Red Velvet Cupcake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #16)(10)

“Did you see the luxury condos?” Barbara asked Andrea.

“Yes. Roger listed them with Stan and I’m handling the sales. I took Hannah up there when we got here.”

“I’ve been hearing all sorts of things about the penthouse. Bill said it’s got a grotto pool and a Jacuzzi.”

“You should see it, Barbara. It’s spectacular.”

“Especially the tropical rooftop garden,” Hannah added. “It covers half of the roof and the landscaping is already in. Andrea told me they’re even going to order a couple of fully grown palm trees.”

“Will palm trees grow in Minnesota?” Barbara asked, looking dubious.

“They will if you have a climate-controlled dome that covers the whole area,” Andrea was quick to explain.

“I can hardly wait to see it!” Barbara took another sip of her diet drink. “I wonder if I could see my house from up there.”

“I know you can, but not tonight. The dome didn’t come in time for the party, and Roger’s got the perimeter roped off. You can walk around the pool and Jacuzzi area, but you can’t go near the edge of the roof.”

“I think I’ll go up there and look around. And I’ll stop and look at the condos on the second floor, too. I know I can’t afford one, but it never hurts to dream.” Barbara picked up her glass, stood up, and turned to Hannah. “The next time you check on the dessert table, would you bring me one of your cupcakes? I ran into Herb in the parking lot and he said they’re incredible.”

“Will do,” Hannah promised with a smile. It was good to hear praise for their cupcakes. She went off to get one for Barbara and to tell Lisa that people were beginning to say nice things about their cupcakes. By the time she came back and sat down, Norman and Mike were approaching the table.

“Hi, Hannah,” Norman said, taking the chair next to her. “You look fantastic.”

“Thanks, Norman.”

“You’re wearing makeup,” Mike commented. “You look really good in makeup.”

“Hannah looks good with or without makeup,” Norman corrected him.

“Right,” Mike said, sitting down next to Hannah. “I’ve got news about the Clayton Wallace case.”

Hannah leaned forward expectantly. Clayton Wallace, the band bus driver for the Cinnamon Roll Six, had been the first fatality in the multi-car pileup on the interstate two months ago. Doc Knight had determined that the cause of death was an overdose of heart medication. “It was accidental, wasn’t it?”

“No.”

“Murder?” Norman asked, drawing the obvious conclusion.

Mike shook his head and Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. Since there had been two fatalities on the same night and one was clearly murder, she’d made a unilateral decision to try to solve the case they knew was murder and to leave the investigation into Clayton Wallace’s death to the authorities.

Hannah had never believed that Clayton’s death was murder. It just didn’t add up. Everyone she’d talked to had believed it was an accident. He’d been the jazz band bus driver since the Cinnamon Roll Six had first begun to tour and everyone connected with the band had liked him.

“If it wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t murder, what was it?” Andrea asked.

“Suicide.”

“Suicide?” Hannah repeated, sounding every bit as shocked as she felt.

“This was his last trip with the band,” Mike told them. “Mr. Wallace told the band manager, Lee Campbell, that he was retiring right after they got back to Minneapolis.”

“How old was Clayton?” Andrea asked.

“Sixty-two.”

“It’s not unusual for a person to retire at sixty-two,” Hannah pointed out. “Perhaps Clayton was tired of being on the road with the band. I could understand that. Or maybe . . .” She stopped speaking abruptly as another possibility occurred to her. “Did you check with his doctor? Was Clayton ill?”

“The M.P.D. interviewed his doctor. The report’s in the case file. The doctor gave him a clean bill of health based on a recent checkup. He was on heart, blood pressure, and cholesterol medications, but everything was under control.”

“Did Clayton give a reason why he wanted to quit working?” Andrea asked.

“All he said was that he had some things that he wanted to do. Mr. Campbell told me he mentioned some improvements he wanted to make to his house and a cruise to Alaska he’d booked with a friend.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone who was contemplating suicide,” Norman remarked.

“True,” Mike said.

“Then what made the M.P.D. think that it was a suicide?” Hannah asked the important question.

“They said he couldn’t have made a mistake like that with his pills, that it must have been deliberate. The three pills he was supposed to take were different shapes and different colors. And he took one of each type every night. The pill box you found in the bus was the type that had one compartment for each day of the week. You remember that, don’t you?”

“I remember. When I handed it to you, I noticed that only one compartment was empty. All the rest were full.”

“That’s right. Clayton had no pill bottles with him, just the pills in the compartments. The M.P.D. concluded that he filled the compartments before he left and they found the bottles in his bathroom medicine cabinet. All three bottles were for a thirty-day supply.”