On impulse, Olivia poked her head into the kitchen. Maddie had just removed a sheet of rosewater cookies from the oven. For a moment, the sweet floral fragrance helped soothe Olivia’s jitters. Who needs meditation when there are cookies fresh from the oven?
“Bertha,” Olivia said, “would you mind filling in on the sales floor for a bit? I just want to confer with Maddie.”
“Of course.” Bertha capped her pastry bag of royal icing and left.
Maddie set the cookie sheet on a cooling rack. “What’s up? Did you think of someone to investigate, I hope? Because much as I love baking and decorating, this is getting a bit old. I could use a little distraction. Plus, I was thinking we ought to clear up this murder thing before my engagement party. It could seriously get in the way of Lucas and me being the center of attention tomorrow. Or is that selfish and callous?”
“No comment,” Olivia said, laughing for the first time since breakfast. “How about a breather from the baking? I need some computer magic.”
“Sure. In fact, I declare the baking finished. More or less. I made a couple extra batches, just in case. We do have to complete the decorating and assemble the cookie cake…assuming our organic rose petals ever arrive. The company did call, by the way, to tell us there’d been a delay, but we should be getting the package this afternoon.” Maddie washed flour off her hands, and asked, “What would you like my dancing keyboard fingers to ferret out for you?”
“First, I don’t want anyone to know what you’re doing, so keep the screen out of sight,” Olivia said. “I’m frustrated. We have bits and pieces, but they don’t add up to much. Nothing leads anywhere. This is just a hunch, but see if you can track down anything about—” Olivia paused to peek out at the sales area. Jennifer was helping a customer, and Bertha had taken over the dusting. “Let’s move out of earshot.” She led Maddie to the storage cabinet at the far end of the kitchen.
“Ooh, clandestine research,” Maddie said. “How exciting.”
“As I said, I might be way off base, only the dates are suggestive.” Olivia spoke softly, aware that Jennifer was in the store. “Remember what Stacey said about ‘Jennie’? The girl she thought might be Jennifer? She said there was an older sister who might have been murdered when ‘Jennie’ was about nine. I think that was about the time Trevor and Dougie were juniors or seniors in high school.”
“And Howie, too, though he was a couple years younger,” Maddie said. “So you’re looking for a possible connection between those guys and this Jennie’s older sister? Yeah, that’s a long shot. Yet somehow intriguing.” Maddie rubbed her hands together in gleeful anticipation. “You tell Bertha to keep Jennifer busy on the sales floor, so she won’t pop into the kitchen.”
When Olivia returned, Maddie had turned the laptop screen so it couldn’t be seen by someone entering the kitchen. After furiously tapping for about thirty seconds, she stopped and said, “Oops.”
“Oops what?”
“I know it’s masochistic, Livie, but I requested an alert when Binnie Sloan publishes one of her wretched blog posts. I’m skimming her latest and…Oh my.”
“Oh my what?”
“Short version,” Maddie said. “Binnie leads with a picture of Spunky snarling at her, but the rest is way different from what I expected after this morning. She claims Spunky is merely reflecting the rage of his owner because she…that is, you…have been dumped.”
“I have?”
“Yep, says so right here. Del finally dumped you, once and for all eternity, in favor of Jennifer. Okay, here’s the scoop: Binnie found out about the hammer the police found in the band shell. She claims Stacey put it there to protect ‘that useless drunk’ Wade. Binnie’s words, not mine.”
“Somehow I guessed that,” Olivia said.
“Del let Stacey leave town because, according to Binnie, he is too distracted with Jennifer to do his job as sheriff. Ooh, and here’s the best part: Binnie speculates that Jennifer might be the real murderer. Jennifer and Trevor came to Chatterley Heights at about the same time. Jennifer came from Twiterton, as did Trevor originally. And Jennifer got a job with the sheriff’s girlfriend, maybe to keep an eye on the sheriff ‘while she carried out her plan for cold, calculating revenge.’ I think Binnie has finally snapped.”
“Finally?”
