Cookie Dough or Die (5 page)

Del shrugged. “We’ll see what the autopsy reveals. Right now I’m concerned about a third alternative, given what you and everyone else have told us about Clarisse’s state of mind. I want it kept quiet until we’ve had a chance to eliminate the possibility.” Del checked his watch. “I need to get back to the station. What you’ve recounted only supports what everyone else has said, that Clarisse was more distracted than anyone had ever seen her. We have to explore the possibility that Clarisse herself might have decided to—”

“No!” A couple of heads swiveled in their direction, and Olivia lowered her voice. “I know what you are going to say, but Clarisse would never choose to end her own life. She could face anything. Whatever was bothering her, she would have found a solution or gritted her teeth and carried on.”

Del reached over and touched Olivia’s arm for a brief moment. For some reason, it only made her angrier.

“I hope you’re right,” Del said. “Look, I know how much you want answers, but please don’t go out there on your own, asking questions that might fuel rumors. Clarisse had several life insurance policies, and we don’t want big-city insurance investigators getting the wind up while we’re still trying to figure out what happened.”

Olivia nodded her assent to a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

After her unsettling lunch with Del, Olivia walked back to The Gingerbread House in a funk. She couldn’t accept the idea that Clarisse had died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol. Clarisse had been a nurse, for heaven’s sakes. And after her marriage, she and Martin had created a medical supply business that grew to be their largest, most successful venture. Clarisse had been far too knowledgeable to make such an ignorant and deadly error, no matter how preoccupied she was.

Olivia understood why Del didn’t want her to broadcast her doubts about Clarisse’s death. Naturally he’d want to protect his town from outside invaders who might take over his investigation. She doubted he’d prevail once the circumstances of Clarisse’s death became known. Insurance investigators were paid to be suspicious. Besides, Clarisse’s reputation reached beyond little Chatterley Heights, and her death would capture media attention.

Olivia hated the idea that Clarisse might have chosen to end her own life. As she approached The Gingerbread House, an unwelcome thought wormed into her mind: Clarisse would have known how to make her death look like an accident. But why? What could possibly have driven her to such a desperate act? And how could she, Clarisse’s friend, not have understood the signs?

She would be asking questions, that much was certain. She wanted, needed to know what had been going on in Clarisse’s life during those days before her death. This wasn’t idle curiosity. Olivia was angry, and the person she was most mad at was herself. She kept replaying in her mind Clarisse’s last time at The Gingerbread House. She should have paid more attention, prodded Clarisse to share her troubles. Maybe she could have helped. Instead, she’d reacted like a rejected child.

When she entered the store, Olivia was relieved to see Maddie working with a talkative customer. She went straight to the kitchen, grabbing a small pile of invoices on the way. Paperwork wasn’t her favorite part of her job, but it might help clear her mind. She settled at her little desk and fired up her laptop. Ten minutes of communing with numbers and her mind had numbed completely. She could barely keep her eyes open. She closed the laptop to put it to sleep, and then she joined it.

A moment later, or so it felt, someone was shaking Olivia’s shoulder. She recognized Maddie’s voice saying, “Livie? Wake up. You need to take Tammy off my hands before I kill her.”

“Kill?” Olivia couldn’t seem to lift her head. “Maddie? Did you say someone killed Tammy?”

“No such luck.” Maddie pulled Olivia’s shoulders to make her sit up.

Olivia lifted her head and winced. “What happened to my neck?”

“Well,” Maddie said, “I’d say it has something to do with sleeping for half an hour on your right cheek. Here, I can fix it.” She wrapped one arm around Olivia’s head and pushed down on her right shoulder with the other.

“Ow!” Olivia heard a crack. She expected her head to fall off as Maddie let go, but instead her neck was back to normal, more or less. “Hey, that worked!”

