW, we don’t’ throw anything away. We even recycle our paper clips.”

“Then you tape something else over them?”

“Yes, but not right away. We store them for a while at the station. Then they’re reviewed. If Mason’s sure we won’t need any of the footage, we erase them and use them again.”

“So all your outtakes are back at the station in storage?”

Rudy shook his head. “The tapes are still in the production truck. Why are you so interested?”

“I just find the whole process fascinating,” Hannah said with a smile. “Do you think I could watch them?”

“It’s a lot of tape, and most of it is pretty boring. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Hannah held her breath as she waited for Rudy to answer. This could be very important. Even if she found Lucy and managed to pry the killer’s name from her, seeing the man and his cuff links on tape was a way of proving that Lucy hadn’t lied to them about his identity.

“If you want to be bored, it’s fine with me. But I don’t have the final say. You’ll have to get permission from Mason.”

Hannah flashed him a smile. Rudy had no idea how helpful he’d been. “Thanks, Rudy. I’ll ask Mason right after tonight’s show.”