“Hi, Hannah,” she said, hanging her coat on the rack by the back door and slipping out of her boots and into her work shoes. “You cleaned up the kitchen and did all the baking without me?”

Hannah shook her head. “I did the baking, but I didn’t clean the kitchen. That was all done when I came in at a little before five this morning. I thought maybe you couldn’t sleep and you’d done it.”

“No way. And I don’t sleepwalk, either. I wonder who…” Lisa stopped in midthought and began to frown. “Is anything missing?”

“Nothing I can see. Besides, our mystery cleaner left us a gift, and people who come in to steal things don’t usually do that.”

“What gift?”

Hannah pointed. “Candy. The note said they’re called Brown Sugar Drops and they’re on a plate right next to the coffee pot.”

“Did you try one?”

“Of course. They’re wonderful.”

“Okay. I’ll try one, too.”

“You’ll try one now that I’ve acted as official poison taster and I haven’t keeled over yet?”

“That’s right.” Lisa laughed as she walked over to get a piece of candy. She popped it into her mouth, chewed, and headed for the pot to pour herself a cup of coffee. “This is good candy. It reminds me of the maple sugar candy my dad used to buy, except that was a little different. I just wish we had the recipe.”

“We do,” Hannah told her, pulling out a stool so that Lisa could sit at the workstation, and handing her the handwritten recipe their early morning visitor had left.

Lisa glanced down at the recipe. “This is great. I’m really glad she left it for us.”

“She?”

“I think so. The writing looks feminine.”

Hannah began to grin. “Because it’s neat?”

“That could be part of it. But it’s also small. The letters are delicate and all the men I know write a lot larger.”

“I don’t think that proves anything. My dad had small handwriting. He could fit things on drawer labels that I had to abbreviate. I think it depends on how you were taught. People used to take great pride in their handwriting. If you look at documents from the eighteen hundreds, you’ll find some notable men with perfect penmanship. And how about the illuminated manuscripts all those monks wrote in the Middle Ages?”

“You’re right,” Lisa admitted. “I guees I made a sexist remark.”

“You certainly did. And I totally agree with you.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely. I’m convinced that a woman wrote that recipe.”

“Why?”

“Because men don’t usually use turquoise ink.”

Lisa took a huge swig of her coffee. “I’m not awake enough for this yet.” She took another swig and then she looked at Hannah again. “If you agreed with me in the first place, why did you argue?”

“Because I like to argue. It gets my brain cells firing and we need all the brainpower we can get today.”

“You mean because we have to figure out who broke in and cleaned our kitchen for us?”