Dead Men Don't Eat Cookies

by Virginia Lowell

  “Maybe she didn’t want to deal with talking to you in person.” Maddie led the way into the kitchen.

  “I guess I can understand that.” Olivia nodded toward the kitchen phone. “We have several messages on the landline, but they’re probably all from my mom. I don’t have the patience to listen to them right now. I need to brush my hair.”

  “Yes, you do,” Maddie said. “I’ll leave mine alone. Brushing would only encourage it.” She pointed to the red tangle of curls, which was twice its normal height. “I’ll check the messages.”

  “Shout if you hear anything interesting.” Olivia headed for the tiny kitchen bathroom, where she kept a supply of toiletries. Leaving the door open, she worked a brush through her tangled auburn hair, then lightly dampened it to help the waves recover from wind shock.

  “No important phone messages,” Maddie called from the kitchen, “but Binnie has gone bonkers again.”

  Uh-oh. Olivia quickly smoothed some moisturizer on her wind-chapped cheeks and rejoined Maddie, who had fired up the laptop. Olivia requisitioned a chair and joined her. “I don’t see any incriminating photos on the screen,” Olivia said. “What has Binnie done this time?”

  Maddie opened Binnie’s nefarious blog. “She seems to have lost interest in publishing her weekly rag. I kind of miss The Weekly Chatter. It was more carefully written, plus it appeared only once a week. Binnie goes overboard on this blog. She thinks she can write anything about anybody, no matter how nasty. In her newspaper, at least she mostly stuck to innuendo. Also, she used punctuation, so a person could make sense of the snide remarks.”

  “When this investigation is all over,” Olivia said, “we must have a forceful talk with Binnie. I’ll see if I can get in touch with Ned. Maybe she can help.”

  “Does Ned actually talk?” Maddie’s fingers began to fly around the keyboard. “Ah, there it is.”

  “There what is?” Olivia sat back for a panoramic view. “Oh, I see. It’s a photo collage. Is that Ned’s work? It’s really very good. How on earth did you—?”

  “Simple,” Maddie said. “And I didn’t have to hack. I found a photojournalism contest sponsored by American University. Ned is taking classes there. Let me check something.” Maddie clicked in silence for a few moments. “Oh wow,” she said. “I knew Ned was good, so I figured she might have placed in that contest, but hey, she actually won first place. No wonder she is trying to distance herself from her crazy aunt.”

  “Her crazy aunt is paying for her education,” Olivia said. “I can’t believe I’m defending Binnie Sloan.”

  “I think I’ll print this collage. I like it.” Maddie pressed a key, and the color printer sprang to life.

  “I wish I’d thought to make a copy of that first note I found tacked to the front door,” Olivia said. “Although the writing was so light and scratchy, it might not have copied well.”

  “It copied beautifully.” Maddie grinned as she opened a drawer used for storing towels. “I forgot about this until now. That note sat around until you left for lunch, so I scanned it into the computer and made a couple copies. Ta da!” She handed a copy to Olivia, who squinted at it under the lamp on her desk. She could see the scratches following the last letter of the note, the “r” at the end of the word “cutter.” “Do we have a magnifying glass?” Olivia asked.

  “We do.” Maddie rummaged through the junk drawer and produced what looked like a glass stick with a small, round magnifying glass on the end. “Aunt Sadie needed a more powerful one for her embroidery, so she gave this one to me. I use it when I need to be precise about placing a tiny decoration on royal icing. It’s important to be compulsive,” Maddie added.

  “Especially when you are impulsive,” Olivia mumbled under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Thanks!” Olivia took the magnifier from Maddie’s hand. “I’ll let you know if I have a eureka moment.”

  “And I shall begin creating dozens of amazing cookies for all those lovely events we’ve been scheduling. We are going to be insanely busy as the holidays approach,” Maddie said. “We need to wrap up this mystery soon.”

  “Uh-huh.” Olivia squinted at the scratches, an idea forming in her mind.

  “You’re so cute when you lose touch with reality,” Maddie said as she opened a container of sugar.

  “A flashlight might help,” Olivia muttered to herself.

