Cookies and Scream (A Cookie Cutter Shop Mystery)

by Virginia Lowell

  “Spray?” Maddie asked. “I don’t remember a spray can in the storage closet.”

  “Really? I put it in there long ago, so you could use it if you wanted to do some cleaning. My goodness, didn’t you girls even notice it?” Bertha looked genuinely distressed by the thought.

  “I guess we’re usually in a hurry when we’re restocking the shelves,” Olivia said.

  “Oh, not that storage closet,” Bertha said. “I meant the little one out on the sales floor. Although I guess it’s too small to be called a closet. You know, it’s behind the table where we serve the coffee and cookies every day. Such a convenience. When I need to spot clean a shelf, I just take a napkin from the coffee table, and then I reach inside the cabinet for the spray.”

  “That little hole in the wall? It isn’t even big enough to hold supplies for the coffee,” Maddie said.

  The three women trooped out onto the sales floor, where Olivia and Maddie moved aside the table that usually held cookies and the coffee urn. The “closet,” as Bertha had called it, was actually a small, shallow cabinet built into the knee wall that supported the long, deep shelf Olivia had commissioned when she’d turned the ground floor into The Gingerbread House. The coffee and treats table usually hid the little enclosure. Maddie reached under the table and opened the door. Inside, the space resembled a medicine cabinet. “Well, I’ll be,” Maddie said. “There really is a spray can in here. Who knew?” She removed the can and handed it to Bertha.

  “What’s this?” Olivia asked as she reached into the cabinet.

  “Oh, I forgot all about that,” Bertha said. “I left a pen and a little notebook in there, in case I needed to remind myself that we were running low on coffee or paper napkins. I never think to write in it, but we might as well leave it. Maybe now I’ll remember it’s there.”

  Olivia retrieved the notebook and pen from the cabinet. As Maddie watched, Olivia opened the notebook and found the first page ripped across the middle. The top half of the sheet was missing. “I think I’ll keep these, if you don’t mind,” Olivia said.

  “Of course,” Bertha said. “The pen is probably dry by now, though. It’s just an old ballpoint I got for free.” She held her beloved can of cleaning solution against her chest, and said, “I can’t wait to get started on this room.”

  Maddie threw her arm around Bertha’s broad shoulders and guided her away from the coffee table. “And I, for one, can’t wait to see the results. For all we know, these shelves are an entirely different color under those layers of grimy dust. If you need us, we’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Bertha didn’t answer. She was already dusting display items one by one as she cleared them off the shelf. While Bertha hummed cheerfully, Olivia and Maddie headed toward the kitchen.

  As soon as Maddie closed the kitchen door behind them, Olivia reached for the antique spice rack that hid the store’s wall safe. She lifted the rack off the wall and handed it to Maddie. Olivia’s hand shook with excitement as she worked the combination and opened the heavy door of the safe. She reached inside to remove the small scrap of paper she and Maddie had found in Greta’s bedroom dresser drawer.

  Maddie nestled the spice rack on the table before picking up the pen and notebook Olivia had taken from the small cabinet behind the treats table. “It sure looks like the same type of paper to me,” Maddie whispered as she opened the notebook to the first page and placed it flat on the kitchen counter, centered under a light.

  Olivia smoothed open the folded fragment of paper that had been wedged into the seam of one of Greta’s bureau drawers. When Olivia laid the torn edge of the paper against the notebook’s torn first page, they matched perfectly.

  Maddie picked up the pen she’d brought in from the storage cabinet and tried to write on a page in the notebook. She compared the result with the scratchy letters at the bottom of the mysterious note. “Another match,” Maddie said. “I wonder how Greta found this notebook and pen. Maybe she’d been searching the sales floor for something to write on while Bertha stuffed her cookie cutters into our wall safe. That’s a creepy thought.”

  “It might explain how the sparkling sugars got rearranged,” Olivia said. “Greta must have been in a hurry.” Pointing to the note, Olivia said, “Part of this note looks sort of like a grocery list, although I can’t make out the words. It’s written with a different pen.”

