Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(65)

“You’re wrong about that. Moishe can’t fit in back of the stove. Besides, the camera wouldn’t catch that. It’s trained on the living room door. Mike wants to see Moishe leaving the kitchen with the food in his mouth so we can find out which way he goes.”

“Do you really think it’ll work?” Michelle looked dubious as Hannah reached up to flick the red switch.

“Why not? Unless Moishe’s savvy enough to jump up there with a can of spray paint and coat the lens of the camera, we’re going to see him heading into the living room with a load of kitty crunchies in his mouth.”



“Here they are,” Andrea said, pulling three envelopes out of her briefcase and placing them on the table as if she were dealing giant cards in a game of solitaire. She tapped the envelope on her left with a perfectly manicured fingernail. “The crime lab report,” she announced, and then she moved to the middle envelope. “Autopsy. And this…” she tapped the envelope on the right, “…this envelope contains copies of the crime scene photos.”

“Norman and I haven’t had our cookies yet,” Michelle complained. “Let’s start with the crime lab report. Anything else might make us lose our appetites.”

“I think that’s doubtful,” Hannah said. And she watched her youngest sister in amusement as Michelle handed Norman a napkin with two cookies and then took three for herself. If Michelle didn’t start watching what she ate, she’d be joining them in their Classic Body Sculpting class before you could say, Pass the cookies, please.

It was the eleven o’clock lull at The Cookie Jar, the time of day when most people felt it was too late for a midmorning snack cookie and too early for a lunch cookie. Lisa’s husband, Herb, was talking to their sole customer, Earl Flensburg, so that Lisa could join in their crime-solving discussion at the table in the back of the shop.

The crime lab report was short, and everyone listened as Hannah read it aloud. There were no surprises and no clues. Since the gazebo was a public area in a busy spa and gym, there was no useful fingerprint evidence. The hair and fiber evidence was more of the same. The Jacuzzi was used by hundreds of people every day, and there was no telling whether the samples they’d collected were from members, guests, or the killer, who could also be a member or a guest. In short there was nothing found at the scene that provided any clue to the identity of Ronni’s killer.

Andrea sighed. “Well, that was a waste. Let’s go on to the autopsy report.”

“Wait a second,” Michelle said, popping the last bite into her mouth and swallowing. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Hannah handed the envelope to Norman. “You’d better read it. You know all the medical words, and you can translate it into laymen’s terms for us.”

“Okay,” Norman said, taking a final sip of coffee and clearing his throat.

As Norman read and translated, Hannah found herself holding her breath and hoping that something in the report would exonerate one of her detective “bosses.” Since one way of determining the time of death had to do with internal body temperature, Doc had used some scientific formula that allowed for the heat of the water in the Jacuzzi to come up with a time frame. Ronni Ward had breathed her last sometime between the hours of one and two thirty in the morning. And that meant the trio at the sheriff’s department were still suspects.

“Doc says the blow to Ronni’s head knocked her unconscious and she drowned in the Jacuzzi. He thinks she was in there already, and the killer walked up to the tub and killed her.”

Hannah did her best not to imagine Ronni’s last moments in living Technicolor. There was something really creepy about leaving an unconscious victim to drown.

“Her blood-alcohol level was three times the legal limit. That means if she hadn’t been knocked unconscious, she might have passed out on her own.”

“Drunk as a skunk,” Andrea said, but she didn’t sound censorious. Hannah figured that was probably because Ronni was dead and couldn’t cause problems for her any longer.

“There was no evidence of rape, and other than her blood-alcohol level, all of her blood work came back normal. That means no drugs, and no infectious diseases. There was a slight bruising of her lower lip, but it wasn’t serious and Doc’s not sure what it’s from.”

Kissing everybody at her birthday party, Hannah thought, and she looked up to find both of her sisters staring at her. It was clear they were thinking alike.

“The last page is just a listing of physical characteristics.”

“What physical characteristics?” Hannah asked.

“Her height, her weight, the size and weight of her organs, and a detailed description of scars and markings on her body.” Norman slid the report back into the envelope and leaned back in his chair.

“How much did she weigh?” Andrea asked quickly.

Hannah was puzzled. “What difference does that make?”

“It makes a lot of difference to me.” Andrea turned back to Norman. “Look it up for me, will you, Norman?”

Norman nodded and removed the papers from the envelope again. He flipped to the last page and read Doc’s description. “Female in her late twenties identified as Veronica Alice Ward.”

“Veronica?” Michelle repeated, before Norman could read on. “I thought Ronni was her real name.”