Olivia had wrinkled her nose at the sharp smell. “Ugh. Too strong.”
“Such a sensitive child,” Ellie said. “That’s a good thing, Livie, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“Um, okay.” Olivia had no idea what her mother was talking about, but she was always willing to resist any opinions that clashed with her own.
“And now, my child, prepare to be amazed and astonished.” Ellie whipped up a light dough, added lavender buds, and dropped it by small spoonfuls onto a baking pan. A gentle lavender fragrance sweetened the kitchen air as the cookies baked. When Ellie removed the pan from the oven, Olivia saw pale lavender nuggets that looked too pretty to eat. Her mother let them cool on a rack before popping one into her mouth whole. “Utterly delicious,” Ellie said with a happy sigh. “These are meringues, Livie. Try one.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s a taste experience you will never forget,” Ellie said.
Olivia picked up a meringue and sniffed it. Definitely lavender, but more pleasant than the buds her mother had waved under her nose. The cookie felt firm, yet light as air. Following Ellie’s example, she tossed the morsel into her mouth.
“That’s my girl,” Ellie said.
As the meringue dissolved in her mouth, Olivia experienced an explosion of sweet perfume that snaked up her nostrils. “Wow,” she said. “That was…Wow.”
Ellie giggled like a child as she reached for another meringue. Olivia’s hand was close behind. Between them they finished off half the pan, yet the cookies had been so light that Olivia felt she’d eaten nothing more than scented air.
The generic ring of a nearby cell phone startled Olivia back to the present. She smiled at the lavender wand in her left hand. It no longer irritated her. In fact, she felt downright friendly toward the tiny purple buds the lavender plants would soon produce; they had given her part of the answer to her dilemma about flavors for the cookies she’d promised to create for Maddie’s engagement blowout.
Sadie Briggs, Maddie’s aunt and a skilled seamstress, had designed Maddie’s wedding gown. The dress was pale yellow satin with tiny lavender buttons down the back of the bodice. Aunt Sadie embroidered beautifully and she had decorated the dress with tiny flowers. According to Maddie, the flowers were lavender to deep purple. So lavender-flavored sugar cookies would be perfect for the engagement party.
Since Maddie’s wedding dress was yellow satin, lemon sugar cookies seemed the logical choice for a second flavor. Not terribly original. Olivia sniffed the leaf she had stuffed in her pocket. It was still fragrant and definitely lemony. If she could identify the plant, maybe she could include it in a cookie recipe. Assuming it tasted as good as it smelled and wasn’t poisonous, that is. She’d need an organic source for both herbs. Maybe the restaurant would have…
Once again, a generic ringtone disrupted the peaceful setting. The sound came from behind Olivia’s bench. This time a quiet voice answered on the first ring. Olivia decided it was time to leave. Too many distractions. As she reached toward her empty coffee cup, the disembodied voice spoke in a low, brusque whisper. There was a hard edge to the voice that sent a chill through Olivia. She guessed the speaker was a man, but it was hard to tell. A very angry woman might sound as harsh.
Instinctively, Olivia sank down on the bench seat, out of sight. She felt a bit silly, not to mention uncomfortable, and she doubted there was any real danger. On the other hand, an encounter with an irritable stranger wasn’t her idea of an ideal start to her day.
After a minute or so of silence, Olivia began to relax. Perhaps the stranger had wandered farther away. Olivia checked her watch; she’d need to leave soon if she wanted to arrive at The Gingerbread House not long after opening. She prided herself on being available to customers during working hours, if at all possible. Olivia slid her two herb samples into her pants pocket and retrieved her empty coffee cup.
“Are you crazy? What were you thinking?” The words were whispered, but even so, the anger came through. After a pause, Olivia heard the voice again, but the only phrases she could make out were “People around…Meet me…” and, after a few moments, “stupid thing to do.” Olivia thought she heard the crunch of footsteps on undergrowth…then silence. She waited until it felt safe to peek over the back of the bench. She saw nothing and heard only the scurrying of small animals and a male mourning dove cooing for a mate. Olivia wished good luck to the lonely dove as she hurried back into the sunshine.
