When the Cookie Crumbles

by Virginia Lowell

  Olivia swallowed a bite of chewy, gingery cookie and felt a familiar ping of pleasure. “So you’re saying we wouldn’t actually have to break into the hardware store and crack Lucas’s safe to steal the diagram? Why am I not reassured?”

  “Don’t be silly, Livie. I have a key to the store, and I know the combination to the safe. But no, we won’t have to use them. I remember that Lucas had marked some parts of the house to be blocked off. He said he wouldn’t bother renovating those areas. He didn’t want to waste time and money, since he didn’t expect anyone to be living in the mansion. No one had been in those parts of the mansion for years, even decades, and he worried they might not be safe.”

  Olivia had finished eating the unexpected cookie, but she no longer wanted to interrupt. She was hooked.

  “The attic was one area. Lucas said he’d looked inside and found it empty, plus a couple of floorboards were rotting. He also found two short doorways that were sort of hidden. And here’s the really interesting part—Lucas never noticed them before. He’d been in that mansion many, many times, what with his fascination with architecture. He’d wanted to renovate the place for years.”

  Olivia couldn’t help herself. “Did Lucas find anything behind those doors? I’m dying here.”

  “Investigation is not his thing,” Maddie said with fondness. “One door is at the back of a storage closet under the front stairs, and the other is in the root cellar wall. No one goes down there because of the creepy crawlies, but my brave Lucas isn’t bothered by a few bugs or snakes or—”

  “I get the picture,” Olivia said. “I might never get it out of my head.”

  “Lucas found the door in the root cellar when he tried to move a cupboard filled with old, empty canning jars. The cupboard fell apart. I won’t describe the stuff that fell out. Lucas cleaned up the mess and saw the door in the wall. He tried to open it, but it was stuck shut, so he gave up. He wondered if it might be some sort of tunnel for helping slaves escape or something.”

  “Uh, I doubt that,” Olivia said. “The Chatterleys were known for owning slaves, not helping them escape. More likely it’s an old hiding place or storage area of some sort. Oh…are you thinking the Chatterleys might have used it as a safe for their valuables?”

  “Well, it’s a thought,” Maddie said. “A root cellar seems like a logical place to hide cookie cutters. I mean, cookies are food of the first order, plus who wants to go treasure hunting in a root cellar?”

  “Definitely not me,” Olivia said.

  Maddie slid a lid on a cake pan filled with the last batch of decorated cookies for the fete. “It’s only twelve thirty a.m.,” she said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That we should finish cleaning the kitchen and get some sleep?”

  “Antique cookie cutters? Chatterley Mansion? Come on, Livie, we’ll never get another opportunity like this. I mean, I’m truly sorry that Hermione is in the hospital with a heart attack, and I hope she comes through okay.”

  “But the sooner she recovers,” Olivia said, “the sooner she’s back in the mansion, and our opportunity will be gone, right?”

  “Well, at least until she sells the house, and then who knows?”

  Olivia wedged a mixing bowl into the dishwasher, added soap, and pressed the on button. “I forgot to mention, Constance called earlier and left a message on my cell. She said Hermione told her to forget about putting the mansion on the market. She didn’t say why she’d changed her mind. Constance was curious, and so am I.”

  “There you are, then,” Maddie said. “Once Hermione comes home from the hospital, our chances go bye-bye. I had a good look around when we were visiting her, and I think she’s been tearing the house apart looking for the Chatterley cookie cutters. Paine probably told her about the collection and how valuable it might be. Maybe she decided to do away with him so she wouldn’t have to share the profits.”

  “But, Maddie, how could Hermione manage the search on her own? If Matthew frightened her into a heart attack, all that heavy lifting would probably have killed her.” Olivia lifted her pooped pup from his blanket under the kitchen desk. She’d allowed him to sleep in the kitchen due to his recent fireworks-induced trauma. “Time for bed, little guy.” Spunky whimpered without opening his eyes.

  “Livie, what if heavy lifting is what caused Hermione’s heart attack? Did anyone actually see Matthew threaten her?”

