Cookie Dough or Die

Chapter Seventeen

If Wednesday morning dawned clear and sweet with the scent of lilacs, Olivia Greyson didn’t notice. She barely noticed Spunky’s insistent tug on his leash, indicating his longing for a run. Lost in her own thoughts, she ran on automatic pilot back and forth along the alley behind The Gingerbread House. She wasn’t eager to show her face outside the store. Not yet, anyway.

“Come on, Spunks,” Olivia said as she nestled the squirming dog under her arm. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Tell you what, you were so good yesterday, why don’t you stay with Maddie and me today in the kitchen? In fact, I’ll move your spare bed and bowls down there. You have to promise to stay in the kitchen, though.” Sure, that’ll happen. At least if he escaped into the store, customers would make a fuss over him, which in turn would delay him long enough to ensure his recapture.

It was seven thirty a.m. when Olivia, with Spunky on a leash, let herself into The Gingerbread House, carrying a dog bed and water bowls, food, treats, and a few toys. She opened the door with the two fingers that weren’t already holding on to dog paraphernalia. With a whimper, Spunky whipped the leash from her other hand and bounded into the store.

“Spunky!”

“It’s okay, Livie, I heard you coming. I’ve captured the little scoundrel.”

“Maddie?” Olivia scooted inside and slammed the door with her rear end.

“Nice moves,” Maddie said.

“What are you doing here so early? Not that I’m complaining. We have work to do.” Olivia deposited the dog food and treats in the kitchen. Choosing the corner farthest from both doors, she set up Spunky’s second home.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Maddie said. She released her hold on Spunky, who raced around the kitchen in frantic circles, pausing now and then for a quick sniff. “After you called last night and told me about your conversation with Del—and by the way, I saw actual sparks in the air—anyway, I was too wired to sleep for long. So here I am, my skills and my laptop at your disposal.” She pointed to a PC on the worktable.

“Mine isn’t good enough for you?”

Maddie shrugged. “I figured you’d changed all your passwords. I can’t read French, and I doubt I could read Proust even in English translation. Also, I brought along my printer, and it would take time to get it to talk to your little MacBook thingie.”

“Great,” Olivia said. “We can both do some searching before the store opens and take turns when business is slow.”

Maddie wrapped her foot around a chair leg and dragged it to the table. While her computer booted up, she said, “By the way, I’ve made an executive decision. I realize business was fabulous yesterday, and far be it from me to quell such success, but I sent an email to everyone on our mailing list announcing that, at the current time, the Chamberlain antique cookie-cutter collection is not for sale. I asked everyone to hold their enquiries until further notice.”

“Might not work, but it’s worth a shot,” Olivia opened her laptop and pressed the start button. “My first order of business is to hunt down some background information on the editor of The Weekly Chatter , Ms. Binnie Sloan. I intend to have a meaningful chat with that woman. I want to know her sources, if any, even if I have to—”

“Don’t say it,” Maddie said. “I might be called upon to testify under oath.”

Olivia’s opportunity to talk with Binnie Sloan came sooner and more easily than she’d anticipated. Twenty minutes after The Gingerbread House opened, Maddie poked her head into the kitchen and said, “Binnie Sloan is here. She wants to talk to you. What should I say?”

“Tell her I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Will do.”

Olivia had skimmed the editor’s biography and a few of her most recent articles in The Weekly Chatter , all of which she’d found on the newspaper’s website. Her search had left her confused about Binnie. Her official photo showed a plump, middle-aged woman with large round glasses, a friendly smile, and a gap between her front teeth. Her straight, short graying hair looked unstyled, and she wore a flannel shirt for a formal photo.

Her newspaper articles, all written in a conversational style, covered town issues ranging from the need to clean bird poop off the town founder’s statue to the underrepresentation of chocolate at the last PTA bake sale. Binnie Sloan didn’t seem the type to take on a controversial topic. Or perhaps Olivia’s predicament had offered Binnie her first opportunity to dig her teeth into a story.

Olivia realized she’d spent much of her time the past year working on and in The Gingerbread House, discussing business with Clarisse Chamberlain, or hanging around with Maddie. She knew about all the bake sales her best friend had held while she was in Baltimore and how Maddie worked hard to make ends meet while still doing what she loved. But Olivia realized she’d lost touch with her home town. She vowed to get to know Chatterley Heights much better in the coming year.

However, first things first. She entered the store and spotted Maddie helping a customer. With a tilt of her head, Maddie pointed toward the antiques cabinet. Binnie stood in front of the glassed-in display, moving her head slowly as she examined each row of cookie cutters. Olivia joined her.

“Ms. Sloan? I’m Olivia Greyson. Everyone calls me Livie, and I hope you will, too.” She tried for her best warm-yet-confident smile, though the clenched teeth weren’t helping. At first glance, Binnie Sloan looked like everyone’s grandmother, but her article had revealed another side.

