Cookie Dough or Die accsm-1

by Virginia Lowell

  “What was the name of the town?”

  “Why on earth would that be—?”

  “Please, Maddie, humor me, okay? Anything might be important.”

  “Okay, give me a sec.”

  Olivia heard a clunk, like the sound of Maddie’s cell phone hitting a hard surface, but the line remained open.

  “I’m back,” Maddie said. “The town was McGonigle, in southwestern Ohio. Population miniscule. That Jasmine died in a car wreck. Sad, really. She was seventeen and driving under the influence. Anyway, unless we’ve uncovered an undead situation, this is not our Jasmine.”

  “I’m amazed that you found an obituary fourteen years old from a tiny Ohio town.”

  “I didn’t, exactly. The girl’s story turned up in newspapers off and on for years—sort of a cautionary tale for teens. Anyway, my guess is our Jasmine managed to slip through the Internet cracks, which was easier then. Maybe Jasmine isn’t her real name. Can I go home now?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home. What I meant was, Lucas wants me to come over for a late, late dinner. He picked something up from Pete’s, and we haven’t had any time together for at least a century. Please?”

  “I’m not actually your boss, you know. Only could you do one more thing for me? If you’d send me some guidelines for searching newspaper archives, I’ll keep looking. You know how backward I am when it comes to the Internet.”

  “Enough with the buttering up, I see right through it. I’ll shoot you an email. Then I’m gone.”

  “Thanks, Maddie,” Olivia said, even though the connection had broken halfway through her first word.

  When her kitchen phone rang, Olivia glanced at the time on her laptop. Eleven p.m. She did not need another call from her ex-husband, and who else would call her so late? She really needed to order caller ID for her private line.

  Spunky opened his eyes and sat up as Olivia grunted her way off the sofa. With muted enthusiasm, he yapped once and followed her to the kitchen. She took her time, hoping the ringing would end before she got there.

  At the beginning of the seventh ring, she answered.

  “I am so sorry, Olivia—Livie, I mean—”

  “Mr. Willard? Don’t worry, I wasn’t even in bed yet.”

  “Still, I apologize for the lateness of my call, but I’ve only now returned from dinner at the Chamberlain home. We spent much of the evening discussing details concerning Clarisse’s will and the family’s private service for her on Saturday, but I was able to convince Hugh and Edward, as well as Ms. Deacons, to attend the Sunday memorial event you are planning for all of Chatterley Heights.”

  “I’m impressed. May I ask how you did it?”

  “It was not too difficult,” Mr. Willard said with a hint of pride in his voice. “I merely reminded them of their mother’s lifelong involvement in the community, which benefited both the town and Chamberlain Enterprises. She and Martin served on local committees, contributed to local organizations—an example being the Food Shelf—and as a result, the town council was receptive to their requests for rezoning. And so on. I had a long history with Martin and Clarisse to draw upon.”

  “I’m glad you’re on my side,” Olivia said. “I’ll keep my part of the bargain. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Del.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that. I will sleep somewhat better tonight.”

  The next morning, Olivia poked her head into The Gingerbread House a few minutes after opening. Maddie and Ellie were already helping customers, so she waved her travel mug at them and slipped away. Only two days left until Sunday, when she and Maddie would be hosting a cookie-cutter memorial service for Clarisse—and hoping to reveal her killer.

  Before crawling into bed the night before, she had finished a nearly complete list of the cookie cutters she needed for Sunday’s memorial. Her energy surged as she drove toward the Chamberlain house. She felt more in control of her fate, no longer buffeted by events, especially those nasty attempts to cast suspicion on her for Clarisse’s murder. Now she had a direction, plans, cookies to decorate.... By the time Bertha met her at the front door, Olivia was floating in adrenaline.

  As they climbed the stairs to the second floor, Olivia asked, “Were you the one who put away the cookie cutters Clarisse was looking at the night she . . . ?”

  Bertha paused on a step, took a wheezy breath, and nodded. “I figured it was my job. Usually Ms. Clarisse did that, but, well . . .”

  “Of course. I don’t suppose you remember where you put them? In which drawers, I mean?”

