Carrot Cake Murder (12 page)

“Yes, and mosquito repellent, too. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Right.” Hannah exchanged a glance with Andrea. She was willing to bet that they were thinking the same thing. Sunburn and mosquito bites were the least of their worries. While there was nothing indecent about the way Michelle was dressed, her outfit would be certain to produce a loud chorus of wolf whistles if she walked past a construction site.

“Is Lonnie coming to the potluck tonight?” Andrea asked, mentioning the young sheriff’s deputy that Michelle had been dating for over a year.

“Yes. And that reminds me…I’d better change clothes. Lonnie doesn’t like me to wear this top around other men. He says it makes them slobber.”

As Michelle headed off to the bedroom to change, Andrea and Hannah exchanged grins. “I think Lonnie’s a good influence on her,” Andrea commented.

“You could be right,” Hannah agreed.

“Do you need some help chopping those vegetables?”

“Not really. This is the only good knife Mother has.” Hannah crossed her fingers to negate the lie, a leftover habit from childhood. Their mother had a whole butcher block full of expensive knives on the counter, and every one was perfectly sharpened. But if she let Andrea help her, her younger, less-culinarily talented sister would probably chop off a finger. And Hannah would much rather tell a little white lie than be responsible for that!

“What are you making?” Andrea stepped closer and peered into the bowl. “I see cauliflower and broccoli chopped up into little pieces. It’s got to be some kind of salad.”

“It is. It’s Sally’s Sunny Vegetable Salad. I got the recipe from her last year. Lisa’s doing a Caesar with black olives, Edna’s fixing macaroni salad, and Marge is making coleslaw.”

“And I’ve got my salad,” Andrea said proudly. “It’s got cottage cheese and grated onions in green Jell-O.”

Hannah tried a few comments to that in her mind. That sounds good, was an outright lie, and That’s nice, was too generic. She finally thought of something appropriate to say. “That’ll look great with the rest of the salads,” she said, just as Michelle emerged from the bedroom wearing white slacks and a lavender top with blousy, chiffon sleeves.

“Nice outfit,” Andrea complimented their youngest sibling.

“Thanks. Lonnie loves it when I wear purple and white. I think it’s because they’re the Jordan High colors.” Michelle walked over to stand next to Hannah. “Can I do anything to help?”

Hannah would have loved to ask Michelle to chop up some broccoli, but she’d already told Andrea the fib about the knives. “How about whisking up the dressing?” she suggested. “If Andrea will gather the ingredients, that is. And while you’re doing that, I need to ask your opinion about something.”

“What’s that?” Michelle asked, as Andrea brought over the small cooler that Hannah had brought with her.

“Mike says he doesn’t mind if I investigate as long as we exchange information. He sounded sincere, but I’m not sure.”

“That’s because you can’t tell with a cop,” Michelle said quickly. “They don’t have to be truthful all the time. I think cop school teaches them how to lie to trick suspects.”

Both Hannah and Andrea turned to Michelle in surprise. “Do you think Lonnie lies to you?” Hannah asked her.

“Absolutely.” Michelle gave a little laugh. “Last night he told me that I was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“That’s not a lie,” Hannah said.

And at almost the same time Andrea asked, “What’s wrong with that? You are.”

“Thanks, guys,” Michelle smiled at both of them, “but I know that’s not true. Lonnie was lying, pure and simple.”

“It wasn’t a lie, strictly speaking,” Hannah informed her. “Lonnie just exaggerated a bit to flatter you.”

Andrea agreed. “Men are allowed to say things like that whether they mean them or not.”

“But it usually means they want something,” Hannah added.

“Oh, he did,” Michelle said.

Andrea and Hannah locked eyes. It was clear that both of them were hoping the other one would ask. But the silence lengthened, and finally Hannah broke down.

“Okay, I’ll ask,” she said. “Are you willing to tell us what Lonnie wanted?”

Michelle laughed. “I was wondering which one of you would cave in and ask me. Sure, I’ll tell you what he wanted. Lonnie asked me if he could buy me an engagement ring for Christmas.”

“But you’ve got two years of college to go,” Andrea pointed out.

“I know that. I told him it was too soon. And I said that if he still felt the same way next year, he should ask me again.”

