Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(58)

“Just trying to think of something the mothers can do.”

Norman reached out to take her hand as they walked down the hallway to the kitchen. “That’s a tough one. They’re going to know if you feed them a placebo.”

“Nicely put,” Hannah teased him. “Do they teach about placebos in dental college?”

“Dental school,” Norman corrected her. “It’s just like med school, except it’s for dentists. We take courses in pharmacology so we can prescribe medications.”

They’d reached the plain wooden door near the end of the hallway. It wasn’t marked in any way, but both Norman and Hannah knew it led to Sally’s kitchen.

“Let’s go,” Hannah said, pushing it open and stepping into the busy interior of a working restaurant kitchen. “Come on, Norman. Let’s find Sally and tell her we love her parfait.”

Less than a minute later, Hannah and Norman were standing in the office Sally called her own, a room just off the busy restaurant kitchen. Large picture windows looked out onto the controlled chaos of the kitchen, providing Sally with a view of what her chefs and servers were doing on this busy night.

“Sit down and have one of my special espressos,” Sally said, pouring them both an espresso in the doll-sized cups Turkish coffee had made popular.

“The parfait was great,” Norman told her, leading off the conversation.

“I know. I tasted it. I’m thinking about adding it to the menu. But enough about desserts. I’ve got some news for you,” Sally leaned across her desk. “You’re working to solve Ronni’s murder, aren’t you, Hannah?”

“Yes, Norman and I are working on it together.”

“Well, you might not know it, but Ronni came out here last week looking for a cocktail waitress job. I told her we really didn’t have cocktail waitresses, that if there was a big crowd in the bar, our regular wait staff filled in. She said that was fine, and she told me she’d worked as a cocktail waitress at The Moosehead Bar and Grill and that they served food in the bar. She said she quit that job last week because the tips weren’t good and it was too far to drive to Anoka and back every other night.”

“Did you hire her?” Norman asked.

“I never hire anyone without checking their job history. The last place she’d listed was The Moosehead, so I called the owner to ask about her. He wouldn’t tell me exactly what Ronni did, but he told me that she lied when she said she quit.”

“She was fired?” Hannah guessed.

“That’s right. He said he didn’t want to go into details, but they couldn’t afford to keep her on any longer.”

“I wonder what that means,” Norman said, looking puzzled.

“I’m not sure, but I thought maybe you might want to drive to Anoka to check it out.”



After everyone had a full cup of coffee and their waitress had left a carafe, Hannah pulled out her stenographer’s notebook, the one she’d come to think of as her murder book, and started their discussion. “Why don’t you go first, Mother? Tell us what you and Carrie found out.”

“You may already know this, but Hannah asked us to call around and see if we could find out who Ronni was involved with,” Delores prefaced her remarks.

“That’s romantically involved,” Carrie clarified.

“It turned out to be a much bigger job than we thought it would be.” Delores tapped her finger on the stapled sheets of paper on the table. “It would have been easier to find out who Ronni wasn’t involved with!”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Carrie suggested. “We made sixty-seven calls, and we wrote down every name that came up.”

“We counted the number of times the names were mentioned by other people and arranged them according to…” Delores turned to Hannah. “What’s the word I want, dear?”

“Frequency?”

“Yes, frequency. If twenty people mentioned a name, we put it ahead of a name that only came up nineteen times.” Delores passed the list down to Hannah. “Here’s the list, but I don’t think it’ll do you much good. Every single name except three have alibis. We printed those three names out in red so they’d be easy to spot.”

Hannah was almost afraid to look, but she glanced down at the list. Sure enough, Mike’s name was in the top ten, and it was printed in red.

“Mike?” Andrea guessed, and Hannah nodded.

“How about Lonnie?” Michelle asked.

Hannah flipped to the second page and found Lonnie’s name, also in red. “He’s number thirty.”

“Bill?” Andrea asked, and her voice quavered slightly.

Hannah turned over more pages until she spotted the third red name. “He’s on the last page.”

“We’re so sorry, dear,” Delores said, reaching out to pat Andrea’s hand.

“It’s okay, Mother. I know all about it, and it’s a mistake. People saw them together and misinterpreted it.”

“Good for you, dear!” Delores praised her. “Without trust a marriage is worth nothing.” Then she turned to Michelle. “How about you, dear? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Lonnie told me all about it.” Michelle gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We were both dating other people at the time.”