  “Jeez, and they say I’m the one who gets lost in my own little world.” Maddie added butter to the mixing bowl.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say, Maddie?”

  “I said there’s a flashlight in the storage closet, bottom shelf, right-hand side.” Maddie put in her earbuds and began to hum off-key as Olivia left the kitchen.

  When Olivia returned, flashlight in hand, the slapping sound of butter and sugar blending together drowned out Maddie’s musical attempts. Olivia settled at the little kitchen desk, where she hunched over the copied note, flashlight in one hand and magnifier in the other. When she’d examined the original note, the marks after the last letter had barely been visible. They’d appeared to be random. Del had assumed the author was trying, perhaps frantically, to expose more pencil lead. Presumably he had wanted to add another line or two of explanation to his cryptic note. That had made sense at the time.

  Olivia held the magnifying glass closer to the paper to look for minute details. She realized there were many more scratches than she’d thought. They were tiny, thin, and relatively close together, as if they were meant to form a pattern. She examined the entire surface of the note and saw no other marks.

  If the author had wanted to expose more pencil lead, rubbing the wood on paper was more likely to tear the paper. And Jack might have had a pocketknife. That would have worked much better. What am I missing?

  What if those marks weren’t random? What if they’d been added for a purpose?

  Olivia abandoned the flashlight and magnifier. Mom would tell me to stop trying so hard . . . to let it come to me. She leaned against the back of her chair and closed her eyes, hoping for quick clarity and insight. What she got was clutter. She could almost hear her mother’s voice telling her to let the clutter drift away. Easy for you, Mom.

  “Livie?” It was Maddie’s voice. “Is it past your bedtime?”

  Olivia scraped back her chair and twisted around. “I was trying to clear my mind, like Mom is forever suggesting.” As Olivia turned back to her desk and reached for the mysterious note, she heard a tiny ping, like a muted bell; only it came from inside her own head. Olivia knew at once what she’d been missing. “I’m an idiot,” she said.

  “Really?” Maddie abandoned her mound of freshly made cookie dough and joined Olivia. “Does this mean I get to feel superior, or are you about to reveal a profound, eternal truth that I probably won’t comprehend?”

  Olivia laughed, though mostly at herself. “I’ve been struggling to find meaning in those scratches at the end of this note. It doesn’t make sense that they’d accidentally cluster this way. But I’ve been too close to it. And by that I mean too close physically, holding a magnifying glass in one hand and a flashlight in the other. I was seeing the trees quite clearly, but I totally missed the forest.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Maddie said as she dragged a kitchen chair next to Olivia.

  “Then you won’t be disappointed. Watch.” She picked up the magnifying glass, but instead of holding it close to the paper, she backed it away.

  Maddie looked through the glass and shrugged. “I still don’t get it.”

  Olivia opened the desk drawer and rooted around until she came up with a pencil. “Watch this,” she said. “If you connect all those little scratches, this is what you get.” Using the pencil, she traced a light “S” that was several times the size of the other letters.

  Maddie tilted her head as she studied the note. “
You get a gigantic squiggle?”

  “Um . . .” Olivia felt a pinch of self-doubt. She had to admit, it did look rather like a big squiggly line. Was she making something out of nothing? Were the scratches meaningless?

  “Ooh, wait, I get it!” Maddie’s wild red hair fluffed in all directions as she bounced up and down with excitement. “You’re right, it’s a forest and trees thing. If you read the whole note now, it says ‘If you want to know what happened to Kenny Vayle, follow the cookie cutterS.’ It must be referring to those antique cutters the police found under Kenny’s bones. “So that means . . .” Frown lines gathered between Maddie’s flour-dusted eyebrows. “Do the police know for sure who wrote that note, or are we just assuming it was the mysterious Jack? Would a drifter have heard of the Chatterley cookie cutter collection? If we didn’t have a clue that part of the Chatterley collection was hiding inside the boarding house wall, how would . . . Oh.” Maddie’s already pale skin lost any hint of color. “The person who wrote the note must have seen those cutters. Are you saying that Alicia has gone off with the man who killed her father?”

