Blueberry Muffin Murder hsm-3

by Joanne Fluke

  "He left you here alone?" Hannah was shocked. Mayor Bascomb was always polite to his constituents, and he carried courtesy and consideration to the extreme in an election year.

  "I suggested it. All he could talk about was expanding the dump and building a new water filtration system. After fifteen minutes, I was bored to tears. And then, when he started discussing environmentally friendly uses for solid waste, I just had to think of a way to get rid of him."

  One of the waitresses approached their table with a tray. Hannah watched as she set down a carafe, a clean cup and saucer, and two chocolate-covered doughnuts. When she'd left, Hannah turned to her sister. "What's this?"

  "I figured you'd need a dose of your own medicine."

  "Thanks," Hannah smiled. Andrea was right. A cup of hot chocolate was just what she needed.

  Andrea took one of the doughnuts and ate it while Hannah drank her hot chocolate. "How about that other doughnut? Don't you want it?"

  "Not really. I'm still full from breakfast. Janie made me French toast this morning."

  "Can I have it? I'm still hungry and I don't know why. I've eaten like a horse today."

  Hannah passed the plate to her sister. If there wasn't a baby in the making, she'd eat the velvet hat from Andrea's wedding, including the fashionable French lace around the brim.

  * * *

  "Here it is, Hannah," Andrea called out, pointing toward a car that was sandwiched in between a van and a midsize sedan with rental plates.

  Hannah was amazed. All Andrea could see was the back end of the cars, and she'd spotted Alan's the moment they walked out to the parking lot. "Are you sure that's his?"

  "Of course I am. I'm a real estate agent, and I know a Mercedes when I see one. Only serious buyers drive them."

  "Because it means they have the money to buy a house?"

  "Not necessarily, but they're expensive and you've got to have good credit to get one. Good credit's more important than money. Did you know that you can put the purchase price of a house on a credit card?"

  Hannah shook her head. "You've got to be kidding! Does anybody really do that?"

  "Yes. When the Ehrenbergs sold their summer cabin, the purchase price was thirty thousand. My buyers put the whole thing on their credit card."

  "Why would they do that?" Hannah was confused. "I thought credit card interest rates were sky high."

  "They are."

  "Isn't the interest rate on a house loan much less?"

  "Absolutely, but they had a really good reason for doing it."

  "This I've got to hear," Hannah said, leading Andrea toward the car she thought was Alan's Mercedes.

  "It's like this. They got a brand new credit card with a sweetheart rate: eight percent for the first six months. That's really good. And since their credit rating was excellent, they got a credit line of forty thousand."

  Hannah whistled "I've never heard of a credit line that high."

  "It's pretty high, but between the two of them they made over a hundred thousand a year, and they always paid their bills on time. They just hadn't saved any money, that's all."

  "Okay, I'm following you so far."

  "The lowest interest rate they could get through a mortgage broker at the time was seven and a half."

  "Hold on a second." Hannah stopped in her tracks. "If the mortgage rate was seven and a half and the credit card rate was eight, they were paying more interest by putting it on their credit card."

  'No, they weren't. Not in the short run. His father's will was in probate and his inheritance was over forty thousand. The only problem was, he didn't have it yet. He told me the lawyer figured he'd get it in four months or less."

  "So why didn't they take out a house loan and pay it off when he got his inheritance?"

  "Because the first couple of years are almost all interest. You only pay a tiny bit off on the principal. Four months of mortgage payments added up to more than the four months of interest on the credit card. They made a financially sound decision."

  "It still sounds crazy to me. What if something had happened to delay his inheritance?"

  "It didn't. He got a check in four months. It was a calculated risk, Hannah. They took it and it paid off."

  Hannah just shook her head. "You remind me of Greg Canfield. He's betting on the thing, too."

  "I thought you told me he tripled his money on that stock he bought."

  "He did, but he could just as easily have lost everything." They'd almost reached the car in question when Hannah had a dire thought. "Do you handle the finances, Andrea?"

