Cookies in the Cottage

by Kathi Daley

  “So other than finding William in the house at times, did he do anything else that seemed off to you?” Shelby asked.

  “I’m not sure. It’s not like I was taking notes. It just seemed that the man was secretive in a way that Abe never was. He never stopped to chat, and when asked a direct question, all he gave in response was a brief answer. Like I said before, he seemed to do a good job keeping up the grounds, but I didn’t like the way he lurked around. It just felt off to me.”

  “Did Henri ever mention strange sounds or flashes of light?” I asked.

  Alma nodded. “She did mention hearing strange noises at one point. Henri seemed to think that there was someone in the house late at night after everyone had left. She described what she heard, but Henri also admitted that she only heard these sounds when no one else was around. I recommended that maybe she have an alarm installed or at least change the locks, but she never did. I assumed that after a bit, the noises stopped. She only mentioned it that one time.”

  “And when was this?” I asked.

  “I guess a couple months before she passed.”

  “And was this after William started working at the estate?” I wondered.

  “Yes. It was after. William had been working at the house for maybe a month or two by that point.”

  “Tell me about William’s assistant, Troy,” I said, not even realizing that I’d totally taken over the conversation.

  “He was a nice kid. I guess he was around twenty. He was a hard worker. Unlike William, who was here most days, Troy only came in a few days a week.”

  “Did he come inside too?” I asked.

  She nodded. “The boy had a sweet tooth and would come in looking for cookies. I always gave him something, and we’d chat, but I never found him anywhere in the house other than the kitchen. It was only William I found lurking around.”

  “What about Abe?” I asked. “When he worked here, did you ever find him in parts of the house other than the kitchen?”

  “Yes, but only when either Henri or I specifically asked him to attend to something. I never happened upon him the way I did William. Of course, to be fair, I liked and trusted Abe, so when I noticed him walking down a hallway, I never gave it a second thought. I suppose there was just something about William that had me on edge from the day he first showed up.”

  “What about the maids?” Shelby asked. “Did any of them seem off to you?”

  Alma shrugged. “No. There were three full-time maids and one part-time maid. The full-time maids worked in pairs, giving the third a day off, and the part-time maid filled in as needed. Fran worked for Ms. Henri the longest. She’s a nice woman who you might want to speak with. The others tended to come and go. I suppose I liked some more than others, but none gave me a chill the way William did.”

  After an hour of asking questions and having Alma answer them, I came away with the distinct impression that William’s death and his job working with Henri might have been directly related. I considered the fact that it might have been William “haunting” Henri for one reason or another, but Henri was dead, and the idea that he’d continued the haunting when the sisters arrived didn’t necessarily make sense. I supposed the fact that the noises had moved from the interior to the exterior of the house after the locks were changed fit the idea that someone with a key had been behind the spooky noises all along. But I really couldn’t wrap my head around a motive that had the man who kept the grounds not only wanting to terrorize Henri but her granddaughters as well. I supposed all we could do at this point was to follow this investigation wherever it led. Hopefully, in the end, the missing pieces that would help us make sense of everything that had happened would become apparent.

  “I called Fran while the two of you were speaking to Alma,” Sierra said after we left the house. “She lives in town and is currently at home. She mentioned that she’d be willing to talk to us.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Shelby responded. “I’d be interested in hearing her take on things.”

  “She said we could come by now,” Sierra said.

  “I’m game,” I said as the three of us piled into the car.

  As it turned out, Fran really just confirmed what we already knew. She explained that all of the staff who worked for Henri came in during the day and left each evening. Fran also confirmed that Abe and Alma had been close and that things weren’t the same after Abe decided to retire. Apparently, while Henri was polite to the staff, she didn’t tend to forge relationships. She mostly kept to herself and only went out when she had a specific reason for doing so. I asked Fran about strange noises and lights. She reported that she hadn’t witnessed any herself, but she did know that Henri had spoken to Alma about disturbances in the night and that it had been Alma who’d suggested that she call her doctor.

  The only new piece of information provided by Fran was that a man from out of the area had spent some time at the estate during the months after Henri learned of Denver’s death. He showed up several months after the death of Henri’s only child, and although he stayed in town, he came out to the estate almost every day. She reported that his presence stood out to her because the man seemed interested in things such as property lines and building codes. She’d overheard him on the phone on several occasions, and based on what she heard, she felt certain that he planned to buy the place. But then he left and never came back.

  That fit what the sisters had said about Henri initially planning to sell the property but then changing her mind after she found out about her granddaughters. What seemed most interesting to me was that Fran reported seeing this same man in town with William several times between the man’s visit and Henri’s death, although as far as she knew, he never came to the estate again, at least not while she was working. Shelby, Sierra, and I all seemed to feel that this piece of information was interesting, but without a name, there wasn’t much we could do to follow up on the lead at this point.

