Thinking back to her conversation with Constance Overton, Olivia said, “Raoul told Constance his wife was dead, but we have only his word for that. Maybe she’s in hiding for reasons relating to the scar on her cheek.” She did some quick math. “But would our ballerina in the park really be so old? Lara Larssen would be pushing fifty. Could she do all those leaps?”
“Maybe,” Maddie said, “if she’d kept dancing and hadn’t suffered a major injury. The question is, why? Who dances outdoors in the middle of the night?”
Olivia selected a rectangular cookie decorated as a library card. “Someone who still longs to express herself? Not that I know anything about this artistic expression stuff.”
“However, you could be on to something, in your own fuzzy way.”
“Or she could be mentally unbalanced,” Olivia said.
“Also not unheard of in the artistic world. It would explain why she stays hidden during the day.” Maddie scrolled up to 1982 and pointed to the screen. “I have a suspicion that the young Lara Larssen’s ballet career was cut short. First, read this list.”
Olivia scooted her chair next to Maddie’s and scanned another list of dancers. “Okay, so Lara Larssen was still a principal player in 1982.”
“This is two years after she was hired by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.” Maddie switched to another screen. “And here it lists Lara Larssen as the dancer chosen to play the role of Clara in The Nutcracker. That’s pretty heady stuff for a young ballerina. I found a review of her performance that called her the next Margot Fonteyn.”
“Margot Fonteyn . . . wasn’t she a soap opera star?” Olivia asked.
Maddie was too excited by her Internet discoveries to react. “Now it gets even more interesting,” she said, pointing to the screen. “This is the list for the following year, 1983.”
“I don’t see Lara’s name,” Olivia said.
“Exactly. She has disappeared, never to dance again, at least in public. I haven’t been able to track down another mention of her. You’d think there’d be something on the Internet, given what a splash she made and how mysteriously she disappeared.”
“I suppose you searched for death notices?”
“Of course,” Maddie said. “No luck. However, I left a question for the blogger who put together this fantastic history-of-the-ballet website. Maybe she’ll know something. In fact, let me check again and see if she’s had time to respond.”
Maddie’s fingers bounced around the computer keys, reminding Olivia of little ballet feet. While she waited, Olivia got up to fill the dishwasher and wondered if Del had found Heather Irwin and her speeding green truck. She doubted Heather would disappear forever. She loved her horse too much to leave him without care. She even loved the barn cats and had given each one a name.
“Eureka!” Maddie paused a few moments to read the blogger’s response to her question. “Okay, Livie, here’s the scoop. Lara was a gifted dancer, but she was of a delicate constitution complicated by feelings of inadequacy, or that’s what the blogger tells me. This is, after all, the Internet, so the information might be anything from total truth to romantic hogwash. Anyway, she says Lara developed a serious problem with anorexia. In those days, ballerinas had to be tiny. They got weighed all the time. Lots of ballerinas had problems with anorexia and bulimia. It’s still a problem. Sad.”
“Any information about Lara’s ultimate fate?” Olivia asked.
“Let me finish. Nope, my blogger says she fell off the edge of the earth. I guess we struck out on this one.”
“Not to worry, we’ll keep searching.” The Gingerbread House cookie box held two more cookies. Olivia handed the gold lion with blue dragée eyes to Maddie. Olivia bit into the other cookie, a library building decorated with pale green ivy leaves.
“I need to do some cutting and baking this evening,” Maddie said. “We’ve managed to run through most of the supply in the freezer. Want to help?”
“I do,” said Olivia. “Should we grab a pizza?”
Staring at her computer screen, Maddie said, “I agreed to have dinner with Lucas tonight.” She didn’t sound happy. “I should be back in an hour.”
“Maddie? Is there something you want to talk about?” Olivia sat down next to her.
Maddie shook her head at the computer screen.
“Maybe later?”
Maddie shrugged her shoulders and stood up. “Back in an hour. Then you can lay out your plan. Because I know you have one, and it better be good. We have about thirty-six hours to save your brother.”
