Cookies and Scream (A Cookie Cutter Shop Mystery)

by Virginia Lowell

  “And their multiple, lucrative demises,” Maddie added. “Maybe Greta kept a diary. Would that be too much to hope for?”

  “Almost certainly,” Olivia said. “Greta struck me as a secretive person. I doubt she would keep anything that might incriminate her. Although people can be unpredictable.”

  Maddie drained her coffee cup. “Okay, then. Let’s get going.”

  “Right now?”

  “There couldn’t be a better time,” Maddie said. “You said yourself that Greta’s house might be unlocked. It’s still dark enough to sneak inside without the neighbors noticing. We should get this done. At some point, someone will have to decide what to do with the house and her belongings, and then it will be too late.”

  “Maybe Greta did die of natural causes,” Olivia said. “Who are we to doubt the emergency room doctors? She didn’t seem to be in the best of health, especially after the cookie event. We probably shouldn’t have pushed her into such a demanding social role.”

  “Geez, Livie, pretty soon you’ll be blaming us for Greta’s death.” Maddie drank the last of her coffee and delivered her empty cup to the sink. “From what I could tell, Greta was holding her own during her argument with Olaf Jakobson. Greta was out of sorts after that, but she didn’t seem exhausted. In fact, I had the impression that the fight energized her, in a cranky sort of way.” Maddie pointed toward the kitchen clock, which read 3:50 a.m. “Come on, Livie, it’s now or never. The sun will be up in a few hours. Maybe we won’t find anything suspicious among Greta’s belongings, but at least we won’t be left wondering if we should have pressured Cody to investigate her death.”

  Olivia thought back to her phone conversation with Greta, especially the fear in her voice and her frantic efforts to breathe. Greta called me for help. “Okay,” Olivia said. “Let’s do it now.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Greta Oskarson’s backyard was dark when Olivia and Maddie arrived. In lieu of a fence, the previous owners had planted evergreens around the perimeter of the property. The dense trees were now at least ten feet tall and certainly provided a sense of privacy. However, Olivia and Maddie had found it easy to slip between the trees and into the backyard. Olivia wondered if Greta had believed herself more protected than she’d actually been.

  “How long until dawn?” Maddie asked.

  “We have a couple of hours, give or take.” Olivia led the way across the lawn to the back door.

  “Maybe we’ll luck out and find the door unlocked,” Maddie whispered as she reached for the screen doorknob.

  “Unlikely.”

  “Well, you never know.” Maddie twisted the doorknob and pulled. The door opened. “One down,” she said. She tried the inner door. “Bingo,” she said as it opened inward.

  Olivia grabbed Maddie’s wrist. “Be careful. We don’t know why the back door is unlocked. Someone might be in there.”

  “Or maybe Greta was more casual about safety than your typical American city dweller,” Maddie whispered. She pushed the door wider and slipped through. Once inside, she switched on one of the small flashlights they’d brought along.

  Olivia followed Maddie into a neatly organized kitchen. A shiny red kettle rested on a back burner of a gas stove that looked brand new to Olivia. Above the sink and countertop, freshly painted, pale yellow cabinets lined the wall. The glass doors of one cabinet revealed a full set of gold-rimmed china. In the entire kitchen, Olivia noticed only one item that clearly showed wear: a linen tablecloth rimmed with cross-stitched flower garlands. The slight yellowing of the fabric made her wonder if the tablecloth had been handed down through Greta’s family.

  “What a sweet little kitchen,” Maddie said. “Why does it make me feel sad?”

  “To me, it feels as if Greta wanted to start her life anew, yet . . .” Olivia smoothed her fingers over the soft, worn tablecloth. “Maybe she also hoped to recapture a part of her childhood.”

  “We’d better move on to the rest of the house,” Maddie said. “It’ll start to get light outside before we know it.” She led the way into a small dining room that connected, through an open archway, with a front living room. As in the kitchen, all the furniture looked new and expensive. A built-in hutch in the dining room needed refinishing, but the lead-glass doors shone. “This is a lovely piece,” Maddie said as she ran her hand across the wood.

