When the Cookie Crumbles

by Virginia Lowell

“How monstrous!” Hermione’s plate slid off her lap, and Spunky lunged for it. Maddie leaped up and grabbed him around the middle. He didn’t object when she plunked him on her lap—he’d had just enough time to determine the plate was empty. Hermione ignored the commotion. “Such incompetence would never be tolerated in England.” Her voice had assumed an aristocratic tone.

  Exchanging a quick glance with Olivia, Maddie said, “Paine grew up in Chatterley Heights. Maybe someone from his youth has a grudge against him?”

  “Of course,” Olivia said. “Mrs. Chatterley, didn’t you mention that your husband was upset when he recognized two individuals from his past in our store Tuesday evening? I noticed he seemed to remember both Quill Latimer and Karen Evanson, our mayor.”

  Hermione’s plump face hardened. “I believe Paine and the professor were at school together. Paine wasn’t one to wallow in unpleasant memories, but he did mention to me that—Quill, did you say? Such an odd name to give a child. Anyway, Paine once mentioned that Quill had copied his schoolwork. That’s all I remember. But that woman…” Hermione began to gather the empty teacups.

  “Oh, let me do that,” Maddie said. “You need to consider your health. You know how it is in a small town,” she added apologetically. “By now, everyone has heard about your visit to Johns Hopkins Hospital.”

  “How very considerate of you,” Hermione said. “I grew up in a tiny village in England, so of course I’m not surprised in the least that you know of my heart condition. It is tiresome, but there you are. I try not to let it rule my life.” Without protest, Hermione allowed Maddie to clear away the tea things and take the tray to the kitchen.

  “Did your husband say anything about Karen Evanson?” Olivia asked.

  With an unladylike snort, Hermione said, “He didn’t have to say a word. I knew all along what that woman was like. Of course, it isn’t my place to judge your mayor. Who knows, perhaps she turned her life around, although from the little I’ve seen, she’s as self-indulgent as ever.”

  “It sounds as if you actually knew Karen,” Olivia said. “If there’s something in her past you think the town should know about…”

  “Well, for the good of Chatterley Heights…after all, the town is named after Paine’s family.” Hermione patted her fluff of white hair and settled back in her armchair.

  Olivia wished Maddie would return to hear Hermione’s story. It might be helpful to have a second pair of eyes and ears, especially when those eyes and ears belonged to Maddie Briggs. Olivia suspected she was conducting a quick search of the kitchen and nearby rooms.

  “I’m not a gossip,” Hermione said, “never have been. However, little Miss Karen Evanson hasn’t always been as respectable as she wants the town to believe. About twenty-five years back, maybe more—when Karen was, oh, nineteen or twenty years old, I’d say—Paine and I had the misfortune to cross her path. I’m only a few years older than she is, but at that time, Paine and I had already been married for several years, so I was far more mature.”

  Olivia estimated that Hermione’s “few years older” equaled at least ten. Spunky lifted his sleepy head at a rustling sound from the hallway. Maddie appeared in the parlor doorway, about to speak. With an infinitesimal shake of her head, Olivia warned her not to interrupt. Maddie quietly sank into her chair.

  Hermione continued as if she hadn’t noticed Maddie’s return. “This was back in the eighties, of course, so morals were quite loose. Karen was studying art, I believe, somewhere in France. I have little interest in frivolous pursuits such as art—except for the old masters, naturally. In the early spring, Karen came to London and stayed for several months. I presume she’d become bored with art and decided a fling would be more fun. She became entangled in a most unfortunate and inappropriate affair with a wealthy—and married, I might add—gentleman of our acquaintance. His wife Ariana was a dear friend of mine. She was so heartbroken. I tried to comfort her, but…”

  Hermione’s story had so mesmerized Olivia that she hadn’t thought about what information she ought to elicit. Luckily, Maddie was quicker on the uptake. “Did Karen break up their marriage?” Maddie asked.

  “Oh, far worse,” Hermione said. “Poor Ariana tried to kill herself. Well, that created quite an uproar, I can tell you. Sir Laurence, Lady Ariana’s husband, he was the one who found her, barely alive. She was terribly ill for some time. Bundled off to the country to recover, she was. Well, with her out of the way, Sir Laurence and that selfish little blonde, they thought they’d carry on as they had before. Well, I wasn’t about to let that happen, I can tell you. I called the tabloids.” Hermione nodded with self-satisfaction.

