Dead Men Don't Eat Cookies

by Virginia Lowell

  “Yippee!” Maddie pumped her arm in the air.

  “However, I draw the line at breaking windows or tearing down walls. Even if Mom didn’t notice, Calliope would, and she’d tell Mom.”

  “Understood,” Maddie said. “We’ve seen only the kitchen and room eight. We could check the other rooms for signs of tampering or repair. There’s probably a cellar, too . . . and maybe an attic.”

  “Then we’d better get moving.” Olivia turned off the laptop. “I do not intend to be out all night. We have to work tomorrow.”

  In under ten minutes, Olivia returned to the kitchen, dressed warmly and toting an eager Yorkie. She found Maddie, wrapped in a long sweater, loading the last soiled coffee cup into the dishwasher. “Are you sure you’ll be warm enough in that sweater?” Olivia asked.

  “I’ll freeze to death.” Maddie pulled a set of car keys from her sweater pocket. “My little VW is parked in the alley. We should drive to the boarding house, at least most of the way. We can park out of sight and walk around the perimeter first. I’m pretty sure I could survive that much exposure to the elements. Spunky will find plenty of tempting smells to guide him to his doggie bathroom.”

  “Okay, I’ll be right behind you. Spunky’s leash didn’t snap on right, so I need to fix it. Hold still, Spunks.” Olivia held the squirming Yorkie under one arm as she tried to attach the leash firmly to his collar. Finally, it snapped into place. “There, that should do it.” She started toward the back door . . . and froze. Maddie stood framed in the open doorway facing Olivia, the pitch-black alley behind her. The look on Maddie’s face told Olivia that something was very, very wrong.

  “Maddie?” Olivia realized she was whispering.

  Maddie slewed her expressive eyes down and to the side. Olivia followed Maddie’s silent instructions but could see only darkness in the alley behind her. Maddie jerked as if she’d been poked in the back. Spunky growled and strained at his leash so hard it pulled him up on his hind legs. Olivia understood at once. Although she saw nothing, someone must be right behind Maddie, holding a weapon against her back. Olivia scooped up Spunky, while her eyes swept the kitchen, searching for a knife, anything . . . but Maddie had cleaned too thoroughly.

  Olivia considered releasing Spunky. No, that was too risky. He had no clue how tiny he was. He could be hurt or worse. It was too late, anyway. Maddie jerked again and took a step into the light of the kitchen. The partial outline of a figure appeared behind her. The intruder’s shoulders were broader than Maddie’s, but he or she must be shorter, since Olivia couldn’t see the top of a head. Maddie’s wild hair hid the face.

  In a matter of seconds, Olivia’s questions were answered. Maddie’s captor pushed her inside and slammed the alley door behind them. Clutching Spunky under one arm, Olivia rushed forward to stabilize her friend, who teetered as if she might lose her balance. “Who are you? What do you want?” Olivia had to shout to be heard over Spunky’s ferocious yapping.

  The intruder stepped into view. He wore a knit face mask, as if he’d been out for a mid-winter walk in an arctic climate. He appeared to be a short, thin man, although dark clothing covered him from head to toe. “Shut that mutt up, or I’ll kill him.”

  “Maddie, are you all right?” Olivia’s question came out hushed and squeaky.

  Maddie gave her a faint nod. Her translucent eyes seemed to darken against her ashen skin.

  Spunky squirmed to escape his mistress’s right arm, wrapped firmly around his small body. Olivia gripped his collar with her left hand. The frustrated Yorkie snarled at the intruder with a fierceness Olivia had never heard before. The intruder stepped backward. Sensing fear from his quarry, Spunky wriggled mightily, paws flailing. Olivia struggled to hold on to him as he strained forward. She didn’t want to squeeze too hard and hurt the little guy. Maddie rushed forward to help, but Spunky was wriggling too much.

  In the midst of chaos, Olivia had a sudden, clear thought. Without loosening her hold on Spunky, she studied the intruder. He hadn’t moved. In fact, he appeared frozen in place, his empty hands hanging at his sides. Despite the threatening mask, he seemed . . . The word “uncertain” popped into her mind. At once, it hit her. Either he was afraid of a five pound dog . . . or he wasn’t armed.

