Peach Cobbler Murder (28 page)

A flick of her card in the slot, and the bar rose to grant her exit. Hannah pulled out and turned onto the access road. There must have been an ice storm during the night, because the wind was still and the world was painted with a film of silver ice. The glaze of silver sparkled in her headlights and dazzled the photos that swept over the snow. The gem of the morning was diamonds and they glittered in strings from the power lines that she passed.

Not a creature was stirring as Hannah plowed through a deep drift to get onto the highway. She stepped on the gas and snow blew up on either side of her truck in plumes that drifted down to powder her windshield. The early morning was still, so still that Hannah felt as if she were the only living person in Winnetka County. Everyone else had been beamed up to a distant planet, but they’d left her behind because she’d been sleeping when the spaceship had come instead of standing out on Main Street in Lake Eden with everyone else. Now she was alone and she had to somehow contact the distant planet and convince the leader to send another . . .

Hannah’s mental journey into woo-woo land disappeared abruptly as a Cozy Cow Dairy truck passed her and the driver honked his horn. Other people were awake and everything was perfectly normal except . . . Hannah crinkled her forehead, deep in thought . . . there was one thing that was unusual about her commute this morning.

“Whoa!” Hannah breathed, partly to test the theory and partly because she was so thoroughly discombobulated. She’d puffed the word out, straight at the inside of the cold windshield, but she couldn’t see her crystallized breath in the air.

“Whoa!” Hannah tried it again and still there was no visible sign. She wiggled her left hand out of her winter glove and tentatively touched the tips of her fingers to the plastic designed to look like leather that covered the console between the seats. Warm. Her console was slightly warm to the touch. And so was her steering wheel, and the dashboard, and even the frame around the rearview mirror. Her heater was working! Hannah let out a joyous yelp that would have done a bull moose proud. The object of the recall must have been the heater, and Cyril had fixed it!

Hannah smiled all the way to the turnoff for Lake Eden. She smiled as she drove through town, and she was still smiling when she pulled into her parking spot at The Cookie Jar. She was about to smile her way out of her truck and into her shop when she noticed that there was a pitcher on the passenger seat.

“That’s my pitcher!” Hannah said to no one at all and then felt silly for talking to herself. But it was her pitcher, the same pitcher she’d washed and left on the counter in Vanessa’s kitchen. What was it doing here in her truck?

Hannah picked it up and saw that someone had stuffed a note inside. She opened the lid, pulled out the note and read, Hannah — thanks for Orange Julius. Vanessa washed the pitcher.

“No, she didn’t,” Hannah muttered, and then she went on reading. I knew you’d never get that auxiliary heater, so Bill and I hatched this plan with Cyril and we installed it for you. I found the leak and fixed it, so you shouldn’t be freezing your foot off anymore. I just wanted to say think you for cutting me some slack the other night with Vanessa and I figured this was one way to do it. And the note was signed, I love you, Mike.

Hannah knew she should be angry. A woman with principles, an independent woman who didn’t need to rely on a man for her comfort and well-being would have been angry. She did her best to work up a snit, but she was just too thankful to feel annoyed. So what if Mike had tricked her by faking a factory recall? So what if he’d decided what would be best for her and done it without consulting her? Her heater was fixed. Basking in the glow of being warm following a winter commute for the very first time since she’d bought her truck, Hannah suspected that if Mike suddenly appeared and begged her forgiveness for two-timing him with both Shawna Lee and Vanessa, she’d come within a car’s whisker of doing it!

Ten dozen Orange Snaps, twelve dozen Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies, eight dozen Oatmeal Raisin Crisps, six dozen Boggles, nine dozen Black and Whites, and fourteen pans of various cookie bars, and Hannah was through baking for the morning. Her next task was to make preparations for lunch. The main ingredient would be shrimp. With two pounds of salad shrimp, two pounds of medium-size tail-on, and two pounds of jumbo colossal shrimp overloading her condo freezer, she’d decided that something had to give. She was going to use the salad shrimp for Shrimp Bisque and offer it to friends who dropped in around noon. Trudi Nash, a former art teacher at Jordan High, had given Edna Ferguson the recipe for her “cheat” collection. These were recipes that weren’t made entirely from scratch, but as Edna said every time she used one, Only a real food snob could tell the difference.

