Amber attacked the food as if she hadn’t had a decent meal for weeks. No one said anything until she was done.
“I guess I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” Amber said when she was through.
Sean nodded. “Few of us do,” he commented.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that means,” Amber told him.
Sean laughed. “I guess what I’m saying is that few of us realize how angry or hungry or happy we are at the time we’re feeling those emotions. Forget it,” he said, seeing Amber’s blank look.
She frowned and started twirling one of her pigtails around her finger. “I really messed up, didn’t I?” Amber said.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Bernie said.
“Are you going to fire me?” Amber asked.
Libby answered. “Fire you? No. Kill you? Yes. . . . I’m kidding,” she said when she saw the panic in Amber’s eyes.
“I understand if you would want to,” Amber said, looking from Bernie to Libby and back again.
“Kill you?” Bernie asked sweetly.
“Fire me,” Amber replied.
“We’re not firing you,” Bernie said. “For one thing if we did, we’d be stuck with George.”
“We don’t want to think about that,” Libby told her.
Amber was silent for a minute. Then she said, “What if Teresa calls the cops on me like she told me she was going to do?”
“So what if she does?” Libby said. “The worst that would happen is that you’d get a restraining order slapped on you.”
Amber’s eyes blazed. “I should get one against her. She killed my aunt.”
“You have no proof of that,” Sean pointed out. “None at all.”
Amber glared at him. “I would have had if your daughters hadn’t dragged me away,”
“No,” Bernie said. “You would have been arrested if I hadn’t dragged you away.”
Amber slouched down in her seat. “This just sucks,” she said.
“Yes, it does,” Sean agreed.
“So you’re telling me there’s nothing I . . .”
“We,” Bernie corrected.
“Fine. Nothing we can do about this?” Amber demanded of Sean.
“No. I’m not telling you that at all,” Sean told her.
“Then what are you saying?” Amber asked him.
“Why don’t you tell us what you’ve found out,” Sean replied, “and then I’ll tell you what I think we should do. Note the pronoun we. The we refers to Bernie, Libby, and myself.”
“I get it,” Amber said.
“I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page,” Sean said.
“We are,” Amber said. And she began to talk.
She started with her meeting with Rose in the parking lot and ended with her drive to Teresa’s. Sean, Bernie, and Libby listened attentively to what Amber had to say. She talked for fifteen minutes and no one interrupted. Finally, when Amber was done, Bernie asked her why she was so sure that Teresa had her aunt’s recipes.
“Because,” Amber spluttered, “Lillian told me that she had them. That she had bought them from Pearl. That’s why.”
“She could have been lying, you know,” Bernie pointed out.
“Why would she do that?” Amber asked.
“Tell me you’re kidding me,” Bernie told her.
“Several reasons,” Libby responded when Amber didn’t answer, and she began ticking them off on her fingers. “She could be covering for herself. She could be covering for someone else. She could be getting even with someone else.”
“Oh, God.” Amber dropped her head in her hands. “I don’t know what to think anymore,” she moaned. “I feel as if I’m going around and around in circles. Everyone tells me something different.”
“I know the feeling,” Libby said gloomily.
Sean took a last sip of hot chocolate and gently set his cup down on his saucer. “Maybe we need to think about this in a different way,” he suggested.
Amber raised her head. “How?” she challenged.
“Okay,” Sean began. “Let’s start by reviewing what we know. Correct me if I’m wrong, but so far none of us have come up with anything substantial. The only thing we’ve learned is that all of the women who belong to the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club had grievances against Millie, grievances that have been simmering under the surface for a long time. Then the circus comes to town—aka Baking for Life—and all hell breaks loose. Agreed?” Sean said, looking around the room.
“Agreed,” Bernie, Libby, and Amber echoed.
“Now,” Sean continued, “it’s also important to remember that what happened to Millie may not have started out that way. It may have started off as a way to delay Millie, maybe rattle her a little so she wasn’t at her best at the bake-off.”
“Or a way to steal her cookies,” Amber said.
“That too,” Sean agreed. “Here’s the way I see it. As of right now we have a crime that’s not officially a crime and seven ladies who categorically deny they had anything to do with Millie’s death and the stealing of her recipes.” He looked around at the three women. “Am I right?” he asked.
“You know you are,” Libby responded.
“That was a rhetorical question,” Sean told her.
“Sorry,” Libby murmured and drank a little more of her hot chocolate.
“All of these women have motives of one kind or another, and to make things even more difficult,” Sean continued, “we have no means to compel any one of those ladies to talk. We can’t arrest them, and we can’t break into their houses and see if they have Millie’s recipes hidden somewhere.”
“We could,” Bernie said, a dreamy look coming into her eyes.
“I guess you could,” Sean responded. “However, you’re not going to.”
Bernie brushed a crumb of cinnamon toast off her lip. “I never said I was going to. I was talking theoretically.”
