Cookies and Scream (A Cookie Cutter Shop Mystery)

by Virginia Lowell

  When Olivia tossed the Milk-Bone into the air, Spunky leaped for it. “Oh, well done, Spunks,” Olivia said as he caught the treat in his teeth. She threw the remaining piece across the living room, and the little Yorkie sprinted toward it. After his morning workout and a meal, Spunky was ready for a nap. He jumped up on the sofa and snuggled into a corner.

  Olivia removed Greta Oskarson’s letters from the covered cake pan, and piled them on her living room coffee table. She sorted out any letters written in a language other than English, which accounted for more than about half the envelopes. Olivia’s task would not take nearly as long as she’d thought. She stored the non-English envelopes in one cake pan, which she slid on top of her refrigerator as if it contained cookies. After freshening her coffee, she returned to the living room sofa.

  Olivia started sorting the remaining envelopes by year, creating one pile for each year. The earliest legible postmark she could find was dated 1968. The letter would have arrived after the death of Greta’s first husband, the count who drowned after falling off their yacht. Olivia resisted the impulse to read the letter immediately. The next earliest date was five years later, 1973. By 1976, Greta was receiving at least one letter a year from English-speaking correspondents, and often three or four more. Olivia wondered if Greta had kept only selected letters.

  Olivia paused when she recognized Clarisse Chamberlain’s handwriting. Torn between curiosity and sadness, she placed the envelope on the table without opening it. Olivia still missed her friend and their long talks. Clarisse had been forthright and insightful. Olivia was quite curious about what she’d had to say to or about Greta. However, organization first.

  As Olivia picked up the next envelope, her cell phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID, and answered. “Hey, Maddie, are you up?”

  “I’m up, as well as down . . . downstairs in the foyer, that is. I am holding a large pizza with everything, so hightail it down here and let us in.”

  “Us? Do you mean you and the pizza?”

  “Okay, the three of us: me, the pizza, and Ellie.”

  “You brought my mother along?” Olivia groaned as she flopped back against the sofa. “I thought we were keeping this whole episode between the two of us.”

  “Well, it’s the three of us now. Or the four of us, actually. I discussed everything with Aunt Sadie this morning. Trust me, Aunt Sadie and your mom will be really helpful, and both of them can keep stuff to themselves. If Aunt Sadie weren’t in a wheelchair, I’d have brought her along, too. However, I promised I’d call her if we need any incisive insights. Come on, Livie, let us in. Cold sausage and pepperoni are not appealing.”

  “Oh, all right.” Olivia closed her phone with more snap than usual. However, she had to admit that her one-egg breakfast was long gone. “You stay where you are,” Olivia said to Spunky. “I’ll be right back upstairs with two of your best buddies.” Either Spunky understood her every word, or he was too drowsy to respond. Olivia made her escape quickly, before he realized she was leaving the apartment.

  Ten minutes later, the three women settled on Olivia’s sofa with plates of pizza and a roll of paper towels. Spunky yapped happily at Maddie and Ellie before he snuggled between them for part two of his nap.

  “I suggest we finish eating before we get to work,” Ellie said. “We don’t want to drip tomato sauce on these letters. It wouldn’t look good.”

  “It won’t look good to who?” Olivia asked.

  “Whom, dear,” Ellie said. “It won’t look good to whom.”

  “Whatever.” Olivia took an extra big bite of pizza.

  “If these letters are as important as we think, we will have to turn them over to the police.” Ellie selected a second slice of pizza, a narrow sliver with very little meat. “I see you’ve organized the envelopes by date, Livie. That takes me back to your childhood. You used to arrange your stuffed animals by size, the largest in the middle, the next largest on either side, and then smaller and smaller ones fanning out like wings. So artistic.”

  “And obsessive-compulsive,” Maddie said.

  Olivia took revenge by snagging the largest remaining slice of pizza.

  Ellie unfolded her small, slender body and stretched. “I feel nourished and refreshed,” she said. “I’ll wash my hands while you two finish eating. Then I want a look at those letters.”

  “I’m full,” Maddie said, “and tingling with curiosity. Let’s get cracking.”

  Olivia felt guilty about usurping the big slice of pizza, but it didn’t stop her from finishing the entire piece. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. After gathering up the empty pizza box and plates, she headed for the kitchen. Maddie followed.

  “I’ll get Mr. Coffee up and running,” Maddie said. “I don’t suppose you have any cookies lying around? I promise not to drop buttery crumbs on the evidence.”

