Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(33)

Her drink was slightly fizzy, and it tasted a little like peach. Hannah supposed that was all one could ask of a product that was less than a dollar fifty and had no carbohydrates or calories. She sat there for at least five minutes, trying to figure out how the manufacturer could make something taste like peach without actually using peach, but then she realized that her toes had stopped tingling and were numb from the cold.

It was time to warm up. Hannah grabbed her towel and headed to the Jacuzzi to thaw her icy feet, but the first thing she saw when she climbed up the steps to enter the latticework gazebo was something that stopped her cold. There was a red-colored smear on the floor that looked a lot like blood.

Visions of cut feet or skinned knees ran through Hannah’s mind, but then she spotted a lump of red near the end of the smear. She walked closer to take a look. It was a smeared, crushed strawberry! Someone had broken the rules. Although plastic bottles or boxes of drinks were allowed in the pool area and the workout rooms, food was only allowed at the tables in the Snack Shack.

The gazebo was a tropical paradise with hanging plants and potted palms. A bar ran the length of one latticework wall. During regular hours, an employee who sold bottled water manned it. A half-dozen stools were arranged in front of the bar. They provided seating for those who’d tired of the steaming water, but wanted to wait for friends who were still enjoying the heat of the tub. Several stools had been tipped over and Hannah wondered why no one had righted them.

There was something shiny on the floor next to the far end of the bar. Hannah walked over for a closer look and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was her silver platter, the very same platter she’d used for Mike’s birthday cream puffs, and it was upside down in front of the flowering hibiscus that thrived in the moist heat.

With the same sinking feeling she experienced every time she came across a bad accident on the road, Hannah lifted one handle and surveyed the smashed cream puffs it had held. Blueberry and lemon filling had overlapped in a puddle of gooey green. There were bits of pastry mixed into a glutinous mash of strawberry and vanilla filling, but there were no chocolate cream puffs. She supposed she should be happy that her great-grandma’s pudding had been such a success, but she felt sick at the cream puff carnage she saw. Mike had told her it was a birthday party at the gym. She’d just assumed he meant the gym at the sheriff’s department, but he’d obviously been talking about Heavenly Bodies. It was clear that the birthday party had gone awry, and from the tipped stools, she guessed that the partygoers had left in a rush. That made her very curious. She had to ask Mike what had happened.

Hannah shivered. Her feet were still cold. She’d clean up the cream puffs and reclaim her platter later, but right now she needed to thaw her frigid digits.

The switch that operated the Jacuzzi was behind the bar. Hannah turned on the heat, activated the jets, flicked on the underwater lights, and headed over to the tub. She was about to dip her toes in the water when she realized that there was something in the center of the Jacuzzi.

The surface was roiling and bubbling so furiously that visibility was limited. Hannah waited until the object resurfaced again, and when it did, she was puzzled. It looked like one of the red-and-black exercise outfits worn by the female instructors at Heavenly Bodies. Had one of them dropped her clothes in the Jacuzzi?

That didn’t make much sense, and the moment she realized it, Hannah felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up in exactly the same way Moishe’s did when he encountered something that frightened him. She braced herself and reached out to grab the material, intending to pull it out of the water to examine it more closely. But instead of grasping nothing but spandex, she felt something under the material, something firm, something muscled, something decidedly human.

“Uh-oh,” Hannah breathed, fighting the impulse to turn tail and run. The only thing that kept her feet rooted to the spot was the thought that Andrea could walk in at any moment. She had to find out who was wearing that red-and-black exercise outfit and spare Andrea from what could very well be a gruesome sight.

Taking a deep breath for courage, Hannah tugged until the solid mass turned from back to front. She took one look and swallowed hard as she stared down at blond hair, a perfect figure, and lifeless blue eyes with a deep indentation between them.

“Hannah?” Andrea called out from the doorway. “Are you going in the Jacuzzi?”

“No,” Hannah said, standing up quickly and blocking the sight as best she could. “Go out to the security station and tell whoever’s on duty to call Mike at the sheriff’s station.”

“But why?”

“Just do it, Andrea. And don’t come any closer.”

Andrea gasped. “Don’t tell me there’s someone…”

“Don’t think, just do it!” Hannah ordered, and she gave a relieved sigh when Andrea turned and ran down the hallway.

Even though she tried to keep her gaze on the tropical wallpaper, or the flowering plants, or the colorful tile that covered the floor, Hannah’s eyes were drawn to the sight she didn’t want Andrea to see. It was Ronni Ward, and she was quite dead. It seemed that someone else had wanted her out of the picture even more than they had!





Chapter Eleven




Lisa’s initial expression of shock turned to one of worry after Hannah finished telling her about finding Ronni’s body. “How awful for you!”