One Dead Cookie (19 page)

*   *   *

I
t was four a.m. when Olivia rinsed out Mr. Coffee’s carafe and Maddie tried to find
space in the already-stuffed dishwasher for the cups and plates they’d used while
Del questioned them about their grim discovery. The color had returned to Maddie’s
cheeks, but she had been uncharacteristically quiet since Del left. Olivia hoped it
was only exhaustion.

“I’m beat,” Olivia said. “What if we grab a few hours of sleep before we tackle the
baking again?” Before Maddie could respond, the phone rang. “Leave it,” Olivia said.
“We can listen for a message.”

Maddie glanced at the caller ID, and said, “Oh jeez, it’s Lucas. I was supposed to
call him about three hours ago. He must be worried sick.” She grabbed the receiver.
“Lucas! I’m so sorry I forgot to call, but…” Maddie’s eye widened as she listened
to him for a few minutes. “Well, all I can say is, I’m impressed. Even I would be
hard pressed to learn all that information in”—she glanced up at the clock—“in less
than an hour. Especially in the middle of the night.” Maddie listened a moment, shaking
her head. “I’m fine, honey, really. A little shook up, that’s all. You get some sleep.
I’m staying here. And no, we are not postponing our engagement party. Livie and I
plan to catch a nap and then start baking again. Neither sleet nor snow nor…whatever
the rest is. I’ll call you at a decent hour. Love you.”

“Did Lucas already find out about Trevor’s murder?” Olivia asked as Maddie hung up.

“Yep.”

“But how?”

“Well, it started with Polly, who was working really late at the food shelf because
she was trying to find a safe
place for a homeless family with a bunch of children to spend the night. After they
left, Polly went upstairs to her little office to do some paperwork. She heard sirens,
so she looked out her office window, which gives her a view of Pete’s Diner. She saw
a light on in the diner and figured Ida was doing some personal cooking. Pete lets
her do that because she doesn’t have a kitchen in her rented room, though she’s allowed
to heat things up in the landlady’s kitchen. Anyway, Polly called Ida, who got her
binoculars and went outside. She saw all the lights on in The Gingerbread House, then
the crime-scene van arrived.” Maddie paused for breath.

“So, how did Lucas find out?” Olivia asked, fascinated in spite of herself. “I have
a hard time believing that Ida would think to call him.”

“Patience, Livie. The gossip vine is a tangled web. And now is not the time for a
lecture on messed metaphors.”

“Mixed metaphors.”

“Whatever. Anyway, Polly has a new boyfriend, did you know that? I just found out
a few days ago. He’s working as a night janitor at the Chatterley Café. They stay
open really late, you know, and the cooks arrive at five a.m., so they need cleanup
during the night. Polly called her boyfriend’s cell. He was just about to leave the
café, so he locked up and walked down Park Street until he could see The Gingerbread
House. He watched the body get carried off the porch. He knew it wasn’t one of us
because he saw us on the porch with Del. Although he did wonder if one of us had killed
someone, like maybe an intruder.”

Olivia was starting to feel dizzy. “So I ask again, how did Lucas find out?”

“Easy,” Maddie said with a grin. “Polly called him. Well, actually, she wondered if
maybe
I’d
killed
Lucas
. He
said Polly sounded a bit disappointed when he answered his own phone.”

“Hold on, Maddie. Lucas hasn’t used that many words as long as I’ve known him. How
did he remember all that detail?”

Maddie laughed. “Here’s what Lucas said: Polly called him and said she’d talked to
Ida, who called her boyfriend, who said something about a body. Period. I filled in
the detail. And I’ll bet you a dozen cookies it’s all accurate. Wow! I feel energized!
I need to bake. You go take a nap, Livie.”

“Good idea.” Olivia had been tired before Maddie’s recitation. Now she was ready to
drop. “We’ll keep the store closed, at least until afternoon. I’ll put a sign on the
front door before I go upstairs. We’ll need to notify Bertha and Jennifer, too.”

“I’ll do that,” Maddie said. “Bertha gets up at five thirty to take a long walk, so
I’ll call her then. Jennifer turns off her phone at night because she has trouble
sleeping. That means I can leave her a message without disturbing her.”