“Yeah, those three hours in chiropractic school really paid off. Listen, Livie, you have got to go out there and talk to Tammy. She insists on showing you something, and she won’t leave me alone to help actual customers. I told her you ran off with a circus lion tamer last night, but she just rolled her eyes. You’ll have to handle her. I liked her a lot better when she was mad at you, but unfortunately all appears to be forgiven.”

Olivia dragged herself to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. As she blotted the water with a paper towel, it occurred to her that Maddie was crabby. Maddie was never crabby. “You need a nap, don’t you?”

“I’m fine. Wanting to strangle Tammy Deacons is an everyday urge for me.”

“Yes, but you are normally cheerful about it. You need a nap.” Olivia dug her keys out of her pants pocket and handed them to Maddie. “Here, use the guest bed. Spunky will undoubtedly join you.”

“Good,” Maddie said, taking the keys. “Spunky never irritates me, unlike certain childhood friends of yours.”

While Maddie escaped upstairs, Olivia greeted Tammy with a wave. Her friendship with Tammy went back to nursery school, six years before Maddie and her aunt moved to town. There had always been a rivalry between her two old friends, but Olivia made a point of ignoring it. Life was much easier that way.

“Oh, Livie, there you are. I have to show you what I bought. It’s so gorgeous, and it fits me perfectly if I don’t gain an ounce.” Tammy held up a large paper bag with black and gold stripes and a gold rope handle, the signature colors of Lady Chatterley’s Clothing Boutique for Elegant Ladies. Tammy opened the bag so Olivia could peek inside. Something small and flat lay at the bottom, wrapped in layers of tissue paper and sealed shut with a shiny paper medallion.

Tammy’s heart-shaped face glowed with excitement, which Olivia would have tried to share if she could see through the tissue paper. She was also very confused. Maddie was right: for the last few weeks Tammy had shunned Olivia. She hadn’t visited the store or returned phone calls, she cancelled a shopping trip to Baltimore they’d had planned for a month, she even snubbed Olivia in public. Olivia still had no idea why. In all their years of friendship, this had never happened before.

The strange turn their relationship had taken made Olivia want to reconnect with her other old friend Stacey who taught at Tammy’s school. Maybe she would know why Tammy was being so fickle. Olivia suddenly remembered that Stacey had never been a big fan of the woman who now stood before her, bursting with excitement. In the interest of keeping the peace, Olivia decided to put that call to Stacey on hold. The joyful nature of Tammy’s forgiveness was puzzling, given Olivia had no idea what she’d done wrong, but they’d been friends a long time and Olivia felt the least she could do was share in her friend’s present glory.

“Did you buy a dress?” Olivia guessed.

“Only the most beautiful, most perfect dress in the world. I have to try it on to give you the full effect. I’ll use the bathroom through the kitchen. Back in a sec.”

Olivia glanced at the clock. Almost four, only an hour left before closing. She began to tidy up the store, which had reached what her mother referred to as “that lived-in look.” Numerous cookbooks lay open as if a committee had been planning a townwide bake-off. After rearranging them on their shelf in the cookbook nook, Olivia reconstructed a large display of cookie cutters representing every dog breed imaginable; apparently, a group of children had played with them, then abandoned them all over the store. She located her favorite, a Yorkshire terrier shape, standing triumphant guard over a stack of pot holders. At the base of the pot holder hill, a vanquished Great Dane lay on its side. Olivia rescued the two creatures, held them nose to nose, and said, “No more dog fights in the store, is that clear?” She smiled for the first time since Del had told her that Clarisse was dead.

As Olivia finished rearranging the dog cutters on their display table, the store’s door opened, followed by a joyful yap and the clicking of nails on linoleum tile. Spunky’s front paws left the floor as he strained against his leash toward his mistress. Maddie dropped the leash, and Spunky raced toward Olivia, skidding on the tile. Olivia caught him as he leaped toward her arms.

“We couldn’t sleep,” Maddie said. “Spunky has requested a walk. Be back in twenty. I’ll close up, and then I want to finish decorating the cookies for tomorrow’s event.”

