One Dead Cookie (4 page)

Del opened the box and selected the top cookie, a simple pink daisy shape with a red
outline around the petals. He took a substantial bite and sighed. Reaching across
the table, Del covered Olivia’s hand with his own. “Cookies,” he said, “are not meant
to be healthy.”

“Words of great depth and wisdom,” Olivia said. “Now back to the break-in at Lady
Chatterley’s. I have a question. They sell a lot of expensive clothing in that store.
I know Chatterley Heights is a small town, and maybe I’m jaded from living in a big
city, but I’d expect a store as sophisticated as Lady Chatterley’s to have a good
alarm system.”

“They do,” Del said, shaking his head. “Like I said, state-of-the-art. That’s what
bothers me. Lola closed up yesterday, and she swears she set the alarm system, as
always. But it was deactivated. That took some know-how.”

“So why would someone skilled enough to deactivate an alarm system bash at a safe
with a hammer?”

“Exactly,” Del said. “It’s possible the thief wasn’t good enough to crack the safe,
so he got frustrated.”

“And took it out on the safe?”

“An entertaining image,” Del said, “but unlikely. We don’t yet know for sure that
he—assuming it’s a he—used an actual hammer, though the dents look like a hammerhead.
But who brings a hammer along for a break-in? There are quieter ways to break and
enter, and this guy sure knew what he was doing when it came to deactivating an alarm.”
Del stood up and reached for his uniform jacket.

“Maybe there were two thieves?”

Del paused a second before shaking his head. “One smart and skilled and the other
dumb and violent? Only in the movies.” He glanced at the kitchen clock. “Gotta go.
I’m supposed to be on duty at the station by six, which was eight minutes ago.”

With a tired Spunky under her arm, Olivia followed Del down the stairs and unlocked
the front door for him. Del gave Olivia a quick kiss, and said, “I’ll let you know
when we catch the guy. Meanwhile, keep your eyes open and be careful. The Gingerbread
House could become a target, too. I hope Cody gets back soon; I can’t be everywhere
at once.”

“You don’t need to stand guard over me.” Olivia heard the testiness in her own voice
and tried to tone it down. “We have plenty of staff on duty all day, and Spunky will
raise the roof if he hears anyone in the house at night.”

“Okay, point taken.” Del stepped onto the porch. He hesitated, then spun around to
face Olivia. Folding her in his arms, he rubbed his cheek against her hair. “I can’t
help it. I worry. So sue me,” he said lightly. He kissed the tip of her nose and left.

Olivia watched him walk away and whispered, “Me, too.”

The sun had barely risen when Del left her apartment, and Olivia already had a plan.
She had nearly three hours before The Gingerbread House officially opened at nine
a.m. She’d need to shower and dress for work, and it would take about half an hour
to prepare the store for opening. That left a couple hours of free time.

Wearing the same clothes she’d worn when she fell asleep on the sofa, Olivia took
Spunky on a brisk early morning run through the park. After twenty minutes, Spunky
was tired enough to curl up for a morning nap. Olivia took a quick shower and changed
into chocolate brown linen slacks and a light matching sweater.

When she reentered her living room, keys in hand, Spunky lifted one eyelid and closed
it at once. He didn’t protest as Olivia quietly locked him inside her apartment. She
thought about taking Spunky downstairs to the store’s sales area, where he held court
during the day. With an
intruder on the loose, however, that might not be the safest place to leave a small
dog alone. Of course, if he’d realized a car ride was on Olivia’s agenda, the wily
little Yorkie would have found a way to sneak out with her. Guile was his middle name.

Olivia had a creative cookie challenge to tackle, and it would require her full concentration.
She had volunteered to provide decorated cookies for Maddie’s afternoon-long, blowout
engagement party, to which everyone in the town of Chatterley Heights plus the surrounding
area considered themselves invited. Maddie and her future husband, Lucas Ashford,
had planned a quiet, private, no-frills wedding, so the engagement party was both
a celebration and their gift to their hometown. Olivia was helping Maddie plan the
party, which would be held in the ever-expanding garden behind the Bon Vivant restaurant
on the north edge of town.

