Devil's Food Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #14)(7)

“Sorry, dears,” she said, heading toward the door. “I really have to run now. Carrie’s expecting me to cover her lunch break, and I’m already five minutes late.” By that time, she’d arrived at the door, but she made no move to turn the knob. Instead, she turned back to address Hannah. “I probably should have saved one of those cookie bars for her. You know how much she loves your cookies. Every time I bring her something you baked, it puts her in a good mood. But you know how much I love chocolate. Those cookie bars were so marvelous, I just couldn’t seem to stop eating them.”

Hannah knew a hint when she heard one and this one was blatant. “I’ll box some up for you and Carrie,” she said obediently, getting up to do just that. “Will a half-dozen do?”

“Oh my, yes. Carrie will be thrilled that you thought of her.”

“Right,” Hannah said, flipping one of her bakery boxes open and lining it with a sheet of wax paper. She arranged six Brownies Plus cookie bars in the bottom, covered them with another piece of wax paper, and secured the lid.

“Thank you, dear,” Delores said, accepting the box that Hannah handed to her. She opened the door, stepped out, and closed it again behind her.

“Well…that was unusual!” Andrea commented the moment their mother was gone.

“What was unusual?”

“I didn’t expect to get a new wardrobe this week, especially now that the Gantz sale fell through.”

“That’s too bad,” Hannah commiserated, knowing that Andrea always felt bad when she lost a real estate sale. “Did the buyers change their minds?”

“No. The buyers still want it, but Margaret and Fred pulled it off the market this morning.”

“But why? I thought they could hardly wait to move off the farm and live in a high rise apartment in the Cities.”

“That’s right, but Fred ended up hating apartment living. He told me it was light all the time outside the windows, even in the middle of the night. And he said the traffic noise was awful, even worse than the time the bobcat came down and spooked his horses.”

“How about Margaret? Was she disappointed, too?”

“Not as much as Fred, but she said she was looking forward to living at ground level again. She didn’t like the elevators.”

“I can’t blame her for that. I’m not crazy about elevators, either. I keep wondering what I’m going to do if it gets stuck between floors and I have to go to the …” Hannah stopped speaking as Andrea’s cell phone rang.

“That’s Bill,” Andrea told her, glancing at the display. “I’d better get it. He never calls me unless it’s important.”

Hannah walked over to the counter to give Andrea some privacy while she talked to her husband. This could take a while, and she had baking to do.

“It happened last week and they just got around to notifying you now?” Andrea asked as Hannah plucked the acetate-covered page for Butterscotch Bonanza Bars out of the three-ring binder that they kept for current recipes. While Andrea listened to her husband’s answer, Hannah went to work melting butter in the microwave and measuring brown sugar for one of her very favorite treats.

“Well, I guess Winnetka County must be on the bottom rung of their ladder,” Andrea commented, and Hannah could tell that her sister was miffed. Andrea always reacted badly if she suspected that her husband, Bill, the sheriff of Winnetka County, was being slighted by big city law enforcement. “What does the Minneapolis P.D. expect you to do about it now?”

There was another long pause while Andrea listened, and Hannah took that time to stir in the brown sugar. This was a simple recipe, easy to make, and it was delicious.

“They broke into a Kenwood mansion?” Andrea sounded shocked, and Hannah turned to look at her. Her sister’s face was flushed and she gave a little shake to her head. “But all those people have state-of-the-art security systems.”

Bill’s response caused Andrea to groan. “Well, it’s not going to do them much good if they forget to set it! Where is this place?”

Andrea nodded at Bill’s answer. “I know exactly where that is. It’s a corner lot with a great view of Lake of the Isles shoreline with Raspberry Island off to the right. The house is a Tudor, five-bedroom, four-bath, single family dwelling, with river rock steps leading up the bank to house level, and an eight-foot evergreen hedge all around it. You enter through a gate in the hedge.”

Bill said something and Andrea sighed. “You’re absolutely right. The hedge hides the lower story from the street and that’s perfect for a burglar. There’s a delivery door at the side, and that’s probably how they got in.”

Hannah was surprised that Andrea knew so much about the house. She was well aware that Andrea did her homework and personally checked out every house for sale in the area surrounding Lake Eden, but Minneapolis was quite far afield.

Bill must have asked the same question that Hannah was pondering, because Andrea gave a little laugh. “It’s just a coincidence, honey. We looked at that place when I was in real estate college. I remember how shocked I was at the asking price, especially because there are only a couple of houses in Lake Eden that would go for over five figures. This one had an asking price of two point three, and it’s probably worth more now.”

Hannah whistled. She couldn’t help it. Two point three million dollars was a whole lot of money, probably more than she’d make in a lifetime. The same was true for most people in Lake Eden, with the possible exception of Mayor Bascomb, who had family money to invest, and Del Woodley at DelRay Manufacturing.