One Dead Cookie

by Virginia Lowell

  “So why would someone skilled enough to deactivate an alarm system bash at a safe with a hammer?”

  “Exactly,” Del said. “It’s possible the thief wasn’t good enough to crack the safe, so he got frustrated.”

  “And took it out on the safe?”

  “An entertaining image,” Del said, “but unlikely. We don’t yet know for sure that he—assuming it’s a he—used an actual hammer, though the dents look like a hammerhead. But who brings a hammer along for a break-in? There are quieter ways to break and enter, and this guy sure knew what he was doing when it came to deactivating an alarm.” Del stood up and reached for his uniform jacket.

  “Maybe there were two thieves?”

  Del paused a second before shaking his head. “One smart and skilled and the other dumb and violent? Only in the movies.” He glanced at the kitchen clock. “Gotta go. I’m supposed to be on duty at the station by six, which was eight minutes ago.”

  With a tired Spunky under her arm, Olivia followed Del down the stairs and unlocked the front door for him. Del gave Olivia a quick kiss, and said, “I’ll let you know when we catch the guy. Meanwhile, keep your eyes open and be careful. The Gingerbread House could become a target, too. I hope Cody gets back soon; I can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “You don’t need to stand guard over me.” Olivia heard the testiness in her own voice and tried to tone it down. “We have plenty of staff on duty all day, and Spunky will raise the roof if he hears anyone in the house at night.”

  “Okay, point taken.” Del stepped onto the porch. He hesitated, then spun around to face Olivia. Folding her in his arms, he rubbed his cheek against her hair. “I can’t help it. I worry. So sue me,” he said lightly. He kissed the tip of her nose and left.

  Olivia watched him walk away and whispered, “Me, too.”

  Chapter Three

  The sun had barely risen when Del left her apartment, and Olivia already had a plan. She had nearly three hours before The Gingerbread House officially opened at nine a.m. She’d need to shower and dress for work, and it would take about half an hour to prepare the store for opening. That left a couple hours of free time.

  Wearing the same clothes she’d worn when she fell asleep on the sofa, Olivia took Spunky on a brisk early morning run through the park. After twenty minutes, Spunky was tired enough to curl up for a morning nap. Olivia took a quick shower and changed into chocolate brown linen slacks and a light matching sweater.

  When she reentered her living room, keys in hand, Spunky lifted one eyelid and closed it at once. He didn’t protest as Olivia quietly locked him inside her apartment. She thought about taking Spunky downstairs to the store’s sales area, where he held court during the day. With an intruder on the loose, however, that might not be the safest place to leave a small dog alone. Of course, if he’d realized a car ride was on Olivia’s agenda, the wily little Yorkie would have found a way to sneak out with her. Guile was his middle name.

  Olivia had a creative cookie challenge to tackle, and it would require her full concentration. She had volunteered to provide decorated cookies for Maddie’s afternoon-long, blowout engagement party, to which everyone in the town of Chatterley Heights plus the surrounding area considered themselves invited. Maddie and her future husband, Lucas Ashford, had planned a quiet, private, no-frills wedding, so the engagement party was both a celebration and their gift to their hometown. Olivia was helping Maddie plan the party, which would be held in the ever-expanding garden behind the Bon Vivant restaurant on the north edge of town.

  Providing dozens and dozens of decorated cookies for the many guests to snack on was a huge feat in itself. However, Maddie also wanted a cake made of cookies. She envisioned something gloriously original, gorgeous, and, of course, yummy. Naturally, Olivia wanted to create such a gift for her best friend. The cookie cake was Maddie’s one request for a wedding gift, to be served at the engagement party. Olivia had four more days to accomplish the entire assignment, while doing her part to keep The Gingerbread House running smoothly. Her imagination, usually so attuned to anything cookie-related, had overloaded and shut down.

