A Cookie Before Dying accsm-2

by Virginia Lowell

  Raoul began to whistle another tune, which sounded vaguely familiar. Olivia had heard it at her mother’s dance lesson. A rumba. He was in the room. Olivia realized she was still holding the psychiatrist’s notes she’d been so thrilled to find. The whistling stopped. Olivia didn’t dare move for fear the paper might crinkle. All she could do was hope that Raoul wasn’t searching for that one page.

  The continued silence should have been reassuring, but Olivia’s imagination filled it with specters of an enraged Raoul about to swing the closet door wide while he called 911. Maddie shifted a bit. She was closest to the open crack and was trying to see into the room. Before Olivia could stop her, Maddie edged the door open a few more inches and peeked through. Nothing happened. Maddie pushed the door wider and poked her head into the room. Pulling back inside, she whispered, “I think I hear him releasing the chain lock on Valentina’s bedroom door. We could try to make a run for it.” She tiptoed toward the office door.

  “Too dangerous,” Olivia said. “If she’s asleep, he’ll come right back out. Even if we get out of sight in time, he’ll hear us run down the stairs.”

  Maddie peeked into the hallway, then hurried to the safety of the closet. “You nailed it,” she said. “I saw his foot step out of the bedroom. I can hear him coming this way.”

  Olivia felt sweat collecting under the light bangs that waved across her forehead. At this rate, she’d need another shower before greeting customers.

  “Okay, I think he’s on the stairs.” Maddie cracked open the closet door and listened. Olivia took the opportunity to fold the paper she’d been holding and stuff it into her jeans pocket.

  “I don’t hear a thing,” Maddie said. “Maybe Raoul is downstairs. He starts teaching at nine, doesn’t he?” She checked her watch. “Yikes, it’s eight forty. How did that happen? We have no chance of escaping until Raoul is in the studio with a student, and we are supposed to open the store in twenty minutes. We’re doomed.”

  “Probably,” Olivia whispered, “but not because we’ll be late opening the store. I called Bertha and Mom last night.”

  “Whew. I may need to reconsider this thinking-ahead idea,” Maddie said. “Raoul must be downstairs getting ready to teach. I’m about to suffocate in here.” She pushed the door open wide enough to slide through. “All clear,” she said, checking the hallway.

  Olivia left the closet and went straight to the window. “I don’t see a car parked in front,” she said, “though anyone who lives in Chatterley Heights would probably walk to a lesson.”

  “Shh,” Maddie said. “I hear something.”

  “It’s music,” Olivia said, “coming from downstairs. Which means Raoul could be in the office or out on the dance floor.” Her mind began to click off possible escape ideas, but they all involved going through the office. “How can we know for sure that Raoul is in the dance studio?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Maddie said. Before Olivia could stop her, Maddie stepped into the hallway, leaving the door wide open. She looked down the hallway toward the staircase, as if preparing to sneak downstairs. Instead, she spun around ninety degrees and turned to stone. Olivia rushed toward the open doorway, her heart pounding inside her brain.

  Maddie’s jaw slowly dropped. “Livie,” she said. “You’d better come out here.”

  Olivia stepped out and joined Maddie. Light spilled into the dim hallway through the open door of the ballerina’s bedroom. An ethereal creature dressed in layers of pink chiffon watched them. Her body was so slight that for a moment Olivia thought she was a mirage. But her face was real, the scar on her cheek unmistakable. Her light brown eyes regarded Olivia and Maddie in a calm and incurious way.

  Olivia breathed the name, “Valentina.”

  “Yes,” Valentina said, “though Daddy calls me Tiny. I know who you are. You are the ones who make beautiful cookies. You saw me dancing in the park. Daddy told me.” Despite her size and childlike way of speaking, Valentina appeared to be in her mid-twenties.

  “We just finished making some ballerina cookies,” Olivia said, “in your honor. You dance so wonderfully.”

  A ghost of a smile touched Valentina’s lips. “I would love to see the cookies. Daddy tells me I have to eat more. He doesn’t know you are here, does he? If he did, he would have locked me in my room to protect me.”

  “We wanted to meet you, Valentina,” Olivia said. “We need to ask you something important.”

