Carrot Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #10)(41)

“That sounds great! I think I missed a lot by not joining the Girl Scouts.”

“Why didn’t you?” Hannah asked.

“They met after school on Wednesdays, and I had to get right home. Mom was sick, and Dad worked an extra two hours four days a week so he could take Friday off to do all the stuff that was closed on the weekends.”

Hannah kicked herself mentally for not realizing that Lisa would have a selfless reason for not joining the Girl Scouts. “You’re talking about things like going to the bank?”

“Yes. And driving her to doctor’s appointments and other medical stuff. She went in for dialysis on Fridays.”

“That must have been hard on you, Lisa.”

“Yes, but worth it. Mom had some good times when she was in remission and all my sisters and brothers would come to visit.”

Hannah saw Lisa blink several times and knew she was remembering her mother and grieving for her. It was time to introduce a happier subject. “I’ve got something for you to taste,” she announced.

“What’s that?”

“Red Velvet Cookies.”

Lisa stared at her in something close to shock. “You mean you’ve got Mom’s recipe? The one Dad remembers?”

“No, but I put one together that I hope is like your mom’s. My mother thought it would be a nice surprise for your dad’s birthday.”

“It’s great! You’re wonderful, Hannah!”

“Don’t get too excited. They might not be like your mother’s cookies at all. I understand she stopped baking them years ago.”

“That’s what Iris said when she told me about them.”

“Do you remember them?” Hannah asked.

“No. I think she’d already stopped baking them. But I get to taste one anyway, don’t I?”

“Of course. I haven’t tasted one yet, either.”

Mere seconds later, both partners had fresh mugs of coffee and a cookie on a napkin in front of them to taste. Hannah tried hers first and pronounced it good, but perhaps not the exact cookie Emily Herman had baked.

“It’s better than good, it’s superb,” Lisa declared. “The chocolate melts in your mouth and the cream cheese in the frosting sends it off the top of that goodness scale you were talking about earlier.”

“Thanks, Lisa. When you get out to the lake will you find your sister and ask her what she thinks? Have Marge and Patsy try them, too. If they taste like your mother’s, I’ll bake another batch before I come out this afternoon. Maybe they’ll jog your dad’s memory and he can tell us more about the night Gus left town and why there was bad blood between them.”

“Do you really think your cookies can cure Dad’s Alzheimer’s?”

“No, but the chocolate is bound to be good for him.”

“That’s true.” Lisa gave a little laugh. “And even if your cookies don’t give us any answers, they’ll be a lovely birthday present for him.”

After Lisa left, Hannah got the coffee shop ready for customers. This meant filling the sugar and artificial sweetener containers that sat on each table and setting out dishes with coffee creamer. Once the napkin dispensers were filled and the tables were wiped down a final time, Hannah sat down at her favorite table in the back of the coffee shop and waited for Luanne to arrive.

Nothing was moving on the street except Jon Walker’s old Irish setter, who was strolling from the drugstore up the block. Jon was nowhere in sight, so Hannah unlocked the front door of the coffee shop and went out to intercept Skippy. But just as she got there, Jon appeared at the end of the block with a leash in hand. A handsome man of Chippewa ancestry, Jon was the town druggist and the owner of Lake Eden Neighborhood Pharmacy.

“Hi, Jon,” Hannah greeted him.

“Morning, Hannah. Skippy started without me this morning. By the time I grabbed the leash, he was halfway up the block and headed for your place.”

“He must have smelled the cookies. Want to come in and have one?”

“Sure. Skippy, too? I can take him back to the drugstore if you don’t want him inside.” Jon bent down and snapped on the leash.

“Skippy, too. The health board’s never around this early, and technically I’m still closed so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Once Jon was settled in a chair with two of his favorite Molasses Crackles and a mug of coffee, and Skippy was sitting at his feet with one of the dog biscuits Hannah kept for visiting dogs, she asked the question she’d been planning to ask him ever since she’d seen the pill in the cottage Gus Klein had inhabited so briefly at the lake. “I saw someone take a pill the other night and I’m wondering what it was. I found another one the next day, so I got a good look at it.”

“Do I want to know who took the pill and where you saw it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay. What did it look like?”

“It was a capsule. One end was green and the other end was white.”

“A green-and-white capsule,” Jon repeated. “Was it a regular size capsule, or a really skinny one?”

Hannah thought about that for a moment. “I think it was a regular size. Mother used to take gelatin capsules to make her nails stronger. It was that size.”

“Regular, then. How about markings? Did you see any?”