After Maddie left, Olivia finished cleaning the kitchen and got out ingredients in preparation for their baking session that evening. She wished she were half as well organized as everyone seemed to think she was. She had managed, without forethought, to add Heather as a suspect in Geoffrey King’s death. She’d almost, but not really, found the mysterious dancer in the park, who may or may not have witnessed Geoffrey King’s murder. And if she had witnessed the murder, she might be incapable of testifying due to mental disturbance. The suspects she hadn’t tackled at all were the obvious ones: Charlene and Charlie Critch.
A subdued Maddie returned to The Gingerbread House kitchen in less than an hour. When she began to page through a decorated cookie cookbook that she knew by heart, Olivia couldn’t stand the tension another minute. She needed Maddie at her best, not distracted and mopey. “How’s Lucas these days?”
Maddie’s eyes flitted up to Olivia’s face and down again. “Fine.”
“ ‘Fine’ is not an acceptable answer,” Olivia said. She heard the impatience in her own voice and didn’t care. “Tell me what is going on between you and Lucas. One minute he is the love of your life and the next he’s just . . . fine.”
“Come on, Livie, it’s no big deal. These things cool down, that’s all.”
“Not that fast and not without a reason.” Olivia filled Mr. Coffee with water, threw in some ground coffee, and snapped the switch. “Madeline Briggs, you and I need to talk.”
“I thought you were worried about Jason. Your brother, remember? Suddenly my love life is more important than your own brother’s actual life?”
“Don’t change the subject. Sit.” Olivia grabbed a chair and pressed it against the back of Maddie’s legs until she had to sit down.
“Hey,” Maddie said. “When did you get so bossy?”
“I’m an elder child, I was born bossy.” Olivia poured two cups of coffee and put one in front of Maddie. After delivering the cream and sugar, she said, “Look, Maddie, I’ve been watching you pretend to be your usual super-perky, enthusiastic self, but you’re unhappy. When you’re unhappy, it isn’t much fun around here.”
Maddie’s freckled face took on a sullen look as she sipped her coffee.
“Okay,” Olivia said, “here’s what I know. I know that Lucas asked you to marry him.”
Maddie’s cup rattled on its saucer. “How did you—?”
“Because Lucas is beyond upset. He talked to me about it. He wants to understand. He’s afraid of losing you. Maddie, you’ve been nuts about Lucas for years. What happened?”
Maddie poured herself another cup of coffee and stirred in silence.
Olivia said, more gently, “Lucas is a great guy, and he loves you. You know that. You will never convince me that you’ve suddenly lost interest in him. That isn’t you. You’re loyal. It took you a long time to get over Bobby after he broke your engagement that summer after high school, and Lucas is a much better person. Wait, is that it? Are you afraid the Bobby thing will happen again?”
Maddie dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand and a shake of her head. Progress.
“Then what?”
“Look, Livie, I really, truly don’t want to talk about this.”
“I get that.” Olivia drained the last of the coffee in her cup. If her taste buds were accurate, she had tossed in about twice the correct amount of ground beans. Her heart had picked up about thirty beats per minute. She started a second pot, lower o
ctane. “This has something to do with your parents, doesn’t it?”
“What? How did you . . . ? Of course not.”
“Nice try,” Olivia said, “but I know you too well. You never want to talk about your parents. Maddie, I know how traumatic it is to lose a parent, and you lost both of them at a very young age. But there was something else going on, wasn’t there?” When Maddie said nothing, Olivia added, “Mom mentioned that she saw your mother a few times in those months before the accident. She said your mom seemed unhappy, that she was distracted, losing weight.”
Maddie stared toward the kitchen floor, sniffled once, and tears began to dribble down her cheeks. Olivia went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Maddie said, “I hate this.”
“Yeah, I know.” Olivia said. “You probably hate me right now, too.”
“Yep.” Maddie ripped off a paper towel and blew her nose. “The least you could have done was wait until we’d started making cookies.”
