A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes)

by Crawford, Isis

  Matt realigned the brim of his hat again and hunched over slightly to protect himself from the icy rain. “I already told you. Someone was practicing his bow skills on it. This is a perfect spot. No one’s around. Or maybe someone’s wife decided to throw it out.”

  Bernie pointed. “And leave it there instead of putting it in the trash?”

  “Sure,” Matt answered. “Makes sense to me. This way the husband wouldn’t see it and dig it out of the trash. Or going back to the hunting scenario, maybe someone brought the target out here to practice on and hurt his hand doing something stupid or twisted his ankle falling over a tree root, and he had to go back home. So he left the target here. They’re not that expensive. You can get them at any sporting goods store. Maybe he’s planning on coming back for it later.”

  “You should impound it,” Libby said.

  “And do what with it?” Matt asked, thinking of the ribbing he’d take if he brought that thing back to the station house. He could hear it now: “Nice goin’, Matt. Good collar.” Besides, he didn’t think it would fit in his squad car. No, scratch that. He knew it wouldn’t fit in his squad car.

  “I don’t know,” Libby told him. “Dust it for fingerprints.”

  Matt snorted. “Okay. Aside from the whole fingerprint deal, which is definitely not as easy as they make it look on TV, I can’t impound anything. This is not a crime scene.” Matt indicated the tree that Millie had crashed into with a nod of his head. “That is an accident scene.” Then he indicated where the three of them were standing. “This is nothing, because nothing has happened here.”

  “You don’t know that,” Bernie told him.

  “I most certainly do,” Matt replied through gritted teeth. He loved Libby and Bernie, but not when they got like this.

  “This could become part of a crime scene if it turns out that Millie’s accident was engineered,” Bernie said. “Wouldn’t you then feel foolish letting this opportunity go to waste?”

  “I can live with that,” Matt said. He was about to explain to Bernie and Libby about the amount of paperwork their suggestion would entail when he heard his radio crackle into life. Thank God, he thought. Finally. A graceful way to get out of here. “Gotta go, ladies,” he said to Bernie and Libby. With that he turned and started back to his patrol car. On the way, he snagged his pants leg on a fallen tree branch. Great, he thought. The perfect end to the perfect day.

  Libby and Bernie watched him trudge toward the road.

  “I must say he wasn’t very open-minded,” Libby said to Bernie.

  “He certainly wasn’t,” Bernie replied as she watched Matt’s patrol car take off down the road. “The question is: what are we going to do with this thing?” she asked, referring to the buck.

  “We could take it with us,” Libby said. “On the other hand, if Matt is right, that means we’ll be stealing someone’s property.”

  “Not to mention messing up a crime scene.” Bernie reached for her phone. “I’m going to take a couple of pictures to show Dad.”

  “Good idea,” Libby said. “As Dad always says, ‘When in doubt, document.’ ”

  Then she took a chocolate kiss out of her jacket pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth. Was Matt right, after all? The more she thought about it, the more she felt he might be. She had a hunch her dad would think so too.

  Not that she’d say anything about her qualms to Bernie, she decided, as she watched her sister snap a couple of pictures of the target. If she did that, given the mood they were both in, Bernie would just call her a flip-flopper and she’d call Bernie pig-headed, and they’d be off and running, and she didn’t want that to happen. Things were stressful enough as they were. A couple of minutes later, Libby watched Bernie tuck her phone back in her bag, bend over, and start studying the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Libby called out. She checked her watch. Time was a-wasting. “We have to get back to the shop.”

  “I’m looking for drag marks,” Bernie told her. “Someone had to have dragged this thing out here.”

  Libby laughed. “So now you’re a Boy Scout? Weren’t you the one who got thrown out of the Brownies?”

  “That was for bad behavior,” Bernie said.

  “Anyway,” Libby went on. “What difference does it make? Of course this thing was dragged out here. How else did it get here, fly? The question is: was it in the road?”

