A Cookie Before Dying

by Lowell, Virginia

  “I’ve been lying here for hours,” Olivia muttered. She switched on the bedside lamp and checked her cell phone for the time. It was one a.m. “Okay, thirty-five minutes.”

  Spunky’s tiny body stretched out flat at the foot of the bed, as far as possible from Olivia. When she spoke, he lifted his eyelids and dropped them shut in one smooth movement.

  Olivia considered going to her kitchen and pouring herself a glass of wine. No, she had to open the store in the morning; she couldn’t afford to feel groggy. She’d finished her last library book. Music never helped her to sleep, and the only television was in her living room, where the air conditioner was even older and louder.

  Olivia shifted sideways to a cooler place on the sheet. Forcing her eyes shut, she tried deep breathing, which her yoga-addicted mother insisted would relax her. It made her crabby. As if mirroring her mood, Spunky raised his head and growled. But he was looking toward the bedroom windows, not at Olivia. She sat up, listened, but heard only the racket made by the air conditioner.

  “What is it, Spunks?”

  Spunky fixed his limpid brown eyes on Olivia and whimpered. His head snapped back toward the window, ears perked. The air conditioner consumed one of two bedroom windows. Spunky leaped off the bed and trotted to the second, moonlight-filled pane, where he fidgeted and whined. When he gave Olivia his most heartrending look, the one with the pleading eyes and tilted head, Olivia turned off the bedside lamp and joined him at the window.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said. Spunky stood on his hind legs and leaned his front paws on her shin. Olivia picked him up so he could look outside. “See? Dark of night, not a creature is stirring.” Spunky’s ears fell, then shot up again. This time Olivia heard it, too, even with the air conditioner whining in her right ear. She turned it off. The sound came through clearly, a howl that would have sent a chill down her spine if the room temperature hadn’t already risen by at least a degree.

  “Hang on a sec, kiddo,” Olivia said, depositing Spunky at her feet. At once he began to hop on his back feet and paw at the wall. Olivia unlocked the window and lifted the crank, but the humidity-swollen frame stuck. She hit the wood with her fist and felt it shift. She hit it again, and the window cracked open, allowing heavy, wet air to penetrate the only slightly drier room. She cranked the pane wide.

  Spunky yapped until Olivia picked him up. Together they peered out through the screen at what looked like black nothing until Olivia’s eyes adjusted and the clouds parted to reveal streaks of moonlight. She began to distinguish large shapes: other buildings on either side of The Gingerbread House, trees in the town square, the lamplight near the late-nineteenth-century band shell. Spunky wriggled his front paws free of Olivia’s grasp and reached out to touch the screen. He yapped three times and went silent. A faint howl answered his call.

  “Oh no, don’t tell me.” Olivia pressed her forehead against the screen. “Is Buddy out there, Spunks? Is that Buddy howling?” Spunky yapped and wagged his tail. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Deputy Sheriff Cody Furlow’s dog, Buddy, was huge, even for a black Labrador. However, the part about having black fur would explain why Olivia couldn’t see him. Buddy and Spunky had forged a special bond and sometimes led one another into trouble, or out of it.

  “Buddy sounds unhappy. Serves him right for running away.” Spunky leaped out of Olivia’s arms and ran to the bedroom door, which was closed to keep in the cooler air. Olivia sat on her bed and speed-dialed Cody’s cell. The call went to voice mail. “Cody? This is Olivia Greyson. It’s—” She checked her cell. “It’s one twenty a.m., and I think Buddy ran off again. Unless he’s home with you, he’s probably the dog I can hear howling from the town square. Anyway, Spunky thinks it’s him. Good luck.”

  Hoping her job was done, Olivia flopped back on her bed. Spunky had other ideas. He scratched the closed door, whimpering piteously. Olivia groaned. “All right, I’ll make another call, but I’m not opening that door.” Still on her back, she punched in her speed-dial code for the police department. She got a recording telling her to dial 911 for an emergency. At the end of the message, she was instructed to press “one” to leave a message for the Chatterley Heights Police Department. She questioned whether Buddy on the loose would qualify as 911-worthy. However, it couldn’t hurt to leave a message for Cody.

