Maddie snatched the list out of Olivia’s hand. “Even better,” she said, “the Chamberlains own a walk-in clinic in Chatterley Heights, plus several drugstores here and in various nearby towns, and a pharmacy clinic that delivers medications to shut-ins. Hugh and Edward would definitely know their poisons. They could easily have slipped Clarisse some sleeping pills in a higher dosage than her usual prescription, for example. Or injected some sort of tasteless poison into our cookies before leaving them for Sam. Or maybe they put something in the cookies that would interact with his insulin?”
Maddie paused in her usual dramatic fashion. “You haven’t yet heard my truly cool discovery, my coup d’état.”
“I think you mean pièce de résistance,” Olivia said. “Coup d’état means overthrow of the state.”
“Language nerd.” Maddie sorted through her recipecard notes, selected one, and held it to her chest. “Tell me, did you ever wonder how Tammy Deacons and Hugh Chamberlain first met? Hugh is five years older than we are, so he was a year out of high school before Tammy even started. Their families certainly ran in different circles, too.”
“I don’t remember Tammy mentioning to me how she met Hugh. It was after I left town, that’s all I know.”
Olivia reached for the recipe card, but Maddie twisted away.
“I will explain all,” Maddie said. “As you may be aware, Tammy attended a small college nobody ever heard of in the DC area, where she got her elementary school teaching degree. She spent summers back in Chatterley Heights, where she worked at Chamberlain Drugs. During the first summer, none other than Hugh Chamberlain was her supervisor. I expect he gave her some hands-on training.”
“That doesn’t mean she learned anything about drugs or poisons,” Olivia said. “She was probably a salesclerk.”
“But wait! There’s more!” Maddie’s emerald eyes sparkled, and her hair had twined into corkscrews.
“Speaking of medications,” Olivia said, “you might want to consider something for that incipient bipolar disorder.”
“You’re just jealous,” Maddie said. “Tammy Deacons wanted to stay in town, presumably because she’d met the love of her life, but she couldn’t find a teaching job right away. So she trained as a pharmacy assistant and kept working at Chamberlain Drugs. Ha! Now tell me she wouldn’t have learned anything about drugs.”
Olivia digested Maddie’s information and found herself growing more and more puzzled. “Maddie, this is a wonderful find, and I take back every snide comment I’ve said this evening, but really, how on earth did you dig up all this fairly personal background information in such a short time?”
Maddie gave her a sheepish look. “I confess to a lovehate relationship with Internet social networks. It occurred to me that Tammy might be on Facebook, so I checked, and she is. You wouldn’t believe the amount of personal information people reveal on those sites, and Tammy is not one to hold back.”
“Wait a minute,” Olivia said. “Only in an alternate universe would you and Tammy be Facebook friends. How did you gain access to her page?”
With a light laugh, which to Olivia sounded nervous, Maddie said, “Interesting story, actually. You’re right, never in a gadjillion years would Tammy ‘friend’ me, or me her. However, I figured she would have invited you, her dear childhood buddy, to be her friend.”
“I don’t remember getting such an invitation.”
“Oh, Livie, I know how you are about emails. If it isn’t about business or cookie cutters, it goes through your eyes and out the back of your head. So I checked back aways, and there it was, more than six months ago, an unanswered email from Tammy inviting you to be her Facebook friend.”
“You . . . you checked my email? You hacked into my email? How could you do that?”
“It was easy, really. FYI, don’t use pet names for passwords.”
Olivia heard a choking sound come from her own throat. She breathed in deeply, then said, “What I meant was, how could you do that to me?”
“Desperate times, Livie, desperate times. And look how fruitful it turned out to be.” Maddie bit the bottom of her lip. “Am I unfriended?”
Olivia heaved a giant sigh. “If you ever do anything like that—”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“At least ask first. Now, if I don’t get some sleep, you’ll be alone at the store tomorrow.”
“Understood. Except . . .” Maddie’s teeth captured her lip again.
“What?”