“Wow. Livie, listen to this: ‘We suspect that Jennifer lured Trevor Lane to Chatterley Heights for her own secret reasons…a childhood crush, perhaps? Did the great Trevor Lane once brush her off like a gnat? Did he do so again after returning to his ancestral home? And has he paid for it with his life?’”
“Ancestral home?” Olivia leaned against the kitchen counter so she could keep an eye on the door. Something about Binnie Sloan’s bizarre assertions sparked Olivia’s curiosity. If she could only figure out—
“Livie? This is planet Earth hailing your ship. Please tell me you don’t believe anything Binnie says.”
“Hm? Oh no, of course not. Binnie is speculating wildly, as always, but…well, why isn’t she making up a nasty fictional story about us?”
“I’m okay with that, really I am.” Maddie sounded confused, verging on impatient. “Are you saying you feel slighted because Binnie is picking on Jennifer more than you? Because I’m thinking gratitude makes a lot more sense.”
Olivia began to pace around the kitchen table, hoping her thoughts would fall into logical order. “Okay, we—that is, you and I, Mom, Spunky, even Bertha—humiliated Binnie, and she vowed vengeance. After that, she wrote a blog post that rehashed her earlier innuendos about Del and Jennifer. Old news, no one cares. Then she singled out Jennifer and accused her of ‘cold and calculating’ murder. That strikes me as very strange. It doesn’t make sense.” Olivia pulled a chair next to Maddie, angled so she would notice if the kitchen door began to open. “I think Binnie is privy to information we haven’t discovered yet,” she said. “Either she has been scouring the Internet, or she’s getting information from someone else. You and I need to do some serious dot-connecting.”
“Cool.” Maddie flexed her fingers. “My computer skills are at your command.”
“See if you can find any evidence that Trevor, Dougie, Howie, and Jennifer are all linked to one another in some way, perhaps in their teenaged past. Besides the fact that they’re all from Twiterton, that is.”
“Jennifer is a lot younger than the guys,” Maddie said. “She wouldn’t have gone to school with them.”
“True, but what about her older half sister? Stacey mentioned she didn’t attend school because she was ‘slow,’ but it’s an angle worth investigating. I really want to know how she died. I’d also like to know more about the tensions among the three men, especially post–high school. While you’re at it, hack into my email and see if Allan sent an email about Howie.”
“I’d love to,” Maddie said. “Have you changed your password?”
“Haven’t had time.”
“Well, it isn’t hacking if I know the password. It won’t be as much fun.”
“I think I’ll have a chat with Jennifer. I’ll have Bertha watch the sales floor, so you’ll be alone in here.”
Jennifer was ringing up a sale when Olivia joined her at the register. As the customer left with her package, Olivia said, “We seem to be short on customers today.”
Jennifer smiled, but her deep green eyes were un-readable.
“Why don’t you and I straighten the cookbook nook for a while?” Olivia said, leading the way into the nook. “Bertha can keep an eye on the sales floor, in case a customer wanders in by mistake. Honestly, I don’t know what’s happened to Chatterley Heights. You’d think we’d be swarmed with curious citizens, what with a murder and the press descending on us this morning.”
“I wondered about that, too. Maybe they’re saving their appetites for the party tomorrow.” Jennifer rescued a bouquet-shaped cookie cutter from under the bookcase, where it had bounced during Binnie’s destructive exit from the cookbook nook. As Jennifer ran her fing
er over a new dent in the top edge, her pale eyebrows drew together in an angry frown.
“Or maybe they’re too busy emailing each other and reading blogs to sate their curiosity about this morning’s drama in The Gingerbread House. You know what outlandish stories find their way online.”
With a slight shake of her head, Jennifer said, “I’m afraid I’m out of step with my peers. I don’t have a computer, so I don’t use the Internet much. My cell phone has Internet access, but I rarely use it, and I have no interest at all in blogs. Cookie cutters are much more fun.”
“I agree,” Olivia said. “You are very knowledgeable about cookie cutters. Did your mother teach you?”