“Your store is marvelous,” Binnie said. “I can’t believe I haven’t come in before now—I really should have, it was remiss of me. I love these old cookie cutters. They remind me so much of my grandmother. Oh, she made the most wonderful cookies. Everyone calls me Binnie, by the way.” She focused pale blue eyes on Olivia’s face.

“Ms. Sloa—Binnie. About your article,” Olivia said. “I have to say, I wasn’t thrilled by it.” This was an understatement of gigantic proportions, but if she wanted a retraction, she’d better keep her temper.

“Oh, I’m so sorry you feel that way. Usually folks around here love to see their names in the paper, but, of course, you lived in the city for so many years.” Binnie’s gaze wandered around the store.

“You never talked to me to find out the truth. That’s . . . that’s unprofessional.”

With a dismissive wave of her hand, Binnie said, “We’re not trying to be the New York Times.”

“Well, you did practically accuse me of murder without even checking in with me. I think most folks might find that upsetting.”

Binnie offered a wide, gap-toothed smile. “Really? Based on the popularity of all those reality shows, I believe people crave attention, even when it brings public humiliation.” She shrugged. “Anyway, there’s no such thing as bad publicity anymore. Why, I peeked in your store yesterday, and it was packed with customers! So really, you have to admit my article was good for your business.”

Binnie looked so pleased with herself. Apparently, she expected Olivia to be gushing with gratitude, not whining about her threatened reputation and her silly privacy.

Olivia opened her mouth and closed it again. Was there any point in trying to reason with Binnie Sloan? She was so agreeable, so sure of herself, and so not of the planet earth.

Suppressing a sigh of frustration, Olivia said, “Look, Binnie, I know you’re only doing your job, but I have two requests. These may not seem important to you, but I would truly appreciate your cooperation. First, print a retraction in next week’s paper making it clear that the quotes you printed about me were inaccurate and not from knowledgeable sources. And second, stop taking photos of me without my permission. Especially on my own property.”

Binnie’s eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “Oh, I’m sure Ned wasn’t on your property, if that’s what you’re so upset about. I specifically instructed her to stay in the arborvitae, which are actually on your neighbor’s property. I looked up the plat map to be sure.”

“Ned?”

“Nedra, but she likes to be called Ned. She’s my assistant. Well, really my niece, my brother’s daughter, but also my new assistant. Fresh out of journalism school and full of energy. Well, it was actually a correspondence course online, but they said she was the best student they’d ever had.”

“Uh—”

“I’m glad we’ve cleared all that up. Now, I’m here to ask you a couple questions for next week’s issue. You’d be amazed how much interest you’ve stirred up in this quiet little town. Everyone wants to know everything about you, but of course I have space limitations, so I’ll stick to the most important issues. First and foremost, what do you plan to do with your five-million-dollar inheritance and Clarisse Chamberlain’s million-dollar antique cookie-cutter collection?” Binnie dug into one of the many pockets of her safari jacket and extracted a handheld tape recorder with a cracked plastic cover. “Speak into this, dear,” she said in that benign and terrifying voice.

Olivia’s vocal chords froze, along with her blood. She would have welcomed a customer about then, but they must have worn themselves out the day before. Olivia struggled to form a comment.

“Really, Livie, it can’t be that difficult,” Binnie said. “You must be fantasizing about how to spend all that money. Will you sell the store and travel around the world? Buy a villa in Italy?”

To her right, Olivia heard a slight click, followed by a creaking sound. She turned to see the kitchen door edge open and a furry little head pop through. When he spotted Olivia, Spunky yapped with joy. He cleared the entrance a moment before Maddie’s arms reached out to capture him.

Spunky escaped to the cookbook nook, from which came the thumping sound of books hitting the floor, followed by the clattering crash of metal pans and cooking utensils. Olivia ran toward the nook, arriving as Spunky bolted through the entryway and back into the main part of the store.

Binnie remained near the antiques cabinet, a bland smile on her face. She was holding her tape recorder toward the sales area to record the sounds of destruction. Spunky paused when he saw her. Ever the curious puppy, he tilted his head up toward the tape recorder. Olivia recognized the stance. He thought Binnie was offering him a treat or a toy.

“Binnie, put that down,” Olivia yelled. Binnie winked at her. A smug wink.

Spunky raced toward Binnie, with Olivia and Maddie in pursuit. Olivia reached out, grabbed the end of his tail. It slipped through her fingers.

To avoid capture, Spunky leaped onto a table, landing in the midst of an elaborate display of farm animal cookie cutters. The cutters sprayed out in various directions, some of them flying at Binnie. Her jaw dropped, along with her tape recorder, which hit the floor and cracked open.

