Devil's Food Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #14)(62)

“That may be the one that I have. I got it from my Grandma Ingrid, and she used to read the Farm Journal. I’ve got it down at The Cookie Jar. I’ll print it out and bring it to you.”

“Just e-mail it to me,” Grandma Knudson said. “I’ll add it to my recipe folder and that’ll be fine.”

“You have e-mail?” Michelle asked, looking very surprised.

“Of course I have e-mail. It’s not just for young people, you know. Bob set it up for me, and it’s a great way to keep in touch with friends. And I just love to surf the Internet. I learn the most incredible things. There are even a couple of Web sites for Bible passages. You can choose the Bible you want to use and type in a phrase to search for. It’ll tell you how many times it was used and give you book, chapter and verse within seconds. It’s just amazing.”

“Will you send me a link?” Michelle asked, writing her e-mail address on a piece of paper and handing it to Grandma Knudson. “One of my roommates is doing a paper for a comparative religion class, and it sounds like a great resource.”

“I’ll do it tonight,” Grandma Knudson promised, and then she turned to Hannah again. “You need my e-mail address to send me those recipes. Mine is Grandma K, that’s all one word, at the church Web site.”

Hannah glanced at Norman, who was looking at her as if to say I told you so. She hadn’t believed him when he’d told her that almost everyone in Lake Eden had become computer literate, but now it seemed he was right. If Grandma Knudson, who was almost ninety, had mastered the intricacies of the Internet, perhaps it was time for her to become a little more skilled at it.

“Do you want the substitute version, too?” Hannah asked her. “That’s the one for people who have milk allergies.”

“I’d love to have that! We have several church members who have milk allergies.”

“I’ll send that one to you too,” Hannah promised. “All you have to do is ask me for your favorite recipes, Grandma Knudson. I’ll be happy to e-mail them to you.”

“Hello, everyone!” a voice interrupted their quiet conversation, as Clara and Marguerite Hollenbeck came in the door.

“Oh, dear!” Marguerite said, glancing at Jacob’s cage and noticing that it was draped with a cloth. “Inside voices, Clara. Jacob’s asleep.”

“You’re speaking louder than I am, Marguerite.”

“Sorry.” Marguerite turned to Grandma Knudson. “We ran into what we think is a little problem at the bank.”

“What’s the problem?” Grandma Knudson asked her.

“We did what we always do,” Clara explained. “We picked up the collection in the bank bag and took it down to Doug at Lake Eden First Mercantile.”

“Doug counted it for us,” Marguerite took up the story. “He always counts it, even though our tally slip with the total is in the bag and we haven’t been off one single cent in twenty-two years.”

“Doug’s a banker,” Clara said. “He has to make sure everything’s accurate.” And then she turned to them again. “But the tally we did on Sunday, after the service, was completely different from the total Doug gave us when we went to the bank!”

“Was Doug’s tally short? Or long?” Hannah asked, quickly going to the heart of the matter.

Marguerite sighed. “Short,” she said. “A lot short.”

“Three hundred and twenty-five dollars short to be exact,” Clara gave them the figure. “Somebody took out all the big bills and left the change and small bills.”

“And nobody noticed until now?” Hannah asked, wondering how that could have happened.

“No,” Clara answered her. “Nobody even thought to check the collection money. We always make church deposits on Tuesday. We go into the church office, count it three times after Sunday service when it comes in, and make out the deposit slip. It was a big collection on Sunday. I remember that instead of fives and ones, there were quite a few twenty dollar bills. That’s not usually the case.”

“And don’t forget the gold coins,” Marguerite reminded her. “There were five gold coins in the collection, but they were gone along with all the large bills.”

“There’s another motive for the murder,” Norman commented.

“Remember what Jacob said?” Hannah asked them. “He was mimicking the fake Reverend Matthew and he said, I know why you’re here and you’re not going to find it! He could have been talking about the collection money.”

“That makes sense,” Marguerite said. “We always keep it in the file cabinet, filed under C for collection, but somebody moved it. That could have been the fake Reverend Matthew.”

“Or maybe the fake Reverend Matthew’s killer moved it after he took out what he wanted,” Michelle postulated. “And if the fake Reverend Matthew moved it to hide it from his killer, he must have known his killer was coming and who he was.”

Hannah nodded. She was proud of Michelle for using her head. “We’re jumping to several conclusions here, but it could make sense.” She turned to Clara. “How many people knew that you filed the collection money under C?”

“Unfortunately…a lot of people. They were church members. We had no reason not to trust them.”