* * *
A sweet buttery scent greeted Olivia as she entered The Gingerbread House. Maddie must have just taken a freshly baked sheet of cutout sugar cookies from the oven. Olivia was glad she’d stopped for a light breakfast at Bon Vivant before heading to the store. Otherwise, she’d be tempted to down a dozen or so of those cookies.
On the sales floor, a middle-aged woman listened with rapt attention to the store’s newest sales clerk, Jennifer Elsworth. With her honey brown hair and clear green eyes, Jennifer was an attractive young woman. Though quiet and serious, her impressive knowledge of vintage cookie cutters and baking more than compensated for her lack of animation. Jennifer gave Olivia a quick nod of acknowledgment but kept her attention focused on her customer. Olivia approved. Jennifer had shown up at the store two days earlier looking for a job, and Maddie had interviewed her. To demonstrate her knowledge and sales prowess, Jennifer had walked up to a customer who was “just looking” and skillfully convinced her to purchase several vintage cutters. Maddie had hired her on the spot.
Jennifer hadn’t yet discussed her background or why she had moved to Chatterley Heights. In fact, Jennifer had shared nothing about herself, which made Olivia uneasy. Maybe it was time to create a job application form. She hadn’t seen a need before now. They’d hired only one permanent part-time employee, Bertha Binkman, who had spent forty years as the Chamberlain family housekeeper. Because of Olivia’s friendship with Clarisse Chamberlain, she knew Bertha well and trusted her implicitly. Not that Jennifer seemed untrustworthy; quite the opposite. And they did need help in the store.
The kitchen door opened, and Maddie breezed through carrying a tray loaded with decorated cookies. She offered their customer first choice. With a guilty grimace, the woman took two. Jennifer declined.
“Welcome, stranger,” Maddie said as she carried the tray over to Olivia. “Did you get any breakfast? I can offer you a pizza-shaped cookie with fondant pepperoni.”
Among the various foods shapes, Maddie had indeed included several cookie wedges decorated with pepperoni-like circles of fondant. Olivia selected a cookie “slice,” telling herself that one scrambled egg did not constitute a full breakfast. She bit off the narrow end, almost expecting it to taste spicy. It didn’t.
“There’s something disturbing about cardamom-flavored pizza,” Olivia said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Maddie deposited the cookie tray next to the coffee urn they always kept filled for the public. “Not many customers so far, but we’ll get more business once word spreads around town that fresh cookies have appeared. Come on, let’s talk while we can. Jennifer has everything under control. She is a marvel.”
Olivia followed Maddie into the kitchen, where their own Mr. Coffee was spitting out the last drops of a fresh pot. Maddie poured two cups while Olivia dug to the back of the stuffed refrigerator for the cream and sugar. “There must be eight batches of cookie dough in here,” Olivia said. “You’ve been working.”
“Lo these many hours,” Maddie said. “Our customers expect cookies every day, and I figured you had your hands full. I’ll freeze enough cookies for a week or more once I get all that dough cut, rolled, and baked. Then I can help you with the cookies for the party. How did your brainstorming go?”
Olivia finished her cookie, remembering the voice she’d heard from the bench among the trees behind the Bon Vivant restaurant.
“I gather it wasn’t productive?” Maddie doctored her coffee with cream and sugar and danced it back to the workta
ble without spilling a drop. “If you’re still hungry, I put aside a few cookies for us. We need our strength.” She pointed toward a small plate.
“My brainstorming was a total success. More or less.” Olivia selected a magenta bunny cookie from the table and tasted its ear. She wasn’t really hungry, but that rarely stopped her from eating a cookie. “I came up with a couple of cookie ideas which are, if I may say so, worthy of you.”
“Good to know.” When Olivia didn’t elaborate, Maddie asked, “So are you planning to share your ideas with me, your obedient co-baker? Livie? You seem distracted. Don’t tell me there’s been another murder in poor, dwindling Chatterley Heights. There’s no other explanation for your failure to spill your brilliant baking ideas and bask in my admiring gratitude.”
“Sometimes you’re scary,” Olivia said. “That was a compliment, in case you wondered. Actually, I was thinking about a conversation I overheard…well, half a conversation. I’m probably making a big deal out of nothing, but…” She repeated for Maddie, as precisely as she could remember, the angry whispered words she’d heard.