Spunky lost traction on the slick table, skidded toward the edge, and landed in Olivia’s waiting arms. She held him firmly and rubbed the fur on his neck to calm him. As he relaxed in her grip, she whispered soothing words in his ear. Something about a week of extra treats for a job well done.

By midafternoon, The Gingerbread House had received only half a dozen customers. Olivia worried that fallout from The Weekly Chatter article had begun to accrue.

“Stop fussing,” Maddie said when she emerged from the kitchen to chat with Olivia on the sales floor. “Yesterday was a lucrative fluke. It’s inevitable things would quiet down.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, since there’s no one here right now, I’ll catch you up on what I’ve found out.” Maddie hiked herself onto a sturdy display ledge. “Okay, the first thing I did was call my friend Kate—she’s a nurse at Montgomery General in Clarksville, where Sam Parnell is. Kate sneaked a peek at his file and called back from her car during her break.”

“I can’t believe she did that for you,” Olivia said.

“What can I say, I’m adored by one and all.” Maddie lifted her chin, crossed her jeans-clad legs, and fluffed up her mass of red curls from behind. “Anyway,” she said, dropping her pose, “I promised to set her up with Lucas’s cousin, who is almost as lovable and yummy as Lucas. Now, stop interrupting. Here’s the scoop: Sam’s blood glucose level was way off, but there was no evidence of any poison in his system. Kate said they can’t measure insulin in the body. Kate didn’t see any notes in the file about tests on the cookie crumbs from the bag. We’d have to hack into—”

“No hacking, I beg of you,” Olivia said. “If there was no poison in Sam, there probably wasn’t any in the cookies. However, I don’t think this was an accident. Someone left that bag of cookies to implicate us somehow.”

“Why?”

“To warn us off, maybe? Or to stop Sam from spreading rumors? I wish I hadn’t pushed him so hard about that letter Clarisse got. I’m afraid I convinced him he was on to something really important, and it would be like him to drop hints all over his route.”

“Sounds like our Snoopy,” Maddie said.

Olivia checked the store clock, designed to look like the witch’s edible house in Hansel and Gretel. It wasn’t the easiest clock to interpret, but Olivia’s mother had given it to her when the store opened. The time was somewhere between two and two fifteen, at least three hours from closing.

“Did you find out anything about Hugh and Edward’s alibi for the night of Clarisse’s death?” Olivia asked.

“Spunky’s little adventure interrupted me, but I did identify the conference they should have been attending. There was only one national business conference that week in Baltimore, so it wasn’t hard. It was held at the Rockwell Hotel, which is still newish and trying to corner the convention market.”

Olivia remembered reading about that conference. She’d thought of going, but Maddie would have needed help to run the store.

“I wrote the hotel phone number on a recipe card next to my computer,” Maddie said. She slid off her perch and stretched. “By the way, we need to order more recipe cards.”

“My name is Ms. Clark, and I am an administrative assistant at Chamberlain Enterprises in Chatterley Heights.” Olivia had come up with a story that she hoped would elicit information about Hugh’s and Edward’s whereabouts the evening and night of Clarisse’s death. “I am calling on behalf of Mr. Hugh and Mr. Edward Chamberlain concerning the conference for small business owners they attended at your hotel last week.”

Thank goodness she had remembered to block her phone number from caller ID.

“Yes, Ms. Clark, how may I help you?”

Olivia’s throat was going dry from nervous excitement. “The Chamberlains asked me to inquire about the session they attended the evening of Thursday, April 23. They are concerned about some materials a member of the panel loaned to them and which they wish to return. Unfortunately, they seem to have lost the presenter’s card, and neither can remember his name. Mr. Hugh Chamberlain thinks it was something like Robinson, and Edward insists it was Thomlinson. They are hoping someone at your hotel might be able to supply the correct name and business address.”

Olivia had found the conference website online and purposely picked one name from a Wednesday session and a second, similar name from the Saturday morning session. The website had also stated that, because space was limited and conference attendance had exceeded expectations, preregistration would be required for this very popular panel. Olivia was counting on the hotel’s desire to go the extra helpful mile to maintain their competitive edge.

“If you can wait a few minutes, Ms. Clark, I’ll ask the events director for you.”

“Thank you so much,” Olivia said. When the Kenny G. music started, she ran for the kitchen sink, poured herself a large glass of water, and gulped it down. She filled the glass again and returned to the phone as the music halted in midphrase.

The hotel concierge sounded tentative, as if he were concerned about irritating her. “Ms. Clark, I spoke with our events coordinator and she was a bit confused. You see, the two names you mentioned served on panels that took place on two other days, but they did not participate in the Thursday evening panel the Chamberlains mentioned. In fact, she also checked and found that Hugh and Edward Chamberlain had both preregistered for that evening, but apparently they didn’t claim their seats. At least, their names aren’t checked off. Our events coordinator wondered if the Chamberlains might be remembering a different panel?”