  “I’m saying we shouldn’t rule him out, although if we assume this Jack fellow did write that first note, he has to be considered a suspect. Alicia thinks he’s ‘nice,’ but can we trust her assessment? At the very least, he must know about those extra cutters. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Kenny Vayle’s killer would have volunteered any information that would tie him to the death. It was such a strange, indirect clue, though. I can’t help but wonder . . .” Olivia ran a hand through her hair. “Why would Jack take the risk of leaving that note?”

  “And why would he go to such pains to hide its true meaning?” Maddie asked. “He must be really, really afraid of someone.”

  * * *

  At eleven p.m., Olivia stood up to stretch. She had been hunched over her desk for two hours, catching up on paperwork. Maddie had spent the time baking cookies in puppy and kitten shapes for an upcoming fund-raising event at Chatterley Paws. As she removed the last sheet of playful puppy-shaped cookies from the oven, a cloud of orange-scented warmth permeated the kitchen.

  “I must be hungry,” Olivia said. “Those cookies smell delicious.”

  Maddie deposited the sheet on a cooling rack. “They smell delicious, my friend, because they are delicious. Try one.” Maddie handed Olivia a cooled sleeping kitten cookie.

  Olivia took a bite and sighed with pleasure. “Cookies do make everything better.”

  “How true.” Maddie began to gather bowls and pans for washing. “I’ve baked more than enough animal-shaped cookies for the event at Chatterley Paws on Saturday evening. She glanced up at the kitchen clock. “In an hour, it’ll only be Thursday, so I’ll have plenty of time to get these little guys decorated.” She pointed to a rack of cooled, sleeping kitten-shaped cookies. “I’m thinking of piping multicolored stripes on those little guys. You know, like pale green and teal, or maybe hot pink and purple.”

  Olivia arched an eyebrow at her friend. “Cats don’t appreciate insults to their dignity.”

  Maddie shrugged one shoulder. “The little critters are napping. They’ll never know.” She began to fill a cake pan with cooled kittens. “Hey, what should we do next? I’m bursting with pent-up energy.”

  Olivia rolled her stiff shoulders. “I’ve been sitting at a computer for too long. At least I’ve caught up on actual store tasks, like ordering supplies and responding to customer emails.” Olivia picked up the copy of the note. “I should tell Del my theory about what this note really says, but . . .”

  “But you don’t want him to leap to the outrageous, yet true conclusion that we plan to investigate on our own?” Without waiting for an answer, Maddie added, “Because I completely agree. We wouldn’t want Del to worry. Worry is one of the major causes of premature aging.” Maddie snuggled the last sleeping kitten into the cake pan and slid the cover shut. “I’ll store these cooled cookies in the freezer,” she said. “I can put the others away afterward.”

  “Afterward? You mean tomorrow morning?” Olivia lifted the laptop lid and clicked the email icon. She had two new emails, one from Del and the other from her mom.

  “It’s almost tomorrow now,” Maddie said.

  “Uh-huh.” Olivia clicked on Del’s email.

  “Livie, you really aren’t tracking well. You should probably leave the multitasking to me.”

  “Del says the forensic team is finishing a DNA test on the skull right now,” Olivia said. “Del is so excited, he’s decided to stick around for a while. He says the lab folks can’t stand the suspense. Neither can he. He borrowed someone’s laptop so he could let me know. That’s sweet.”

  “That’s probably because poor, patient Del tried to text you and discovered your phone is, as usual, dead.” Maddie wedged the cake pan of cookies into an already well packed freezer. “So Chatterley Heights is without police protection tonight—by which I mean police interference, of course.”

  “What? Oh, Del says that Twiterton will handle any 911 calls.” Olivia blinked her eyes, which felt dry from staring at the computer screen. “He has decided to stay at the lab until he hears the DNA results. Then he’ll head straight home. I wish he wouldn’t drive when he hasn’t had any sleep.” Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. “I’m sorry, Maddie, what were you saying?”

  Maddie hiked herself onto the counter next to the laptop. Olivia barely had time to yank her hands off the keyboard before Maddie closed the lid. “Livie, we need to go to that boarding house. Now. There’s a good chance Alicia is in there with this Jack person, who might or might not be a thoroughly nice guy.”