  While Spunky paced between the door and the window, Olivia closed her eyes. She had done her duty, which ought to help her relax and fall asleep. She envisioned wading into a chocolate lake dotted with pink and yellow sugar sprinkles. She swam to the opposite shore and entered a real gingerbread house, minus the child-eating witch. The air smelled like ginger and cloves and cinnamon, and the shelves were stocked with iced gingerbread. She reached for a piece and felt how moist and light it was as she bit into it. A tiny sound made her glance down at her feet, where a marzipan puppy with licorice eyes gazed up at her. As she broke off a bit of gingerbread to give him, she became aware of an almond smell and realized the puppy was melting from the heat in the kitchen. The oven door was open and heat was pouring out, which meant the wicked witch was—

  A breath-stopping howl reached her through the open bedroom window. Spunky answered with his own version, which sounded more like an extended yap.

  “Thank goodness I didn’t adopt a beagle,” Olivia said. She rolled over on her stomach. “You’re really worried, aren’t you, Spunks?” With tiny, galloping steps, Spunky ran to the bed, leaped onto it, jumped back down, and ran back to the window.

  “What’s more to the point,” Olivia said, “you aren’t going to let me sleep until we rescue Buddy. Though Lord knows what we’ll do with the brute if we do manage to capture him.” She slipped into jeans and a T-shirt and slid her cell phone into her pocket. She tried to pick up Spunky before opening her bedroom door, but he wiggled free and raced for the front door of the apartment. He held still long enough for Olivia to hook a leash on his collar, then stood on his hind feet and strained toward the door. “I’m worried, too,” she told him as they headed out into the night. “I hope it isn’t Cody he’s howling over.”

  Dense, wet fog rolled in as they made their way across the town square, with Spunky barking and Buddy howling back. A vivid streak of lightning sliced the sky south of the park, followed by a loud boom and, a few seconds later, a long rumble. As all the lights in and around the town square blinked out, Olivia realized a major storm was moving in . . . and the booming sound hadn’t been thunder. She hadn’t thought to grab a raincoat, and she didn’t even own a flashlight. She needed to start taking the Weather Channel more seriously. It would be too time-consuming to go back for rain gear. Better to find Buddy as quickly as possible and race back to the now darkened Gingerbread House. If the storm hit too fast and hard, they could all take shelter in the band shell.

  The combination of dark and fog made it tough to determine direction, though a flash of lightning nearby illuminated the outline of the band shell. Olivia didn’t catch sight of Buddy, though. She loosely held Spunky’s leash and allowed him to lead her, which he did with fierce terrier determination. She was glad he weighed only five pounds and had minuscule legs, or he would have yanked her off her feet and dragged her through the damp grass.

  Without hesitating to sniff the air, Spunky pulled Olivia around the band shell and toward the statue of Frederick P. Chatterley. As they passed the horse’s rump, Olivia was able to make out Buddy’s large form sitting on his haunches, his head lowered. He lifted his head as they neared. When he recognized Spunky, Buddy barked once and lowered his head again. He edged his front legs forward until his belly reached the wet grass, raised his head to the dark sky, and howled with a mournfulness that made even Spunky pause. Lightning slashed the darkness, illuminating the south end of the town square. A split second later came the rumbling of thunder. Olivia shivered as foreboding sliced through her. In that moment of light, she had seen a human form sprawled motionless on the grass, inches from Buddy’s front paws.

  With Spu
nky beside her, Olivia ran toward Buddy and knelt on the damp grass. “Cody?” Even as she whispered the question, Olivia realized that the prone form was not Deputy Cody. Cody was a skinny six-foot-three. She touched the man’s jacket, then drew her hand away, remembering her rudimentary forensics. The material had felt like leather. Under his jacket, this man had the broad shoulders and muscled build of a weight lifter. He lay on his stomach, his face hidden from view. His head was bare, and his dew-soaked hair looked black.