  “As it happens, I froze a whole batch of lemon cutouts before I left on vacation. You know, in case I needed a midnight binge after the drive back. They aren’t iced, of course; I sprinkled sparkling sugar on them before I baked them.” Olivia reached into her freezer and dug out a covered cake tin. “The cookies will take a while to thaw.”

  “I like them frozen,” Maddie said.

  By the time Olivia and Maddie returned to the living room with trays of coffee and cookies, Ellie was already engrossed in one of Greta’s letters.

  “Not fair, Mom,” Olivia said. “You could have waited for us. Reading those letters was my idea, after all.”

  “Yes, dear, and I’ll remember that when we are arrested for possessing stolen property.” Ellie selected a bunny-shaped cookie with purple sprinkles, nibbled off the tip of an ear, and returned to her reading. Olivia rolled her eyes toward Maddie, who smirked.

  Olivia flopped onto the sofa. “Okay, Mom, how many letters have you already finished and what did they say?”

  “Hm?” Ellie’s eyes remained focused on the pale gray sheet of stationery in her hand. Her other hand held her cookie in the air, as if the bunny were reading alongside her.

  Olivia plucked the cookie from her mother’s hand. Ellie’s head snapped toward her hand, then to her cookie in Olivia’s hand. Ellie’s hazel eyes narrowed, a danger sign that her daughter remembered well from her childhood. She was prepared. When her mother’s small hand shot out to snatch the cookie, Olivia whipped it out of reach. “Talk,” Olivia said, “or you’ll never see your bunny again.”

  Ellie shifted to the lotus position, closed her eyes, and took several long, deep breaths. She opened her eyes and smiled. “Ah, much better. Now Livie, if you wanted to know what I’ve learned from this letter, you only needed to ask.”

  “I did ask. You ignored me.”

  “Oh.” Ellie’s forehead puckered. “I must have been too absorbed to hear you. Ah well, I shall work on improving my awareness of my surroundings. Now, about this letter . . .” Ellie retrieved the gray paper. “It is written in English, but the syntax is odd. More Germanic than English, I think, though I haven’t your gift for languages, Livie. You got that from your father. He was able to decipher entire bird conversations.”

  “Yes, Dad was awesome,” Olivia said. “Now, about that letter . . . ?

  “This letter is signed ‘Gerhard,’ Ellie said. “That’s all, just a first name. At least, I assume it’s a first name. Anyway, it sounds German to me, although I suppose it could be Scandinavian.”

  “Ellie, I’m perishing of curiosity,” Maddie said. “What does the letter actually say?”

  “Well, it reads like sort of an angry love letter. Hopeless love, that is . . . and very, very angry.” Ellie twirled a lock of long, gray hair around her index finger. “It’s such a shock when someone turns out to be so very different from the person she appears to be.”

  Olivia wished she’d snatched the letter, rather than the cookie, from her mother’s hand. “Agreed, Mom, but what d
oes the letter—”

  “I’m getting to that, Livie. Give me a chance.” Ellie skimmed through the letter again. “It begins rather abruptly by telling Greta to be patient, that her gift is on the way. That seems an odd way to offer a gift to a lady, which is why I sensed anger. Maybe Gerhard sent Greta a gift right before she broke it off with him, and there was no way he could stop it from arriving. Then there’s more about how valuable the gift is, and he hopes Greta is happy with it. So odd to harp on the value of a gift to a loved one. Usually one emphasizes the sentimental value.”

  “Maybe Greta wasn’t really a ‘loved one’ to Gerhard. Can I see that?” Olivia held out her hand, and her mother gave her the letter. “You’re right, this reads oddly. German isn’t my language, but I don’t think this phrasing results entirely from syntax issues. There’s some odd word usage, too. Listen to this: ‘I trust the value of this trinket will be of satisfaction to you. And that it will be the end of the matter.’ It sounds a bit . . .”

  “Like code!” Maddie bounced on the sofa and clapped her hands before grabbing two more envelopes.

  “I was going to say it sounds a bit formal, not what you’d write to a loved one,” Olivia said.

  “Here’s another one.” Ellie waved a sheet of blue paper. “This letter says, ‘I am enclosing the item you desired so much. Though I assume I will never hear from you again, yet a part of me does not regret our time together.’”

  “I might have one like that, too,” Maddie said as she skimmed a page of crisp, white stationery. “Listen to this: ‘Words cannot express my disappointment and my feeling of betrayal. You had only to ask, and I would have given you anything. Nevertheless, I am sending, under separate cover, the gift you crave.’”

  “There’s a distinct theme in these letters,” Olivia said. “It sounds to me as if the mysterious Greta Oskarson obtained her considerable wealth from more than just a series of wealthy husbands. I suspect she was also a prolific blackmailer.”