  Olivia was taken aback. In the United States, tabloids were popular but wielded little real power. She reminded herself that British tabloids had operated for many decades with fewer controls. They had successfully intruded into the lives of the wealthy and powerful, until recently without repercussions. “I’m intrigued,” Olivia said. “That was a clever way to punish the people who hurt your friend so badly.”

  Hermione grinned like a feral cat with a feather in its mouth. “It worked, too. Sir Laurence was humiliated. He ended his affair with that woman and moved to the country to be nearer his wife during her recuperation. Karen, of course, was outraged. She’s an American, so she didn’t understand why Sir Laurence took the tabloids so seriously.” Hermione leaned toward Olivia and Maddie, her hands neatly clasped in her lap. “You see, Karen believed that Sir Laurence would divorce his wife and marry her. She couldn’t understand why a few tabloid pieces ruined her dream of becoming the wife of a rich lord. And ooh, she was so angry with me. Because she knew I was the instrument of Ariana’s revenge.” Hermione sat back in her chair and smiled.

  Acting on a hunch, Olivia asked, “Did Karen by any chance try to take revenge on you? I ask because I see her as someone who doesn’t easily accept defeat. I suspect she wouldn’t have been that…mature.” Olivia almost said “passive,” but Hermione might have interpreted that as a compliment to Karen.

  Hermione waved a dismissive hand. “There really wasn’t much she could do. The reporters wouldn’t leave her alone, you see. They parked themselves outside her flat, took photos every time she left the building.… If she went to the shops, they photographed her buying biscuits or bottles of wine. If she talked to anyone, especially a man, we’d read an interview with him the next day. She left London in less than a fortnight.”

  Olivia shivered as she imagined what it would feel like to be hounded daily. Seeing herself in Binnie Sloan’s irritating blog was the closest Olivia had come to feeling publicly exposed, and it hadn’t been comfortable. She had a hard time believing Karen would have slunk away without lashing out at her tormentor. There was more to Hermione’s story; Olivia was sure of it. She was willing to bet the vintage Hallmark cookie-cutter collection she’d inherited from Clarisse that the rest of Hermione’s story involved her husband. Had Karen run into Paine in London? If so, she would know that his death certificate was a fake. Yet she’d raised no objections to the town’s ownership claim to Chatterley Mansion. What if Paine was the man with whom Karen had a fling? That would explain why Hermione’s anger with Karen sounded personal. And why else would Paine have greeted Karen as if he’d once known her well?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Wielding a pastry bag filled with fire engine red royal icing, Maddie swirled a crooked grin on the face of a running gingerbread man. “C’est magnifico! I just get better and better.”

  “Well done.” Olivia glanced up from the gingerbread girl she was decorating. “That was two languages in one exclamation.”

  “Drat,” Maddie said. “I’ll never get the hang of French. What did I do wrong this time?”

  “Not a thing. It’s just that c’est is French and magnifico is Italian, which makes you multilingual.” Olivia squeezed two drops of icing to create baby blue eyes for her gingerbread girl. “Besides, I continue to feel impressed and horrified that you managed to guess my email pa
ssword. Now I have to change it to another French phrase, one I never use but might have a shot at remembering.” She moved her finished cookie to a drying rack and selected another. “How many more dozens do we have left to decorate?” Olivia asked, glancing up at the kitchen clock. “It’s already eight p.m. Aren’t you and Lucas going to the dance in the park?”

  “At least five dozen, and Lucas flaked out,” Maddie said. “He’s tired, so he decided to go home and to bed. I think the real reason is he thinks he can’t dance. I’ve been teaching him.”

  “Maybe that’s what wore him out.” Olivia decided on aqua for her gingerbread man’s hair and beard. After all, Maddie wasn’t the only one allowed to veer beyond the limits of reality.

  “Nonsense,” Maddie said. “Lucas is nearly ready for Dancing with the Stars. He’s shy, that’s all. But no matter. We have work to do, you and I, and I don’t mean mere cookie decorating.”

  “Good,” Olivia said. “I didn’t want to keep you away from the dance, but I wasn’t looking forward to traveling the Internet on my own.”

