A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes)

by Crawford, Isis

  “One of them,” Penelope allowed as she glanced down at her buzzing cell phone. “However, the ladies are a little,” Penelope stopped to choose a word, “intense.”

  “Agreed,” Libby said, thinking about what had just happened back at Millie’s house.

  “Or maybe disagreeable is a better word choice,” Penelope said. “Or possibly obsessive.”

  “Those too,” Bernie told her. “But I’m sure you’ve handled worse.”

  Penelope made a face. “Not by much.” She reached for her phone. “I think I’d better answer this. Morons,” she said when she was done texting. “I’m surrounded by morons and incompetents.”

  Bernie watched Penelope finish her margarita in three gulps and signal for Brandon to bring her another one. He nodded.

  “The usual for you guys?” he asked Bernie and Libby.

  “White wine for me,” Libby said.

  “I’ll take a shot of Black Label,” Bernie told him.

  Brandon raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s been a tough day,” Bernie explained.

  “Evidently,” Brandon said before going off and making everyone’s drinks.

  “It’s really too bad about Millie,” Bernie said.

  Penelope shrugged. “Everyone has to die sometime. As for me, I’d rather go the way Millie did. Quick.”

  “I guess,” Libby said. She was not convinced.

  “Anyway, she was old,” Penelope said.

  “Maybe we should just shoot people when they hit eighty,” Libby remonstrated.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Penelope said.

  “Then what did you mean?” Bernie asked.

  “I meant that she wasn’t a kid. She’d lived her life,” Penelope said as her fingers beat an impatient tattoo on the bar. “Although it’s too bad she couldn’t have waited to have her accident until after the filming.”

  Libby was about to explain the situation, but before she could, Bernie said, “Yes, life is definitely unfair.”

  Libby lifted an eyebrow, but Bernie shook her head. This was not the time to get into the whole “accident” thing.

  If Penelope caught the raised eyebrow or Bernie’s sarcasm, she chose to ignore both. “On the other hand,” she continued, brightening, “as the saying goes, ‘There’s no storm that doesn’t bring someone some good.’ ”

  “Meaning?” Bernie asked.

  “Well, Amber told me that Millie wanted her to represent her in the contest. She said it was Millie’s dying wish.” Penelope fell silent as Brandon approached with their order.

  Bernie waited to reply until after Brandon had set everyone’s drinks down in front of them and she’d taken a sip. The scotch went down nice and smooth, warming her mouth, throat, and stomach.

  “That’s what she told me too,” Bernie said.

  Penelope took a gulp of her margarita and put the glass down. Somehow, Bernie hadn’t expected someone who looked so angular to be drinking something so frivolous. If she had been asked, she would have pegged Penelope for a Jim Beam or Maker’s Mark kind of gal.

  “At first,” Penelope went on, “I was inclined to say no to Amber, but after talking it over with my production people I said yes. It gives the show a nice hook.”

  “What would that be?” Libby asked.

  Penelope looked at her in disbelief. “Come on. You gotta get it.”

  “No, I don’t,” Libby told her.

  Penelope waved her hands in the air. “It’s drama. This is what people watch reality TV for. We couldn’t have written anything better than this if we’d tried. You’ve got the whole ‘dying wish’ thing going. You know, this kid is taking the banner from her aunt and running with it, and it also ups the tension on the show. And let’s face it, tension is good.”

  “I just bet it is,” Bernie said dryly. “So I take it you’ve already told the ladies of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club what’s going to happen.”

  “Not yet, but I did just tell Amber.”

  “How long ago?” Bernie asked.

  “Right before you came in. You were next on my list to call.”

  “That means that everyone will know,” Libby told Penelope. Then she turned to her sister. “How long do you give it? Ten minutes?”

  Bernie snorted. “At the most.” She extracted her phone from her bag. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to turn my phone off. I just can’t deal with anyone else tonight.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Libby said, visions of being pursued by the ladies of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club dancing in her head.

