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As usual, Andrea was the scribe. Not only did she have good organizational skills, she also had the neatest handwriting of the three sisters. Michelle’s had deteriorated when she’d gone off to college. After two years at Macalister, her notes were cryptic, filled with abbreviations that only she could decipher. Hannah, on the other hand, tended to print whenever she wrote something she hoped to read later.
“Here you go. A brand new steno notebook.” Hannah handed her sister one from the stash of notebooks she kept in every room. “Do you need a pen?”
“I have one.” Andrea reached in her purse and pulled out what Hannah termed a “dress pen,” since the barrel was gold and studded with sparkling white stones.
“Pretty fancy,” Michelle commented, leaning closer to gaze at the pen. “Are those rhinestones, or diamonds?”
“I’m pretty sure they’re rhinestones. It was a present from a client and the house he bought was a fixer-upper.” Andrea flipped to the first blank page and wrote Wayne Bergstrom’s name at the top. “We don’t know the time of death, or the method. What do you want me to write down?”
“We could list the time I found him,” Hannah suggested, “but I didn’t look at my watch.”
“I did.” Michelle said. “When you said Santa’s dead, I pressed the button to light the time and it said ten twentytwo.”
Andrea started to write it down, but Michelle grabbed her hand. “Put down tenseventeen,” she said.
“Wait a second,” Hannah was confused. “I thought you said you looked at your watch and it was ten twentytwo.”
“That’s right. But I always set my watch five minutes ahead. It keeps me from being late to class.”
“How does it keep you from being late if you know your watch is five minutes ahead?” Hannah asked her.
“It’s simple. If I start counting on that extra five minutes, I set my watch ten minutes ahead and psych myself out.”
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Joanne Fluke
All was silent as Hannah digested that. It seemed her youngest sibling hadn’t inherited the logic gene.
“Okay. Tenseventeen.” Andrea jotted it down. “Do we know what time Wayne left for the parking lot?”
“Ten after eight,” Hannah responded.
“Are you sure your watch isn’t five or ten minutes fast?”
Andrea teased her.
“I didn’t look at my watch. I glanced at the clock in Sally’s kitchen as Wayne went out the back door. We can check it to make sure it’s accurate.”
Andrea flipped to another page and started a list of things they had to do. “Got it. We’ll run out to the inn and check Sally’s kitchen clock tomorrow.”
“That means Wayne was killed between eight-ten and tenseventeen,” Michelle pointed out. “That’s a window of just a little over two hours.”
“When we go out tomorrow, let’s see how long it takes to walk from Sally’s kitchen to that berm,” Hannah suggested.
“Even if you’re poking along taking your time, it can’t be more than five minutes.”
Andrea made another note. “Got it,” she said. “If you’re right, it means that Wayne was probably killed around eightfifteen, or eight-twenty.”
“Unless he stopped to talk to someone on the path,”
Michelle argued. “You know how people are when they meet each other at a party. They stop and talk for a while. He could have met up with his killer after he talked to somebody.”
“Good point,” Hannah said.
“We should get a guest list from Sally and check to see if anyone at the party met Wayne on the walkway.” Merrily winking rhinestones, or diamonds, or whatever they were, Andrea’s pen flew across the page. “It’s a couple of degrees above freezing tonight. If you were dressed for the weather, you could stand there and talk for five or ten minutes without getting cold.”
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Michelle nodded. “But Wayne wasn’t dressed for the weather. Hannah said he was wearing his Santa suit.” She turned to Hannah. “Do you think it was as heavy as a parka?”
“I don’t know. It looked heavy, especially with all that fur, but I didn’t actually feel the material.”
“They sell the same Santa suit at Bergstrom’s,” Michelle told them. “I saw a whole rack of them when I was shopping for boots with Mother.”
“We’ll go out there and check.” Andrea added another line to her To Do page, and then she let Moishe capture her pen and bat it around for a moment.
“Mother!” Hannah exclaimed.
“What about Mother?” her sisters chorused in perfect unison.
“When she calls to read me the riot act for finding another body, I’ll ask her to go shopping at Bergstrom’s and check out the Santa suits. It’s her favorite store at the mall.”
“And she’ll be so pleased she’s helping us solve Wayne’s murder, she’ll forget all about criticizing you?” Michelle guessed.
“That’s the general idea.”
“It could work,” Andrea offered her opinion. “Mother’s hard to distract, but a trip to Bergstrom’s right before Christmas could do it.”
! % { # 9
LEMON WHIPPERSNAPPERS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.
1 package (approximately 18 ounces) lemon cake mix, the size you can bake in a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan (Andrea used Betty Crocker) 2 cups Cool Whip (measure this—Andrea said her tub of Cool Whip contained a little over 3 cups.) 1 large beaten egg (it’s okay to just whip it up in a glass with a fork)
1?2 cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar in a separate small bowl (you don’t have to sift it unless it’s got big lumps)
Combine dry cake mix, Cool Whip, and beaten egg in a large bowl. Stir until it’s well mixed.
Drop by teaspoon into the bowl of powdered sugar and roll to coat the cookie dough.
Place the coated cookie drops on a greased (Andrea used Pam, but any nonstick cooking spray is fine) cookie sheet, 12 cookies to each sheet.
Bake the cookies at 350 degrees F., for 10 minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheets for 2 minutes or so, and then move them to a wire rack to cool completely.
Yield: approximately 4 dozen light and lovely cookies.
Hannah’s Note: Andrea showed me the recipe. Carli wrote that this is an old church recipe and that you can use any flavor cake mix in these cookies. She especially likes Lemon Whippersnappers in the summer because they’re simple to make and very refreshing.
! % { # 9
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