Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(17)

Add two cups of the flour now. Mix it in.

Add the orange juice to your bowl. Mix it in and then add the rest of the flour. (You should have three cups left to add.) Mix thoroughly. This dough will be quite stiff.

Give the bowl a final stir by hand and cover it with plastic wrap. Stash it in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Overnight is fine too!

When you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375

degrees F., rack in the middle position.

! % { # 9

53

! % { # 9

Prepare your baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper and spraying the paper with Pam, or another nonstick cooking spray.

Hannah’s 2nd Note: If it’s snowing outside and you’re all out of parchment paper and your car won’t start for the trip to the store to get more, don’t worry about it. Just spray your cookie sheets with Pam or whichever nonstick cooking spray you have on hand. If you do this, you’ll have to let the cookies cool on the sheets for at least 5 minutes before you transfer them to wire racks, but that’s okay. It’s a lot better than trudging a mile through the snow to get to the store when you don’t have to.

Take the chilled dough out of the refrigerator and make dough balls, about an inch in diameter, with your hands.

Drop them in the small bowl with the sugar and roll them around to coat them. Then place them on the cookie sheets, 12 to a standard-size sheet. Press them down slightly when you place them on the sheets so they won’t roll off on the way to the oven.

Bake the cookies at 375 degrees F. for 7 to 10 minutes.

(Mine took about 9 minutes.) Let them cool on the pan for a minute and then pull off the parchment paper and transfer the paper and cookies to a wire rack.

Hannah’s 3rd Note: If you didn’t use parchment paper, follow the cooling directions in my 2nd note.

! % { # 9

54

CANDY CANE MURDER

55

If the dough begins to get sticky and you start to have trouble rolling it with your hands, return it to the refrigerator while the cookies are baking and take it out again when you need to make more dough balls.

Yield: approximately 8 dozen tasty cookies.





Chapter


! Five #

Hannah had just finished packing up everything she needed for the luncheon when Lisa came in through the swinging restaurant-style door carrying a tub of miniature candy canes, and a large shopping bag with Bergstrom’s logo emblazoned on the front. “Your mother was just here and she dropped these off for you,” she said.

“I know about the candy canes. I asked her to pick them up for me. I’m almost afraid to ask, but … what’s in the shopping bag?”

“Two things. The first is a Santa suit.”

“But I wanted her to look at it, not buy it!”

Lisa laughed. “That’s exactly what she said you’d say. She bought it for Bill so that he could play Santa at the sheriff’s department Christmas party. She says she’ll give it to him later, after you take a good look at it.”

“Okay. What’s the second thing in the bag?”

“A new purse. She says she just wants you to see it. You don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to.”

Hannah groaned. “So you think she’ll be insulted if I don’t keep it?”

“She’s your mother. Of course she’ll be insulted. You’ll have to use it at least once, Hannah.”

Hannah wanted to object, but Lisa was right. It was inevitable. Delores was determined to give her the purse and it CANDY CANE MURDER

57

might just be time to clean out her old one, although she hated to admit it. “Later,” she said, deciding to tackle that problem once she’d solved Wayne’s murder.

“You’d better get going if you want to preheat those ovens down at the community center.”

“I’m just going to crush some of those candy canes for the batch of Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies I’ve got in the cooler.”

“I’ll do that while you’re gone. Do you need help loading your truck? Marge and Dad are out front taking care of the customers so I can carry stuff out for you.”

“Not a problem. I’ve got it covered.” Hannah glanced at her partner. Lisa was wearing the frilly dress apron they used in the coffee shop and her light brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She looked like what Hannah’s grandmother would have called “a slip of a girl,” but Grandma Ingrid would have been wrong to dismiss Lisa Herman Beeseman so lightly.

Not only did Lisa work full time at The Cookie Jar, she also kept what Hannah’s grandmother would have termed a “preacher-ready house,” cooked nutritious meals for her new husband every night, and visited her father, who had Alzheimer’s, at least five times a week. Lisa was on the go every second, and Hannah often wished she had that kind of energy. She told herself it was because a twenty-year-old possessed double the energy of women who’d passed the thirtyyear milestone, but that probably wasn’t true.

“Did you use the invisible waitress trick?” Hannah asked her, referring to the strange phenomenon she’d discovered the first day she opened her coffee shop. If two customers were having a private conversation, they kept right on talking about confidential matters while Hannah or Lisa refilled their coffee mugs, or delivered their cookie orders. It was as though the moment Hannah or Lisa picked up a coffee carafe, or a tray of cookies, they became incapable of overhearing anything that was said. Armed with the invisible cloak of a frilly serving apron, they ceased to exist as living, 58