Cookie Dough or Die

Chapter Twenty-three

For some reason, Olivia’s alarm had switched from a gentle beep-beep to a high-pitched whine. Also, her body was being used as a punching bag. She slogged through the quicksand of sleep until she could identify Spunky as both whiner and assailant. He was expressing his displeasure at being cooped up too long. Given her soreness after her recent accident, Spunky’s five pounds felt like five hundred. She lifted him off and rolled onto her side. “Remind me why I thought adopting a puppy was such a good idea?”

Spunky responded by bouncing off her sore shoulder.

“Would you give me a break?” Olivia reached over him for her cell phone. She had defied Maddie’s order to sleep all day by setting her cell’s alarm for eight a.m. She hadn’t heard it go off, but it must have, given the bright daylight edging her bedroom curtains.

Olivia squinted at the upper-right corner of her cell. “Four o’clock!” She sat up. “Ouch!” Spunky leaped backwards with a nervous yip. Olivia rubbed her eyes and checked the time again. Four o’clock all right, with a little “p.m.” following behind. She’d slept through her alarm and then some.

Instantly she thought of Clarisse and how close she was to learning the truth. The thought cleared Olivia’s head and muted her awareness of pain. In the next thirty-six hours, she intended to find out who had killed her friend.

After a shower, a cold slice of sausage pizza, and a couple extra-strength ibuprofen, Olivia took Spunky downstairs for a quick visit to the side yard. When he’d finished, she tucked him under her arm and entered The Gingerbread House. Over by the antiques cabinet, Maddie was deep in conversation with two women, who were exclaiming over some vintage cutters. Maddie spotted Olivia and winked at her over the customers’ bent heads.

At the sales counter, Olivia’s mother handed a small Gingerbread House bag to another customer, a husky woman who looked familiar. When the woman turned to leave, she recognized Binnie Sloan, editor of The Weekly Chatter . Binnie’s tight mouth expressed displeasure. As soon as she saw Olivia, however, a predatory smile spread across her face. Spunky squirmed in Olivia’s arms, but she held on tight, feeling in need of his protection.

“There you are, Livie, just the person I wanted to see.” Behind Binnie, Ellie waved to get Olivia’s attention and shook her head in silent warning.

“Hey there, fella,” Binnie said, reaching her hand toward Spunky’s head.

Spunky responded with a low growl. Olivia could feel his muscles tighten. She backed up a step to prevent him from biting Binnie’s outstretched fingers.

Binnie dropped her hand. “Not very friendly, is he? Anyway, I dropped in to let you know I’ll be covering your little memorial service tomorrow for the newspaper. Your mom tells me it’s private, which is why it’s so important for me to report on it. Everyone who knew Clarisse Chamberlain needs a chance to grieve her loss.”

It took a chunk of willpower for Olivia to keep her eyes from spinning toward the ceiling. “I’m afraid the memorial will be closed to the press,” she said. “It will be a time for Clarisse’s family and close friends to remember her in private. I’m sure you understand.” She managed a tight smile. Spunky growled in his throat.

Binnie gave Spunky a wary glance. “Have you considered how the rest of Chatterley Heights will react to being excluded from her circle of ‘close friends’? They might feel deeply hurt, don’t you think? Maybe even angry?”

And if they don’t feel hurt or angry, you will urge them to do so. “As an experienced journalist,” Olivia said, “surely you can help the town understand our need for privacy. It will be a quiet, simple get-together, nothing newsworthy. If anything exciting does happen, I’ll be glad to report to you afterwards.” A rash promise, perhaps, but it was never a good idea to alienate the press in a small town.

Ellie appeared beside Olivia, providing a gentle air of support. “Livie dear, shall we begin closing? It’s past five.”

Binnie Sloan, however, was immune to hints. “On another topic,” she said, “I hear you were involved in a single car accident yesterday. Ran right into that guardrail we locals like to call the Drunk Stopper. Care to comment?”

Alienating the press was starting to sound more appealing. Sensing his mistress’s rising irritation, Spunky bared his teeth. Olivia had never seen him do that before. Ellie wove her fingers into the fur on his neck and stared into his eyes. Ellie must have lost her magical touch, though, because Spunky’s growl turned menacing.

Without comment, Binnie headed for the door, her lips pressed into a thin line. When the door closed behind her, Spunky relaxed at once. Ellie rubbed his ears and said, “What a good, good boy you are. Olivia, are you quite sure that you’re feeling all right after that dreadful accident? Your brother said—” Spunky’s tail beat a staccato rhythm against Olivia’s arm.

