Cookie Dough or Die accsm-1

by Virginia Lowell

  In that instant, Olivia knew her lovely plan was doomed. It was too complex and time-consuming. She hadn’t given enough thought to the human element.

  It was now or never.

  “Everyone, can I have your attention?” Heads swiveled toward her. Del, who had been lounging against a wall, straightened and reached into his pants pocket for his cell phone. “I know you’re all busy, but before you leave, I’d appreciate your help. Would you all gather up here with me? Maddie, would you and Jason bring those three trays from the front?” She’d been vague, but Maddie would understand which ones she wanted.

  With the trays arranged on three small display tables and the guests in a semicircle around them, Olivia said, “Clarisse and I shared a passion for cookie cutters. Sometimes a particular cutter has a special meaning for me, and I know Clarisse felt the same. As I mentioned earlier, Maddie and I made these cookies from cutters that were special to Clarisse. I would like for all of us who cared for her to share our thoughts about what each of these shapes might have meant to her and the nice memories they must represent.

  “Let’s start with this one.” Olivia selected two cookies in the shape of the crowned gingerbread boy and held them up so everyone could see. One had black hair, and the other, fire engine red.

  “Goodness, that’s Hugh,” Bertha said. “When Hugh was little, Ms. Clarisse would have me make a batch of cookies for her ‘little prince.’ You wouldn’t remember, Hugh, because she stopped when you were about four. She was afraid little Edward might think she loved you better.” Bertha’s face reddened as she realized the implications of what she’d said.

  “Interesting,” Hugh said.

  Olivia couldn’t see Edward’s face, but he hung his head as if the revelation disturbed him.

  “What about this one?” Olivia held up a running gingerbread man with bright red hair.

  After a moment of silence, Tammy said, “If she wanted to be fair, wouldn’t she choose a gingerbread man for Edward, too? Anyway, it looks like him. He’s always on the go,” she said with a teasing poke at Edward’s arm.

  Olivia picked up the gingerbread woman and girl. “And these lovely figures?”

  After a moment of silence, Bertha sniffled. Ellie handed her a tissue, and Bertha dabbed at her eyes. “My poor Clarisse,” she said. “She loved her boys but, oh, she wanted a girl so much. When that never happened, she started wanting a granddaughter.”

  Olivia sneaked a peek at her group of suspects. Tammy was checking her watch. Hugh’s ever-present smile had disappeared. His head swiveled slowly as he studied each of the three cookie arrangements. Edward stared into space. Olivia decided to kick it up a notch. She picked up the two flower shapes. Both were iced with simple, realistic piped lines. The six-petaled flower had red stamens and dark pink, curving petals that came to a point. On the eight-petaled flower, numerous flowing white lines, spreading out from a pale yellow center, suggested a dense petal structure.

  Olivia saw puzzled faces among the guests. Del took out his cell phone and edged away, as if he had a call. He strolled toward the front door, cell phone to his ear.

  A slight movement caught Olivia’s attention. It was her mother, adjusting the scarf over her shoulder. Ellie’s raised eyebrows and serene countenance conveyed a message: I’ll move this along, shall I?

  “Livie, dear,” Ellie said, “that lovely pink flower looks so familiar to me. Let me think a moment.”

  Del pressed a button on his cell and held it to his ear. He craned his neck to look behind Olivia. Shaking his head, he stabbed at his cell phone.

  Olivia felt light-headed and realized she had stopped breathing. Cody must not be answering his cell. She tried to telegraph a warning signal to her mom, but Ellie gazed off to the right, as if racking her memory. “Yes, I think I’m right,” she said. “I believe the pink flower is a lily. Possibly a stargazer, such a sweet scent.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Olivia thought she saw Hugh and Edward both stiffen.

  “Of course it is,” Bertha said. “Clarisse loved her lilies. I knew that cookie reminded me of something. And now I think on it, that white flower reminds me of growing up in the South. We had such lovely flowers, and the fragrance on a summer’s day, it was like perfume. That’s it! That white flower is a jasmine, I’m sure of it.”

  Tammy gasped as she looked up at Hugh. “Hugh?” Her eyes widened as red blotches formed on Hugh’s handsome face. “Hugh, what’s wrong?”