  Once we’d concluded our conversation with Fran, I picked up my car at the mansion, and then I headed home to check in with Colt, who I assumed had been filled in by Conroy and Dillinger by this point. Once we connected, I floated the idea past him that, for reasons unbeknownst to us, it appeared possible that William had been the “ghost” who had been behind the noises and lights both Henri and the girls had experienced. Colt reminded me that when he and Lonnie had searched the house, they hadn’t found evidence of props. Still, Colt agreed to send Lonnie back to the house for a second look around. This time, he’d ask him to focus on any hidden spaces that might exist in the attic.

  Chapter 5

  After an extensive search the day after William’s body had been found in the garden shed, Lonnie was able to determine that the attic had a crawl space between the floor of the attic and the ceiling of the top story that had been added to the old house at some point to upgrade the plumbing and electrical. It was a space that wasn’t evident unless someone was really looking for it, but with the new information the sisters and I had provided about the sounds and lights, Lonnie decided to pull up some floorboards for a closer look. Once he had access to the crawl space, he found mechanisms that created both sound and light, such as the sort most likely used for community haunted house events. In my mind, this gave validation to our theory that someone, probably William, had intentionally set out to scare Henri and her granddaughters.

  The question that was on everyone’s mind was why someone would do that. But perhaps two better questions were if William was our ghost, who killed him, and why?

  Based on what the sisters had said, Colt knew that once the locks had been changed, effectively denying access to the resident spook, the haunting had been moved outdoors. He’d asked Lonnie to look outside as well, but he hadn’t found anything so far. Maybe whoever killed William took his props with him after stashing the body in the shed.

  On another note, by the time Friday rolled around, the inn was packed with holiday guests, and the list Jeremy and Mylie were organizing was in full swin
g. Today, we not only had sleigh rides, bonfires, and s’mores, but the inn was sponsoring a snowman building competition as well. Mylie had prize packages assembled for each competitive event, which seemed to make everyone involved take extra care with what they were doing.

  “Something smells good,” I said to Georgia after walking into the kitchen from the lawn area, which was covered with two feet of snow and at least a dozen half-outfitted snowmen and snowwomen.

  “Cookies for the gang once the contest is over. I have hot cocoa and cider as well as coffee. I figured I’d just set everything out on the sideboard, so the guests can help themselves.”

  “Have you been outside to look at the snowpeople? Everyone has done such a good job. I think it’s going to be really difficult for the judges to choose.”

  “I haven’t yet, but I plan to head outside once the final batch of cookies comes out of the oven. Jeremy came through a few minutes ago and said that everyone is having a wonderful time.”

  “It does seem that everyone is really into it. I noticed that the photo boards are already starting to fill up. We may need to replace the boards with new ones as the week progresses. We can display the completed boards in the lobby.”

  “The photo printer has been popular,” Georgia agreed. “I’m fairly certain that all the adults and most of the kids have phones they can use to take photos on a whim. With the board on display, it seems that most are anxious to add to it by printing their best shots.”

  “It’s been fun to see all the smiling faces.” I was about to pour myself a cup of coffee when Annabelle and a girl who looked to be around Annabelle’s age came running through. “Walk,” I automatically called out.

  Both girls stopped running.

  “Sorry, Abby,” Annabelle said. She turned to the girl next to her. “This is Avalon. We teamed up on a snowwoman along with Avalon’s brother, Alex. We wanted to see if you had some old sunglasses we could use.”

  “Actually, I do. Walk to the cottage with me, and I’ll get them for you.” I looked at Avalon. “Is your aunt helping as well?”

  “She was, but she got a call from work that she had to take.”

  I waited until the girls stepped out onto the back deck ahead of me and then made sure the door to the inn was closed tightly before walking toward the cottage with them. “I seem to remember your aunt mentioning that she needed to make this a bit of a working holiday,” I said as I also remembered that Poppy Sinclair had become an instant mother to her niece and nephew when her sister and her brother-in-law, their mother and father, had been killed in an auto accident. This was their first Christmas as a new family unit, and Poppy wanted to be sure it was special for Avalon and Alex, but she had a demanding job that she couldn’t totally walk away from.

  “Aunt Poppy works all the time,” Avalon said as we headed down the snowy pathway toward the cottage. “But she did say she would try to keep her calls and computer time to a minimum while we’re here. I can tell she’s trying to be a good mom for Alex and me since our mom is busy with our dad in heaven, but she works all the time.”

  “When I spoke to her, she said she was going to spend as much time with you and Alex as she could,” I confirmed.

  “And when she’s busy and needs to work, you have us,” Annabelle said. “Uncle Jeremy is usually around, and I love having kids my own age to hang out with. We’re going to have the best Christmas.”

  Avalon’s smile faded. “Yeah, that’s what Aunt Poppy keeps saying, but I don’t know how it can be the best Christmas without Mommy and Daddy.”

  Annabelle wove her fingers through Avalon’s as they walked side by side. I watched as she gave her hand a squeeze. “I miss my mom too. I know it’s different since she’s just away and not in heaven, but I sort of know how you feel.”

  “Do you want a scarf to go with the sunglasses?” I asked. I opened the door to the cottage, and both dogs came out, and enthusiastically greeted the girls.