“Smart sister!” Hannah exclaimed, exchanging a high-five with Andrea.

“But the two years I’ve got left in school aren’t the only reason I didn’t want to get engaged now,” Michelle went on. “There’s someone else I might want to date.”

“Someone here in Lake Eden?” Hannah asked, hoping that wasn’t the case. Lonnie would be pretty upset if he had a rival he had to face every day in town.

Michelle shook her head. “Someone at school. And he hasn’t even asked me out yet. But I think he will, and I want to be free to go if he asks me.”

“That’s probably smart,” Hannah told her.

“I think so. I don’t want to commit to anyone until I’m absolutely sure. I’m just like you, Hannah.”

Hannah winced inwardly. What Michelle was admiring as a smart choice might actually turn out to be a flaw in Hannah’s personality. There were some people who simply couldn’t commit to anything. They sat on the fence all their lives, wavering between two choices, and ended up completely alone. Hannah didn’t think that was what she was doing, but she wasn’t completely sure. In any event, this wasn’t the time for deep soul-searching. She needed their opinion of the alliance that Mike had suggested.

“We got off the track here,” Hannah said. “We were talking about cops and lying. Do you think Mike was lying to me when he promised to give me access to information he learned if I’d do the same with him?”

Michelle looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. Does he have anything to gain by lying to you?”

“Of course he does,” Andrea answered the question. “He knows Hannah will play straight with him if she agrees to his deal. But she won’t know if he’s not playing straight with her.”

“I’ll know,” Hannah said.

Andrea looked surprised. “How?”

“My sister’s a member of the sheriff’s wife network. Mike has to report everything he does to Bill, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, but…”

“And it won’t be too difficult for you to get a look at those reports, will it?” Hannah interrupted her.

Andrea began to smile. “It won’t be hard at all. Tell Mike yes, and I’ll check the reports so we can keep him honest.”

Michelle manned the whisk while Andrea handed her the ingredients. Hannah chopped the last of the vegetables and as she was chopping, she thought of something she wanted to ask Andrea.

“When Mike interviewed me, he told me that the diamond pinkie ring Gus was wearing was paste, and he thought the Rolex was a fake, too. How about his clothes? Do you think they were fakes?”

“Are you talking about knockoffs?” Andrea asked.

Hannah shrugged, unable to place the word. “I don’t know. What are knockoffs?”

“Designer styles that are copied by other manufacturers, mostly in foreign countries. When Bill and I went to Hawaii, we had a four-hour layover in Los Angeles. The taxi driver took us downtown, and I bought a fake Gucci bag for ten dollars. It even had the logo as part of the brass clasp.”

“You mean the G and the backwards C?” Michelle asked her.

“That’s exactly right. It was a clutch, really cute, and it smelled like real leather.”

“But it wasn’t,” Hannah guessed.

“Bingo!” Andrea pointed her finger at Hannah. “Of course I knew it had to be hot, or a knockoff. Real Gucci bags sell for anywhere from ten to a hundred times that much. But I liked it, and Bill bought it for me.”

“What happened?” Michelle asked.

“Well, the leather smell faded before I even got it home, and the second time I carried it, the clasp fell apart.”

“Why didn’t you have the clasp fixed?” Michelle asked her.

“Maybe I should have, but I didn’t feel like going out of town to have it done.”

“You could have taken it to Bud Hauge’s welding shop,” Hannah told her.

“No, I couldn’t have. Bill was a deputy sheriff when we got married, and everybody in town thought he’d bought me a Gucci bag. How would it look for a deputy sheriff’s wife to try to pass off an illegal knockoff of a designer bag as the real thing?”

“It would be bad,” Michelle said.

“Fodder for the gossip hotline,” Hannah added.

“Exactly. And that’s why I tossed it in the trash.”

“Wise move,” Hannah complimented her, and grabbed the bowl with the dressing before Michelle could whisk the daylights out of it.

“Whoa!” Michelle exclaimed, staring at her oldest sister in shock as Hannah added the dressing to the salad. “Why are you doing that now? We’re not going to set out the buffet for another two hours!”