  Penelope’s phone began to ring. She looked at the caller ID. “It’s Pearl Pepperpot.”

  “Good luck,” Bernie said.

  “You know what,” Penelope said, “I think my phone just ran out of power.” With that she powered it down.

  “They are not going to be happy,” Libby pointed out.

  “No, they’re not,” Penelope agreed. “I was hoping you could help me calm the talent down.”

  “How would you suggest Libby and I do that?” Bernie asked.

  Penelope shrugged. “I was thinking you could call the ladies tomorrow morning and reassure them you’re not going to be biased on Amber’s behalf.”

  “There’s just one problem with your idea,” Libby pointed out.

  “What’s that?” Penelope asked, looking totally uninterested in what Libby was going to say.

  “The ‘what’s that?’ ” Libby answered, “is how is Amber going to bake the cookies?”

  Penelope made an impatient gesture with her hand. “Anyone can follow a recipe. Even I can do that.”

  “True enough,” Bernie said. “Unfortunately, the Meltaways seem to have disappeared, as has the recipe—a fact I’m sure Amber has mentioned.”

  “As a matter of fact, she has,” Penelope said. She finished her drink and threw a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. “However, she did say she thought she knew where Millie might have hidden another copy of the recipe. I’m banking on that.”

  Bernie leaned forward. “Really?” she said. “That’s news to me. Did she tell you where she thought it might be? She never said anything about that to us.”

  Penelope shrugged. “I don’t have the foggiest idea. I didn’t ask her and she didn’t tell me.”

  Libby shook her head. “I can’t believe that she didn’t tell me or Bernie.”

  “It’s very odd,” Bernie agreed. “Maybe she’s just playing you. Maybe she really doesn’t know.”

  Penelope scowled. “I will tell you what I told her. I don’t care. I don’t care if she’s found the recipe or not.” She held up her hand to forestall Libby from speaking. “The truth of the matter is that it doesn’t matter to me if she uses Millie’s recipe or if she enters Oreo cookies into the competition. I’ve given her three extra days to come up with something—whatever that may be. Then we’re filming the show and moving on. We have a schedule to keep.” Penelope shook her head. “It’s just a show, for heaven’s sake. We’re not doing brain surgery here. It really doesn’t matter who wins or loses.” With that Penelope stood up and strode toward the door with her assistant trailing behind her.

  As Bernie watched them go, she couldn’t help wondering whether or not the moto boots Penelope had on were the real deal or not. She’d just decided they were when Brandon ambled over.

  “What do you think about the boots Penelope was wearing?” Bernie asked him as he collected the twenty-dollar bill Penelope had left behind.

  “I didn’t notice,” Brandon told her. “Why? Was I supposed to?”

  “Not really,” Bernie said. “So what do you think of her?”

  “She left me a thirty-five-cent tip. What do you think I think of her?”

  “Not much. I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Bernie said, thinking of Millie’s accident that wasn’t. “Winning or losing matters to someone on the show. It matters a lot.”

  “The question is to whom,” Libby noted. “The way I see it, we have seven choices
.” She took a sip of her wine, put the glass down, and pushed it away. She was too tired to drink.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning started off well for Bernie and Libby. It hadn’t snowed as much as Libby had feared, so it took Libby and Bernie five minutes, if that, to shovel and salt the pavement in front of their store. In addition, the weather report was good: it was going to be in the upper thirties, with no snow predicted, so that meant more people coming into the shop.

  The muffins and the breads went in and out of the oven like clockwork. The mixer they were using didn’t break. The hazelnut buttercream they were using for the chocolate tortes didn’t curdle, and none of the cookie bottoms burned, so they didn’t have to throw them out. In addition, Libby and Bernie managed to complete the prep work for the dinner they were catering that night for the Sloans.

  The dinner followed a French-bistro theme, and while onion soup wasn’t hard to make, browning the onions till they were caramelized and making the beef stock was time-consuming and laborious, and even though Libby had tried various methods to speed up the process, she always came back to the one outlined by Julia Child.

