“These cookies are based on that cake. I call them Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Cookies.”

“Because of the sauerkraut? Or because of the military?”

“The sauerkraut.”

“That’s funny. I like the name.” Tad turned to Michelle with a contemplative look. “You look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”

That was Andrea’s cue to take her phone out of her pocket. “Sorry,” she said to Tad, after glancing at the display. “It’s my babysitter. I’ve got to take the call.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Michelle said, stepping a bit closer to completely capture Tad’s attention. “I mean, I was thinking I know you from somewhere.”

“How about high school?” Tad asked her. “I’m a couple of years older than you are, but what school did you go to?”

“Jordan High. How about you?”

As the conversation went on between Michelle and Tad, Hannah glanced in Andrea’s direction. She’d managed to walk all the way back to the wall of security monitors and she was pacing back and forth, pretending to hold an imaginary conversation with Grandma McCann. And all the time she was talking, Hannah knew she was using her in-phone camera to take photos of everything inside the security station.

“I don’t think I know anybody from Elmdale,” Michelle said, “but maybe we met at some kind of statewide school contest. Were you in the band? Or the chorus?”

“Not me, but I was always in line at the Dairy Queen in Little Falls when they opened in the spring. How about you?”

Hannah tuned out for a moment and stepped away slightly so that she could examine the rest of the station. It was fairly large, the size of someone’s living room, and other than two small cubicles in the back that were walled off into offices, everything was open to view.

“Maybe I saw you out here when you were on duty,” Michelle suggested.

“I don’t think that’s it. I know I saw you somewhere, but I don’t think it was out here.”

Hannah tuned out again. She moved back slightly so that she could see what appeared to be bookshelves on the far wall. They were filled with tapes, clearly labeled with the day and date, and there was an obvious gap for the night of Ronni’s murder.

Pay dirt! Hannah sidled a bit closer. The span of the tapes covered two weeks, and that was obviously as long as the security team kept them. Perhaps the older tapes were archived. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was the gap for the night of Ronni’s murder, a bare spot on the shelf.

There was only one conclusion to draw. Hannah assumed that the sheriff’s department had taken the tapes. If she carried her theory further, Detective Stella Parks could be viewing them at this very moment.