“How do you
know
these things?”

“Well, Livie, it’s very simple. I didn’t waste ten years living in Baltimore and avoiding
my neighbors.”

“I’ll ignore that,” Olivia said. “See you in a couple hours.”

“Oh, Livie, make it three hours at least. I’m fired up enough to do the work of a
team of bakers.”

Olivia pretended she hadn’t heard. Maddie was already humming along to her earbuds
as Olivia closed the kitchen door.

Spunky’s head popped up when Olivia flipped on the light for the sales floor. “Hey,
Spunks, time for bed.” She searched the shelf under the cash register and found a
blank sheet of paper, a pen, and a small Scotch tape dispenser. Spunky jumped down
from his favorite chair and trotted over to her. “You’ve been a patient little boy,”
Olivia said as she scrawled a quick message on the sheet of paper. Aiming for indefinite
and uninformative, she wrote,
Closed for Inventory.
The sign would fool no one.

Spunky trotted beside Olivia into the foyer. He waited at the door leading up to Olivia’s
apartment while she unlocked the front door. Her heart began to pound as soon as she
cracked the door open. “It’s all over,” she whispered. Her heart wasn’t convinced.
She took a deep breath, then another before wedging her arm through the opening to
tape the note on the outside.
Okay, that felt a little silly, but I don’t care.

Olivia led Spunky upstairs, comforting herself with the knowledge that, by daylight,
everyone within a fifty-mile radius would have heard about the body on The Gingerbread
House porch. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel so alone.

At twelve minutes past eight, Olivia opened the kitchen door of The Gingerbread House
to a blast of sensory overload. The aroma alone nearly knocked her off her feet. The
dominant fragrance was lavender, but Olivia thought she smelled lemon, rose, and a
hint of tuna fish.

Maddie’s hair, a mass of fluffy red springs dotted with flour and confectioners’ sugar,
resembled a powdered wig. She sang along with the Dixie Cups as she danced around
the worktable with a pastry bag full of electric purple royal icing. Olivia noticed
several flower girl cookies with electric purple hair. Either Maddie had overdosed
on coffee, or she’d cracked from stress. Possibly both.

Maddie waved with her pastry bag and sang, “So did you sleep well?” as if it were
“Goin’ to the chapel,” a line from “Chapel of Love.” When Olivia didn’t so much as
smile, Maddie stopped dancing and pulled out her earbuds. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m just wondering the same thing about you,” Olivia said. “How did you do all this
baking? Why do I smell lavender, lemon, and
rose
? Did you have tuna salad for breakfast, and is there any left?”

Maddie sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. “Sorry about the tuna. It’s all I could
find for breakfast, and I’m afraid I devoured all of it.” Maddie capped her pastry
bag to keep the icing fresh. “About the other, more pleasing aromas…Livie, I realize
I’ve taken over creating the special cookies for my wedding gift, but you know how
it is. I get carried away. Ideas pop into my mind, and I can’t resist trying them
out. I thought about Trevor and that rose-covered chapel cookie he held on the palm
of his hand. That memory upset me at first, but then I thought, ‘Hey, instead of plain
lemon, why not use lemon and rose together for the cookie cake?’ I tried that combination,
but it tasted awful, so I dumped the lemon altogether and went with rosewater and
vanilla bakery emulsion. I know it’s been done before, but I’ve been varying the flavoring
measurements to try for a somewhat rosier effect. I thought we could sprinkle rose-colored
sparkling sugar on the cookies and use rose-flavored icing to hold them together in
a pyramid.”

To be honest, Olivia felt considerable relief that the project was progressing so
much faster than she’d feared it would.

Maddie’s eyes lit up like green sparklers. “And my best idea of all, my pièce de…de…don’t
tell me. My pièce de persistence!” Noting the pained expression on Olivia’s face,
Maddie said, “Blew it again, huh?”

“It’s pièce de résistance, but I like your version, I really do. And I’m sure the
Académie française would agree, after a glass of wine or two. So elaborate on your
idea for me.”