  “Bless you, dear, I don’t even remember what they looked like. I was so upset and teary, I could barely see to find the room. I put those cookie cutters back anywhere I could find a free space. Why? Is it important?”

  At the tone of alarm in Bertha’s voice, Olivia backpedaled. Bertha had sworn an oath of secrecy concerning Olivia’s visit; that was enough of a risk. The less she knew about the details, the better.

  “Oh no, I’ll find plenty of cutters for Sunday, don’t worry.”

  They reached the second floor, and Bertha opened the first door on the left. “Well, here we are, dear. I’ll leave you to it.”

  Clarisse Chamberlain’s cookie-cutter collection filled an entire spare bedroom. Olivia had visited it on numerous occasions during her visits to the Chamberlain home, yet each time she entered the room a quickening rushed through her. Even now, with Clarisse gone, Olivia felt like a child crossing the threshold of a toy store.

  Once Bertha closed the door behind her, Olivia turned in a slow circle, taking in the bureaus and cabinets that lined all four walls. She knew the history of each one. The older, smaller cabinets had belonged to Clarisse’s workingclass family, while the Victorian-style walnut dresser had survived through several generations of Martin Chamberlain’s well-to-do family. Other pieces were antiques, which Clarisse had purchased for her growing cookie-cutter collection.

  During the year she and Clarisse had shared their passion for cutters, Olivia had seen perhaps a third of the collection. She had no more than half an hour to find the pieces she needed for the memorial event, so she couldn’t afford to dawdle. When her mother agreed to help out at the store yet again, she’d made it clear she did not intend to miss her book group at ten a.m.

  Clarisse had loved both the cookie cutters and the act of organizing. Olivia knew that she would at times amuse herself by dismantling part or all of her collection and then reorganizing it. So even though Olivia had seen the insides of many drawers, their contents might have changed since then.

  Olivia checked her short list of vintage cookie cutters, culled from the longer list of cutters on Clarisse’s desk. These were shapes she could not reproduce from the store’s inventory:

  1. Dancing Snoopy *

  2. Gingerbread Boy with Crown *

  3. Gingerbread Man Running *

  4. Gingerbread House *

  5. Gingerbread Woman and Girl *

  She remembered that Clarisse usually reserved the chests from her own family for her mother’s modest collection, as well as other cutters from the 1940s and 1950s. The walnut dresser and an old cedar chest were the only pieces from Martin’s family, and they had also contained some antiques.

  Olivia began with the cedar chest. The heavy lid creaked as she lifted it, and she caught a fleeting whiff of mothballs. Inside, she found wooden trays lined with velvet and stacked on top of one another. The cutters were spaced evenly in rows across the trays. Each cutter bore an easily read identification tag. Bless Clarisse and her obsessive organization. She worked her way to the bottom two trays. There she found gingerbread figures, including the woman and the girl from her list.

  One cookie cutter down and four to go.

  Olivia turned to the walnut dresser, which had three large drawers and a mirror in a carved frame. Beneath the mirror lay a marble insert, flanked on each side by a small drawer. She pulled open the right drawer. It contained only one cookie cutter—a gingerbread house with a chimney.
The shape was on her longer list, so she took it. She could have used a similar shape from the store, but it was good to have the well-used original.

  She opened the small drawer on the left. It was empty. Naturally it wouldn’t be that easy.

  Olivia moved on to the large drawers. In the top one, she found a maze of various-size boxes, arranged as tightly as possible. Some had clear plastic lids, several were collections with pictures of the cutters on the top, and the rest would have to be opened. Olivia said good-bye to the remains of her adrenaline rush.

  By the time she’d reached the bottom of the top drawer, Olivia was in despair. So far, only two cutters matched her list. She checked her watch. If she didn’t leave in fifteen minutes, at the latest, Maddie would be on her own in the store. Maybe she’d be all right for a while, but not for too long.

