“Not really,” Hannah said with a shrug. She’d gotten quite accustomed to being the baker in the family. Delores didn’t “do” desserts, and Andrea avoided the oven with a passion. The only other member of the family who showed signs of inheriting Grandma Ingrid’s love of baking was Hannah’s youngest sister, Michelle. She was constantly calling Hannah for recipes to try out on her college roommates.

Lisa stuck some water on to boil and opened the lemon Jell-O packet. “When I’m done with this, I’ll do the baking for the day. You can concentrate on the recipes you have left to test for tonight.”

Hannah gave her a grateful smile. Lisa was only nineteen, but she was more responsible than others who were twice her age. Hannah had never regretted the day, only a little over a year ago, when she’d offered her diminutive assistant a partnership in The Cookie Jar.

Once the baking was done and Hannah had returned from her run to the sheriff’s station with the brownies for Mike, Lisa and Hannah settled down in the back booth of the coffee shop with fresh mugs of coffee.

“So what did Mike say when you gave him the brownies?” Lisa asked.

“He wasn’t there. I just wrote a quick note, put them on his desk, and came straight back here.”

“I wonder what time we should start hiding.”

Hannah laughed. “Not before noon. I checked with Barbara and she thought he’d be out in the field all morning. If he does come back early and he charges in here, he’ll be so bowled over by your decorations, he’ll forget all about being mad.”

“You like them?”

“They’re even better than last year. I never would have thought to paint Christmas designs on the mirror with Glass Wax and powdered tempera.”

“It’s just an idea I got from a magazine. When you wash it off, it cleans the mirror at the same time.”

“Well, it makes the whole place look fantastic.” Hannah glanced up at the silver and gold streamers Lisa had hung from the ceiling and admired how nicely they fluttered as the ceiling fans whirred softly overhead. She’d even hung mistletoe from the pull chain, a little extra that Hannah hadn’t noticed when she’d first seen the decorations. “It’s a good thing Moishe isn’t here.”

“Why?”

“Because mistletoe berries are poisonous for cats. So are poinsettia leaves.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“Most people don’t. Christmas is very hard on cats, especially if their people don’t know how dangerous it is. Sue told me Dr. Bob had three feline patients last Christmas who almost died from eating tinsel. It gets tangled up in their insides and causes all sorts of problems.”

Lisa just shook her head. “Maybe it’s a good thing Herb wants us to get a puppy.”

“Not necessarily. Poinsettias and mistletoe are poisonous for dogs too, and tinsel’s not good, either. And then there are the glass balls that people use to decorate trees.”

“A dog might bat at them and break them?”