  “I’m confused,” Maddie said. “What does this mean? If Greta was so frantic to jot down those numbers, why would she use the same paper to make an indecipherable grocery list? It’s indecipherable to me, anyway, though Lucas thinks I need glasses. Then she folds the paper into a tiny lump and stuffs it into the seam of a bureau drawer. Was she mentally unhinged?”

  “In some ways, maybe she was,” Olivia said. “But in this instance, I’m guessing there was method in her madness. Maybe the grocery list is a cover, in case someone found the note.”

  “But why? Why would Greta go to all this trouble for some scratchy numbers that don’t mean anything?”

  Olivia stared at those scratchy numbers. “I think they do mean something. I think Greta was writing down the combination for our safe.”

  “Well, then she got it wrong. Look at this.” Maddie slapped her index finger underneath the first number. “Our combination starts with a seven, and Greta wrote a four. If she had a plan to steal her own antique cutters for the insurance money and then blame us for the loss, it wasn’t going to work. She had the wrong combination. Maybe that’s why the cutters were still in our safe when we moved them to the secure storage facility.”

  “I don’t think so,” Olivia said. “I think the cutters remained in our safe simply because Greta didn’t take them out. Why, I don’t know. She did have the right combination, though. That first number is a European seven, which has an extra line through it about halfway down. This seven looks like a four because Greta was writing in a hurry with a bad pen. Even if Bertha was whispering the numbers to herself, like she usually does, Greta would probably have been watching the dial spin to make sure she didn’t miss a number. That’s a lot to do at one time.”

  Maddie flopped onto a kitchen chair. “Okay, you’ve convinced me, more or less. Greta stole the combination to our wall safe. But again I ask, why? If she was planning an insurance scam, why would she wait? Once we moved the whole collection to more secure storage, it was too late. We gave Greta a key to the storage vault, so she would have become a suspect.”

  “I don’t know, Maddie.” Olivia put the paper and notebook in her jeans pocket and sank onto a chair next to her best friend. “Greta was cunning. Maybe she changed her plans for some reason. Whatever she had in mind, it died with her. I hate to say this, but I can’t help feeling relieved that we won’t have to work with her. Greta was ruthless and diabolical, and I’m quite sure she had plans that included leaving the two of us in a dangerous spot.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  After a light lunch of salad and iced tea, which Maddie had volunteered to pick up from the Chatterley Café, Bertha insisted on continuing her cleaning in The Gingerbread House. Maddie and Olivia remained in the kitchen for a planning session.

  “I haven’t checked on Aunt Sadie today,” Maddie said as she drank the last of her iced tea. “Her air-conditioning pooped out during the night, and Lucas sent someone over to fix it. It’s such an old system, I’m afraid it might be unfixable.”

  Olivia removed the last clean item, a serving plate, from the dishwasher and wiped off any excess water before putting it away. “Maybe we should rescue Aunt Sadie,” she said. “If her air conditioner is out, we could bring her here for cookies and lemonade. Besides, I have lots of questions to ask her about Greta.”

  “Ah, so your offer isn’t entirely altruistic?” Maddie moved out of range before Olivia could whack her with a wet kitchen towel.

  Olivia slid their used lunch plates into the dishwasher’s lower rack. “I pr
efer to think of it as a win-win,” she said. “I’m almost finished here. Then we can leave Bertha to her cleaning frenzy. I left Spunky upstairs. We’ll bring him along with us.”

  “Oh good,” Maddie said. “Aunt Sadie adores Spunky, so—”

  A hallelujah burst from Olivia’s cell phone. “The ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, Maddie? Really? Why can’t I have a nice, generic ringtone, like other boring cell phone users?” Olivia reached for her phone as it sang out again.

  “Because that would be, as you so accurately put it, boring,” Maddie said. “Who is it?”

  “Del,” Olivia said.

  “I’m out of here.” Maddie headed for the door. “But as soon as you hang up, I expect you to tell me everything that Del says.”

  “Scram, Maddie.” Olivia waited for the kitchen door to close before cutting off the song. “Del?”

  “Hi, Livie!”

  “You sound chipper,” Olivia said. “Has Lisa’s situation been resolved?”

