Carrot Cake Murder (15 page)

“Let’s go have some tuna,” Hannah said, leading the way to the kitchen without checking the rest of the rooms for damage. Moishe had obviously been traumatized by the forest green Kitty Kondo that had invaded his living room, but a whole can of albacore tuna should take his mind off the carpeted intruder.

Two hours later, Hannah slipped on the oversized T-shirt she wore as a summer nightgown and crawled into bed. Moishe had cut a wide berth around the activity center when they walked through the living room on their way to bed, but he hadn’t growled or bristled, and that was a good sign.

She certainly hoped the cookie dough she’d mixed up after two failed attempts would work. She’d read through Edna’s red velvet cake recipe, balanced the wet and dry ingredients for drop cookie dough rather than a cake batter, and added more chocolate and some chocolate chips. There was no point in using the vinegar and baking soda, since the cookie dough would sit out on the counter and lose its fizz between batches. She couldn’t use buttermilk, either, since she didn’t have any in her refrigerator and she certainly didn’t want to drive out to the Quick Stop to buy some.

The first batch she’d baked looked fine, but they were too flat and chewy. The second batch solved that problem, but they fell apart when she tried to take them off the cookie sheet. She thought she’d managed to mix up a winner with the third batch, but she was so tired her eyes were beginning to cross. She covered the dough and stashed it in her refrigerator. She’d be risking disaster by baking more cookies tonight. The third batch would have to wait until morning to bake.

“’Night, Moishe,” she whispered, reaching out to give her pet a scratch under the chin. Then she closed her eyes and fell asleep to dream of Red Velvet Cookies dancing around the floor of the Lake Pavilion while Frankie and the Frankfurters played the Beer Barrel Polka.

It wasn’t morning. It couldn’t be morning. But it must be morning, because a rooster was crowing in the living room.

Hannah rolled over and pulled the covers over her head, but that didn’t help. The rooster kept right on crowing. Except it wasn’t exactly crowing. It was more of a chirping sound, like a cricket on steroids, or a frog croaking in a falsetto, or a mouse being terrorized by a…

Hannah’s eyes popped open. Her mind was working so hard to identify the origin of the sound she was hearing, it had awakened her. And it was the middle of the night. At least she thought it was the middle of the night. It was certainly dark enough to be the middle of the night.

There it was again, a sort of a high-pitched squeak. Perhaps it was a mouse being terrorized by a cat! “Moishe?” she called out, flicking on the light.

Moishe was nowhere in sight. He wasn’t on the bed, and he wasn’t in it, either, because there was no lump under the covers. He wasn’t in the bedroom at all. The chirping had stopped, and Hannah knew that meant she had to get up. She gave a tired sigh as she pulled her slippers out from under the bed and put them on. It was a warm summer night, and she didn’t need to protect her feet from cold floors. But her slippers were washable, and she did need to protect her feet from any tangible evidence of rodent carnage that might be scattered in her path.

There was nothing in the hallway. Hannah was careful as she walked. And there was nothing in the living room except…

Hannah stopped short as she spotted Moishe sitting proudly on the second floor of his Kitty Kondo. He was practically grinning at her, but not so widely that he might drop the prize in his mouth. It was a furry gray mouse with a string attached, and Hannah knew that string had been tied to the pole of kitty toys when they’d gone to bed. Moishe must have gathered his courage and gone up there in the middle of the night to get his prize. And he must be chewing on it right now, even though she couldn’t see his jaw working, because it was making a new sound, an electronic beeping sound that seemed to be coming from her bedroom.

Realization dawned and with it, Hannah groaned. The beeping was coming from her alarm clock. It was time to get up and face the morning. She’d had a full four-hours’ sleep, and that was all she was going to get.

There was a soft hissing sound from the kitchen, and Hannah sniffed the air. The last of the water had gone into her coffeemaker’s basket and it was dripping down through the coffee grounds to join the fresh brew that awaited her in the carafe.

“I should have taught you to shut off the alarm clock,” Hannah said, addressing her courageous hunter.

