“Good idea. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to drop a hint.” Olivia thought of her mother. She wasn’t eager to put her mother in danger, but if anyone could drop a hint without raising suspicion, it was Ellie Greyson-Meyer.
“Any idea what the six-sided flower is supposed to be?” Maddie asked.
“That one puzzles me. I suppose Clarisse might have used it to represent Jasmine, but it doesn’t seem the best choice. Jasmine flowers have so many petals; that’s why I gave you the eight-sided flower shape instead of the six.”
“Let’s leave it for now and move on.” Maddie started collecting measuring cups and spoons. “I need to move. You talk. I’ll whip up a batch of icing.”
Olivia retrieved her laptop from the desk, brought it to the table, and sank onto a chair. “Maybe we can get some ideas from this.” She lifted the laptop lid to reveal Deputy Cody’s photo of Clarisse’s desk. “See that one?” Olivia pointed to a cutter shape in the lower-left corner. “That looks like Snoopy Dancing.”
“Hallmark, 1971, red plastic,” Maddie said. She cut open a bag of meringue powder and measured out four teaspoons.
“I’m almost positive Clarisse thought of Sam Parnell as Snoopy, like everyone else in town.” Olivia touched the red image on the screen. “She bought this cutter right here, the last time I saw her. I remember she held it in her hand and said something like, ‘So gleeful.’ She was talking to herself, so it was hard to make out.”
“You think she meant Sam or Snoopy?”
“Maybe both. Sam did look pleased with himself when he told me about seeing the word ‘grandchild’ in the private detective’s letter to Clarisse.”
“Vague enough for me,” Maddie said. “Anyway, Snoopy is off to the side in the photo, so Clarisse probably hadn’t thought much about it yet. In fact, look at this gap here.” She drew her finger in a circle around the laptop screen. “It’s like when I work a jigsaw puzzle. First, I group pieces that might go together. Then in the middle I put the pieces that suggest a design to me.”
Olivia arched her eyebrows in surprise.
“What? I can be organized when it’s really important.”
In the interest of time, Olivia let that pass.
Maddie opened a new box of confectioners’ sugar. “I’m only saying, if Clarisse was using cookie cutters to work through a problem, wouldn’t she single out the most important cutters first?”
Olivia zoomed in on the center of the photo. “Actually, you might be on to something. There are three cutters clustered in the middle—the crowned gingerbread boy, the running gingerbread man, and the gingerbread house. Hugh and Edward, maybe? And the Chamberlain home?”
“Which gingerbread man is which brother?” Maddie asked as she added two cups of confectioners’ sugar to the mixing bowl.
Olivia leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her head had begun to ache; time for another dose of ibuprofen. Nevertheless, she stayed put and forced her resistant brain to dredge up any judgments Clarisse had made about her sons. There hadn’t been many. Clarisse had kept their less appealing qualities to herself, perhaps because she hoped Olivia would marry one of them. However, early in their friendship, Clarisse had made a couple of telling comments.
“Once when Clarisse was frustrated with Hugh, she said he expected everything to drop in his lap. He needed to work harder, she said, not depend on his charm to get by. She called it a ‘sense of entitlement.’”
“So Hugh is the boy with the crown,” Maddie said. “Lucas told me last night about when Hugh offered to adjust his loan. Lucas said he acted like it was his duty to take care of his inferiors, like Lucas wasn’t smart enough to handle his own finances. Hugh never said one word about Lucas’s mom and dad, how hard that has been.”
“Noblesse oblige,” Olivia said.
“Enough with the French, Livie. I have trouble with English.”
“Sorry, only you described it perfectly. I’m convinced the crowned boy is Hugh. By the way, did Lucas request those loan concessions?”
“He did not.” Maddie tossed a set of measuring spoons into the sink. “It would never have occurred to him. Hugh came to him, out of the blue.”
“Really. Did Edward know about it?”
“Hugh said that Edward agreed. That’s all I know. Now be quiet while I mix this icing to perfection.”
