Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen #4)(76)

"Chocolate fudge cupcakes. They're my mom's recipe. The kids just love mem and so do the grown-ups."

"Great," Hannah said, just as the timer Lisa wore around her neck started to clang. "That's my cue to leave. I'll take care of our customers and you take care of the cupcakes."

The next half-hour was busy. It was always busy in the

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summer when the tourists came to town. Hannah often wondered why they came to the lake when they spent most of their time shopping in the Lake Eden stores, cooking in the kitchens of their rented cottages, watching the television sets they'd brought with them, and doing almost exactly what they'd be doing at home in the big cities. She figured they must come for the genuine small-town atmosphere, the friendly, open feeling they got in Lake Eden. In the big Minnesota cities, people locked and bolted their doors and they didn't speak to strangers on the streets. Here things were different. A stranger was a friend unless he or she proved otherwise.

By and large, the tourists who rented the lake cabins were nice folks. They were certainly getting behind the town's Fourth of July celebration. Tickets for the potluck picnic and barbeque at Eden Lake were selling like hotcakes. Mayor Bascomb had predicted that there would be more than five hundred out-of-town guests watching the parade, taking part in the activities on the shores of Eden Lake, eating the food the residents provided, and enjoying the fireworks in the evening.

Business was brisk and Hannah's old-fashioned cash register dinged almost continually. The locals dropped in, as they always did, and mingled with the lake cottage tourists. Friendships were formed, romances with some of the local girls and boys appeared to be blooming, and no one was thinking about Labor Day, when the tourist season would end. Hannah had explained why the town was called Lake Eden and the lake that was within the city limits was called Eden Lake at least a dozen times by the time most of the customers had cleared out She was just transferring some of the money from the till to the bank deposit bag when the bell over the door tinkled and Jed Sawyer walked in.

Jed gave her a friendly smile. "Hi, Hannah."

"Don't Hi, Hannah me!" Hannah said right back, glaring at him. "I heard what you did last night."

"What did you hear?"

"You got Freddy drunk and let him pick up a girl in a bar.

256 Joanne Fluke

I thought you honestly cared about Freddy, but it looks like I was wrong!"

"Hold on." Jed held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I don't know where you got all that from, but it's not what happened."

"Oh, no?"

"Look, Hannah... I'm sorry Freddy got drunk, but it didn't start out that way. I let him have one bottle of beer and it hit him like a ton of bricks."

"You should have known better."

"I know. I found out later that he'd never even tasted alcohol before, but I didn't know that at the time."

Hannah put her hands on her hips. There was no way she was letting Jed off the hook this easily. "You should have guessed it. Mrs. Sawyer was a complete teetotaler. She didn't allow alcohol in her house."

"She used to when Freddy's dad was alive. We drove to see them every summer and my dad and Uncle Jim always sat out on the dock in the afternoon, fishing and polishing off a six-pack."

Hannah sighed. It was up to her to point out the obvious. "But you didn't see Freddy drinking, did you?"

"No. We were both too young back then. But really, Hannah ... Freddy's almost thirty and I had no idea he couldn't handle one beer. It'll never happen again. I can promise you that."

Hannah thawed slightly, but she still had a ways to go. "It's not just the beer, Jed. You shouldn't have let Freddy pick up that bar girl."

"She wasn't a bar girl. And Freddy didn't pick her up. It was like this, Hannah. We were going to the movies and my date knew I was bringing Freddy along. When we got to her house, she had a friend there to make it a foursome."

"How about the bar? You were there, weren't you?"

"Yeah, but we just stopped off for a quick one before we headed off for the movies. You gotta remember, I was driving and I had my eyes on the road. I didn't know what

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Freddy was doing back there until the deputy pulled us over."

"And you would have stopped Freddy if you'd seen him?"

"You bet! I would have pulled over and told him to knock it off. But I didn't know, Hannah. I never thought Freddy would do anything like that."

Hannah didn't say anything. So far Jed's story had the ring of truth, but she still wasn't completely satisfied.

"I had a long talk with Freddy this morning," Jed went on, "and he knows what he did was wrong. I'm not going to date that girl again, either. If her friend thinks it's funny to egg on a nice, simple guy like Freddy, I don't want to have anything to do with either one of them."

Hannah was appeased. It sounded as if Jed had taken the proper steps to make sure that Freddy wouldn't get into trouble again. "I heard that Freddy was pretty drunk. How's his head this morning?"

"He's got a hangover the size of Minneapolis and he's feeling pretty ashamed of himself. That's the reason I stopped in. I wanted to bring him some cookies to prove that I'm not mad at him."