Chocolate Cream Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen #24)(44)

There was a long silence while Hannah held her breath and then Ross sighed.

“All right. Just be there when the bank opens and you can get it for me.”

“I’ll be at The Cookie Jar on Monday morning,” Hannah said quickly, “and I could do that, but there’s another little problem.”

“What’s that?”

Ross sounded suspicious again and Hannah knew she needed to be very careful. “Doug can’t release the cash to me unless you sign off on the withdrawal slip.”

“Are you sure?”

“That’s what he said. And he also said that it wouldn’t take more than a minute or two because he’d have the slip all ready for you to sign. And once you sign off, you can call me to tell me to go to the bank. Then you can drive out to our condo, I can pick up the money, and we can meet there.”

“Are you sure you can’t convince Doug to give you the money without my signature?”

“Well . . . I can meet with him again, but I really don’t think he’ll go for it. He told me that it was a banking regulation and Doug’s a real stickler for protocol like that.”

“All right.” Ross didn’t sound happy and he sighed again. “We’ll do it Doug’s way.”

“Oh, good!” Hannah hoped she sounded absolutely delighted. “Just call me Monday morning right after you go to the bank. Then I can get the money and meet you at our condo. You can meet me there, can’t you, Ross?”

“Of course I can, darling. It’ll give us a chance to be together again before I take the money to my wife. All I need is the key to that storage unit and the money. That’s very, very important to me, Cookie. And remember . . . I love you even more than life itself.”

Hannah was trying to decide what she could say to Ross’s declaration of love when the line went dead. Ross had disconnected the call. She shut off her phone and turned to Mike. “Did you get it?” she asked, knowing that he’d planned to trace the call.

“Yes, but it won’t do us any good. He was in transit.”

“You mean on the road, driving?”

“Yes, he’s miles away from Lake Eden now.”

“Do you know which way he was going?”

Mike nodded. “South, toward Minneapolis. He was just passing through Anoka when he hung up.”

Hannah gave a relieved sigh. “At least he’s not coming here!”

“No, he’s not . . . at least not now. We’d better plan out what to do about Monday morning, Hannah. I’m going home with you for the night, just in case he decides to come back here.” Mike turned to Lonnie. “We’ll both go home with Hannah. I wouldn’t put it past Ross to come to her condo to stay there until Monday morning.”

Hannah looked at Mike in surprise. “But why would Ross do that?”

Mike gave a little smile. “Number one, to intimidate you just in case you changed your mind. Number two, your condo complex is isolated.” Mike ticked off the point on his fingers. “Number three, he’s bound to have a different car by now, and none of the residents will recognize it parked in the visitor’s lot. Number four, he could even have changed his appearance, bleached his hair, dressed in clothing he didn’t normally wear, things like that. And number five, he might think that you got the money from Doug already and you’re keeping it until Monday so that we can set a trap for him.”

Hannah’s eyes widened in shock and surprise. “But I thought I’d convinced Ross that I still loved him and I wanted to help him get the money so that I could marry him again!”

“Look, Hannah,” Mike slipped an arm around her shoulders. “For you, that was an Academy Award performance. But don’t forget that Ross knows you pretty well. And he knows that he hurt you deeply and you’re not the type of woman to simply sit there and take it. He may suspect that you’re trying to trap him. And if he does, he may come to the condo to confront you again and scare you into submission. There’s no way we’ll leave you alone tonight and take the chance that Ross might come there to hurt you.”

Hannah began to feel anxious again. She’d been so sure that she’d convinced Ross, but perhaps Mike was right to be cautious. “All right, Mike. You’re probably wise not to take chances. But . . . what are you going to do if Ross does show up?”

“He’s threatened to hurt you, but that’s your word against his. It won’t stand up in a court of law. And he doesn’t have a history of physical abuse toward you, does he?”

“No! Never! That’s why I have trouble believing that he’d actually do anything violent.”

“We already asked his wife about that. She claims Russ never laid a hand on her all the time they were married.”

“Russ?” Hannah asked, catching the name that Mike had used.

“Yes, Russell Burton. That’s the name he used with her.”

Hannah felt slightly faint. “That’s the name he used on the storage locker in Minneapolis! The supervisor thought that the temporary secretary they used when they transferred over to their new computer system simply misread the name!”

Mike nodded. “Ross has probably used a couple of different names in different places.”

Hannah closed her eyes and winced as another possibility occurred to her. “Ross used Russell Burton with her and Ross Barton with me and with Lynne. Do you think that he could have more than one wife?”