Dead Men Don't Eat Cookies

by Virginia Lowell

Much as she cherished her sleep, Olivia awakened at six o’clock on Tuesday morning feeling revved up for work. She was well aware that not everyone looked forward to the work week, but not everyone was lucky enough to run a store like The Gingerbread House. Spunky, whose furry little head emerged from a fold in the blanket, looked less enthusiastic. The covers were warm, the bedroom was not.

  “Come on, Spunks, it’s Tuesday. You can nap all day downstairs in the store. You love your chair by the front window, remember? The adoration, the ear rubs, the extra treats . . .”

  When he heard the word “treats,” Spunky wriggled out of the bedclothes and hopped to his little paws.

  “Good boy.” Olivia pulled a long sweatshirt over her pajamas and took her pup downstairs for a quick, chilly visit to the side yard. Spunky finished his business with unusual efficiency and declined a run around the property.

  Olivia had intended to return upstairs to her apartment for a shower and change of clothes before unlocking the store, but when she entered the foyer, the aroma of freshly baked lemon sugar cookies floated under the door of The Gingerbread House. “What do you think, Spunks? Should we stop to visit Maddie? Lucky thing I keep a supply of kibbles in the store kitchen.” Spunky would want to eat in the kitchen with his two favorite humans, but the health department disapproved. Feeding him breakfast in the sales area would keep him content for a while.

  As soon as Olivia opened the door of the store, Spunky slid inside. He headed directly for the cookbook nook, where he usually began his morning inspection. While her little guard Yorkie was happily distracted, Olivia opened the kitchen door to a rush of warm, sweet air. Maddie was in constant motion, as always. She sang snatches of whatever song her earbuds piped into her ears and swayed in time with the music. Somehow, her hands remained steady enough to swirl dusty rose royal icing into a perfect scalloped pattern around the outer edge of a round cutout cookie. However, Maddie’s perfect aim was limited to icing—flour dusted her bouncy red hair, and a glob of excess cookie dough rested on her shoulder.

  Olivia admitted to herself that her mother was right. Maddie would be the perfect choice to teach the cookie decorating classes at Ellie’s future arts and crafts school. Olivia was good, but not that good. Besides, who could resist Maddie’s exuberance?

  “Hey, girlfriend.” Maddie capped her pastry bag and removed her earbuds. “You’re up uncommonly early. Although I notice you’re still in your jammies, such as they are, and you have yet to brush your hair.”

  “Or my teeth,” Olivia said. “Spunky and I made a brief visit to the side yard. I thought I’d feed him breakfast out on the sales floor, while I go back upstairs and make myself reasonably presentable.”

  “Not until you’ve told me about your dinner with Del last night.” Maddie refilled her coffee cup and fixed a cup for Olivia. “Want a cookie for breakfast?”

  “No, thanks.” Olivia sipped her coffee and felt the warmth flow through her. “I think I’ll hold off on sugar for, oh, maybe an hour.”

  “Such willpower.” Maddie hiked herself up onto the counter, from where she could swing her legs. “So, back to your dinner with Del . . . What did he say about the bones?”

  “Wait two seconds.” Olivia opened a canister and scooped out some kibbles, which she poured into a small bowl. She slipped out to the sales floor and headed toward Spunky’s chair, an antique with a padded seat, located in front of the large front window so the vigilant Yorkie could keep an eye on both the store and the porch. However, Spunky wasn’t there.

  “Spunks?” Olivia called. Spunky slid out from behind the heavy front curtain. “Oh, there you are,” Olivia said. “Are the squirrels invading the porch again?” Spunky’s nails tapped on the floor as he scurried toward his breakfast. Once his face disappeared into the bowl, Olivia shifted the edge of the heavy curtain and peered out at the Gingerbread House porch. She saw nothing amiss. She told herself that finding one body on the porch didn’t mean more would follow. She returned to the kitchen, trying to repress her lingering anxiety.

  Maddie was back at work piping scallops on her round cut sugar cookies, this time with violet icing. She paused and glanced up as Olivia closed the kitchen door. “Speak,” Maddie said. “Piping this icing design takes no concentration whatsoever.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Olivia relaxed on a kitchen chair. “I have trouble making perfect scallops time after time. Those cookies look wonderful. Did you tint the dough?”

