Fudge Cupcake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #5)(20)

"No one knows except you two. My meeting with Howie was confidential, but someone will find out about it, sooner or later. And since I don't have an alibi, that'll make me the number one suspect in my husband's murder."

Hannah's ears perked up. "You don't have an alibi?"

"No. I was working alone in the sewing room, finishing an appliquй wall hanging for a client."

"Where's your sewing room?" Hannah asked, intending to check out the location of windows. It was always possible that one of Nettie's neighbors had spotted her working on the night the sheriff had been killed.

Andrea and Hannah followed Nettie up the stairs and down the hallway. She stopped at the second door to open it and ushered them in. "This is my sewing room. It's where I was working the night Jim was killed."

Hannah looked around the small, crowded sewing room in surprise. She'd thought that Nettie's workroom would be much more spacious. For years, she had been quite well-known, locally, for making appliquй wall hangings to order. Her work had been featured in several craft magazines and she always won a blue ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair. Just last year, a big name decorator had ordered several of Nettie's wall hangings to use in a celebrity's home. There had been a tour of the home on national television with an interview with the celebrity in front of a large wall hanging Nettie had designed. Since then, Nettie had been deluged with orders from people who were willing to pay large amounts of money to have an original Nettie Grant hanging on their wall.

"I love it, Nettie!" Andrea crowed, having somehow made her way between the sewing machine and the cutting table strewn with bolts of cloth to stand in front of the wall hanging Nettie had just completed. "The cows look so real, I almost expect them to moo. Who gets it?"

"The Minnesota Dairy Council commissioned it for their headquarters."

Hannah turned to look at the wall hanging, but she didn't try to get any closer. The room was so small she couldn't have managed it without knocking Andrea off her feet. "I like it a lot, Nettie. The cows look like they're all enjoying some huge joke at our expense."

"That's exactly what I wanted, but I doubt that anyone else will catch it." Nettie turned to smile at Hannah. "Their big concern was that I have every breed of cow in Minnesota represented."

Hannah sidled past the ironing board, steadying the iron as she went, and made her way to the single window. The drapes were heavy and no one passing outside could have seen any shadows from within. "Did you have the drapes open that night?"

"Yes. I see what you're driving at, Hannah, but it won't do any good. The Maschlers live on that side and they were gone."

"You asked them?"

"Mike did. He called right after I brought him up here to show him what I was doing when Jim was killed. Jerry dropped Kate off at the school and then he went bowling with a couple of friends. And Richie was out with his friends."

"So you didn't see or hear anything from next door?"

"I heard the television. They must have left it on as a burglar deterrent and I wish they'd switched it to another channel. It was some kind of kung fu movie and the yelling and grunting almost drove me crazy."

Andrea looked surprised. "It was really inconsiderate of Kate to leave the television on so loud."

"Oh, it wasn't that loud. I wouldn't have heard it at all if I'd had the window closed. But I had to open it because I was cutting material. If I don't, the fibers and dust make me sneeze. This is a really small room and it's impossible to keep to keep it dust free."

"It certainly is tiny," Hannah commented, glancing around her again.

"It's the smallest bedroom. When Jamie died, I thought I'd move my things to his room. It's a lot larger. But Jim didn't want me to touch anything in there. He was so insistent about it, I didn't."

"You mean… everything is still just the way it was when Jamie was alive?"

"That's right. I tried to talk him into giving some of Jamie's things to charity, but he just couldn't bear to get rid of anything, not even the clothes in the closet."

Hannah looked over at her sister. Andrea looked a little sick and that was understandable. Leaving a dead boy's room intact for three years was a peculiarity that had crossed over the line into obsession.

"He wouldn't even let me clean in there," Nettie went on. "He said he'd take care of it. And he kept it locked so that I couldn't go in there when he wasn't home."

"Did he go in there sometimes?" Andrea pulled herself together enough to ask.

"Almost every night. He used it as a sort of home office. He said it made him feel close to Jamie to be surrounded by his things."

Hannah was thoughtful as she followed Nettie and Andrea back down the stairs. When you saw a person almost every day and you lived in the same small town, you thought you knew them. But it turned out that Hannah hadn't really known much about Sheriff Grant at all.

A few minutes later, the three women were back in the living room, eating slices of Rose MacDermott's famous coconut cake. Hannah had cut the slices double the size that Rose served at the cafй, working under the theory that larger was better.

"Did Rose give you the recipe for the Lake Eden cookbook?" Nettie asked, finishing her last forkful.