Authors: Joanne Fluke,Leslie Meier,Laura Levine
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction
Joanne Fluke Christmas Bundle: Sugar Cookie Murder, Candy Cane Murder, Plum Pudding Murder, & Gingerbread Cookie Murder (64 page)
“I guess I’ll forgive you this time, since your hands are burned.”
“Right,” he said. “Open it.”
Lucy withdrew a paperback book, a compendium of New England crimes. “This is great,” she said, delighted. “How’d you think of it?”
Bill blushed. “Well, I knew you were interested in what happened to Miss Tilley’s mother, and you’ve been reading mysteries.”
“That was very thoughtful. Thank you,” she said, opening the book and scanning the table of contents. One listing immediately caught her eye: The Angel of Death. Settling back into the corner of the couch she turned the pages and began reading, fascinated by the story of a nurse who was thought to have killed more than twenty of her patients using a variety of hard-to-detect methods such as drug overdoses, poison and smothering. “Oh my God,” she breathed, her eyes glued to the page.
“I didn’t think you’d like it this much,” complained Bill, who was feeling ignored.
“You won’t believe this. This woman, this nurse, she’s the one who killed Mrs. Tilley. It fits, exactly. It all fits.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. It’s all here. Even her name. Well, her aliases. Anne DePasquale, Andrea Dale, Anita DeSouza. Always a first name beginning with A and a last name beginning with D. Angela DeRosa, that was the name she used when she was supposedly caring for Mrs. Tilley. Everybody thought she was an angel, but she was actually killing off her patients.”
“How’d they figure it out?”
“People started getting suspicious when none of her patients ever seemed to recover,” said Lucy. “One man who happened to be a chemist analyzed the medicine she was giving his wife and found it was arsenic and went to the police.”
“Did they arrest her?”
“They tried,” said Lucy, reaching the end of the chapter, “but she killed herself before they could take her into custody. A lethal dose of strychnine.”
“She must have been nuts,” said Bill, lifting Toby onto his lap and opening a picture book.
“I’ve got to call Miss Tilley,” said Lucy, heading for the phone.
Miss Tilley answered the phone with a cheerful “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you,” replied Lucy. “And thank you for yesterday. It was a wonderful surprise.”
“I think everyone enjoyed themselves,” said Miss Tilley. “I put quite a bit of brandy in the eggnog, just to help things along.”
“So that’s your secret,” said Lucy. She paused. “I think I’ve found your mother’s murderer—and it wasn’t your father.”
“Who was it?”
“The nurse. Angela.”
“No, no. She was so kind….”
“It’s in a book. She killed at least twenty of her patients, maybe more.”
“She was convicted?”
“No. She killed herself before there could be a trial. There was an investigation, though, and some of her victims were exhumed and their bodies contained poison.”
“I can hardly believe it.”
“Nobody could. That’s how she had so many victims.”
“Papa never liked her.”
“He had good instincts.”
“He was innocent!” announced Miss Tilley, joyfully.
“Absolutely,” said Lucy. “I just wanted you to know, but I’ve got to get back to my family….”
“Thank you. This was a wonderful Christmas present. The best Christmas present I ever had.”
“But I still don’t know where the cane came from,” said Lucy. “Maybe it was a gift from Emil Boott.”
“Or maybe my mother planned to give it to my father as a Christmas gift.”
“We’ll never know,” said Lucy.
“No, that will have to remain a mystery,” said Miss Tilley. “Merry Christmas!”
CHRISTMAS SPRITZ COOKIES
Lucy’s mother always made these cookies every Christmas. They require a cookie press, which is a gizmo rather like a caulking gun that is available in kitchen supply stores.
1¼ cups sugar
2 cups butter
2 eggs
5 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon almond extract (or vanilla)
Cream butter, adding sugar gradually. Add unbeaten eggs, then sift dry ingredients and extract. Dough will be stiff.
Fill cookie press and press cookies out onto cookie sheet and decorate. (Lucy sprinkles colored sugar on the long strip cookes and puts bits of candied cherry in the center of the flower shapes.)
