Cookies and Scream (A Cookie Cutter Shop Mystery)

by Virginia Lowell

  Olivia smiled as she refolded the second letter and put it aside. She opened the third and final letter. It was dated shortly before Clarisse’s death. At once, Olivia sensed unsettling differences in this letter. Clarisse’s normally neat handwriting looked looser and darker, as if she’d been pressing harder and writing faster than usual. Olivia noticed several strike-outs on the paper. As she read, her heart began to thump in response to a sense of urgency that emanated from the page.

  The letter read:

  Congratulations, Greta, you have accomplished a rare feat. You unerringly sensed my weak spot and bored your way into my trust. I should have known better. Martin was not a perfect man, but he was virtually impervious to the wiles of other women. Virtually. I forgave him—and you, as well—for your indiscretion. Your radar picked up my own discomfort with anger and resentment, so you couldn’t resist stoking them again. They are enervating emotions, and I avoid anything that deters me from fully enjoying my life and my work. However, don’t think you have won, that you have destroyed another happy life. My anger will be gone very soon. You, on the other hand, must continue to live with yourself. I’m sorry for you. You were raised to expect that life would be your servant, fulfilling all your dreams and desires. When that doesn’t happen, you lash out. You hurt others to fill your own emptiness.

  I don’t know everything that you have done, but I can find out. And I will use what I find to hurt you, if you try to hurt me through those I care about. Do not ever contact Olivia or anyone who knows her. I can only imagine through what sordid means you obtained the bulk of this antique cookie cutter collection you’ve been bragging about, and I will not allow you to involve Olivia in your attempts to profit from it. Stay in Europe. You are not welcome here.

  “Wow,” Olivia said, loud enough to awaken Spunky. He tilted his furry head and studied her, as if he were trying to gauge her mood. “I’m okay, Spunks,” Olivia said. “It’s just a mild case of shock.” Not for the first time, Olivia wished she could pick up the phone and call Clarisse, who had often stayed up late to work in her home office. But Olivia would never be able to call Clarisse again, so she did the next best thing: she called the phone in the Gingerbread House kitchen and waited for the answering machine to click on. “Maddie, it’s me,” Olivia said. “I found out something startling this evening. We should definitely discuss this before we consider confessing to Cody, so if you come to the store early to bake, and I know you will, call my cell right away. Keep calling until I wake up. I’ll throw on some clothes and join you in the kitchen.”

  Olivia doused the bedside light and slid under the covers. Her eyes wouldn’t stay shut. Clarisse’s warning to Greta hurtled around her mind like an endless roller coaster. Olivia decided to use her never-fail sleep aid: she took a deep breath and pictured herself snuggled inside a soft gumdrop canoe, floating slowly down a river of molten milk chocolate. One of her hands hung over the side of the canoe. Her fingers trailed through the warm, thick liquid, while blue, pink, and purple sugar crystals sparkled in the moonlight as they fell around her boat. Eventually, Olivia slipped into sleep, but only after she’d banished the piranha-shaped cookie that bobbed dangerously close to her chocolate-dipped fingers.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Livie? Yoo-hoo, Livie, wake up.”

  That’s Maddie’s voice, Olivia thought. Why am I dreaming that Maddie is trying to wake me up? Olivia felt a hard object pressed against her ear. Her cell phone . . . She must have answered Maddie’s call and fallen right back to sleep.

  “Livie, you told me not to give up until you were awake, and I always do as I’m told . . . at least, when it promises to be amusing. So here’s the thing, Livie. I am prepared to whistle into the phone, if that’s what it takes to wake you up. You know how much phone whistling irritates you. The beauty of it, from my point of view, is that you can’t whistle, so you won’t be able to take revenge on me. Although I suppose you could take revenge some other way, but that wouldn’t have the same satisfying symmetry.”

  Olivia groaned.

  “Oh good, you’re alive,” Maddie said. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Well, as you know, Livie, when I get the urge to bake, it’s usually predawn. However, vacation made me lazy, so I didn’t get here until now, which is 5:37 a.m.” When Olivia made no comment, Maddie asked, “Are you sure you’re okay? Because the message you left on the kitchen answering machine got me worried. In television mysteries, when a character says she has found out something really important, it usually means she is about to get, you know, terminated.”

