Lemon Meringue Pie Murder (Hannah Swensen #4)(69)

"I'm really sorry to call so late, but I'm trying to balance my mother's checkbook and I noticed she sent a check to a man by the name of Loren Urlanski." Andrea paused and winked at them. "That's right. Urlanski. He's supposedly an inmate at Stillwater and my mother made a contribution to his appeal fund. Since it's a fairly large check, I wanted to make sure that Mr. Urlanski is really an inmate." Andrea

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paused again and then she smiled. "Of course. I'll be happy to hold while you check."

"You did it!" Michelle whispered, gazing at Andrea in awe.

Andrea shook her head. "Not quite yet. But he said he'd check the computer."

Hannah just shook her head. Andrea could lie like a trooper when the occasion warranted.

"Yes, I'm here," Andrea said, speaking into the phone again. "He's not? Are you sure?" She paused to make a note in her book and then she continued. "How about David Aspen? My mother also contributed to his appeal fund. Could you check that name for me?"

Hannah grabbed Andrea's pen as she waited and scribbled a note to her sister. It said, Transferred? Dead? Paroled? Andrea glanced at it and turned back to the phone. "He's not, either? That's exactly what I was afraid of. How about if they were transferred? Or if they died? Or if they're out on parole? Is there any way your computer can tell that?"

Hannah held her breath as she waited for the answer. If neither bank robber had been an inmate at Stillwater, their theory was a washout.

"I see. Well, thank you so much for checking. I really appreciate it. I'll turn these canceled checks over to the proper authorities in the morning. Obviously somebody is running one of those scams that targets the elderly."

Hannah waited until Andrea hung up and then she started to laugh. "The elderly? If Mother had heard that, you wouldn't have a chance to get elderly."

"You're right. She'd kill me." Andrea grinned from ear to ear. "But she's never going to find out about it... right?"

"Right," Michelle said.

"Absolutely," Hannah agreed. "Thanks for checking on it, Andrea. You were incredible."

"Anytime. What do you want me to do next?"

"I don't know." Hannah sighed deeply. "My theory about Jed is blown. If the two bank robbers were never at Still-

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water, Jed couldn't have met them there. It's a shame. I really wanted him to be the one who was passing that stolen money."

"Me, too," Michelle said. "He's a jerk."

"I know, but I guess not every jerk is a criminal." Hannah picked up her notebook and paged through it "We're spinning our wheels with this bank robbery thing, especially when we can't prove it has anything to do with Jed or with Rhonda's murder. Maybe we'd better tell Bill and Mike what we know and drop it."

When her alarm went off the next morning, Hannah had to squelch the urge to throw it across the room. The only thing that stopped her was that she didn't have the energy to lift her hand. It had been almost one in the morning by the time Bill had come to collect Andrea and close to one-thirty by the time she'd gotten Michelle settled in the guest room. It would be a two-pots-of-coffee morning before she was alert enough to drive to work.

"That new pillow had better come in soon," Hannah grumbled, rubbing her neck as she crawled out of bed. She'd ended up with the foam pillow again because she'd been too tired to dislodge Moishe from hers.

After a quick shower that eased some of the pain in her neck, Hannah dressed in cotton pants and a short-sleeved top. She slipped her feet into a pair of moccasins and padded to the kitchen with Moishe, who was following on the trail of his breakfast. Once she'd filled his food bowl and given him fresh water, Hannah poured her first cup of coffee, grabbed her master file of recipes, and sat down at the table to page through it while she woke up. Today was the day before the Fourth, and she still hadn't decided what type of dessert to bring to the potluck picnic and barbecue.

Long minutes passed while Hannah paged and sipped. When the hands of her apple-shaped kitchen clock approached five o'clock, the tune she'd decided to leave for work, she was no closer to deciding which dessert to bring than she'd

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been before she'd started. She might have actually welcomed the diversion of a morning call from her mother, but it was too early, even for Delores. Hannah finished the first cup of coffee from the second pot and poured the rest in her insulated car coffee caddy. She wrote a quick note for Michelle, telling her to come down to the shop when she woke up, and propped it up against the saltshaker where she'd be sure to see it. Then she refilled Moishe's food bowl for the final time, slung her purse over her shoulder, and stepped out into the muggy early morning air.

The air outside was like a sauna and Hannah imagined that she could hear steam hissing up as the water hit the rocks. It would be another scorcher today. If this heat wave didn't let up before tomorrow, the students in Jordan High's marching band would be dropping like flies in their uniforms at the parade.

Hannah drove through the still morning with her windows down, attempting to catch every breath of wind. Crickets chirped in the fields, somewhere a cow was lowing, and several frogs hopped dangerously close to her wheels as they crossed the road to a pond on the opposite side of the road.