-25- "Then Hannah walked into the lobby of the inn, the first VV person she saw was Janie. Her temporary houseguest was standing by the desk talking with Sally, who was manning the phones.
"Hi, Janie," Hannah greeted her. "Did you get a chance to see Paul?"
"No, he's gone. Sally just told me that he's in Minneapolis at corporate headquarters."
"He left at noon yesterday," Sally explained, "right after he came back from his interview with Mike and Bill. He told me he'd be in meetings all afternoon and all day today. I'm saving his room for him. He'll be back in time for the grand opening of the boutique tomorrow."
"Did he leave someone in charge?" Hannah asked her.
"Alan Carpenter, but we can't find him, either. He's probably out at the mall making last-minute arrangements for the opening."
"I really need to find out if I still have a job, and Alan would know." Janie looked a little nervous. "If you have time, could you take me out there?"
Hannah felt the horns of a dilemma poke her squarely in the backside. She wasn't supposed to say anything about Alan's murder, but she had to let Janie know that a trip to the mall wasn't necessary. "Uh. . . forget the mall. Alan's not there."
"Are you sure?" Janie asked.
"Oh, yes." Hannah held her breath, waiting for Janie's next question.
"Where is he?"
"He's: . . um . . . out at the mayor's ice-fishing house."
Sally's eyebrows shot up. "What's he doing out there?"
"Not much," Hannah said, and then she clamped her lips shut.
Sally stared at her for a moment and then began to frown. "You look like I do when I bounce a check and I don't want Dick to find out. Is there something you're not telling us?"
"You could say that," Hannah admitted, sending a silent apology to Mike for having to break another of his rules. "Alan's dead."
"I can't believe it!" Sally gasped after Hannah had told them. "Two of my guests. . . murdered!"
"Do they think it's the same killer?" Janie asked.
"Yes. I shouldn't have told you, but I couldn't see any way around it. Don't say anything to anybody until the sheriff's department officially releases the news."
"I won't," Sally promised.
"Me neither," Janie said. "Poor Alan. Sometimes he was a real pain, but he didn't deserve that."
Alex Matthews appeared at the doorway just then and waved to Janie. "Hi, Janie. I'm so glad you're back!"
"So am I," Janie said, and then she turned to Sally and Hannah. "I'll go talk to her for a minute. Don't worry. I won't say a word about Alan."
After Janie had left, Sally motioned for Hannah to come closer. "You're going to investigate, aren't you?" she asked.
"Of course I am."
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"There may be," Hannah said. "The first thing I have to do is find out exactly when Alan was killed. When is the last time you saw him?"
"Last night. I was bartending and he came in with Kurt Howe. It was right before the eleven o'clock news."
"Was there anything odd about him?" Sally looked puzzled and Hannah went on to explain. "Maybe he was more nervous than usual, or angry about something?"
"He was a little uptight, but he told me they'd just come from a press conference and they'd been fielding questions about Connie Mac's death. Alan said they needed to unwind or they'd never get to sleep, and he ordered Chivas neat for both of them."
"How long did they stay in the bar?"
"Until the news was over. Kurt left first. He said he was going up to bed. Alan stayed for another couple of minutes, and then he said he was going to take a walk before he turned in. Before he left, he said he was going to sleep in, and he asked me to save him a prune Danish from the breakfast buffet."
"Did you?"
"Of course I did. I wrapped it up and left it in the kitchen for him, but he never came to get it. I figured he'd gone out to the mall early and had breakfast out there, so I gave it to Earl Flensburg when he came out here for lunch."
"So, as far as you know, he took his walk and then he went up to bed?"
"That's right."
"How about his car? Is it still in the lot?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. I haven't been outside all day long. If you want to check, it's a silver Mercedes with tinted windows."
Hannah thanked Sally for the information and headed to the restaurant to see how Andrea was bearing up. She was still chilled and she wanted to warm up before she walked out to the parking lot to look for Alan's car.
The restaurant was only half full, and Hannah spotted t Andrea sitting at a table for two. As she approached, her sister smiled a greeting. The color was back in Andrea's cheeks, and she looked as if she'd fully recovered from her shock.
"You look a lot better," Hannah commented, pulling out a chair and sitting down.
"I am." Andrea gestured toward the empty cup on the table. "You were right about the chocolate, Hannah. I had three cups of cocoa and I'm almost myself again."
"Where's Mayor Bascomb?" Hannah asked, noticing the second empty cup on the table.
"He went back out to the lake. Since he can't finish the ice-fishing contest, he's going to award the first-place trophy to the winner."
"He left you here alone?" Hannah was shocked. Mayor Bascomb was always polite to his constituents, and he carried courtesy and consideration to the extreme in an election year.
"I suggested it. All he could talk about was expanding the dump and building a new water filtration system. After fifteen minutes, I was bored to tears. And then, when he started discussing environmentally friendly uses for solid waste, I just had to think of a way to get rid of him."
One of the waitresses approached their table with a tray. Hannah watched as she set down a carafe, a clean cup and saucer, and two chocolate-covered doughnuts. When she'd left, Hannah turned to her sister. "What's this?"
"I figured you'd need a dose of your own medicine."