Providing dozens and dozens of decorated cookies for the many guests to snack on was
a huge feat in itself. However, Maddie also wanted a cake made of cookies. She envisioned
something gloriously original, gorgeous, and, of course, yummy. Naturally, Olivia
wanted to create such a gift for her best friend. The cookie cake was Maddie’s one
request for a wedding gift, to be served at the engagement party. Olivia had four
more days to accomplish the entire assignment, while doing her part to keep The Gingerbread
House running smoothly. Her imagination, usually so attuned to anything cookie-related,
had overloaded and shut down.

Now that Olivia wasn’t running with an energetic dog, the morning air felt chilly.
She walked briskly to the side street where she parked the used PT Cruiser with which
she was not-so-secretly in love. She told herself that her affection arose from the
car’s practical design, which allowed her to transport numerous covered cake pans
filled
with iced cookies to themed events. But she had to admit that her heart stirred every
time she saw the elaborate painting she had commissioned to advertise The Gingerbread
House. A fanciful depiction of a yellow-and-purple Victorian house, festooned with
silver and copper cookie cutters, decorated the hood. Across the doors, ornate lettering
spelled “The Gingerbread House,” and grinning gingerbread men and women somersaulted
all over the car’s trunk. Definitely not her most practical expenditure. However,
her ride got noticed.

The scent of cinnamon welcomed Olivia when she opened the PT Cruiser’s door. Simply
sitting inside ought to have triggered an idea for Maddie’s cookie cake, but Olivia
had tried it several times without success. She needed visual stimulation. She turned
her key in the ignition and drove off without a destination in mind. Her car pointed
north, so north she went.

Ever since Frederick P. Chatterley first wandered onto the stretch of land that became
Chatterley Heights about two hundred and fifty years earlier, the town’s wealthier
inhabitants had clustered north of the town square. No one knew why. The land wasn’t
more arable, nor were the views particularly stunning. Frederick P. was not a get-up-and-go
sort of town founder. His sole desire was to get up on his trusty steed and go to
the home of his mistress of the moment, and the north end of town had been the closest
he could get to her without moving in next door. Eventually the Chatterley family
built a mansion on the site of Frederick P.’s original house.

Olivia drove through the historic section of town, now solidly middle class, and across
the northern boundary of Chatterley Heights. Unlike so many small towns, Chatterley
Heights had experienced minimal suburban sprawl. Olivia
soon reached a sparsely populated area. Only one new business had chosen to locate
beyond the north edge of town—the Bon Vivant restaurant, an upscale establishment
that took pains to meld into the countryside. Olivia and Del had shared a number of
tasty meals at Bon Vivant, often featuring previously unimagined varieties of pizza
accompanied by excellent merlot. As she drove past the restaurant, Olivia smiled at
the memory of those times. She and Del always tried to snag a table by the window
so they could enjoy the restaurant’s elaborate garden, showcased against lush rolling
hills in the distance.

Olivia saw no approaching cars through her rearview mirror, so she lifted her foot
off the accelerator and drifted to a halt. She’d remembered reading in the town’s
otherwise irritating newspaper,
The Weekly Chatter,
about Bon Vivant’s ever-more-ambitious plans for its garden. Olivia was fairly certain
the article had called the renovation “over-the-top frou-frou.”

Bon Vivant had begun with a modest garden, which seemed to double in size each time
Olivia returned to the restaurant. Maddie and Lucas had chosen the setting for their
engagement party because they thought it might be large enough to accommodate their
guests, as long as those guests spread themselves throughout the grounds.

A garden sounded like the perfect place to awaken Olivia’s cookie creativity. She
felt her initial idea for the cookies wasn’t unique enough. Flower and bunny shapes
were fine for a spring store event, but Olivia wanted a less predictable theme. To
be honest, she hoped to present Maddie with a cookie creation she wouldn’t have thought
of herself. If that was possible.