  “Nope,” Del said, “but it cheers me up to hear your voice. What’s going on at your end?”

  “Um, has Cody been in contact?” Olivia didn’t feel any obligation to protect Cody’s reputation . . . if it needed protecting.

  “He was, finally, a little while ago,” Del said. “He sure took his time. I gave him a lecture for not contacting the medical examiner immediately after Greta Oskarson’s death. He should have searched her house, too. By the time he got around to it, someone had gone inside. Although they might have been there right before Greta called 999 instead of 911. Who knows?”

  Olivia’s heart doubled its usual pace. “Why does Cody think someone might have been in Greta’s house when she got sick?”

  Olivia heard a snorting sound before Del said, “Very belatedly, Cody decided to test for fingerprints on the doorknobs. He’d found all the doors unlocked.”

  Olivia gulped hard. “Greta called me when she felt sick, you know. I told her to unlock the doors so the EMTs could get to her. Their fingerprints would be on the front door, at least. Her line went dead while I was talking to her, so I called 911 and sent an ambulance to her house.”

  “Cody forgot to tell me that, too. Why did Greta call you in the first place?” Del’s tone sounded curious, rather than suspicious.

  “She had my cell number. Maddie and I were working with her to sell her antique cookie cutter collection, remember? I’m sure I told you that.” Olivia shook her head at Maddie, who poked her head into the kitchen. Maddie shrugged and withdrew.

  “Oh yeah,” Del said. “I remember that much, at least. Hang on a sec.” A scratchy sound told Olivia that Del had his hand over his phone. “Okay, I’m back. Here’s the weird thing about Greta’s house,” he said. “There weren’t any fingerprints at all on any of the doorknobs, inside or out. Most other surfaces had been wiped clean, too. That would have taken some time.”

  All the fingerprints were wiped clean?

  “Well, right now it’s Cody’s problem,” Del said. “Too much going on here.”

  “Speaking of which, what’s happening at your end?” Olivia asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe.” Del’s sigh came through clearly.

  “Try me. I’m gullible.”

  “Sure you are, Livie. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the gullible one. Lisa . . .” More quietly, Del said, “Well, to be blunt, I’m not sure anymore that she didn’t shoot her husband on purpose. Lisa swears up and down she never knew the gun was loaded, that she only intended to scare him off. She expects me to back her up.”

  “What are you going to do about that?”

  Del chuckled. “Don’t worry, Livie, I won’t lie for Lisa. There’s no way I can corroborate whether or not the gun was loaded. I didn’t even know she had access to a gun. How could I? It’s not as if we kept in touch.”

  Olivia was surprised by the depth of her relief. “So what can you do, besides give Lisa moral support? Are you going to investigate on your own?”

  “Probably.”

  “You sound halfhearted,” Olivia said.

  “I am.” Del was quiet for several seconds before adding, “I only half believe that Lisa is innocent. I have the feeling I never really knew her. She married this jerk twice, you know.”

  “You were the sane guy in the middle.”

  Del chuckled. “I was the boring guy in the middle. I made Lisa feel safe, at least for a while, and then she wanted a more exciting relationship. She dumped me, and here I am, thinking I’m supposed to rescue her.”

  Olivia paused to measure her words. “Del, do you want to rescue Lisa, or . . .”

  “I’ve asked myself that same question, Livie. The answer is a resounding ‘No!’ I do not feel a driving desire to be Lisa’s rescuer. If anything, I’m tired of her shenanigans. On the other hand, I don’t want to see her convicted of murder if she isn’t guilty. I’m in the process of finding her a better lawyer. The last one was useless.”

  “If I were in Lisa’s shoes, I’d be grateful for any support,” Olivia said.

  “I’ll stick around for the trial, if it comes to that.” Del sounded tired. “Then I want to come home.”

  “You are needed here, Del,” Olivia said softly. “In more ways than one. . . .”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” Del cleared his throat, as if he felt nervous. “Livie, I’m worried about the situation in Chatterley Heights. It’s not that I don’t trust Cody; I think he’s got a lot of potential. He needs more seasoning, that’s all. His instincts aren’t honed enough. That’s partly my fault; I haven’t ever let him take the lead. Besides, the Oskarson case is a tough one. The evidence is confusing. It isn’t entirely clear if Greta died because someone tried to strangle her or . . . well, never mind. I could call in someone to help Cody, but I want to give him a chance to show what he can do. Livie, I shouldn’t ask you this . . .”

