Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen #1)(44)

Hannah felt a chill as she stared at the car and its motionless driver. There was only one unit the man could be watching and it was hers.

Ron’s killer! The thought struck Hannah like a lightning bolt of dread. Bill had told her to be careful about asking questions and she thought she had. But what if the killer had the misguided notion that she was hot on his trail? Bill’s words came back to haunt her: If he killed once, he won’t hesitate to kill again.

The security light had been on this morning. Hannah shivered as she remembered. She’d assumed that a bird had set it off, but perhaps she’d been wrong. Had Ron’s killer attempted to get into her condo?

Hannah swallowed past the lump of fear in her throat, took a deep breath, and forced herself to think rationally. She really hated to call Bill and roust him out of his comfortable bed. Bill would race right over here to question the guy, but she’d feel like a fool if the driver had some perfectly good reason for being there. But what reason could there be for sitting in a car in the dead of night, alone in the snow?

She thought about it for several minutes and she came up with only one possible scenario. The driver was locked out of his condo. But why would he park in the visitors’ lot if he lived here? It was a lot warmer in the garage.

Hannah didn’t think she was in any actual danger. Bill had installed a police-recommended deadbolt on her door when she’d first moved in and he’d put extra locks on all the windows. She even had an alarm system, installed by the previous owner, that boasted a siren, clanking bells, and two keypads, one by the front door and another in her bedroom. Hannah had never bothered to turn it on before, but tonight she would. She hadn’t been born with nine lives like her feline roommate.

She was about to go to the keypad to activate the system when she had a brilliant idea. The moment she thought of it, she jumped up and rummaged through the closet for her camera. She’d take a picture of the car. It was sitting right under the streetlight and the license plate would show. And she’d turn the film over to Bill in the morning.

Her camera was out of film and it took a frantic search to find a roll. Hannah turned off the flash, knowing it would just glare off her windowpane, and used the zoom lens to snap several shots of the car. Then she activated the security system and sat down in her chair. She’d done all she could, with the exception of alerting Bill, but she’d never be able to sleep peacefully. She might as well resign herself to an all-night stint of surveillance.

Several minutes later, armed with a freshly made cup of coffee and a box of white cheddar cheese crackers, Hannah sat down in her chair again. As she alternately crunched and sipped, Moishe opened his good eye to give her a curious stare and promptly went back to sleep again.

“Some attack cat you are!” Hannah complained. And then she heard the sound of another car approaching the visitors’ parking lot. As it drove past one of the old-fashioned streetlights, Hannah recognized Bernice Maciej’s yellow Cadillac.

Bernice, who lived in the building directly across from Hannah, turned in to park next to the snow-covered car. She got out, the man got out, and they embraced in the parking lot. Hannah punched in the code to turn off the security system and opened the window to listen in on their conversation. She heard Bernice say: “Sorry, honey. I didn’t think I’d be out this late.” And the man replied, “That’s okay, Mom. The traffic was light and I got here sooner than I thought I would.”

Feeling more than a bit foolish, Hannah closed the window, set her alarm clock, and climbed under the covers. She rousted Moishe from the nest he’d made on her pillow and plunked him down on his.

“I must be getting paranoid,” Hannah murmured as she reached out to pet Moishe’s soft fur. “I should have taken my cue from you and just curled up and gone to sleep.”





Chapter Fourteen




When Hannah woke up the next morning, she was in a foul mood. She was used to getting along without the recommended eight hours of sleep, but she’d spent a very restless night and some of her dreams had been disturbing. Ron’s killer had chased her in a yellow Cadillac bearing a striking resemblance to the one Bernice drove. Her final nightmare hadn’t been so bad. She’d dreamed that she was being held down and tickled by a furry monster. By now, Hannah knew what that dream meant. Moishe had crawled onto her pillow. She’d managed to rouse herself enough to shove him over, and the rest of the night had been relatively peaceful.

There was a list on the pad of notepaper she kept on her night table and Hannah switched on the light to read it. The words Fluffy Dreams were written at the top and they were in her handwriting. She must have been dreaming about cookies again.

Oh, yes. Hannah began to smile. She remembered the dream now. She’d been catering a reception at the White House and the president, a young Abe Lincoln, had raved about her cookies. His wife, Barbara Bush, had asked for the recipe and she’d written it out right there in the Oval Office.

Hannah laughed out loud. Abe Lincoln and Barbara Bush. She guessed she shouldn’t be surprised. It had been a dream, after all. But she had written down the recipe. Perhaps her unconscious had come up with something delicious.

The words were written in an untidy scrawl. Obviously, she hadn’t bothered to turn on the light. Hannah made out the word butter and a bit farther down sugar. Between the two words was a scrawl that looked like pooches. It must be peaches, and peach cookies were an intriguing concept. She also made out marshes for marshmallows, and cuckoo, which could be either cocoa or coconut. Perhaps she’d experiment a bit with the ingredients and see what she could make.