Devil’s Food Cake Murder

by Joanne Fluke

  “What did he do?” Hannah asked, beginning to get a little confused with names and pronouns herself. “The current Reverend Matthew, I mean.”

  “He stood on the Bible.”

  Now Hannah really was confused. “Is that like standing up for Jesus?”

  “No. I mean standing, with his feet, right on top of the holy scriptures! That’s something a real minister would never do, Hannah. It’s disrespectful!”

  “I can understand that,” Hannah said quickly. “It would be like having a tea party with the communion glasses.”

  “My little sister did that,” Grandma Knudson confided, “and everyone was horrified. But she was just a little child who didn’t know any better. She saw the small cups and thought they were doll size. This is different, Hannah. A real minister, an adult who’s gone through the seminary and been ordained, would never treat the Bible that way.”

  “Where was…the current Matthew when he did this?”

  “In the church office no more than fifteen minutes ago. I called you right after I saw him. He said he was too busy to come to the parsonage for tea, so I decided to bring him a tray. I found him standing on a little pile of books so that he could look at the top of the tallest bookcase. There’s nothing up there, Hannah. I don’t know why he was doing that.”

  “And you think one of the books he stood on was the Bible?”

  “I know it was. I knocked on the open door, and he stepped down right away. And then he came to meet me and took the tray. He said it was sweet of me to bring him tea and he appreciated it. And then he said he was doing research for next Sunday’s sermon. And that’s when I saw that the top book on the pile, the one he’d been standing on, was the Bible. I just wish I knew what he was looking for on that top shelf.”

  “Maybe he was doing research and he needed a book that was there for reference?”

  Grandma Knudson shook her head. “Impossible. The only books on the top shelf are the old hymnals that Bob takes down for Vacation Bible School. The kids love to use real hymnals, but they’re hard on them so he uses the old ones. There’s nothing in there that’s not in the new hymnals, and there are at least a dozen of those on the shelf below. He was looking for something, Hannah. But I can’t figure out what it could be.”

  “Is he still in the church office?” Hannah asked.

  “No, he’s visiting the sick at the hospital. I didn’t call you until he left. I was afraid he’d hear me.”

  “That’s good,” Hannah praised her for her caution. “As long as he’s gone, I’m going to go over to the church office to have a look.”

  “Then you think he was searching for something?”

  “I don’t know what else to think, unless he had a dust rag in his hand. He didn’t, did he?”

  Grandma Knudson smiled for the first time. “No. He’s not as neat as the first Matthew, the one I think was real. This one leaves his clothes on the floor, just like Paul used to …” Grandma Knudson stopped and began to frown. “It can’t be!”

  “It could be,” Hannah said. “Norman printed out some pictures of Matthew and Paul when they were in high school, and they looked a lot alike.”

  “That’s true. Then you think this fake minister is Paul?”

  “I don’t know what to think, but it’s a distinct possibility. I’m going over to search the church office. Do I need a key?”

  “I don’t know if he locked it, but take mine.” Grandma Knudson reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a key on a key chain with a little bell charm attached.

  “That’s cute,” Hannah commented.

  “My husband gave it to me. I used to ring the church bell for him before Sunday services. What should I do if Paul or whoever he is comes back?”

  “I’ll probably hear his car drive in, but if you see him turn into the lot, call me at the church office.”

  “I will. Don’t let him catch you, Hannah. I have the terrible feeling that he killed Matthew.”

  “I have that feeling, too. Don’t worry, Grandma. I’ll search as fast as I can and be right back.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was difficult to search when you didn’t know what you were searching for. All Hannah knew was that Grandma Knudson had seen Paul, or Matthew, or whoever he was, searching for something in the church office. Hannah’s hope was that he hadn’t found it and she would find it first.

  There was nothing in the tall bookcase. Hannah had checked behind every book on every shelf. She’d even opened them all to make sure none were hollow inside to provide a hiding place.

  I know why you’re here and you’re not going to find it! Jacob had said in the fake Reverend Matthew’s voice. But Grandma Knudson didn’t think he’d been the fake Reverend Matthew, not anymore. Now she thought that he was the real Reverend Matthew, and the second man who came to Lake Eden claiming to be Reverend Matthew was really Matthew’s cousin Paul.

  Hannah buried her head in her hands for a moment. Just wait until she told Lisa about this newest development! It was almost too much to fathom. If she could prove that Paul had murdered Reverend Matthew and then come to Lake Eden, pretending to be Matthew so that he could identify Matthew’s body as his, everyone in town would rush to The Cookie Jar to listen to Lisa’s stories.

  Hannah sighed as she searched the desk. If there’d been anything of interest, the crime scene techs would have found it, but this case had so many twists and turns, she dared not leave any stone unturned.

  I know why you’re here and you’re not going to find it! Those were the words the first Reverend Matthew had spoken to his killer. And if their suspicions were correct, his killer was his cousin Paul. That meant Paul knew that Reverend Matthew had hidden whatever it was that Paul had come to Lake Eden to get. But how had Reverend Matthew gotten what Paul wanted in the first place? And where had he hidden it?