Olivia relaxed to the familiar sound of a whirring mixer. Her attention drifted among the loose clusters of cookie cutters that surrounded the three central gingerbread shapes. Dancing Snoopy frolicked in the lower-left corner, next to a witch’s hat. If the gleeful Snoopy was Sam Parnell, might the witch’s hat designate someone else who had disappointed Clarisse? Maddie would say the witch had to be Tammy Deacons, and maybe she’d be right.
Four images formed a semicircle along the right side of the photo: a lovely stylized dove, a nutcracker, a rounded shade tree, and two more gingerbread figures—adult woman and little girl. Mother and daughter. Did Clarisse know that Jasmine had given birth to a daughter, or was she guessing?
Olivia wasn’t sure what to make of the dove, nutcracker, and tree. She herself knew that sometimes a certain cookie cutter evoked an emotion, so a dove might simply represent Clarisse’s longing for peace in her family. The tree puzzled Olivia. And a nutcracker . . . She thought back to the nutcracker story. Wasn’t the nutcracker really a prince?
Maddie had finished mixing the royal icing and was collecting little bottles of gel paste food coloring.
“Hey, Maddie, do you remember the nutcracker story?”
“The nutcracker? I’m not sure I ever understood it completely. Too many curses. All I remember is the nutcracker guy was odd looking because he was under an ugly curse, but he was really a handsome prince. Then he does something heroic—like kill the evil mouse king or whatever—but the beautiful princess rejects him because he’s ugly. Those beautiful princesses were mighty full of themselves, you know? Anyway, I think she changes her mind in the end, and the prince turns handsome again, and they live happily ever after in dolly land.”
“I’m impressed,” Olivia said. “Although I still wonder what the nutcracker meant to Clarisse. It must be related somehow to Hugh or Edward, or maybe even Martin.”
Maddie didn’t respond. She stood hunched over a small bowl, counting drops of coloring as they fell into a small container of icing.
If only she had a computer program for reading minds, Olivia thought. No, that would be scary. Only four more recognizable images to go, spread from the upper part of the photo and around the upper-left corner: coffin, baby carriage, small angel, and six-sided flower. Three more cutter shapes were partially obscured by shadows. One looked like the bottom of an apple or maybe a bell pepper. Next to it might be a flower or grass blowing in the wind—or a head with hair sticking out. Along the top-left edge, a bit of design could be part of a shield or coat of arms. Or almost anything.
Olivia leaned back and took a long, slow breath. Nice. She breathed in again, but her exhale erupted into a startled cry when she heard a loud pounding on the door to the alley.
“Déjà vu all over again,” Olivia said when she saw Maddie bolt upright, holding a dropper of food coloring.
“Now that French I understand,” Maddie said.
“Hey, you kids in there?” It was Del’s voice.
“What are the odds?” Maddie said as she opened the door.
Del had bags under his eyes and a day’s growth of stubble. He slid out of his jacket and slung it over a chair back. He caught sight of the photo on Olivia’s computer screen, then glanced over the sea of cookies on the kitchen table. “So you’re really going ahead with this memorial tomorrow? I can’t talk you out of it?”
“Yes, we are,” said Maddie. “And no, you can’t even threaten us out of it.”
“Then I have no choice. I can’t let you kids do this all on your own. It’s too dangerous.” He gave Olivia a hard stare. “I’ll be here the whole time, keeping a close eye on your guests.�
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“You’ll scare them off,” Olivia said. “You can come as a guest, but you can’t be in uniform or carry a gun. And you’ll have to give a speech about Clarisse.”
“Livie, come on, I can’t—”
“Teasing. But you can’t wear a gun.”
Del sighed loudly and sank into a chair. “Cody will be here, out of sight. Preferably in the kitchen, so I can give him a whistle if anything happens. And he will most definitely have his weapon.”
Maddie gave a nod of approval, and Olivia said, “All right, we can live with that. Have you found out anything about Jasmine?”
Del ran his fingers through his hair, which explained its condition. “This is so wrong. I should be protecting you, not helping you with some harebrained—”
“Hey, could we move on? I’m tired, everything hurts, and I can’t rest until I know who killed my friend. So what have you got?”
