Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen #1)(102)

She’d started thinking about Candy and how frantic her family must be, and that had made her eyes open wide and her mind kick into high gear. She had to figure out where Candy came from, discover why she’d run away, and try to get her to go back home where she belonged.

There was no way she could sleep with a problem this weighty on her mind. Hannah put on her slippers and shrugged into her robe, knotting the sash around her waist. She always thought best when she was cooking, and since she was wide awake anyway, she might as well look for Ibby’s toffee recipe and make it tonight. She could take some to work tomorrow morning so Norman could taste it.

“Coming?” Hannah asked, turning to look at her feline roommate. But Moishe had commandeered her pillow the moment she’d left it and he was stretched out on top like a sphinx, his front paws aligned in front of him, his head held perfectly erect, and his expression regal.

“Guess not,” Hannah said, answering her own question as she walked out of the room.



To Hannah’s sleep-deprived eyes, the kitchen appeared glaringly bright with its white walls and appliances. She had the urge to fetch her sunglasses as she got out her box of recipes marked “TO TRY” in big red letters. She lifted the lid, frowned at the pieces of multicolored and mismatched paper that were stuffed haphazardly into the interior, and set it down on the kitchen table with a clunk. Then she put on the coffee, snatched the carafe aside, and stuck her mug directly under the stream of fresh coffee dripping through the grounds. When her mug was full, she completed her juggling act by removing her mug and replacing the carafe.

Going through recipes without reading them was like eating a cream puff before it was filled. Even though Hannah did her best to page quickly through them, she found herself pulling out several she wanted to try immediately, some she needed to make for Christmas, and even more she intended to try within the next few months.

Her mug was empty by the time she finished sorting all the papers in the box, and Hannah got up to refill it. She hadn’t found Ibby’s toffee recipe, but she was sure she had it.

There was another place she could look. Hannah headed for the bookshelf in the living room where she kept her collection of cookbooks. One was from her father’s mother, Grandma Ingrid, and it had an envelope for recipes on the inside of the front cover. She might have slipped it in there.

By the time she’d finished going through the envelope, Hannah had a fistful of recipes to add to her piles on the kitchen table. Unfortunately, Ibby’s toffee recipe wasn’t among them. That meant there was only one more place to look and the moment Hannah thought of it, she was off and running to the guest room closet, where she was almost certain she’d stashed her old college backpack.

It took some doing. The closet was stuffed with cast-off clothing and other useless items she hadn’t been able to throw away, but eventually Hannah emerged from the depths, her search complete. Her naturally unruly red hair had been made even more unruly by an intimate encounter with a black plush coat that had belonged to her maternal grandmother, but she was clutching a bright red backpack covered with sewn-on patches from exotic places she’d never been.

“I found it!” she said, as she switched off the lights and carried it down the hall to the kitchen. That was another advantage of living alone. There was no one to think you were crazy if you talked to yourself. And on the off-chance that someone dropped by and caught her at it, Hannah could always pretend she’d been talking to Moishe and she hadn’t realized he’d left the room.

Hannah sat down, took another sip of coffee, and eyed the backpack. Without books it seemed oddly deflated, like a beach ball that had been left out all winter. It didn’t look promising, but it was the only place she had left to look.

“Here goes nothing,” Hannah said to the cat that wasn’t there, and plunged her hand down into the bottom of the backpack. The first thing she encountered was her old lunch sack with something in the bottom. Whatever it was, or had been, it was light years past the expiration date. Hannah also found a pair of sunglasses, a handful of assorted pens, and a combination lock to which she’d forgotten the combination. Eventually her fingers touched paper, stiff paper the size of an index card.

Heart beating hard, Hannah drew her hand from the backpack and took a look. It was Ibby’s recipe for Metaphysical English Toffee. She could hardly wait to taste it again!

A quick glance at the list of ingredients and Hannah realized that she was in luck. She had everything, even a package of Club Crackers. They were her mother’s favorite cracker and Hannah had stocked up for the holidays.

It didn’t take long to line a pan with foil and spray it with nonstick cooking spray. Hannah covered the foil with crackers and mixed the toffee ingredients together in a saucepan. As she was stirring the boiling toffee mixture, waiting for five minutes to elapse, she thought about Candy again. It certainly couldn’t hurt to ask an expert some questions, and she had an expert right in the family. Her brother-in-law, Bill, was a sheriff’s deputy.

Hannah glanced at the clock. It was eleven-thirty, but Bill always stayed up until midnight. If she were in luck, he’d answer the phone before it woke her sister, Andrea. Hannah reached for the phone, punched in the number, and kept right on stirring while it rang.

“It’s right here on the table by the front door. You must have set it down while you were looking for your car keys. I’ll drive it out there right now if you want me to, but that means I have to wake Tracey and…”