  “Not that I know of.” With Spunky draped over her shoulder Olivia gathered the small bottles of gel food coloring scattered around the worktable and tightened all the tops. She felt torn between her rational, grown-up self and the cookie-cutter hunter bubbling to the surface. Finding even a tiny fraction of the Chatterley cutter collection would be a thrill she’d never forget. However, conducting a secret search of Chatterley Mansion while its mistress was hospitalized with a heart attack struck Olivia as callous…and so tempting.

  Olivia’s temptation went beyond the Chatterley cutter collection. Ever since Paine and Hermione’s arrival in town, Olivia had felt she was missing something. Paine had behaved like two different people, which was odd enough, but it was really Hermione she’d puzzled over. Olivia very much wanted to know about Hermione’s connection with Chatterley Heights’s mayor, Karen Evanson. She didn’t believe she’d heard the truth yet from either woman. A search of Hermione’s belongings might yield a clue or two.

  “If we are caught,” Olivia said, “Del will be furious.”

  “We won’t be,” Maddie said. “We’re only going to pick up some of Hermione’s clothes to bring to the hospital. It’s a small-town gesture.”

  “Oh yeah, that’ll work,” Olivia said. “Del might want me to do that at some point, but not in the middle of the night and without permission.”

  “There’s that,” Maddie admitted. “It’s a chance I’m willing to take. Livie, it’s okay if you don’t want to go. I can handle it on my own. There’s probably nothing to find anyway, but at least I’ll know.”

  “I can’t let you go alone.” Snuggling her drowsy pup against her chest, Olivia held open the kitchen door and doused the light. “Let’s grab a couple hours of sleep first. By three a.m., the streets will be as deserted as they’ll ever be. You can crash in my guest room.”

  “I’ll hang out on the sofa,” Maddie said. “I won’t be able to sleep, so there’s no point in messing up your guest bed. I’ll have double-strength coffee perked by two forty-five. If you’re not up by three, I’ll leave without you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Olivia’s alarm awakened her from a disturbing dream in which she was being pursued by a crazed gingerbread man wielding a licorice hatchet. She was trying to run up a staircase made of pearlized sugar sprinkles, which rolled away as she stepped on them. Since Olivia was not prone to nightmares, she figured this one was guilt induced. However, she had no intention of backing out of the plan to search Chatterley Mansion. If she did, Maddie would just go by herself anyway.

  The aroma of fresh coffee helped her roll out of bed, fully dressed. Spunky opened his eyes without lifting his head. He saw nothing to convince him it was time to get up. Olivia left quietly, as if she were making a bathroom run.

  “Good,” Maddie said as Olivia entered the kitchen. “I wasn’t looking forward to dragging you out of bed. Spunky might get all protective.”

  “I should hope so.” Olivia drained her coffee. “Let’s get going before Spunky catches on. I just need to collect a couple things on the way out.” She sorted through a kitchen drawer and found a sturdy screwdriver, which she slipped into her jacket pocket. She also grabbed two flashlights, one of which she handed to Maddie. Her cell phone lay on the small table by the front door of her apartment. She left it turned off and dropped it into another pocket.

  Within minutes, they were on the front porch of The Gingerbread House. Olivia scanned the town square for movement and saw none. It had been a full day for the citizens of Chatterley Heights, and she hoped they were all sound asleep. M
atthew Fabrizio, incarcerated or not, was probably deep in alcohol-induced slumber. Olivia felt a pinch of sympathy for Heather.

  With Maddie in the lead, they followed a circuitous route to Chatterley Mansion and slipped down the alley to the back door. Olivia was pleased to notice that several lights had been left on, perhaps to make the house look occupied while so many strangers were in town. No lights shone in the kitchen or over the alley door, for which Olivia was grateful. She felt confident they had entered unseen.

  Maddie aimed her flashlight at the kitchen floor. “Remember there’s stuff all over the place,” she whispered. “It’s easy to trip, even with a light on.” They picked their way through the dining room and down the hallway to the front of the staircase, where a door led to a closet under the stairs. “Lucas is so thorough,” Maddie said as the closet door opened smoothly. “He actually oiled all the hinges in the house. I could have killed Paine myself when he complained about the mansion being in bad shape.”