  “I haven’t heard that name in so long,” Hugh muttered to himself as his blotches were replaced with a ghostly pallor.

  Olivia noticed a quick flash of something in Edward’s eyes. It seemed like an uneasy mix of hatred and fear. He took one look at his brother’s face and backed away. His lips were moving, but it seemed that he was unaware that a name had escaped them. The name released in a coarse whisper was “Jasmine.”

  “Edward?” Hugh was rubbing his chin now, seemingly deep in thought. Suddenly his perfectly modulated voice turned harsh as he locked eyes with his brother. “What is this all about? What’s with this trip down memory lane?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” Edward said. His dark eyes were wary.

  The other guests spread away from the brothers. Del watched the brothers intently, looking uncertain. Olivia knew how he felt.

  Hugh picked up the jasmine flower cookie. Holding it in the palm of his hand, he said, “Did you know that Jasmine wrote to me after she disappeared? Just once. She wouldn’t tell me where she was. She said she was sorry but she had to leave, that my family would never forgive her.”

  “You know Father never approved of her,” Edward said flatly.

  “He also knew enough not to interfere,” Hugh said. “But you . . . You couldn’t stand it, could you? You never forgave her for loving me instead of you. You convinced her to run away, didn’t you?”

  “Why would I do that? Hugh, you’re not making sense. And why do you care now, anyway? You’ve got a perky new wife while I still have what I’ve always had—nothing.” Edward edged away from his brother, cast a glance at the kitchen door, and Olivia’s doubts evaporated. She knew that Edward’s emotions had always been so close to the surface. He and Hugh had tried to keep things civil while Clarisse was alive, but her little show with the cookies brought everything to a furious boil. Olivia was going for broke. She picked up the coffin cookie.

  “You did more than scare Jasmine into leaving town, didn’t you, Edward?” She’d kept her voice calm and soft. Her mother would be proud. She placed herself between Edward and the kitchen door. “You knew Jasmine was pregnant, didn’t you? Did you offer to claim the child as your own if she would marry you? Did she refuse you?”

  Hugh’s head snapped toward Olivia, then back to Edward. “Child? Whose child? What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing, Hugh. Can’t you see Olivia is playing some game?” He looked toward the kitchen, blocked by Olivia, then back at the front door, where Del waited. His eyes darted around the room like those of a trapped animal.

  “Did you kill her?” The voice was barely recognizable, but it was Hugh’s. His hands reached toward Edward’s throat.

  Edward ducked and backed into a corner. “It wasn’t my fault, Hugh. Jasmine was mine first, I loved her. You already had everything, you didn’t need her. I would have taken care of her and the child, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “So you killed her,” Olivia said, deliberately goading him.

  “No . Don’t listen to her, Hugh. It was an accident. I was trying to make her listen, make her see how much I still cared for her when she lost her balance and fell down the stairs. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “Jasmine died of exposure,” Olivia said. “She was still alive when you dumped her body in Patuxent River State Park on a cold March day. That was no accident. Your mother found out, didn’t she?”

  Hugh let out a yell and leaped at his brother. Edward sidestepped, and Hugh hit the wall.

  As Edward sprin
ted for the kitchen, Olivia shouted, “Cody!” She heard a crash, coming from behind the kitchen door, followed by a deep bark. Edward skidded to a halt and spun around. Hugh tried to block his way, but Edward shoved him so hard, he lost his balance. He twisted and fell sideways. Hugh winced as he used his left arm to sit up. Jason knelt beside him.

  Edward barreled forward, and Lucas tried to block him as he neared the antiques cabinet. Edward grabbed the thirty-six-cup coffeemaker and hurled it at him. The metal container bounced off Lucas’s shoulder and smashed open, spewing hot coffee down his side.

  Del guarded the front door, ready to fight. Powerful muscles strained against the sleeves of his shirt. But he didn’t have a weapon. It would be all right, Olivia told herself. Del was the stronger of the two and far more experienced.

  Where was Cody? Olivia skirted the sales desk and shoved open the kitchen door. She saw nothing but overturned chairs and spilled sugar. The door to the alley hung open. She heard a rattling sound and twirled around in time to watch her antiques cabinet rock forward. As it crashed to the floor, she tried not to think about the innocent cookie cutters trapped inside.