“Good,” Sean said. “Because aside from everything else, we don’t know that those recipes are in their houses. Whoever has them might have buried them someplace or trashed them, for all you know. In fact, we don’t even know that the person who has the recipes—if anyone does—is the person who set up the deer target and engineered Millie’s death. The two things might be completely separate events.”
“So what are you suggesting, Mr. Simmons?” Amber said, leaning forward. “That we give up?”
“Not at all,” Sean replied. “I’m suggesting that we go about this a different way.”
Amber leaned back on the sofa and folded her arms across her chest. “Like how?”
“Well, I find that when you get into a fix like this, it’s always good to go back to the beginning.”
“Meaning?” Libby asked.
“Meaning,” Sean said, “that we need to know why Baking for Life came to this town and chose these women to be contestants.”
“You think that’s relevant?” Bernie asked.
“At this point, I think everything is relevant,” Sean said. “The unexplored avenue is the avenue that might point us in the right direction.”
“You may be right,” Bernie conceded. “So I guess we should talk to Penelope and see what we can find out. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Sean said. “Now we come to the manner of Millie’s death and the mysterious vanishing deer target.”
“Sounds like a bad Victorian novel,” Bernie quipped.
Her dad shot her a look, and she became quiet. “Why do I say mysterious?” he pontificated. “I say mysterious because this is something that most ladies of a certain age, at least these ladies, don’t have lying around in their garages. It would be a very uncommon item unless their husbands hunted. But they don’t have husbands, and the ones that did have spouses had spouses that didn’t hunt.
“So did someone borrow the target? Where did it come from? There are four stores in the area that sell sporting goods. It might be instructive if one of us visited them and asked if anyone rememb
ered selling a deer target to one of our ladies.”
“Makes sense to me,” Amber said.
“Definitely worth a shot,” Libby agreed.
“There’s something else,” Sean said, pausing to take another bite of cinnamon toast. “How did whoever did this set the target up? That thing weighs a fair amount and is awkward to carry, and yet we’re talking about someone setting it up, tying it off, and coming back and removing it. I just can’t see one of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club brigade doing that,” Sean said. “They’re too old.”
“How ageist,” Bernie said, smiling.
“But true,” Sean said. “Listen, if I can’t be ageist, who can?”
“Okay, but Rose is still in pretty good shape,” Bernie countered. “I bet she could do it.”
“And Pearl and Sheila definitely have the heft,” Libby added.
“Heft does not equal muscle,” Sean pointed out. “As for Rose, she’s limber, I’ll grant you that. But strong enough for this? Probably not.”
“So what are you saying?” Amber asked Sean.
“I’m saying that this was probably a two-person job,” Sean answered. “The question is which two ladies did it?”
No one said anything, because no one had an answer.
“Anything else?” Libby asked.
“Yes, there is,” Sean replied. “Did anyone check out the story of the person who reported the accident?”
Libby and Bernie looked at each other.
“Ah, no,” Bernie said.
“Well, if I were you I’d get over to the Minces and talk to them tomorrow.”
“But Matt already told us what happened,” Libby said.
“This is called double-checking,” Sean told her.
Libby sighed. “Fine,” she said.
“Hey,” Sean told her, “far be it from me to . . .”
Libby interrupted. “No. You’re right, Dad,” she said.
“As per usual,” Sean couldn’t resist saying. He turned and directed his gaze at Amber. “Now we come to the last and, to my mind, the most interesting question.” He paused for dramatic effect, then said, “Amber, perhaps you would be kind enough to tell us where the recipe for Millie’s Majestic Meltaways is?”
Amber reacted as if she’d been punched. “You’re looking at me as if you think I have it,” she cried, sticking her jaw out.
“That’s because I think you do,” Sean replied in a pleasantly conversational tone.
Bernie and Libby looked startled.
“Is that for real?” Bernie said.
“I think so,” Sean said.
“Think!” Libby exclaimed.
“Yes, think,” Sean replied. “Actually, I’m fairly sure.”
“How can you say that?” Amber demanded.
Sean smiled. “I can say it, my dear, because I believe it’s the truth. The reason I’m saying that is because you haven’t mentioned Millie’s Majestic Meltaways at all recently, whereas before that was practically all you talked about. Now you keep talking about Millie’s recipe book. From what I can make out, none of the ladies of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club are talking about it either, a fact that leads me to conclude that they think it’s off the table, to coin a modern-day expression.”
“That’s right,” Libby said, jumping into the conversational fray. “Now that you mention it, Dad, I haven’t heard Amber or anyone else say anything about it.”
Then Bernie spoke. “That means you either don’t care or you have it. Which is it, Amber?” When Amber didn’t say anything, she continued. “I don’t buy that you don’t care. You certainly thought that recipe was important enough when you had us go running off to Millie’s house to find it.” Bernie stopped talking when another thought occurred to her. “Did you take the recipe for your aunt’s Meltaways?” she asked Amber. “Did you stage that scene in Millie’s kitchen to make it look as if a robbery had taken place?”
Amber narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped at Bernie. “Why would I do that?”