  Now that Olivia wasn’t running with an energetic dog, the morning air felt chilly. She walked briskly to the side street where she parked the used PT Cruiser with which she was not-so-secretly in love. She told herself that her affection arose from the car’s practical design, which allowed her to transport numerous covered cake pans filled with iced cookies to themed events. But she had to admit that her heart stirred every time she saw the elaborate painting she had commissioned to advertise The Gingerbread House. A fanciful depiction of a yellow-and-purple Victorian house, festooned with silver and copper cookie cutters, decorated the hood. Across the doors, ornate lettering spelled “The Gingerbread House,” and grinning gingerbread men and women somersaulted all over the car’s trunk. Definitely not her most practical expenditure. However, her ride got noticed.

  The scent of cinnamon welcomed Olivia when she opened the PT Cruiser’s door. Simply sitting inside ought to have triggered an idea for Maddie’s cookie cake, but Olivia had tried it several times without success. She needed visual stimulation. She turned her key in the ignition and drove off without a destination in mind. Her car pointed north, so north she went.

  Ever since Frederick P. Chatterley first wandered onto the stretch of land that became Chatterley Heights about two hundred and fifty years earlier, the town’s wealthier inhabitants had clustered north of the town square. No one knew why. The land wasn’t more arable, nor were the views particularly stunning. Frederick P. was not a get-up-and-go sort of town founder. His sole desire was to get up on his trusty steed and go to the home of his mistress of the moment, and the north end of town had been the closest he could get to her without moving in next door. Eventually the Chatterley family built a mansion on the site of Frederick P.’s original house.

  Olivia drove through the historic section of town, now solidly middle class, and across the northern boundary of Chatterley Heights. Unlike so many small towns, Chatterley Heights had experienced minimal suburban sprawl. Olivia soon reached a sparsely populated area. Only one new business had chosen to locate beyond the north edge of town—the Bon Vivant restaurant, an upscale establishment that took pains to meld into the countryside. Olivia and Del had shared a number of tasty meals at Bon Vivant, often featuring previously unimagined varieties of pizza accompanied by excellent merlot. As she drove past the restaurant, Olivia smiled at the memory of those times. She and Del always tried to snag a table by the window so they could enjoy the restaurant’s elaborate garden, showcased against lush rolling hills in the distance.

  Olivia saw no approaching cars through her rearview mirror, so she lifted her foot off the accelerator and drifted to a halt. She’d remembered reading in the town’s otherwise irritating newspaper, The Weekly Chatter, about Bon Vivant’s ever-more-ambitious plans for its garden. Olivia was fairly certain the article had called the renovation “over-the-top frou-frou.”

  Bon Vivant had begun with a modest garden, which seemed to double in size each time Olivia returned to the restaurant. Maddie and Lucas had chosen the setting for their engagement party because they thought it might be large enough to accommodate their guests, as long as those guests spread themselves throughout the grounds.

  A garden sounded like the perfect place to awaken Olivia’s cookie creativity. She felt her initial idea for the cookies wasn’t unique enough. Flower and bunny shapes were fine for a spring store event, but Olivia wanted a less predictable theme. To be honest, she hoped to present Maddie with a cookie creation she wouldn’t have thought of herself. If that was possible.

  It was six forty a.m. when Olivia pulled into the parking lot, and Bon Vivant was open for breakfast. She slipped into a light jacket she kept in the car, just in case. The morning air was chilly for late April, and she didn’t want to shiver her way through the gardens. The parking lot held three cars. Olivia walked around to the rear of the restaurant, where
she found the patio seating area empty. She went inside, ordered a cup of coffee, and obtained permission to wander through the garden.

  Olivia paused on the patio to sip her coffee and take in the view. Bon Vivant had added a few small trees since the last time she and Del had dined there. She couldn’t identify them, but at least they didn’t obscure the lush hills in the distance. Not yet, anyway. Curving paths divided the expanding garden into sections, each with a different theme. Beyond the garden stretched several acres of undeveloped land. Olivia wondered if Bon Vivant owned any or all of it. Given the restaurant’s popularity, she suspected it was doing well financially, despite the hefty prices.

  A light breeze carried a sweet scent that reminded Olivia of her idea to incorporate real flowers into the cookie cake design. She followed the scent to a large patch of lily of the valley. Olivia was fairly certain that lilies of the valley were poisonous. Not the party theme she had in mind. She wished she’d thought to bring a plant identification guide, one with lots of color photos.

