"Um… yes, I do have something important to tell you," Hannah said, wondering why Lonnie was permitted to use the nickname Michelle disliked. "I've got some bad news, Lonnie."
"My folks are okay, aren't they?" Lonnie asked, before Hannah could follow up her initial statement.
"They're fine," Hannah reassured him. "Your whole family's fine. Everybody in Lake Eden is fine, except for Sheriff Grant."
The minute the words were out of Hannah's mouth she wished she'd thought of another way to phrase it. She'd never been a master at tact.
"What's wrong with Sheriff Grant?" Lonnie asked, exactly as Hannah had expected he would.
"He's dead," Hannah said, deciding to spit it out now and deal with the fallout later. "Somebody murdered him last Monday night."
There was a long silence, so long that Hannah wondered if Lonnie had passed out from shock. But then she heard a sigh and Lonnie cleared his throat.
"That's really awful," he said, his voice shaking slightly. "Do Mike and Bill need me to come back home?"
"I don't know, but you can call them if you think you should. Mike's the acting sheriff now. You could say that you were out of touch and you just heard about it."
"Good idea." Lonnie sounded more in control when he spoke again. "Do they have any suspects?"
"I don't know. If they do, they're not telling me."
"I guess they wouldn't. So are you mad?"
"I'm not exactly dancing up and down the streets in delight," Hannah said with a shrug, even though she knew Lonnie couldn't see it. "Sure, I wish they'd include me in their investigation, but that's about as likely as snow in August."
"I didn't mean are you mad at Mike and Bill. I meant, are you mad at me."
"Oh." Hannah took a second to regroup. "You mean, because you're spending your vacation with Michelle?"
Lonnie gulped again. "Um… yeah. That's exactly what I mean."
"No, I'm not mad." Hannah smiled, remembering her own college days. It had been a time of testing her wings and it was fairly obvious that Michelle was doing the same. "I just hope you didn't keep her from her classes. Good grades are very important to Michelle."
"I didn't keep her from anything. I went along to every class and sat in the back. Nobody seemed to mind and I even took notes in case Shelly missed something."
Hannah gave it up. It certainly didn't sound as if Lonnie had hurt Michelle in any way. "I need to talk to you about that stolen car report you wrote right before you left on vacation. Did you know that Sheriff Grant took it home with him?"
"I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me. He was really interested in that car thief. He told me he was going to handle the case personally and that was when he gave me two weeks of comp time for all the extra hours I'd put in working on it, effective anytime I wanted."
"And that was unusual?" Hannah asked.
"I don't know, for sure. But Sheriff Grant isn't…" Lonnie stopped and Hannah heard him swallow. "Sheriff Grant wasn't known for being really generous about time off, and vacations, and things like that. I figured I'd better grab it before he changed his mind, so I said I'd take the comp time right away and I left."
"That was probably smart. Let's get back to the car thief. What can you tell me about him?"
"I put everything I knew into the report. The guy wouldn't give me his name and he didn't have any I.D. on him. He just clammed up and I figured he was bound to lawyer up when I got him to the station, but he didn't. Sheriff Grant told me not to worry about it. He said he'd interrogate the guy himself and find out who he was. I'm assuming that's what he did. The guy was still in the holding tank when I left the station."
Hannah asked several other questions, but when it became clear that Lonnie couldn't give her any more information, she asked to talk to her sister again. After assuring Michelle that she wasn't about to tell anyone the identity of her house-guest, Hannah hung up and flipped through her notebook.
Car parts in Sheriff Grant's home office that belonged to him, not Jamie. A car thief Lonnie had apprehended. Sheriff Grant's interest in pulling Lonnie off the case so that he could interview the suspect himself. The fact that Sheriff Grant took Lonnie's report home in his special briefcase. Hannah was beginning to see how all these things might fit together. Could they be part of the big case that Sheriff Grant had needed to win the election? And did something he discovered while he was working on this big case result in his murder?
Just when Hannah thought her head would burst with churning ideas, the phone rang. She reached out to answer it without thinking, and only then did she realize that she should have locked up the shop ten minutes ago.
"Hannah?" It was Andrea's voice and she sounded excited. "I'm so glad I caught you!"
"Why's that?" Hannah asked, pulling out the cash drawer and starting to count the money for their nightly deposit.
"I wanted to tell you that I'm almost done with the recipes."
"Almost done?" Hannah was so surprised, she almost put a five-dollar bill in her stack of twenties. "But you just started!"
Andrea laughed, obviously pleased at Hannah's shocked reaction. "I've been at it for two days. I told you before that I'm a fast typist."
"I know, but I never expected you to finish this soon. What time do you want me to pick up Tracey tonight?"
"That's the other reason I called. Can you be here at seven-thirty? Lucy Dunwright just left and she took Tracey out for hamburgers with Karen. Then they're going trick 'n treating and they'll be back here at seven-thirty."
Hannah knew Lucy's daughter, Karen. She was a classmate of Tracey's and Hannah liked her. "If it's okay with Lucy, I can take both girls down to the Haunted Basement. Then Lucy can stay and visit with you until we come back."
"That's really nice of you, Hannah." Andrea sounded grateful. "I'd love to have company tonight. But I was calling to ask you for another favor and now I feel funny about it."
"What is it? I owe you more than one favor for typing all those recipes."
"No, you don't. I was happy to have something to do. But this is really important, Hannah."
Hannah frowned as she recognized a slightly panicked tone in Andrea's voice. "What is it?"
"It's Bill. He got so excited about going back to work, he forgot to replace his taillight."
"Uh-oh," Hannah groaned guessing the rest. "And they caught him out at the checkpoint again?"
"That's exactly what happened. He got another fixit ticket this morning and the next time it'll be a real ticket. He can't let that happen, Hannah. It would look awful for someone who's running for sheriff."
"That's true," Hannah said, waiting for her sister to get to the point.
"The problem is, Bill's bound to get that ticket tonight."
"Why tonight?"
"Because the checkout at the sheriff's station is staying open late. And there's no way Bill can drive home and not get one."
"So you want me to drive out there and give him a ride home?"
"Not exactly," Andrea sighed deeply. "Bill says it's really easy to replace a taillight on his car and if he had the part, he could do it in less than ten minutes. The only thing is, he doesn't have the part and if he drives out to get it, he'll get ticketed."
"Catch twenty-two," Hannah mused.
"That's exactly what it is. I just loved that movie, didn't you? I saw it on the old movie channel last year and I thought Alan Arkin was just perfect. But then there was Buck Henry's performance. It was marvelous. And Anthony Perkins, well…"