Devil's Food Cake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #14)(87)

She stepped around the rope and headed for the ladder-type staircase on the wall. At least it didn’t have round rungs. She didn’t like to climb ladders with round rungs. In place of rungs, this built-in ladder had regular steps like a stepladder. They were much narrower and shallower than ordinary steps, but she could handle that.

The steps went straight up at a ninety-degree angle from the floor, but there were handrails to grip. When Hannah came to the point where the top of her head was about to hit the trap door, she held on with her left hand and pushed the trapdoor open with her right. The trapdoor was big enough to accommodate a large man, but it opened smoothly on its hinges and fell back against a wooden brace that held it open and in place.

It was a bit eerie stepping into the hushed and quiet belfry. There were no sounds at all except the occasional honk of a horn in the distance, the faraway bark of a dog, or the tinny growl of a snow blower clearing a sidewalk. There was no rustling, and Hannah was relieved. If there were bats, they were sound asleep.

The space, itself, was a geometric figure that Hannah couldn’t begin to identify. It began as a square with five-foot walls, but the walls began to narrow and tilt in beyond that point to form the ascending steeple. The four large open windows, covered only with fine mesh, displayed the bell to passersby on the streets below. From her bird’s eye vantage point in the belfry, Hannah’s view of Lake Eden was spectacular. If she looked out each of the four windows in turn, the vista was only a few degrees short of a full circle.

“Incredible!” Hannah said, spotting her mother’s car traveling down Main Street and heading out of town toward the highway. Michelle must be going out to the mall to return the costume their mother had rented.

The interior of the space was cluttered and crisscrossed with wooden rafters, metal braces, and heavy blocks of wood to support the structure. Just as Grandma Knudson had told her, the bell sat directly in the center, suspended between two heavy wooden wheels. There was a groove for the rope, and Hannah surmised that was how the bell was operated. A pull on the rope from below would turn the wheel, and gravity would cause the clapper to hit the side of the bell.

A cabinet hung below one of the windows. The door was open and tools were scattered across the floor as if they’d been carelessly tossed there. No workman would leave his tools in such a state. Someone had looked for something in the cabinet and tossed the tools aside.

The walk space around the church bell and its housing was minimal. In order to get to the walls, she’d have to bob, and duck, and weave her way around structural supports. And it seemed that someone else had done exactly that not long ago, because there were footprints in the thick dust on the floor!

Hannah followed the footprints, careful not to bump into rafters, or braces, or blocks on the way. As she neared the wall, she was forced to stoop lower and lower until she was in a crouching position. When she reached the wall, she saw that the boards had been pried off, exposing the space between the inner and outer walls. Someone had searched here. And she was convinced that someone was Paul.

“What are you doing up here?”

Hannah, startled by the loud voice, swiveled her head to see who was there. “Paul!” she gasped.

The word hung between them like a scimitar swinging lower and lower over her head. Hannah desperately wished there were some way to call the name back, but of course there wasn’t. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice?

“That’s right. I’m Paul. You’re smarter than you look, Hannah. You figured it out!” He stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Too bad someone didn’t teach you to keep your nose out of other people’s business.”

Hannah gave an involuntary shudder. His voice had changed from that of a warm and friendly minister into one that was as cold as ice. The transformation shocked her so much, she stood there and stared at him like a possum caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. And then, as she watched, he pulled out a gun and aimed it directly at her head.





Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was a twenty-two semiautomatic. Hannah knew that because Lisa and Herb had one just like it, and Hannah had shot it at target practice. And she was almost positive that this twenty-two semiautomatic was the missing murder weapon.

“What are you looking for up here?” Paul confronted her.

“The same thing you’re looking for. Grandma Knudson saw you standing on a pile of books, searching for something on the top of the bookcase in the church office. I figured you were trying to find something that the real Reverend Matthew hid.”

“Give the lady an A,” Paul said with a sarcastic laugh. “Let me get this straight. You were searching for something, trying to find it before I did, and hoping that you’d recognize it when you found it?”

“Exactly right.” Hannah inched her way forward slightly, causing Paul to back away.

“Come one step closer and you’re dead!” he threatened.

“Sorry,” Hannah apologized quickly and switched gears. “You must have hated Matthew a lot.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You killed him.” Hannah managed to inch just a slight bit closer.

“I know I did, but I didn’t hate him. It was…self defense. That’s exactly what it was. I was saving my own skin. I had to shoot Matthew to keep him from calling the police. He said he wanted me to do the right thing, to turn in the jewels so they could be returned to their rightful owner.”