  Olivia counted eight boxes in the dining-living room area, all open and partially unpacked. “Now I’m the one feeling sad,” she said. “Greta was working hard to set up her new home. It looks like a labor of love . . . and hope.” Olivia reached into one of the open containers and lifted out a wooden box. “Look at this, Maddie. The entire surface is covered with little carvings. I think they might be gingerbread figures.”

  Maddie grabbed the carved box out of Olivia’s hands and shined her flashlight on its surface. “That’s what they are, all right. I don’t have enough light to make out the shapes.” Maddie carried the box into a windowless hallway, where she switched on an overhead light. “These carved figures look old,” she said. “I think this piece might be a genuine hand-carved antique.”

  “What makes you think the figures are old carvings?”

  “It’s hard to see because the carving is so tight and intricate, but look at this one right here.” Maddie pointed to a tiny figure on the side of the box. She traced its outline with her fingernail. “See? The bottom part is shaped like a bell with little dots underneath to represent feet. At the top there’s the head with another small rounded part on top, like hair gathered in a topknot or a bun. It’s a gingerbread woman, but not like the ones we see today. I think these little folks are all minuscule representations of the gingerbread figures you usually find carved into speculaas molds, especially ones from Germanic countries.” Maddie grinned. “All that research is paying off.” She peered at the front edge of the box. “The carving is worn down here, right around the latch. This piece is old and well used.”

  “And well loved,” Olivia said.

  Maddie abruptly handed the box to Olivia and turned away. “Here comes the sad again,” Maddie said. “I’m pretty sure I remember Aunt Sadie telling me that Greta’s father was a skilled carver. I’ll bet he made that for Greta when she was a little girl.”

  “Mom said Greta was an adored only child,” Olivia said. “She was beautiful, brilliant, and much was expected of her. Maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t sound like an idyllic childhood to me. It sounds complicated and demanding.” Olivia lifted the lid of the box. There was nothing inside . . . no photos, no mementoes, no childhood treasures or even adult jewelry. “Greta must have used this box for something,” Olivia said, “given the wear around the latch.” She sniffed the interior of the box. “Tobacco. I think Greta stored cigarettes in here.”

  “No!” Maddie snatched the box from Olivia’s hands and sniffed for herself. “Yep, cigarettes. What a letdown.” Maddie started back toward the living room. “Is this search doing us any good? We already knew that Greta had a checkered past and a number of enemies, but we haven’t found any reason to believe she might have been murdered.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check the bathroom,” Olivia said, “and maybe the bedroom. Greta might have overdosed on a medication, I suppose.” They followed a hallway and found a bathroom. “There’s no curtain over the bathroom window,” Olivia said. It’s still dark, so our flashlights might be visible from outside. Let’s make it quick.”

  Maddie opened the medicine cabinet. With a sigh, she said, “Greta’s drug habits were profoundly boring. Here’s some generic aspirin, unopened. A half-full bottle of Tums, which tells us she had tummy problems, but don’t we all. Here’s a prescription bottle with a Chatterley Heights Apothecary label that reads, ‘Take one at bedtime for sleep. No more than two pills in a twenty-four hour period.’” She pried off the lid and poured the pills into her hand. “According to the label, th
e prescription was for forty pills, and there are thirty-five left. So . . . two or three nights when Greta couldn’t sleep, out of what . . . a week or so since she arrived in town? Not much. I’m guessing it wasn’t a sleeping pill overdose that sent her to the emergency room. Not unless she had another bottle, like maybe one she brought with her from Europe.”

  “When Greta called me,” Olivia said, “she couldn’t get her breath. I don’t think that’s a symptom of overdosing on sleeping pills. I suspect she would simply have passed out and never awakened if she’d taken too many of those little guys. We should keep our eyes open for any empty medicine bottles, no matter what the pills were for.”

  “Apparently, Greta had asthma,” Maddie said. “We should look for an extra inhaler or an empty one. Bertha’s asthma is much better than it used to be, but she carries an inhaler everywhere. She always has a spare. She says people tend to get themselves murdered around us, and the shock could set her off. I don’t think that’s fair, do you? Don’t answer that.”