“That’s okay. There’s nothing in this salad to wilt. You can dress it hours ahead of time. It’s even a good idea, since it takes that long for the flavors to meld. All you have to do is toss it, cover it with plastic wrap, and stick it in the fridge. Then, when you’re ready to serve, you just sprinkle on the bacon pieces and the salted sunflower seeds, and set it out on the buffet table.” She stopped, took a deep breath, and got back to the subject at hand. “Now, back to Gus’s clothing. Did either of you two fashion experts get a good look at them?”

“I did,” Andrea said, which was nothing less than Hannah had expected.

“I didn’t,” Michelle admitted. “When everybody else was crowding around the car, I was saying goodbye to Lonnie in the church parking lot. He had to work, so I went out to the mall with a couple of my friends, and I wasn’t invited to the Inn for the breakfast buffet. Then last night at the dance, Lonnie and I were sitting with Lonnie’s parents, and Rick and Jessica. I saw Gus and I thought he looked really good, better dressed than anyone else there, but I didn’t really get close enough to catalogue his outfit, if that’s what you mean.”

“Expensive, expensive, expensive,” Andrea categorized, giving a little shrug. “I can’t tell you how much exactly, but I’m sure the two ensembles I saw him wearing cost enough for a down payment on a Lake Eden fixer-upper. I’d bet my real estate license on that!”

Hannah just stared at her sister. That was good enough for her. Andrea valued her real estate license only slightly below her husband and her children. “Then the clothes were real even if the jewelry wasn’t?”

“That’s right.”

“That proves that Gus Klein had some money…or at least he did until he spent it on master tailors, fine material, and shoes even Mayor Bascomb couldn’t afford.”

SALLY’S SUNNY VEGETABLE SALAD

5 cups chopped broccoli florets

5 cups chopped cauliflower florets

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (the sharper the cheddar the better the salad)

½ cup golden raisins (Sally says to tell you she’s used sweetened, dried cranberries as a substitute for the raisins)

2/3 cup minced onion (Sally uses chopped green onions)

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½ cup white (granulated) sugar

1 cup mayonnaise (Hannah uses Hellmann’s—it’s called Best Foods west of the Rockies)

2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar (I used raspberry vinegar)

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6 bacon strips, cooked and crumbled (or ½ cup bacon bits)

¼ cup shelled, salted, toasted sunflower seeds

Chop the broccoli and cauliflower florets into tiny bite-sized pieces.

Combine the broccoli and cauliflower in a large salad bowl. Add the shredded cheese and mix it up with your fingers.

Mix in the raisins and the minced onion.

In a small bowl, combine the sugar, mayonnaise, and red wine vinegar. Mix it with a rubber spatula, or a whisk until it’s smooth.

Pour the dressing you just mixed over the top of the salad. Toss it, or stir it with a spoon or spatula until the vegetables are coated with the dressing.

Sprinkle the bacon bits on top.

Sprinkle the sunflower seeds on top of that.

Hannah’s 1stNote: You can make this salad several hours before serving. It’s even better that way because the flavors blend. Just toss the vegetables and raisins with the dressing, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate it until your company arrives. Then all you have to do is sprinkle on the bacon bits, and the sunflower seeds, and serve.

Yield: 12 to 16 servings.

Hannah’s 2ndNote: I made this for a 6-person dinner party once, and I ended up with about half of the salad left in the bowl. I refrigerated it to see what would happen, and it was every bit as good the next day!

Hannah stifled a yawn as she loaded pots and pans into one of the industrial-sized dishwaters at the Thompson cottage kitchen. She had volunteered for the task to free up the other women who wanted to see the slide show that Lisa, Herb, and Norman had compiled from the old family photos that everyone had brought. Hannah had wanted to see the slide show, too, but she knew she was far too tired to keep her eyes open once she was snuggled down on a blanket on the beach, the alternate venue Lisa and Herb had arranged because the pavilion was still roped off as a crime scene. Norman had rented a giant-screen television, the kind they used for huge outdoor events, from a place in Minneapolis, and the men who’d delivered it had helped to run an extension cord from the nearest cottage. Even though she was across the road and up the equivalent of a city block from the festivities, Hannah could hear applause and laughter from the family members gathered on the beach.