It was six forty a.m. when Olivia pulled into the parking lot, and Bon Vivant was
open for breakfast. She slipped
into a light jacket she kept in the car, just in case. The morning air was chilly
for late April, and she didn’t want to shiver her way through the gardens. The parking
lot held three cars. Olivia walked around to the rear of the restaurant, where she
found the patio seating area empty. She went inside, ordered a cup of coffee, and
obtained permission to wander through the garden.

Olivia paused on the patio to sip her coffee and take in the view. Bon Vivant had
added a few small trees since the last time she and Del had dined there. She couldn’t
identify them, but at least they didn’t obscure the lush hills in the distance. Not
yet, anyway. Curving paths divided the expanding garden into sections, each with a
different theme. Beyond the garden stretched several acres of undeveloped land. Olivia
wondered if Bon Vivant owned any or all of it. Given the restaurant’s popularity,
she suspected it was doing well financially, despite the hefty prices.

A light breeze carried a sweet scent that reminded Olivia of her idea to incorporate
real flowers into the cookie cake design. She followed the scent to a large patch
of lily of the valley. Olivia was fairly certain that lilies of the valley were poisonous.
Not the party theme she had in mind. She wished she’d thought to bring a plant identification
guide, one with lots of color photos.

Olivia wandered at random, allowing whim and fragrance to guide her. She came to a
garden filled with wildflowers organized in rows. The small patch flourished due to
care and an automated watering system. Not a single weed poked through the displays.
The effect was stunning, yet Olivia found herself uninspired. She wished for a bit
less perfection. Her favorite cookie cutters always had dents or scratches or those
tiny variations that indicated they were handmade.

Once again the Dixie Cups musically expressed their imminent wedding plans, in case
the event had slipped Olivia’s mind. She fumbled for her cell. “I’m all for fun,”
Olivia said, “but this is getting old.”

“What? Not even a ‘Hi, Maddie, friend of my childhood, it’s great to hear from you?’
I might be having a serious premarital crisis, you know. Or even better, maybe I found
a dead body in the kitchen.”

“Uh-huh.” Olivia instantly regretted her cynical tone. Ebullience was Maddie’s normal
state, and wedding pressures had ramped it up to levels intolerable to ordinary humans.
“Sorry,” Olivia said. “I’m feeling pressed for time, which makes me cranky. What’s
up?”

“Oh, Livie, I’m so excited. Aunt Sadie finished my dress, and it is unbelievably,
incredibly, gloriously stunning. The embroidery is fabulously…well, I’m running out
of adjectives or whatever they’re called.”

“Adverbs.”

Maddie laughed. “Anyway, I tried the dress on, and wow. The embroidered flowers are
Aunt Sadie’s best work ever. They’re done mostly in shades of purple, but she added
some reddish embroidery floss that’s close to the color of my hair. The bodice is
a bit loose. I guess I’ve been running around so much, I lost some weight. Aunt Sadie
offered to take it in, but I told her to leave it. A few cookies, and I’ll be back
to normal.” Maddie’s generous curves were legendary, as was her wild red hair. “And
speaking of cookies…”

“No, you can’t take over the cookie baking for your own engagement party,” Olivia
said. “And stop worrying. Everything is under control.”

“Livie, I can always tell when you’re lying. Besides, I’m calling from the Gingerbread
House kitchen, and I see no
signs of furious baking, no creative design ideas, no unique ingredients…. Need I
say more?”

“Snoop. I am not ready to admit defeat.”
Although it’s starting to feel tempting.

“Livie, don’t think of it as giving up. Think of it as saving your best friend’s engagement
party from cookie-less disaster.”

“I think I’ve just been insulted.”

“Look,” Maddie said, “how about a compromise? I know you’ll come up with a plan—you
are, of course, the queen of planning—but you have too much going on at once. And
you need a design idea, like, yesterday. I know how you get when you’re feeling too
pressured. So let me help with the baking. You’ll be able to think better, it’ll be
fun, and together we can get the baking done in half the time it would take you alone.”