  “This bathroom is disappointingly free of suspicious objects.” Olivia closed the medicine cabinet and flicked off the light.

  “Let’s check the bedroom,” Maddie said as she started down the hallway. She hesitated at the open bedroom door. “I think it would be safe to turn on the lights in here. The curtains are really heavy. I don’t see so much as a sliver of light coming through. I can’t even see the light switches.”

  Olivia felt along the wall next to the door. “Here we go.” When she flipped two switches, a soft yellow overhead light warmed the beige walls. On a small table next to the bed, a reading lamp lit up as well. Next to the lamp, a hardback book lay open, cover up. The bed pillows were pushed up against the headboard, and the tousled sheet and light blanket had been tossed aside. Olivia wondered if Greta had crawled into bed to read when something or someone interrupted her.

  Maddie picked up the open book next to Greta’s bed. “This is an Agatha Christie mystery,” she said. “You’ll have to tell me the title. It’s in that language I mangle mercilessly, according to you.”

  “French? Really?” Olivia walked closer to read the book cover. “Le Cheval Pâle. Greta was reading The Pale Horse, in a hardback edition, yet. Very cool. It looks old. I wonder if it’s a first edition.” She reached for the book, then changed her mind. “I think I’ll leave it where it is for now. There’s something about this room that gives me pause.”

  “Like the sheet and blanket?” Maddie asked. “Maybe someone phoned, or the front doorbell rang.”

  “Or she might have felt ill,” Olivia said, thinking of Greta’s desperate phone call to her. “Maybe Greta left the book open and tossed the bedclothes aside to get out of bed quickly. You know what I haven’t seen so far? A phone. Did you see a landline anywhere?”

  “Nope,” Maddie said. “I know she had a cell phone because I have her number.”

  “Try calling it,” Olivia said. “Maybe we’ll hear the ring in the house somewhere.”

  Maddie hit redial and held her cell to her ear. “You listen for a ring, and I’ll see if this goes to voice mail.”

  Olivia stood in the hallway, but she heard nothing. She poked her head back into the bedroom, where Maddie tried redial again. “I just got generic voice mail instructions,” she said, “We’ll have to wander around the house; the cell phone could be in a drawer somewhere. Or maybe she took it with her to the emergency room.”

  “Paramedics usually tell patients not to take valuables with them to the hospital,” Olivia said. “Anyway, from what Bill the ER guy said, Greta wasn’t in any condition to worry about what to bring with her.”

  With her phone to her ear, Maddie whispered, “How do you know these things?”

  “Jason was accident prone when he was growing up.” Olivia winced at the memory of watching her younger brother fall past the dining room window on his way down from the roof. Luckily, his clumsy stage had passed before he’d become a mechanic.

  Maddie dialed again and again while they paced through the living and dining rooms. As they stepped into the kitchen, Maddie sucked in a breath as if she were about to speak. Instead, she snapped her phone shut. “I think someone answered,” she whispered. “Only they didn’t say anything. I’m pretty sure I heard breathing, though.”

  “Are you saying that someone answered Greta’s phone and just waited to hear your voice? That’s eerie.”

  “Suspicious, too,” Maddie said.

  “Why?” Olivia sank onto a kitchen chair. “Maybe Greta stuck her cell phone in the pocket of her robe, and someone at the ER found it. Although you’re right, I’d expect at least a tentative ‘hello.’ Maybe it suddenly went dead, which cell phones have a habit of doing.”

  “Well, I give up,” Maddie said as she slid her own phone into her jeans pocket. “Whoever has Greta’s cell also has my number now. Maybe they will call me back at some point. Is it really important that we get our hands on that phone?”

  Olivia shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. It just seems strange to me that the phone isn’t in the house. I think Greta might have dropped it while she was talking to me. It cut off, and she never came back on the line.”

  “But then we’d probably have found it somewhere on the floor already,” Maddie said.

