Fudge Cupcake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #5)(74)

"Read it if you want," Barbara handed the report to Hannah.

Hannah took the report from Barbara and skimmed it quickly. Lonnie had written it to chronicle spotting a suspicious car, using his on-board computer to ascertain that it was stolen, and apprehending the driver.

"See what I mean?" Barbara said, as Hannah handed the report to Norman.

As far as Hannah could see, this incident report didn't have any bearing on Sheriff Grant's murder. Even if the driver's friend's had wanted to get even for his arrest, they would have come after Lonnie, not Sheriff Grant.

"This looks pretty straightforward to me," Norman said, looking up from the document. "Would you like us to drop this off at the station for you, Barbara? Hannah said you were out on leave."

Barbara shook her head and reached out for the file. "That's okay. I'll take care of it when I get back to work."

"But Shawna Lee's spending a lot of time looking for it." Hannah was confused. "And you're planning to stay home for at least another week, aren't you?"

Barbara nodded and an impish grin crossed her face. "I'm going to let Shawna Lee keep right on looking. If she keeps busy enough, she won't have time to flirt and maybe we'll be saved from another homicide."





Chapter Twenty-Six





Hannah's mind was going a million miles an hour as they drove away from Barbara's house. She was so engrossed in her thoughts she only dimly registered the fact that Norman had spoken to her. "Sorry, Norman. What did you say?"

"Do you think Lonnie's stolen car report has anything to do with why Sheriff Grant was killed?"

"I just don't know. Lonnie busted a car thief, and we found car parts in Jamie's room. Cars do seem to be a common denominator here."

"And didn't you say that Jamie was killed in an auto accident?"

"That's right!" Hannah was excited for a moment, but then she went back to being puzzled. "But how does that figure in?"

Norman shrugged. "I'm not sure. There's also the fact that Sheriff Grant was killed in a parking lot filled with cars."

"And he was attacked while he was standing by his cruiser," Hannah added with a sigh. "I think we're going overboard on this car thing, Norman."

"Probably. I just thought that if we could find all the pieces, we might be able to figure out how they fit together."

"That makes sense," Hannah said, turning to smile at him. She was about to throw him a mind-bender. "But what if some of the pieces are from another puzzle? Won't they only confuse us?"

Norman thought about that while he waited for the stoplight at the corner of Elm and First to turn green. "Yeah. I guess they might confuse us. How do we get around that?"

"I'm not sure," Hannah replied, feeling helpless in the face of the challenge. "I think the first thing we have to do is gather more facts. That report from Lonnie was pretty sketchy and it was obvious that he wrote it in a hurry. He probably left out things he thought didn't matter. I have to talk to him and find out everything that happened when he pulled over that stolen car."

"That's a good place to start. What do you want me to do while you're doing that?"

"Develop the film. That's a good place to start, too. Maybe we'll spot something important in the pictures that we missed when we were at Nettie's house in person. And do you think you'll have time to do some research on the Internet?"

"Sure." Norman pulled up in back of The Cookie Jar and parked between Lisa's old car and Hannah's cookie truck. "I wasn't supposed to be back from Seattle yet and Doc Bennett's still filling in for me at the clinic. What sort of research do you need?"

"It would really help if you could print out the articles that ran in the Lake Eden Journal when Jamie was killed. And do the same thing for the papers in Ann Arbor."

"Why Ann Arbor?"

"Jamie was killed when he was away at the University of Michigan."

"Okay. I'll do a search under his name. Would that be Jamie, or James?"

"Try both. He went by Jamie, but his real name was James just like Sheriff Grant." Hannah remembered what Norman had said and brightened up a bit. "You can do a search just by typing in someone's name?"

"As long as you know where to look."

"And you do?"

"I'm pretty good at it. I can access quite a few public records and that gives me a surprisingly large amount of information."

Hannah thought about it for a long moment. What she wanted to ask Norman to do was an invasion of her mother's privacy, and it would make her feel like a rat. But feeling like a rat might be better than feeling like a dope if her gut-level feelings were right and she failed to take steps to protect Delores from a Romeo swindler.

"What do you need, Hannah?" Norman prompted, when she'd been silent for several moments.

"Winthrop Harrington the Second."

"What?"

"That's his name. I need you to check him out for me."

"Okay. Who is he?"

"That's what I want to know," Hannah said, glancing over at Norman. She knew he could be trusted. If she told him this was a private matter, he'd die before he'd mention it. "I hope I'm wrong, Norman, but he could be a con artist. And the way things are going, he might just become my new stepfather."