  “Maddie, I have no idea what you are talking about, but keep going. I’m starting to wake up.” With her free arm, Olivia pushed herself to a sitting position. “I’m also remembering why I told you to wake me up,” she said.

  “Good. Tell me before I burst.”

  “Give me ten minutes to shower and dress. Then I’ll come downstairs.”

  Maddie sighed audibly. “You’re torturing me, but okay. Bring along some eggs, and I’ll scramble up breakfast.”

  Olivia ran her fingers through her tangled waves and wished she had time to wash her hair. “Um, I think I ran out of eggs.”

  “Of course you did,” Maddie said. “For a super-organized businesswoman, you sure have a hard time keeping your own kitchen adequately stocked. We ran out of eggs down here in the store kitchen, too. However, no worries, we’ll have cookies for breakfast. And coffee, lots of it, very strong. See you in ten. And I expect an awesome revelation after all your hype.”

  * * *

  “You took twenty whole minutes,” Maddie complained when Olivia showed up in the Gingerbread House kitchen. “I made the coffee and put out cookies almost fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Sorry.” Olivia headed straight for Mr. Coffee. “I couldn’t stand my hair, so I washed it. I didn’t take time to blow-dry it, so it will dry in strings, but they will be clean strings.” Olivia stirred cream and sugar into her cup. “Spunky insisted on coming downstairs with me. He’s in his chair, staring out into the park.” Olivia took several gulps of her coffee, and said, “Ah, elixir of the gods. Where are those cookies you promised for breakfast?”

  “I ate them.” Maddie avoided Olivia’s gaze. “I got hungry, okay? And I don’t want to hear a word about how much weight I’ve gained since my wedding.” She took a cake pan from the freezer and slid off the lid.

  Olivia watched warily as her best friend since age ten refilled the cookie plate. “Honestly, Maddie, I haven’t noticed that you’ve gained any weight. In fact, you look a bit slimmer to me. Anyway, since when have you started obsessing about a pound or two? Lucas hasn’t made any insensitive comments, has he?”

  “Lucas? Of course not. He is the soul of sensitivity. Besides, he thinks I’m gorgeous. That’s the problem; I want him to keep thinking of me that way. So I weighed myself. I gained two whole pounds over less than a week of vacation! All we did was hike and swim. At this rate, I’ll be a blimp in a month.”

  Olivia laughed so hard she spilled her coffee. As she mopped up the spill, she noticed Maddie wasn’t laughing. Oops. “Maddie, my friend, don’t you know that muscle weighs more than fat? You gained two pounds of muscle from all that exercise.”

  Maddie’s eyes narrowed to emerald slivers. “You made that up to make me feel better.”

  “No, really, Mom told me. Mom would never lie about anything related to health and/or well-being.”

  Maddie’s balled-up fists relaxed. “You’re right, she wouldn’t. Not Ellie.” Maddie reached toward the plate of cookies and snatched a daisy with blue sprinkles. “What was so important you made me go through the agony of trying to wake you up early?”

  Olivia reached into the back pocket of her jeans and produced the envelope that held Clarisse’s letters to Greta. “Read these in order,” Olivia said as she handed over the envelope. While Mad
die read, Olivia fixed herself another cup of coffee and selected an apple-shaped cookie. Now she could report to her mother that she’d had an apple for breakfast.

  “Whoa.” Maddie dropped the papers on the table as if they had burned her hands. “This third letter . . . I would love to know what Clarisse discovered about Greta. I wonder how Clarisse came by the information. Would Bertha know anything about this, do you think?”

  Olivia sank onto a kitchen chair and hugged one knee to her chest. “If Bertha knew, wouldn’t she have said something to us? She told us about the affair between Martin and Greta. Anyway, that happened when Clarisse’s sons were little boys. As you can see in the first letter, Clarisse had known about that for some time, and she had forgiven both Martin and Greta.”

  “Which I wouldn’t do,” Maddie said, “but that’s just me.”

