Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen #1)(113)

“She’s approximately fifteen, she doesn’t have a driver’s license yet, and she lives with her mother. Her father was a veterinarian, and he’s dead.”

Andrea shook her head. “We don’t know that for sure.”

“We don’t know what for sure?” Hannah asked with a frown.

“We don’t know her father’s dead.”

“Why would Candy lie about something like that?” Norman wanted to know.

“Divorce. I heard all about it on a talk show. Some kids don’t want to admit their parents have broken up. They’d rather say that one of them is dead.”

Norman looked puzzled. “But why?”

“It ends the discussion. If someone says, My dad is dead, you say, I’m sorry. And then you change the subject. If someone says, My parents are divorced, you might ask questions about which one they live with, and how often they see the other one, and things like that.”

Norman nodded. “That makes some kind of sense, but I still think he’s dead.”

“So do I.” Hannah glanced down at her notebook again. “I’m almost positive her name really is Candy. She answers to it even when she’s distracted, and it sounds natural when she says it. And I’m pretty sure her last name starts with an R.”

“She told you that?” Andrea asked.

“In a way, but she didn’t mean to. That first night when I woke her up, I asked her name. She said Candy, and then she began to say something that started with an R. When she realized what she was doing, she stopped cold and told me that I didn’t need to know her last name.”

“It’s probably an R, then,” Norman decided. “What else?”

“She has a photographic memory, although I’m not sure if that’s a clue or not. And when she was demonstrating it for me, she said she remembered the personalized license plate her mom gave her dad for his van. It said critters. And she told us her dad’s phone number at his clinic. It was eight-one-four, eight-four-four-one.”

“That’s a great clue!” Andrea exclaimed, giving her a thumbs-up.

“Only if her father’s not dead and the clinic she was talking about is still open.”

“Chances are, it’s still open even if he’s dead,” Norman told her. “Most clinics don’t go out of business when the doctor dies. Look at my father’s practice. If I hadn’t come back to run it, my mother would have sold it to another dentist. And you can bet he wouldn’t have changed the number, since all the patients already have it. You see medical practices for sale all the time. What you’re buying is the equipment and the existing patient list.”

Andrea gave him a bright smile. “Norman’s right, Hannah. Just look at Bertie. She didn’t start the Cut ’n Curl from scratch. She bought the former owner’s equipment and her client list. And I know for a fact that she kept the same phone number.”

“Maybe the vet clinic still has the same phone number, but unfortunately, there’s a hitch.” Hannah didn’t bother to point out that buying a medical practice wasn’t exactly the same as purchasing a beauty shop, and that Andrea was guilty of trying to add apples and oranges.

“What’s the hitch?” Norman asked.

“Candy didn’t give me the area code.”

Andrea waved off that concern. “We ought to be able to get around that. I mean, how many area codes can there be?”

“Over two hundred sixty, and that’s not counting Canada. I looked it up in the phone book. It would take hours to dial all those numbers.”

“I’ll do it,” Andrea volunteered. “It won’t take me that long since I’ve got programmable one-button dialing. All I have to do is punch in the area code and my phone will put in the rest.”

Hannah just shook her head. “Okay, if you think you can do it, but I don’t even want to think about what Bill will say when you get your next phone bill.”

“He won’t say anything, because it’ll be the same as this month’s phone bill.”

“You have a cell phone with unlimited minutes and no roaming charges?” Norman guessed.

“That’s right. I’ll start calling the minute I get home and work until Bill comes in the door. I’ll do what it takes, Hannah. If I have to, I’ll wait until he goes to sleep and I’ll call all night.”

“They might not be open all night,” Hannah pointed out.

“I know that. But since it’s a clinic, there’s bound to be an answering service. Is there anything else I should know about Candy’s family?”

Hannah glanced back down at her notes. “Her mother taught her how to make candy, but you already knew that. And here’s something, but it doesn’t do us a whole lot of good.” Hannah pointed to a note she’d made. “She said her Grandfather Samuel is a Methodist minister, but I don’t know what side of the family he’s on.”

“So far the phone number’s our best bet,” Norman said. “I’ll hop on the Internet to see if I can track down that license plate, but it’s a long shot since she didn’t say exactly how they spelled it and we don’t know the state. And if her father’s dead and her mother sold the van or something like that, the plate could have gone back into circulation.”