Bake at 375 degrees for 10–12 minutes, remove to rack to cool. These cookies keep well in a tightly sealed tin, but you’ll have to hide it well if you want to save them for Christmas.
SAND TARTS
These cookies are named for the dusting of cinnamon sugar that looks like sand. They’re delicious and not very well known anymore. Lucy remembers them from her childhood, when her grandmother used to make them. This is her recipe, written in her style.
Cream ½ cup butter.
Add:
1 cup sugar
2 beaten egg yolks
1 tablespoon milk
½ teaspoon vanilla
Beat mixture until light.
Sift together:
1½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Add to first mixture and blend well. Chill for several hours. Roll dough very thin and cut with a star or circle cookie cutter. Place on buttered baking sheet and put a split blanched almond on each cookie. Brush with unbeaten egg whites and sprinkle with mixture of 1 tablespoon sugar and ¼ teaspoon cinnamon.
Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes. Cool on racks.
Hannah bent over to examine the large lump of fur. The animal she thought she’d seen was really the expensive fur coat that Martin’s new wife was wearing. The only other animal in sight was the reindeer sugar cookie that was broken near Brandi’s feet, along with the pieces of a Christmas tree cookie, and a bell decorated in red and green icing. Brandi must have taken several cookies from the dessert table and come out here to eat them. The big question was, did she also take the antique cake knife?
Hoping that she’d just slipped and fallen, Hannah reached down to tap Brandi on the shoulder. “Brandi? Do you need help getting up?” she asked, shaking her a little harder and wondering if she should go for help.
Hannah certainly wouldn’t risk moving Brandi, but she’d taken a first aid class in college and she knew there was a pulse point just under the jawbone on the side of a person’s neck. The collar of Brandi’s coat was in the way and Hannah pushed it back. This caused the coat to fall open and Hannah gave a strangled gasp as she caught sight of Brandi’s chest.
“Hannah? Are you out there?” Edna called from the kitchen.
“I’m here.”
“Did you find the knife?”
Hannah glanced down at her mother’s valuable antique knife, buried to the hilt in Brandi’s too-perfectly-proportioned-to-be-natural chest. “I found it…”
Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
Strawberry Shortcake Murder
Blueberry Muffin Murder
Lemon Meringue Pie Murder
Fudge Cupcake Murder
Sugar Cookie Murder
Peach Cobbler Murder
Cherry Cheesecake Murder
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
OANNE
F
LUKE
S
UGAR
C
OOKIE
M
URDER
A HANNAH SWENSEN HOLIDAY MYSTERY WITH RECIPES
KENSINGTON BOOKS
This book is for Haley, Rachael, and Madeline.
Thank you to Ruel, my in-house story editor.
And thanks to our kids who say things like, “You should make a cookie that tastes like German Chocolate Cake.”
(I’ve almost got it, and it’ll be in the next Hannah book!)
I’m grateful to our friends and neighbors:
Mel and Kurt, Lyn and Bill, Gina and the kids, Jay, Bob M., Amanda, John B., Dr. Bob and Sue Hagaman, and to everyone who came running when I said I was testing potluck recipes for this book.
Thank you to my talented editor, John Scognamiglio, for his constant support.
Editors don’t come any better than John.
And thanks to all the good folks at Kensington who keep Hannah Swensen sleuthing and baking to her heart’s content.
Thank you to Hiro Kimura, my cover artist, for his incredible artwork.
Big hugs to Terry Sommers and her family for critiquing my recipes and for letting me use their family recipe, Aunt Grace’s Breakfast Muffins.
Happy Birthday, Terry!
Thanks to Jamie Wallace for shepherding my Web site
MurderSheBaked.com
Thank you to Laura Levine (she writes the Jaine Austen mysteries),
Helen Kauffman, and Charlene Timms, for the title suggestions.
They were all great, and you may see them in print yet.
Thanks to Merle and Tracy for information about Alzheimer’s, and to Doris Hannon for asking about “Hot Stuff” and “Silver Fox.”
A big hug to all my e-mail and regular mail friends who share their feelings, their baking experiences, and their love for Hannah with me.