“Mom, I’m completely fine, I promise you. What just happened here?”

Ellie smiled. “Merely an experiment in dog whispering, dear. Now, if I hurry, I can make my poetry group on time. You two have fun decorating cookies this evening. Don’t stay up too late.”

The Gingerbread House kitchen smelled of orange zest, cookie dough, and pepperoni pizza, with an overlay of French roast coffee. Racks of cutout cookies covered half the worktable, and most of the remaining space was disappearing fast as Olivia gathered the ingredients for royal icing.

Maddie had brought along her Aunt Sadie’s trusty twenty-year-old Artisan stand mixer. “This calls for the big guns.” She gave it a loving pat. “So let me get this straight,” she said. “You don’t want me to have too much fun decorating these cookies?” Maddie was wearing jeans ripped across the knees and a tight T-shirt that said, “Born to Gambol,” in case there was any doubt.

“I want the shapes to be recognizable,” Olivia said. “If we hope to see anyone react to our designs, they’ll have to know what they’re looking at.”

“So I could decorate a baby carriage with, say, magenta, as long as it still looks like a baby carriage?”

“Sure, within reason. But I have some ideas for specific cookies.” Olivia pointed to the nearest rack, which held cookies in the shape of a hooded baby carriage on wheels. “Any color is fine, but make sure some are blue and some are pink. If there’s a grandchild out there, we don’t know the gender.”

“Check.” Maddie picked up the revised cookie cutter list Olivia had left with her:

CLARISSE’S COOKIE CUTTERS

1. Hooded Baby Carriage on Wheels

2. Small Angel

3. Dancing Snoopy *

4. Jasmine Flower (Added by Olivia)

5. Jasmine Vine with Flowers (Template added by Maddie)

6. Six-petaled Flower

7. Gingerbread Boy with Crown *

8. Gingerbread Man Running *

9. Gingerbread House *

10. Gingerbread Woman and Girl *

11. Coffin Shape

12. Witch’s Hat

13. Round Tree

14. Dove

15. Nutcracker

UNIDENTIFIED

16. Shield? Coat of Arms?

17. Apple? Bell Pepper?

18. Flower? Grass in Wind? Head with Wild Hair?

“Those little angel shapes,” Olivia said, “make some boys and some girls. And a few of each should have black hair.”

“Aha. Like Jasmine, you mean.” Maddie scribbled a note on her list.

“Exactly. Ditto for the gingerbread mother and daughter. But we should represent other hair colors, too.”

“How about navy blue? Or violet?

“Uh, sure.”

“Puce?”

“Have you been chewing coffee beans again?”

Maddie smirked. “Sorry, it’s the excitement. Carry on.”

Olivia wished she, too, felt the thrill of the chase, but all she could muster was fierce determination. Besides, the ibuprofen had barely touched the aching throughout her body. She rubbed her neck as she pointed toward the right side of the table. “The gingerbread boy wearing a crown—Clarisse must have acquired that cutter before I met her. It was distributed by Robin Hood Flour in the 1980s. She might have gotten hers that way. I wonder if she used it when Hugh and Edward were growing up. Her little boys.” Olivia’s legs felt spongy, and she braced herself against the table edge.

“Hey, you should be back in bed,” Maddie said. She dragged a chair over and pushed Olivia into it. “Listen, tell me what you want, and I’ll do the decorating. If you’re serious about this unveil-a-killer event tomorrow, you’ll need more strength than this.”

Olivia knew her weakness had as much to do with sadness as with pain. “No, even you can’t finish all this decorating and plan the event alone. We need to talk it through while we work. I can rest later, when this is over.”

“Okay, but if anyone has to stay up most of the night, it’s going to be me. Got it?”

“Won’t be necessary.” Olivia drained her coffee cup. “Okay. Gingerbread boy with crown. He could represent either or both of the Chamberlain brothers, or maybe a grandson. Make the crown stand out. I have a feeling that might be important.”

Maddie refilled her own cup and Olivia’s. “I’d better explain this shape,” she said, pointing to a rack of cookies that looked like clouds. “I know you gave me an eight-petaled flower cutter to represent a jasmine flower, but I wasn’t sure anyone would recognize it, even if we use white icing. So I made a roundish template with a stemlike bottom. I’ll pipe icing into vine and flower designs.”

“Good idea. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to drop a hint.” Olivia thought of her mother. She wasn’t eager to put her mother in danger, but if anyone could drop a hint without raising suspicion, it was Ellie Greyson-Meyer.

“Any idea what the six-sided flower is supposed to be?” Maddie asked.