  "No. Bill takes care of all that, and he's very cautious. Sometimes it bugs me, but we've got a family to consider. Tracey already has a college fund. Bill started it the day we found out that I was pregnant."

  "That's good," Hannah said, smiling slightly. Andrea didn't realize it, but Bill would be making another trip to the bank to open another account soon.

  "So what did you learn?" Andrea asked, after they'd examined Alan's car and were walking back to the inn.

  "Alan didn't drive anywhere this morning."

  "How could you tell that?" 'There was snow on the windshield, and it stopped snowing about four this morning. I heard it on KCOW when I was driving out here."

  "In that case, I learned something, too."

  "Really? What?"

  "Alan was killed before four this morning."

  "You learned that by looking at his car?" Hannah turned to her sister in surprise.

  "No, it was what you said."

  Hannah was confused. "What did I say?"

  "That it stopped snowing at four this morning. If somebody dragged Alan out there after four, there would have been tracks in the snow."

  "That's true"

  "Well, there weren't any. When we drove up, there was only one set of footprints leading up to the door."

  "Good for you, Andrea. You're incredibly observant and you have a great memory for detail."

  Andrea looked slightly uncomfortable. "Actually, no. The only reason I noticed was that I overheard Sara Thompson talking to Patsy Berringer in the caf' the other day. They were gossiping about the mayor's new girlfriend."

  "I didn't know he had one," Hannah commented, feeling a wave of contempt for their town's illustrious leader. Mayor Bascomb had come within an eyelash of getting into big trouble for his last affair, and she'd hoped the close call had taught him a lesson.

  "They didn't mention who his girlfriend was, and it might not be true. I usually don't put much stock in gossip, but I didn't want to interrupt him if he was. . . uh . . . you know. That's the only reason I noticed, Hannah. It was all because of the gossip I heard. But it helped, didn't it?"

  Hannah's grin grew wider. "You bet! It narrows our time frame down to four hours and saves us a whole lot of trouble. This has got to be the first time in history that gossip actually turned out to be good for something."

  -26- "You concentrate on the Connie Mac people," Hannah told her sister after they'd reentered the inn and removed their coats and boots. "Most of them will be out at the mall, but you might find a few who stayed here. I'll talk to the maids and whoever was manning the front desk last night."

  Andrea pulled her organizer out of her purse and flipped through it. "I've got my list of questions about Connie Mac. DO you want me to ask them anything about Alan?"

  "Yes, but you can't say that he's dead."

  "I know. I'll just tell them I'm looking for him and I can't seem to find him. I'll ask them if they saw him today."

  "They didn't. You know that already."

  "I know, but that'll lead me into my next question. They'll tell me about the last time they saw him and they won't even guess that that's what I was really after in the first place."

  Hannah gazed at her sister in admiration. "You're really good at this, you know?"

  "Do you really think so?"

  "I wouldn't have said it if I didn't."

  "That's true. You never say anything you don't mean. Some
times I wish I had the luxury, but. . ."

  "But you're a real estate agent." Hannah finished the sentence for her and they both laughed.

  "Sometimes it bothers me a little," Andrea admitted, "but I'd lose a sale if I told a prospective buyer that the roof would probably leak within the first three years or the plumbing might need to be replaced."

  "Caveat emptor?'

  "I know what that means, Hannah. It's 'let the buyer beware.' I guess it's true to a certain extent, but I don't actually lie about anything. If they ask me straight out, I tell them. I just don't volunteer the negative things, that's all: And don't think you're so smart just because you know Latin. I picked up a few phrases in real estate school."

  "Like what?" Hannah challenged.

  "Like Illegitami non carborundum."

  Hannah translated that in a flash. She wasn't certain that the syntax and word order were correct, but the meaning was clear and she stared at her sister in shock. "Do you know what that means?"

  "Of course. It's 'Don't let the client grind you down.' Our instructor at school had it stamped on his briefcase and I asked him about it."

