"Uh-oh," Lisa said with a frown. "My brilliant plan to give Moishe his vitamins wasn't so brilliant after all?"
"It could have been brilliant, I just don't know. I never got the chance to test it out. When I got home last night, Moishe was hiding under the bed and his vitamin bottle was at the bottom of the toilet bowl."
"I guess that tells you what he thinks of food supplements."
"It certainly does," Hannah said with a grin. "Anyway, I decided to try something that both of us could live with. Cooking his food doesn't seem to be that difficult."
"Let me see." Lisa peered over Hannah's shoulder at the typewritten recipe. "You're going to boil liver for him every morning and every evening?"
"It's worth it as long as I don't have to give him those vitamins."
"How about the rest of this stuff? You have to cook that, too." Lisa read the list of additional ingredients and shuddered. "This sounds really horrible, especially for breakfast."
"It's not that bad, Lisa. It's almost like an omelet, if you think about it."
"I don't want to think about it, especially first thing in the morning. What is this last ingredient, calcium carbonate?"
"It's what's in eggshells. Sue said I could just crush the shells really fine and add the powder to Moishe's food. The whole thing'll be like a crunchy liver omelet with a side of rice."
"Yuck. Just thinking about it is making me sick. I don't know what's worse, the liver or the eggshells. Do you think he'll eat it?"
"I think so, especially when I finish seasoning it. I can't bear the thought of making an omelet without salt and pepper and maybe a little dash of garlic powder."
"But animals aren't supposed to have seasoning."
"Says who? I bet that comes from people who never had to taste pet food. If I were a cat or a dog, I'd want my dinner spiced up with a little seasoning. I might even douse it with ketchup if I could figure out how to get the cap off the bottle."
When Lisa came back from lunch, she handed Hannah a bag from the Red Owl. "Here, Hannah. I picked up a sack of candy corn. Where do you want it?"
"In the kitchen, on the counter by the sink."
Hannah made the rounds with the coffee carafe while Lisa took the bag to the kitchen and washed her hands. When she came back out, she was wearing her hair net and one of the pretty serving aprons that a local seamstress had made for them.
"You should see the community center," Lisa said. "The seniors are helping to decorate it for Halloween and it looks really good."
"How's the Haunted Basement coming along?"
"It's almost done. They were just moving in the furniture while I was there. Edna was in the kitchen, filling the bags of treats for the kids, and she had an idea for Alma's cupcakes."
"What's that?" Hannah asked. Edna had been baking for almost half a century and she knew what she was doing.
"She said she thought it had to be some kind of thickened liquid."
"I agree," Hannah said. "Did she have any suggestions?"
"Only one, but she said it couldn't be right."
"What was it?" Hannah wanted to know. Even if Edna's suggestion wouldn't work for the secret ingredient, it might give them some ideas.
"Sweetened condensed milk."
"But that could be it! The recipe could use more sugar and it's just about the right consistency. Why didn't Edna think it would work?"
"Because Alma was known for pinching her pennies."
"You mean sweetened condensed milk would be too expensive for her to use in a recipe?"
"Not exactly. Edna said Alma would use it, but she sure wouldn't throw any away."
"I get it," Hannah began to smile. "The recipe calls for half a cup and there's more than that in the can. But maybe Alma doubled the recipe."
Lisa shook her head. "Edna thought of that. Even if she doubled the recipe, she'd still have a quarter cup left in the can. Edna said Alma never would have stood still for that."
"Edna's probably right," Hannah said, refilling her coffee cup. "When you get a second, Mayor Bascomb needs another Molasses Crackle and Mrs. Jessup wants a dozen Peanut Butter Melts to take home with her. Call me if it gets really busy. I'm going to mix up a batch of Corn Cookies for us to test."
Hannah had just finished decorating her first pans of Corn Cookies when there was a knock at the back door. She slid the pans on shelves in the bakers' rack and hurried to the door.
"Sorry to bother you, Hannah." Barbara Donnelly stood there, shivering in the bitter wind that blew down the alley, "but I just thought of something you should know."
Hannah glanced up at the iron-gray sky. The KCOW weatherman hadn't predicted snow, but he could be wrong… again. "Come in and warm up, Barbara."
"Do you think it's going to snow?" Barbara asked, stepping into the warm kitchen and sniffing appreciatively.
"Maybe. Sit down at the workstation and I'll get you a cup of coffee. You can be my taste tester for the test batch of Corn Cookies I just baked."
"That's a job I can sink my teeth into," Barbara quipped, accepting the cookies that Hannah brought her. "These must be for Halloween. They're cute, Hannah. I like the candy corn on top."
Hannah waited until Barbara took a bite, then asked the important question. "Are they good?"
"Very good. They'll be perfect for the party." Barbara took another bite. "I think he had it with him, Hannah."
"Who had what where?" Hannah asked, missing only the when and the why. According to her college journalism professor, the five w's were the basis of all good reporting.
"Sheriff Grant. I've been thinking about that missing report and I'm almost positive that he took it. There were only two keys to the file cabinet. I had one and Sheriff Grant had the other."
"But wouldn't you have noticed it was missing?" Hannah asked, fetching her steno pad and flipping it open to take notes.
"Not unless I'd had a reason to look for it. I didn't go through the files every day."
"So you have no idea when Sheriff Grant took it?"
"None at all," Barbara shook her head, "but I might know where it is."
Hannah's head snapped back from her notes as if a puppeteer standing above her had pulled a string. "Where do you think it is?"
"In his briefcase. He always put the important papers in there."
"But… wouldn't Mike have found it?"
Barbara shook her head again. "Not unless he knew how to open the secret compartment. And I'm almost positive that Sheriff Grant didn't tell anyone about that."
"What secret compartment?"
"The one in the James Bond briefcase I gave him for Christmas last year. I always bought him James Bond things for gifts. I ordered it from a catalogue."
"And it had a secret compartment." Hannah jotted down a note. "What did it look like, Barbara?"
"The secret compartment?"
"No, the briefcase."
"It was just an ordinary brown leather briefcase. That's what was so great about it. You could never tell it had a secret compartment just by looking at it."
"So Mike could have found it, searched it, and not realized that something was hidden inside?"
"That's certainly possible. The secret compartment is tricky to open and you'd never see the catches if you didn't know they were there. You have to release them in a certain order."