“That one puzzles me. I suppose Clarisse might have used it to represent Jasmine, but it doesn’t seem the best choice. Jasmine flowers have so many petals; that’s why I gave you the eight-sided flower shape instead of the six.”

“Let’s leave it for now and move on.” Maddie started collecting measuring cups and spoons. “I need to move. You talk. I’ll whip up a batch of icing.”

Olivia retrieved her laptop from the desk, brought it to the table, and sank onto a chair. “Maybe we can get some ideas from this.” She lifted the laptop lid to reveal Deputy Cody’s photo of Clarisse’s desk. “See that one?” Olivia pointed to a cutter shape in the lower-left corner. “That looks like Snoopy Dancing.”

“Hallmark, 1971, red plastic,” Maddie said. She cut open a bag of meringue powder and measured out four teaspoons.

“I’m almost positive Clarisse thought of Sam Parnell as Snoopy, like everyone else in town.” Olivia touched the red image on the screen. “She bought this cutter right here, the last time I saw her. I remember she held it in her hand and said something like, ‘So gleeful.’ She was talking to herself, so it was hard to make out.”

“You think she meant Sam or Snoopy?”

“Maybe both. Sam did look pleased with himself when he told me about seeing the word ‘grandchild’ in the private detective’s letter to Clarisse.”

“Vague enough for me,” Maddie said. “Anyway, Snoopy is off to the side in the photo, so Clarisse probably hadn’t thought much about it yet. In fact, look at this gap here.” She drew her finger in a circle around the laptop screen. “It’s like when I work a jigsaw puzzle. First, I group pieces that might go together. Then in the middle I put the pieces that suggest a design to me.”

Olivia arched her eyebrows in surprise.

“What? I can be organized when it’s really important.”

In the interest of time, Olivia let that pass.

Maddie opened a new box of confectioners’ sugar. “I’m only saying, if Clarisse was using cookie cutters to work through a problem, wouldn’t she single out the most important cutters first?”

Olivia zoomed in on the center of the photo. “Actually, you might be on to something. There are three cutters clustered in the middle—the crowned gingerbread boy, the running gingerbread man, and the gingerbread house. Hugh and Edward, maybe? And the Chamberlain home?”

“Which gingerbread man is which brother?” Maddie asked as she added two cups of confectioners’ sugar to the mixing bowl.

Olivia leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her head had begun to ache; time for another dose of ibuprofen. Nevertheless, she stayed put and forced her resistant brain to dredge up any judgments Clarisse had made about her sons. There hadn’t been many. Clarisse had kept their less appealing qualities to herself, perhaps because she hoped Olivia would marry one of them. However, early in their friendship, Clarisse had made a couple of telling comments.

“Once when Clarisse was frustrated with Hugh, she said he expected everything to drop in his lap. He needed to work harder, she said, not depend on his charm to get by. She called it a ‘sense of entitlement.’”

“So Hugh is the boy with the crown,” Maddie said. “Lucas told me last night about when Hugh offered to adjust his loan. Lucas said he acted like it was his duty to take care of his inferiors, like Lucas wasn’t smart enough to handle his own finances. Hugh never said one word about Lucas’s mom and dad, how hard that has been.”

“Noblesse oblige,” Olivia said.

“Enough with the French, Livie. I have trouble with English.”

“Sorry, only you described it perfectly. I’m convinced the crowned boy is Hugh. By the way, did Lucas request those loan concessions?”

“He did not.” Maddie tossed a set of measuring spoons into the sink. “It would never have occurred to him. Hugh came to him, out of the blue.”

“Really. Did Edward know about it?”

“Hugh said that Edward agreed. That’s all I know. Now be quiet while I mix this icing to perfection.”

Olivia relaxed to the familiar sound of a whirring mixer. Her attention drifted among the loose clusters of cookie cutters that surrounded the three central gingerbread shapes. Dancing Snoopy frolicked in the lower-left corner, next to a witch’s hat. If the gleeful Snoopy was Sam Parnell, might the witch’s hat designate someone else who had disappointed Clarisse? Maddie would say the witch had to be Tammy Deacons, and maybe she’d be right.

Four images formed a semicircle along the right side of the photo: a lovely stylized dove, a nutcracker, a rounded shade tree, and two more gingerbread figures—adult woman and little girl. Mother and daughter. Did Clarisse know that Jasmine had given birth to a daughter, or was she guessing?

Olivia wasn’t sure what to make of the dove, nutcracker, and tree. She herself knew that sometimes a certain cookie cutter evoked an emotion, so a dove might simply represent Clarisse’s longing for peace in her family. The tree puzzled Olivia. And a nutcracker . . . She thought back to the nutcracker story. Wasn’t the nutcracker really a prince?