  Olivia lowered Spunky to the floor. Keeping a firm grip on his leash, she released her enraged protector. With the aggressive stance of a much larger dog, Spunky lunged forward, nearly yanking the leash from Olivia’s hand. The intruder stepped backward. Again, he did not reach for a weapon . . . but he didn’t run out into the alley, either.

  “Who are you?” Olivia had to raise her voice to be heard over Spunky’s yapping. “What do you want?”

  Maddie took a step toward the man. “Hey, I felt you poke me in the back. I thought you had a knife,” she said. “Where is it?” When the man neither responded nor produced a weapon, Maddie strode toward him. “That’s what I thought. You’re nothing but a faker.” She reached toward his head as if to yank off the knit mask. The intruder spun around and grabbed for the alley door, but Maddie was too quick for him. She snatched at the top of the face mask and whipped it off his head. With her free arm, Maddie seized his shoulder and spun him around to face her. “You’re Kurt Kurtzel, aren’t you?”

  Kurt shrugged one shoulder. “Tell me where Alicia is hiding.”

  “We don’t know,” Olivia said. “We believe she is safe.”

  “She’s with that old guy, isn’t she? Where did he take her?”

  “You’re wasting your time, Kurt,” Maddie said. “We have no idea where Alicia went. Besides, she’s an adult. She can go wherever she pleases.”

  Maddie might not feel threatened by Kurt, but Olivia wasn’t so sure. Now that she’d seen his face, she had mixed reactions. She knew he was in his midtwenties, but his sullenness made him seem younger. With his fine-boned face and dark blue eyes, she could see why young girls might find him attractive. Kurt had thin, hunched shoulders that practically screamed “computer nerd,” but his hands, with their long fingers, might be described as elegant. Those fingers looked strong, too. Kurt’s hands tightened into fists.

  Maddie reacted quickly. She grabbed Kurt by his upper arm and dragged him over to the kitchen table, where she shoved him into a chair. “If you aren’t armed, what did you use to poke me in the back?” she demanded. “I definitely felt a sharp point.”

  Before Maddie could stop him, Kurt slid his hand into the pocket of his faded black jeans and pulled out a jackknife. Maddie snatched it from his hand. “That’s nothing but a little pocketknife,” she said.

  Narrowing his eyes, Kurt said, “I left my switchblade at home. Didn’t figure I’d need it with you two.” Kurt’s nasal voice made the statement sound more whiny than threatening, but Olivia shivered at the intensity in his eyes. She lifted the folded knife from Maddie’s hand and tossed it in the kitchen junk drawer.

  “Hey, give that back!” Now Kurt sounded like an aggrieved ten-year-old whose mother had just confiscated his favorite toy. Olivia was beginning to understand why he appealed only to much younger girls. It was reassuring to know that Alicia had outgrown him . . . assuming she truly had, that is. “Fine, then,” Kurt said with a shrug. “You can keep it. I’m expecting a shiny new shipment tomorrow, anyway.”

  “You order your weapons in bulk?” Olivia asked.

  Kurt smirked. “You’d be surprised what I can get online. No one can trace me, either.”

  Maddie shot an amused glanced toward Olivia. “Well, Kurt,” she said, “maybe no one has really tried. Yet.”

  Kurt relaxed against the back of the kitchen chair. “I am very, very good at what I do,” he said. This time he sounded calm and sure of himself. “That’s why I know you aren’t going to call the police.”

  Over Kurt’s head, Olivia exchanged a quick, puzzled glance with Maddie. “Why on earth wouldn’t we call the police?” Olivia said. “You h
id outside our kitchen and threatened my friend.”

  “That’s not the first time I’ve hidden outside your kitchen.” Kurt looked pleased with his cleverness. “It was funny, really. You two never caught on, and neither did that dimwitted husband of yours.” He grinned at Maddie, whose eyes narrowed dangerously. “It never occurred to him that anyone was messing with those bulbs he kept having to change. He’d replace one, and I’d just shimmy up the pole and shake it to break the filament. You girls aren’t nearly as smart or safe as you think you are.”