Hannah thawed the shrimp in running water and chopped it with a knife. Then she got out the “cheat” ingredients, a can of condensed tomato soup and a can of condensed green pea soup. She dumped the soups in the blender, turned it on low, and combined them with the milk. Then she poured the resulting mixture in a saucepan that she carried to the walk-in cooler. The shrimp went in a separate container that she placed right next to the saucepan, and she was all ready to heat it when lunchtime rolled around.

She shut the cooler door, poured herself another cup of coffee, and carried it to her favorite booth at the back of the coffee shop. It was still dark outside and nothing was moving. That wasn’t surprising, considering that it was six forty-seven in the morning. Lisa, who was an early riser, wouldn’t even get up for another few minutes. Of course now that she was married . . .

Hannah steered her mind away from those possibilities and zeroed in on her tasks for the day, not nearly as interesting, but much, much safer for a single woman who wanted to stay that way, at least for a while.

TRUDI’S SHIRMP BISQUE

Note: You can also make this bisque with crab meat, or with a combination of shrimp and crab.

10 ¾ oz. can condensed tomato soup (I used Campbell’s) 11 ¼ oz. can condensed green pea soup (I used Campbell’s) 3 cups whole milk (or light cream, if you want it richer) 2-pound package salad shrimp, roughly chopped ½ cup sherry (optional)

Mix the tomato soup and the green pea soup together. (It has to be green pea — don’t use split pea.) The green pea soup is lump, so use a blender if you have one. Add the milk or light cream.

Heat the soups and the milk in a saucepan over low heat, stirring occasionally, while you thaw and chop the shrimp. When the mixture is warm, add the chopped shrimp and stir it in.

When the soup is heated thoroughly, add the sherry and serve.

Yield: Makes approximately 6 servings.

Lisa said this bisque is even better than the bisque she had at the very fancy, very expensive restaurant in Minneapolis where Herb took her last year on Valentine’s Day. Herb agreed, and not just because it’s a whole lot cheaper.

“Did you know that Bill and Mike fixed my heater?” Hannah asked, climbing into the passenger seat of Andrea’s Volvo.

“I knew,” Andrea admitted, “but they swore me to secrecy. That’s why we pulled into Cyril’s garage yesterday. It was supposed to seem like a big coincidence when he told you about the fake recall.”

“It was really great being warm on the drive to work this morning.”

“How about your feet? Bill said Mike was still trying to find the leak when he left last night.”

“Mike found it. When I got out of the truck this morning, I could actually feel my toes.”

“So . . . is he forgiven?”

“Bill?” Hannah asked, deliberately misunderstanding.

“No, silly. Mike. He’s sorry, Hannah. He told Bill he wished he could take it all back.”

“Take what back?”

Andrea looked very nervous. “Um . . . all the time he spent with Shawna Lee.”

Hannah didn’t say a word, but the goodwill she’d felt toward Mike for fixing her heater vanished like free soft serve at the Fourth of July picnic.

“He told Bill absolutely nothing happened between them.”

“Of course he did. He knew that Bill would tell you, and you’d tell me.”

“I guess. But it’s like you told Mother . . . Shawna Lee’s dead and she’s no competition anymore.”

Hannah remembered saying that, but what was sauce for her mother’s goose was not necessarily sauce for hers. “So Bill saw them together a lot?”

“Of course. I mean, they work together and they go to the same places to eat lunch. If Mike took Shawna Lee to lunch, Bill saw them. But you don’t have to worry. Nothing happened. Mike told Bill that every time Bill mentioned he’d seen them together.”

“Makes me wonder why Shawna Lee was after him. With all those nothing happeneds, why did she bother?”

“Don’t tell me, Norman said when he opened the sliding glass panel between his waiting room and the receptionist’s desk. “You’re here to see the forensic dentist.”

Hannah grinned. Norman was always a quick study. “That’s right,” she agreed. “How did you know?”

“It’s unlikely both of you would have a dental emergency at the same time. And since neither of you look as if you’re in any pain, that can’t be it anyway. Of course I’d like to think you came to see me because you find me incredibly intelligent, and attractive, and sexy, and . . . “

“That, too,” Hannah said, interrupting what would surely be a list of Norman’s sterling qualities. “We’d like you to take a look at a picture. We need your expert opinion.”