  “I wouldn’t repeat that if I were you.”

  “I’m just saying.” Maddie poked her head inside the closet and pulled out a tasseled lamp shade with a rip in the fabric. “We’ll have to excavate our way in. At the back, Lucas found a door that went up about to his waist. Luckily, it’ll be higher for us.” She handed Olivia several more broken pieces of what were once lovely examples of nineteenth-century furnishing. “That should do it.” Maddie shone her flashlight on a small door painted the same light yellow as the closet walls. The door stuck when she pulled the wooden knob, but it yielded on the next try. Maddie bent through the open doorway and disappeared into darkness.

  “Come on in,” said Maddie’s disembodied voice. “I feel so Nancy Drew-ish. I haven’t had this much fun since you and I were twelve, and we sneaked into that creepy old farmhouse on the edge of town. Remember that? We thought it was haunted.” Maddie aimed her flashlight near the opening so Olivia could see her way.

  “That place really was haunted,” Olivia said as she scooted through the short doorway. “By a flock of pigeons. I also remember I nearly fell through a rotted floorboard.”

  “Yeah, good times.” Maddie moved her light along the inner walls of the small hidden closet-within-a-closet. “Looks like old papers and books. Probably nothing useful, but it’s worth a few minutes.” She sat cross-legged on the floor, stirring up decades of dust.

  Olivia sneezed twice and decided against sitting. “I hope there aren’t any mice in here,” she said, kneeling to pick up a small book with a blank, stained cloth cover. Opening to a random page, Olivia saw faded, cramped handwriting. “I wonder if this is a journal of some sort,” she said.

  “Cool! Read some to me. I’ve found nothing but boring old receipts and household budget figures. Although I suppose historians might drool over this stuff.” Maddie abandoned the papers and began looking for a more promising stack.

  Olivia held her flashlight on a page in the little book. “I think the handwriting style is really old. I can’t make sense of it.”

  “Hand it over. Aunt Sadie told me about old cursive writing when we saw the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives Building in DC.” Maddie’s flashlight cast shadows on her face as she frowned in concentration. After examining several pages, she looked up and grinned. “I think I know what this might be. See that mark that looks like a big ‘2’? That’s a capital Q in old cursive. So ‘2uarts’ is really ‘Quarts.’ Hey, this is a recipe book! It’s written in a run-on style, like paragraphs of description. Not the way we write recipes today.” Maddie turned several more pages. “Ooh, and this recipe,” she said, tapping the page, “has got to be for some type of gingerbread cookie.” She handed the book to Olivia.

  “I don’t see—”

  “I know it’s hard to make out,” Maddie said, “but I know what I’m looking for. See that word there, with what looks like the letters ‘fs’? That’s really ‘ss,’ not ‘fs,’ so the word is ‘molasses.’ That’s how folks used to write when they used quill pens. I think it was because quill pens left globs of ink on the paper if you lifted them, so people tried to connect letters to keep the pen on the paper.” She took the book back from Olivia and leafed through it. “There’s no name in this. Or date. I’m guessing it was written by an early Chatterley cook, then brought along when the mansion was built.”

  “Would a cook have been able to read and write in those days?” Olivia asked.

  Maddie shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe she was from an educated family in England and came to the colonies alone. Or her husband died, and she had to find a way to survive.” Maddie unzipped her backpack. “I’m taking this with me. It’s my duty as a citizen of Chatterley Heights. Hermione Chatterley hasn’t shown an excess of appreciation for the historical artifacts in this house. I wouldn’t put it past her to sell everything behind our backs or throw stuff away.”

  “Presuming anything is left unbroken,” Olivia said.

  “Exactly.”

  “We’ve been in here for at least twenty minutes,” Olivia said. “Fascinating as all this is, I don’t see any sign of cookie cutters. We need to move on.”

  Maddie rolled to her knees. “Time to battle the creepy crawlies in the root cellar.”

  “Before we head downstairs,” Olivia said, “I want a look at Hermione’s room.”

  “For anything in particular?”