  The whole thing was just too confusing for words. Hannah’s mind was spinning in circles, and she knew she had to stop thinking about who was who, and what was where. Instead, she should be concentrating on where the whatever-it-was could be hidden. It wasn’t in the church office. She’d checked everywhere. Where else would a minister hide something in his church?

  “The baptismal font,” Hannah said aloud. It had a cover, and no one would think to look in there. She got up from the desk chair and raced down the aisle to the front of the church. There it was, the white marble basin with the ornate gilt-painted cover that had witnessed thousands of baptisms.

  Thirty minutes later, Hannah was ready to give up her search altogether. She’d checked every hiding place at the front of the church, including the pulpit and the statues. She’d gone through every pew, looking for anything that might be taped under the seats or inside the hymnal and Bible racks. She’d searched the little storage room where the communion supplies and the vestments were kept, and she’d even explored the choir loft. The only place she hadn’t gone was the belfry and that was because she wasn’t sure how to get there. Grandma Knudson would know. She’d mentioned that she used to ring the church bell when her husband was the minister.

  The moment she thought of it, Hannah raced back to the church office and picked up the phone. She dialed the parsonage and was greatly relieved when Grandma Knudson answered. “I need to know how to get up in the belfry,” she said.

  “The belfry?” Grandma Knudson sounded surprised. “Why do you want to go up there?”

  “Because Reverend Matthew could have hidden something up there to keep Paul from finding it. It seems unlikely, but I’ve checked everywhere else.”

  “All right. Whatever you think best, Hannah. To get to the belfry, all you have to do is go through the door in back of the choir loft. There’s a circular staircase that leads up to the bell-ringer’s platform.”

  “And that’s the belfry?”

  “Only part of it, dear. You’ll see the rope for the bell and if you look to the right, you’ll notice another staircase that looks like a ladder next to the wall. There�
�s a trap door above that staircase and the bell tower’s up there.”

  “Uh-oh,” Hannah breathed, not liking the sound of that. She wasn’t exactly afraid of heights, but she certainly wasn’t comfortable with them. And although she didn’t think she was claustrophobic, she asked her next question anyway. “Is the bell tower large?”

  “It’s good-sized, but you can only stand up in the center. The rest is filled with rafters that support the steeple. And of course the bell and the bellframe are in the middle. Since you’re tall, you’ll have to duck a little to walk around that.”

  Hannah sighed. The belfry didn’t sound like a pleasant place to visit. And then she remembered the phrase her grandmother Ingrid had used to describe someone with only part of their faculties. “Are there bats in the belfry?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, dear. I’ve never been all the way up there, but I imagine there could be bats. You should be very quiet when you’re up there and they’ll probably stay asleep. Bats are nocturnal animals, you know.”

  “I know,” Hannah said, not terribly relieved by that piece of knowledge. Nocturnal did not mean nonfunctional in daylight. She’d watched part of a program about bats on the animal channel. They’d debunked the old wives’ tale that bats were blind in the daylight and could get tangled in your hair, but she was glad she had tightly curled hair all the same.

  “At least there’s no such thing as a vampire bat,” Hannah said, trying for humor.

  “Oh, yes there is. They’re from Mexico, I believe. Of course they’re not like Count Dracula or any other foolishness like that, but I understand that they bite.”

  Lovely! Hannah’s mind interjected. Bats that bite. That’s all I need!

  “Good luck, Hannah,” Grandma Knudson said. And then she hung up the phone.

  There’s nothing to it but to do it, Hannah’s mind echoed her great-grandmother Elsa’s favorite sentiment, the one she’d uttered every Monday when she got out the big galvanized wash tubs and wheeled the old washing machine and wringer into the kitchen from its storage place on the back porch.

  Time was ticking away, and Hannah knew she’d better get at it before Paul, or Matthew, or whoever he was got back from visiting the sick at the hospital. Her great-grandma was right. Sitting here thinking about what she had to do would not get it done.

  On her way to the choir loft, Hannah passed the cloak room and stopped at the lost and found box. It was half-full of items that had been left behind in the church. There was a woolen head scarf on top, and Hannah reached down to grab it. She folded it into a triangle and tied it over her head, knotting the ends under her chin babushka-style. Old wives’ tale or not, she felt much better about facing the bats.

  She found the door behind the choir loft with no problem, and for a moment, she wondered why she’d never noticed it before. Then she realized it was probably because she’d never sung in the choir. Hannah opened the door and went up the narrow, winding staircase to arrive at a part of the Lake Eden Holy Redeemer Church that she’d never seen before, the platform for the bell-ringer.

  Light filtered in through the vented windows on all four walls. The wooden slats were canted so that very little rain or snow could get in, but it didn’t stop the cold air from whistling through. Hannah knew she wouldn’t like the job as bell-ringer. This part of the wooden steeple was freezing cold in the winter, and she was sure it would be miserably hot in the summer. Grandma Knudson was a saint for ringing the bell to gather the flock for Sunday services when her husband was the minister.