  “Yep,” Maddie said without looking up. “Pale yellow works well with violet, don’t you think?”

  Olivia answered with an extended sigh.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, eat one,” Maddie said. “What’s the point of running a store filled with everything cookie if you never indulge?”

  “Can’t argue with that.” Olivia bit into a cookie and sighed again, this time with pleasure. While she nibbled, she told Maddie about her dinner conversation with Del, minus the personal parts.

  Maddie glanced up in midscallop. “You left out the personal parts, didn’t you? Never mind, I’ll let it go this time, but only because I desperately wanted to hear what Del had to say about those bones.” As she spoke, Maddie smoothly completed the interrupted scallop curve and began icing another. “It sounds as if he is taking the bones more seriously than the crime lab is. And yes, I do know the lab is always overwhelmed with more immediate cases . . . which is okay with me because it means we can investigate without too much interference from those pesky professionals.”

  “Except Del is a professional, and he certainly sounded interested in this case,” Olivia said. “Although I wouldn’t call Del pesky. He does seem more relaxed than he usually is about our avid curiosity. He didn’t tell me to back off and mind my own business, though he sort of hinted. Of course, his casual attitude could change quickly if this turns out to be a murder. Especially if living, breathing, weapon-toting murder suspects begin to emerge.”

  Maddie capped her pastry bag and put it on the kitchen counter. “The cookie decorating is hereby finished for the morning.” She stretched her arms toward the ceiling, then checked the clock above the sink. “It is 7:23 a.m., which gives us at least an hour to begin our investigation. Now, don’t argue, Livie. You can shower later, and I can open the store. Tuesdays are usually slow, anyway.”

  “Are you sure you can stand being in the same room with me before I shower?”

  “I’ll try, in the interests of the murder investigation.” Maddie gathered up the tiny bottles of gel food coloring she’d used for the icing. “I’ll simply focus on the lingering aroma of lemon sugar cookies.”

  “Such dedication,” Olivia murmured.

  “Why don’t you tidy up the kitchen, while I power up the laptop. I have a couple ideas for online searches that might help us.”

  “I’ll clean up in a minute,” Olivia said. “First I need to check on Spunky and retrieve his breakfast bowl, which I’m sure is empty and licked clean by now.” When she entered the sales floor and headed toward Spunky’s chair, the little Yorkie opened one eye. He closed it again when he noted the absence of doggy treats in her hand. “Wise choice, Spunks,” Olivia said as she massaged his soft, sensitive ears.

  Spunky sighed.

  “Sleep while you can, little one,” Olivia said. “Your adoring fans will arrive in about an hour, and they will expect you to be perky. It takes energy to be adorable.”

  The kitchen door opened, bringing with it a hint of lemony sweetness. Maddie’s head peeked around the edge of the door. “Livie? Is that you muttering to yourself?”

  “I do not mutter.” Olivia gave her pup a final pat and picked up his empty bowl. She headed toward the kitchen, dodging display tables as she navigated the sales floor. “I was merely conversing quietly with Spunky. He has sensitive hearing.” A strip of light from the kitchen sparkled off a cookie cutter mobile as it stirred in the air currents. “I love t
his time of morning,” Olivia said. “The store feels magical, as if we were in the middle of a fairy tale.”

  “Luckily, I’ve turned off the oven,” Maddie said, “so we won’t be trapped with Hansel and Gretel in the evil witch’s kitchen. Now I think of it, most fairy tales felt dark and disturbing to me when I was a kid. I wasn’t always tough as over-baked cookies, you know. Aunt Sadie used to ask me to read fairy tales to her—you know, to make it fun for me to practice reading—but she stopped because they gave me nightmares.”

  As she followed Maddie into the kitchen, Olivia asked, “Was that soon after . . . ?”

  “After my parents died?” Maddie’s forehead puckered in thought. “Now that you mention it, you’re right. Right after the accident, I went through a quiet, sensitive phase. You and I had just met.”

  “I remember, though.” Olivia poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “You seemed shy at first, but eventually the boisterous Maddie emerged. At ten, I didn’t think much about it.”