For the first time since Jennifer’s arrival at The Gingerbread House, Olivia saw a genuine smile light her face. “Oh yes,” Jennifer said, “my mother loved cookie cutters. We had lots of them, all passed down from my grandmother and great-grandmother. My mother told us about the cutters while we baked.”
Jennifer had said “us,” yet had made no mention of any possible siblings. Much as she wanted to ask directly, Olivia was afraid Jennifer would shut down. Instead, Olivia asked, “Does your mother still have all those cutters?”
“No, she…” Jennifer’s smile faded. “My mother passed away. I’m keeping the collection of cutters packed away for now.”
Hoping to lighten the mood, Olivia asked, “You lived in Twiterton as a child, didn’t you? Was it as gossipy as most small towns?”
Jennifer hesitated for only a moment. “Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “I do remember my mother complained that everyone was into everyone else’s business. She was a very private person.”
Olivia took a bound notebook and pen from a locked drawer in an antique bureau. “Since it’s so quiet, let’s do a little inventory, shall we? I like to keep track of stock in the cookbook nook, since customers are often alone in here. Not that I don’t trust my customers.”
“It’s smart to be careful,” Jennifer said with an edge in her voice. “People can’t always be trusted.”
Olivia handed the notebook and pen to Jennifer. “I’ll rearrange the cookbooks in alphabetical order, and you can mark them off on the inventory list.” They had worked through the A’s and B’s before Olivia said, casually, “I don’t know many folks from Twiterton. I can only think of one who lives here in Chatterley Heights. He works at the bank. His name is Howie…Howie Upton, I think. Do you know him?”
Jennifer dropped her pen and bent down to pick it up. “The name doesn’t sound familiar,” she said, focusing on the inventory list. “I haven’t had a chance to open an account yet. Anyway, I was a kid when we left Twiterton.”
“Why did you decide to move to Chatterley Heights instead of back home?”
“Twiterton isn’t the town I remember. Now it’s more of a bedroom community,” she said, responding with ease and confidence. “I wanted more of a small-town feel.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Olivia said. “I guess that’s why I’m a bit of a small-town gossip myself. I am so curious about Trevor Lane and Dougie Adair. I know they were both from Twiterton.”
With a light laugh, Jennifer said, “I can understand your curiosity, given what’s happened. I honestly can’t tell you anything about them. They were a lot older than I was. All I ever heard was that Trevor and Dougie played football.”
Since Jennifer sounded more relaxed, Olivia decided to dig a little deeper. “If my experience is any clue, high school football heroes leave a mark for years. I remember seeing our school corridors lined with trophies and photos of quarterbacks. And, of course, there were photos of prom kings and queens, who were usually football players and cheerleaders.”
“Oh yeah,” Jennifer said. “I heard Trevor Lane was a big football hero, even after he left town. Especially after people found out he’d become an actor.”
“I’m amazed that he and Dougie Adair maintained their friendship over all these years.”
Jennifer was marking off cookbook names as if she’d done inventory her whole life. “I’m not positive that Trevor and Dougie are such great friends,” she said.
“Really?”
Jennifer’s pen froze in midair. “I don’t know for sure, you understand, only it seemed to me that Trevor hogged the spotlight, and I don’t think Dougie Adair was very happy about that. I mean, when they were here in the store. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
Was Jennifer in the store when Trevor, Dougie, and Lenora were holding court? I thought she hadn’t shown up for work. “You could be right,” Olivia said carefully. “Trevor did seem to outshine his companions.” Olivia sneaked a peek at Jennifer’s profile as she made quick work of the cookbook inventory. The shy softness of her mouth had tightened. She looked nervous…or angry.
* * *
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Olivia said. Maddie barely smiled, she was so engrossed in her computer search. “Bertha is back on the sales floor keeping Jennifer busy. I had an interesting and revealing conversation with Jennifer.”
“Uh-huh,” Maddie said without taking her eyes from the screen.