“You might want to check your email before you lose consciousness. Del wants to talk to you tomorrow. He says he left messages on your cell and your home phone. He’s willing to come to the store, but it’s important that he talk to you.”
“Tell you what,” Olivia said, dragging her unwilling body out of her chair. “For penance, you can email him from my account. Tell him to come midmorning. Maybe I can get rid of him before the lunchtime shoppers start showing up.”
“Absolutely,” Maddie said.
Olivia lifted Spunky, who melted into her arms. “Do it tonight. First thing tomorrow, I change all my passwords. I’m thinking some obscure phrases from Proust, in the original French. Good luck with that.”
Chapter Sixteen
Olivia’s hope for a quiet Tuesday, the beginning of her workweek, evaporated the moment she opened The Gingerbread House for business at nine a.m. A small group of her local regulars had already gathered on the store’s lawn, and all the prime parking spaces contained cars she recognized as belonging to antique dealers and collectors from out of town. Olivia forged a welcoming smile as she held open the front door.
Before the dealers and collectors could reach the store entrance, Olivia slipped past her customers, avoiding eye contact, and escaped to the kitchen. At the worktable, Maddie was piling decorated cookies on a platter. Behind her, the Mr. Coffee spat out its second pot of the morning. The kitchen door slapped shut behind Olivia, and Maddie looked up. Her smile of greeting melted when she saw the look on Olivia’s face.
“You told Lucas, didn’t you? Maddie, how could you?” Olivia began to pace around the kitchen. “The store is filling up with dealers and collectors and plain old busybodies.” She raked her fingers through her hair, which threw her off balance enough to bump into the table.
“Livie, take a deep breath and stand still. You’re bruising yourself and, more important, ruining your hair.” Maddie took a cookie from the platter and held it out to Olivia as she paced past. When Olivia waved it away, Maddie said, “Look, if you think I told Lucas anything about your inheritance, you are wrong. I said not one word about you last night. In fact, I haven’t even talked to Lucas since our quick dinner. It wasn’t easy to get away last night, you know. Lucas wanted me to come over and watch a DVD with him. Something about football bloopers, sounded like fun, but no, I spent the whole evening doing your bidding and awaiting your arrival. I had to fudge and say I was way behind on paying invoices so he wouldn’t think I was blowing him off. I knew he’d understand if it was business.”
Olivia heard the hurt in Maddie’s voice. “Then how . . . ?”
“How do you think?” Maddie’s arched eyebrows and clear disgust said it all.
“Are you saying . . . Tammy?”
Maddie nodded. “Yep, I’m saying Tammy. Mind you, it could have been anyone who was there last night, but really, does anyone else fit the bill? Tammy is the one who spills huge amounts of personal information all over the Internet. She probably checks her Facebook account first thing every morning and last thing before bed. She probably spilled the whole story as soon as she got home last night. Unless she stayed over, in which case she’d use Hugh’s computer.”
The din beyond the kitchen door had reached an insistent level. “I need to get out there,” Olivia said, nodding her head toward the sales area. “We have a business to run.”
“We do, but let me handle it for a while,” Maddie said. She whipped off her apron and lifted the platter of cookies. “You need to figure
out how to answer the questions you’ll be getting. Besides, no one will buy anything if you’re there. I suggest you check Tammy’s Facebook page and see exactly what deeply private thoughts she has shared with her online nearest and dearest.”
“How do I . . . ?”
“I’ll set it up for you,” Maddie said. She slid the plates on the kitchen table. “Come over here and watch me.” She sat down and opened the computer lid. Her fingers flew across the keys, leaving Olivia confused. “Play around with it,” Maddie said. “I’m out of here.”
As she settled at the computer, Olivia felt a surge of resentment. She wanted her life back. She wanted to nestle in the warm, gingerbread world of cookie cutters and decorated cookies and making a living with her best friend. But here she was, hiding from customers and hunched over a Facebook page that had invaded her privacy.
