Red Velvet Cupcake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #16)(40)

“Rrrrroow!”

“Of course,” Hannah said with a smile. “I should have guessed. You had tuna last night so tonight you want salmon. How about a couple of salad shrimp thrown in for good measure?

“Rrrrrrrrow!”

The response was more prolonged this time and Hannah laughed. People claimed that cats didn’t understand human language, but she’d swear in a court of law that Moishe knew at least eight words. His tail flicked at the very end whenever she uttered the words shrimp, chicken, bacon, tuna, salmon, and the generic fish. There were also several non-food-related words that garnered a physical response. Cuddles was one. Norman’s cat was his favorite friend and his ears perked up every time he heard her name. The other, most evocative non-food word was Mother. When Moishe heard Hannah greet her mother on the phone, he bristled and puffed up like a Halloween cat. Hannah could understand that. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot, or perhaps she should say the wrong leg, from the very beginning. The first time Hannah’s mother had met Moishe, she’d tried to treat him like a cute, cuddly lap cat, and Moishe had taken offense at the baby talk and the attempt to pick him up. Such behavior was an assault to his dignity and Moishe had made that perfectly clear.

To Hannah’s relief, the relationship between her mother and her cat was non-violent now. Since those first few meetings with the shredded hose, Moishe and Delores had arrived at an uneasy truce. Whenever Delores arrived at Hannah’s condo, she was armed with treats. Moishe would sit next to her on the couch so that she could feed him his favorite fish-shaped, salmon-flavored treats, and he even permitted a pet or two, or a scratch behind the ears. Hannah wasn’t sure what would happen if her mother arrived without treats, but she wasn’t betting on feline civility without culinary bribery. Every time Delores called to say she was dropping by, Hannah had a treat jar on the chair by the door just in case her mother had forgotten.

Hannah opened the can of kitty gourmet salmon and spooned it into Moishe’s bowl, covering the picture of Garfield on the bottom. She took a bag of salad shrimp from her freezer and shook out five before she returned it to the shelf. A few seconds under running water and they had thawed enough to add to the bowl.

“Go ahead and eat, Moishe,” she said, as if there were any doubt he’d do just that. “I’m going to take a quick shower and change clothes. I have to drive out to the hospital to see Barbara.”

Moishe didn’t bother to look up. His face was buried in his food bowl. His tail flicked twice and Hannah figured that was response enough.

Less than twenty minutes later Hannah was in her cookie truck driving out to the hospital. As she zipped along, she considered Doctor Bev’s thinly veiled threat about Norman, and wondered whether Norman would be gullible enough to get involved with his two-time and two-timing fiancée for the third time.

“He knows what she did the last time,” Hannah said aloud as she took the turn that led around the lake to the hospital. “He wouldn’t fall for that again, would he?” Absolute silence greeted her query. Even though her window was all the way down, the cows grazing along the fence that ran past Frederick Miller’s farmland didn’t raise their heads to answer.

“Maybe he would,” Hannah said out loud, answering her own question. She hoped that wasn’t the case, but she wasn’t sure, not after the things Doctor Bev had said that afternoon. Hannah had just rounded the tight curve that was marked by the three white crosses that the Sheriff’s Department Protective League had put up to signify three speed-related fatalities when she noticed several broken branches hanging from the dogwood that lined the roadway. Someone had taken the curve too fast and mowed through the bushes that hid Miller’s Pond from view.

Hannah pulled over to the side of the road. The branches were still hanging from the dogwood and Frederick Miller was known for keeping up his property. If the accident had happened a week, or even several days ago, Frederick would have removed the broken branches. She hadn’t heard about any accident at The Cookie Jar and it would have been a topic of conversation. That meant the accident was recent and she could be the first person on the scene!

Hannah turned off the ignition and hurried out of her truck. She pushed aside the branch, stepped past the dogwood, and gazed down at the pond below. What she saw made her gasp in horror. There was a car in the bottom of Miller’s Pond!

Miller’s Pond was stream-fed and the water was much clearer than a pond without an underwater source. It was deep, at least fifteen feet, and some people might have classified it as a small lake. Even though the car was over ten feet under the water, Hannah was a strong swimmer and she knew she could dive down to it if she had to.

She made a snap decision and scrambled down the steep embankment, slipping and sliding, but luckily, not falling. If someone was still inside the car, she had to try to save them!

As she grew closer, she could see that the car was a convertible, a red convertible. And there, deep in the clear water, she saw a shape behind the wheel.

Hannah didn’t hesitate. She slid down the remainder of the embankment as fast as she could, and when she got to the edge of the pond, she kicked off her shoes. A second later, she was wading into the water.

Miller’s Pond was a favorite swimming hole for the kids from surrounding farms because it was as shallow as a bathtub for at least twenty-five feet before it deepened. This made it ideal for smaller children as a wading pool, but swimmers had to wade out quite far before the water was deep enough to swim. Hannah waded as fast as she could, splashing out with frantic determination. Finally she reached swimming depth and she swam to the center of the pond as fast as she could.