Carrot Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #10)(18)

Last night the pavilion had looked majestic, a gleaming white edifice in the moonlight with its open shutters spilling out warm yellow light into the humid blanket of summer darkness. Music had set up joyful vibrations in the walls, the wooden booths, the old chrome-and-black plastic barstools, and the revelers themselves, causing laughter and loud voices to peal out in a cacophony of raucous gaiety. Today it was…Hannah paused, in both mind and step, attempting to think of the word. Sad. The word was sad. The white paint was peeling, the shutters were warped from exposure to the elements, and there were a half-dozen brown beer bottles leaning up against the front of the building like tipsy sentinels. The party was over. Everyone had left. All that remained was the abandoned pavilion with its curling shards of paint.

Hannah tried the front door, but it was locked, just as she’d thought it would be. She knocked, calling out for Gus, but there was no answer. Someone else might have gone back to find Lisa or Herb to get the key, but Hannah had been born and raised in Lake Eden, and she knew all about the Lake Pavilion. In a town where Lover’s Lane was regularly patrolled, and the parking lot at the rear of Jordan High was peppered with arc lights, the Lake Pavilion was the sole haven for teenage couples seeking privacy.

The shutter was at the back of the pavilion, the third from the corner. Hannah found the proper one, tugged on the padlock that had been rigged to open, and removed it. Gaining access to the pavilion was as easy as her high school friends had told her it was. She lifted the shutter and propped it open with the stick that was attached to the side of the window frame. The opening was a bit above waist height, but she managed to swing one leg up and over the sill. A moment later, she was sitting on the sill with both legs hanging down inside the building, preparing to push off with her hands and jump down.

She landed awkwardly, which wasn’t surprising. She’d never been the athletic type. Since the shutter was at the back of the pavilion, not visible from the road, she left it open for illumination.

All was quiet within. The interior had an air of abandonment, and the only sign of life Hannah heard was the buzzing of several flies that had been trapped inside. As a child she’d believed that if she recorded the high-pitched buzzing of house flies and played it back ever so slowly, she’d hear tiny little voices saying things like, “Dig in. Hannah spilled strawberry jam on the kitchen table,” and “Watch out! Her mother’s got a flyswatter!”

A phalanx of giant trash barrels sat against the wall. Several were close to overflowing with plastic plates from the dessert buffet and Styrofoam cups with the remnants of coffee. Another barrel was marked with a familiar symbol, and it contained bottles and cans for recycling.

Hannah wrinkled up her nose. There was an odd combination of scents in the air, a spicy sweetness from the dessert buffet, the acrid scent of coffee that had perked too long in the pot, the lingering fragrance of perfumes and colognes, and the stale odor of spilled beer and liquor. Those smells were ordinary, what you might expect in a place where a large party had been held. But there was another scent under it all, cloying and sharp, and slightly metallic. It reminded Hannah of something unpleasant, something bad, something…but she didn’t want to think about that now.

She fought the urge to dig in, to start picking up paper napkins, cups, glasses, and bottles, and stuffing them into the appropriate trash barrels. She reminded herself that Lisa and Herb had organized a crew of relatives to clean the pavilion this afternoon, and nobody expected her to do it. Her number one priority was to find Gus so that they could take the family picture.

A light breeze swept across the shaft of sunlight that streamed through the open window, setting dust motes twirling. As Hannah watched, several more flies buzzed by the beam of sunlight on their way to the mahogany bar against the far wall. The top of the bar was empty except for a brown grocery sack and a white, disposable cooler. It was obvious that Gus had been here. Perhaps he’d been so tired, he’d forgotten his groceries and his cooler.

Fat chance! Hannah’s rational mind chided her. He wanted those groceries. He asked Ava to open the store after hours for him. There’s no way he would have forgotten them when he left.

Another group of flies with the same destination in mind flew in and headed straight for the bar. If this kept up, Lisa and Herb would never get the insects out in time for the slideshow they’d scheduled for tonight. Hannah hurried to the kitchen, soaked a rag with water, and grabbed a bottle of cleanser. They’d set out the dessert buffet on the bar last night, and it was apparent that whoever had wiped it down hadn’t done a good job. She’d clean it thoroughly right now so that no more flies would come in.

Hannah had almost reached her goal when she noticed something. She stopped abruptly and peered down at the floor. The flies weren’t the only insect group attracted to this particular locale. There was a line of black carpenter ants streaming toward the bar and disappearing behind it. They must be looping around because there was a returning line of ants and they were carrying morsels of something. Carpenter ants seldom foraged for food during the daylight hours, but their scouts must have discovered something tasty enough to call out the troops.

Hannah moved closer and let out a groan when she saw what had attracted the ants. They were retrieving sweet crumbs from a piece of her carrot cake. It had been dropped, frosting-side down, and mashed to a pulp by someone’s heel!

For a brief moment, Hannah was livid. Gus had dropped a piece of her Special Carrot Cake and stepped on it. What a waste! But then she spotted something sticking out from behind the bar, something that looked like a shoe, on a foot, attached to a leg that was presumably connected to a person who was on the floor behind the bar. Hannah set the bottle of cleanser on the barstool as the ominous organ music that had been playing in her mind increased in volume, until the crashing chords almost deafened her.