Cookie Dough or Die accsm-1

by Virginia Lowell

  “Impressive,” Olivia said. “And I see you’ve even arranged for entertainment.” She pointed out the window toward the sidewalk. A black Lab the size of a pony loped past, scattering passersby.

  “The cavalry won’t be far behind,” Del said, shaking his head.

  Within seconds, a tall young man with a frantic expression sprinted past the window. It was Deputy Cody Furlow, trying to dodge the folks his dog, Buddy, had nearly mowed down.

  “Is Spunky still trying to run away, too?” Del asked.

  “Not as often. I think he’s feeling safer now.”

  “That’s one plucky little guy,” Del said. “Escaping from a puppy mill, living on the streets of Baltimore for weeks. It would make a terrific movie.”

  “Yeah, he’s a great little con artist. It’s part of his charm.”

  Once they’d ordered, Del rested his chin on his laced fingers and regarded Olivia with a concerned expression. “You wanted to talk about Clarisse?”

  Olivia sipped her coffee, searching for the right words to describe Clarisse’s behavior a few days earlier. It was the last time she’d ever see Clarisse, but she couldn’t have known that, so she hadn’t paid rapt attention to their conversation. Though it had struck her as off-kilter, she wasn’t sure she could explain how or why. Del didn’t prod her, for which she was grateful.

  When their orders arrived, Del dug into his turkey club as Olivia said, “Clarisse Chamberlain was the sharpest, most determined woman I’ve ever met, and I admired her for that, even though sometimes I didn’t agree with her. She always seemed to know what she wanted.”

  Del nodded encouragement while he chewed.

  “But the last time I talked to her, she was like a different person.”

  “When was this exactly?” Del crunched the tip of a dill pickle.

  “Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday is usually a slow retail day, so I was glad to see her and hoping for a chat. Her business insights were always so helpful to me. I offered her a cup of coffee, only she didn’t seem to hear me.”

  “Livie, you know how distracted people can get, no matter how sharp they are. Hugh and Edward are both in their thirties, so Clarisse must have been nearing sixty. At her age, lots of folks are thinking about retiring to the golf course. Maybe she was tired, or maybe she wanted time to use all those cookie cutters instead of just collecting them.”

  “I wonder if you will feel that way when you are sixty,” Olivia said. “Besides, Clarisse had no interest in cooking. She certainly wasn’t longing to become a housewife.”

  “I didn’t mean . . . Okay, help me understand. You said Clarisse wasn’t acting like herself Tuesday afternoon. What did she say or do to leave you with that impression? Tell me everything you can remember.”

  Olivia munched on her salad, casting her mind back to that afternoon. Clarisse was wearing her long, wool winter coat, even though spring had touched the air that day. Olivia had glanced at Clarisse’s face and sensed right away that something was wrong.

  “Her lipstick was smudged,” Olivia said, “badly smudged.” Before Del could respond, she added, “And don’t suggest she’d been eating an apple or making out. I never saw Clarisse without perfect makeup, even when I’d drop off a delivery at her home without calling ahead.”

  “Point taken,” Del said. “What else struck you? Better yet, describe the whole scene to me, including any details that stuck with you. People tend to remember details that have meaning for them, even if they don’t realize their significance at the time.”

  Fortified by food, Olivia placed herself back in time and described what she saw. “I noticed that Clarisse’s face was sort of pinched, scrunched up—”

  “Frowning? Angry?” Del leaned forward, elbows on the table.

  “Not angry. More like she was thinking about a problem, something that worried her. When she saw me, she smiled. Not a big smile, and she didn’t greet me by name, like she usually does. Did, I mean. It’s so hard to believe—”

  “I know.”

  Olivia exhaled a sigh. “She was carrying a large purse, the one she used when she had lots of errands or was delivering a package somewhere. I remember because she opened it, looked inside, then snapped it shut. Then she glanced around the store again, but she stood rooted in one place as if she couldn’t remember why she’d come.

  “I asked her, ‘Is there something special you’re looking for, Clarisse? We’ve gotten in several new spring collections since you were here last.’ She didn’t react, so I added that we’d received several vintage pieces from the 1970s Hallmark Peanuts collection. She perked up and asked to see them, so we walked over to the curio cabinet.”

