Raspberry Danish Murder (Hannah Swensen #22)(44)

“Oh, yes, I will,” Hannah said with a laugh. “All I have to do is bake some bar cookies and we can talk while I mix them up.”

“Okay,” Norman agreed, sitting back down again. “What are you making, Hannah?”

“Sweet and Salty Strawberry Bar Cookies. I love the combination of sweet and salty.”

“So do I. I can remember my mother sprinkling sea salt on chocolate sundaes. She said it brought out the richness of the chocolate.”

“And she was right.” Hannah made a quick trip to the pantry and came out carrying the ingredients she needed. She softened some butter, mixed it in with the white sugar she’d already placed in the bowl of the industrial stand mixer, and gave a little sigh. “What do you think it means, Norman?”

“I can only guess, but it’s clear Ross was worried he’d be gone for a while and he wanted to leave you with enough money.”

Hannah smiled as she realized that Norman had correctly interpreted her ambiguous question. “You knew exactly what I was asking, didn’t you,” she said, and it was a statement rather than a question.

“Yes. I could see that it bothered you the entire time Andrea was here. You were listening to her, but you were thinking about what Doug Greerson told you.”

“You’re right,” Hannah admitted, mixing the ingredients for the crust. Once the crust had been thoroughly mixed, she removed enough of the sweet dough for the crumble topping, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and stuck it in the walk-in cooler. Then she filled the bottoms of the pans she’d prepared with the remaining sweet dough, smoothed out the bottom crusts with the blade of a metal spatula, and slipped the pans onto the shelves in her industrial oven. She closed the oven door, set the timer, and came back to the work station to join Norman.

“Do you think he’s coming back?” she asked.

Norman made a helpless gesture. “I really don’t know, Hannah. Some things seem to point to it, and others don’t.”

“It’s so frustrating! Sometimes I think . . .” The rest of her sentence was interrupted by an authoritative knock on the back kitchen door.

“Mike’s here,” Norman said, recognizing the knock.

“I know. I’ll let him in.”

“You have to tell him about the bank, Hannah.”

Hannah gave a little sigh. “I know,” she said as she walked toward the door to open it for Mike.

*

“He did what?” Mike stared at Hannah in shock.

“He signed everything over to me the day he left town. It’s a lot of money, Mike.” Hannah drew the printout Doug had given her from her purse and handed it to Mike. “See?”

Mike examined the printout. “Yes. This puts a different light on things, Hannah. We may have been looking for Ross in all the wrong places.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need to find out if he withdrew any large sums of money. You say that you cosigned on all these accounts?”

“That’s right. Doug told me that Ross wanted me to have full access to everything.”

“Good! That’ll save us a lot of time. I need you to go to the bank with me, Hannah.”

“But I can’t go now. I have bar cookies in the oven.”

“How soon will they be baked?”

Hannah glanced at the clock. “I should be through in a little less than an hour.”

“Okay. That’ll do.” Mike picked up his coffee and stood up. “I’m going back out to the cruiser. I have to check in with my detectives in the field, and then I’ll give Doug a call. I need to tell him that we’re coming in. I have to find out if there’s any paperwork he needs from me.”

When Mike had left, Hannah turned to Norman. “Do you have any idea why Mike needs me to go with him?”

“I think so. You cosigned on Ross’s accounts and you can request information on deposits and withdrawals. Mike can’t do that unless he gets a court order from a judge.”

“But if I request those deposits and withdrawals, I can give the information to Mike so he can have it right away? And then Mike will know if Ross withdrew any large sums of money right before he left?”

“That’s right.”

“I get it now. And of course I’ll cooperate. It just confused me when Mike said he could have been looking for Ross in all the wrong places.”

“That puzzled me too, until Mike said he needed to take you to the bank. I think he needs to know how much cash Ross took with him and whether Ross gave Doug any clue about how he was going to use the money.”

“But . . . how could Ross give Doug a clue about . . .” Hannah stopped speaking for a brief moment, and then the answer popped into her mind. “Traveler’s checks! If Ross bought traveler’s checks, that might indicate he was planning to go to a place where he didn’t want to carry a lot of cash.”

“Exactly. And Ross may have asked about foreign currency. That would give Mike a clue. Mike’s hoping something Doug tells him or something he sees on the bank records will point him in the right direction.”

The timer buzzed, and Hannah got up to take the pans of sweet dough crust from the oven. She slipped them on the bakers racks to cool and went back to prepare her strawberry filling. Once that was done and the crusts had sufficiently cooled, she spread the filling on them, sprinkled it with sea salt, and topped it with crumbles of the refrigerated sweet dough.