  “Daddy wouldn’t like that. You should leave before he sees you.” Valentina cocked her head, as if to listen. A thick lock of straight, white-gold hair fell across her face, nearly obscuring the scar on her cheek. Olivia realized how beautiful she must have been. “Daddy will be on the dance floor right now,” Valentina said. “He is warming up before he starts teaching. You can go out the back door. If you are quiet, Daddy won’t see or hear you. He is in another world when he dances.”

  Olivia reached out a hand in supplication. “Please, Valentina, one question only, I promise. It would mean so much to me and my family. I have a younger brother, Jason. He is in trouble. The sheriff thinks he killed a bad man, but I know he didn’t. All I want to know is if you were dancing in the park a few nights ago . . . Tuesday, the night of the storm. If you were, did you see anything, anyone?”

  Small as she was, Valentina shrank into herself. She turned her face toward her bedroom but did not escape into it, which Olivia found hopeful, yet puzzling. The psychiatric report Olivia had read described a frail creature so damaged that she couldn’t think or act rationally. Certainly, Valentina appeared to exist in a world of her own. However, the Valentina standing before her, though delicate and damaged, might make a credible witness.

  Valentina turned to face Olivia. Tears bunched in her eyes. She blinked until they burst and trickled down her face, following the line of the scar on her left cheek. “I didn’t want to dance in the storm,” she said.

  “But before the storm,” Olivia said. She could hear desperation in her own voice and took a deep breath to calm herself. “Did you see anything at all that night? Or anyone?”

  Valentina’s frail body began to shiver. She reached up to her cheek and touched her scar.

  “Please, Valentina. Jason is my baby brother. He doesn’t deserve this. I know he didn’t kill that man. You are my brother’s only hope.” It was too much pressure; she knew it as soon as she said it. Valentina’s face contorted in agony as she fled into her room. Olivia heard the click of a lock.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Maddie said. “Now!” She grabbed Olivia’s arm and dragged her toward the staircase. Olivia didn’t fight her. Her chance had evaporated, but she’d find another. Somehow.

  With Maddie in the lead, they tiptoe-ran down the stairs. Maddie peeked into the kitchen and signaled the all clear. The tough part came next. The door leading from the kitchen into the dance studio stood wide open. A familiar waltz played on the CD player.

  Maddie yanked her along by the upper arm. “It’s three minutes to nine, and that waltz is almost over,” she hissed in Olivia’s ear. “Raoul will be coming into the kitchen to set up music for his students.”

  Olivia nodded and reached for the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn. She remembered she’d flipped the lock from the inside to keep Raoul from becoming suspicious. A good idea at the time.

  Olivia whispered in Maddie’s ear, “The music needs to be loud enough to cover the sound of this lock.”

  Maddie nodded. She grabbed the doorknob with one hand, the lock with the other. The music grew softer. Olivia held her breath. Maddie’s muscles twitched a split second before the music crescendoed. She timed it perfectly. The lock snapped, the door opened, and Olivia slipped through. Maddie was right behind her. She eased the door shut. “Should we lock it?”

  Olivia shook her head. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As they headed north up the alley, Olivia paused and looked back. She could see the second-floor window of Valentina’s room. A small figure, dressed in pi
nk, was observing their escape. For reasons she could not name, Olivia felt a flicker of hope.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The phone began ringing the instant Olivia stepped out of her shower, and it stopped in mid-ring as she reached for the receiver. She still felt hot after her race home from the dance studio. Even her lightest outfit, taupe pants and a matching blouse in the thinnest possible fabric, weighed on her skin like wool. However, wearing a bikini to work was not an option.

  She threw her sweaty jeans and T-shirt into her clothes hamper and headed toward the kitchen, Spunky at her heels. As she bit into a slice of cold pizza, the phone rang again.

  “Livie? It’s Mom. I can hear you chewing, so don’t try to talk. Everything is fine in the store, but Heather Irwin is in the kitchen, sobbing her heart out. I gave her coffee and some tissues from my bag.”

  Olivia swallowed. “Good, she’s on my list.”