  Remembering her friend, Olivia said, “Clarisse hated betrayal. She must have been in anguish. I suspect she needed to forgive Greta and . . . well, if not forget, at least put aside the whole episode. Maybe Clarisse focused on their mutual interest in cookie cutters so her friendship with Greta would feel safe and normal again. Anyway, I got the impression from Clarisse’s third letter that she was referring to something more than Martin’s fling with Greta. She sounded so shocked and angry, as if she’d only just found out about what Greta had done. Whatever it was, I can’t tell if Greta actually told her about it, or if Clarisse heard about it from someone else.”

  “Livie, you don’t suppose . . . What if Clarisse found some evidence that Greta was murdering her husbands for their fortunes?”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Olivia said. “How would Clarisse come across that information when, apparently, the police could never prove anything? Unless . . .”

  “What? What? Livie, I can see your brain clicking away. Have pity on me, at least think out loud.”

  Olivia frowned and shook her head. “Clarisse wasn’t easy to dupe,” she said. “It would take more than gossip to make her this angry. Someone had to give Clarisse convincing evidence that Greta was not to be trusted, or she wouldn’t have tried to protect me so fiercely.” Olivia refolded the letter and slid it into the envelope. “Bertha doesn’t seem to know about this letter. We need to talk to Mr. Willard. He was Clarisse’s attorney, and he knew her well.” She glanced at the clock over the sink. “It’s 6:24 a.m., and Mr. Willard usually gets to his law office not long after six a.m., so he should be firing up his cappuccino machine about now. Come on, let’s go.”

  Maddie unplugged Mr. Coffee, stowed the uneaten cookies in a tin, and scurried to follow Olivia out of the kitchen. “Hey, maybe Greta died of shock when someone she’d wronged in the past showed up at her new home. Wouldn’t that be a lot like justice?”

  “Maybe too much like justice to be true,” Olivia said. Spunky leaped off his chair and pranced toward Olivia as she entered the sales floor. She scooped him into her arms, and said, “Let’s take Spunky with us. Mr. Willard loves him. And let’s leave through the kitchen. I’d just as soon keep this outing less than public.” They cut back through the kitchen, where Maddie unlocked the back door leading into the alley. While Maddie locked the door from the outside, Olivia said, “I truly hope this will all blow over before Del comes home.”

  Maddie was first to reach the end of the alley. She checked the street and signaled Olivia to follow her. “You’d think that by now Del would realize you can take care of yourself and stay safe,” Maddie said quietly.

  With a chuckle, Olivia said, “Are you kidding? I’m still not convinced that Del can keep himself safe. Look what he’s gotten himself into with his ex-wife.”

  “Point well taken,” Maddie said. “Let’s use my car, and we won’t park in front of the bookstore. We don’t want to advertise our location. My little yellow VW is almost as easy to spot as your PT Cruiser. Those tumbling gingerbread creatures are a dead giveaway.” Maddie unlocked her VW and slid behind the wheel. “We’ll park in back of the bookstore. BookChat doesn’t open until nine, so we’ll have to get him to come down and let us in the back door. We can throw pebbles up at his office window.”

  “Or we could simply call his office number from one of our cell phones,” Olivia said with perhaps a hint of sarcasm.

  “What fun would that be?”

  In the end, neither maneuver proved necessary. As soon as they’d parked behind the BookChat Bookstore, Spunky spotted a squirrel. He leaped from Olivia’s lap as she opened the car door and chased after it. He got only as far as the end of his leash, but his ferocious yapping brought Mr. Willard’s tall, reed-thin figure to the open, upper-story window of his law office. Olivia and Maddie waved up at him and pointed toward the back door of the two-story building. Mr. Willard seemed to nod at them before he disappeared.

  “I hope he understood our hand signals,” Maddie said.

  “Mr. Willard understands everything.” Olivia tugged on Spunky’s leash to draw him closer.

  The back door opened a few minutes later, and Mr. Willard appeared. Spunky took advantage of his mistress’s momentary distraction to yank the leash from her grip. Olivia turned back to look for him. “Spunky!” she yelled, but he was gone from sight.

  “Livie, it’s okay,” Maddie said. “Turn around.”

  Olivia obeyed. Spunky hadn’t run off; he had broken free to race toward his buddy, Mr. Willard. “Okay, fine,” Olivia said, “but I almost had a heart attack.”