  "I see," Hannah said hiding a grin. It was obvious that Andrea's teacher hadn't wanted to tell her the literal meaning of illegitami. "Let's get a move on, Andrea. Bill and Mike could be here any minute, and I don't want them to catch us asking questions."

  The two sisters parted ways at the bottom of the staircase: Andrea went up, and Hannah headed for Sally's office. When she got there, Alex Matthews was just leaving.

  "I'm glad I caught you, Hannah." Alex gave her a big smile. "I cleared it with Sally and if it's all right with you, I'm going to give Janie a ride to your condo and help her pack up her things."

  Hannah was puzzled. "That's fine with me, but why?"

  "Janie's moving back into her room out here. She spoke to Paul on the phone and he told her that he couldn't get along without her. He even gave her a raise to make up for all the trouble that horrible woman caused her."

  "I'm glad to hear it, but I'm going to miss her."

  "That's exactly what she said. You're one of her favorite friends, Hannah. Thank you so much for helping her."

  "Hannah?" Sally hailed her from the open doorway. "Come in and shut the door. I've got some news for you."

  Hannah walked in and took the chair in front of Sally's desk. "I've got news for you, too. We found Alan's car and it's been out there all night. We figure he was killed between midnight and four this morning, give or take half an hour."

  "Well, that's one mystery solved. It explains why he never picked up his prune Danish,' Sally said, and she sighed deeply.

  "Don't think about that," Hannah advised, and then she started to frown. Whenever someone told her not to think about something, it had quite the opposite effect. Once she knew she shouldn't dwell on something, it took on even more importance in her mind. Rather than try to take back her advice, which was impossible anyway, she decided to enlist Sally's help on the one aspect of Alan's death that they could do something about. "I need your help, Sally. What was Alan wearing when you saw him in the bar last night?"

  "A gray suit with a light-blue shirt. He was carrying a black overcoat when he came in and he put it down on an empty barstool. Was that what he was wearing when you found him?"

  Hannah shook her head, deciding not to go into detail. Sally didn't need a mental picture of how Alan had looked when they'd pulled him from the icy water. "He must have gone up to his room to change clothes. You said you had news. What is it?"

  "I checked with the maid who took care of Alan's room, and his bed hadn't been slept in. Do you think he was killed while he was out on his walk?"

  "It's beginning to sound that way. I need a list of your night people, Sally. I have to find out if anyone saw Alan last night."

  "They didn't. I already checked. And I talked to Chris. He's the college kid I hired to man the front desk from ten to six. He said Alan walked out the door at a quarter past midnight, and he wasn't back when Chris left at six."

  "Didn't he think that was odd?"

  "No, he figured that Alan had driven out to the mall. Alan did that sometimes. There were a couple of nights when he left here at ten-thirty or eleven at night and went out to the boutique to work. He told Chris that there were too many distractions during the day and he got his best work done in the middle of the night."

  "That makes sense to me," Hannah said. She'd pulled her share of all-nighters at The Cookie Jar with Lisa, especially in December when the parties were plentiful and they'd booked back-to-back catering events.

  "I have a piece of good news," Sally said.

  "Let's hear it. I could use some good news about now."

  "Dick called me a couple of minutes ago and his mother came through the surgery just fine. They've already got her sitting up in bed."

  "That's great," Hannah said, "and it must be a huge relief for Dick."

  "Oh, it is. He's been worried sick. His mother's not young, you know. When he called, I knew everything was fine before he even told me."

  "By the tone of his voice?" Hannah guessed.

  "He sounded relaxed for the first time in almost a week. And that reminds me: he wanted to know everything that was happening here."

  "You didn't tell him about Alan, did you?"

  "Of course not. I could trust him not to say anything. That's not the problem. But he sounded so upbeat, I didn't want to say anything to change that. I told him about Greg Canfield, though. That was all right, wasn't it?"

  Hannah shrugged. "Why not? Greg didn't tell me to keep it a secret."

  "I mentioned that he made a real killing in the market, and Dick was really glad for him. But I must have gotten the name of the stock wrong. What was it again?"

  "Redlines."