"Thanks," Hannah smiled. Andrea was right. A cup of hot chocolate was just what she needed.
Andrea took one of the doughnuts and ate it while Hannah drank her hot chocolate. "How about that other doughnut? Don't you want it?"
"Not really. I'm still full from breakfast. Janie made me French toast this morning."
"Can I have it? I'm still hungry and I don't know why. I've eaten like a horse today."
Hannah passed the plate to her sister. If there wasn't a baby in the making, she'd eat the velvet hat from Andrea's wedding, including the fashionable French lace around the brim.
* * *
"Here it is, Hannah," Andrea called out, pointing toward a car that was sandwiched in between a van and a midsize sedan with rental plates.
Hannah was amazed. All Andrea could see was the back end of the cars, and she'd spotted Alan's the moment they walked out to the parking lot. "Are you sure that's his?"
"Of course I am. I'm a real estate agent, and I know a Mercedes when I see one. Only serious buyers drive them."
"Because it means they have the money to buy a house?"
"Not necessarily, but they're expensive and you've got to have good credit to get one. Good credit's more important than money. Did you know that you can put the purchase price of a house on a credit card?"
Hannah shook her head. "You've got to be kidding! Does anybody really do that?"
"Yes. When the Ehrenbergs sold their summer cabin, the purchase price was thirty thousand. My buyers put the whole thing on their credit card."
"Why would they do that?" Hannah was confused. "I thought credit card interest rates were sky high."
"They are."
"Isn't the interest rate on a house loan much less?"
"Absolutely, but they had a really good reason for doing it."
"This I've got to hear," Hannah said, leading Andrea toward the car she thought was Alan's Mercedes.
"It's like this. They got a brand new credit card with a sweetheart rate: eight percent for the first six months. That's really good. And since their credit rating was excellent, they got a credit line of forty thousand."
Hannah whistled "I've never heard of a credit line that high."
"It's pretty high, but between the two of them they made over a hundred thousand a year, and they always paid their bills on time. They just hadn't saved any money, that's all."
"Okay, I'm following you so far."
"The lowest interest rate they could get through a mortgage broker at the time was seven and a half."
"Hold on a second." Hannah stopped in her tracks. "If the mortgage rate was seven and a half and the credit card rate was eight, they were paying more interest by putting it on their credit card."
?No, they weren't. Not in the short run. His father's will was in probate and his inheritance was over forty thousand. The only problem was, he didn't have it yet. He told me the lawyer figured he'd get it in four months or less."
"So why didn't they take out a house loan and pay it off when he got his inheritance?"
"Because the first couple of years are almost all interest. You only pay a tiny bit off on the principal. Four months of mortgage payments added up to more than the four months of interest on the credit card. They made a financially sound decision."
"It still sounds crazy to me. What if something had happened to delay his inheritance?"
"It didn't. He got a check in four months. It was a calculated risk, Hannah. They took it and it paid off."
Hannah just shook her head. "You remind me of Greg Canfield. He's betting on the thing, too."
"I thought you told me he tripled his money on that stock he bought."
"He did, but he could just as easily have lost everything." They'd almost reached the car in question when Hannah had a dire thought. "Do you handle the finances, Andrea?"
"No. Bill takes care of all that, and he's very cautious. Sometimes it bugs me, but we've got a family to consider. Tracey already has a college fund. Bill started it the day we found out that I was pregnant."
"That's good," Hannah said, smiling slightly. Andrea didn't realize it, but Bill would be making another trip to the bank to open another account soon.
"So what did you learn?" Andrea asked, after they'd examined Alan's car and were walking back to the inn.
"Alan didn't drive anywhere this morning."
"How could you tell that?" ?There was snow on the windshield, and it stopped snowing about four this morning. I heard it on KCOW when I was driving out here."
"In that case, I learned something, too."
"Really? What?"
"Alan was killed before four this morning."
"You learned that by looking at his car?" Hannah turned to her sister in surprise.
"No, it was what you said."
Hannah was confused. "What did I say?"
"That it stopped snowing at four this morning. If somebody dragged Alan out there after four, there would have been tracks in the snow."
"That's true"
"Well, there weren't any. When we drove up, there was only one set of footprints leading up to the door."
"Good for you, Andrea. You're incredibly observant and you have a great memory for detail."
Andrea looked slightly uncomfortable. "Actually, no. The only reason I noticed was that I overheard Sara Thompson talking to Patsy Berringer in the caf? the other day. They were gossiping about the mayor's new girlfriend."
"I didn't know he had one," Hannah commented, feeling a wave of contempt for their town's illustrious leader. Mayor Bascomb had come within an eyelash of getting into big trouble for his last affair, and she'd hoped the close call had taught him a lesson.
"They didn't mention who his girlfriend was, and it might not be true. I usually don't put much stock in gossip, but I didn't want to interrupt him if he was. . . uh . . . you know. That's the only reason I noticed, Hannah. It was all because of the gossip I heard. But it helped, didn't it?"
Hannah's grin grew wider. "You bet! It narrows our time frame down to four hours and saves us a whole lot of trouble. This has got to be the first time in history that gossip actually turned out to be good for something."