  Maddie laughed in a way that Olivia found less than sympathetic. “Bertha told me that Mr. Willard is so taken with Spunky he now carries dog treats in his suit pocket. He’s been sneaking them to Spunky whenever he visits Bertha in The Gingerbread House.”

  “That little con artist,” Olivia muttered under her breath. “No wonder he’s been gaining weight.” But when Mr. Willard—holding Spunky to his chest with one long, bony arm—greeted them, Olivia didn’t have the heart to insist he stop indulging her already-spoiled pup. For all she knew, Gingerbread House customers were habitually feeding extra treats to Spunky. The little guy was too irresistible for his own good. Maybe she should adopt a companion for him . . . a nice, big cat. Except the cat would have to stay upstairs, because Bertha was allergic.

  Mr. Willard led the group up the narrow back stairs to the second floor. He didn’t release Spunky to Olivia’s arms until he needed both hands to unlock and unstick the ancient, swollen door to his office. Spunky snuggled against Olivia’s shoulder and fixed melting brown eyes on her adored face.

  “You cunning little creature,” Olivia said lovingly. “Don’t think I’m not on to you.”

  Mr. Willard’s outer office held a well-used desk, no chair, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with law books. The only object on the desk was a dusty Underwood typewriter. Olivia smiled. The first time she had ever entered the outer office, she’d seen an old electric typewriter in the same spot. It seemed appropriate that Mr. Willard had decided to replace it with an even more antiquated, yet more appealing, typewriter. A secretary had once occupied the room, but not since well before Olivia’s return to Chatterley Heights. Mr. Willard skirted the abandoned desk and opened the door to his private office, where he spent many of his daytime hours. His antique maple desk and a deep chair occupied nearly a third of the small room. Piles of paper and books, some of them open, surrounded Mr. Willard’s laptop computer. A smaller table nearby held a printer, and two visitors’ chairs faced the desk.

  “Have a seat,” Mr. Willard said, “while I whip up some cappuccino for us. Would Spunky like a blanket to nap on?”

  “He’s fine on my lap,” Olivia said. Spunky agreed. He curled into a circle and closed his eyes.

  “I love visiting your office, Mr. Willard,” Maddie said. “It almost makes me want to shoplift, just so I can spend time here.”

  When Mr. Willard grinned, shallow wrinkles curled around the corners of his mouth. “As I’ve mentioned before, Maddie,” he s
aid, “I am not a criminal attorney. Perhaps it would be wise to visit my office merely for the cappuccino machine.” Mr. Willard distributed tiny cups filled with the frothy mixture. He settled behind his desk, and asked, “Now, what brings the two of you to my office at such an early hour? Has it perhaps something to do with Greta Oskarson’s death? Don’t look so surprised, Livie. Bertha and I met for breakfast yesterday at Pete’s Diner. Word had spread quickly. Are you wondering what to do about Greta’s cookie cutter collection? It will take some time to determine the location of any living relations, if they exist. If she made a will, she did not discuss it with me.”

  Olivia exchanged a quick glance with Maddie. “At the moment,” she said to Mr. Willard, “I’m not too concerned about the collection. It can stay where it is until we know what to do with it. Right now we’re more in need of information and advice. So consider us on the clock as of now.”

  Mr. Willard nodded and pulled a notepad from his desk drawer. “Have the police released any new information about Greta’s untimely death?”

  “Not that we’ve heard,” Olivia said. “However, Maddie and I have been wondering if there’s more to it than our deputy sheriff seems to think.”

  Mr. Willard’s deep-set eyes widened as his eyebrows shot up. “When you say you’ve been wondering, do you mean that you’ve been investigating?”

  “Would that be a bad thing?” Maddie asked. “I mean, what if we felt we needed to know Greta better, so we did some investigative, um, exploration?”

  “Exploration?” Mr. Willard’s sparse, gray eyebrows nearly disappeared into the creases that formed across his forehead. “Perhaps you should simply tell me what you have done that you fear might have crossed the legal line.”

  With a pleading glance toward Olivia, Maddie withdrew into the depths of her chair.