Maddie had finished mixing the royal icing and was collecting little bottles of gel paste food coloring.

“Hey, Maddie, do you remember the nutcracker story?”

“The nutcracker? I’m not sure I ever understood it completely. Too many curses. All I remember is the nutcracker guy was odd looking because he was under an ugly curse, but he was really a handsome prince. Then he does something heroic—like kill the evil mouse king or whatever—but the beautiful princess rejects him because he’s ugly. Those beautiful princesses were mighty full of themselves, you know? Anyway, I think she changes her mind in the end, and the prince turns handsome again, and they live happily ever after in dolly land.”

“I’m impressed,” Olivia said. “Although I still wonder what the nutcracker meant to Clarisse. It must be related somehow to Hugh or Edward, or maybe even Martin.”

Maddie didn’t respond. She stood hunched over a small bowl, counting drops of coloring as they fell into a small container of icing.

If only she had a computer program for reading minds, Olivia thought. No, that would be scary. Only four more recognizable images to go, spread from the upper part of the photo and around the upper-left corner: coffin, baby carriage, small angel, and six-sided flower. Three more cutter shapes were partially obscured by shadows. One looked like the bottom of an apple or maybe a bell pepper. Next to it might be a flower or grass blowing in the wind—or a head with hair sticking out. Along the top-left edge, a bit of design could be part of a shield or coat of arms. Or almost anything.

Olivia leaned back and took a long, slow breath. Nice. She breathed in again, but her exhale erupted into a startled cry when she heard a loud pounding on the door to the alley.

“Déjà vu all over again,” Olivia said when she saw Maddie bolt upright, holding a dropper of food coloring.

“Now that French I understand,” Maddie said.

“Hey, you kids in there?” It was Del’s voice.

“What are the odds?” Maddie said as she opened the door.

Del had bags under his eyes and a day’s growth of stubble. He slid out of his jacket and slung it over a chair back. He caught sight of the photo on Olivia’s computer screen, then glanced over the sea of cookies on the kitchen table. “So you’re really going ahead with this memorial tomorrow? I can’t talk you out of it?”

“Yes, we are,” said Maddie. “And no, you can’t even threaten us out of it.”

“Then I have no choice. I can’t let you kids do this all on your own. It’s too dangerous.” He gave Olivia a hard stare. “I’ll be here the whole time, keeping a close eye on your guests.”

“You’ll scare them off,” Olivia said. “You can come as a guest, but you can’t be in uniform or carry a gun. And you’ll have to give a speech about Clarisse.”

“Livie, come on, I can’t—”

“Teasing. But you can’t wear a gun.”

Del sighed loudly and sank into a chair. “Cody will be here, out of sight. Preferably in the kitchen, so I can give him a whistle if anything happens. And he will most definitely have his weapon.”

Maddie gave a nod of approval, and Olivia said, “All right, we can live with that. Have you found out anything about Jasmine?”

Del ran his fingers through his hair, which explained its condition. “This is so wrong. I should be protecting you, not helping you with some harebrained—”

“Hey, could we move on? I’m tired, everything hurts, and I can’t rest until I know who killed my friend. So what have you got?”

Maddie and Del both stared at her in mute astonishment while Olivia swallowed an ibuprofen. Del cleared his throat and said, “Your information was very helpful. I contacted the Montgomery County PD, talked to a buddy of mine in the Cold Case Squad. Don’t ask me how, but Roberta spent her Saturday tracing Jasmine back to a little town in southern Ohio. Parents deceased. And here’s the kicker—Jasmine was supposed to be dead, too. Died in a car crash fourteen years ago.”

“McGonigle, Ohio, right?” Maddie said. “I found that information online. Wow, I’m good.”

“Jasmine’s car went off a mountain road and burned,” Del said. “Charred remains of a young woman inside. The authorities figured it was Jasmine and closed the case.”

Olivia’s latest dose of ibuprofen must have kicked in, because she felt better. “How did you determine that our Jasmine was the real one?”

“Dental records. Roberta managed to track down Jasmine’s childhood dentist. He faxed us her records, up to age seventeen. The match was convincing. We may never know who died in Jasmine’s car, or how she got there, but at least we know where Jasmine herself died.”

“Do we know how?” Olivia asked.

“That’s tougher. She was found near some rocks, but it was hard to determine if she fell, jumped, was pushed, or even whether she died elsewhere.” Del slung his jacket over his shoulder. “Gotta get back.”