  “That’s why I brought my laptop. I’ll crank it up while you tell me your plan. Because I know you have one.” Maddie finished decorating a gingerbread man with black eyes and red fangs. She dribbled a few drops of icing blood down his chin and placed him with the growing collection of finished cookies.

  “My plan is more like a list of questions.” Olivia counted the remaining cookies with misgiving. They were destined for The Gingerbread House’s booth at the Sunday afternoon fete, so they had to be designed with skill and imagination. When it came to decorating cookies, Olivia was excellent, but Maddie was superb. Maddie was also superb at navigating the Internet. Olivia wasn’t even in the running.

  Olivia stretched her back, loosened her shoulders, and reached for a gingerbread boy. “First, I’m dying to know if that story Hermione told about Karen Evanson has any truth to it. Hermione said it happened sometime in the 1980s. Would something that far back be on the Internet?”

  “We can but try,” Maddie said. “Members of the British nobility can be tracked down through a number of avenues, especially when they’ve been involved in a scandal. What were the names again?”

  “Sir Laurence and Lady Ariana.” Olivia squeezed her pastry bag too hard and left a red glob at the corner of the gingerbread boy’s mouth. She added more icing and formed clown lips. “I wish we’d gotten their last name. Hermione said they lived in London and then moved to the country after the scandal. It might be someplace with a private hospital or rest home.”

  After several minutes of rapid clicking sounds, Maddie sat back and grunted.

  “No luck?” Olivia asked.

  “Not yet, but not to worry. I’ve come up with lots of Arianas, with one ‘n’ or two, and Laurences in numerous spellings, but not the two together, except…I wonder…” After more tap-tapping, Maddie said, “I’ve returned to a site that I dismissed earlier because I thought it wouldn’t be relevant. Sir Laurence and his wife Ariana are listed as characters in a London play called Malice and Teacakes that tanked in 1986. It lasted about three weeks. I don’t recognize the playwright’s name, probably for a good reason.”

  Olivia longed to pull a chair next to Maddie, so she could see the site for herself, but the silent cries of naked gingerbread people kept her working. “Are the actors’ names listed? Anybody we might know?”

  “Good idea.” Maddie clicked through several screens. “Here they are. Nope, don’t recognize a one. I was hoping to see Hermione’s name; if there’s anyone who screams failed actress, it’s Hermione. She could have used a stage name, of course. There’s one character in the script that also reminds me of Hermione—a betrayed wife in her thirties, named Doris. Let me see if I can find a photo of the cast.”

  As Olivia began decorating a gingerbread clown, a familiar longing for a cookie made her reach toward a small gingerbread boy dressed in a sea green sailor suit. She mentally slapped her own hand and drew it back.

  “Here’s a cast photo,” Maddie said. “It labels the character names and the actor playing the role, which undoubtedly caused endless embarrassment, given the snotty reviews.” Her finger on the screen, Maddie twisted her head toward the worktable. “Livie, come look at this, will you? It’s the actress who played Doris, the betrayed wife. Tell me what you think.”

  Olivia capped her icing bag and scrunched next to Maddie on the roomy kitchen chair. “Way too tall to be Hermione Chatterley,” Olivia said. “Hermione can’t be more than about five foot two. This actress is closer in height to the other female cast members, so she’s got to be at least five foot six. She looks like she’s in her midthirties.”

  “Ah, the wonders of greasepaint,” Maddie said with a grin. “Get this, the actress’s name is Karin Evensong.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” Maddie tapped the screen at a list of actor names. “Our mayor in a New Age moment. I will enjoy having this information.”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  “Only if pushed beyond human endurance,” Maddie said. “Anyway, this actress might be Karen Evanson, which would indicate that she was in London in the 1980s, as Hermione claimed. Karen couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty then.”

  “If this is Karen, it means Hermione might have had some connection with her, at least through this play. Hermione used the names of the main characters in her story about Karen’s alleged affair. Why would she make up such a story?” Olivia reluctantly returned to her mammoth cookie-decorating task. “Does anyone else in the cast look familiar to you?”

  “Nope,” Maddie said. “None of the male characters is small enough to be Paine Chatterley. It’s always possible that Hermione worked backstage, I suppose. I can’t imagine Paine doing manual labor, especially volunteer.” Her fingers bounced over the computer keys. “I’ll check a few more sites.”

