Chapter Eighteen
At a few minutes after eleven, Lonnie had called to report that there had been no action at the bank yet. Ross had not shown up. Mike had contacted Herb, who was keeping his eye on the entrance to town, and that was a negative, too.
“Do you think he’ll show up?” Hannah asked Mike.
Mike shrugged. “Maybe. He’s got plenty of time. The bank’s open until three.”
At eleven-fifteen, the swinging door from the coffee shop swung open and Earl Flensburg came into the kitchen. “You wanted to see me?” he asked Hannah.
“Yes,” Hannah said, quickly dishing up a plate of Coconut Snow Cookies, even though they were barely cool enough to eat. “Try my new cookies, Earl. And I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”
“Hi, Norman,” Earl greeted his son-in-law. “Mike? Good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too,” Mike responded. “Out with the plow again today?”
“Sure am. I’m plowing around the lake. Jessie Pillager wants to get out there to check his pipes.”
Norman groaned. “Don’t tell me he was late wrapping his pipes again this year!”
“He was. And, actually, he is. Jessie’s going out there to do what he should have done last October.”
“That’s Jessie,” Norman said. “He’s a nice guy, but he’s always a day late and a dollar short.”
“In this case, it might be a thousand dollars short and four months late!” Earl predicted. “It got pretty cold during the blizzard and the wind that comes across the icy lake is freezing cold. I’ll lay odds that Jessie’s pipes have already burst.”
“No way I’ll bet on that,” Mike told him.
Norman shook his head. “Me neither.”
“These are really good, Hannah,” Earl said when he’d tasted one of her Coconut Snow Cookie Sandwiches.
“Thank you. I’ll let Carrie decide if she wants to serve them plain, or if she wants to make sandwich cookies out of them.”
“We like Nutella,” Earl told her. “What else could you use between the cookies?”
“Peanut, cashew, or almond butter. Or any flavor of jam. Any flavor of frosting would be good, too. The possibilities are almost endless.”
Earl smiled. “Knowing Carrie, she’ll probably want to use crab apple jelly. She made some last year from the crab apple tree in our backyard. Or maybe rhubarb jam. She makes that, too.”
“Mom’s rhubarb jam is great!” Norman complimented his mother. “I miss it.”
“Then you’d better take a trip to our basement,” Earl told him. “Carrie filled a whole shelf with rhubarb jam.”
When Earl got up to leave, his box of Coconut Snow Cookies in his hands, Hannah also rose from her stool. “Are you parked in back, Earl?”
“Yes, I didn’t want to take up your parking spots in front.”
“Then I’ll walk you out,” Hannah told him, motioning to Norman and Mike to stay seated. “I’ll be right back, guys.”
Hannah waited until the back kitchen door had closed behind them before she broached the subject of Carrie’s concern. “Carrie’s a little worried about you, Earl.”
“She is?” Earl looked genuinely surprised. “Why?”
“Carrie’s afraid that you might use one of those firearms you carry on the snowplow if you see Ross.”
Earl looked absolutely shocked. “But she ought to know better! I carry those because I sometimes run into wild animals on the country roads when I’m plowing. I can’t believe that Carrie actually thought that I’d do something like that!”
“Well, she didn’t really think so, but she wanted me to talk to you about it,” Hannah said quickly, doing her best to exonerate Carrie from what could be an argument between husband and wife.
“Why did she think I’d do something that drastic?” Earl asked her, and Hannah could see that he appeared completely puzzled.
“She knows how much you like Norman. And she said you know how much Norman loves me. And she thought . . .”
Earl began to smile. “That I’d defend your honor or something like that?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“Well . . . she’s right in a sense. I would, but not that way! Let’s be honest here, Hannah. I don’t like what Ross did to you one bit! I think it was . . .” Earl paused, and Hannah knew he was trying to think of the correct words to describe how he felt. “I think it was disgraceful and totally unforgivable! And I do believe that Ross should be held accountable for hurting you! A lot of people in town feel the way I do, but I don’t think any of them would actually take any drastic action.”
“You mean they wouldn’t run him out of town on a rail?”
“I didn’t say that. They might, if they knew what that meant. Or they might tar and feather him if they knew how to do it. Don’t get me wrong. If they accused him and he sassed them back, or tried to say that everything that happened was all your fault and not his, they’d probably coldcock him. I know I would and I do know what that means.”
Hannah drew a relieved breath. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Earl. I was afraid that Ross would come back here and some well-meaning, but misguided person would attack him and get into trouble by doing it.”
“It could happen that way,” Earl admitted. “I told Carrie that if I saw him back in Lake Eden, I’d scoop him off the road with my snowplow. That’s probably why she was worried.”
Hannah smiled at him. “Thanks for being so honest with me, Earl. I’ll tell Carrie that she doesn’t have to worry about you anymore.”
* * *
When Hannah got back inside, she poured herself a hot cup of coffee and joined Mike and Norman at the work station. She didn’t really want the coffee, but it had been cold outside and she needed to warm up. She cupped her hands around the cup, lifted it to her mouth, and took a sip. The hot liquid helped, but she found herself wishing that it were chicken broth instead of coffee. Her stomach had been giving her a bit of trouble lately and she knew she’d been drinking too much coffee. Perhaps she should buy some bouillon cubes the next time she went to the Red Owl Grocery, and drink broth made in the kitchen microwave instead of the endless cups of black coffee she was in the habit of consuming every day.