  Olivia tried to think of a way to shorten her search. She still needed three cookie cutters: gingerbread boy with crown, gingerbread man running, and the 1971 Dancing Snoopy, from a Hallmark collection. In a pinch, she and Maddie could make templates, but it wouldn’t be the same. She looked at the tightly packed second drawer of the walnut dresser and remembered Bertha’s comment that she’d put the cutters back wherever she could find room.

  Olivia stood in the middle of the room and studied the remaining pieces of furniture. If I were Bertha, I’d make it easy on myself. Then she saw it—a small bureau in a sleek Scandinavian style. It screamed 1970s, and it was right next to the door. In the second drawer, she found an extensive collection of Hallmark Peanuts cookie cutters, including a rare Snoopy sitting on a pumpkin. Unable to help herself, Olivia picked it up, caressed it with her thumb, then yelled at herself for wasting precious time.

  Within seconds, Olivia located the Dancing Snoopy she had sold to Clarisse. Snoopy was resting between the boy with a crown and the running gingerbread man. She checked her watch. If she left now, she should arrive at the store as her mother left for her book group.

  Olivia stuffed her loot into a cloth bag she’d brought along and ran for the stairs. As she passed the living room, she saw Bertha wielding a vacuum cleaner. Olivia waved to catch her attention, then mouthed “Thank you.” Before Bertha could turn off the vacuum cleaner, Olivia escaped through the front door.

  Only seven miles separated the Chamberlain home from the town of Chatterley Heights. However, the twists in the road and the hilly terrain could make the trip feel much longer. Propelled by a growing sense of urgency, Olivia had sprinted from the Chamberlain’s front door to her dusty old Valiant. Her tires spit gravel as she accelerated hard down the long driveway. Before turning onto the main road, she made a rolling stop and swung right.

  Questions bounced around in Olivia’s head, forming an overwhelming to-do list. Was Jasmine Dubois truly the dark-haired dead woman found six years earlier near the Patuxent River? If so, was her death an accident or was she murdered? Had Clarisse found out about a murder as well as a grandchild?

  Of course, there were other possibilities. Maybe Clarisse once gave up a child for adoption, or Martin Chamberlain fathered a child, who grew up and decided to extort money from Clarisse, or . . . Following a curve in the road, Olivia swerved over the center line into the ongoing lane. She corrected at once, and no traffic was coming toward her, but it shook her. She realized that the more her thoughts raced, the harder her foot pressed the accelerator. She eased up, placed both hands on the wheel, and gave herself a lecture.

  “Stick with the evidence, Livie, stick with the evidence.” There were times that called for talking to oneself, and this was one of them. “The evidence I have is a cryptic note, from someone named Faith, claiming the existence of a grandchild. Clarisse initiated an investigation, probably through a detective agency. Clarisse sounded hopeful in her letter to me, written shortly before her death. Yet even Bertha reported that she was distracted and upset on the last evening of her life.”

  Olivia came to a straight stretch in the road, but instead of speeding up, she decelerated to well below the speed limit. Maddie could handle the store for a while. She needed more time to think. She was certain that Clarisse had been murdered, despite the lack of clear forensic evidence. She also felt sure that whoever killed Clarisse also, somehow, caused Sam’s diabetic coma. Maybe that bag of cookies had been laced with something that threw his insulin off. The Chamberlain brothers would know all about what drugs might do the trick.

  Tammy stayed home from school on Monday, so she had no alibi for the period preceding Sam’s collapse. Olivia remembered that on Mondays, Clarisse made the rounds of her businesses, to keep tabs on operations. She’d mentioned more than once that the boys did the same. So Hugh or Edward also had opportunities to leave those cookies for Sam.

  Olivia couldn’t shake the conviction that Clarisse had learned something about Jasmine’s fate. Something that disturbed her deeply. And she was killed to keep her quiet. Olivia stretched her hand toward the passenger’s seat and touched the small bag that held Clarisse’s cookie cutters. It was made of soft cloth to buffer the cutters against an ungentle world.

  A glance in her rearview mirror revealed a car gaining on her fast. Her first instinct was to speed up, but she hesitated. The next patch of road had several curves, one of which had sent many a drunk driver into the ditch. The driver behind was clearly in a hurry. He’d try to pass her. If she sped up, he might do so, too. She decided to slow down, let him pass.