  The rope hung down from an aperture above, and Hannah looked up to see the church bell high above her. It was a huge bell and very old. Reverend Bob had once mentioned that the bell had been made in the eighteen hundreds, and it was cast bronze. The bell rope was made of thick hemp with a sleeve of cotton so the bell-ringer’s hands wouldn’t touch the fibers of the rope. She’d once heard someone mention that the sleeve was called a “sally,” although she had no idea why.

  Hannah stared at the rope for a moment and fought the insane urge to grab the rope and pull. Of course she didn’t. If she rang the bell, Grandma Knudson would think there was something wrong, the parishioners would start calling the church office and the parsonage to find out why the bell was ringing, and if Paul, or Matthew, or whoever he was, caught wind of it, he’d rush right up here to see who was responsible and catch her searching the belfry.

  She stepped around the rope and headed for the ladder-type staircase on the wall. At least it didn’t have round rungs. She didn’t like to climb ladders with round rungs. In place of rungs, this built-in ladder had regular steps like a stepladder. They were much narrower and shallower than ordinary steps, but she could handle that.

  The steps went straight up at a ninety-degree angle from the floor, but there were handrails to grip. When Hannah came to the point where the top of her head was about to hit the trap door, she held on with her left hand and pushed the trapdoor open with her right. The trapdoor was big enough to accommodate a large man, but it opened smoothly on its hinges and fell back against a wooden brace that held it open and in place.

  It was a bit eerie stepping into the hushed and quiet belfry. There were no sounds at all except the occasional honk of a horn in the distance, the faraway bark of a dog, or the tinny growl of a snow blower clearing a sidewalk. There was no rustling, and Hannah was relieved. If there were bats, they were sound asleep.

  The space, itself, was a geometric figure that Hannah couldn’t begin to identify. It began as a square with five-foot walls, but the walls began to narrow and tilt in beyond that point to form the ascending steeple. The four large open windows, covered only with fine mesh, displayed the bell to passersby on the streets below. From her bird’s eye vantage point in the belfry, Hannah’s view of Lake Eden was spectacular. If she looked out each of the four windows in turn, the vista was only a few degrees short of a full circle.

  “Incredible!” Hannah said, spotting her mother’s car traveling down Main Street and heading out of town toward the highway. Michelle must be going out to the mall to return the costume their mother had rented.

  The interior of the space was cluttered and crisscrossed with wooden rafters, metal braces, and heavy blocks of wood to support the structure. Just as Grandma Knudson had told her, the bell sat directly in the center, suspended between two heavy wooden wheels. There was a groove for the rope, and Hannah surmised that was how the bell was operated. A pull on the rope from below would turn the wheel, and gravity would cause the clapper to hit the side of the bell.

  A cabinet hung below one of the windows. The door was open and tools were scattered across the floor as if they’d been carelessly tossed there. No workman would leave his tools in such a state. Someone had looked for something in the cabinet and tossed the tools aside.

  The walk space around the church bell and its housing was minimal. In order to get to the walls, she’d have to bob, and duck, and weave her way around structural supports. And it seemed that someone else had done exactly that not long ago, because there were footprints in the thick dust on the floor!

  Hannah followed the footprints, careful not to bump into rafters, or braces, or blocks on the way. As she neared the wall, she was forced to stoop lower and lower until she was in a crouching position. When she reached the wall, she saw that the boards had been pried off, exposing the space between the inner and outer walls. Someone had searched here. And she was convinced that someone was Paul.

  “What are you doing up here?”

  Hannah, startled by the loud voice, swiveled her head to see who was there. “Paul!” she gasped.

  The word hung between them like a scimitar swinging lower and lower over her head. Hannah desperately wished there were some way to call the name back, but of course there wasn’t. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice?

  “That’s right. I’m Paul. You’re smarter than you look, Hannah. You figured it out!” He stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Too bad someone didn’t teach you to k
eep your nose out of other people’s business.”

  Hannah gave an involuntary shudder. His voice had changed from that of a warm and friendly minister into one that was as cold as ice. The transformation shocked her so much, she stood there and stared at him like a possum caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. And then, as she watched, he pulled out a gun and aimed it directly at her head.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was a twenty-two semiautomatic. Hannah knew that because Lisa and Herb had one just like it, and Hannah had shot it at target practice. And she was almost positive that this twenty-two semiautomatic was the missing murder weapon.

  “What are you looking for up here?” Paul confronted her.

  “The same thing you’re looking for. Grandma Knudson saw you standing on a pile of books, searching for something on the top of the bookcase in the church office. I figured you were trying to find something that the real Reverend Matthew hid.”

  “Give the lady an A,” Paul said with a sarcastic laugh. “Let me get this straight. You were searching for something, trying to find it before I did, and hoping that you’d recognize it when you found it?”

  “Exactly right.” Hannah inched her way forward slightly, causing Paul to back away.

  “Come one step closer and you’re dead!” he threatened.

  “Sorry,” Hannah apologized quickly and switched gears. “You must have hated Matthew a lot.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You killed him.” Hannah managed to inch just a slight bit closer.

  “I know I did, but I didn’t hate him. It was…self defense. That’s exactly what it was. I was saving my own skin. I had to shoot Matthew to keep him from calling the police. He said he wanted me to do the right thing, to turn in the jewels so they could be returned to their rightful owner.”