  Olivia saw her own shock reflected in Maddie’s eyes, and in that split second, Kurt jumped up, knocking his chair to the floor. Slipping past Olivia before she could grab even a pinch of his shirt, he flung open the alley door. Kurt turned to face them and, for a moment, stood framed in the doorway. “I will find Alicia,” he said. “Don’t even try to stop me. You can’t. Alicia belongs to me.” He stepped backward and disappeared into the black night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Olivia’s eyelids slid open. Given the thumping of her heart, she expected to see a ravenous tiger leaping toward her, but there was only darkness. She sat up and tried to orient herself. Once she understood she was in her own bedroom, the covers no longer felt like restraints, but her heart kept right on pounding. She’d had a nightmare, that much was clear. From her physical reactions, Olivia decided the content of her dream was best left unexamined. As she fell back on her pillow, Spunky emerged from under a fold in the blanket and crawled onto her stomach.

  “Hey, Spunks. So what just happened here?” Olivia’s voice sounded raspy, as if she’d been screaming in her sleep.

  Spunky’s fluffy tail wagged in comforting response. Settling his fuzzy face on his paws, the little Yorkie fixed trusting brown eyes on Olivia as if he expected her to answer her own question. Olivia reached over and ruffled the silky hair between his perked ears. “Unfortunately,” she said, “it’s beginning to come back to me. It was only a dream, but a scary one. You and I were playing catch in a room in the boarding house when a hole opened in the wall. Only this time there weren’t any nice, quiet bones inside. Thousands of tiny knife-shaped cookie cutters rose up en masse and spewed into the room, heading right for us. I was reaching out to grab you when the cutter knives flew between us. Suddenly I couldn’t see you anymore. I called your name and tried to push through the cutters, but . . .” Olivia’s breath caught in her throat. She pulled Spunky to her chest and held him so tightly he squirmed and yapped.

  “Oops, sorry, little one,” Olivia said. “It was that wretched young man, Kurt. He must have scared me more than I realized.” She released Spunky, who retreated to the end of the bed, where he watched his mistress warily for further signs of insanity.

  “I don’t blame you one bit.” Olivia pushed herself up on one elbow and felt along her bedside tabletop for the lamp switch. She checked her cell phone, which told her it was two a.m. She’d been asleep for only an hour and a half. The nightmare had receded, allowing her heart to resume its normal rhythm. Spunky tilted his head and whimpered as if he were leery of his mistress’s mood. Olivia gave his ears a quick rub before melting back into her soft pillow. Spunky snuggled into the crook of her arm. Within moments, he was snoozing.

  Olivia was not so lucky. She kept thinking about those flying cookie cutters. On the whole, she preferred comforting dreams about cookie cutters dancing in the moonlight. However, the thought of those angry, swarming cutters did trigger a thought . . . or rather, a question about the antique cutters Del had found under the skull that might or might not have belonged to Horace Chatterley. Those cutters were probably connected in some way with Horace Chatterley’s murder, but how? Were they meant to convey a message? Olivia couldn’t shake the suspicion that those lovely, abused antiques might somehow lead her to Kenny Vayle’s killer.

  Olivia sat up so quickly that Spunky yapped in alarm. “It’s okay, sweetie.” Olivia felt his little body relax as she massaged the soft hair behind his ears. “I need to go over my suspect list again.” Olivia disentangled her legs from the covers. “You can stay here, Spunks, and have a nice snooze.”

  Spunky had other ideas. He leaped off the bed and headed toward the hallway. At the doorway, he paused to yap at his mistress. “Oh, all right,” Olivia said. “I’ll give you one extra Milk Bone, but that’s it. Then you hightail it back to bed. Understood?” Spunky yapped again. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” she said, though Spunky had already disappeared.

  It would be cold downstairs in the store, so Olivia pulled on an old pair of jeans and a scruffy sweatshirt. She left the bedding tangled. With any luck, she’d be diving under those covers again soon. A dreamless sleep awaited once she had removed the whirling thoughts from her mind and recorded them on paper. Her father had called the exercise a “brain squeeze,” and he had taught the skill to Olivia.

  The apartment kitchen was empty when Olivia entered it. Spunky had failed to stop for his promised treat. Such behavior was unprecedented. A sharp yap called her down the hallway to the front entrance, where she found a determined little Yorkie barring the door with every one of his five pounds. Olivia gave up without a fight. She knew Spunky would fret if she went downstairs alone in the middle of the night. “Okay, fine.” Olivia opened the deadbolt. “You can sleep on your chair out on the sales floor, and that’s my final offer. If you try to sneak into the kitchen, I’ll turn you over to the health department myself.”

