Cream Puff Murder (Hannah Swensen, #11)(81)


“Is there any way he could have gotten into Heavenly Bodies?”

“That’s what I’m worried about. I should have told Tad about it when he came in at eleven, but I really didn’t think it was important. The guy was gone. That was that.”

“But now you’re giving it a second thought?”

“Yeah. The thing is, people were coming and going for Miss Ward’s birthday party, and that back door was opening and closing a lot. He could have slipped in with one of the guests.”

After Frank had left, Hannah took out her shorthand notebook and added the man in the blue parka to her suspect list. It wasn’t much to go on, but there had to be some reason he’d been hanging around the mall entrance to Heavenly Bodies. Then she closed her notebook and slipped it into her large shoulder bag, the one her mother hated and her fashionable sisters kept trying to replace.

“Ready?” Andrea asked, opening the door partway.

“Ready,” Hannah answered, hoping her coffee would hold out.



She’d gone through five people with tidbits of information for her that had proved to be less than useful. Then Delores and Carrie had come in to tell her that they’d won the karaoke contest at The Moosehead and now had a fifty-dollar credit at the bar. When the door opened and Herb walked in with Mike, Hannah hoped they’d have something interesting to tell her.

“You can go back to baking cookies now, Hannah,” Mike said with a grin that couldn’t have been any wider.

“What do you mean?” Hannah gazed from Mike to Herb and then back again.

“I reviewed the red-light camera photos from the night that Ronni was killed,” Herb explained. “The camera’s mounted by the traffic light at the mall exit, and it catches anybody running the red light to get on the freeway. It shows Mike entering the intersection on yellow at twelve thirty-five.”

“And Ronni was killed between one and two-thirty in the morning,” Hannah said, recalling the time from Doc Knight’s autopsy report.

“That’s right.” Mike gave a little nod. “The only reason the highway patrol didn’t write me up is that I was driving a patrol car.”

“We’re taking the photo out to the sheriff’s department to show Bill,” Herb said.

“And I’ll be back on the case this afternoon.” Mike gave her a little kiss on the top of the head. “You’ve done a good job, Hannah. Write up what you’ve learned so far, will you? I’ll take over now.”



“He actually said that?” Michelle looked outraged.

“He actually did.”

“You’re not going to do it, are you?” Andrea asked, bringing up the rear with Norman as they climbed the steps to Hannah’s condo.

“Do what?” Hannah asked her.

“Write up a report for Mike.”

Hannah turned around as she reached the landing. “Of course I am. But he told me to go back to baking cookies, and reports take time to write. It’ll probably be a week or so before I have the chance to put anything down on paper.”

When she got inside, the first place Hannah headed was the kitchen. She glanced down at the Kitty Valet and let out a whoop of excitement. “Moishe’s out of food again. Now we’ll get to see if the kitty-cam worked.”

Hannah put on the coffee, Norman took the tape out of the kitty-cam, and Michelle and Andrea refilled the food tube on Moishe’s Kitty Valet. In less than five minutes, they were all settled in the living room with fresh mugs of coffee and a box of Lois Brown’s Lemon Cookies that Hannah had brought home from The Cookie Jar, ready to watch the tape from the surveillance camera.

“These are great lemon cookies!” Michelle said, reaching for her second in less than a minute. “There’s a lot of lemon, and that makes them nice and tart.”

“Sometimes I sprinkle them with powdered sugar before I serve them,” Hannah told her. “Does anybody want me to do that?”

There were headshakes all around. It seemed they all liked the tart, lemony flavor.

“Okay, then…let’s get started,” Hannah said, taking a sip of her coffee. “At least we won’t be bored silly. Moishe’s kitty-cam is motion activated. If nothing moves, it doesn’t record.”

“No more hours of closed doors and empty rooms?” Andrea asked her.

“Not unless an ant is crawling across the floor.” Hannah turned to Norman who had the remote control. “Okay Norman. Let’s see what Moishe’s been up to while I’ve been at The Cookie Jar today.”



“It looks like he just took a big mouthful,” Michelle said. She was holding Moishe, and he was purring so loudly they could all hear him. Evidently he didn’t mind being caught in the act as long as he got star billing on Hannah’s television screen.

“But he’s eating it,” Andrea commented, and Hannah thought she sounded slightly disappointed.

The Moishe on the screen swallowed and then moved to the water bowl to take a drink. A moment later, he was back at the food bowl, head buried up to his ears and chewing.

“Maybe he does eat it all!” Andrea said, watching Hannah’s cat eat.

Michelle lifted Moishe up from her lap, held him a moment to judge his weight, and put him back down again. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m almost sure he’s not gaining weight.”

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