As Hannah turned to go back to the bedroom to shut off her alarm, Moishe made a sound that she took for agreement, but he didn’t open his mouth. It was clear he wasn’t about to give up his prey for an early-morning conversation.

It didn’t take long for Hannah to shower and dress, and she drained the last of her first mug of coffee as she walked down the hallway to the kitchen again. There she found Moishe still staring at the food in his bowl, the toy mouse held tightly in his mouth. “Can’t have your mouse and eat it, too?” she asked, pointing to the food bowl.

Moishe made another pathetic closed-mouth sound, and Hannah took pity on him. “I tell you what…why don’t I tie the mouse back on the pole, and you can catch him again later? That way you’ll have twice the fun.” With that said, Hannah reached for the mouse, and surprisingly, Moishe let her have it. As she headed for the living room to tie it back on the pole, she wondered if he’d really understood her and opted for twice the fun, or whether the food in the bowl had simply won out over the nonfood in his mouth.

She had time for one more cup of coffee. Hannah poured her last cup and leaned against the counter to sip it. Once she finished her coffee, all she had to do was retrieve the cookie dough, find her car keys, pick up her purse, and go out the door.

The phone rang, and Hannah mentally corrected herself. All she had to do was answer the phone, pick up the cookie dough, find her keys and her purse, and go.

“Hello,” she said, answering normally since Moishe wasn’t bristling.

“Hi, Hannah. You were up, weren’t you?”

It was Norman, and Hannah laughed. “Of course I was up. I have to be at work in thirty minutes. I’m glad you called, though. I wanted to thank you for putting up Moishe’s Kitty Kondo.”

“You’re welcome. I didn’t think you’d mind if Sue from downstairs let me in.”

“I don’t mind at all!”

“Good. I think it’s going to take a while before the Big Guy gets used to it. He made himself scarce while I was installing it, and when I tried to coax him closer, he hid under your bed.”

“He’s a faster learner than you think. You should have seen him this morning playing with that mouse on the pole. He managed to get it loose, and he looked really proud of himself.”

“Great! I’ll pick up some replacement toys the next time I’m out at the mall. The girl at the pet store said her cats tear up at least one toy a week.”

“Thanks, again,” Hannah said. “You’re the most thoughtful person I know.”

There was a silence, and Hannah knew Norman was a bit embarrassed by her compliment. “Well, you are,” she told him.

“Thanks. You threw me off balance there and I almost forgot the reason I called. It’s number fifty-seven.”

“Number fifty-seven?”

“Five-seven. That’s right.”

“But what’s five-seven?”

“The Animal Channel. For Moishe to watch. I asked around after the slide show last night. I thought you might want to turn it on before you left for work.”

“Right. Thanks, Norman. I’ll do that. And if you can, come in for cookies this morning. I’m trying out something new.”

Hannah had no sooner hung up the phone than it rang again. She assumed it was Norman, who’d thought of something he’d forgotten to tell her, so she answered, “Hello again, Norman.”

“It’s not Norman. It’s Mike.”

“Oops. Sorry about that. I just finished talking to Norman on the phone, and I thought he was calling back.”

“Norman calls you this early in the morning?” Mike sounded shocked.

“Sometimes. He knows I get up early.”

“How does he know that?”

“Because I’m always in the kitchen at The Cookie Jar by six at the latest, and he sees the lights on when he drives by on his way to the dental clinic. Anyway, how did you know I’d be up this early?”

There was a pause, and then Mike laughed. “Okay. Let’s start over. Morning, Hannah.”

“Morning, Mike. What can I do for you at the crack of dawn?”

“I don’t think I’d better try to answer that. I just called to say that Ronni says to try seven-five.”

Hannah was puzzled. “Try seven-five for what?”

“For the Animal Channel. Ronni turns it on every day for her dog. She’s got a Pekingese.”

“Ronni who?”

“Ronni Ward. Her engagement didn’t work out, and she’s back doing fitness training at the station. She just rented the apartment across the hall from me.”