“Why indeed,” Bernie said. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
Sean leaned forward. “Tell us,” he urged Amber. “You won’t get into trouble.”
Amber looked at Sean, Bernie, and Libby and then studied the seam on the arm of the sofa she was sitting on. “Everyone will be mad at me,” she murmured.
“Everyone will be madder at you if you don’t,” Sean told her.
Amber chewed on one of her fingernails for a moment. “I have most of the recipe,” she finally said, mumbling into her hand.
“I don’t understand,” Libby said.
“I talked to Penelope and . . .”
“You talked to Penelope,” Bernie exclaimed. “She’s been calling us every half hour demanding to know if we’d heard from you.”
Amber hunched her shoulders and leaned forward. “Well, I wouldn’t tell her where I was, so I guess she was trying to find out if you knew anything,” she said.
“What does all this have to do with Penelope?” Sean asked.
“Well, she wanted me to be on the show and . . .” Amber stopped.
“We know that. Go on,” Bernie urged.
“She wanted me to bake Millie’s Meltaways.” Amber stopped talking again.
“Tell us,” Sean repeated, nodding encouragingly.
“I told her I didn’t know where the recipe was, and she told me she had overheard someone saying that Millie had hid an extra copy in her composting bin. Only they had looked and it wasn’t there.”
“Did Penelope remember who said it?” Libby asked.
“She mentioned Alma,” Amber said.
“So if it wasn’t there, how did you find it?” Sean asked.
Amber looked up, allowing herself a self-satisfied grin. “I remembered that Millie had two composting bins. One was in the garage, and the other one was out in the garden. Alma must have looked in the garage. If you didn’t already know that there was a composting bin in the garden, you would never have seen it. It was covered with a tarp, and there was snow on top of the tarp.”
“So you have most of the recipe?” Libby asked.
“Yes. Some animal nibbled part of the bottom half of the paper away, but I think I can recreate the last couple of steps and the baking time,” Amber said. She touched her nose ring.
“So why didn’t you tell us?” Libby asked Amber.
Amber twisted her hands together, then touched her nose ring again. “Penelope didn’t want me to tell you. She didn’t want me to tell anyone. She wanted it to be a surprise. She said it would be really cool if I just walked on the show and told everyone that I was taking my aunt’s place. That that would be good theater and would help the show’s ratings. She was going to pay me. How cool is that?” She asked Libby and Bernie.
“Pretty cool, I guess,” Bernie conceded.
“She said that maybe someone would notice me and I could get on some more TV shows because I had presence. She even said she’d ask the person who was responsible for what happened to Aunt Millie to come forward. That she thought she knew who she was. But that it had to be a secret because she didn’t want this person to know. She wanted to catch the expression on their face when she named them.”
Bernie’s face grew dark. “I really am going to kill Penelope,” she muttered.
“But then,” Amber continued explaining, “I wasn’t sure that I believed her.”
“Good call,” Sean interjected.
Amber flashed him a brief smile. “Especially about knowing who killed Aunt Millie. So I decided to do some investigating on my own. I just figured if I could find my aunt’s recipes, that would lead me to who killed her.” She slumped down in the sofa and ran a finger along its arm. “Guess I should have talked to you guys, huh?”
“Guess you should have,” Bernie said. She stifled a yawn. She was suddenly exhausted. The relief at finding Amber was making her crash, she thought. She hadn’t realized just how tense she’d been. “So you’ve figu
red out the recipe?” Bernie asked Amber.
“Yeah,” Amber replied, sounding more definite than she had a moment ago. “At least, I think I have. I’m pretty sure I know what brand of chocolate Millie was using.”
“That’s a big step,” Bernie said, “especially when you consider what’s on the market these days.”
“And I think I know what kind of shortening she was going to use.”
“Butter?” asked Bernie.
“Nope,” said Amber.
“Oil?” guessed Libby.
Amber shook her head.
“Crisco?” Bernie asked.
Amber shook her head. “Not even close.”
“Not lard, I hope,” Libby said.
Amber laughed. “Hardly.”
“Then what?” Libby asked, and then she amended herself. “No. Don’t tell us,” she said, “if you’re going to be in the show.”
Amber flashed her a sheepish smile. “I’d like to be, if it’s okay with you. I don’t want to cost you guys any more hassle.”
“It’s okay with me,” Libby said.
“And me,” said Bernie. “As long as you leave the investigating to us.”
Amber didn’t say anything.
“Deal?” Bernie prodded.
Amber thought for another minute. “Deal,” she finally said.
“Good,” Libby said, and she handed Amber the keys to Mike’s car and told her to go home.
“So what do you think?” Bernie asked her dad and sister after Amber had left. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
Sean nodded. “Mostly, I think she is.”
Bernie got up and began clearing off the table. “Well, I know one of the things I’m doing tomorrow.”
“Make the meringue mushrooms for the bûches de Noël?” Libby asked.
“Besides that,” Bernie said. “I’m going to have a little chat with Penelope. That’s what I’m going to do.”
A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes) Page 23
