Plum Pudding Murder. Joanne Fluke

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      “Norman!” Hannah recognized him immediately, despite the bulky parka and fur hat he wore. She smiled at him and hoped her teeth wouldn’t freeze in the bitterly cold wind. “What are you doing here?”

      “I thought I’d save your mother a trip. This way she can go straight home and she won’t have to swing by your place.”

      “That’s sweet of you Norman, but I don’t mind,” Delores jumped into the conversation and Hannah knew she was thinking about her lost opportunity to find out more about Bradford Ramsey.

      “Oh, but I have an ulterior motive,” Norman said, unplugging Delores’s car, wrapping the cord around her bumper, and opening the driver’s door for her. “If I drive Hannah home, we’ll get a little more time to talk.”

      Delores hesitated for a moment and then she slid in under the wheel. In the war between her curiosity about her daughter’s old romance, and her concern about her best friend, Carrie had won.

      “I’ll see you tomorrow, dear,” Delores said as she started her car and flicked on the lights. “I’ll stop by for coffee before I open the shop.”

      A minute later, Hannah was in Norman’s warm and toasty car. She unzipped her parka, took off her hat and her gloves, and reveled in the fact that she no longer had to fear frostbite.

      “Did you eat?” Norman asked, pulling out onto the highway.

      “Not yet. I had time to feed Moishe and that was about it.”

      “So Moishe comes first?” Norman’s voice was warm and Hannah could see his smile in the lights of the dashboard. Norman loved her cat and the feeling was mutual.

      “Moishe comes first,” she confirmed it. “How about you? Did you eat?”

      “No. I thought we’d stop for a bite if you wanted to go out.”

      Hannah thought about their favorite places, Bertanelli’s Pizza, the Lake Eden Inn, and The Corner Tavern. It would be nice to go out to dinner, but what she really wanted to do was curl up on the couch with Norman and Moishe, and watch mindless television.

      “Bertanelli’s? The Corner Tavern? Sally’s at the Inn?” Norman named the places Hannah had already thought of and dismissed.

      “I’d rather go home and make something there,” Hannah said, “if that’s all right with you, that is.”

      “That’s fine with me, but I don’t want you to work. You’ve had a full day.”

      “It’s okay. I’ve got some meatloaf I can heat up and I’ll pop in a batch of Easy Cheesy Biscuits.”

      “Easy Cheesy Biscuits? I don’t think I’ve tasted those.”

      “I know you haven’t. I just got the recipe last weekend from an old classmate of mine at Jordan High. Prudence left Lake Eden right after school and moved to Niagara Falls.”

      “Do you have everything you need to make them? Or shall we run by The Quick Stop?”

      “I have everything I need. I planned on baking them tonight anyway. Lisa loves cheese so I thought I’d take her a couple for breakfast.”

      The roads were clear and Norman zipped along in his well-maintained car. Hannah felt as if she were living in the lap of luxury as she listened to mellow jazz on the stereo and watched the night stream past her window. All too soon, they turned in at Hannah’s condo complex and Hannah handed him her gate card to raise the wooden lever that let the residents in and out. This time the wooden barrier was intact and Hannah wondered if they’d solved the gate card problem at last. Even though residents were warned of the consequences, they still stuck the magnetic gate cards in their wallets next to other cards with information strips. When the gate cards ceased to work, some irate condo owners crashed right through the wooden arm. Perhaps she was exaggerating slightly, but Hannah believed that the one-by-four designed to keep non-residents out was broken more often than it was not.

      “You can park in my extra spot,” Hannah said, and Norman took the ramp to the underground garage. Her condo came with two parking spots, and Norman pulled in next to her cookie truck.

      The first thing Hannah noticed when she got out of the car was the cold. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d just left a warm car, but it seemed even colder than it had at the college. “Better plug in your car,” she said.

      “Good idea.”

      Hannah watched as Norman unwound the power cord that was part of winterizing a car in Minnesota, right along with antifreeze, and the survival pack careful drivers kept in the trunk. The box containing blankets, extra parkas, gloves, an empty coffee can, a candle, and matches wasn’t quite as necessary as it had been in the years before cell phones, but it was still possible to get stuck in a snowstorm with a non-working cell phone, and freeze to death in subzero temperatures.

      When Norman was through, they walked across the floor of the garage and climbed the steps to ground level. When they left the shelter of the stairwell, a cold blast of wind hit Hannah’s face and her eyes began to water. Norman grabbed her arm and rushed her up the covered staircase to her second-floor condo, taking the keys from her hand and opening the door.

      A projectile with orange and white fur hurtled at them the moment the door opened, and Norman caught Moishe in his arms. Hannah’s cat began to purr as Norman carried him inside and set him on his favorite perch on the back of the couch.

      “Are you glad to see us, Big Guy?” Norman asked, and Moishe answered him with an even louder purr. “What do you say I throw your catnip mouse for you?”

      This time Moishe gave a happy yowl and hopped off the couch to stare up at Norman while he located the mouse. With her cat occupied, Hannah shrugged out of her parka and went off to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner.

      The Easy Cheesy Biscuits were first. Hannah preheated the oven, took out one of her medium-sized mixing bowls, and gathered the ingredients. She’d just completed the first step in her food processor, and she was about to dump the mixture into her bowl, when Norman came into the kitchen.

      “Do you want some help?” he asked.

      “Sure,” Hannah answered, never one to turn down a genuine offer of assistance. “You can grate the cheese. I need a half cup of cheddar, a half cup of Asiago, and a half cup of Parmesan. You can use the food processor with the grating blade.”

      Norman eyed the food processor which still had a bit of flour clinging to the sides of the bowl. “I’d better wash it out.”

      “There’s no need. I just used it to mix up the dry ingredients and butter for the biscuits. Since the cheese is going in the biscuit dough, it won’t make a speck of difference.”

      Norman made short work of grating the cheeses and Hannah added the grated cheddar and Asiago to her bowl. She saved the grated parmesan for the biscuit tops and was just about to break the eggs into a glass to beat them when Norman spoke up.

      “I can do that for you,” he said.

      “Okay. Just crack two into my glass and beat them up with a fork. I’ll measure out the sour cream and the milk.”

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