“While we were talking, a herd of performing rhinoceroses entered the store. They want us to do a circus-themed cookie party under a big top.”
“Aha!” Maddie leaped up from her chair and did a little celebration dance.
“Why do I suspect your joy has nothing to do with the rhinoceroses?” Olivia glanced at the screen but had no idea what she was looking at.
“You’re seeing rhinoceroses?”
“Never mind,” Olivia said. “What have you found?”
Maddie plopped onto her chair and pointed to the computer screen. “Somebody scanned this newspaper article and posted it online. It’s an old article, wrinkled and yellowed, so it’s blurry in spots. However, since my eyes are two months younger than yours, I can read it to you. Pull up a chair. We don’t want curious ears to hear this.”
Olivia peeked out to the sales floor and was pleased to see three customers. Bertha was showing one woman their extensive array of sanding sugars, while Jennifer explained a variety of decorating tools to the other two. “All quiet on the sales front,” Olivia said as she moved a kitchen chair next to Maddie at the computer.
“Mostly I found bits and pieces of information, which I’ll go over in a minute,” Maddie said. “But this is the mother lode. This piece appears to be cut from the Twiterton Times weekly newspaper, a 1993 edition. The rest of the date isn’t legible. However, we can gather from the content that it probably was published in late May. The article is about the death of Melissa Nortenson, and it mentions she had a younger sister. I don’t see the sister’s name, though.”
“So in 1993…” Olivia did a quick calculation. “If Jennifer told the truth during her interview, she is now twenty-eight years old, which means she was about nine in 1993. Supposedly, that’s when Jennie’s half sister died.”
“Yep,” Maddie said. “So I’ll bet you another red mixer that your brother was right: Jennie Nortenson and Jennifer Elsworth are indeed one and the same. She attended Twiterton High at least through junior year, so she couldn’t have left town before about 2000 or 2001.”
“Interesting.” Olivia mentioned Jennifer’s comment that, during their recent visit to The Gingerbread House, Trevor had “hogged the spotlight,” and Dougie was unhappy about it. “I wonder if someone told Jennifer about it, or if she really was in the crowd somewhere,” Olivia said. “She’s been insisting that she didn’t know Trevor or Dougie at all, but clearly she knew about them.”
“I sure didn’t see her during the event, but it was awfully crowded,” Maddie said. “She wouldn’t have been in high school when they were, but she might have heard about them. Why would Jennifer want to hide the fact she went to Twiterton High?”
Olivia stretched to loosen a tight shoulder muscle. “Perhaps to keep her identity a secret.” She squinted at the fuzzy print on the computer screen. “I wonder who posted this piece. It lo
oks choppy, as if someone cut it apart and reassembled it, maybe to delete specific information. If your eyes are so great, tell me what it says.”
“Sure, but first, about how this piece got itself posted…” Maddie clicked away and scrolled through some unintelligible information. “It’s sort of like an anonymous website. Whoever did this knew what he or she was doing. This involved skilled programming. The identifying information is encrypted. I can’t figure out where it was sent from.”
“Jennifer just told me she doesn’t use the Internet,” Olivia said.
“Then either she’s lying, or someone else did this. I’m good, but not good enough to translate all this stuff. We’d need a younger computer genius with a more extensive skill set than even I possess. However, I can tell you what the article says, minus a few unintelligible words.”
“I’ll settle for that,” Olivia said. “But use your low-energy voice, just in case.”
“I’ll be positively pooped,” Maddie said. “In fact, to save energy, I’ll simply summarize this article for you. Anyway, it’s too sad to read word for word. Melissa Nortenson, age sixteen, was found dead at the base of a cliff not far from Twiterton. Cause of death was a broken neck. Foul play not ruled out but no viable suspects were identified. Some unnamed persons were questioned but apparently had alibis. Bruising on the arms and wrists suggests a possible struggle. Victim described as a pretty redhead with limited mental capacity. Due to the latter, she did not attend the local high school but was homeschooled.”
“Homeschooled,” Olivia said. “By her addict mother and nine-year-old sister?”
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