  Maddie sat at the kitchen table and opened a laptop Olivia had never seen before. “Time for some fun,” Maddie said, “which is something we boisterous folk do especially well. And before you ask, yes, I splurged on a new, faster laptop. Let’s see what we can dig up on the not-so-recently deceased and his less-than-loving family.”

  While she waited, Olivia checked the icing on Maddie’s freshly made decorated cookies. It hadn’t hardened. She arranged a single layer on a large platter. Later, if the icing had hardened enough, she would pile the plate high with cookies, which would disappear soon after she placed them next to the coffee urn on the treats table.

  Olivia dug through the stuffed freezer to locate the container of ground coffee. She was about to measure enough for the store’s large coffee urn when Maddie let out a whoop.

  “I am so very good at computer research,” Maddie said.

  “And so very modest, too,” Olivia murmured.

  “Okay, here’s what I’ve found out so far.” Maddie turned her laptop sideways so Olivia could read the screen, though she had no clue what she was seeing. The print on the screen was unusually small and faint. “I know this isn’t your favorite activity,” Maddie said, “so I shall interpret for you. The person who posted this piece is sort of an electronic age version of the old-fashioned neighborhood gossip . . . an under-appreciated role, in my humble opinion, and not to be confused with the nasty editor of a certain small town newspaper. I will say no more.”

  Olivia topped off her coffee and pulled a chair next to Maddie. “Why is the print so small?”

  “I’m not sure,” Maddie said. “Maybe she—or he, I suppose—is trying to create a blog that looks like whispering. You know, sort of like a neighbor whispering gossip to someone over a fence. Or, more likely, it’s meant to discourage casual readers. The posts are hard to read, and the blog link is just a string of nonsense, so outsiders probably wouldn’t drop in to read posts, let alone take the time to enlarge the print. This is probably aimed at a select group of visitors who have shared the link with each other. Although if I found it, so can others. Of course, I am not just any Internet explorer.” Maddie zoomed in on the post, which made it more readable.

  “Wow,” said Olivia as she read through the post. “This makes Binnie Sloan look like an amateur. It says here that Crystal was already involved with Robbie Quinn, her second husband, before Kenny Vayle’s disappearance. And Kenny was still living at home, trying to stay sober. According to Ida, Crystal was seeing another guy in between Kenny and Robbie.” Olivia summarized Ida’s story about Crystal’s brief second so-called marriage.

  “This is making me dizzy,” Maddie said.

  “All this must have been incredibly painful and confusing for Alicia. Wasn’t she in her teens?” Olivia skimmed ahead, looking for some mention of the young woman’s age at the time of the post.

  “Alicia was thirteen,” Maddie said. “It says so at the end of the post. That means Crystal was stringing along maybe three men for a number of years. Incredible.”

  “Unless these are all lies,” Olivia said.

  “A distinct possibility.” Maddie stretched her arms above her head. “There are several posts following this one, most of which hint at dirt on other neighbors. Months later, the blogger returns to the Vayle family. That one is even more interesting.” Maddie scrolled through the blog until she came to a post that contained a photo.

  “That looks like a young Alicia,” Olivia said pointing at the girl in the photo.

  “So that smiling man might be her father, Kenny Vayle. If so, it’s the only picture of him I’ve seen in this blog.” Maddie tapped her finger on the screen. “That looks like a hand on Alicia’s shoulder. So is Kenny posing for an affectionate father-daughter photo? Why would this blogger include a positive image of them?”

  “Kenny may have a smile plastered on his face, but look at his eyes,” Olivia said. “Do they look unfocused to you? He seems to be looking beyond the camera.”

  Maddie leaned closer to the screen. “I see what you mean. It’s like he’s staring off into space. And his hair . . . part of it is sticking out as if the wind were lifting it up, but Alicia’s hair is lying perfectly flat. I’m thinking that man was drunk.”

  “Or on drugs, I suppose,” Olivia said. “Not that I could tell the difference.”