“Hand it over.”

Hannah shoved the framed photo they’d taken from Winthrop’s apartment through the open glass panel. “We really need to know whether the woman in this picture is Shawna Lee, or Vanessa.”

“Vanessa,” Norman said, giving the photo a quick glance.

“But . . . don’t you have to compare it to dental charts or something?” Andrea asked.

“No. It’s Vanessa.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Hannah tapped the photo with her finger. “It looks just like Shawna Lee to me.”

“This woman’s left incisor is perfectly formed. Shawna Lee’s left incisor had a chip.”

“But maybe this picture was taken before she chipped it,” Hannah suggested.

“No. She told me that happened in kindergarten when she fell off the swings.”

“So you know for sure that this is Vanessa?”

Norman nodded. “I’d stake my license on it. I can go get the dental records if you want me to, but there’s no doubt in my mind.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Andrea said, turning to Hannah. “We’d better not tell Mother. You just got her calmed down and this’ll rile her up all over again.”

“You’re right, especially since Vanessa is still alive. We’ll have to tell her sooner or later, but I agree that it should be later.”

Norman looked like a guy who’d just gone down for the second time and was about to feel the water close over his head again. “I don’t get it. Why would this picture upset your mother? It’s a perfectly ordinary picture. Winthrop and Vanessa are sitting at a table in some kind of a restaurant or club, and they’re smiling for the photographer.”

“But Winthrop never said a word about knowing Vanessa, and Mother thought he’d told her everything.”

“Maybe he didn’t think it was important, especially if they didn’t know each other that well. I can understand why your mother would be curious, but it’s not exactly incriminating.”

“Oh, yes it is,” Hannah said.

“How? Professional photographers take pictures like this all the time.”

“I know, but Winthrop must have known Vanessa pretty well because Mother found this photo hidden in his underwear drawer.”

“Oh,” Norman said, and then he was silent. To his credit, he didn’t ask what Delores had been doing in Winthrop’s underwear drawer. Perhaps, like Hannah and Andrea, he didn’t really want to know.

“Now all we have to do is find out exactly where it was taken,” Hannah told him. “Mother will want to know.”

“That’s easy,” said, shoving the photo back to Hannah’s side of the glass. “It’s obviously taken by a professional. Just look at the back and see if it’s stamped with the studio name.”

“You do it,” Hannah said, shoving the picture over to her sister.

“Okay,” Andrea agreed, turning the frame, glass side down, on Norman’s counter. “Everybody cross their fingers . . . “

Hannah and Norman watched as Andrea bent back the prongs that kept the backing in place and lifted out the cardboard. The photo was backside up and there was a stamp in the lower left-hand corner.

“Peachtree Photo,” Andrea read aloud, turning to them with a pleased expression.” There’s a phone number and the photographer’s in Macon, Georgia. Do you want me to call?”

“Absolutely,” Hannah said. “Call now.”

Andrea, who was always ready for any assignment that tested her information retrieval skills, snatched her cell phone from her purse and punched in the number. Hannah rummaged through her purse, pulled out her steno notepad, flipped it to a blank page, and handed it to her sister.

“Oh, hi!” Andrea said, when the call was connected. “I’m calling about this incredible photo of a friend of mine. I was wondering if I could order another copy, or get the negative, or something. You see, we’re having a surprise party for her birthday, and we want blowups of all her flattering photos to put up in the restaurant. And since this is such a good one . . . “

Andrea started to doodle a smiling face and Hannah took heart. It was a promising sign.

“It’s taken at some kind of restaurant, or club,” Andrea related, “and it’s of Vanessa and a guy she met while she was living in Georgia. She looks so good in it. It’s probably the best picture I’ve ever seen of her.”

Another smiling face doodle joined the first, and Hannah felt a smile break out on her own face. Andrea was working wonders with the person on the other end of the line.

“Yes, it’s a two-shot,” Andrea confirmed, glancing over at Hannah and winking. “Tropical décor, peacock chairs, and glass-topped tables on rattan bases. There’s a caged parrot in the background, if that helps.”

Andrea was silent for a moment and then she bent down for a closer look at the photo. “A number in the lower left-hand corner? Yes! I see it. It’s really small. Hold on a second and I’ll read it off to you.”