  Olivia wandered at random, allowing whim and fragrance to guide her. She came to a garden filled with wildflowers organized in rows. The small patch flourished due to care and an automated watering system. Not a single weed poked through the displays. The effect was stunning, yet Olivia found herself uninspired. She wished for a bit less perfection. Her favorite cookie cutters always had dents or scratches or those tiny variations that indicated they were handmade.

  Once again the Dixie Cups musically expressed their imminent wedding plans, in case the event had slipped Olivia’s mind. She fumbled for her cell. “I’m all for fun,” Olivia said, “but this is getting old.”

  “What? Not even a ‘Hi, Maddie, friend of my childhood, it’s great to hear from you?’ I might be having a serious premarital crisis, you know. Or even better, maybe I found a dead body in the kitchen.”

  “Uh-huh.” Olivia instantly regretted her cynical tone. Ebullience was Maddie’s normal state, and wedding pressures had ramped it up to levels intolerable to ordinary humans. “Sorry,” Olivia said. “I’m feeling pressed for time, which makes me cranky. What’s up?”

  “Oh, Livie, I’m so excited. Aunt Sadie finished my dress, and it is unbelievably, incredibly, gloriously stunning. The embroidery is fabulously…well, I’m running out of adjectives or whatever they’re called.”

  “Adverbs.”

  Maddie laughed. “Anyway, I tried the dress on, and wow. The embroidered flowers are Aunt Sadie’s best work ever. They’re done mostly in shades of purple, but she added some reddish embroidery floss that’s close to the color of my hair. The bodice is a bit loose. I guess I’ve been running around so much, I lost some weight. Aunt Sadie offered to take it in, but I told her to leave it. A few cookies, and I’ll be back to normal.” Maddie’s generous curves were legendary, as was her wild red hair. “And speaking of cookies…”

  “No, you can’t take over the cookie baking for your own engagement party,” Olivia said. “And stop worrying. Everything is under control.”

  “Livie, I can always tell when you’re lying. Besides, I’m calling from the Gingerbread House kitchen, and I see no signs of furious baking, no creative design ideas, no unique ingredients…. Need I say more?”

  “Snoop. I am not ready to admit defeat.” Although it’s starting to feel tempting.

  “Livie, don’t think of it as giving up. Think of it as saving your best friend’s engagement party from cookie-less disaster.”

  “I think I’ve just been insulted.”

  “Look,” Maddie said, “how about a compromise? I know you’ll come up with a plan—you are, of course, the queen of planning—but you have too much going on at once. And you need a design idea, like, yesterday. I know how you get when you’re feeling too pressured. So let me help with the baking. You’ll be able to think better, it’ll be fun, and together we can get the baking done in half the time it would take you alone.”

  “Probably less than half the time,” Olivia said.

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “Well, I guess I—”

  “Yippee! Oops, sorry about the decibel level.”

  Olivia felt a surge of relief. “I get to come up with the ideas, though.”

  “I promise you are free to ignore all my brilliant suggestions,” Maddie said. “I can’t wait to get started. Only don’t feel pressured by that.”

  “Quit while you’re ahead,” Olivia said, laughing. “I’ll go commune with nature and see if it triggers a brilliant cookie idea. Since you’re already at the store and bursting with nervous energy, you can open. So there.”

  “Done,” Maddie said. “Go commune.”

  Olivia switched her ringtone to vibrate and looked around for a promising direction to try next. Numerous gardens fanned out before her, forming a large semicircle divided by curving paths. To her left, Olivia saw flowering shrubs and trees shading wooden benches. The scene looked inviting, a good place to sit and ponder the enormity of her creative baking task and the woefully inadequate amount of time left to accomplish it. Instead, Olivia turned to her right, a sunny area with small, low patches of greenery dotted with bits of color. Bland, yet pleasant. Olivia’s watch told her she had well over an hour before Maddie might need her at The Gingerbread House. She decided to explore the few remaining gardens before settling on a tree-shaded bench to wait for a tasty idea to pop into her head.

  The fully risen sun warmed Olivia as she followed a winding path between two patches of bushy green plants. She picked a stiff leaf from one of the plants and bent it in half. It released a rich lemony fragrance. She couldn’t find a marker to identify the plants, so she used her cell phone camera for a close-up of the leaves and sent the photo to her computer. She put the leaf in the pocket of her linen pants, hoping it wouldn’t stain.