Tammy’s latest most recent entry had been posted at one o’clock that morning:
You will not believe what happened at the will reading. Mostly it was what we expected, Hugh and Edward got most of their mom’s estate, split in half, and so on. But then we found out their mom had added an extra part that said Olivia Greyson—dear friend Livie—got $150,000 AND Clarisse’s whole huge collection of antique cookie cutters!! She’s supposed to use the money for her cookie-cutter store here in town, The Gingerbread House. (A little plug for your store, Livie.)
Of course, Livie thought, this entry was written after Tammy discovered Olivia had “accepted” her Facebook invitation, which would explain the gushing.
A number of responses had been posted throughout the night and into the morning. Olivia began to read:
Lucky lady. She sure knows how to pick her friends.
Yeah, rich ones who are about to kick off.
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
What about that postal carrier? Wasn’t he poisoned by her cookies?
What do you really know about her, anyway? She could be a serial killer.
At that point, Olivia signed off and snapped her computer shut. Her hand pressed hard on the laptop lid as if it might fly open and spew out more accusations against her. Not that it mattered; the damage was done.
There was only one path through this quagmire. Clarisse’s killer and Sam’s attacker—Olivia was convinced they were one and the same—had to be identified and arrested as soon as possible. Somehow she had to convince Sheriff Del. If she couldn’t do so, she and Maddie would have to find the killer themselves, but it would be so much easier if Del would cooperate. Although he would undoubtedly order her to stay out of it, which she couldn’t do.
Olivia wanted to escape out the back and into the alley, but instead she stepped into the store. The Gingerbread House had taken second place for too long, and Maddie needed help. The sales floor teemed with customers. Maybe they were there for the wrong reasons, but publicity sometimes took a strange form.
Maddie stood in front of her, behind the sales counter, moving at warp speed as she rang up and bagged sales. As Olivia moved into the room, she heard the volume of chatter lower, then a whoosh as customers tried to reach her first. She recognized a few Chatterley Heights residents, as well as several antiques dealers and cookie-cutter collectors. At least half the faces were unfamiliar.
A tall, thin woman of about thirty, wearing a tight sweater, skinny jeans, and combat boots reached Olivia first. She stuck out her hand, and said, “Ms. Greyson? I’m Anita Rambert, representing the Rambert Antiques Mall. We’ve never met, but perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
Olivia had heard of her, through Maddie, who had made the rounds of antiques malls when they’d first opened The Gingerbread House. Maddie had described Anita Rambert as a barracuda cookie cutter, all sharp angles and hungry eyes. When she smiled, Olivia noticed her incisors were on the pointy side.
“I’ll get right to the point,” Ms. Rambert said. “I’ll take the Chamberlain collection off your hands for a fair price, in cash. I’ll need to see a complete listing of the cutters, of course, and verification of their authenticity.”
“That’s an interesting offer,” Olivia said, “but at this early stage, I’m not yet considering my—”
“You won’t get a better one, I assure you. I know all the players in the cutter world, and not one of them has sufficient cash on hand to buy the Chamberlain collection, at least from what I’ve heard about it.”
Ms. Rambert had impenetrable eyes that matched the sleek blue-black hair she wore tied back at the nape of her neck. She possessed all the ingredients for exotic beauty, but somehow they formed a forbidding presence.
Since she was almost the same height as Ms. Rambert, Olivia looked straight into those eyes and asked, “Where did you hear about the collection?”
Ms. Rambert’s eyebrows lifted in a startled expression. “On the Internet, of course. It’s tough to keep information about a collection secret, unless the collector is a complete hermit. Unlike some art collectors, cookie-cutter collectors love to share. Really, Ms. Greyson, I’d expect you to know that already.”
“Call me Livie,” Olivia said, pasting a smile across her face.
Olivia glanced over Ms. Rambert’s shoulder to see Maddie waving at her. When they made eye contact, Maddie, who was in the middle of unpacking an upscale professional mixer to show two customers, mouthed, “Help,” and pointed toward the register. Six customers, their arms full of potential purchases, fidgeted and peered around the store looking for help. Olivia excused herself from Ms. Rambert and hurried to the sales counter.
