"That makes sense," Hannah said, turning to smile at him. She was about to throw him a mind-bender. "But what if some of the pieces are from another puzzle? Won't they only confuse us?"
Norman thought about that while he waited for the stoplight at the corner of Elm and First to turn green. "Yeah. I guess they might confuse us. How do we get around that?"
"I'm not sure," Hannah replied, feeling helpless in the face of the challenge. "I think the first thing we have to do is gather more facts. That report from Lonnie was pretty sketchy and it was obvious that he wrote it in a hurry. He probably left out things he thought didn't matter. I have to talk to him and find out everything that happened when he pulled over that stolen car."
"That's a good place to start. What do you want me to do while you're doing that?"
"Develop the film. That's a good place to start, too. Maybe we'll spot something important in the pictures that we missed when we were at Nettie's house in person. And do you think you'll have time to do some research on the Internet?"
"Sure." Norman pulled up in back of The Cookie Jar and parked between Lisa's old car and Hannah's cookie truck. "I wasn't supposed to be back from Seattle yet and Doc Bennett's still filling in for me at the clinic. What sort of research do you need?"
"It would really help if you could print out the articles that ran in the Lake Eden Journal when Jamie was killed. And do the same thing for the papers in Ann Arbor."
"Why Ann Arbor?"
"Jamie was killed when he was away at the University of Michigan."
"Okay. I'll do a search under his name. Would that be Jamie, or James?"
"Try both. He went by Jamie, but his real name was James just like Sheriff Grant." Hannah remembered what Norman had said and brightened up a bit. "You can do a search just by typing in someone's name?"
"As long as you know where to look."
"And you do?"
"I'm pretty good at it. I can access quite a few public records and that gives me a surprisingly large amount of information."
Hannah thought about it for a long moment. What she wanted to ask Norman to do was an invasion of her mother's privacy, and it would make her feel like a rat. But feeling like a rat might be better than feeling like a dope if her gut-level feelings were right and she failed to take steps to protect Delores from a Romeo swindler.
"What do you need, Hannah?" Norman prompted, when she'd been silent for several moments.
"Winthrop Harrington the Second."
"What?"
"That's his name. I need you to check him out for me."
"Okay. Who is he?"
"That's what I want to know," Hannah said, glancing over at Norman. She knew he could be trusted. If she told him this was a private matter, he'd die before he'd mention it. "I hope I'm wrong, Norman, but he could be a con artist. And the way things are going, he might just become my new stepfather."
Halloween morning came in with a yowl, at least ten minutes before Hannah's alarm clock was due to go off. Moishe was hungry and he wasn't the type to suffer his hunger pangs in silence. Hannah pulled on her slippers and shuffled to the kitchen while she was still half-awake. It was best not to be fully alert when one had to boil liver before daybreak.
Hannah stumbled to the stove and turned the burner on high. She'd set a pot of water at the ready before bed last night. Then she poured a cup of coffee, sipped it until the water boiled, and dropped in the pieces of liver she'd cut up the previous night. When they turned an unappetizing gray color, she scooped them out and put them in a frying pan with oil and the rest of the ingredients.
In less than five minutes, Moishe's omelet was ready and Hannah scraped it into his food bowl. She checked to make sure the stovetop exhaust fan was on its highest setting, poured herself a second cup of coffee, and sat down at her kitchen table, deliberately turning her back on the culinary creation she'd made for her feline. The scent of liver first thing in the morning made her stomach lurch and roil. If the twinges of nausea she felt were anything like the morning sickness Andrea had complained about, she should have been more sympathetic.
It didn't take Moishe long to eat his breakfast, about one-fourth the time it had taken her to prepare it. There was something wrong with this equation. Hannah rinsed out the pan she'd used to boil the liver, the frying pan that had held the omelet, and Moishe's bowl, and stuck them all in the dishwasher. It was already partially loaded with dishes from the previous night. There was the pot she'd used to cook the rice, the bowl and top of the food processor she'd used to whip up the egg and pulverize the shell, and the knife she'd wielded to cut up the liver. Once she'd gathered up the implements she'd used to cook Moishe's breakfast and the containers she'd used to store the egg and the rice in the refrigerator, the dishwasher was almost full. Hannah poured in the soap, set it on wash, and stood there shaking her head. This was crazy. She didn't eat breakfast unless she went out and the only dish she used in the morning was her coffee mug. Yet here she was at five in the morning, washing a full load of dishes she'd dirtied by cooking breakfast for her cat!
The phone rang and Hannah poured another cup of coffee before she walked over to answer it. There was only one person who called her this early. It had to be Delores calling in to give her report. When Hannah hadn't been able to find out where Lonnie was vacationing by asking his family or his friends, she'd tapped her best resource and recruited Delores and Carrie who had promised to research Lonnie's whereabouts on the Lake Eden gossip hotline.
"Hello Mother," Hannah answered. Answering the phone that way had become almost a tradition. Hannah knew her mother would miss these morning squabbles if she simply said hello.
"I wish you wouldn't answer the phone that way, Hannah. What if it wasn't me?"
"Then I'd say, Sorry, I thought you were my mother. And they'd say, That's all right. And then they'd try to sell me some stock over the phone."
Delores laughed. "Still… you shouldn't presume. Think how embarrassed you'd be if it was someone important and you called them Mother."
"You're not someone important?"
"Of course I am. It's just that… never mind," Delores said, giving it up with a sigh. "How are you this morning, dear?"
"Not so hot. Do you know the phrase, Wake up and smell the roses?"
"Yes, dear. I've heard it."
"Well, this morning it's, Wake up and smell the liver."
"The liver?"
"That's right. Doctor Bob put Moishe on a new diet. I just cooked breakfast for him and it smells awful."
"Well, open the windows, dear. And use some of that air freshener I gave you. It's scented like an English garden."
"Right," Hannah said, wrinkling up her nose. She'd used the air freshener, and if the manufacturer's claim was accurate, she'd be sure to give English gardens a wide berth.
"I always used it when your father made corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day," Delores said. "He insisted on making it every year and none of us liked it."
Hannah laughed. It was true. More of the corned beef and cabbage had gone down the garbage disposal than into their mouths. But even though Hannah didn't care for the meal, the custom pleased her. It was exactly as her dad used to say; everyone was Irish on St. Patrick's Day.
"Did you find out anything about Lonnie, Mother?"