“Could you wait a few moments while I ask one of them?”

“Of course.” Olivia could almost hear the concierge sigh.

Thank goodness Maddie had talked her into including a hold function with her store phone service. Olivia watched the clock for one minute, hoping it would feel like ten to the concierge. After several more gulps of water, she was about to reconnect when Maddie opened the kitchen door and poked her head inside. “It’s quieted down out here, so could you—?”

“Hang on, I’m almost finished.” Olivia pointed to the flashing red hold button on the phone.

Maddie wedged herself between the door and the jamb, so she could watch the store and listen at the same time.

Olivia picked up the receiver and punched the hold button. “Hello? Yes, this is Ms. Clark again. I’m so sorry to have taken so much of your time,” she said, relaxing into a more friendly, apologetic tone. “When I mentioned the other panels to Mr. Chamberlain, he suddenly remembered the right one, as well as the name of the presenter. Thank you for being so patient and helpful. Chamberlain Enterprises will certainly keep your hotel in mind for the future.”

Whew. Olivia disconnected with a gratified concierge.

“Wow,” said Maddie. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Hey, I played a role in one of our high school plays, remember?”

“Yes, but that was Chatterley Heights High School theater. Anyone who wanted a part, got a part. However, what I heard sounded impressive. What did you find out?”

Olivia filled her in. “It isn’t proof, of course,” she added. “Hugh and Edward might have attended some other function, or the hotel might have made a mistake. But at least they don’t appear to have a solid alibi at the moment.”

“This would be a lot easier if we were cops,” Maddie said. “But I’d miss the cookie cutters.” She peeked into the store. “Gotta go. I hear someone coming in from outside.”

“One more call and then I’ll spell you.”

Once Maddie had left, Olivia picked up the phone again. At least this call should be easier. She finally found time to dial her old friend’s number. After two rings, a familiar cheerful yet no-nonsense voice answered. “Stacey?”

“Livie? You’re a mind reader. I’ve been thinking about you ever since . . . Well, I don’t need to remind you.” Her voice became softer and a bit distorted, as if she were whispering with her mouth too close to the phone. “I’m in the outer office, and it’s crammed with kids and teachers. Hang on.” After a moment, Stacey’s voice returned to normal. “There, that’s better. I’m in my office. How the heck are you?”

Stacey Harald was another of Olivia’s since-kindergarten friends, though their lives had taken different turns after graduation. At the age of nineteen, Stacey married her high school sweetheart, with whom she’d had two children. When Olivia returned home, she’d discovered that Stacey and her husband had split. During the summer, she and Stacey had squeezed in several lunches and reconnected over their tales of divorce. Stacey did not look down her nose at a bit of discreet gossip. Best of all, after her divorce, Stacey had brushed off her secretarial skills and worked her way up to office manager at Chatterley Heights Elementary. She knew Tammy well and wasn’t especially fond of her.

“I’m good,” Olivia said. “Considering the situation.”

“Looks like one big, messy situation from where I sit.”

With a rueful laugh, Olivia said, “About that . . .”

“Spit it out, Livie.”

Olivia smiled to herself. Stacey’s directness was legend throughout Chatterley Heights. Beating around the bush would only irritate her. “Okay, between you and me,” Olivia said, “I’m trying to save my own skin. Sheriff Del wants me to stay in the store and bake cookies, but I need to find out what’s been going on around here. If you know what I mean.” She didn’t want to be too explicit on the phone.

“I know what you mean.”

“Maddie is helping, but I need to talk to someone more . . .”

“More in daily touch with, say, one of the main players?”

“You are so quick, it’s scary.” Olivia glanced up at the kitchen clock. Three thirty. The Gingerbread House closed at five. “Any chance you’re free for dinner?”

“As it happens, Tyler has basketball practice and Rachel will be studying at a friend’s house, or so she claims.”

“How about six thirty? My place? It’s more private.” The tables at Pete’s Diner were so crowded together that Olivia had heard complete conversations from three tables away.

“You aren’t going to cook, are you? Because I’ve heard things. . . .”

“You wound me. No, baking is the only cooking I do willingly. I’ll order a couple of the Chatterley Café’s finest pizzas. You can take home the leftovers.”

“It’s a deal. And Livie, don’t be too hard on Del. I dated him for a brief time before marrying what’s-his-name. He’s levelheaded and honest. I always thought I’d made the wrong choice.”

As she hung up, Olivia felt a stabbing sensation in her chest. “Careful, kiddo,” she murmured. “That felt suspiciously like jealousy.”