Maddie and Del both stared at her in mute astonishment while Olivia swallowed an ibuprofen. Del cleared his throat and said, “Your information was very helpful. I contacted the Montgomery County PD, talked to a buddy of mine in the Cold Case Squad. Don’t ask me how, but Roberta spent her Saturday tracing Jasmine back to a little town in southern Ohio. Parents deceased. And here’s the kicker—Jasmine was supposed to be dead, too. Died in a car crash fourteen years ago.”
“McGonigle, Ohio, right?” Maddie said. “I found that information online. Wow, I’m good.”
“Jasmine’s car went off a mountain road and burned,” Del said. “Charred remains of a young woman inside. The authorities figured it was Jasmine and closed the case.”
Olivia’s latest dose of ibuprofen must have kicked in, because she felt better. “How did you determine that our Jasmine was the real one?”
“Dental records. Roberta managed to track down Jasmine’s childhood dentist. He faxed us her records, up to age seventeen. The match was convincing. We may never know who died in Jasmine’s car, or how she got there, but at least we know where Jasmine herself died.”
“Do we know how?” Olivia asked.
“That’s tougher. She was found near some rocks, but it was hard to determine if she fell, jumped, was pushed, or even whether she died elsewhere.” Del slung his jacket over his shoulder. “Gotta get back.”
Olivia refreshed her computer screen and stared at Clarisse’s cookie cutters. “The autopsy revealed Jasmine had given birth. I’m willing to bet she had a daughter.” She pointed to the gingerbread woman and girl. “There’s no mother and son here, only a mother and daughter. Can your friend check with hospitals?”
“That would take a long time. We don’t know when Jasmine gave birth. She might have used another name or given birth at home. A name would help.”
“What about Faith, the name on the note to Clarisse that I gave you?”
“Still a long, long shot. If this Faith was a friend of hers, then maybe Jasmine used her ID at a hospital, but we need a last name.” With his hand on the doorknob, Del said, “Cody and I will be here tomorrow morning at eleven. Get some sleep.”
“I’ll probably still be decorating cookies at eleven,” Maddie said.
Olivia didn’t answer. She was staring at her computer screen, trying to tease out a thought. She heard the alley door shut behind Del, but it barely registered.
“Maddie, come look at this.” Olivia pointed toward the left corner of the photo on her screen, then over to the right side.
“What?” Maddie pulled over a chair.
“Clarisse spoke some French, you know. A little, anyway. You see this tree shape, right above the gingerbread mother and daughter? What if Clarisse was trying to find a cutter that represented a forest?”
“You’ve totally lost me.” With an air of boredom, Maddie began poking loose curls back under her bandanna.
“Dubois. The name Dubois loosely translates as ‘of the wood’ or ‘of the forest.’”
Maddie dragged over a chair. “You think ‘tree’ is as close to ‘forest’ as Clarisse could get? That would imply the gingerbread woman is Jasmine Dubois, and the girl is her daughter, whose first name we don’t know.”
“Except . . .” Olivia pointed at the far left side of the screen. “What does that look like to you?”
Maddie twisted her head in several directions, trying to find an angle that made sense of the partial image. “It looks sort of familiar. Not a flower shape, at least I don’t think so. Can you zoom in a bit?” She touched the screen and traced the outline as best she could. “For some reason it reminds me of my first high school boyfriend, Matt.”
“You mean Matt the do-gooder? The one who left you on the curb while he helped any woman over thirty across the street?”
“That’s the one.”
“Hang on.” Olivia jumped up and rushed over to the desk, moving far too fast for someone who’d recently wrecked her car. She’d pay for it, but she didn’t care. She grabbed her list of Clarisse’s entire cookie cutter collection and flipped through it. “Yep, there it is,” she said, poking a triumphant finger at one name.
“Hold still, will you?” Maddie followed Olivia’s finger and read, “‘Boy Scout insignia.’ There’s a Boy Scout cookie cutter?”
“Clarisse had this handmade when Hugh was a Boy Scout, so she could bake cookies for his troop. Well, so Bertha could bake them. Clarisse showed me a photo of a plate piled with cookies, all shaped and decorated like the Boy Scout insignia.”