  Bernie straightened up. She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment and reached for her cell phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Libby asked.

  “Brandon.”

  “Why? He probably just fell asleep.”

  “I know, but he used to hunt and I want him to see this.”

  “Bernie, we need to go.”

  “He’ll be here in five minutes,” Bernie told her. “Five minutes! What’s the rush?”

  Libby just shook her head and walked back to the van. There was no point in arguing with her sister when she got this way. But at least it was warm in the van. She had a chocolate bar stashed in the glove compartment for emergencies, and if this didn’t constitute an emergency, she didn’t know what did. As she climbed inside Mathilda, she decided to call Googie and get him to get George to start prepping things in the kitchen. At least that way the morning wouldn’t be a total loss.

  Fifteen minutes later an extremely grumpy, pajama-clad Brandon arrived at the scene. Bernie ran over and kissed him as soon as he got out of his Jeep.

  “Thank you,” she cried.

  “This better be good,” Brandon said as he zipped up his parka. He’d gotten to bed just three hours ago. “I closed last night.”

  “I didn’t know anyone else to call,” Bernie said. “And you do know about this stuff.”

  “That was ten years ago.”

  Bernie gave him her most charming smile. “But you still know more than I do.”

  Brandon looked at her for a moment and said, “Sometimes being your boyfriend really is a pain in the butt.”

  “That’s so mean, Brandon.”

  “But so true, Bernie. Show me what your problem is so that I can take care of it and go back to bed.”

  “You heard about Millie, right?”

  “I heard that she was in a car accident.”

  “We think that accident might have been caused,” Bernie said. And then she went into her explanation.

  Libby decided, judging from Brandon’s facial expression as Bernie talked, that he seemed as impressed by Bernie’s theory as Matt had been. Libby watched from the warmth of the van as he and Bernie tramped into the woods to look at the deer target. Then he came out and carefully began walking along the road. Bernie walked with him.

  “What are we looking for?” she asked.

  “Something to tie the target in place or give it some stability. Maybe a rope or a wooden platform with wheels. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t need something like that because these things come with a base, but it was really windy last night and there’s a good chance the target would have tipped over,” Brandon said. He kept his eyes down on the road as he spoke.

  Bernie did likewise. The two of them walked in silence down the stretch of road that encompassed the area between where Millie had hit the tree and the telephone pole several yards away.

  “Even if we don’t find anything, that doesn’t prove I’m wrong,” Bernie said to Brandon. “A negative doesn’t prove a positive.”

  “But it doesn’t disprove it either,” Brandon said. “Can we please just concentrate on the road?”

  “We are concentrating on the road,” Bernie said.

  “Not if we’re talking we’re not,” Brandon told her.

  “So you’re saying you want me to shut up?” Bernie asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes I do.”

  “Fine,” Bernie huffed. “All you had to do was ask.”

  “I am asking,” Brandon said.

  Bernie pressed her lips together, made an imaginary locking motion with h
er thumb and forefinger, and threw the key away.

  “You don’t have to be that dramatic,” Brandon said.

  “Shush,” Bernie said, pressing her forefinger to her lips again and making a big show of staring at the ground.

  Five minutes later, Bernie and Brandon saw what they were searching for.

  “Look,” Bernie said, pointing at a large rock outcropping that had a length of twine tied around its base.

  “I see it,” Brandon said as he moved toward it.

  Once he was in front of it, he squatted down for a better look. Bernie joined him.

  “Millie would have seen the target, not the rope that was securing it,” she mused.

  Brandon grunted, picked up the rope, and pointed to the end. “Somebody cut this with a knife.”

  “Meaning?” Bernie asked.

  “Meaning,” he said, “that whoever set the target up didn’t want to take the time to undo his knots.”

  Bernie grinned. “So that means that I’m right,” she said triumphantly.

  “No,” Brandon said. “But it doesn’t mean you’re wrong either.” Then Brandon got up and walked over to the other side of the road.