“Okay, this isn’t entirely new, either,” Maddie said, “but what is? We’ll ‘sprinkle’
organic rose petals on the cookie cake and hold them in place with little dabs of
icing. What could say ‘wedding’ more lusciously than red and pink rose petals? Plus,
it will sort of match my hair.”

Olivia had to admit it all sounded beautiful and delicious…and labor intensive. “It’s
a great idea,” she said. “How would we get the rose petals in time for Saturday? I
don’t think Bon Vivant uses them, do they?”

“No, but don’t worry. Problem already solved.” Maddie uncapped her pastry bag. As
she added decorative loops to a wedding cake cookie with the last of her electric
purple icing, she said, “I know a little online company based on a farm outside Clarksville.
I emailed them. Someone was already up and on their computer, checking orders. They
promised to have dried organic rose petals in our hands by tomorrow morning. We’ll
have the cookie cake ready by then.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m really needed here,” Olivia said.

“Don’t be silly,” Maddie said as she mixed pale daffodil yellow gel coloring into
a small bowl of icing. “You’re the one with the money. Also, you can add and subtract.”

Olivia dumped old coffee grounds and rinsed out the Mr. Coffee carafe. “I smell a
lot of lavender in here,” she said. “You didn’t increase the lavender in the other
experimental recipe, did you? I may not have mentioned this before, but lavender is
not my favorite flavor.” Seeing Maddie’s worried expression, Olivia added, “Though
I love the color and, of course, the stunning gown Aunt Sadie made for you, in which
you look gorgeous.”

“Nice save,” Maddie said with a grin. “To put your mind at rest, I got a bit too rambunctious
with the dancing, and I
spilled half a bottle of lavender oil. Think of it as cleaning solution.”

“Believe me, I do.”

“Here, try one of these.” Maddie handed Olivia a bright yellow and purple daisy.

Olivia sniffed the cookie. The lemon fragrance was stronger than the lavender. Good
sign. She took a small bite. “Nice,” she said. “Very yummy. It’s even better than
our experimental lavender recipe. What did you change?”

“I used lemon bakery emulsion instead of extract. It didn’t change the texture of
the dough, but the lemon flavor is stronger and sort of mellows out the lavender better.
I agree with you, a little lavender goes a long way.”

“So did you get any sleep at all?” Olivia asked.

“Nope. I hit a slight energy dip, so I sneaked into Lucas’s house for a shower and
a change of clothes. Only please don’t tell Aunt Sadie that I keep some clothes at
his house. She never married, you know.”

“Maddie, I hate to shatter your innocent image of Aunt Sadie, but I’m quite certain
she wouldn’t die of shock. According to my mom, Aunt Sadie was quite the popular young
woman. Mom said she broke off at least two engagements.” Olivia had to laugh when
she saw Maddie’s stunned expression.

“How come she didn’t tell me?”

“You were her little girl,” Olivia said. “Mom never shared a word with me about her
scandalous past. I was nearly eighteen when I found an album with pictures of mom
and dad dressed in hippie clothes. That was the first I’d heard about them living
together in a commune. Of course, now she won’t shut up about it. There are some things
we don’t need to know about our parents, at least not too soon or in too much detail.”

“I see what you mean,” Maddie said.

Olivia poured cream into two fresh cups of coffee. “Did you mute the phone? I thought
it would be ringing nonstop.”

“It was.” Maddie filled a clean pastry bag with daffodil yellow icing and gave a flower
girl a head of perfectly reasonable blond hair. “I figured no one should be calling
the store phone in the middle of the night, so it wouldn’t matter. My cell was going
crazy, too, so I turned it off.”

“I guess we should turn the wretched things back on,” Olivia said. She began with
the kitchen phone, which began to ring immediately. Olivia checked the caller ID.
“It’s Bertha.” She picked up the receiver, and said, “Sorry, Bertha, have you been
trying to reach us for long?”

“Oh my, no, Livie. I knew you’d be trying to get some sleep. Goodness, what a night
you two had! Are you both okay? Do you need me to cover the store today? I know how
to handle gossips. They won’t get through me.”