“Okay,” Maddie said, “but what startling revelation does this lead to?”
Olivia quickly found a website that showed the Boy Scout insignia in its entirety. “What is that shape called?”
“Oh. It’s another French thing, isn’t it?”
“It’s a fleur-de-lis.”
“Livie, don’t you dare ask me to guess what that means, or I swear—”
“Fleur means ‘flower,’” Olivia said. “And ‘lis’ means ‘lily.’”
A broad smile plumped Maddie’s cheeks as she stared at the screen. “I knew I’d seen that somewhere before.”
“I just told you—”
“No, not the fleur whatever, I mean that one.” Maddie poked her finger at the six-sided flower to the right of the fleur-de-lis. She snatched the laptop off the table and put it on her lap. Her fingers flew until she pulled up the website of an online cookie-cutter vendor. “Look at that.” She turned the screen toward Olivia.
And there it was, a six-sided copper cutter with pointed petals, labeled “lily flower.” On Clarisse’s list, the cutter was labeled simply “six-sided flower.” Olivia wondered if Clarisse had obscured the name to protect her grandchild.
“I need your cell,” Olivia said. When Maddie dug it out of her coat pocket and handed it to her, Olivia punched in a number. “Del? I may have something for you. Lily.”
“The flower?” Del sounded groggy.
“Also a name. A flower name, like Jasmine. I think the child’s name is Lily.”
“What makes you think so?”
“It’s complicated, I’ll explain later, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.”
“Okay, I’ll . . .” Del yawned. “I’ll call Roberta. Maybe it’ll help. Bye.” The telephone clunked and went silent.
Olivia handed the phone back to Maddie. “I hope our Lily doesn’t show up in an obituary.”
Chapter Twenty-four
The next morning as Olivia and Maddie finished readying The Gingerbread House for Clarisse Chamberlain’s memorial, storm clouds began rolling in. Sheriff Del and Deputy Cody had already arrived. Cody had taken his position in the store kitchen, with the door slightly ajar. He would be the only one armed.
“Perfect,” Maddie said, shutting the windows against the first spatter of raindrops. “It’s a dark and stormy afternoon.”
Olivia was so keyed up, she giggled.
Ellie and Jason Greyson arrived, shaking off raindrops. Ellie peeled her raincoat off an outfit that was unique yet appropriate—a tunic and loose pants of black si
lk with glistening silver thread work. A silver silk scarf draped loosely around her neck and over a shoulder. A single braid hung down her back, secured with a thin black ribbon.
Jason wore his best black jeans.
“Fill me in on my role, dear,” Ellie said with a gentle tug at Olivia’s arm.
“For this experiment to work, “Olivia said, “the guests need to understand what the cookie shapes are. You could drop a subtle hint here and there.”
“I am the soul of subtlety.”
Olivia led her mother to the cookbook nook, where Maddie had cleared space on a table by moving a display of pie-baking equipment to the main sales room. In its place was a large metal tray holding one each of the identifiable cookie shapes found in the photo of Clarisse’s desk. They’d given up on two shapes.
“Never mind the icing colors,” Olivia said. “First, tell me what you think the shapes represent.”
Ellie pointed a silvery polished nail. “That is an angel in the upper-left corner. Then a baby carriage, a coffin, a bird of some sort?”
“A dove.”
“Of course.” Ellie hesitated at the next shape. “Oh, a nutcracker. And that must be a tree, despite the bright red trunk. Oh, a gingerbread woman and little girl. I grew up with a set like that. I wonder what happened to it.”
“Time marches on, Mother.”
“Yes, dear. Over here we have a witch’s hat, that darling Dancing Snoopy with purple fur, a flower of some type. . . .”
“That’s an important one,” Olivia said. “It’s meant to be a lily.”
“Oh yes, I see it now. And the flower next to it?”
“A jasmine flower.”
“Ah. So Lily is . . . ?”
“We think Lily is Jasmine Dubois’s daughter. You mustn’t say that to anyone, but do observe reactions.”
“Of course.” With a troubled glance, Ellie asked, “Are these two lovely flowers still blooming, do you know?”
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