Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(46)

She picked up the phone, held it to her ear, and answered it in a voice groggy with sleep. “’Lo.”

“Hannah. Wake up, Hannah. I’ve got to see you, and this is the only safe time. Meet me in your garage by the Dumpster in fifteen minutes.”

“What?”

“It’s Mike. Wake up! Meet me by your garage Dumpster in fifteen minutes. It’s important.”

The curtains of sleep began to part and Hannah sat up in bed. “Mike?”

“Yeah. I’ve got to get off the line now. They could be tracing your calls.”

Hannah clicked on the lamp on her bed table. Tracing her calls? Surely not! The isolation from his colleagues must be taking its toll in the guise of paranoia.

There was no way she was going to get dressed to go out at midnight, spend five minutes telling Mike that he was crazy, and then come back upstairs to undress and go back to bed again. She slipped on her robe, the warmest one she owned, and thrust her bare feet into her fleece-lined moccasins.

Her parka was next. Hannah zipped it up to her chin and pulled a wool ski cap over her ears. At least she’d be warm enough. She was just debating the wisdom of brewing a pot of coffee in the eleven minutes she had left when she heard a soft voice at her elbow.

“What is it, Hannah?”

For a moment, Hannah was startled. Then she remembered that Michelle was staying with her. She flicked on the lights and apologized. “I’m sorry if the phone woke you. Everything’s okay. You can go back to bed.”

“But what is it?”

“Mike. He wants me to meet him in the garage.”

Michelle stared at Hannah for a moment. Then she giggled.

“What?”

“I guess the bloom’s off the rose if you’re going out to meet Mike like that.”

Hannah glanced at her reflection in the big mirror that hung on her living room wall. The apparition that stared back at her wasn’t pretty. “I’m not getting dressed for him. He doesn’t deserve it. For all I know he killed Ronni.”

“You know better than that.”

Hannah thought about that for a moment. “You’re right. I do. If Mike decided to kill Ronni, he would have figured out a way to do it so it looked like an accident.”

“Exactly right. Do you want me to package up some bar cookies for him? There’s about a dozen left.”

“Sure. I’ll put on the coffee and take him a cup. He doesn’t deserve it, but I’ll do it anyway.”

Once the coffee was ready and the bar cookies were packaged, Hannah zipped up her parka and started down the stairs. Fourteen minutes had elapsed since Mike’s call, and she was right on time. She shivered a bit as a gust of wind threatened to whip the knit cap from her head, and she was glad to reach the underground garage where the absence of wind chill caused the air to feel considerably warmer.

“Psssst!”

A shrill hiss greeted her as she approached the Dumpster. Hannah had all she could do not to laugh as Mike stepped out. He was clothed entirely in black and he had a black ski cap on his head, rolled down low to almost cover his eyes.

“Thanks for coming, Hannah,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’m just sorry my cloak and dagger were at the cleaners.”

“Very funny. It’s just that I promised I wouldn’t see you, and I could lose my job over this.”

Hannah nodded to show she understood and moved a few steps away from the Dumpster. Someone had dined on fish…several days ago. “I brought you some bar cookies and some coffee.”

“Thanks, Hannah.” Mike accepted the package of bar cookies and the coffee. “That was really nice of you.”

“You said it was important?”

“Yes. I just wanted you to know that there was nothing between Ronni and me. I know it looks bad, but there wasn’t.”

Why did it look bad? Was there something she’d missed? These and several other questions occurred to Hannah. She wanted to ask them, but she didn’t. It was an old interrogation trick she’d learned from him. If you remained silent, a guilty person kept right on talking and trying to explain. The increasingly frantic explanations resulted in inconsistencies. Once the inconsistency is addressed, lies tumble out pell-mell and eventually lead to the truth.

“She was really upset after she broke up with Wade, you know,” Mike went on. “She needed a friend, a shoulder to cry on. I guess I knew she was using me, but I didn’t mind being helpful.”

I’ll bet! Hannah said, but not out loud. And she continued to play the waiting game.

“Maybe I let her depend on me a little too much. I mean, maybe I gave her the wrong idea. She was always calling me to come over for something and I went because…well…we had a lot in common since we both worked for the sheriff’s department and all.”

Right. Sure. Hannah clamped her lips shut. No way was she going to comment.

“When I said that about looking bad? I know it’s going to come out that I slept at her place a few nights. We’d be watching a movie or something, and I’d fall asleep on her couch. She never woke me. She’d just go to bed and let me wake up on my own the next morning. That’s all it was. Really.”

Ah-ha! Now we’re at the crux of it! Hannah’s mind crowed with victory, but her stomach felt a little sick. Hearing the truth could be very unpleasant, especially when it was something you didn’t want to know.