Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke Read Free Book Online Page A

cookies to keep him from becoming too impatient.
    “About time,” Bill commented. “Lisa said you smelled worse than the panhandler that hangs around the Red Owl. What happened?”
    “I was just helping you. Edna Ferguson told me that Max hired a woman assistant for Ron. I was collecting the coffee cups they used this morning.”
    Bill looked confused. “But Ron didn’t have an assistant. I asked Betty about that. If there was a woman with Ron this morning, she wasn’t hired by the dairy. Didn’t Edna recognize her?”
    “Edna didn’t see her. Ron and this woman left before she came in to work.”
    “Wait a minute.” Bill held up his hands. “If Edna didn’t see this woman, how did she know about her?”
    “From the cups. Edna always leaves a jar of instant coffee out for Ron and there were two cups on the counter this morning. One of them had a smear of lipstick on the rim and that’s how she knew that Ron was with a woman. I collected them and they’re right over there by the dishwasher in that bread wrapper.”
    “Why did Edna save them?” Bill looked puzzled as he got up to retrieve the cups.
    “She didn’t. I dug them out of the cafeteria Dumpster. They were all the way in the bottom and I had to climb in to get them.”
    “That’s why you smelled like a panhandler?”
    “You got it.” Hannah gasped as Bill started to reach inside the bread wrapper. “Don’t touch them, Bill! I went to a lot of trouble to preserve any fingerprints.”
    Bill’s eyebrows shot up and he froze for a second. He took one look at her earnest face and then he began to laugh. “The lab can’t lift prints from this kind of cup. The surface is too rough.”
    “I knew I never should have climbed in that Dumpster!” Hannah groaned. “How about the lipstick? Can you do something with that?”
    “It’s possible, unless it’s such a popular color that half the women in Lake Eden wear it.”
    “It’s not.” Hannah was very sure of herself. “Most women look awful in bright pink.”
    “How would you know? I’ve never seen you wear lipstick.”
    “That’s true, but Andrea bought a color like that once and it looked horrible on her. She’s got every other shade there is, so I figure that this one can’t be very popular.”
    “You’ve got a point.” Bill started to smile. “Good work, Hannah.”
    Hannah was pleased at the compliment, but then she started thinking about the logistics of finding the Lake Eden woman who owned that color of lipstick. “What are you going to do, Bill? Inspect every powder room in town?”
    “I hope it won’t come to that. I’ll start with the cosmetic counters and see if they carry this color. Whoever she is, she had to buy it somewhere. That’s called legwork, Hannah, and I’ll need your help. You may not know much about lipstick, but you’ve got to know more than I do.”
    Hannah sighed. Watching paint dry held more interest for her than cosmetic counters, and legwork didn’t sound like very much fun.
    “You are going to help me, aren’t you?”
    “Of course I am. I’m sorry I’m not more enthusiastic, but rooting around in all that garbage got me down.”
    “Next time just call me and I’ll do it. I’ve got coveralls in the cruiser and I’m used to stuff like that.”
    “I did call you. I even left a message, but you didn’t get back to me in time. And since Edna told me that the trash company was coming to empty the Dumpster at five, I figured that I’d better do it.”
    Bill reached out to pat her on the back. “You’d make a good detective, Hannah. Your dip in the Dumpster gave us the only real clue we’ve got.”
     
    Rhonda Scharf, her plump middle-aged body encased in a baby-blue angora sweater that might have fit her thirty pounds ago, leaned forward over the glass-topped cosmetic counter at Lake Eden Neighborhood Pharmacy to stare at the smudge of pink lipstick on the white Styrofoam cup. Rhonda was wearing a scowl that turned down the corners of