There was a knock on the back kitchen door, and Mike got up quickly. “I’ll get it,” he said, heading to the door. There was a moment before he opened it, and Hannah knew he’d checked the peephole that he and Lonnie had installed right after she’d told them about Ross’s early-morning visit to The Cookie Jar.
“Come in, guys!” Hannah heard Mike say, and she went to pour more cups of coffee. Lonnie and Rick were back from the bank and she could hardly wait to hear what had happened.
“Doug!” Hannah gasped when she turned around with two cups of coffee in her hands. “I didn’t expect you to come back here with Lonnie and Rick.”
“I know, but I wanted to tell you what happened this morning myself,” Doug said. “I’m not sure I handled the situation as well as I could have. And if I didn’t, I want to personally apologize to you.”
“As long as you did the best you could, that’s good enough for me,” Hannah assured him. “Just let me get another cup of coffee for you and then you can tell us what happened when Ross got there.”
Hannah hurried to the coffeepot and poured another cup. She quickly put on another pot, carried Doug’s coffee back to the work station, set it in front of him, and gave him an encouraging smile. “So what happened when Ross got to the bank?”
“That’s just it. He didn’t.”
That caught Hannah completely by surprise and it took her a moment to respond. “Ross didn’t show up?!”
“No. Lonnie and Rick and I waited in my office until almost eleven, but there was no sign of him. Then I went out and told Lydia that if Ross came into the bank, she should buzz me immediately and say that I was waiting for him in my office. That’s where Lonnie, Rick, and I sat until we came over here.”
Hannah couldn’t help the shocked expression that crossed her face. She’d been so sure that Ross would show up to sign the withdrawal slip. “So Ross didn’t contact you at all?” she asked.
“Not physically. But about twenty minutes ago, Lydia buzzed me to say that I had a phone call. I asked who was calling and she didn’t know, but she said the caller had told her that it was imperative for him to talk to me.”
There was only one question to ask and Hannah asked it. “And it was Ross?”
“Yes.”
“That makes sense,” Mike said. “Ross only contacted Hannah once in person and that was before anyone else in town was awake.”
“The other two times I talked to Ross, it was on my cell phone,” Hannah explained. “What did you do when you realized that the phone call was from Ross?”
“As soon as I realized it was Ross, I wrote Ross’s name in big, block letters on my notepad so Lonnie and Rick would know who it was. And then I put the call on speaker phone so they could listen in.”
“Smart,” Mike commented, giving Doug an approving nod. “Go on, Doug.”
Doug paused to take a sip of his coffee and then he went on with his account. “The first thing Ross did was identify himself. Then he asked me if I had his withdrawal slip ready to sign and I told him that I did. And then I said that the bank didn’t normally keep that much cash on hand, but I’d managed to get it by armored truck early this morning. All I needed was the signed withdrawal slip before I could release it.”
“What did he say to that?” Hannah asked.
Doug looked terribly embarrassed. “He accused me of playing games with him to try to get him into the bank. And he called me a name that I’d rather not repeat in polite company. I was shocked, Hannah. The first part of our conversation was friendly, almost like he was a regular bank customer. But then he turned ugly. He said I should listen to him and listen carefully, that he’d filled out a withdrawal slip that he had with him and taken a cell phone photo of it. He was faxing that photo to the bank and since he’d already signed the withdrawal slip, I should give the money to you and be quick about it.”
“Did you explain that you couldn’t accept a fax, that you had to personally witness his signature?” Mike asked.
“Of course I did. And then he called me another name, even worse than the first one, accused me of setting a trap for him, and said that if I didn’t release the money to Hannah, there would be some very nasty consequences.”
Rick nodded. “It was really frightening, Hannah. Ross sounded really unhinged. Both Lonnie and I think he’s insane.”
“That’s right,” Lonnie agreed. “It was almost like he had two personalities, the nice one and the nasty, vindictive one.”
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” Doug apologized, “but the change in his voice really rattled me.”
“It rattled me, too,” Hannah admitted. “What else did Ross say?”
“He accused me of lying to him. He said he knew that I’d given the money to you because we were friends. And he said the word friends in a very nasty way!”
“What came next?” Mike asked him.
“He repeated that there would be consequences for lying to him, that he knew the truth and I wouldn’t get away with trying to trick him.”
They sat there looking at each other for a moment. Ross truly was insane.
Doug shook his head. “That’s really all I can tell you, Hannah.”
Hannah picked up on Doug’s phrasing. “I understand. But did Ross say anything else?”
“Yes, but I’d rather not say. It’s . . . really bad.”
“You have to tell us, Doug,” Mike said, giving him a hard look. “It’s important.”
“I know.” Doug sighed, and it was clear to everyone that he didn’t want to go on.
“Go ahead,” Hannah encouraged him. “We have to know what to expect from him, Doug.”
“Okay.” Doug swallowed again. “Ross gave that really nasty laugh again and said it wouldn’t do any good, that he was going to get his money back from Hannah even if he had to . . .”
“If he had to . . . what?” Mike leaned forward.
Doug looked more troubled than Hannah had ever seen before. “Ross said he was going to get his money back from Hannah even if he had to kill her to get it!”