  To speed up her decorating progress, Olivia placed three gingerbread men side by side. She gave one of them yellow hair, the second got a yellow shirt, and the third acquired yellow shoes.

  “Hey, this is interesting,” Maddie said. “It’s a British tabloid article from about five years ago. Someone posted it recently because one of the people in the article died. The names are different, but the story is exactly the same as the one Hermione told us. Young American woman leaves art school in Paris, visits London, has affair with much older member of the aristocracy, wife has stroke, and so on. Only there’s a photo of the young woman, and she wasn’t Karen.”

  “So Hermione lifted her story from a tabloid exposé,” Olivia said. “Then she changed the names, using characters from a play in which Karen performed? That’s a lot of work. Hermione must have prepared that story in advance.”

  “Maybe Karen and Hermione knew each other, and not in a friendly way,” Maddie said. “Hey, what if the man Karen had an affair with was—”

  “Paine Chatterley!” Olivia squeezed her pastry bag, inadvertently squirting a ribbon of magenta icing into the air. It landed on the table, less than an inch from a row of decorated cookies. “Oops.”

  “Put the pastry bag down, Livie, and no gingerbread people will get hurt. Remind me not to get you a firearm for your birthday.”

  “Duly noted.” Olivia dragged a chair over to the computer. “Break time. Let’s look up Paine and Hermione.”

  “Excellent.” Maddie typed in their names and hit return. “Huh. Not much there, except recent articles about their arrival in Chatterley Heights and Paine’s untimely departure.” She checked several pages of listings. “I don’t see anything from the UK here.” Maddie pulled up a site that promised to find anyone, anywhere. She added “London” to their names and requested an address. No reference popped up. Since Paine had been reported dead, Maddie tried Hermione’s name alone. “Nothing,” she said. “That’s weird. Maybe they were using assumed names. They did have passports, right?”

  “Del confiscated them,” Olivia said. “He’d have said something if they were using di
fferent names. How accurate are these sites?”

  “I wouldn’t bet Clarisse’s cookie-cutter collection on them. With a little time and hacking, I might be able to locate an official site; that would be more accurate. Still, it’s odd that Paine and Hermione don’t show up anywhere except here in Chatterley Heights. I’d assume they were impostors, but Aunt Sadie totally recognized Paine.”

  A stray lock of auburn hair fell across Olivia’s eye, and she smoothed it behind her ear. “I meant to ask you,” she said. “When I visited Aunt Sadie and Paine, or his evil twin, was there, she complained about a hand tremor. I hate to even think this, but could she have something neurological going on?”

  “Not Aunt Sadie,” Maddie said with certainty. “That tremor is a nerve thing caused by excessive embroidery, or that’s what the doctor says. She’s supposed to lay off for a while, but you know Aunt Sadie. She insists that the tremor goes away when she embroiders, so now she’s doing even more of it. I told her, we’ll have to sell all her aprons to get enough money for the whopping surgery she’ll wind up needing. But did she take me seriously?”

  “I’m guessing not?”

  “Good guess.” Maddie squinted at the computer screen. “Here’s something interesting.” She pointed to a listing that read “The legendary Chatterley cookie-cutter collection…” Maddie clicked on the link and up popped an article by a collector whose name Olivia recognized. As she remembered, the woman had passed away two or three years earlier.

  “When did the article first appear?” Olivia asked.

  “2007.”

  “I’d better get back to decorating,” Olivia said, “but I’m curious. Read the article out loud.”

  “Excellent, a command performance,” Maddie said. “Okay, here’s the text:

  “The legendary Chatterley cookie-cutter collection might be more than a legend. The Chatterley family died out years ago, and their nineteenth-century home, located in the quaint little town of Chatterley Heights, Maryland, is now a historical landmark. The small mansion has seen better days, both inside and out, and few visitors make it a destination spot. Of course, most avid cookie-cutter collectors have made the pilgrimage to the Chatterley Mansion at least once. None has found so much as a single battered biscuit cutter, not one item worthy of the famed Chatterley collection. Legends die hard, though, and some collectors still believe that generations of Chatterley wives and mothers brought cutters from Europe; acquired more cutters from itinerant tinware peddlers; and, during periods of prosperity, commissioned cookie cutters in unique designs from tinware artists.