Heather Irwin, the new, fresh-out-of-college librarian for the Chatterley Heights Public Library, stood at the front of the line clutching a dozen individual cookie cutters in her small hands. With evident relief, she dumped them on the counter. While Olivia removed tags from the cutters and rang up the charges, Heather leaned forward and said, “It’s so exciting about you inheriting Ms. Chamberlain’s whole antique cookie-cutter collection. I’ve heard it’s amazing. Would you consider letting the library host an exhibit? It would be great publicity for The Gingerbread House, after all, and maybe more people would think about supporting the library.” Heather’s sweet, young voice tightened in frustration when she mentioned support for the library.
“We’ll see,” Olivia said. “I honestly haven’t had time to take it all in.”
“Really? You mean you didn’t know that Ms. Chamberlain was leaving her—?”
A male voice from the end of the ever-lengthening line called out, “Could we save the chat for later? Some of us have work to get back to.” Must be a dealer, Olivia thought. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d come for the same reason as Anita Rambert—to make an offer for Clarisse’s collection.
Another pile of cookie cutters clattered onto the sales counter. Olivia noticed an animal theme, specifically fish, bones, cats, dogs, rabbits, and one lone ferret. “I decided to leave the pony until later,” said a round-faced young woman. “We’re hoping to get some land outside of town so we can expand.”
“Gwen,” Olivia said with genuine pleasure. Gwen Tucker and her husband Herbie ran the local no-kill animal shelter, Chatterley’s Paws. They were responsible for leading Olivia to the Yorkie rescue website where she’d found Spunky. “I didn’t know you were interested in cookie cutters.”
“I didn’t, either,” Gwen said. “But then I got this idea for making animal treats and decorated cookies as a way to tempt people to come see the animals. If their kids are with them, so much the better. How many parents could say no to bringing home a cat or a dog after watching their kid feed it a treat?”
“Especially parents who are nibbling on decorated cookies themselves,” Olivia said as she wrapped the cutters in tissue paper and slid them into a bag.
“Exactly! I figure this is the perfect time to try out my idea, now that everybody in town is talking about cookies and cookie cutters. What an incredible stroke of luck that you should inherit Ms. Chamberlain’s collection. If it contains any animal figures, would you mind if Herbie a
nd I took pictures of them to post around the shelter? Cookie cutters are such homey things, aren’t they? We thought the pictures and the cookies and treats would put people right in the mood to complete their families with a pet or two.”
Gwen’s request sent Olivia’s mood on another trip down the slide. Everyone seemed so eager to cash in on Clarisse’s death, and Olivia’s own “stroke of luck” had happened for the same reason. She felt a sudden urge to take a shower, pack up the car, and move with Spunky to an undisclosed location.
Avoiding eye contact, Olivia worked through the line of customers in silence. If anyone started to ask a question, she pretended not to hear. By two o’clock, The Gingerbread House began to empty as cars and vans carted off four or five passengers at a time, hoping to beat the worst of the Baltimore and DC rush hours.
With only a few stragglers left in the store, Olivia gestured to Maddie that she was taking a stack of receipts into the kitchen. Once the door closed behind her, Olivia dropped the receipts in a heap on the table, sank into a chair, and let her forehead drop onto her folded arms.
Clarisse’s death and Olivia’s growing conviction it was murder, Sam’s hints about a grandchild, Sam’s possible poisoning, the inheritance from Clarisse—too much had been happening, much too fast. And now she was smack dab in the middle of the mess and well on her way to joining the suspects list.
Olivia took Spunky on a quick run in the alley behind The Gingerbread House, then sped through the receipts. Not a bad take, and the day hadn’t ended. Having finished business, she began to search the Internet for references to the Chamberlain cookie-cutter collection.
When she heard the kitchen door open and close behind her, Olivia called over her shoulder. “Hey Maddie, come here and see what I’ve found.”
Cookie Dough or Die Page 16