“I could help you,” Olivia said.

“Nope, this one’s mine. Only my brain can envision the magnificent possibilities of this project. Bakers and horticulturists will sing of my flower cookies for years to come.”

“I doubt it not,” Olivia said. “Thanks for taking over. I could use a break.” She put Spunky on the floor and gave him a gentle push. “Go to Maddie,” she said. He trotted to Maddie, who gathered him up right as Olivia heard the click of the kitchen door opening behind her. And she remembered—Tammy wanted to model her new dress. Judging from her earlier giddiness, it was a sexy new dress.

Olivia spun around in time to see the kitchen door fling open. Tammy emerged twirling. Admittedly, the dress was amazing, a silky swirl of pale pink and white, with spaghetti straps and a low-cut bodice. Excellent for Tammy’s pale coloring. She had invested in a push-up bra, which did wonders for her slight figure. As she pirouetted toward Olivia, the skirt flared out in a circle, providing a quick view of pale pink panties.

Olivia expressed silent thanks that Tammy had not opted for thong underwear.

This was un-Tammy-like behavior. Maybe she’d cracked under the strain of teaching first-graders. Or perhaps she had drunk her lunch. However, she was as steady on her feet as a ballerina, so she must be sober. She was so deliriously happy that she didn’t remember she was in a place of business, where anyone might walk in at any moment.

Tammy stopped in front of Olivia, her green eyes sparkling. Olivia tried to send a warning look, but Tammy was oblivious.

“Isn’t it glorious?” Tammy gushed. “I can’t wait for Hugh to see me in it.”

Olivia stared at her, speechless. Tammy must have known that Clarisse, Hugh’s mother, was just found dead. But if she was upset about it, no one would be able to tell. Even Maddie seemed to have run short of witty comments. Only Spunky had no trouble expressing his opinion in the form of nonstop yapping, which broke Tammy’s enchantment. Her cheeks, already flushed from exertion, reddened when she realized she had an audience.

“Nice dress,” Maddie said, deadpan. “We’re off,” she said to Olivia. She was out the door so fast that Olivia knew she’d been on the verge of hysterical laughter.

 

 

T
hanks to Maddie, Olivia had the rest of Friday afternoon and all evening to herself. She poked her head into her bedroom, where Spunky curled in a nest of tangled blankets. “Spunks,” she said. “Ride in the country? You and me, what do you say?”

Spunky’s ears poked up. He leaped off the bed and trotted past Olivia toward the kitchen, where his leash hung. Olivia poured a handful of kibbles into a plastic container, in case they stayed out past Spunky’s dinnertime.

“Hey, take it easy,” Olivia said as Spunky yanked on his leash so hard his little paws scraped against the floor tile. When she released the leash, he shot out of the kitchen. She snatched her jacket from the back of a kitchen chair and followed him.

Olivia retrieved her 1972 Valiant from the small detached garage behind The Gingerbread House. The car had been her father’s before he and her mother married, and he’d never been able to give it up. Her brother had honed his mechanic’s skills on the old green machine. When Olivia moved back to Chatterley Heights, Jason had offered it to her, so she wouldn’t have to pay for a car, in addition to a house and a new business. He kept it in running order. Olivia loved that it reminded her of her father and was also roomy enough to cart around the paraphernalia she and Maddie needed for cookie events. So what if it coughed and sputtered now and then?

She cracked open the passenger-side window so Spunky could sniff the air, but not wide enough for him to squeeze through and hurl himself after a fox. Or worse yet, a skunk.

Olivia felt her mood lighten as she left Chatterley Heights and headed northwest toward the rolling hills of Howard County. After a chilly beginning, the afternoon had turned springlike. Olivia lowered her window and let the wind lift her hair. Interstate 70 would be in the throes of rush hour. With no destination in mind, Olivia chose winding side roads leading in a general westward direction. Eventually, she reached the eastern edge of Patuxent River State Park.