A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes)

by Crawford, Isis

  Libby frowned. “Which means that whoever did this was most likely one of the members of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club.” She shook her head. “I’m finding that hard to believe.”

  “Me too.” Bernie said.

  “They don’t seem like the types to do something like this.”

  Bernie rubbed her hands together and cackled. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men,” she said, quoting from her father’s favorite old radio show. “The shadow knows. Heh. Heh. Heh.”

  “I don’t know about the evil part, but I do know that Millie would be turning over in her grave if she could see this,” Libby observed.

  “The hell with turning over. She’d be spinning.” Bernie took out her cell and snapped some pictures of the kitchen to show her dad. “I wonder if the recipes that Amber wanted us to get are still in the safe,” Bernie mused, “because I’m willing to bet the Meltaways recipe is not here.” She pointed to the empty flour canister. “At least not if that was where it was supposed to be.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Libby said. “It occurs to me,” she said after a brief pause, “that it says a lot about Millie that she kept her recipes in a safe.”

  “Or,” Bernie rejoined, “it says something about her friends. Given this mess,” she waved her hand, indicating the kitchen, “I’d say her instincts were one hundred percent correct.”

  “Apparently,” Libby said, thinking about their recipes lying on top of their office desk or scribbled in various notebooks piled up on the shelves lining the walls. It never occurred to her to worry about them. “But then why have friends like that? Judging from what I heard from Barbara, Lillian, and Teresa, no one was exactly in love with Millie.”

  “Yeah, but I bet things didn’t start off that way,” Bernie replied. “We are talking about people who have known each other twenty . . .”

  “More like thirty . . .”

  “Okay. Thirty years. A lot of grudges can accumulate during that time.”

  “Well, she certainly wasn’t very likable these days,” Libby said.

  “No, she wasn’t,” Bernie agreed. “Truth be told, you didn’t like Millie all that much. I didn’t like Millie all that much.”

  “But Amber did,” Libby said. “She really loved her.” Then she stopped talking and put a finger to her lips. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

  “Hear what?” Bernie whispered back.

  “That noise.” Libby pointed upstairs.

  Bernie listened. “You’re being paranoid,” she said. “I don’t hear anything. There’s no one here. Whoever did this is long since gone.”

  “No, I’m not being paranoid,” Libby hissed. “I know what I heard. There. There it is again.”

  This time Bernie heard it too. It was like a shuffle, and then she thought she heard a word, but she wasn’t sure. “It could be something in the walls,” she said in Libby’s ear. “Maybe a squirrel or the house settling. Or maybe our ears are playing tricks on us.”

  “Like what kind of tricks?” Libby asked.

  Bernie shook her head. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of any. “Okay,” she conceded, “maybe you’re right. Maybe someone is up there.”

  “Of course, I’m right. My hearing is better than yours.”

  “Marginally.”

  “A lot better,” Libby said.

  “Not so. Anyway, my sense of smell is better.”

  “That is so not true.”

  “It most certainly is. You didn’t smell the pie crusts burning.”

  “That’s because I had a cold, as you well know.”

  “If that’s how you want to remember it, it’s fine with me.” Then before Libby could reply, Bernie added, “Hey, how about we stop bickering and go up there,” indicating the stairs with a nod of her head, “and see what’s going on.”

  “How about we leave instead?”

  “What, Libby? Are you kidding me?” Bernie said. “I want to see who’s up there. I’m not leaving now. Not when we have a chance to get Millie’s recipes back. Besides, the people up there are probably the other members of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club. We’re not talking motorcycle gang scary here.”

  “But what if they’re not?” Libby asked her sister.

  “Who else could they be?” Bernie asked. “Aliens from outer space? Call if you want,” she told her, “but I’m not waiting for the police to come.”

  “Naturally,” Libby muttered.

  “What do you mean ‘naturally’?” Bernie asked her. “We already discussed this.”

  “We discussed coming in the house. We didn’t discuss going upstairs when someone is in the house.”

  Bernie snorted. “Could you get anymore nit-picky? Come on. Where are your balls?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have any,” Libby snapped. She hated when her sister talked this way.

  “Jeez. It’s just an expression,” Bernie said.

  “An offensive one, given what it implies.”

  Bernie rolled her eyes. “Please don’t do your whole feminist number right now.”

  Libby opened her mouth.

  “Seriously,” Bernie told her before she could say anything.

  “Fine,” Libby retorted, “if that’s the way you feel, but all I’m saying is that there could be someone dangerous up there. We don’t really know.”

  Bernie pointed to the mess in the kitchen. “Somehow I think the person or people who are upstairs are the people who did this. I don’t think people who are looking for recipes are usually defined as dangerous. Since we’re pretty sure we know who they are, that goes double.”

  Libby felt a flash of anger. She took a deep breath and let it out. She refused to let Bernie push her buttons. “First of all,” she told her sister, “we don’t know if what you’re saying is true or not; second, the people up there might have caused Millie’s accident, which makes them dangerous in my book.”

  “To whom?” Bernie asked.

  “Obviously to us,” Libby replied.