  Olivia took her foot off the accelerator and slowed to twenty-five miles per hour. Then to fifteen. The car seemed to be flying closer, as if the driver hadn’t noticed her. Olivia wasn’t skilled at identifying a car’s make and model, but the one behind her looked like a beater. Probably a teenager, maybe talking on a cell phone—or worse, texting.

  She edged to the side of the road. There was no shoulder, only a culvert. As she headed up a hill, the drop-off deepened. She was going so slowly, she had to accelerate to get up the hill. Maybe it was for the best. If the kid didn’t come to his senses in time, he’d rear-end her.

  On her descent down the hill, Olivia picked up more speed. She was heading for the final hill, the bane of drunk drivers. Beyond that she would hit a straight stretch, a good place for passing. She increased her speed, hoping to put more distance between the two cars. She’d have to slow down a bit to take the treacherous double curve that began just over the crest, but she’d done it many times before.

  The car continued to gain on her. Olivia nudged her accelerator as she began to ascend. For the first time, she could see the driver in her rearview mirror. The quickest of glances showed curly hair on a bobbing head. The driver’s shoulders seemed to be dancing. It was a kid all right, lost in an iPod world, swaying to the music. And she was a girl, not a boy.

  Olivia had no time to ponder her misdirected sexism. She was about to crest the infamous hill. She tapped her brakes to slow down, so she could accelerate into the curve. Her speed didn’t change. She pumped the brakes. Nothing happened. Finally, she jammed down, and the pedal hit the floor without resistance. That’s when she knew. She had no brakes.

  Olivia gripped the steering wheel with all her strength. She hovered her foot above the accelerator, letting the engine drag slow the Valiant. Only when she’d entered the curve did she press lightly on the accelerator, figuring she’d have more control. She focused so intensely on the road that her mind noted the cracks in the pavement, each telling dent in the low guardrail. She didn’t dare blink.

  Despite a deep swerve into the oncoming lane, Olivia managed to navigate the first curve. However, she was now going downhill, picking up too much speed. She couldn’t afford to keep her foot on the accelerator. All she had left was her steering wheel. She was clutching it so hard her fingers began to cramp as she headed into the second curve.

  At the sound of screeching tires, Olivia’s eyes flashed to her rearview mirror. She noted with relief that the car behind her had cleared the first curve and slowed enough to make a rear-end crash unlikely. A split se
cond later, she saw the front end of her car rush toward a badly damaged section of guardrail. Her last thought was how unfair it was. She wasn’t even drunk.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The voice sounded close. Was someone in the house? In her bedroom? Not a threatening voice, though . . . Concerned, maybe . . . And young, very young.

  “Wake up, please wake up,” the voice said. “Please don’t be dead. I can’t handle that.”

  Olivia recognized the words but couldn’t figure out how they went together. Where was she? She opened her eyes. Through a window she saw tree tops and trunks, with sky behind them.

  “What happened?” Olivia’s voice sounded weak, but at least it worked.

  “You’re alive! Oh, thank God! Does anything hurt? Well, of course, everything must hurt. No wait, don’t move, the paramedic said not to move you unless the car was on fire, which it isn’t.”

  “Para . . . ?”

  “I called 911. They said to stay with you, so I did. Don’t you remember anything at all?”

  The voice, Olivia realized, belonged to a woman, but it wasn’t familiar. “Nothing.” She leaned her head back as exhaustion flooded through her. The feel of the headrest triggered a thought. “I’m in a car,” she said.

  “Right, you were driving. I’m Julie, by the way. You don’t have to remember that, just relax.” Sirens whined in the distance. “Oh good, here they come. Sit still, okay? It won’t be long. I’ll be right here.”

  Olivia began to drift, but the siren screamed until it filled her head. Then it stopped. She groaned, closed her eyes, and gave up trying to understand. A light touch on her shoulder brought her back.

  “Livie, don’t try to move yet. The paramedics are arriving. They’ll take care of you.” It was a male voice, familiar, gentle. A nice voice.