  Olivia strolled past several plots filled with culinary herbs, many of which she recognized, such as Greek oregano with its fuzzy leaves. Oregano made her think of pizza, which caused a tummy rumble. She’d raced out of the house without eating. She thought the small plants with tiny leaves might be thyme, and the large grayish leaves on the next batch of plants had to be sage. The last garden held lavender, which Olivia recognized from her mother’s herb garden. It would be lovely later in the season, with its long stems and spiky flowers. This early in the spring, the plants hadn’t reached the bud stage. Olivia wondered if Bon Vivant harvested their lavender, as her mother did. Olivia knew the buds dried into fragrant potpourri, which she doubted Bon Vivant would go to the trouble of creating. The restaurant must be using the buds for cooking. Olivia picked one fragrant stalk.

  A young couple emerged from Bon Vivant carrying coffee cups. The woman pointed toward the flower gardens, and the two of them headed in Olivia’s direction. A server held the door open for a second couple and led them to a table on the patio. Feeling guilty about the lavender stalk in her hand, Olivia escaped to the shade. The copse of trees wasn’t large, but it felt like a dense forest. When planting the young flowering trees, Bon Vivant had chosen to preserve several older, larger trees.

  Olivia chose a bench under an old oak, well hidden from the restaurant. She checked her cell, which she’d left on vibrate, and saw with relief that she had no messages. She had about twenty minutes to relax and hope for culinary inspiration to descend.

  Olivia squeezed a lavender leaf between her fingertips and breathed in the sharp sweetness. Her mother would undoubtedly take one whiff, go into an otherworldly state, and discover a new path to universal peace. Olivia wasn’t a trance sort of person, but she let her mind wander. It led her to potpourri. She didn’t actually like potpourri. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the use of lavender in baking. Instead, she remembered the organic, lavender-scented spray cleaner her mother insisted on using to clean the kitchen counter.

  A shout in the distance told Olivia she wouldn’t enjoy her solitude for much longer. She needed an idea, and she needed it now. To purge the scent of lavender cleanser from her
stubborn mind, Olivia dug the folded lemony leaf from her pocket and held it to her nostrils. Heavenly. Lemon-scented cleanser, now that was a product she could—Enough with the cleansers, Livie. Think about cookies.

  A childhood memory flashed into Olivia’s mind. The scene came back to her so clearly, she could remember the aromas. Her mother, Ellie, did nothing in a tentative way. When she tackled an activity, she did so with every fiber of her ethereal being. Olivia’s lifelong love affair with decorated cookies and cookie cutters had begun when her mother had gone through her baking phase.

  At age nine, Olivia had still wanted time with her mother, so she spent every possible moment in the kitchen, sometimes at the expense of homework. Her mild-mannered, intellectual father had expressed concern, in his distracted way. Her mother, however, insisted that school should never get in the way of a child’s education. Cookie cutters illustrated history, Ellie had said. While they mixed, rolled, and cut out shapes from the dough, Ellie told stories about fairs in medieval England, where maidens would devour cookies shaped like men, hoping to summon bridegrooms.

  Ellie’s teachings had included information about edible and poisonous plants. She’d insisted her daughter learn to recognize the difference between the two. Olivia had forgotten most of the details, but she’d retained one fragrant lesson about edible plants. Her mother had a habit of leaping from one topic to another through an obscure route. She’d been explaining meringue powder, composed mostly of dried egg whites and used in royal icing. Without a moment’s pause, she had launched into a tutorial on everything meringue, including meringue cookies. Olivia remembered feeling dizzy as her mother twirled around the kitchen, collecting baking ingredients. At one point, Ellie opened a high cupboard and selected a jar of lavender buds she’d harvested and dried the previous summer.

  Olivia was surprised by how precisely the conversation replayed in her mind. Ellie had opened the jar of dried lavender and breathed in the scent, closing her eyes in ecstasy. “So luscious. Smell this, Livie,” she’d said, holding the jar under her daughter’s nose.