  Instinctively, Olivia reached toward his neck to feel for a pulse, then pulled back as she touched cold skin. A wave of revulsion turned her stomach. Spunky was braver, or at least more compelled by curiosity. He trotted around the dead man and sniffed his hand before Olivia yanked him back. Buddy’s mournful brown eyes watched her as if expecting the human to take charge.

  “Stop being such a wimp,” Olivia muttered. “I meant me, not you,” she said to Buddy. As the first raindrops landed on her back, she opened her cell and punched in 911.

  Soaked to the skin, Olivia huddled between Spunky and Buddy, peering into the darkness to avoid looking at the dead man nearby. “I guess this is a two-dog night, huh, guys?” Neither dog laughed. Olivia heard a shout from somewhere close by, but the rain was falling so furiously she couldn’t see more than a couple feet in any direction. The second shout was even closer, from somewhere to her left. “Hello?” she called.

  “Where are you? Can’t see a thing in this mess.” It was Del’s voice, worried and irritated and very welcome.

  “Del, it’s me, Livie. I’m—We are south of the band shell, right before you get to the statue.”

  Del sounded quite close and even more cross when he shouted, “Why on earth aren’t you inside the band shell?” He arrived right behind her, panting but dry under a large umbrella. “Here, hold this,” Del said, handing the umbrella to Olivia. He took off his raincoat and wrapped it around Olivia’s trembling shoulders. Pulling on crime-scene gloves, he leaned over the prone body and felt for a pulse. “He’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  Del pulled a flashlight from his uniform jacket pocket and squatted down, playing the light slowly over the body and along the soaked ground. Olivia tried not to watch, but she couldn’t help herself. Del seemed interested in the area around the man’s left shoulder. Olivia saw nothing but dark, wet grass. Del carefully lifted the man’s shoulder off the ground enough to see beneath it. The grass, protected from rain by the man’s chest, glistened with a dark liquid. Blood.

  “Try to keep the umbrella over him, Liv. The scene is enough of a mess as it is.” Del dialed his cell with his thumb. “I’m going to start with the assumption that you did not kill this man,” he said as he waited for an answer to his call.

  “Thanks ever s-so.” Olivia shivered, but not from the sudden cooling of the air. Shock had begun to set in. Buddy edged closer to her, while Spunky, dripping wet and unusually subdued, snuggled up against her ankle.

  “Cody, it’s me,” Del said into his cell. “Come to the park right away, south of the band shell, near the statue. Yeah, I’m aware there’s a storm; I’m in it. So is your dog, by the way, as well as a deceased male, Caucasian. Apparent stabbing victim. Don’t quote me on that, I haven’t found a weapon. It might be underneath him. Get here as fast as you can and bring a couple extra umbrellas.”

  Del snugged his cell into an inside pocket of his jacket. Without touching the body, he leaned in close with his flashlight. “Expensive leather jacket,” he said. “What’s this?” An object protruded from the man’s right hand. As the light caught a metallic sheen, Olivia inhaled sharply. It looked to her like the shaped edge of a tin cookie cutter. She thought back to the Duesenberg cookie cutter that had gone missing after the store event. That was made of tin. She told herself that lots of cookie cutters were made of tin, and there were lots of tin cookie cutters floating around Chatterley Heights. Besides, the small object could be anything.

  “I don’t recognize the guy,” Del said. “Any chance you do?”

  “What? Oh. No, he doesn’t look familiar.” Olivia wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “Wait a sec,” she said as the light reached the man’s face. “Hand over the flashlight, will you? Thanks.” Del held the umbrella while Olivia knelt down, her knees sinking into the squishy ground. Her stomach lurched, but she forced herself to lean closer to the body. She trained the light on the man’s hair, which hung in short strings down the sides of his head. The layered ends were even and precise, indicating a professional trim. Earlier, the hair color had looked black, but now she could see it was dark brown. And the dampness had brought out natural curls. She sat back on her knees and slid the light up and down the man’s torso.

  A siren pealed in the distance. Spunky and Buddy lifted their heads and peered toward the sound. “That’ll be Cody,” Del said. “Did you notice something I should know about?”

