Carrot Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #10)(36)

“Three women already told me about it,” Hannah interrupted her mother’s question. “And there’s probably a couple more waiting to catch me alone.”

“And they all told you about his tattoo?” Delores looked outraged. “That rat! He told me he loved me! Who were they? I have to know.”

“No, you don’t. They all found out about the tattoo by accident.”

“By accident? What do you mean?”

“One was visiting Marge and walked by his bedroom door when he was dressing, one peeked over the wall in the boys’ changing room at the lake, and the other one…” Hannah stopped abruptly. She couldn’t mention the principal’s office because her mother would be able to identify Rose as the secretary. “He mooned the other one,” she settled for saying, only recounting the second part of Rose’s experience.

“Likely stories!” Delores gave a little snort. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew all along that Gus was a rakehell.”

“Is that the same as a bounder and a scoundrel?” Hannah asked, exhausting her Regency Romance vocabulary.

“In a way, dear. It’s a matter of degree. But it’s water over the dam. It happened years ago, and I don’t know why I got so upset.”

“I do,” Hannah said, before she could stop herself.

“You do?”

“Yes. You wonder how you could have been so na?ve.”

“And gullible. And you wonder how many people know you were that vulnerable back then.”

“That, too.” Hannah reached out and squeezed her mother’s shoulder. Since she’d grown up in a family that seldom showed overt affection, this was tantamount to a hug. “The same thing happened to me when I was in school. But I was older and I really should have known better.”

“Really?” Delores gave Hannah’s hand a pat, the Swensen family way of returning a hug.

“There was someone in college, an assistant professor. He said he loved me, and I believed him, but I found out that he was engaged to somebody else.”

Delores looked shocked. “That’s just awful, dear!”

“It was. It took me a long time to get over it. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to go back to college after Dad died.”

“Because he was still there?”

“That’s right. He probably still is, for all I know.”

Delores gave her a shrewd look. “You don’t care enough to find out?”

“Not really.”

“You’re over it, then,” Delores pronounced. “The strange thing is, I was sure I was over Gus when I started dating your father.”

“But you weren’t?”

Delores frowned. “I think I was. And I’m sure it wouldn’t have bothered me a bit if your father were still alive. But he isn’t. And seeing Gus again brought up old memories.”

“I understand,” Hannah said. And she did.

“But I almost forgot to tell you something. I talked to Iris Herman Staples this afternoon. She’s Lisa’s oldest sister, you know.”

“I know.”

“Well, she remembered some cookies that their mother used to make, and she said they were Jack’s favorite cookies. She was just a toddler at the time, but she remembered them. Marge and Patsy did, too. They said their mother used to love those cookies so much, she’d hired Emmy to bake them whenever she had ladies over for meetings.”

“What kind of cookies were they?” Hannah asked.

“Patsy said that Emmy called them Red Velvet Cookies. We were eating a piece of Edna’s red velvet cake at the time, and they all agreed that the cookies were just like the cake, except that they had more chocolate in the batter and there were chocolate chips inside. They were even frosted with a cream cheese frosting. You’ve eaten Edna’s cake, haven’t you, dear?”

“Yes.” Hannah thought she knew exactly where her mother’s conversation was heading.

“I mentioned the cookies to Lisa, and she looked through her mother’s recipe box, but she couldn’t find any cookie recipe like that. Jack remembers them, though, and he told Lisa they were the best cookies he’d even eaten.”

Hannah couldn’t stay silent any longer. “So you want me to try to make a red velvet cookie that tastes like the one Jack remembers?”

“That’s right, dear. It won’t be too much trouble, will it?”

Hannah felt like laughing, but she didn’t. Her mother had no concept of how many batches of trial-and-error cookies she’d have to bake before she found the proper balance of ingredients. And even when she arrived at a cookie recipe that worked, she still had no assurance that it would even remotely resemble the cookie that Jack Herman remembered.

“Dear?”

Hannah gave a tired little sigh and bowed to the inevitable. “I’ll do my best, Mother,” she promised.

“I asked Edna to write out her recipe for you.” Delores handed her a piece of notebook paper covered with Edna’s fine, spidery writing.

“Thanks, Mother. This’ll help.”

“Then you think you can do it?”

“I’ll give it my best shot.”

“By tomorrow night? It’s Jack’s birthday, and I think it would be wonderful to surprise him with a batch of his favorite cookies. Unless, of course, you’re too busy to bake them.”