  Both nine-year-olds agreed that having a scarf for their snowwoman would be awesome, so I headed toward my bedroom to see what I could find. When I came back, I found the girls eating cookies that had been left on the counter. The plate featured a Santa face, which I was sure wasn’t one of ours, and the chocolate cookies with red filling didn’t look like anything I’d noticed Georgia making.

  “Do you know where those cookies came from?” I asked Annabelle.

  She shrugged. “They were sitting on the counter when we came in. I hope it’s okay that we tried them. They looked really good.”

  “They are really good,” Avalon seconded, with her mouth full of the chocolaty treat.

  “I didn’t notice Georgia making this type of cookie.” I picked one up and took a bite. The cookies were exactly like the ones my grandma used to make. I remembered eating the cookies when I was a child, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t had one since she’d passed away. They were a unique recipe that she’d brought with her from Germany, so not usually found in the States.

  “I guess you can ask her,” Annabelle said, taking another large bite. “They sure are good.”

  “They are good, and I will ask her,” I said, picking up another cookie and taking a bite.

  I looked at the sunglasses and scarf in my hands. “Can you think of anything else?”

  “A hat,” Annabelle said.

  “Or maybe a ski pole,” Avalon added. “We can make our snowwoman look like a skier. The glasses you brought out sort of look like ski glasses.”

  “I have a cap that matches this scarf and a ski pole you can use,” I said. “I’ll grab them and help you get everything in place.”

  Once I’d helped the girls finish their snowwoman, I headed back to the inn’s kitchen to ask Georgia about the cookies. She indicated that she hadn’t made them. If someone had simply gone inside and left the cookies on the counter, the dogs would have had a fit, unless the cookie delivery person was someone who they knew well, like Jeremy or Mylie. I supposed I could hunt them down and ask them if they’d left cookies in the cottage. I didn’t know why they would have, but there were only a handful of people I knew of who could get past the dogs, so I figured it had to be one of them.

  “Hey, guys,” I said to Jeremy and Mylie, who I found in the parlor off the main lobby on the first floor of the inn. They’d built a fire and set out card tables with a variety of jigsaw puzzles on them. “Are you getting ready for another contest?”

  “It’s not a contest, but it is an event from the list,” Mylie answered. “We wanted to be sure to offer both indoor and outdoor activities every day. Not everyone likes to be outdoors when it’s so cold.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” I said, smiling at the industrious woman.

  “Tomorrow, I’m doing wreath making in the library while Jeremy takes the outdoor group sledding, then on Sunday, I’ll be hosting cookie decorating indoors while Jeremy takes a group snowshoeing.”

  “The two of you are going to be exhausted by the time Christmas arrives.”

  Mylie grinned. “Maybe, but figuring out a list to work from and then helping the guests work on completing the items they’re most interested in has been a lot of fun for me.”

  “It seems like everyone is having a wonderful time so far, and the photo printer has been really popular. I think I might need to run into town for more photo paper.”

  “If you are going into town anyway, can you pick up some ribbon for the wreaths?” Mylie asked. “I thought I had enough, but when I took the ribbon out of the bag and took a closer look at what was left from the wreaths we made to decorate the inn, I realized that we’ll probably be short.”

  “Yeah, I can get some more. I’ll head over to the sewing and craft store and see what they have. Anything else?”

  “We’re going to need more marshmallows,” Jeremy said. “I bought plenty for the s’mores we’re providing as part of the sleigh ride experience, but I didn’t take the marshmallows folks seem to want to roast during other activities such as the snowman
building into account.”

  “I noticed a group sitting around the fire you built on the back deck,” I said. “A couple of the kids did have roasting forks in their hands.”

  “I guess roasting marshmallows is fun for the kids even if the graham crackers and chocolate aren’t provided,” Jeremy agreed.

  “I’ll get more of everything,” I decided. “The graham crackers and chocolate will keep if we don’t need all of them this week. Listen, before I go, I wanted to ask about some cookies that were left in the cottage. Do either of you know anything about that?”

  “No,” Mylie and Jeremy answered at the same time.

  “Did you ask Georgia?” Mylie asked.

  “I did.”

  “How did someone who wasn’t one of us get into the cottage with the dogs keeping an eye on things?” Jeremy asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know.” I paused to think about it. “I suppose that either Lacy or Lonnie would have been able to get in and out with no problem. Tanner and Nikki too. I guess I can call and ask them if they did, but it seems that any of the four would have just come to the inn and left the cookies with Georgia.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy agreed. “It does seem odd that someone left the cookies without stopping in to say hi or at least leave a note. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks. It might not even be important to know who left them, but if someone got into the cottage when no one who lives there was around, I want to know who it is and why the dogs didn’t sound the alarm.”

  After I finished my discussion with Jeremy and Mylie, I went to find Georgia and ask her if she needed anything from town. By the time I pulled away from the inn, I had a list that was going to require five stops. The inn wasn’t really all that far from town, but it wasn’t really close either, so we tried to take care of everything that needed to be done when we did make the trip. I especially enjoyed heading into town at this time of the year with all the decorations. Holiday Bay might be a tiny town with a tiny local budget, but the vendors knew the importance of bringing visitors to the area, so they all pitched in and put on a magical display every year.