  “I doubt that.”

  “How can you say that with such assurance?” Libby demanded.

  “Well, I don’t see a deer target around here, do you?” Bernie asked.

  “No,” Libby admitted.

  “We’re not in a car on a dark country road, are we?”

  “No,” Libby repeated.

  “Ergo, you don’t have to worry.”

  Libby said, “What if they’re armed?”

  Bernie rolled her eyes. “Oh please.”

  “No. I’m serious.”

  “With what? Rolling pins? Pastry bags?”

  “One of those women—and I’m not saying it is one of them, mind you—could have a gun. You don’t know.”

  “Fine.” Bernie went over to the rack that Millie’s pans were hanging from and grabbed two cast-iron frying pans. “Now we’re armed too,” she said as she handed one to Libby. “There. Does that make you feel better?”

  Libby looked down at the frying pan. “Not really.”

  “Do you want a knife? Will that do the trick? Because I see several on the counter.”

  For a moment Libby considered it. Then visions of bad things flashed through Libby’s mind and she discarded the idea. “No. That’s okay. I’ll stick with the frying pan.”

  “I’m glad that’s settled,” Bernie said, and she headed for the stairs. Libby followed.

  “I still think we should call the police,” Libby whispered to Bernie as they started up the stairs.

  “Then call them,” Bernie snapped as she continued her ascent. “I told you before I’m not stopping you.”

  Libby sighed. She knew she could call, but she also knew that she wouldn’t call. For reasons that were unclear to her, she’d been letting her younger sister get her into trouble for as long as she could remember. Her mother used to tell her that it was up to her to set a good example for Bernie, but for some reason she couldn’t seem to say no to her.

  When Bernie was halfw
ay up the stairs, she halted and turned to Libby. “What room did Amber say the safe was in?” she mouthed.

  “Millie’s bedroom,” Libby mouthed back, although she was positive that by now unless they were deaf, anyone in the house had to know that Bernie and Libby were there too.

  “Which one is that?” Bernie whispered.

  “I think Amber said it was the second on the left.”

  “You think?” Bernie hissed.

  “Yeah, I think.”

  Bernie shook her head.

  “Don’t give me that look,” Libby told her.

  “What look is that?” Bernie asked.

  “The ‘how could you be so dumb?’ look.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all,” Bernie said as she continued her climb. “It’s not my fault if you suffer from low self-esteem.”

  “What?” Libby squeaked.

  “You heard me.”

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “Look at your clothes, for heaven’s sake.”

  Libby glanced down at the sweatshirt, jeans, and boots she was wearing. “There’s nothing wrong with these. They’re appropriate. Which is more than I can say for yours,” she told Bernie. “High heels? A pencil skirt? A black cashmere sweater? That’s what I always wear in the kitchen.”

  Bernie was just about to tell Libby she saw nothing wrong with her outfit when she heard someone yell “Now!” She started to run up the stairs. She’d just made it to the landing when the door to the room on the left was flung open and Alma Hall and Pearl Pepperpot came running out and flew past her. The whole thing happened so fast that Bernie didn’t have time to grab either of the women as they went by her. She just stood there, stunned.

  Chapter 10

  “Help,” Pearl screamed as she came barreling down the stairs.

  Libby jumped aside to keep from being knocked over by her. A few seconds later Alma Hall thundered down after her.

  “Watch out,” Alma cried.

  Libby instinctively looked around. She didn’t see anyone. By the time she glanced back, both women were running out the front door. As she watched, a silver car pulled up into the driveway, and Alma and Pearl jumped into it, and the car roared off. She heard the tires squeal as it cleared the corner, and then silence reigned once again. Later, when she was telling her dad what had happened, Libby estimated that from start to finish the incident had taken two minutes—at the most.

  “What was that all about?” Libby cried as soon as she recovered from her shock.

  “I think I can guess,” Bernie said. Her tone was grim. “And I’m really less than amused,” she added, continuing into the room Alma and Pearl had come out of.

  Libby was right behind her. “It’s Millie’s bedroom,” Libby noted.

  “No kidding.” Bernie indicated the safe standing open in the middle of the media unit. “Guess what’s not there?”

  “The recipes?” Libby replied.

  “Good call,” Bernie said. She cursed quietly. This was exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen. She took a quick look around the room. Unlike in the kitchen, nothing was out of place. Therefore, she thought that whoever had opened the safe had known exactly where the recipes were. “I wonder how they knew the combination?”

  Libby shook her head. “That’s an interesting question, given who we’re dealing with.”

  “Exactly. I have to say that being on a TV show does not bring out the best in a lot of people,” Bernie observed.

  “You think this is about the TV show?” Libby asked.

  “What else?” Bernie replied. “Up until now everyone was acting perfectly normal, or as normally as they ever do.”

  With that, she went over to Millie’s dresser and started opening the drawers.

  “What are you looking for?” Libby asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bernie confessed as she quickly closed the first drawer and opened the second. When she was done with the dresser she went through Millie’s closet. There was nothing in there except eight print dresses spaced exactly one inch apart and four pairs of black two-inch pumps in an even line. “Amazing,” Bernie said. “Who has a closet like this?”