  “Maddie, I gave the key back to Mom, and it isn’t all that easy to break into that building. Those new locks are solid. You should know that—after all, Lucas installed them. Also, the windows are boarded up on the ground floor. Besides, the police have been in and out of the place so much lately. All things considered, it doesn’t seem like a very tempting place to hide out.”

  Maddie’s eyebrows shot up. “Not a tempting place? Are you kidding? Part of the famous Chatterley cookie cutter collection was recently discovered in that boarding house. The kitchen is the only room Calliope and her workers have finished renovating. They were just getting started on all those rooms upstairs. Who knows what secrets lurk behind those old walls?”

  “I do not intend to go out in the cold and spend the night tearing down boarding house walls. We’re more likely to find mice than Chatterley cookie cutters. Mom has the key, and she is frantic to find Alicia. I’m sure she checks regularly for any signs that Jack and Alicia might be using the building as a hideout. Mom will be thorough beyond what is normally considered human. It’s more likely Jack has taken Alicia somewhere far away from Chatterley Heights. Personally, I suspect Alicia went with Jack willingly and is safe with him.”

  “Poop head.”

  “Besides, I have more emails to write,” Olivia said. “I want to get the Binnie situation under control before she humiliates poor Lenora with those photos.”

  Maddie fit another covered pan of cookies into the packed freezer. “Good luck controlling Binnie. She’s likely to smack Lenora even harder, if only to get back at you.”

  “That’s why I’m turning the project over to my mom. She can handle Binnie much better than I can. I figure Mom can get away with gushing about Ned’s work, if that’s what it takes to soften up Binnie.” Olivia downloaded Ned’s prizewinning photo and attached a copy to the email to her mother. “The photo is really quite good, but Binnie would never believe that coming from me.”

  “Ellie is amazing, that’s for sure,” Maddie said. “Not that you don’t have your own gifts, Livie. You write a really stunning business plan, and no one can equal your paperwork skills.”

  “Um, thank you?” Olivia copied Ned’s email address and added it to the text of her email. “I wish I had your gift with decorated coo
kies.”

  “You do okay.” Maddie began selecting gel icing colors to use on her shelter animal cookies. “I mean, you haven’t ruined a batch of royal icing in years.”

  Olivia hit send, and her email whooshed off to her mother. “Okay, Maddie, what’s with the passive-aggressive act? Are you mad at me just because I’d rather not wander around outside after dark on a cold, windy night?”

  Maddie took a deep breath and released a noisy sigh. “Well, since you ask . . . Lately you’ve been so, I don’t know . . . so adult. Here we have a lovely mystery to investigate—two mysteries, in fact, one even colder than the other, both of them utterly fascinating. I’m way ahead on the baking for the week. You’ve placed the orders for supplies. Your mother will use her wiles to save Lenora from the wrath of Binnie. Yet the most totally intriguing puzzles are the ones you don’t seem truly interested in solving. Livie, my friend, you have lost touch with your inner Nancy Drew and become all grown-up Business Woman.”

  “Well, I did solve the riddle of the cryptic note. That was Nancy Drewish.” Olivia thought of several more retorts, but they all sounded equally defensive.

  Maddie stared wide-eyed at her best friend since age ten. After several seconds, a faint chortling sound came from her throat. Then she began to laugh. Olivia joined her.

  When they’d caught their breath, Olivia asked, “You really want to go out and look for Alicia, don’t you? Because it’s frigid and windy out there, not to mention dark. She and Jack might be anywhere, including another town. Or is finding Alicia an excuse to search for more cookie cutters in the Chatterley Boarding House?”

  “The two are not mutually exclusive,” Maddie said. “I’ll admit, the thought of finding more of the Chatterley collection makes my heart go pitter-patter. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t love to go antique cutter hunting, because I wouldn’t believe you for an instant.”

  Olivia yawned. She wasn’t really tired, simply tired of sitting. A walk might help. Maybe the wind had calmed down a bit. And she could take Spunky along. He’d been cooped up for quite a while and undoubtedly needed a visit to that doggie bathroom called the great outdoors. “Mom did mention a board covering one of the ground floor windows was loose,” she said. “In a sense, we wouldn’t really be breaking in . . . exactly.”