  “List? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Spunky circled her ankles, disturbed by the unusual morning schedule, which had not included an outing. “Come on, little guy. Bertha will take care of you for a while.” Spunky did not seem happy with this information, but an extra treat helped.

  As Olivia entered The Gingerbread House, she imagined she could feel a heaviness in the air that was more than heat. Her mother was showing a customer the elegant embroidery stitches on a handcrafted apron. Ellie’s shoulders rolled forward as if she were carrying a backpack filled with rocks. Olivia knew how she felt. When Ellie glanced in her direction, Olivia blew her a kiss and pointed toward the kitchen.

  Heather Irwin sat bent over the kitchen table, her head on her arms. At the sound of the door opening, she raised her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and her lips looked chewed. “Oh, Livie, you’re really okay?”

  Olivia poured herself a cup of coffee, refilled Heather’s cup, and sat across from her. “I’m fine. How about telling me what’s been going on with you lately?”

  Heather gave a slow nod but didn’t speak.

  Olivia reached over to a tray of ballerina cookies, selected a classic toe shoe iced with shiny raspberry luster dust, and handed it to Heather. “A cookie for your thoughts.”

  The gesture coaxed a sad smile from Heather, followed by a deluge of tears. “How . . . how can you be nice to me, after what I . . . ? I almost killed you. Only I didn’t mean to, honestly, it just . . . I sort of . . .” She bit the toe off her cookie.

  “I know you weren’t aiming your truck for me, or you’d have hit me.” This wasn’t quite true, but recriminations would only waste time.

  “Still, it was unforgivable.” Heather sniffled. “Sheriff Del is talking about pressing charges for reckless driving. I deserve that. But mostly, I don’t want you to hate me forever.”

  “I try to avoid the ‘hatred forever’ thing,” Olivia said as she slid the plate of cookies in front of Heather. “However, if you want to speed up the forgive-and-forget process, there is something you could do for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “Tell me everything you know about Geoffrey King. I know it’s a painful subject, but I’m trying to save my brother from prison, and I don’t have much time.”

  Heather picked up a cookie shaped like a ballerina performing an arabesque. With a grim smile, she laid the cookie on a napkin and said, “That’s fair. Embarrassing, but fair. As it happens, I know a lot. It’s a mistake to lie to a librarian, you know. Some people assume we’re shy and gullible, but we know how to dig up the dirt.” Blinking back tears, Heather nibbled on her ballerina’s pale blue toe.

  Olivia refilled their coffee cups. She could feel the time pressure in the tightness of her shoulders. Since Heather owed her, she could afford to be blunt. “King hit you, didn’t he?” Olivia could see a hint of yellow under Heather’s foundation.

  “Yes,” Heather said. “I’ve never felt so humiliated, so angry. No man has ever hit me before. I could have killed . . .” She bit off the ballerina’s shin.

  “You aren’t alone,” Olivia said. “Did he think he had a reason to hit you?”

  With a shaky hand, Heather wiped a crumb off her upper lip. “I’d gotten suspicious because he didn’t want to meet any of my friends or go out with me in public. I started noticing some of my kitchen things were missing, and I couldn’t find my new iPhone. When a hundred dollars disappeared from my wallet, that’s when I knew Geoff had to be stealing from me. Nobody else had access to all that stuff.”

  “So he hit you when you confronted him?” Olivia asked.

  With a lopsided smile, Heather said, “Not exactly. First I searched for him on the Internet. He told me his name was Geoffrey Lord, which didn’t match anyone in my search. I did find a blog discussion about a Geoffrey Duke, though, so I tried every royalty-related name I could think of, and that’s how I found out his real name was King. Geoff was charming and cunning, but he wasn’t exactly a creative genius.”

  “Wow,” Olivia said. “Never mess with librarians.”

  “You bet.” Heather’s round face relaxed to its normal friendly diffidence. “I found out Geoff had a history of stealing from girlfriends. He also gave stolen gifts to girlfriends. He seemed to pick shy women who were too embarrassed to report him to the police. They sure unloaded online, though. They all said he was charming at first, and then he became demanding and critical and usually violent.”

  “Did any of the women mention whether he used weapons?”