  Del interrupted, his voice muted. “Do you keep it locked? Just wondering.”

  “I always try to, although I’d let Clarisse sort through it. The average shoplifter wouldn’t know the value of vintage cookie cutters—some can be worth hundreds of dollars—but serious collectors and antiques dealers do. At night, we lock the most valuable ones in the safe.”

  “Good,” Del said. “Makes my job easier. Go on.”

  “When I got out the Peanuts cookie cutters, Clarisse picked up one with Snoopy dancing. She held it for several seconds while she stared off into space. Finally, she said something like, ‘So gleeful,’ softly, almost to herself. Then she said to me, ‘I’ll take this one.’ As I walked over to the sales counter, she called to me, ‘I’m going to look around a bit.’ I looked over my shoulder, but she’d already turned her back on me.

  “I said to her, ‘Of course, take your time,’ but she didn’t answer. I felt a bit . . . well, rejected. Clarisse had never acted so distant, not with me.”

  Olivia picked at the remains of her salad. “I know it doesn’t sound like much, but in the last few months, Clarisse had been treating me almost like a daughter, taking me out to dinner, offering unwelcome advice. . . .”

  Del chuckled. “Sounds about right.”

  “The next thing she did during her visit on Tuesday was out of character,” Olivia said. “She asked me for some of our cookie recipes.”

  “You said she didn’t bake,” Del said, sounding interested.

  “I must have looked surprised, because she added that they were for Bertha. Even that didn’t make a lot of sense. When Clarisse wanted decorated cookies for a gathering, she always hired us to provide them. Anyway, I said, sure, I’d go make copies of them.”

  “Anything else you can remember?”

  “That’s about it. When I returned with the recipes, Clarisse had put another cookie cutter on the counter—a flower shape, I think. I wrapped it up, then walked over to her, and . . . You know, I thought I’d imagined this, but after Sam’s comment, I’m not so sure.”

  Olivia pushed her plate aside, so she could lean on her elbows. Rubbing her temples with her fingers, she said, “Clarisse was standing in front of a collection of cookie cutters meant for baby showers—you know, baby booties, rattles, a rocking horse, that sort of thing. She was holding a baby carriage shape. I touched her lightly on the sleeve of her coat, and her head jerked up as if I’d startled her home from another world. She looked right at me. I’d swear she had tears in her eyes. But she recovered so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. Then today, Sam insisted that grandchildren were very important to Clarisse—except she’d never mentioned it to me.”

  Del said, “Sounds like a safe, generic observation, the kind Sam often uses to elicit information. What mother doesn’t want grandchildren? However, what you saw might be helpful.”

  Del was silent for a few moments. A wrinkle between his eyebrows told Olivia that he’d taken her seriously and was giving her observations some thought.

  “You’re actually pretty good at this,” he said. “You have no idea how hard it is to get coherent details out of witnesses. I understand now why you’ve felt concerned. I might be able to put your mind at rest, at least partially.” Del leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “I’m going to tell you some information we
’ve gathered since Clarisse was found. It hasn’t been very long, and we don’t yet have the autopsy and other test results, so this will be sketchy. Only here’s the thing, Livie, don’t tell anyone else, not even Maddie. Especially not Maddie. There are enough rumors out there already.”

  “Of course I won’t,” Olivia said.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, or even that this information will turn out to be important, but . . . well, we simply don’t know what we’re looking at here.”

  “Del, are you saying that—”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  Olivia leaned closer and whispered, “Are you saying that there’s something suspicious about Clarisse’s death?”

  “No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m pretty sure it was an accident, only . . . Look, I’ll tell you what I can, then you’ll understand why it’s important to keep this to yourself.”

  Del glanced around the half-empty café and seemed satisfied. “Okay. It looks right now like Clarisse drank a full bottle of red wine the night she died. Bertha said Clarisse asked her to open the bottle and bring it to her study. She also said Clarisse normally drank no more than one glass of wine, and only with dinner. Clarisse had trouble sleeping, Bertha said, and she had a prescription for strong sleeping pills. Since she had trouble swallowing pills, she always crushed the sleeping pills and added them to liquid, usually water or orange juice. Bertha said she’d seemed troubled lately. The evening of her death, she had barely touched her dinner.”

