Chocolate Cream Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen #24)(29)

“Did you find out if Lynne and Tom are coming?” Michelle asked, greeting Hannah as she came in the back door of The Cookie Jar.

“No. Their names weren’t on Stephanie’s list, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not coming. I’ll try calling Lynne again tonight to see if I can reach her.”

“Good. I’d like to see her again.” Michelle hurried toward the oven as the stove timer rang. “I’d better get the cakes out before they get too dry.”

“What are you baking?”

“Lisa’s Pink Grapefruit Cake. She told me that it was one of Lois Brown’s recipes and she mixed up the batter before they got busy in the coffee shop. I volunteered to bake her cakes and glaze them for her.”

“Lisa mentioned she’d made Pink Grapefruit Cake during the blizzard. I wonder where she found pink grapefruit at this time of year. I meant to ask her this morning, but I forgot.”

“The same thing occurred to me and I asked her.” Michelle removed the cakes from the oven, set them on the baker’s rack, and turned back to Hannah. “Someone sent Lisa and Herb a package of pink grapefruit from Florida a couple of days before the blizzard hit us. Lisa and Herb had pink grapefruit for breakfast twice, but Lisa realized that they wouldn’t be able to eat all of them before they spoiled. Rather than taking that chance, she zested them, juiced them, and froze the zest and the juice.”

“That makes sense,” Hannah said. “Lisa’s very thrifty. Was she thinking about the recipe she had for the Pink Grapefruit Cake?”

“Yes, and that’s why she did it. And now we don’t have to worry about finding pink grapefruit for Valentine’s Day. Lisa says she’s got enough ingredients for at least two dozen Pink Grapefruit Cakes and Pink Grapefruit Glaze in her freezer.”

“Hannah?” Lisa stuck her head in the kitchen. “There’s a phone call for you. It’s Lynne Larchmont.”

Hannah hurried to the phone and she was smiling as she picked it up. “Lynne! Are you coming here for the film festival?”

“I’m here already,” Lynne replied, with a laugh that made Hannah smile. “We flew in last night and we’re staying at the Lake Eden Inn. I called to see if you’d like to join me for dinner tonight.”

“I’d love to!” Hannah answered quickly. “What time? And where are we going?”

“Seven o’clock right here in Sally’s dining room. Unless, of course, there’s another blizzard. That’s all anyone can talk about around here. Everybody says we’re just lucky that we didn’t fly in a week earlier or we would have been stuck in the middle of it.”

“The Lake Eden Inn is a great place to be stuck,” Hannah said with a laugh. “Sally’s got huge freezers full of food, and they have their own generator at the inn. When Dick and Sally moved here and opened the inn, Dick told Sally that the weather could be brutal way out there by Eden Lake and they’d better be prepared for anything.”

*

“Tell Lynne hello for me,” Lisa said as Hannah prepared to leave The Cookie Jar and drive out to the Lake Eden Inn. “And take this cake for Sally. I want her to taste it.”

“Stay out as late as you like,” Michelle told her, walking Hannah out to her cookie truck. “I’ll feed Moishe when I get home, and Lonnie’s coming over tonight to watch a movie with me.”

“Lonnie has the night off?”

“Yes, Mike said that he didn’t need him tonight.”

“Since I’m going out tonight, I’m surprised Mike didn’t assign him to my bodyguard detail.”

“He did, but when he told Mike that you were going out to the Lake Eden Inn for dinner with Lynne, Mike said not to worry, that you’d be fine.”

Hannah was a bit puzzled as she started her truck and drove off. Why had Mike changed his mind about the bodyguards? He’d been worried about her safety this morning, but tonight he’d told Lonnie that she’d be fine all by herself. She didn’t understand, but being without a chaperone was fine with her. Mike must assume, or perhaps he knew, that Ross had left Lake Eden and wouldn’t be back tonight.

The sky was beginning to darken as Hannah turned onto the road that led around Eden Lake. She switched on her headlights and gave silent thanks to Earl Flensburg for plowing the county road. Since no one else was on the road, it didn’t take long for her to get to the turnoff for the Lake Eden Inn. This narrow road had also been plowed and Hannah suspected that Dick Laughlin had been out with his truck, which was equipped as a snowplow, to clear the road.

She was about to turn to go to the parking lot when she saw a large sign stuck on top of a snowbank. It read, HANNAH PARK IN DELIVERY SPOT IN BACK. Hannah laughed. It was obvious that Sally and Dick knew that she was meeting Lynne for dinner and they hadn’t wanted her to walk all the way to the restaurant from their parking lot.

Hannah did as she was told and parked in the delivery spot by the delivery door. Then she picked up the Pink Grapefruit Cake that Lisa had asked her to bring and carried it to the door. She was about to press the buzzer when the door opened.

“Hi, Hannah,” Sally greeted her. “I saw you stop to read the sign and I figured you’d be at the door about now. Come in. Now that it’s getting dark, it’s turning colder.”