  Heather nodded. “Several women mentioned he’d threatened them with a knife. One woman needed a couple stitches in her chin. He didn’t use a knife with me because . . . well, when I confronted him in my kitchen about the stealing, I’d locked away all my sharp utensils. He knew right where they belonged because he opened the drawers to look for them. When he realized I’d hidden them, he really lost it. He hit me in the face, and I fell down. I thought he was going to kill me. But he just smiled and left. I changed all my locks, just in case.”

  One driving purpose consumed Olivia’s mind—to clear her brother of murder charges—and she had less than twenty-four hours to do it. Calming and questioning Heather Irwin had taken more than an hour, but it had been worth the time. Olivia hoped Heather hadn’t killed Geoffrey King. She had a strong motive, though, and no alibi. And she was one smart cookie.

  Maddie, Bertha, and her mom could handle the store, in case curiosity brought in more than the usual number of Friday customers. Olivia gulped down the rest of her coffee, took a filled Gingerbread House bag from the refrigerator, and exited into the alley.

  The Vegetable Plate, right next door, was Olivia’s first planned stop. To avoid being seen entering sugar-phobic Charlene’s store holding what looked like a bag of cookies, Olivia followed the alley to the rear door. Charlene would probably be in her kitchen. She had help who worked the sales floor much of the time, so she could experiment with healthy recipes.

  Olivia peeked through the small kitchen window. She was in luck. Both Charlene and her brother Charlie sat at the worktable, their heads tilted toward each other as they talked. If she knocked, Olivia was afraid they might disappear. She tried the doorknob. It turned easily in her hand. She slipped inside so swiftly that the Critch siblings had no time to scrape back their chairs.

  “I’m so glad to find both of you here,” Olivia said as she closed the alley door behind her. “We need to talk.”

  “What the . . .” Charlene twisted to her feet. “A civilized person would knock. You of all people should remember that someone broke into my store.”

  “Yes, but the man who broke in is dead, isn’t he? Which is why you feel safe enough to leave your back door unlocked.”

  Charlie put an arm around his sister’s tight shoulders. “It’s okay, Sis. I’m here, no one can hurt you.”

  “Especially not me.” Olivia held out her bag. “I come with a peace offering.” Before Charlene could start shrieking about the demon sugar, Olivia added, “Th
ese are cut-out vegetable sandwiches. Sorry about the bag, it’s all I could find.” She plunked her gift on the table between Charlene and Charlie. Pulling up a chair, Olivia said, “Sit down, please. I know this is abrupt, but I don’t have a lot of time.”

  Charlene exchanged a quick glance with her brother. “We heard a rumor that Jason was being released.”

  Olivia, who had started the rumor and encouraged her friends and relatives to spread it around, said, “He is . . . for now. He’s still the prime suspect, though. I want to clear him.”

  “Jason is my buddy,” Charlie said, “but Charlene and I are suspects, too, so why should we help you?”

  “If you are guilty, then you probably shouldn’t help me. Or you could lie. But if you didn’t kill Geoffrey King, you should have no problem answering my questions. I’m not the police. I have no interest in learning any of your secrets unless they help me find the real killer and free Jason.” Olivia opened her bag of sandwiches. “If I do say so myself, these are works of art.”

  Charlene’s button nose twitched. “I smell cucumber.”

  “Yep, freshly cut.”

  “I eat only organic vegetables.”

  Olivia nudged the bag closer to Charlene. “These vegetables are all organic. So is the whole-grain bread.”

  “How can I be sure?”

  “My mother bought all of it right here at The Vegetable Plate yesterday afternoon.”

  Charlene hooked an index finger on the edge of the opening and peered inside. Frowning, she said, “I see mustard. I eat no commercial sandwich spreads. They contain sugar.”

  Olivia quashed a strong impulse to sigh and roll her eyes. “My mom made the mustard from organic dried, ground mustard seed. And she used pure spring water.” Thank you, Mom.

  Charlie opened a cupboard next to the sink and took out a large glass serving plate, which he rinsed and dried before setting it on the table. “Look, Livie,” he said, “we both care about Jason, but I don’t see how we can help. We didn’t kill Geoff, I swear it.”