  “Either way, his brain would have been mush.” Maddie hopped out of her chair and gravitated toward the plate of decorated cookies. She picked up a round cookie decorated with violet scallops. “I’ll never understand why anyone would turn to drugs when there are cookies in the world.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Olivia said. “Bring me one of those, would you? The one with peach scallops will do. I’ll pretend it’s fruit.” Maddie delivered the cookie and took her seat facing the computer. While the two friends munched on their cookies, they studied the photo on the screen.

  Kenny must once have been an attractive man, Olivia thought. His medium brown hair had a reddish tinge, brought out by the sun, and his fine-boned facial features reminded her of Alicia. Olivia found her gaze riveted to the vague, blue eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses. A tiny glint of light sparkled off the metal. Olivia’s gaze lowered to the front of Kenny’s neck, where she saw a second point of light.

  “Maddie, look.” Olivia pointed to the spot. Kenny was wearing a button-down shirt, as if he had dressed up for a special occasion with his daughter. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, perhaps due to the warmth of the day.

  “Whoa, that’s the necklace. It’s got to be.” Maddie zoomed in again to enlarge the photo. The image became fuzzy. Maddie ran her finger down the screen, stopping at the middle of Kenny’s collarbone. “I see something right there below the suprasternal notch.”

  “The super-what?”

  “Suprasternal notch,” Maddie said. “Just something I picked up during my brief stint in chiropractic training.”

  “Okay, but how on earth did you remember the name? As I recall, your ‘stint’ lasted less than a month.”

  “More like three weeks,” Maddie said. “Or was it three days?”

  “You can’t remember how long you studied chiropractics, yet the supernastral bone, or whatever it’s called, just popped into your head?” Olivia crossed her arms and raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Yep,” Maddie said. “And the word is pronounced suprasternal.” With a happy sigh, Maddie added, “Thank you. You’re always laughing at my French, so it feels good to correct your pronunciation for a change.”

  “Glad to be of service,” Olivia said. “So, what are we looking at here?” She squinted at the computer screen. “Ah, I see what you mean. There must be something shiny around his neck, catching the sunlight.” Olivia touched the screen with her fingernail. “See right there where the top button of Kenny’s shirt is open? I can just barely see something sticking out. It looks pointy. I wouldn’t bet the
store, but that could be the point of an arrow.”

  “Eureka!” Maddie bounced on her chair. “I would bet the store, except you own it. Kenny must be wearing the cookie cutter necklace. He might have worn it all the time, under his shirt, but most people wouldn’t see it. Maybe the killer didn’t know that . . . or he was in a hurry when he stuffed Kenny into the wall, so he didn’t even notice the necklace.”

  “Down, girl,” Olivia said. “Even if that is the cookie cutter necklace, it still doesn’t prove those were Kenny’s bones in the wall. And it doesn’t eliminate other possibilities. What if Kenny killed someone else, like another drifter, maybe in a drunken fight? If he wanted to disappear, he might have tossed his necklace inside the wall along with his victim’s body.”

  Maddie’s shoulders sagged. “It also doesn’t prove Kenny killed anyone, or that anyone killed anyone. The bones might have belonged to some drunk who just up and died. Kenny could have found the body and decided that closing him into the wall would be a perfect way to disappear forever. Or the chain might simply have broken while Kenny was moving the body.”

  “I’m not sure that makes sense,” Olivia said. “It takes time for a body to skeletonize. How could Kenny be sure the body wouldn’t be found right away? The police would suspect Kenny at once.”

  Maddie frowned as she cleared the screen. “Maybe the bones were already in the wall. Maybe Kenny threw in his necklace to make people think he was dead.”

  “Assuming Kenny knew nothing about DNA analysis,” Olivia said. “Speculation isn’t getting us anywhere. We have too many unanswered questions. What we do know is that someone was interested enough in Kenny Vayle—or disliked him enough—to showcase him on a gossip blog. I’d really like to find out the identity of the blogger. Meanwhile, my friend, we have a store to open soon, and I need to make myself presentable. Andiamo!”

  “Okay, Livie, I get the point,” Maddie said. “You’re using French to get back at me for using a word you don’t know.”

  “Nonsense,” Olivia said. “It wasn’t French. Andiamo means ‘Let’s go!’ in Italian.”