  “Which means,” Olivia said, “she was drinking wine and taking pills on an empty stomach.”

  “Exactly. Bertha got up at about three a.m. to answer the shout of nature, as she put it, and saw the lights on downstairs. She found Clarisse on her study floor. She was lying facedown, halfway between her desk and the study door, as if she’d realized she was in trouble and had tried to get help.”

  Olivia stared out the café window. The sky had been darkening all morning; rain would arrive before long. “So what you’re saying is that Clarisse was so disturbed, she didn’t realize or care that she was doing something really stupid?” Olivia’s mind flashed again to her many conversations with Clarisse. “I don’t know, though. . . . Clarisse could be stubborn, but she wasn’t ever stupid.”

  Del shrugged. “We’ll see what the autopsy reveals. Right now I’m concerned about a third alternative, given what you and everyone else have told us about Clarisse’s state of mind. I want it kept quiet until we’ve had a chance to eliminate the possibility.” Del checked his watch. “I need to get back to the station. What you’ve recounted only supports what everyone else has said, that Clarisse was more distracted than anyone had ever seen her. We have to explore the possibility that Clarisse herself might have decided to—”

  “No!” A couple of heads swiveled in their direction, and Olivia lowered her voice. “I know what you are going to say, but Clarisse would never choose to end her own life. She could face anything. Whatever was bothering her, she would have found a solution or gritted her teeth and carried on.”

  Del reached over and touched Olivia’s arm for a brief moment. For some reason, it only made her angrier.

  “I hope you’re right,” Del said. “Look, I know how much you want answers, but please don’t go out there on your own, asking questions that might fuel rumors. Clarisse had several life insurance policies, and we don’t want big-city insurance investigators getting the wind up while we’re still trying to figure out what happened.”

  Olivia nodded her assent to a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

  Chapter Three

  After her unsettling lunch with Del, Olivia walked back to The Gingerbread House in a funk. She couldn’t accept the idea that Clarisse had died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol. Clarisse had been a nurse, for heaven’s sakes. And after her marriage, she and Martin had created a medical supply business that grew to be their largest, most successful venture. Clarisse had been far too knowledgeable to make such an ignorant and deadly error, no matter how preoccupied she was.

  Olivia understood why Del didn’t want her to broadcast her doubts about Clarisse’s death. Naturally he’d want to protect his town from outside invaders who might take over his investigation. She doubted he’d prevail once the circumstances of Clarisse’s death became known. Insurance investigators were paid to be suspicious. Besides, Clarisse’s reputation reached beyond little Chatterley Heights, and her death would capture media attention.

  Olivia hated the idea that Clarisse might have chosen to end her own life. As she approached The Gingerbread House, an unwelcome thought wormed into her mind: Clarisse would have known how to make her death look like an accident. But why? What could possibly have driven her to such a desperate act? And how could she, Clarisse’s friend, not have understood the signs?

  She would be asking questions, that much was certain. She wanted, needed to know what had been going on in Clarisse’s life during those days before her death. This wasn’t idle curiosity. Olivia was angry, and the person she was most mad at was herself. She kept replaying in her mind Clarisse’s last time at The Gingerbread House. She should have paid more attention, prodded Clarisse to share her troubles. Maybe she could have helped. Instead, she’d reacted like a rejected child.

  When she entered the store, Olivia was relieved to see Maddie working with a talkative customer. She went straight to the kitchen, grabbing a small pile of invoices on the way. Paperwork wasn’t her favorite part of her job, but it might help clear her mind. She settled at her little desk and fired up her laptop. Ten minutes of communing with numbers and her mind had numbed completely. She could barely keep her eyes open. She closed the laptop to put it to sleep, and then she joined it.

  A moment later, or so it felt, someone was shaking Olivia’s shoulder. She recognized Maddie’s voice saying, “Livie? Wake up. You need to take Tammy off my hands before I kill her.”

  “Kill?” Olivia couldn’t seem to lift her head. “Maddie? Did you say someone killed Tammy?”