  “Someone who’s OCD or who’s been in the military,” Libby volunteered.

  “I cannot conceive of wearing the same thing every day,” Bernie said as she closed the closet door.

  “I can,” Libby said.

  “I wouldn’t brag about that if I were you,” Bernie told her.

  “So what do we tell Amber?” Libby asked, changing the topic.

  Libby’s disinterest in clothes was an old bone of contention between them, and she wasn’t in the mood at the moment to discuss the subject with her fashionista sister.

  Bernie put her hands on her hips and started tapping her foot on the floor while she considered Libby’s question. As far as she could see, they had two possibilities. They could continue searching the rest of the house, which seemed pointless, or they could go get the recipes from Pearl and Alma.

  “So?” Libby asked again.

  “So,” Bernie replied, her mind made up. “We don’t tell Amber anything yet. We find Pearl and Alma and get those recipes back. They’re not theirs to keep.”

  Libby went over and peered inside the safe. It was empty. There was nothing inside it, not even a speck of dust. “This just gets weirder and weirder,” she said. “I can understand if all this fuss was about the recipe for Oreos or Sara Lee cheesecakes. But Millie’s Meltaways?”

  “Millie’s Majestic Meltaways,” Bernie corrected. “Let’s not forget the ‘Majestic’.”

  “Fine. Millie’s Majestic Meltaways. Millie’s recipe book? Please. There has to be something else going on here. But what? That’s the question.”

  “I told you,” Bernie said as she turned and marched out of the room and down the stairs. “This isn’t about money. This is about being on TV. It’s about ego. In this case, a cigar really is a cigar.” She stopped at the door and turned to Libby. “I’ll tell you something else. I’ll bet you anything that the person driving the getaway car was Rose Olsen.”

  “It could have been Sheila,” Libby suggested as she followed Bernie out of the house.

  Bernie locked up. “Sheila drives a green Subaru.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since two months ago. No. It’s Rose. Has to be. She’s the only one of the bunch who drives a car that color.”

  “I still can’t believe that those women are doing this,” Libby said.

  Bernie opened the door to their van and jumped into the driver’s seat. “It is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” she replied. “One doesn’t expect this kind of behavior from suburban matrons—at least not these. We’re not talking Desperate Housewives here. We’re talking women in their seventies. Which just goes to show one is never too old to make a complete idiot of oneself.”

  “Maybe seventy is the new forty.”

  “In that case,” Bernie said, “you and I are in our teens.”

  “You mean we’re not?” Libby deadpanned.

  Bernie laughed. “Well, Brandon does say that sometimes I act like I’m twelve.”

  “I don’t think I would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Libby said, returning to the original subject as they zoomed out of the driveway.

  “Me either,” Bernie said.

  “Where are we going?” Libby asked her.

  “To Rose’s house, of course. I’m going to take the shortcut over by Lakeview.” Bernie looked at her watch. Rose had a ten-minute lead on them—at most. Bernie was pretty sure she could make up the difference. First of all, Rose was a slow driver, and second, the shortcut she was going to use took at least ten minutes off the drive. “If we hurry we can beat her.”

  “If she’s not there?” Libby asked.

  “Then we’ll either wait in her driveway or go to Alma and Pearl’s houses.”

  “Just as long as you don’t kill us in the process,” Libby said, thinking of the condition of the roads Bernie wa
s suggesting. They were unlit country roads, little more than gravel, two-lane jobbies that were full of potholes.

  Bernie just grunted and put her foot down on the gas. Mathilda began to groan and buckle. From the sound of her, Libby guessed that they were up to forty miles an hour, which was faster than the van liked to go.

  “Be nice to Mathilda,” Libby implored as Bernie drove out of Millie’s driveway and sped down Clark. “She’s the only vehicle we’ve got.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Bernie snapped. She kept her eyes on the road. Four blocks later they turned onto Route 31. Darkness engulfed them.

  “We know where they live. I don’t see what the big hurry is,” Libby told her as she clutched the edge of her seat. She could feel the van going up and down. Was that a shock that just went? She wasn’t sure. But whatever it was, it felt as if it was going to be expensive to fix.

  “The big hurry,” Bernie told her as she steered around a large pothole by going into the opposite lane, “is that I want to catch them as they get out of the car while they still have the recipe book.”

  “You think they’re going to just hand it over to us?”

  “If I have anything to do with it they will,” Bernie said through gritted teeth.

  “This is insane,” Libby protested. “Rose could have picked the women up and be dropping them at their places now.”

  “Maybe,” Bernie allowed. “But I think that they left their cars at Rose’s house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what makes the most sense.”

  “Which they would do since they’re acting in such a logical manner,” Libby observed.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Bernie admitted as she took a sharp left onto Voorhees Hollow. “But I don’t care. I’d just like to surprise them, if I can. I feel it’s the least we can do, given what they did to us.”

  “I’m all for revenge, but not at the expense of Mathilda,” Libby objected.

  “Mathilda will be fine,” Bernie assured her sister.