Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen #4)(40)

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her mother are about accepting anything they think is charity."

"You're right. I'll say they were Tracey's. After all, they could have been hers. She had so many toddler toys she didn't even get a chance to play with them all."

"You're devious, Andrea." Hannah turned to smile at her sister. "And you're generous, too. I'm really proud to be your sister."

"Thanks, but I'm not that devious, at least not more than any other real estate professional. And I'm proud of you, too."

"All this for Suzie?" Marjorie Hanks gasped as she looked inside the shopping bag Andrea and Hannah had toted into her small cabin. She was a short but compact woman in her fifties with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. "Are you sure Tracey can't use any of these?"

"She cleaned out her closet herself," Andrea said, pulling out a pink velvet teddy bear dressed in fake fur with a string of fake pearls around its neck. "Tracey especially wanted Suzie to have this. You know how girls are when they reach a certain age. She thinks pink is too young for her."

Marjorie picked up the bear and stroked its soft fur. "Suzie will love it. I'll give it to her the minute she wakes up from her nap. But isn't this one of those new bears like they have in the toy store out at the mall?"

"It can't be," Andrea stated with what sounded like complete sincerity, "unless they reissued them, or something like that. One of my friends gave it to Tracey for a christening gift."

Hannah figured it was time to step in before Andrea dug an even deeper hole. "I need to ask you about Rhonda, Mrs. Hanks. I'm investigating her murder and Norman told me that you cleaned the Voelker place for her."

"That's right. I did. I'm sorry the job's over. It was one of the best I ever had."

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"But wasn't it a lot of work?" Andrea asked, jumping in to help with the questioning.

"The only hard part was the first day. Rhonda warned me that her great-aunt had been in a wheelchair since nineteen-eighty, and she said the place was a real mess. It sure was! That companion Mrs. Voelker had living with her didn't do much in the way of cleaning."

"It must have taken you a long time to whip it into shape," Hannah commented.

"Not that long. All I had to clean was the ground floor. Rhonda said the attic was bare and the basement could stay the way it was. And I had Freddy and Jed to help me. They were out there doing some other work for Rhonda and they hauled out all the heavy trash bags."

"What sort of work were they doing?" Hannah was curious.

"Handyman things. They did a real good job replacing some of the glass in the windows."

Andrea nodded and returned to her first line of inquiry. "But the place wasn't hard to keep up once you'd cleaned it the first time?"

"Heavens no! All I had to do was dust and vacuum and that was it... except for the bedroom."

"The bedroom?" Hannah's interest rose. "What did you have to do in there?"

"Dust and vacuum, clean the bathroom, and change the sheets on the bed. I know Rhonda had her own place in town, but she stayed out there some nights. Now I don't want you to repeat this to a soul, but I think Rhonda had overnight company, if you know what I mean. There were always at least four dirty towels on the floor and once I found a razor in the wastebasket. It was right on top of one of those little travel bottles of aftershave."

"What kind of razor was it?" Hannah asked, hoping for something distinctive that she could track down.

"Just one of those blue disposable kind you can buy a dozen to a bag at CostMart."

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"How about the aftershave? Do you remember the brand?"

"Sure do. It was Old Spice and I almost kept the bottle because it was kind of cute. Suzie loves to pick dandelions and I was thinking I could use it for a little vase on her table." Marjorie paused for a moment and then she frowned. "Is it important?"

"It could be," Hannah told her. "If we had it, the crime lab could dust for fingerprints. The man who spent the night with Rhonda might be able to tell us something about her murder."

Marjorie shivered slightly. "Or he could've killed her. Now I wish I'd saved the bottle and the razor, too. They'd be evidence. But I just tossed them into a garbage bag and carried it out to the trash can."

Hannah frowned slightly. She'd unwittingly sent evidence off to the dump and so had Marjorie Hanks.

"Don't worry about it," Andrea jumped in. "Hannah can catch Rhonda's killer without those things."

Hannah turned to give her sister a startled glance. Either Andrea was just attempting to make Mrs. Hanks feel better, or she really had confidence in Hannah's abilities. Unfortunately, Hannah didn't feel all that confident. With the exception of the fact that they now knew Rhonda's boyfriend was real and not just gossip, they were still back at square one.

"Thanks, Mrs. Hanks. You've helped a lot." Hannah put on her brightest smile. "Norman told me he hired you to clean his office. I'm really glad you got a new job."

"So am I. Doctor Rhodes said he'd pay top dollar, and he promised us a discount anytime we need our teeth fixed. He even said he'd hire me to clean that new house he's building for you."