  “I can’t be positive.” Olivia struggled to her feet and traded the flashlight for the umbrella, “but I think this might be the man I saw running from Charlene’s store.”

  “Okay, we’ll get Charlene and her brother to see if they can identify him. They might stonewall, given they’ve tried so hard to keep his existence a secret.”

  “I might have a first name for you. Geoffrey,” Olivia said. “He might be Charlene’s ex-husband.”

  Del’s mouth tightened. “Where did you get this name? And why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “Hey, I just found out a few hours ago, and Mom wasn’t even sure about the name. Or the marriage. She did say that this Geoffrey and Jason were friends, though, so Jason would know . . . unless he’s keeping quiet for Charlene’s sake.” Spunky smacked his wet front paws on Olivia’s leg and whimpered until she lifted him up and held him to her chest. The smell of wet dog comforted her.

  “Anything else you haven’t had a chance to tell me?” There was an edge of impatience to Del’s tone.

  Olivia counted to three before giving up on the power of meditation. “Look, Del, I am tired and wet and close to losing what’s left of my dinner. If I wake up before dawn and think of some tidbit that might be important, I will call you instantly.”

  Del’s shoulders dropped as if the wind had gone out of him. “Livie, I’m really—”

  A shout told them Cody was in the town square and trying to locate them. Buddy leaped to his feet and barked joyfully. When his master’s form became visible, Buddy shot toward him, nearly knocking him backward. “The crime scene guys will be here in about five minutes,” Cody said once he’d subdued Buddy.

  “Good,” Del said. “You take Livie and those wet piles of fur home, then come right back. I’ll stay here.” He turned back to his examination of the dead man without revealing to Olivia whether he’d been about to say he was really sorry or really angry with her. She wanted not to care, but she did.

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as she unlocked the door of The Gingerbread House and stepped inside the following morning, Olivia heard the whirring of the mixer. She thought she caught a whiff of lemon, too, or perhaps it was her nose expecting lemon to go along with icing. Spunky wriggled in the crook of her arm. Every morning, he explored the whole store inch by inch, making sure nothing dangerous lurked in the shadows. When she put him on the floor, he took off like a windup toy. She left him to his task and headed toward the kitchen.

  The mixer had quieted, and Maddie’s head poked through the kitchen door. “I thought I heard the clatter of little doggie claws,” she said. She looked better rested than she had the night before, but her voice lacked its normal exuberance. Olivia missed it.

  “Tell me you haven’t been here for hours,” Olivia said, hoping a touch of lightness would bring the old Maddie back.

  “I haven’t been here for hours,” Maddie said. “Only one. If I don’t get these cookies iced pronto, they won’t be dry for Gwen and Herbie’s baby shower this evening.”

  “Give me a few minutes to set up the cash register, then I
’ll help you.” Olivia located Spunky in the doorway of the cookbook nook. “Hey, Spunks, mind the store until we open, okay?” When she turned back toward the kitchen, Maddie had already disappeared without even a thank-you. This was serious. With mild trepidation, Olivia entered the kitchen to find Maddie hovering over a baked cookie, the omnipresent iPod plugged in her ears. So intense was her concentration that her light eyebrows nearly touched each other as she guided a plastic pastry bag filled with dark pink icing around the edges of the cookie, piping the outline of a baby carriage.

  Olivia opened the small wall safe hidden behind the kitchen desk and began to count out bills and coins for the cash register. She scooped up the money and dropped it into a zippered bag. Maddie had moved on to another cookie, so Olivia decided not to interrupt until she’d set up the register and was ready to help. However, as she approached the door to the main sales area, Maddie looked up.

  Maddie capped the tip of her pastry bag. “I called Bertha to come in for opening. We’ll probably be swamped again, and I need to concentrate,” she said. “You, sit.”

  “What’s up?” Olivia asked as she pulled over a chair.

  Maddie hauled herself up on the kitchen counter. “Since when don’t you tell me instantly the moment something important happens, like, you find a dead body in the town square?”