  “No such luck.” Maddie pulled Olivia’s shoulders to make her sit up.

  Olivia lifted her head and winced. “What happened to my neck?”

  “Well,” Maddie said, “I’d say it has something to do with sleeping for half an hour on your right cheek. Here, I can fix it.” She wrapped one arm around Olivia’s head and pushed down on her right shoulder with the other.

  “Ow!” Olivia heard a crack. She expected her head to fall off as Maddie let go, but instead her neck was back to normal, more or less. “Hey, that worked!”

  “Yeah, those three hours in chiropractic school really paid off. Listen, Livie, you have got to go out there and talk to Tammy. She insists on showing you something, and she won’t leave me alone to help actual customers. I told her you ran off with a circus lion tamer last night, but she just rolled her eyes. You’ll have to handle her. I liked her a lot better when she was mad at you, but unfortunately all appears to be forgiven.”

  Olivia dragged herself to the sink and splashed cold water on her face. As she blotted the water with a paper towel, it occurred to her that Maddie was crabby. Maddie was never crabby. “You need a nap, don’t you?”

  “I’m fine. Wanting to strangle Tammy Deacons is an everyday urge for me.”

  “Yes, but you are normally cheerful about it. You need a nap.” Olivia dug her keys out of her pants pocket and handed them to Maddie. “Here, use the guest bed. Spunky will undoubtedly join you.”

  “Good,” Maddie said, taking the keys. “Spunky never irritates me, unlike certain childhood friends of yours.”

  While Maddie escaped upstairs, Olivia greeted Tammy with a wave. Her friendship with Tammy went back to nursery school, six years before Maddie and her aunt moved to town. There had always been a rivalry between her two old friends, but Olivia made a point of ignoring it. Life was much easier that way.

  “Oh, Livie, there you are. I have to show you what I bought. It’s so gorgeous, and i
t fits me perfectly if I don’t gain an ounce.” Tammy held up a large paper bag with black and gold stripes and a gold rope handle, the signature colors of Lady Chatterley’s Clothing Boutique for Elegant Ladies. Tammy opened the bag so Olivia could peek inside. Something small and flat lay at the bottom, wrapped in layers of tissue paper and sealed shut with a shiny paper medallion.

  Tammy’s heart-shaped face glowed with excitement, which Olivia would have tried to share if she could see through the tissue paper. She was also very confused. Maddie was right: for the last few weeks Tammy had shunned Olivia. She hadn’t visited the store or returned phone calls, she cancelled a shopping trip to Baltimore they’d had planned for a month, she even snubbed Olivia in public. Olivia still had no idea why. In all their years of friendship, this had never happened before.

  The strange turn their relationship had taken made Olivia want to reconnect with her other old friend Stacey who taught at Tammy’s school. Maybe she would know why Tammy was being so fickle. Olivia suddenly remembered that Stacey had never been a big fan of the woman who now stood before her, bursting with excitement. In the interest of keeping the peace, Olivia decided to put that call to Stacey on hold. The joyful nature of Tammy’s forgiveness was puzzling, given Olivia had no idea what she’d done wrong, but they’d been friends a long time and Olivia felt the least she could do was share in her friend’s present glory.

  “Did you buy a dress?” Olivia guessed.

  “Only the most beautiful, most perfect dress in the world. I have to try it on to give you the full effect. I’ll use the bathroom through the kitchen. Back in a sec.”

  Olivia glanced at the clock. Almost four, only an hour left before closing. She began to tidy up the store, which had reached what her mother referred to as “that lived-in look.” Numerous cookbooks lay open as if a committee had been planning a townwide bake-off. After rearranging them on their shelf in the cookbook nook, Olivia reconstructed a large display of cookie cutters representing every dog breed imaginable; apparently, a group of children had played with them, then abandoned them all over the store. She located her favorite, a Yorkshire terrier shape, standing triumphant guard over a stack of pot holders. At the base of the pot holder hill, a vanquished Great Dane lay on its side. Olivia rescued the two creatures, held them nose to nose, and said, “No more dog fights in the store, is that clear?” She smiled for the first time since Del had told her that Clarisse was dead.