  “What are you doing?” Bernie asked.

  “Looking for another rope anchored to another rock on this side. Now, that would lend more weight to what you’re suggesting.”

  Bernie got up and joined Brandon, but neither she nor he saw anything, and after five minutes they abandoned the attempt.

  “Whoever did this could have just used one rope,” Bernie said as she took out her phone and snapped a picture of the rope they’d found.

  “I’m not disagreeing with you,” Brandon said as he squatted down and took another look at the rope. “I’m guessing from the rope’s color and condition that it hasn’t been here that long. In fact, the rope looks pretty new.” He got up and brushed a few pieces of gravel off the knees of his pants. “But I think you’re still skating on pretty thin ice. This whole scenario you’ve conjured up . . .”

  “Conjured?” Bernie squawked.

  “As in dreamed up.”

  “I know what ‘conjured’ means, thank you very much, and I haven’t dreamed up anything,” Bernie replied indignantly.

  “I’ll be interested to hear what your dad has to say when he hears about this,” Brandon said to Bernie.

  “He’ll agree with me.” Bernie was about to explain why when Libby beeped the van’s horn.

  Bernie and Brandon both jumped at the sound.

  “We have to go,” Libby yelled to Bernie as she rolled down the van’s window. “Amber just called. Millie’s, and she wants to talk to us.”

  “About what?” Bernie called back.

  “I don’t know,” Libby replied. “Amber didn’t say.”

  “Good,” Brandon said. He began walking to his car. “Now maybe I can go back to sleep.”

  “Is Marvin around?” Bernie asked Libby after she’d climbed back into their van and brushed the particles of sleet off her bangs. Brandon’s last comment had given her an idea.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I figure if he isn’t busy, he and Dad can drive over and see the target and the rope. Four eyes . . .”

  “In this case eight . . .”

  “Whatever . . . being better than two, or four.”

  Libby nodded. She had to admit it was a good idea. “I’ll call and ask.”

  “Good.” Bernie rubbed her arms with her hands in an effort to take off the chill. “Can’t you get the heat in this thing up any higher? My comforter is warmer than this.”

  “Then maybe you should have brought it along,” Libby told her as she punched in Marvin’s number on her speed dial.

  At least, Bernie thought as she settled back in her seat, the hospital would be warm.

  Chapter 6

  The rain was falling harder now, coating the roadway and the trees with ice, so it took Bernie and Libby longer than usual to get to Longely General Hospital.

  “You know you can go over twenty miles an hour,” Bernie said to Libby as they turned onto Route 42.

  “I would if our tires were in better shape,” Libby shot back. Her hands clenched the steering wheel. She hated driving under circumstances like these, but she was damned if she was going to admit that to Bernie.

  “They’re not that bad,” Bernie said.

  “They’re not that good either,” Libby countered through gritted teeth. If they’d left a half hour ago, as she had wanted to, they wouldn’t be driving through this mess now.

  “Do you want me to drive?” Bernie asked Libby.

  Libby shook her head. “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “You are so not, Libby.”

  “I would be if you would stop asking me how I was every five minutes, Bernie.”

  Bernie grimaced. “You blame me for this, don’t you?”

  “What’s this?” Libby asked, feigning innocence.

  “This being the fact that we’re on the road now.”

  “Not at all,” Libby told her, lying again.

  Bernie shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “It is.”

  “Fine. Just remember I offered to drive.”

  “Thanks, but I prefer to get there in one piece.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Libby?”

  “Exactly what you think it does, Bernie,”

  “Let’s take a time out from each other,” Bernie suggested.

  “Works for me,” Libby answered.

  Bernie turned her head and gazed out at the passing scene, while Libby leaned over and clicked on the radio. The sound of Aretha filled the air. The sisters didn’t talk until ten minutes later when they hit Park Street, at which point Libby extended an olive branch.

