Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(63)

In spite of the Almond Joy I’d wolfed down on Hysteria Lane, I was hungry. I had an untouched order of pork potstickers in my refrigerator which I intended to demolish the minute I got home.

Back in my apartment, I raced past the eternally napping Prozac and made a beeline for the kitchen. I grabbed the potstickers from the refrigerator and put them in the microwave, counting impatiently as the seconds ticked by. It’s amazing how long thirty seconds can seem when you’re starving.

Then, wouldn’t you know, just when I’d snatched them out, the phone rang.

Argggh! Why does the phone always ring when you’re about to shove a potsticker in your mouth?

“I’ll be right back,” I promised the little darlings, and raced to the living room to get the phone.

“Yes?” I growled, answering the dratted thing. Probably some stupid telemarketer.

“Am I speaking with Jaine Austen?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“It’s Tyler Girard.”

Oh, shoot. In my frenzy to get at those potstickers, I hadn’t THE DANGERS OF CANDY CANES

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recognized his voice. Why had I been so grouchy? I wanted him to think I was sweet and upbeat, not a snarling harpy.

“Oh, hi, Tyler!” I gushed.

“It sounds like you were in the middle of something.”

“Well, yes, actually. I was baking cookies for the homeless.”

Huh? Where had that come from? Why on earth had I made up such an outrageous lie?

“For the Union Rescue Mission,” I added in a fit of lunacy, referring to a local soup kitchen.

“Really? I didn’t know they accepted homemade goods. I thought the stuff had to be packaged for security reasons.”

“Oh, they know me down there. I’ve been doing it for years. In fact, they call me The Cookie Lady.”

If I told one more lie, I’d be struck by lightning.

“So,” he asked, “how was your date with Angel Cavanaugh?”

“Fine! Terrific. We definitely began to bond.”

Would the whoppers never end?

“That’s so gratifying to hear. It’s always nice to know we’ve made a good match. I hope we’ll see you at the Christmas party.”

“We?”

I smelled a Significant Other lurking in the wings.

“Yes, I told Sister Mary Agnes all about you, and she can’t wait to meet you.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. The “she” in his “we” was Sister Mary Agnes.

“Well, you’d better get back to those cookies.”

“Cookies?”

“For the homeless.”

“Oh, right. My cookies.”

I hung up, vowing to some day actually donate cookies to the homeless, and praying that Angel wouldn’t spill the beans about our disastrous date. Then I hurried back to the kitchen 218

Laura Levine

for my potstickers, whose heavenly aroma had now drifted out into the living room.

What happened next was absolutely heartbreaking. Sensitive readers may want to get out their hankies.

I bounded into the kitchen, only to find Prozac curled up on the kitchen counter, belching softly, surrounded by what just five minutes ago had been my potstickers. Now they were mangled bits of dough, pathetic dim sum corpses.

Prozac, the little devil, had burrowed her way through the doughy wrappings and devoured every speck of pork inside.

“Prozac!” I wailed. “How could you? That was my lunch.”

And quite delicious it was, too.

I picked up a limp piece of dough and stared at it balefully.

“How can one cat eat so much, so fast?”

Pretty impressive, huh?

For a desperate instant I considered eating the shards of dough, but don’t have the vapors. I didn’t.

Instead I had a nutritious lunch of English muffins and martini olives.

After which, I put in a call to Garth’s law partner, Peter Roberts.

“Law offices of Janken and Roberts,” a perky receptionist answered. “Oops, I mean law office of Peter Roberts.”

Interesting, I noted, that Janken had top billing in the law practice.

“May I help you?” she asked in a friendly voice, about a zillion times more friendly than Prudence Bascomb’s dragon lady secretary.

I asked if I could speak with Peter.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, he’s in court all week. Would you like to leave a message?”

Once again, I posed as an insurance investigator looking into Garth Janken’s death, and asked her to please have Mr.

Roberts call me back as soon as possible.

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“Of course,” she promised. “I’ll get the message to him right away.”

Not two minutes after I hung up, the phone rang.

Wow, that was fast. Miss Perky really had gotten the message to him right away.

I answered it eagerly.

“Mr. Roberts?”

“No, this is not Mr. Roberts,” a no-nonsense woman replied. “Am I speaking with Jaine Austen?”

“Yes.”

“This is Elizabeth Drake from Century National Insurance Fraud Unit.”

Gulp. I smelled trouble ahead.

“Ms. Austen, we received a call from a Mrs. Libby Brecker, inquiring about a Century National investigator named Jaine Austen.”