  “Ask.”

  “Would you keep me up-to-date on the case?” Del asked. “I’ve checked with the medical examiner and crime scene folks—behind Cody’s back, I’m afraid—but it would help if I knew what’s going on in town. You know the drill: who’s saying what, any history that might be helpful, that sort of thing.”

  “The gossip, in other words,” Olivia said with a laugh. “Sounds like fun. Do you have time to hear what Maddie and I have heard so far?”

  “I’m just sneaking off for a cup of coffee, so now is a good time,” Del said.

  “Wait, do I hear a car door closing? You’re driving off while talking on your cell, aren’t you? I refuse to be an enabler.”

  “As I keep telling you, Livie, it’s—hang on a sec . . .” Del’s voice disappeared for a time, though Olivia thought she heard the blare of an angry car horn. “Okay, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I’m a cop, so it’s okay for me to use a cell phone while I’m driving.”

  “Even when it isn’t an emergency?” Olivia asked.

  “Something tells me you’ve already decided the answer to that question. Okay, I give up. I’m pulling off the highway right now.” Del didn’t speak for a minute or two, but Olivia heard the highway noise begin to fade. “I have no idea where I am,” Del said, “except that I’m in an empty parking lot. The engine is off. Satisfied?”

  “For now,” Olivia said. “And of course I’ll keep you informed, if you’ll reciprocate by sharing some information with me, if you have any. After all, you aren’t assigned to the case. Also, you’re sort of asking me to keep tabs on your deputy sheriff, which is above and beyond my duty as a citizen.”

  “Point taken,” Del said with a chuckle. “Okay, my squad car will remain at a full stop, engine turned off. I’m locked inside without a cup of coffee and a bit of time on my hands. Tell me everything you’ve heard about Greta and her death.”

  “Okay,” Olivia said, “I’ve heard Greta might have died from an asthma attack. Maddie heard from a wai
tress at the Chatterley Café that Greta had been poisoned. I even heard someone speculate that she’d been frightened to death. What’s up with all that?”

  Del laughed, a welcome sound to Olivia. “Well, I did say that the evidence is confusing. However, it isn’t unusual to hear all sorts of wild rumors after an unexplained death, especially in a small town. People have a natural tendency to fill in the blanks. I’m hearing the same stuff here about Lisa’s husband’s death,” Del said. “However, I’ll tell you what I do know about Greta’s death, but you must absolutely keep it to yourself.”

  “You know Maddie will worm it out of me.” Olivia figured she had a duty to warn Del.

  “Excuse me while I sigh heavily,” Del said. “Yes, I am well aware that Maddie will find out, as will the rest of Chatterley Heights and surrounding areas, but she might just as easily hear it from a hospital employee or a patient or an intern’s girlfriend, or . . . You get the picture. So I’ll fill you in, anyway . . . not because it’s a good idea, but because this isn’t my case, and I want you to be informed if you are going to be my eyes and ears. My only caveat is please, I beg of you, stay out of danger. Don’t take risks, and don’t confide in anyone, if you can help it. Make sure Maddie understands the dangers. Despite the fuzzy evidence, my instincts tell me there’s a murderer out there.”

  “Heard and understood,” Olivia said.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Del said.

  “Me neither.”

  “Okay, here’s what the coroner has pieced together so far,” Del said. “Technically, Greta died of a heart attack, though she did have other problems that can’t have helped.”

  “Greta was gasping for breath when she called me,” Olivia said. “She sounded as if she might be having an asthma attack.”

  “Right,” Del said. “The rumor about poison isn’t true. Greta did show signs of coronary disease, but her heart wasn’t on the verge of ceasing to function, according to the medical examiner. And she did have some bruises on her neck. The ER doctor didn’t think they were significant enough to have caused her death. Another ER doctor took a later look and decided the bruises might be ligature marks, though it was hard to tell.”