  “I hope this stops soon,” she said, pointing to an overhead power line that was bowed under the weight of the ice.

  “But it is beautiful,” Bernie commented. “You have to admit that. The ice makes everything look magical.”

  Libby snorted. “Yeah, but that’s not going to help if the power goes out. I think we need a backup generator in the shop,” Libby said, continuing with her original train of thought.

  “Agreed,” Bernie told her. Libby was right. A power outage at the shop would be a disaster. They’d lose thousands of dollars’ worth of ingredients. Better not to think about it, Bernie decided, so she changed the subject. “I wonder what Millie wants to talk to us about?”

  “She probably wants to know about her cookies,” Libby said, her eyes glued to the road as she slowly glided through a stop sign because it was safer than stopping. At this point she felt as if she were driving a large, lumbering beast.

  Bernie brushed a lock of hair that had come loose from her ponytail off her forehead. “What are we going to tell her?”

  Libby sighed. “Good question.”

  “She’s going to be very upset when we tell her we can’t find them.”

  “That is an understatement,” Libby observed. She was definitely not looking forward to this.

  Neither sister spoke again until they’d pulled into the hospital parking lot.

  “We’re here,” Libby announced as she shoehorned Mathilda into the parking space that was the nearest vacant one to the door and turned off the van. It shuddered to a stop after making an awful grinding noise. “I guess she doesn’t like this weather either,” Libby observed.

  “Who does?” Bernie replied.

  As she looked at the building, she thought about the fact that neither she nor Libby had been here since their mother had broken her arm—that is, unless she counted the time the three-year-old she had been babysitting for had squeezed half a tube of toothpaste into her ear. God, what a nightmare that had been. Who would have thought that anyone could even do something like that? She certainly hadn’t. It had been the last time she’d babysat. Not that anyone had asked her since then.

  “At least it’s not sleeting anymore,” Libby said.

  “I’m not sur
e this is much better,” Bernie said as the wind blew the rain sideways. She watched as a gust of wind plastered a newspaper against the hospital’s foundation plantings. “Maybe we shouldn’t have asked Marvin and Dad to run out.”

  “They’ll be fine,” Libby assured her. “Marvin told me he’s taking the hearse.”

  Bernie laughed. “Dad will be so pleased.” She flipped up her hood. “We have to go.”

  “Absolutely,” Libby agreed, putting her hood up as well. “Amber’s waiting.”

  But the two women continued to sit there. They’d hit a wall. They were cold and wet and tired and finding it difficult to move.

  “On the count of three,” Bernie said.

  “Make that five,” Libby said. “Or better yet, ten.”

  “Five,” Bernie said.

  “Okay. Five,” Libby grudgingly conceded.

  Bernie began counting down. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.”

  At which point Libby and Bernie threw open their respective doors and ran into the hospital lobby.

  “It really is awful out there,” Bernie said as she pushed her hood back and followed Libby to the elevator. “Do we know where we’re going?”

  “We do.” Libby showed her the text Amber had sent her while they were in transit.

  Amber was pacing up and down outside the ICU when Libby and Bernie walked up the corridor. One look at Amber’s face and Bernie knew.

  “I think we’re too late,” she whispered to Libby.

  “I think so too,” Libby whispered back as Amber came rushing up to them.

  “Millie’s gone,” Amber told them, tears pouring down her face.

  Bernie and Libby reached over and hugged Amber to them.

  “She made me promise you would find her murderer,” Amber said.

  “Murderer?” Libby asked. “Is that what she said?”

  “More or less,” Amber replied. She blinked her eyes and looked down at the floor.

  Libby was about to ask her what she meant by that, but before she could, Bernie glared at her and Libby bit her tongue. Her sister was right, she decided. This was not the time to cross-examine Amber.

  “You will, won’t you?” Amber begged, lifting her head and looking from Libby to Bernie and back again. A tear trickled down her cheek. “Promise me that you will.”