  “Not sure.” Olivia crawled back into the larger closet and turned off her flashlight before returning to the hallway. “There’s something unreal about Hermione. She’s way too good at making up stories, like the one about Karen. I want to know if there’s anything else she’s fibbing about.”

  Leaving the mansion lights out, Olivia and Maddie hurried up the staircase to Hermione’s bedroom. Once inside the room, they found the shades pulled down. Since the overhead light might show around the edges of the shades, they turned on their flashlights.

  “At least this room hasn’t been ransacked,” Olivia said. “I know the police searched it after Paine’s death. They didn’t find anything incriminating, or they would have arrested Hermione.”

  “So what’s left for us to find?” Maddie asked. “And how will we know it when we see it?”

  “Look for anything personal: photos, newspaper clippings, papers.” Olivia shone her flashlight under Hermione’s bed, looked under her mattress, and examined her pillows. “If it’s important, Hermione would have hidden it carefully. The police were searching for possible weapons or additional drugs that might have been used on Paine. But I want to know about Hermione’s past, her secrets. The police probably ignored personal items unless they might tie her to her husband’s death.”

  Maddie tackled Hermione’s walnut dressing table, a well-preserved antique with a marble insert. “Wow, Livie, come look at this.” Maddie had pushed aside used lipsticks and a half-empty jar of inexpensive facial moisturizer to make room for the table’s one drawer. “This drawer is crammed with brand-new, unopened cosmetics,” Maddie said. “I wonder what the cops thought of that.”

  “If they were guys, maybe they thought nothing of it. Or the stores Hermione was stealing from decided not to report the thefts,” Olivia said. “I’m not sure I would.”

  “What happens in Chatterley Heights stays in Chatterley Heights?”

  “At least until the celebration is over.” Olivia had moved on to Hermione’s closet. She picked up a pair of worn leather walking shoes that had new heels. On impulse, she twisted one of the heels. It took some muscle, but finally the heel shifted and slid open. The heel was hollow inside, and empty. Olivia closed the heel, picked up the matching shoe, and tried the same maneuver. It, too, was empty. At least she now knew that Hermione sometimes carried items she wanted to hide.

  Olivia searched through the ten or so dresses hanging in Hermione’s closet. All were variations of the great-grandmother style Hermione favored. At the far end of the closet hung a canvas coat. Olivia pulled it off the hanger for a closer look. The beige coat looked wel
l worn and was stained down the front with what might have been coffee. It didn’t strike Olivia as good enough to bring overseas. She lay it on the bed and examined the pockets, all of which were empty. She spread the coat open. The lining looked new, which struck her as odd. Why reline such a battered old coat. Olivia lifted the lining away from the coat fabric. “Bingo,” she said.

  “What?” Maddie left her search and joined Olivia. “Two linings,” Maddie said. “The hidden lining has stitching in it, see? I’ll bet those are hidden pockets. Okay, this is now officially fun.”

  Olivia turned the coat inside out, revealing the inside of the hidden lining. There were, indeed, four pockets. Two of them were empty.

  Maddie reached inside the remaining two and came out with two British passports. Opening one, she said, “This is Hermione’s photo, but the name is Portia Carswell. So this is why Hermione and Paine Chatterley didn’t show up on the Internet. I would so love to know why they were using assumed names. Ooh, maybe they were international jewel thieves.”

  “If they were jewel thieves,” Olivia said, “they must have been incompetent. On the other hand, Hermione did steal from some local businesses, so the thief part is accurate.” Olivia opened the second passport, which contained a photo of Paine and the name Howard Carswell. So they’d swapped first initials. “Hermione and Paine must have been in hiding. Or they were involved in something illegal. Or both.” She returned both passports to their hiding places and rehung the coat. “Unfortunately for us, we have to tell Del about this.”

  “Not right this minute, though,” Maddie pleaded. “We have one more hidden storage area yet to explore. Hermione is in the hospital; she’s not going anywhere. This information can wait awhile, right? Livie? I know Del will be angry, but I’ll tell him I came here alone so he won’t get mad at you.”

  “I guess so,” Olivia said. “I’ll take care of telling Del. He’d never believe I came here without you.”