  Having successfully finished with the onions, Libby went out front and unlocked the front door. She was tallying up the money in the cash drawer when Googie came in and said hello. Libby nodded hello back and went on with her count while Googie went into the back, hung up his jacket in the office, washed his hands, came out front, and started the coffee.

  By now it was ten after seven. As Libby closed the cash drawer, she noted that Amber was officially ten minutes late. We have to have a talk, Libby thought as she went into the office to check on a delivery. When Libby clicked on the OPEN sign fifteen minutes later, Amber still hadn’t shown up.

  “She’s half an hour late,” Libby observed to Bernie. “That’s way too much. I understand that she’s upset about Millie, but she needs to call if she’s not going to be here on time. It’s not fair to Googie. Or to you and me, for that matter.”

  Bernie looked up from the potatoes she was peeling. “She’s probably working on her recipe and lost track of time,” Bernie said.

  “According to Penelope, she already has the recipe,” Libby pointed out.

  Bernie put down her paring knife and wiped her hands on the towel she had tied around her waist to protect the wool-and-silk tweed pencil skirt she was wearing. “I’ll call and tell her to get over here.”

  But Amber didn’t answer her cell.

  “Maybe she’s still sleeping, or maybe she’s in the shower. Or her cell could be dead,” Bernie posited after she’d left a voice mail on Amber’s phone.

  “Great,” Libby groused as she took off her apron and got ready to go out front and help Googie with the customers. “Things were going so well too.” This was one of their busiest times of the day, and she and Bernie prided themselves on their quick service.

  Bernie sighed. “I’ll go get her. Her house is just five minutes away.”

  Only Amber wasn’t in her house, and none of her roommates had seen or heard from her since last night. In fact, they hadn’t even known Amber wasn’t there until Bernie had woken them up. The three roommates worked in a hospital and had the night shift.

  At this point, Bernie called George and asked him to come in and cover for Amber. Then she called Libby and updated her on what was going on, after which she drove around looking for their wayward counter girl.

  Bernie kept telling herself that she was overreacting, that she should be back at the shop working instead of driving around aimlessly and that Amber was absolutely fine, but no matter what she said to herself, Bernie couldn’t shake the bad feeling that had taken up residence in her gut.

  Because even though Amber looked like a freak, underneath she was an extremely responsible person, and she’d never in the five years she’d been working for A Little Taste of Heaven not shown up for work without calling and letting Bernie and Libby know that she’d be late or absent. Ten minutes later, the bad feeling Bernie was carrying around got worse when she spotted Amber’s car in the parking lot of a small strip mall located over the town line.

  None of the stores in the mall were open yet. It was too early. Amber’s car was the only one in the lot. Bernie parked beside it, got out, and tried the doors of Amber’s Taurus. They were locked. She brushed the snow off the windows and peered inside. The Taurus looked the way it always did—a mess. Used coffee cups and takeout bags were piled on the passenger’s seat, while newspapers were stacked up on the backseat, along with clothes that Amber was going to take to the Rescue Mission. After Bernie tried the trunk and found it locked, she called Libby and updated her on what was going on.

  “What the hell was she doing there?” Libby demanded of Bernie.

  “Damned if I know,” Bernie told her.

  “That was a rhetorical question.”

  “I know,” Bernie said, buttoning her jacket. The wind had started picking up again.

  “Come home,” Libby told her.

  “I thought I’d drive around some more,” Bernie replied. She decided she’d come back here later on when the shops were open and see if anyone had seen Amber.

  “To what end?” Libby demanded Bernie admitted that she didn’t know.

  “Exactly,” Libby said. “Come home,” she repeated. “We need to formulate a plan of attack.”

  “You’re right,” Bernie said, and she hung up.

