Free Key Lime Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke

night during Casablanca. Since this wasn’t a young Ingrid Bergman, Hannah figured she was at least one, probably two features past her bedtime.
    The starlet reached out to turn off the alarm clock and climbed out of bed with the sheet wrapped around her like a toga. As she walked across the bedroom set and disappeared through a door, Hannah wondered if anyone had ever pulled the sheet off the bed for modesty’s sake while they were alone in their bedroom. It seemed silly. You’d just have to remake the bed from scratch.
    After one glance at the time, which was subtly displayed at the lower right-hand corner of the screen, Hannah clicked off the television with the remote control. It was almost four-thirty in the morning. Since she always set her alarm clock, the one in her bedroom, to go off at a quarter to five, it seemed silly to go to bed for fifteen minutes and count the seconds she had left before it was really time to get up.
    A compelling scent wafted in from the kitchen to help Hannah make up her mind. The timer on her coffee pot had activated, and her morning brew was ready.
    “Coffee,” she pronounced in a voice that was midway between a groan and a prayer. She needed caffeine, and she needed it fast, before the specter of another hot, muggy day would drive her to turn on the window air conditioner the former owners had installed in the bedroom and sleep until the unseasonable June heat wave headed east, or west, or anywhere far away from Lake Eden, Minnesota.
    Hannah stood up and shivered slightly. She’d fallen asleep in her favorite summer sleep outfit, an extra-long, extra-large tank top in such an eye-popping shade of magenta that she hoped Moishe’s vet, Dr. Hagaman, was right and cats truly were colorblind. Not only was her sleepwear the wrong color choice for anyone with red hair, it was plastered to her skin in a manner her mother might call decidedly unladylike.
    “Okay, I’m up,” Hannah declared to the orange and white tomcat who still wore the scars of his former life on the streets. She tugged her tank top back into place, got to her feet with what she thought was a minimum of groaning, and headed off to the kitchen. “Just let me pour a mug of Swedish Plasma and then I’ll get your breakfast.”
    But Moishe didn’t follow her into the kitchen as he usually did. He didn’t even move from the back of the couch where he’d perched. And then everything came back in a rush of memory, and Hannah recalled why she’d been sleeping on the couch. She was worried about Moishe. He wasn’t eating. And she’d wanted to wake up and take note if she heard him crunching his food in the middle of the night.
    Hannah had just poured her first, life-giving mug of coffee when she heard a voice that seemed to be coming from inside her condo.
    “Is Moishe okay?” the voice asked.
    Even in her sleep-deprived state, Hannah recognized that voice. It was Michelle, and she was staying in the guest room.
    “Don’t know yet. Want coffee?” she managed to say, anything other than Pidgin English eluding her.
    “I’ll get it. Just sit there and drink yours. Do you know your eyes aren’t open all the way?”
    “No.”
    “What time did Norman leave?”
    “No numbers.” Hannah took a giant swig of coffee and felt it burn all the way down. It was worth it if it lifted the curtain of fog from her mind. “Never good at math in the morning.”
    “I’m sorry I asked. Take another sip of your coffee. I won’t bother you again until you finish that mug.”
    Hannah finished her coffee in several large, near-scalding swallows and held out her mug for more. By the time Michelle had set it on the table in front of her, the mists of sleep were starting to depart and she had glimpses of clarity. “Okay,” she said, giving her youngest sister a little smile, mostly because Michelle’s sleep outfit, a green cotton nightgown with miniature cows grazing all over it, was even more ridiculous than hers. “What did you