  Once downstairs, Olivia unlocked the Gingerbread House door and held it open for Spunky. He entered with an air of ownership and, Olivia thought, smugness. However, he stopped to look back as if worried his human might be planning to lock him inside, alone. He relaxed when Olivia followed him to the sales floor, flipped the lights on low, and locked the two of them inside.

  Ever hopeful, Spunky followed Olivia to the kitchen door and stared up at her with eyes that begged to be allowed to go inside. “I’m sorry, little one.” Olivia crouched down to rub his ears. “Not even your melting gaze could convince me to let you into the kitchen.” Spunky accepted defeat and headed toward his chair, his claws clicking on the tile floor.

  Olivia slipped into the kitchen and flipped on the lights. She eyed the clean, empty coffeepot with longing. After the shock of Kurt Kurtzel’s late night appearance, she and Maddie had reported the incident to the Twiterton police and then decided to call it a night. Maddie had already cleaned Mr. Coffee, so Olivia had no dregs to reheat. She wasn’t sleepy at the moment, but coffee always helped her think. In the interests of alert sleuthing, she brewed half a pot before settling at the kitchen table to skim through her original list of suspects and questions.

  “Well, this won’t help much.” Olivia’s voice sounded eerie in the empty kitchen. She wished Maddie were there, baking cookies and humming off key to her earbuds. A gulp of sweet, milky coffee comforted Olivia. She returned to her list and began to jot notes next to her questions. The first two seemed to have simple answers. The mysterious Jack was probably one of Crystal’s post-Kenny companions, but almost certainly not legally married to her. That might explain why Jack had told Polly, when he’d arrived at her homeless shelter, that he had come to Chatterley Heights to see his “stepdaughter”—presumably Crystal’s daughter, Alicia. Olivia had found no evidence that Crystal ever bothered to marry or divorce any of the men who’d followed Kenny. Nor had she divorced Kenny or had him declared dead. It followed that Crystal’s marriage to Robbie Quinn was a sham.

  Olivia’s next question now had an answer, as well. Robbie and Kenny once were, if not friends, at least drinking buddies. According to the story Lucas had told, Kenny had publicly warned Robbie to stay away from Crystal, which implied they were involved before Kenny disappeared. It probably wasn’t Kenny’s drinking that ended his so-called friendship with Robbie, though it might have driven Crystal into Robbie’s arms.

  That left Kurt Kurtzel. He had developed an unsavory attachment to the m
uch younger Alicia Vayle. Kenny, whatever his other failings, had loved his daughter, and he had ordered Kurt to stay away from her.

  “Kurt Kurtzel has one mean temper,” Olivia told her nearly empty coffee cup. Kenny got between Kurt and Alicia, so Kurt took revenge on Kenny by posting a photo of him looking drunk. Olivia poured the last of the coffee into her cup, shivering at the memory of Kurt’s midnight visit to the Gingerbread House kitchen. His behavior had struck her as staged, like an online persona designed to appear mysterious and threatening. Still, his obsessive pursuit of Alicia sent a chill down Olivia’s spine. She imagined him lurking in the alley behind The Gingerbread House, disabling their light, watching them come and go . . . Then he had forced his way into their kitchen, terrifying Maddie in the process. True, Kurt hadn’t produced a real weapon, but quite possibly the police did confiscate his switchblade. In fact, finding such a weapon on him might have convinced the police to arrest Kurt for trying to slug Pete.

  Olivia took a sip of warm coffee as she pondered the final question on her list: on the day he disappeared, who had Kenny Vayle gone to meet about a job? Olivia wondered if this meeting, if there was one, had taken place at the Chatterley Boarding House, perhaps in the very room where Kenny’s bones were found.

  So far, no one had mentioned how Kenny might have heard about a possible job opportunity—a phone call, a note, over a beer in a nearby bar? If Del knew the answer, he hadn’t shared it with Olivia. He was too busy salivating over an old skull with his forensic buddies. Olivia dropped her pen on the table and rubbed her eyelids. She still wasn’t sleepy, but she was certainly getting cranky. More discouraging, she wasn’t any closer to a breathtaking breakthrough.