  When the cabinet fell, the loud crash distracted Del long enough for Edward to dart toward a table in the corner, to Del’s left.

  What was a table doing in that corner? Olivia’s mind flashed back to their preparations for the memorial. Hadn’t Maddie moved the pie-baking equipment out of the nook and into the main room to make room for a cookie tray? Cold dread shot through her as she remembered one item in that display—her beloved gray marble rolling pin.

  With the quickness of a threatened squirrel, Edward snatched the rolling pin and swung it at Del’s stomach. Del doubled over, collapsed. Edward leaped over Del’s prone body and escaped into the foyer.

  Mr. Willard had herded the remaining guests as far away from the doors as possible, so Olivia didn’t have to run anyone down as she raced toward Del. By the time Olivia reached him, Del was sitting up. He grasped her arm and rolled to his knees.

  Olivia squatted beside him, an arm around his shoulders. “Del, don’t try to move. I’m so, so sorry, I should have known that rolling pin could be used as a weapon, I—”

  Del put a shaky finger to his lips, and Olivia realized he was trying to catch his breath. Then she heard a familiar sound from behind the partially open door to the foyer. A growl. A yappy sort of growl.

  “Spunky?! Oh my God.” He must have escaped when Jason went to get her cell. She reached behind Del and pushed the door open. Edward had cleared the front door, with Spunky nipping at his heels. She stood up and ran after them. The Chamberlain family car, a roomy Ford van, was parked right in front of the store. Edward beeped open the lock before he reached for the door. Spunky jumped inside a moment before the door slammed shut.

  “Oh no.” She was too late. Edward was about to drive off with her puppy and get away with murder. She heard sirens coming nearer, but would they be in time? She kept running.

  Edward was being unusually slow about starting his car. When she got close enough, she heard Spunky’s distinctive bark. He’d jumped into Edward’s lap. When Edward tried to shove him off, Spunky dug his teeth into Edward’s shirt sleeve and tugged, as if they were playing a game. Edward lifted his arm and tried to shake off the tiny dog.

  Olivia reached the van first and grabbed the door handle. It was locked. Spunky spotted her outside. He let go of Edward’s sleeve, plopped down on the seat, and began to yap excitedly. Edward aimed his key toward the ignition.

  “No!” Olivia banged on the driver’s-side window. She stopped when she heard a loud thump to her left. Edward’s key was in the ignition, but he froze. He stared out the front windshield, where eighty-five pounds of black Labrador balanced on the hood, barking at his little friend inside.

  Edward recovered, turned the key. Someone yanked Olivia aside right before she heard a brief explosion. Cody stood in front of the van, holding his revolver. Air hissed out of the left-front tire. The ignition caught, and Edward shifted into drive, flat tire or no flat tire. Dogs or no dogs.

  Del appeared. “Sorry about this, Livie,” he said. Olivia thought he was talking about her puppy. Then she noticed what he held in his hand—her lovely gray marble rolling pin. Del swung it at the driver’s-side window.

  Marble isn’t the hardest stone on the planet, and Del didn’t swing as hard as he might have, but it did the trick. Edward ducked sideways as Spunky leaped into the backseat. Buddy the Lab skittered off the hood, taking some of the car’s finish with him. A maze of cracks spread across the glass. Del held the marble rolling pin like a baseball bat, ready to smash the window again, if he had to. Cody aimed his revolver at the windshield.

  Edward sat up and switched off the ignition. He sat very still, one hand tight on the steering wheel. After a few moments, his hand slid to his lap. Olivia heard the van’s locks snap open as Edward Chamberlain, for perhaps the first time in his life, gave up.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Olivia and Maddie sat cross-legged on the floor of The Gingerbread House, lights dimmed, mourning over the crushed remains of their antiques cabinet. It lay where it had fallen the afternoon before, facedown, vintage cookie cutters snug inside.

  “Like a mommy protecting her babies,” Maddie said.

  “Let’s hope so.” Olivia stroked Spunky’s ears as he snuggled beside her. “From the size of those cracks in the side, I doubt the poor thing is reparable. I suppose we should turn it over and assess the damage to our cutters.” She took her time getting to her feet. The pain from her injuries had lessened, but her muscles felt stiff and tight.

