Carrot Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #10)(17)

“Of course I did.” Hannah smiled back. Ava had told her the story enough times. But she wasn’t here to discuss Popsicle history. She had to find out if Ava had seen Gus. “Did Gus Klein come in this morning?” she asked. “They’re lining up for the family reunion picture, and they sent me to find him.”

“I haven’t seen him since he walked me back here last night after the dance. And before you can ask, it’s not what you think. He just wanted me to open the store so he could get some milk to go with that carrot cake you gave him.”

“So you opened the store for him?”

“Of course I did. A customer’s a customer, even after midnight. He bought his groceries, and then we had a drink together and waited for the cars to clear out of the parking lot. He said he hid your cake behind the bar and he was going back to eat it as soon as no one else was around. I think that was so he wouldn’t have to share. We went to school together, you know. Gus never was any good at sharing, not even in kindergarten.”

Hannah thought about that for a moment. On the one hand, she was pleased that Gus liked her Special Carrot Cake so much that he hadn’t wanted to give any away. On the other hand, she’d given him a half-dozen pieces, and he could have given one to Ava.

“Anyway,” Ava went on, “he got the milk and some other groceries.”

“Food for breakfast?” Hannah guessed, remembering the empty refrigerator.

“Not what a normal person would eat for breakfast, but that didn’t surprise me. Gus was never what you’d call a normal person. From little on, he had his own style, you know?”

“What did he buy?” Hannah was curious.

“Sliced ham, bread, Swiss cheese, a half-dozen little packages of potato chips, and ten Milky Ways, the old-fashioned kind with the milk chocolate, not the dark. The last I saw Gus, he was heading back to the pavilion with his cooler and his sack of groceries.”

“Cooler? What cooler?”

“Guess I forgot to mention that he bought one of those disposable coolers. I asked him why he needed a cooler when there was a refrigerator in his cottage, and he said it wasn’t working right.”

Hannah frowned. When she’d checked the cabin, the refrigerator had been working just fine. The ice cubes in the trays hadn’t melted, and cold air had rolled out of the door when she’d opened it. Why would Gus lie to Ava about it?

“He was supposed to come back to pay me for the groceries this morning,” Ava went on, “but he never showed.”

Ominous music began to play in the recesses of Hannah’s mind. It sounded like a cross between Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and the soundtrack of a bad horror movie. But she didn’t have time to think about that now. “What time was it when Gus left here last night?”

“A little after one-thirty. I got ready for bed, that takes about ten minutes, and I looked at the clock before I turned off the lights. It was a quarter to two.”

Hannah reached reflexively for her steno pad, the kind she used for murder cases, but she quickly thought better of it. This was nothing more than a missing person, someone who hadn’t shown up for the family reunion picture. Gus hadn’t left for good, his car was still here, but he could have found a warmer, more hospitable place to sleep than the single bunk in his unheated lake cottage. There had been at least five dozen women at the dance last night. One of them might have thought a good-looking, middle-aged man like Gus was irresistible, especially since he wore expensive designer clothes and sported a Rolex watch and a diamond pinkie ring. Lake Eden women didn’t meet many men who drove Jaguars and flashed around money at every opportunity. Gus could have asked one of the women for a late date, and she could have accepted. Then he could have waited with Ava until no one was around, gone back to collect the carrot cake, and walked to the woman’s cottage bearing gifts of what appeared to Hannah to be picnic fixings.

The more Hannah thought about it, the more sense it made. Perhaps Gus and his lady friend had decided to skip the group photo this morning, and they were sitting at her kitchen table right now, eating a ham and cheese sandwich, and sharing the carrot cake…

“…or not,” Hannah muttered under her breath, and then she turned to Ava. “I’d better get going. They’ll be ready to take that photo soon.”

“I hope you find Gus. If you do, will you do me a favor?”

“What?” Hannah asked, knowing better than to promise blindly.

“Right after they snap that picture, grab Gus by the ear and march him back here to pay his bill. You can tell him I said that groceries don’t grow on trees, not unless they’re apples that is.”





Chapter Six


There was only one logical place to look, and Hannah headed straight for it. The Lake Pavilion was clearly deserted. The sandy parking lot was empty of cars and contained only a crumpled cigarette pack, the remnants of what had once been a blue and white bandanna, and a neatly clipped coupon for a two-fer breakfast at Paula’s Pancake House.

As she approached the entrance to the white clapboard structure, Hannah felt an odd prickling at the back of her neck. She’d experienced that sensation before, and it had preceded something unpleasant, something bad, something like discovering a body. She told herself that Gus was fine and she’d find nothing but the debris of a party inside, but her feet dragged a bit as she approached the front entrance.