Raspberry Danish Murder (Hannah Swensen #22)(40)

“I’m ready for you.” Lydia motioned to Hannah as she took her seat on the high swivel chair behind the first teller’s window.

Hannah got up and hurried to Lydia’s window. “I have a deposit for my personal checking account.”

Lydia examined the check Hannah pushed through the grate that separated the tellers from the customers. Then she flipped it over and frowned slightly. “You have to endorse it, Hannah.”

“Of course I do.” Hannah felt like a fool as Lydia pushed the check back through the grate. “Sorry about that,” she apologized as she quickly endorsed the check. “I know my account got really low, and this check should help a lot.”

“Let’s put it in and I’ll give you your new balance,” Lydia said, clicking some keys on her computer keyboard. A moment later, she began to frown.

“What is it, Lydia? I haven’t reconciled my latest bank statement yet, but I’m not overdrawn, am I?”

“I should say not!” Lydia looked shocked at Hannah’s question. “I’ll write the current balance on your receipt of deposit.”

It took a moment for the printer to generate the receipt, and then Lydia flipped it over and wrote on the back of the slip. She pushed it through the grate to Hannah and watched as Hannah read the amount.

“But this says . . .” Hannah took a deep breath before she read off the amount. “Sixty thousand eight hundred and seventy-six dollars!”

“That’s what my screen says. Did you make a big deposit to your personal account that should have gone in your business account?”

“No! I’ve never had that much in my business account. This is wrong, Lydia. Somehow my personal account was credited with someone else’s deposit.”

“Just let me see whose initials are on that large deposit.” Lydia typed something on her keyboard and waited for a response. “Oh, dear!” she said, wincing slightly.

“Who is it?”

Lydia leaned closer to the grate. “It’s Doug Greerson. Let me go see if he’s in his office, Hannah. I’m not sure how this happened, but somehow a terrible mistake has been made.”

Two minutes later, Hannah was seated in front of Doug’s desk, a cup of cappuccino from his espresso machine in her hand. She sipped as Doug typed something on his keyboard and then he looked up at her.

“It’s not a mistake, Hannah. That is your correct balance. Did you think you had more than that in your account?”

“Good heavens, no! I’ve never deposited that much money in my life, and now I have sixty thousand dollars more than I’m supposed to have. I was credited with someone else’s deposit, Doug, and by now their checks are probably bouncing all over the place!”

Doug smiled. “It’s not someone else’s deposit, Hannah. It’s yours. And I think I see the problem. Didn’t Ross tell you that he was transferring money to your account before he left to go out on location?”

Hannah was so shocked that, for a moment, she couldn’t speak. “No,” she answered in a small voice. “I . . . I was at work and we didn’t get a chance to talk before he left.”

Doug pulled out his desk drawer and removed a folder. “Well, he certainly took care to make sure that you wouldn’t need any money while he was gone. I have some signature cards for you to sign.”

“Signature cards?”

“Yes. For his accounts. He listed you on all his accounts and he said he wanted to make them joint accounts. He told me he felt bad that he hadn’t done that before you two were married.”

Hannah watched as Doug pulled some cards from his folder. “There are three accounts, and here are three signature cards. Just sign your full name on the second line of each card and you’ll be able to access any and all of them.” Doug stopped speaking and stared at her across his desk. “You look pale, Hannah. Are you all right?”

“I . . . I . . . yes. It’s just . . . a surprise, that’s all.” Hannah looked down at the signature cards so that Doug couldn’t see how rattled she was. It appeared that Ross had left all of his assets to her, including his car. Was Cyril right and had Ross gotten a premonition that something bad was going to happen to him and he might not be able to come home? Or was this even more proof that he had planned to leave and never come back home to her? But Ross had taken his keys to the condo with him. Didn’t that prove that he’d planned to come back?

As Hannah signed the first card, she tried her best to trust Cyril’s advice about believing that everything would be all right instead of worrying about the worst. But faced with this new information about the man she had married, it was even more difficult not to worry.

“While you’re signing, I’ll print out the balances,” Doug said, turning to his keyboard again. “Ross told me he wanted you to know exactly what was in each of his accounts.”

Hannah nodded. She was still too upset to try to speak. As she signed the second card, Doug’s printer activated and a sheet of paper dropped into the tray.

Doug removed the paper and reached across his desk to hand it to her. “Here you are, Hannah.”

“Thank you, Doug.” Hannah signed the last card, stacked them in a neat pile, and pushed them across the desk to Doug. Then she folded the sheet of paper in half and stuck it in her purse. There was no way she could face any more surprises this morning. She’d look at it later, when she was alone in the kitchen at The Cookie Jar.