Maddie frowned in quiet thought for so long that Olivia began to worry she’d made the incident sound more sinister than it probably was. “I suppose there are numerous perfectly innocent explanations,” she said. “A marital spat, for instance. Bickering spouses can be brutal to each other,” Olivia remembered her own marriage as it broke down. Although she couldn’t recall even Ryan, her ex-husband, using quite so harsh a tone with her, or her with him. Sarcasm was Ryan’s personal favorite way to get his point across. “I missed most of the conversation,” Olivia said, “and I might have misinterpreted what I did hear.”
“Or you heard right, and you are a witness to half a criminal conversation. Remember, someone broke into Lady Chatterley’s last night.”
Olivia poured herself a cup of fresh coffee, added cream, and reached for the sugar. “From what Del told me, nothing was taken.”
Maddie perked up. “What else did Del tell you? And no stinting on the details.”
Oops. Olivia had promised Del she would keep mum about anything he shared with her about ongoing investigations. Once again, she had failed. “Look Maddie, I can’t tell you everything Del says to me. He trusts me…more or less. I don’t want to mess that up.”
Maddie didn’t protest. In fact, she was suspiciously silent.
“Maddie? You have that look on your face. You’ve already heard all the details of the break-in, haven’t you? Did you bug my apartment?”
“Don’t be silly, Livie. I am but a simple baker; I have no idea how to bug an apartment. Lucas would know, but I would never involve him in such a nefarious scheme. No, I’m simply amused by your city ways.”
“City ways? What the…? Oh. There are no secrets in small towns, right?”
“Right.” Maddie’s generous mouth curved in a smug grin. Even the curly mass of red hair that piled on top of her head seemed to puff up with self-satisfaction. “Plus, my friend Lola is the top manager at Lady Chatterley’s, remember? She told me every detail about the break-in, including the weird fact that someone expertly dismantled the store’s state-of-the-art alarm system only to bash the safe with a hammer. So incompetent.”
“And, as you said, weird. It might explain why nothing was taken. Maybe the intruder only wanted cash and got angry when he couldn’t find any.” Olivia relaxed. After all, Del understood the relentless power of the small town rumor mill better than she did. Juicy information always zipped through Chatterley Heights faster than a professionally set wildfire; Del wouldn’t assume she’d lit the match. Would he?
“It makes me think the intruder was a man. I doubt a woman could resist carting off a selection of expensive dresses.” Maddie emptied a bowl of cookie dough onto the rolling mat. “What if there were two burglars? Maybe the voice you heard in the Bon Vivant garden was one of them checking in with his partner in crime. Maybe one turned off the burglar alarm and left, and the other was supposed to steal the money, only he couldn’t get into the safe. That would explain the anger you heard. Plus, if—”
“Whoa, that’s a whole lot of speculation,” Olivia said.
“You never let me have any fun.” Maddie glanced up at the clock over the sink. “The hordes will descend soon to devour our free cookies. I’d better start baking and decorating for later.” She gathered her icing ingredients: meringue powder, confectioners’ sugar, lemon extract, and a handful of tiny bottles of gel food coloring.
“I’ll help Jennifer work the sales floor.” Olivia wiped cookie crumbs into the garbage can before she deposited the plates in the dishwasher. “By the way, how is she working out?”
“Great! That girl knows her cookie cutters. Bertha says she connects well with the customers.” Maddie washed her hands, which meant she was ready to begin measuring ingredients into the mixing bowl.
“Does she seem a bit distant to you?” Olivia asked. “Has she shared much about her background? I’m wondering why I’ve never met her before, even at Cookie Cutter Collectors Club meetings.”
“Livie, you are so suspicious. Jennifer isn’t actually from Chatterley Heights. She grew up in Twiterton, but she left as a child. She’s been living in DC, wanted to be in a small town, remembered this area with fondness, and so on. That’s about all I know. She isn’t talkative, which I can appreciate because it allows me to talk more. She’s a steady worker, knowledgeable…really, what’s not to like? I get tired of high school girls who would rather text on their cell phones than wait on customers. Not that I wasn’t exactly the same at their age, except for not having a cell phone.” Maddie measured lemon extract into the mixing bowl. “Begone,” she said. “I am about to transform these simple ingredients into the miraculous substance known as royal icing.” She lowered the beaters into the bowl.