“You’re right. I’ll undoubtedly rot in hell for that.”
“Works for me.” Maddie blew her nose again on another paper towel. “Ouch. Put tissues on the grocery list.”
“Will do. How about telling me what happened with your parents? You’ll feel better, I’ll feel better, we can get to those cookies, maybe save my brother’s life. . . .”
Maddie half-laughed. “Okay, all right. Quick version. Mom was depressed, and I guess she started drinking. Anyway, looking back on her behavior, that’s what I suspect. On the day of the accident, she was driving. Why, I don’t know. Dad usually did all the driving. No one told me the part about Mom being at the wheel until I’d finished college. Aunt Sadie let it slip one day. That’s about it.”
“So . . . I guess I need a longer version because I’m not connecting the dots. Did you start worrying that marrying Lucas would turn you into a drunk?”
Maddie heaved a huge sigh. “If you’re going to force me to talk about this, I really, really need to be baking.”
“Okay by me. As you can see, I’ve lined up the ingredients. The butter is at room temperature. You only have to fire up the mixer.” Olivia waved toward the neat line of flour, sugar, and extracts.
Maddie was already mixing flour and salt in a bowl, which she set aside near the mixer. “Mom was depressed. I know that much because I remember hearing one of her friends use the word, and I asked Mom what it meant. She said she was just feeling a little sad and not to worry about it. Dad was traveling a lot for work. I don’t know, maybe she was lonely. Mom and Dad had always been so close, at least until those last few months. Dad seemed to be gone all the time, and Mom must have stopped eating because she lost a lot of weight.”
“Do you think she might have been seriously ill?” Olivia put the flour away and refilled their coffee cups.
“No, Aunt Sadie would have told me. I do have to wonder if my dad was having an affair. That’s something I would never be able to dredge out of Aunt Sadie. She thinks I’m still ten and terribly vulnerable.”
“She loves you.”
“Yeah, I know.” Maddie yanked another towel off the roll. Her nose had turned red from the roughness of the paper.
While Maddie washed her hands, Olivia took a roll of toilet paper from the kitchen storage cabinet. She tore off the paper cover and plunked the whole roll on the table next to Maddie.
“Here’s the irony, though,” Maddie said as she measured sugar into the mixer bowl. “Hand me the butter, will you?”
“Irony?”
Maddie opened the wrapper and scraped globs of soft butter into the bowl with the sugar. “Mom and Dad were going off for a weekend away together the day they died. They were driving to the mountains, planning to stay in the same place they went for their honeymoon.”
“Maybe they were trying to work things out?”
“What I remember so vividly was that when Mom leaned over to kiss me good-bye, I smelled her perfume. It was the first time I’d seen her smile in a long time. That was the last time I saw her.” Maddie switched on the mixer, indicating she was done talking about her parents, and lowered the spinning blades into the sugar and butter.
Olivia reached for a hunk of toilet paper.
While Maddie made noise in the kitchen, Olivia picked up her cell and headed for the kitchen door. When Maddie paused the mixer and glanced up at her, Olivia said, “I want to call Del and find out what happened with Heather.” Maddie nodded and went back to work.
Spunky was curled in a ball on the padded seat of an antique chair near the large front window. His head lifted when he saw Olivia. “Hey, you lazy bum.” Spunky wagged his fluffy tail and tried to lick Olivia’s face as she picked him up. When she sat on the brocade-covered seat, Spunky circled in her lap and collapsed into a ball again. Olivia wove her fingers into the silky fur that tended to fall over his eyes. Time for a trim. Spunky sighed with contentment as Olivia massaged his ears and stared out the window at the park. The setting sun lent a warm glow to the collection of copper cookie cutters hanging from tiny suction cups on the window. Sometimes she felt as if she lived in a real gingerbread house . . . except, of course, the oven was used only to bake cookies. Olivia had a feeling this might be her last contemplative moment for some time.
With her free hand, Olivia opened her cell phone and called Del. He answered immediately. “Livie, are you okay?”