“Oh,” Hannah said, wondering if she should start worrying about Mike and Ronni. The last time a woman from the sheriff’s department had lived in Mike’s complex, they’d been involved. And right after that unpleasant thought had crossed her mind, Hannah wondered if Andrea knew that Ronni was back in town. Even though Bill had sworn up and down that he wasn’t the least bit interested in the winner of Lake Eden’s bikini contest, Andrea had worried that they were more than employer and employee.

“Andrea knows,” Mike answered Hannah’s unspoken question. “Bill said he told her last night when he got home.”

“Oh,” Hannah said again, treading on eggshells. She wasn’t about to tell Mike any sisterly secrets.

“Bill said Andrea thought they were involved when he went to Florida for that convention.”

This time Hannah didn’t even open her mouth for fear she’d say the wrong thing. Less was more, or silence was golden, or any one of several phrases that seemed to fit the situation.

“Anyway, I thought I’d tell you. Try seventy-five and see if it works. And if it doesn’t work, try fifty-seven. Ronni sometimes transposes numbers.”

“Good thing she doesn’t do countdowns for NASA.”

“Very funny, Hannah. Just try both numbers. It might save you money on couch pillows. And that reminds me…are you going to be at the lake this morning?”

“No, I have to work. I’ll be at The Cookie Jar.”

“Good. I’ve got a couple of things to do in town, anyway. I’ll come in about eleven, and we can compare notes.”

“Fine by me,” Hannah said. “And thanks for telling me about the Animal Channel. I’m about to leave for work, so I’ll try it right now.”

Once she’d hung up the phone, Hannah headed for the couch and the remote control that she kept in the drawer of the coffee table. The drawer was fairly cat-safe, but she still pushed it all the way to the back and covered it with an old copy of the TV guide. Moishe had already killed one control, and it had cost her big bucks to replace it.

“Hi, Moishe,” she greeted her pet as he jumped up to the seat of the couch and then even higher to perch on the back. “Just for fun, let’s see if Ronni Ward got the number for the Animal Channel right.”

When channel seventy-five came on the screen, Hannah let out a gasp of pure shock. She didn’t know they were allowed to do things like that on television! She resisted the urge to cover her cat’s eyes and wasted no time punching in fifty-seven. When a pride of lions replaced the scene that had shocked her on channel seventy-five, she smiled and reached up to give Moishe a scratch. “Okay, this is the Animal Channel. It’s number fifty-seven and I’ll leave it on for you.”

Once she’d stashed the cable control in the drawer and collected her cookie dough, her keys, and her purse, Hannah noticed that one of the lions, probably the adult female, was stalking a zebra. “’Bye, Moishe. Enjoy the show, but don’t get any grandiose ideas,” she said. And then she headed out into the early morning darkness to drive to The Cookie Jar and bake the day’s cookies.

RED VELVET COOKIES

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F., rack in the middle position.

2 one-ounce squares unsweetened baking chocolate

½ cup (1 stick, ¼ pound, 4 ounces) butter at room temperature

2/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1/3 cup white (granulated) sugar

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 large egg

1 Tablespoon red food coloring

¾ cup sour cream

2 cups flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)

1 cup (a 6-ounce package) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. Spray the parchment paper with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray. (If you don’t have parchment paper, you can use foil, but leave little “ears” of foil sticking up on the ends, enough to grab later when you slide the whole thing on a cooling rack.)

Unwrap the squares of chocolate and break them apart. Put them in a small microwave-safe bowl. (I used an 8-ounce measuring cup.) Melt them for 90 seconds on HIGH. Stir them until they’re smooth and set them aside to cool while you mix up your cookie dough.

Hannah’s 1stNote: Mixing this dough is easier with an electric mixer. You can do it by hand, but it takes some muscle.

Combine the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat them on medium speed until they’re smooth. This should take less than a minute.

Add the baking soda and salt, and resume beating on medium again for another minute, or until they’re incorporated.

Add the egg and beat on medium until the batter is smooth (an additional minute should do it.) Add the red food coloring and mix for about 30 seconds.

Shut off the mixer and scrape down the bowl. Then add the melted chocolate and mix again for another minute on medium speed.