As the mixer began to whir, Olivia closed the kitchen door behind her and scanned the sales floor, one of her most favorite places on earth. She counted four customers wandering among the tables of cookie cutter displays. Three more had commandeered the coffee table for an intense discussion that required nearness to cookies. Across the floor, a young couple watched, clearly entranced, as Jennifer explained the many and mysterious attachments for a large red mixer that had gone unsold since The Gingerbread House first opened its doors. No one so much as glanced at Olivia as she tidied the display of baking equipment.
Olivia’s back was to the sales floor when she heard a staccato clip-clip behind her, followed by a sound that made her think of castanets. “Mom?”
“So clever of you, Livie. How did you know?”
Olivia turned to see her petite mother, Ellie, dressed in a shiny lavender top, slim black pants, and charcoal suede shoes tied with black laces. Her long gray hair hung over one shoulder in a braid, and a gray suede fedora tilted rakishly atop her head. “Wow,” Olivia said. “You look amazing. Are those sequins?”
“My little costume enhancement.” Ellie smoothed her fingers across several rows of deep purple sequins sewn around the neck of her lavender top. As she spun in a pirouette to show off the entire effect, her feet made a clicking sound.
“Hey, are those tap shoes? This is so unfair. You wouldn’t let me take tap dance lessons when I was a kid.”
“I’m sorry about that, dear,” Ellie said. “I was a teensy bit afraid you would get your feet tangled up and lose your balance. I was only thinking of your safety.”
“Well, Mom, I am eight inches taller than you are. It’s easier to stay balanced when you’re so close to the ground.”
“Ouch,” Ellie said, grinning up at her five-foot-seven-inch daughter.
“Okay, that was mean of me. How about a cookie?” Olivia made a silent promise to accept her clumsiness, inherited from her late father, and to celebrate the fact that she could reach high shelves.
“Apology accepted,” Ellie said. “And normally I’d love a cookie, but I’m on the run. I didn’t even have time to take off my tap shoes after my lesson, and I’
m already late for my League of Women Voters meeting, which I’m supposed to chair. I merely stopped by to offer you my help with the baking for Maddie’s lovely yet ambitious engagement party. My kitchen is at your disposal. So much easier to keep Maddie in the dark about your cookie plans, and it would be such fun to bake with you again.”
“Mom, that would be perfect. I’ve already agreed to let Maddie help, but I’d rather she didn’t know about my experimental failures. Can you really fit baking sessions into your schedule? Don’t you have activities planned for every hour of every day?”
“You’re exaggerating just a bit, Livie,” Ellie said with an indulgent smile. “You got that from your father, along with a tiny tendency toward sarcasm. Although I do realize you are stressed at the moment, which always—”
“Mom? The League of Women Voters?” Olivia pointed to the Hansel and Gretel clock on the wall, a gift from her mother to celebrate The Gingerbread House’s grand opening. The clock face depicted an intricate view of the inside of the witch’s house, complete with children and oven. The visual detail made it difficult to read the time accurately. “According to Hansel and Gretel,” Olivia said, “either you are due at your meeting right now, or you’re up to thirteen minutes late.”
“Oh good, I still have time. We usually drink coffee and eat doughnuts for at least twenty minutes before calling the meeting to order. No one will miss me until the doughnuts are gone.” Ellie glanced toward the cookie tray, still blocked by the two intense women. “Maybe I’ll have that cookie, after all. For strength, you know.” She tap-danced the few feet to the table, which startled the women into jumping aside. Ellie snagged two cookies and tap-danced back to Olivia. “That was fun.”
“I’m torn between pride and embarrassment,” Olivia said.
“Thank you.” Ellie bit the tail off a bright red cardinal with dark red sprinkles. “When can you come to the house for a baking session? I’d skip my yoga class this afternoon, but I’ll need it after the league meeting. After that, I’m free. Maybe you could come for dinner? Allan would love to see you, and I’m sure Jason could join us once he finishes his shift at the garage.”
One Dead Cookie Page 4