  She hated to admit it, but for once Libby was correct. The only thing she was doing now was wasting gas. But on the way to A Little Taste of Heaven, Bernie made a detour and stopped in at the bed and breakfast Amber’s mom, Linda, ran. She hadn’t seen or heard from her either, but then, as Linda pointed out, that wasn’t unusual. She and her daughter didn’t exactly get along.

  “I agree that it’s worrisome,” Sean’s friend Clyde said, referring to Amber’s disappearance as he took a small bite of parsnip pie.

  Sean put his cup of coffee down on the dining room table after taking a sip. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon and no one had heard from Amber, which was why he, his two daughters, and Clyde were gathered in the apartment above the shop trying to decide what to do.

  “That’s why we called you,” Sean said to Clyde.

  “In an unofficial capacity, of course,” Libby said.

  Clyde nodded. “Of course. What else?” Not only was Clyde Sean’s best friend, he was also a member in good standing of the Longely Police Department. “Anyway, what other choice do you have?”

  “None,” Bernie said.

  “Exactly,” Clyde responded. “The police won’t do anything,” he added. “Amber’s over eighteen. The most they’ll do is write up a report and file it.”

  “Who should know that better than I?” Sean retorted, thinking back to his twenty years on the force. In all that time, only two of all the people who were reported missing hadn’t shown up eventually. “After all, I used to be chief of police.”

  “The place was a lot better off when you were,” Clyde told him. Then he turned to Libby and Bernie. “By the way, I have to tell you that this pie is wonderful. When you told me it was made with parsnips I had my doubts, but I’m a firm believer now. What’s in it anyway? Besides the parsnips, that is.”

  “Just some orange juice, orange rind, cream, butter, orange marmalade, and Grand Marnier,” Libby told him. She’d discovered the recipe in an old cookbook she’d found at a garage sale last summer and had been anxious to try it ever since. So far, despite Bernie’s skepticism, it was selling well.

  “Ah,” Clyde said, making a doleful face. “I should have known it wasn’t healthy. Nothing I like is.” He took another bite. “So why,” he asked when he had swallowed, “did you call me here in the first place? Not,” he said hastily, “that I’m not always happy to come over and visit.”

  “We want your opinion,” Bernie said promptly, after which she proceeded to lay out the backstory to Amber’s disappearance.

  Clyde listened attentive
ly to the story of Millie and the TV show and the accident without interrupting.

  “Well?” Bernie asked Clyde when she was through. “What do you think?”

  Clyde added a smidgen of cream to his coffee, stirred it, and took a sip before replying. “So,” he said slowly, “you really believe that someone caused Millie’s accident? That it wasn’t an accident at all. It was just made to look like one.”

  “Absolutely,” Sean said, answering for Bernie.

  Clyde shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m having trouble believing that someone would kill someone over winning first place in a bake-off.”

  “Maybe the intention wasn’t manslaughter,” Sean said to Clyde. “Maybe whoever did this just wanted to rattle Millie and put her out of commission for a while. Or maybe this was just a prank gone awry.”

  “True,” Clyde said.

  “On the other hand, as you well know, people have killed people over a cigarette,” Sean pointed out.

  “Indeed they have,” Clyde said.

  Bernie wiped a drop of cream off the table with the end of her napkin. “I agree with Dad. Maybe whoever did this really just meant to slow Millie down,” she said. “Maybe they didn’t mean to kill her. At least it would be nice to think so.”

  “Yes, it would,” Sean agreed. “The thing is,” he said to Clyde, “when you put all the facts together, such as the disappearing cookies and the ransacked house, it’s the most logical conclusion.”

  “Then someone kidnaps Amber because she’s going to appear on the TV show?” Clyde said skeptically. “You’re making a huge jump here.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just don’t buy it. How could one of these ladies—all of whom are in their seventies and early eighties—kidnap Amber, who is what?”

  “Twenty-two,” Libby answered.

  “Exactly,” Clyde said. “I don’t think that it would be physically possible. It would make more sense if the producer of the show did it. For the publicity,” Clyde explained, catching the looks on Sean’s, Bernie’s, and Libby’s faces.