Carrot Cake Murder: A Hannah Swensen Mystery

Hannah is baking the birthday cake for Norman's mother's surprise birthday party to be held at the Chameleon Bistro, Eugene Crenshaw, the owner, a longtime friend of the Rhodeses. Concurrently, there is a community effort to save the Steiner, a historical building, from redevelopment, that effort led by Norman's new girlfriend, lawyer Diana Graves. While her efforts have led to construction being halted for the time being, she fears that purported shoddy work done in a previous renovation in 1995 has made the building irreparably damaged. Following the surprise party, Hannah and Norman, walking by the Steiner, hear an explosion inside the building, they, investigating, not only seeing moving light meaning someone having just been inside, but discover human skeletal remains at the bottom of the elevator shaft, now exposed due to the explosion. Mike confirms from the police investigation that the body is that of Jerry McDowell, a known criminal who went missing in 1995 and who was implicated in a jewelry heist at that time. With it being a cold case, Mike's boss, Sheriff Ron Ealing, is concerned solely with the explosion and closing the jewelry case. As such, Hannah gets Mike's blessing for the two of them to investigate Jerry's death on their own in wanting their own closure to the incident. Beyond Hannah and Mike's initial belief that the explosion and finding the body was not coincidental in the building demolition most-likely eventually exposing the corpse, this situation places Hannah and Mike's relationship in a new realm in Hannah being involved not impeding a police investigation on the same case, or so she believes.