Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Hannah Swensen #1)(62)

Andrea looked around. “Everything’s the same, except for the couch. He used to have a black one with cow pillows on it. See that painting up there over the fireplace? He told me that his mother painted it from an old photograph. That’s Max’s grandfather standing in front of the original dairy.”

“I didn’t know that Max’s mother was an artist.” Hannah stared at the painting. It wasn’t very good.

“Obviously, she wasn’t.” Andrea recovered enough to smile. “It’s from one of those original paint-by-the-number sets. They were very big in the fifties. She mailed in the photograph and they sent back the canvas with little numbers in the spaces so she’d know what color to use. I had all I could do not to tell Max how bad it was.”

Now that Hannah had moved closer, she could see some of the numbers showing through the paint and she doubted that Max’s grandfather had sported a seventeen tattooed on his forehead. “Let’s go through the other rooms. Tell me if you see anything that you don’t remember.”

With Andrea following, Hannah stepped briskly out into the hallway and they proceeded to go through every room in the house. Andrea pointed out new curtains in the den, a slightly different furniture arrangement in Max’s home office, and new wallpaper in the dining room. Max’s bedroom had been painted since Andrea had seen it. He’d changed the color scheme from blue to green, and the guest bedroom had a new braided rug on the floor. Every room had at least one cow in some shape or form.

“How can you remember what everything looked like?” Hannah asked. She was amazed at the amount of information Andrea had remembered from a single tour of Max’s house.

Andrea shrugged modestly. “I’ve always had a good eye. That’s why I could tell when Mother had been in my room. If one tiny thing had been moved, I noticed it.”

“And there isn’t one tiny thing out of place in Max’s house?” Hannah kept talking as they made a full circle and approached the kitchen again. She didn’t want Andrea to think about what might have happened to Max.

“Not that I can see, except…” Andrea stopped by the connecting door that led to the garage and reached up to touch an empty hook by the side of the doorframe. “Wait a minute, Hannah. There’s supposed to be a key right here.”

“What kind of a key?”

Andrea closed her eyes for a moment and then they snapped open again. “A shiny blue metal key on a cow key chain. It was hanging right here when Max showed me his kitchen. The cow was really cute, brown and white with a little—”

“Do you know what the key was for?” Hannah interrupted her sister’s description.

“The dairy. Max said he used it when he walked to work and he didn’t want to carry his whole key ring. He told me he just grabbed that key and his garage-door opener and—” Andrea stopped speaking and turned to Hannah. “That must be what he did on Wednesday morning! When I went back to his car to get the keys, I noticed that his garage-door opener wasn’t clipped to the visor.”

“I think you’re right. Max started to pack his car Wednesday morning, but he didn’t have time to finish before his meeting. He left his briefcase open because he needed to pick up the speech that Betty typed up. When his meeting was over, he planned to come back here and leave for the convention. But Max didn’t come back. The last time anyone saw him he was in his office at Cozy Cow. His trail ends at the dairy.”

Andrea winced. “I hope you’re not going to say what I think you’re going to say.”

“I am.” Hannah closed up the garage and ushered her sister out Max’s front door. “We don’t have a choice. We’ve got to check out the dairy.”





Chapter Nineteen




Hannah started her Suburban, reached for the bag of cookies she always carried in the back, and tossed them to Andrea. “Have a cookie. You need some chocolate. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I don’t need chocolate. What I need is a shrink! It would take a psychiatrist to figure out why I ever agreed to this harebrained, idiotic idea of yours to…to—” Andrea stopped speaking, too rattled to go on. Then she reached into the bag, pulled out a cookie, and bit into it savagely. She chewed, swallowed, and then she sighed. “These are really good, Hannah.”

“They’re called Chocolate-Covered Cherry Delights. Mother gave me the idea for the recipe when she told me how Dad used to always bring her chocolate-covered cherries whenever she was mad at him.”

Andrea reached into the bag for another and took a huge bite. “Are you absolutely sure we need to go inside the dairy?”

“I’m sure.” Hannah turned at end of Max’s access road and into the Cozy Cow parking lot.

“We can’t just try to call Bill first?”

“He’s got his hands full,” Hannah answered. She parked in the darkest corner of the lot and turned to her sister. Andrea looked a lot better and her hands weren’t shaking anymore. “Relax, Andrea. Max isn’t inside. He couldn’t be. Betty or one of the other employees would have found him by now. All we’re going to do is look for clues in his office.”

“That’s true.” Andrea managed a shaky smile.

“Then you’re coming in with me?”