  Maddie hopped up and offered a steadying hand. Together, they pulled the cabinet onto its side. The contents clattered and tinkled into a heap on the floor. Maddie turned up the lights, while Olivia closed Spunky into the kitchen to keep his little paws off the glass shards. When she returned with a whisk broom, Maddie was already sorting vintage cookie cutters from broken glass.

  After a half hour of work, interrupted only by whining from the kitchen, Maddie asked, “What time will everyone start arriving?”

  “I suggested anytime after two.” Olivia checked the Hansel and Gretel clock on the wall. “We have somewhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour to get this cleaned up. Del called and said he’d come later. So will Hugh and Tammy. Mom and Jason will probably be on time, and Mr. Willard will bring Bertha along shortly. Del called this morning and filled me in on a few details from Edward’s confession. It seems Edward was getting desperate. Clarisse had found out from Faith’s letter—the part we didn’t see—that Jasmine died soon after giving birth to Hugh’s child.”

  “But not that Edward killed her?”

  “Not something you add to a letter asking a stranger to come rescue a grandchild she didn’t know she had.”

  “Good point,” Maddie said. “Clarisse would have become very suspicious of Faith’s motives. So who was Faith?”

  “Faith Kelly, Jasmine’s closest friend. Jasmine went to live with her after disappearing from Chatterley Heights. Apparently, Faith grabbed baby Lily and ran when Edward showed up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jasmine told her to. Jasmine was smart; she probably began to suspect that Edward had lied to her about Martin wanting her to disappear forever.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Maddie said. “If Faith wrote this letter saying she was dying of cancer, why did Clarisse hire a private detective agency to find Lily? Why not just get her from Faith?”

  “Ah, because Faith collapsed and was rushed to the hospital before she could post the letter. Social Services took Lily. Faith never went home again. After she died, her landlady found the letter, already stamped and addressed, so she dropped it in the mail. It reached Clarisse nearly a month after Faith wrote it.”

  “But if Clarisse never actually met Faith, how did she find out that Edward killed Jasmine?”

  Olivia picked up a gingerbread man with a tilted hat and a red aluminum handle. She smoot
hed her fingers over the cool metal. “The same way we did: she searched the Internet. Clarisse had the advantage of knowing about when Jasmine died. She was so upset, she called Edward at that conference in Baltimore and said she was thinking about contacting the police. She couldn’t have been completely sure at that point which of her sons killed Jasmine, but she knew one of them was guilty, and I think she suspected Edward. He begged her to wait until he could talk to her. That’s why she asked Bertha for a full bottle of wine: she was expecting Edward.”

  Maddie balanced on her rear and stretched out her arms and legs. “Pilates,” she said. “Your mom taught me.”

  Olivia spotted a small crack in a plastic Hallmark Lucy and reluctantly added it to the pile of damaged cutters. Lucy still had value. Someone would love her, crack and all. As much as one could love Lucy. “It’s sad, really,” she said. “Because of his drive and intensity, Edward was a successful businessman, but he felt trapped in Hugh’s shadow. Then Edward met Jasmine and fell in love. And Hugh won again.”

  “Love isn’t business,” Maddie said.

  “So right,” Olivia said. “Love isn’t coolheaded and rational. Hugh would have defied his father to marry Jasmine, and of course, Clarisse would have been thrilled. But Edward couldn’t let go. He thought he could convince Jasmine that Hugh cared more about what their father thought than for her and her child. He wanted to look like her knight in shining armor. Edward was only trying to convince Jasmine to marry him instead of Hugh, but his lies about Martin’s disapproval frightened her into hiding. He still managed to keep tabs on her and tracked her down probably thinking he had one last chance to get her back into his life. But when she refused him, things turned violent.”

  Maddie began filling two boxes, one with unscathed vintage cutters and the other with damaged ones, while Olivia whisked up the glass shards.

  The Gingerbread House door opened, and Ellie Greyson’s head appeared. “Are we early? We brought food and drink, in the form of pizzas and wine. Jason brought beer, of course. I’ll warm some pizza in the oven, shall I?”