“Fine, Del, really. I don’t think Heather was actually aiming her truck at me. Did you find her?”
“We did, although we can’t take much credit for it. She’d pulled over only a few miles from her farm. We found her curled up on the front seat, balling her eyes out. Getting anything coherent out of her took some time. She cried all the way back to the station and through most of the interview.”
“Was I right? Is she a suspect?”
“We consider her a suspect, yes.”
In her excitement, Olivia shifted suddenly, causing Spunky to tumble off her lap.
“That’s good news for Jason,” Del said. “Heather has a motive but no alibi. A knife similar to the murder weapon was part of the loot you found in her barn, so she might have had access to another in the same set. That’s not for general consumption.”
“Understood.” Spunky lifted his front paws to Olivia’s knees, scouting out the possibility of regaining her lap. She patted her thigh, and he jumped up. “Did you find out if Heather knew about the stolen goods in her barn?”
“Denied all knowledge. Claims she didn’t know someone was hanging out there, that she rarely entered that barn.”
“I’m inclined to believe her,” Olivia said. “No horses, no cats . . . Heather loves animals. She’d have no reason to trek way out to a run-down barn unless there were animals to care for. Except . . .”
“What?”
“Well, I suppose she might have seen the stuff if she decided to check out the condition of the folding chairs. Gwen said Heather had volunteered to bring them to the baby shower. That’s why I was there, to get those chairs.”
“Thanks. I’ll follow up on that. For now, we had to let her go. We had no evidence linking her to King’s murder. However, since she has no alibi for the night of the murder, she stays on the list. Do I dare hope you will let me take it from here?”
With a light laugh, Olivia said, “One can always hope. I do have a request, and it has nothing to do with the murder. I know how busy you are, but could you see if you can find any information about the car accident that killed Maddie’s parents? They lived in Clarksville when they died, but maybe you know someone who could dig up some details? Maddie won’t check for herself, she doesn’t want to know.”
“But you think she should?”
“Long story, Del. Let’s just leave it that Maddie needs to work through a few things before she can move on to another stage in her own life. I’d like to help her do that.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Are we still on for tomorrow evening?”
“Tomorrow? Friday?”
“Tomorro
w would be Friday, that is correct. Dinner?”
“Oh gosh, Del, I’m so sorry. I sort of . . .”
“Forgot. I get it,” Del said, a touch of curtness edging into his voice. “Did you make other plans?”
“Well . . . The Gingerbread House might be staying open late tomorrow for sort of a special event.”
“Sort of a special event? Is it, by any chance, the sort of event where a guest might suddenly get whacked with a blunt object?”
“Del, you are so suspicious. Although you’re a cop, so it’s understandable, and besides, you’re probably on the right track. We have so little time. I can’t help thinking there are folks who know more than they realize. I’m looking for a way get that information as fast as possible. I might decide it won’t work.”
“Well, let me know if you want me to hang around. Meanwhile, I’ll put Cody to work on the Briggs’ car accident.”
“Oh, and I have one more request.”
“Which is?
“It’s about Jason.” Olivia hesitated, searching for the right phrasing. When it eluded her, she went for blunt. “Jason needs to be here tomorrow evening. Now hear me out, Del. You and Cody can watch him every minute, as long as you’re subtle about it.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Del asked, “Are you planning to tell me why you think this bad idea is actually a good one?”
“Of course,” Olivia said. “I want everyone to think Jason has been cleared.”
“Again, why?”
“So that I can clear him, of course. Thanks, you’re the best.” Olivia closed her phone before Del could respond.
A moment after Olivia hung up her cell, Maddie burst through the kitchen door. “Livie, that ex-husband of yours is on the line. I told him you’d been sold into slavery, but he ignored me. He always ignores me. You have to talk to him.” Maddie disappeared into the kitchen without waiting for a response.
“Sorry, Spunks, you’re on your own again.” Olivia scooped him out of her lap and nestled him back onto the seat alone. He curled into the warm spot she’d left behind.
A Cookie Before Dying Page 21