  "That's what I told him, but Dick pulled Redlines up on his laptop while we were talking and he said it peaked about six months ago. Then the stock started dropping and the company went bankrupt at the end of last month."

  Hannah frowned. That certainly didn't match what Greg had told her. "Is Dick sure?"

  "Positive. He checked the history of the stock for me. About a week before Redlines hit rock bottom, there were rumors about a new infusion of foreign cash. Some investors bought in on the strength of the rumors, but it never happened and they all lost their shirts."

  Hannah's frown grew deeper. She was positive that Greg had told her he'd invested in Redlines.

  "You must have gotten the name wrong. Dick said there was no way anybody could have made any money on Redlines unless they bought when it first went public and sold at the peak six months ago."

  Hannah thanked Sally for all she'd done and left her office thoroughly puzzled. Greg had told her he'd more than tripled his money on Redlines, and he'd lied to her. Was that because he was too embarrassed to admit that he'd made a bad investment?

  There was a pay phone at the end of the hall, and instead of turning off at the entrance to the dining room, where she was supposed to meet Andrea, Hannah kept on walking and dug into the bottom of her purse for change. Sally had done all the legwork for her, and she still had forty-five minutes before she hooked up with her sister. There was no time like the present to talk to Greg about Redlines. She'd call him right now and ask him why he hadn't trusted her enough to tell her the truth.

  One of Sally's waitresses headed for Hannah's table with the coffee carafe, but Hannah smiled and waved her away. She'd had four cups already and that was enough, even for her. She picked up a french fry and dipped it into the side of blue cheese dressing she'd ordered. French fries and blue cheese dressing was one of her favorite treats. Sally's french fries were perfect, golden brown and crisp on the outside and made from real, hand-peeled potatoes. Her blue cheese dressing was also made from scratch, with chunks of tasty Roquefort blended with heavy cream. Normally Hannah would have been in hog heaven, but today even the tastiest food had lost its appeal. There were too many questions buzzing in her mind, and h
er brain felt like a mixer that had gone into warp speed.

  As she munched, Hannah tried to concentrate on the most important question. Who had murdered Connie Mac and Alan? She'd eliminated a lot of suspects, but she was no closer to solving the crimes than when she'd started.

  The second question concerned Andrea's pregnancy. Was she putting her sister and unborn baby in jeopardy by agreeing to let Andrea help with the murder investigations? Andrea didn't know that she was pregnant, and she'd gotten a little hot under the collar the second time that Hannah had brought it up. That subject was obviously off limits, and other than driving to Lake Eden Neighborhood Pharmacy, buying a home pregnancy test, and forcing Andrea to, use it, Hannah really couldn't confirm what she strongly suspected. She could always come up with an excuse to exclude Andrea from the sleuthing, but she'd be jeopardizing their friendship. And if it turned out that Andrea wasn't pregnant, her sister would never forgive her.

  In addition to these problems, there were other questions of lesser importance. Some were minor. Did Mayor Bascomb really have a new girlfriend? How had Alex and Janie become such good friends on such short acquaintance? Was Francine going to get Sally and Dick in trouble by dressing up and pretending to be Ezekiel Jordan's ghost?

  A final question, one that was very important, almost overshadowed Hannah's murder investigation. What was going on with Greg Canfield? Something was very wrong, and Hannah would be a lousy friend if she didn't even try to help him.

  Greg hadn't been home when she'd called, but she'd spoken to his grandmother. The information that Mrs. Canfield had given her had caused Hannah to worry about Greg even more. Greg had claimed that he was trading stock on-line, but his computer had been broken for over two weeks. He'd said he'd tripled his money on Redlines, but the company had gone bankrupt. He'd also said that he'd paid off his creditors, but his former suppliers wouldn't be leaving urgent messages with his grandmother on a Sunday afternoon if that were true. As if all that weren't enough to handle, Mrs. Canfield was convinced that Annette had left Greg for good. She'd seen the packet of legal papers that had arrived for him last week from a family law firm in Denver.