Olivia refreshed her computer screen and stared at Clarisse’s cookie cutters. “The autopsy revealed Jasmine had given birth. I’m willing to bet she had a daughter.” She pointed to the gingerbread woman and girl. “There’s no mother and son here, only a mother and daughter. Can your friend check with hospitals?”

“That would take a long time. We don’t know when Jasmine gave birth. She might have used another name or given birth at home. A name would help.”

“What about Faith, the name on the note to Clarisse that I gave you?”

“Still a long, long shot. If this Faith was a friend of hers, then maybe Jasmine used her ID at a hospital, but we need a last name.” With his hand on the doorknob, Del said, “Cody and I will be here tomorrow morning at eleven. Get some sleep.”

“I’ll probably still be decorating cookies at eleven,” Maddie said.

Olivia didn’t answer. She was staring at her computer screen, trying to tease out a thought. She heard the alley door shut behind Del, but it barely registered.

“Maddie, come look at this.” Olivia pointed toward the left corner of the photo on her screen, then over to the right side.

“What?” Maddie pulled over a chair.

“Clarisse spoke some French, you know. A little, anyway. You see this tree shape, right above the gingerbread mother and daughter? What if Clarisse was trying to find a cutter that represented a forest?”

“You’ve totally lost me.” With an air of boredom, Maddie began poking loose curls back under her bandanna.

“Dubois. The name Dubois loosely translates as ‘of the wood’ or ‘of the forest.’”

Maddie dragged over a chair. “You think ‘tree’ is as close to ‘forest’ as Clarisse could get? That would imply the gingerbread woman is Jasmine Dubois, and the girl is her daughter, whose first name we don’t know.”

“Except . . .” Olivia pointed at the far left side of the screen. “What does that look like to you?”

Maddie twisted her head in several directions, trying to find an angle that made sense of the partial image. “It looks sort of familiar. Not a flower shape, at least I don’t think so. Can you zoom in a bit?” She touched the screen and traced the outline as best she could. “For some reason it reminds me of my first high school boyfriend, Matt.”

“You mean Matt the do-gooder? The one who left you on the curb while he helped any woman over thirty across the street?”

“That’s the one.”

“Hang on.” Olivia jumped up and rushed over to the desk, moving far too fast for someone who’d recently wrecked her car. She’d pay for it, but she didn’t care. She grabbed her list of Clarisse’s entire cookie cutter collection and flipped through it. “Yep, there it is,” she said, poking a triumphant finger at one name.

“Hold still, will you?” Maddie followed Olivia’s finger and read, “‘Boy Scout insignia.’ There’s a Boy Scout cookie cutter?”

“Clarisse had this handmade when Hugh was a Boy Scout, so she could bake cookies for his troop. Well, so Bertha could bake them. Clarisse showed me a photo of a plate piled with cookies, all shaped and decorated like the Boy Scout insignia.”

“Okay,” Maddie said, “but what startling revelation does this lead to?”

Olivia quickly found a website that showed the Boy Scout insignia in its entirety. “What is that shape called?”

“Oh. It’s another French thing, isn’t it?”

“It’s a fleur-de-lis.”

“Livie, don’t you dare ask me to guess what that means, or I swear—”

“Fleur means ‘flower,’” Olivia said. “And ‘lis’ means ‘lily.’”

A broad smile plumped Maddie’s cheeks as she stared at the screen. “I knew I’d seen that somewhere before.”

“I just told you—”

“No, not the fleur whatever, I mean that one.” Maddie poked her finger at the six-sided flower to the right of the fleur-de-lis. She snatched the laptop off the table and put it on her lap. Her fingers flew until she pulled up the website of an online cookie-cutter vendor. “Look at that.” She turned the screen toward Olivia.

And there it was, a six-sided copper cutter with pointed petals, labeled “lily flower.” On Clarisse’s list, the cutter was labeled simply “six-sided flower.” Olivia wondered if Clarisse had obscured the name to protect her grandchild.

“I need your cell,” Olivia said. When Maddie dug it out of her coat pocket and handed it to her, Olivia punched in a number. “Del? I may have something for you. Lily.”

“The flower?” Del sounded groggy.

“Also a name. A flower name, like Jasmine. I think the child’s name is Lily.”

“What makes you think so?”

“It’s complicated, I’ll explain later, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

“Okay, I’ll . . .” Del yawned. “I’ll call Roberta. Maybe it’ll help. Bye.” The telephone clunked and went silent.

Olivia handed the phone back to Maddie. “I hope our Lily doesn’t show up in an obituary.”