“Del called a few months ago,” Betty continued. “It was about a personal loan. He was complaining about the high interest rates, and Max wasn’t very nice to him.”

“Really?” Hannah feigned surprise.

“As a matter of fact, he was very nasty. Max told Del that if he didn’t like the interest rates, he could just come up with the money and pay off the loan.”

“Did Del pay off the loan?”

“I don’t know, Hannah. Del didn’t call again and that’s the last I ever heard about it.”

“Thanks, Betty.” Hannah hung up the phone and dropped her face in her hands. This was all very confusing. Perhaps she should take a run out to the dairy and look at the crime scene again. It was possible that Bill might have missed something that pertained to the loan that Del had taken out with Max.

“I’m leaving again, Moishe,” Hannah announced as she stood up and felt around in her pocket to make sure she had her keys. But Moishe didn’t rush to the food bowl as he usually did. He just opened his good eye and gave her what amounted to an extremely bored kitty shrug.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hannah zipped down Old Lake Road at seventy miles an hour, just about as fast as her Suburban would go. She had almost reached the intersection at Dairy Avenue when she began to reconsider her destination. It would be a waste of time to go over the crime scene. The killer had planned everything carefully, making a private appointment with Max and tricking him into opening the old safe in the original dairy. There was no way such an organized killer would have left any incriminating evidence behind.

So what should she do? Hannah took her foot off the gas pedal and let her Suburban slow to the legal limit. Perhaps she should run out to the sheriff’s station to find Bill. She had more facts for him, information that she hadn’t yet learned when she’d left her voice mail message. She could pull Bill aside and tell him everything. Between the two of them, they could figure out what to do next.

Hannah glanced in her rearview mirror and saw that the road was clear behind her. She slowed her truck to a crawl and did something she’d never done before in her life. She hung a U-turn right across the double yellow line and headed for the Winnetka County Sheriff’s Station.

As she pushed the speedometer up to seventy again, Hannah thought about Del Woodley. He couldn’t have killed Max. The laws of physics were absolute and he couldn’t have been in two places at the same time. Even if Phil had been wrong by five minutes and Danielle’s watch had been off by the same amount, it still wasn’t possible to drive from DelRay Manufacturing, out on the interstate, to the Cozy Cow Dairy in that length of time.

But Benton could have killed Max. Hannah’s hands tightened on the wheel as that thought occurred to her. Phil had said he’d come home because he was worried that the family money would run out. If Max had called in his loan and Del had told Benton about it, Benton could have decided to protect his inheritance by shooting Max and stealing the paperwork.