"You got that backwards," Hannah told her. "I should be thanking you. Just let me mix up the Little Snowball dough and I'll show you how to make those."
Lisa shook her head. "It's too late. We baked them already. The instructions were right on the recipe and once we got going, we didn't want to stop." She stepped over to whisk back a towel that covered six of Sally's crystal ice buckets, and Hannah saw that each one was filled with small snow white balls. "They're absolutely delicious, Hannah. We just had to taste them."
"Of course you did," Hannah said, reaching out to take one. The Little Snowballs were so tender they practically melted in her mouth, and she started to smile. "Delicious."
"Are you sure?" Alex looked a bit worried. "I rolled them in powdered sugar twice, just like it said in the recipe. Once when they were hot, and once after they'd cooled. Do you think it's too much?"
"There's no such thing as too much powdered sugar. They're perfect, Alex, even better than I remembered. I'll help you two mix up the cookie dough for tomorrow morning and then I'll deliver the Little Snowballs to Edna."
"What cookies are we making tomorrow?" Lisa asked. "It's basically the same lineup, except we'll substitute your White Chocolate Supremes for the Molasses Crackles. You can mix up the dough for those."
"I'll do the Oatmeal Raisin Crisps," Alex offered. "I read the recipe and I bet my boss would just love them."
"You mean Sally?"
"No, my regular boss."
"Who's that?" Hannah asked, trolling for a little information.
"I work for Remco. It's a big accounting firm based in Edina. My boss is the senior vice president. I'm on vacation right now. I had three weeks coming and I had to use it up before I lost it."
"Wait a second." Hannah turned to her with an amazed expression. "You took a temporary job with Sally on your vacation?"
Alex laughed. "I know this isn't exactly a vacation, but I wanted to see how a place like this was run. I inherited my parents' house last year, and I thought I might turn it into a bed-and-breakfast."
"Well, the inn is certainly a good example of what you can do with an old place," Hannah said, still watching Alex closely. She looked perfectly sincere, but she didn't quite meet Hannah's eyes. That made Hannah suspect that Alex wasn't telling her the whole truth and that she had a second reason for accepting Sally's job.
"I'll start in on these," Alex said, glancing down at the recipe. "I'll go get a fresh box of oatmeal."
When Alex had gone, Hannah turned to Lisa. "Did you find out anything more about her?"
"She's forty-five years old, she lives in Edina, she has two cats, she loves to dance, and she sews in her spare time. That's about it. You got more real information from her in two minutes than I did in two hours."
"You primed the pump," Hannah said, patting Lisa on the shoulder. "I just happened to be here when the water gushed out."
"Do you really think so?"
"Absolutely. Just keep working on her."
Alex came back in with a jumbo-sized box of oatmeal, and the three of them worked in silence for several minutes. It didn't take long to mix up the cookie dough with all three of them working, and that was all to the good. Sally's staff had begun to arrive to prepare the lunch buffet, and Hannah didn't want to get in the way.
"Don't worry," Alex said, noticing Hannah's concerned expression as more kitchen workers arrived. "Sally's serving soup and sandwiches for today's lunch buffet. She figured that most of the guests would be out at venues and she could keep it simple. All the kitchen staff has to do is lay cold cuts, cheeses, and breads on platters and carry it out. There's potato salad, but that's already made, and so is the coleslaw and the soup."
Another five minutes of work and they were finished Hannah covered the bowls with plastic wrap, and Lisa and Alex stashed them in Sally's walk-in cooler.
'Why don't you go pull your truck around to the back entrance?" Lisa suggested. "We'll finish up here and then we'll help you load."
Hannah headed out to get her truck. As she walked through the halls to the lobby, she didn't meet another soul. Sally had been right. Almost everyone was out at the venues.
Her boots were on the rack by the front entrance, right where she'd left them when she'd come in, and Hannah sat down on the bench to pull them on. She was just putting on her parka, preparing to go out into the cold, when she noticed a small crowd of people out on the lakeshore. Two parka-clad men were unloading a wooden structure from a pickup truck that had been driven out on the ice, and Hannah realized that they were setting up for the ice-fishing contest. The actual contest would take place tomorrow, but the preparations had to be made in advance. By the time night fell, the surface of Eden Lake would be sprinkled with ice-fishing houses.
Hannah was about to step out the door when she noticed that the plume of smoke on the far side of the lake was still there. A die-hard Winter Carnival attendee would be out at the venues by now. He wouldn't be huddled in his summer cabin, feeding the fire in his fireplace. But this column of smoke showed no signs of diminishing. It was still just as thick as when she'd first spotted it.
Hannah turned on her heel and headed for the phone. If she remembered correctly, Janie's parents had owned a cabin on the far side of the lake. She had to find out if they'd sold it when they'd moved to Florida, and there was one person who could tell her that in a flash.
Two minutes later, Hannah had Andrea on the phone. But the moment she started to ask her question, Andrea interrupted her.
"Wait a second, Hannah. I've got big news. You can take Ray off your suspect list."
"The bus driver called you?"
"That's right. Ray rode all the way up to Duluth and his parents were there to meet him. The driver saw him get into their car. That was at eight last night, and the driver told me that the roads up north were a mess. He was an hour behind schedule, and there's no way Ray could have driven back to Lake Eden last night."
"Great. That'll make Earl happy. Now listen carefully, Andrea. I just got a wild idea. Didn't Janie's parents own a cabin on the far side of Eden Lake?"
"Yes, and they still own it. We rent it out for them every summer. They didn't want to sell, because they thought that someday Janie might want to . . ." Andrea stopped speaking and gasped. "Do you think she's there?"
"She could be, if the smoke I saw is coming from her parents' cabin."
"I know which one it is. I'll drive right out and check."
"No, you stay put," Hannah ordered. "There's an APB out on Janie, and if you find her, you'll have to tell Bill."
There was a long silence and then Andrea sighed. "You're right. I love Bill, but sometimes I wish I'd married a dermatologist. They never get called out on emergencies and you don't have to worry about what you tell them. You're going out there, aren't you?"
"I'm on the way."
"Are you going to turn Janie in?" Andrea asked, sounding very worried.
"Not until she tells me exactly what happened last night. And then I'll get her to turn herself in."
Hannah uttered a word that she would have swallowed if her niece had been a passenger in her truck. The road that ran around the lake was in poor repair, and this was the fourth time she'd hit the top of her head as she bounced over the ruts. She glanced in the rearview mirror and heaved a sigh of relief as she saw the cookie boxes, still exactly where they'd placed them. It would be a real pity to arrive at the venues with broken cookies.
Andrea had given her detailed directions, and Hannah turned left at the fork in the road by the green cabin with yellow trim. Every cabin she'd passed had been vacant. No one except a desperate person would sleep overnight in a summer cabin in this kind of weather. She turned off again, at the pink cabin, and took the winding road down to the lakeshore. Andrea had told her to look for the sky blue cabin, and she could see it through the pine trees.