Carrot Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #10)(5)

“It’s okay,” Hannah said, cutting straight to the chase. “I know you shredded that pillow, and I’m not mad at you. I just wish I knew why you did it.”

Moishe gave as close to a shrug as a cat could give, hunching his shoulders forward and then back. His tail flicked once and his eyes opened wide. Hannah thought he looked thoroughly bewildered. Perhaps he didn’t know why he’d done it either, and she reached down to pick him up.

The moment she lifted him up into her arms, he began to purr. Hannah nuzzled him and gave him a little scratch behind the ears in the spot he loved. He licked her hand to show that he was grateful for her forgiveness. At least she thought it was to indicate that he was grateful. It could also have something to do with the fact that she’d packed up the leftover cookies and probably smelled like butter.

“Just let me finish up here,” Hannah said, placing him on the back of the couch so that she could pick up the last few clumps of pillow innards. She tied the bag shut, placed it by the door so she’d remember to carry it out to the dumpster when she left for the evening, and beckoned to Moishe, who was watching her intently. “I bet you’d like lunch. I know I would.”

After a quick survey of the pantry and cupboards, Hannah turned to her cat again. “How about Salmon Cakes?”

“Yowwww!” Moishe said.

Hannah took that as approval and she selected a small can of red salmon from the pantry. She opened it and dumped it into a strainer, removing the soft backbones and the dark skin for Moishe. Once she’d thoroughly drained the fish and flaked it, she cut the crusts from two slices of sourdough bread and tore it into small pieces. She’d just added the last few ingredients to the bowl when Moishe gave another yowl.

“Can’t wait, huh?” Hannah glanced down at her pet. By some miracle, or perhaps it was a deliberate trick, her twenty-three-pound cat managed to look half-starved. If it was a trick, it was a good one. Hannah just wished that she could emulate it when she tried to wriggle into the bronze silk dress she planned to wear to the dance at Lisa and Herb’s family reunion tonight.

Moishe gave another yowl, and it sounded so pathetic that Hannah surrendered and dumped the salmon bones and skin in his food bowl. While her cat attacked it with the same ferocity he would have shown to a small, furry rodent, she gave her bowl a final stir. She was just shaping the mixture into cakes about the size of a hamburger patty and preparing to fry them in butter when the phone rang.

Hannah turned to look at her pet. He’d lifted his head from the last of the salmon and was staring at the phone balefully. As it rang again, his ears went back and flattened against his head. The hair on his back began to bristle, and a low growl, more doglike than catlike, rumbled from his throat.

“Mother?” Hannah asked him, already knowing the answer. There was only one person in the universe who got such a negative response from her cat. Surprisingly, mostly because she didn’t believe in ESP or any of its cousins, Moishe was right more times than he was wrong. It was probably Delores. Hannah reached for the phone, lifted it out of its cradle, and answered, “Hello, Mother.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Hannah!” Delores gave her standard reply.

“Do what?” Hannah asked, even though she knew exactly what her mother meant.

“Say Hello, Mother before you really know who it is. What if it was someone else?”

“Then I’d be wrong.”

“Yes. And you’d feel very foolish, wouldn’t you?”

“Not really.”

“Well!” There was a long pause while Delores considered it. Finally, she spoke. “You’re right. You wouldn’t. But I really wish you’d just say hello like a normal person.”

“I know you do.” Hannah felt a little niggle of guilt for annoying her mother. “It’s just that I can’t seem to resist.”

Delores sighed so heavily, it sounded like a little explosion in Hannah’s ear. “You do it because you know it bothers me, don’t you?”

“In a way. It’s become almost like a game. I say, Hello, Mother. You say, I wish you wouldn’t do that. And I say, Do what? And then you give me a reason not to answer the phone that way. It’s what we always do before we really start to talk.”

“So it’s our own private greeting? A mother-daughter ritual?”

“That’s exactly right.” Hannah nodded even though she knew her mother couldn’t see it. There were times when Delores was amazingly perceptive.

“Then we’d better continue to do it, dear. Rituals are important. They’re patterns for us to follow to bridge awkward moments.”

“That’s extremely insightful, Mother.”

“Thank you, dear. I’ve been researching the English Regency period and the number of formal traditions they practiced was truly amazing. Did you know that the dress a debutante wore to be presented at court had to follow strict guidelines? And her curtsy had to be just so?”

“I didn’t know.”

“And did you know that the number of removes at a formal dinner was dictated by the family’s social status?”

“No. What are removes?”

“They’re similar to courses, dear.”

Hannah nodded. Unlike some Regency conventions, this one was aptly named. When a meal was served formally, the server removed the plates from the previous course before presenting the next. And sometimes the plate or bowl had a cover that was removed with a flourish. “Are you doing this research for your Regency Romance Club?”