  Olivia twitched the edge of a kitchen curtain. “It isn’t getting light yet. I want to walk through the house again to look for anything that might give us some insight into Greta’s past life.”

  Maddie bounced to her feet. “I’ll look for any corners we might have missed our first time through. Ooh, maybe there’s a secret room in this house. Maybe that’s why Greta decided to buy it.” Maddie’s emerald eyes shimmered with excitement.

  “One can hope,” Olivia said. She thought the odds were slim to none, though a secret room might hold some interesting surprises. Unfortunately, they usually turned up only in Nancy Drew mysteries and other novels Olivia had devoured as a child.

  Maddie scooted into the living room, where she felt along the floor under the sofa as if she were looking for a trapdoor. Olivia headed back toward the bedroom. She turned on the lights and checked the bed and table, inch by inch. She found nothing, not even a speck of dust.

  Next, Olivia began a methodical search of the closet. Greta had organized her clothing by type. The blouses hung at the left side of the closet, skirts in the middle, and dresses at the far end. Sweaters were neatly folded and zipped into plastic storage bags, which covered the length of the top shelf. Greta’s shoes stood obediently in rows along the closet floor. Her entire wardrobe appeared to be practical, finely tailored, and exorbitantly expensive. There were no satin gowns such as the one Greta wore in Constance’s photo of her. Olivia wondered if Greta had been running low on money, or if she’d made a conscious effort to redirect her life. For her later years, Greta might have longed for quiet, comfort, and understated elegance. No more balls or yachts or wealthy husbands.

  In addition to the bed and table, Greta’s bedroom contained a cream-colored chest of drawers. Olivia thought the piece might be Scandinavian, perhaps late nineteenth century, but Maddie would know. If so, it had been restored to near perfection. Such loving care lavished on a simple piece made Olivia wonder if it might have been passed down through the generations in Greta’s family. The Oskarsons had never been rich—until Greta, that is—so they would have cherished the chest.

  Olivia opened the top drawer of the dresser and found lingerie neatly folded in small piles. She touched the fabric of a pale blue slip; it had the liquid feel of fine silk. She felt hesitant to paw through the soft lingerie, and she doubted it would be helpful, anyway.

  “Hey, how’s it going in here?” Maddie’s voice startled Olivia, who spun around so fast she nearly lost her balance. “Whoa,” Maddie said. “Were you expecting an ax murderer?”

  Olivia pushed her hair off her forehead and realized her hand was shaking. �
��I’m fine, really. It’s just . . . there’s something disturbing about hunting through the personal belongings of a woman who was alive only a short time ago.”

  “If by ‘disturbing’ you mean ‘fascinating,’ then I completely agree,” Maddie said as she peered into the open drawer. “Those silk undies are gorgeous. I’ll bet she bought them in France. Find anything important yet?”

  “Not really.” Olivia slid the top drawer shut. “The closet is precise, neat, and filled with exquisite and expensive clothing.” She opened the middle drawer, which held six elegant summer nightgowns and nothing else. The gowns were all sewn from the same fabric, a thin ecru cotton, but each design was unique, ranging from plain to tucked and beaded.

  “Ditto here,” Maddie said as she selected the most ornate nightgown and unfolded it. “Wow, the tucking is done by hand. This is incredibly fine stitching. Aunt Sadie would be impressed.” She carefully folded the nightgown and returned it to its place. As she slid the drawer shut, Maddie said, “This chest of drawers is a fine piece. Excellent condition.”

  “Scandinavian, right?” Olivia asked.

  Maddie nodded. “Swedish, to be precise. Simple, yet elegant.” She ran her fingertips across the top. “Recently restored by someone with a lot of experience.”

  Olivia knelt on the floor to open the bottom drawer. She found it empty. As she pushed the drawer forward to close it, a small object inside fell. Olivia plucked it out of the drawer.

  “What’s that?” Maddie asked.

  “This must have been stuck to the inside edge of the drawer.” Olivia held a folded piece of paper in the palm of her hand. “It’s probably just an old bill or something.”

  “Well, open it up, for heaven’s sake,” Maddie said. “I’m not a patient woman.”