  “Ooh, blackmail,” Maddie said. “Now things are getting interesting.”

  “Our visit to the ER wasn’t interesting enough?” At once, Olivia wished she hadn’t opened her mouth.

  Ellie’s eyes widened. “The emergency room? Why? What happened? I thought you called 911 for Greta. Are you two all right?”

  “It’s nothing, Mom. We’re fine.”

  Ellie sprang off the sofa and glared down at her daughter. “Olivia Greyson, you told me all you did when Greta called was to call 911. What else happened last night? Tell me at once.”

  “Oh, all right, Mom, but we’re wasting time. I went to the emergency room because . . . well, Greta’s phone connection went dead while I was talking to her, and I didn’t know what had happened. So I called 911 and then hopped in my car. I heard the ambulance and followed it to the emergency room. I kept trying to get an update from the nurse or receptionist or whatever she was. She stonewalled me, never mind I was the one who called 911. I wasn’t a relative.”

  “I’m sure that was frustrating,” Ellie said, “but they do have their rules. They can’t be giving out personal information to someone who has no strong ties to the patient. I mean, what if Greta had been a celebrity, and you were a reporter angling for a scoop for some gossip magazine?”

  “Mom, why on earth . . . Never mind. I wanted to know if Greta was okay, let’s leave it at that. Here, eat your cookie.” Olivia returned the cookie she’d snatched from Ellie’s hand.

  Ellie nibbled on her cookie and frowned. “So what was the excitement about?”

  “No excitement. I called Maddie, and she came to meet me.”

  “But Livie, somehow you found out that Greta had died, and you became suspicious that she might have been murdered. Otherwise, you and Maddie wouldn’t have gone to her house and collected her letters.” Ellie sounded genuinely puzzled and worried.

  “That was my fault,” Maddie said. She quickly summarized her sneaky assault on the back entrance to the emergency room, her faked foot injury, and how she’d duped a gullible attendant into revealing Greta’s death. “Livie and I weren’t satisfied,” Maddie explained. “It sounded as if the doctors figured Greta was an old woman who just up and died from a breathing problem or something. We were afraid there wouldn’t be an autopsy because of her asthma. Plus we’d assumed Cody Furlow would want to investigate just to prove himself, but apparently he isn’t experienced enough to know a suspicious death when he sees one.”

  Ellie chewed on her lower lip, which Olivia recognized as a sign of nervous concentration. “Well, we’ll have to hope for the best,” Ellie said finally. “There may yet be an autopsy, especially if the doctor suspects an overdose, even an accidental one. If they find any evidence of something like poisoning, there will be an investigation. Cody will search Greta’s house.”

  “But we’ve already searched her house,” Maddie said, “and we found absolutely nothing that looked like evidence of poisoning.”

  “Uh-oh,” Olivia said as she flopped down on the sofa. “If the police do get suspicious later, they will dust for fingerprints. We didn’t think about that. Our fingerprints will be everywhere and on everything, including her bedroom furniture. That will be hard to explain.” Olivia grabbed a sofa pillow and hugged it. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

  “Now, now,” Ellie said. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Livie. You were awakened in the middle of the night with a crisis, which you had to handle. You felt personally responsible. One thing led to another . . .”

  “What’s my excuse?” Maddie asked.

  Ellie patted Maddie’s arm, and said, “You are Maddie. You are impulsive, excitable, and adventuresome.” Ellie arose from the sofa and stretched. “We needn’t assume the worst will happen, but we must be prepared. I know you won’t like my advice, but here it is: Go immediately to the police station and tell Cody everything you have told me. Emphasize your concern that Greta might have been murdered and your fear that her death was being written off as natural. And share these letters with Cody. I’d say there’s plenty in them to indicate that Greta might have been a blackmailer.”

  “And blackmailers,” Olivia said, “tend to get themselves murdered.”

  * * *

  By evening, Olivia and Maddie had read most of Greta’s letters and discussed possibilities for hours. They had decided to delay telling the deputy sheriff about their search of Greta’s house. They couldn’t provide any clear, indisputable evidence of either blackmail or murder, either in the house or in the letters. If an autopsy pointed to murder, they would come clean.

  The unrelenting heat plus her interrupted sleep the night before had left Olivia longing for rest, so she crawled under the covers at ten p.m. Spunky hopped up onto the foot of her bed, more than ready to snooze. Before Olivia would be able to fall asleep, however, she had one more task to perform, and she wasn’t looking forward to it. She propped up her pillow and leaned back against it. One envelope lay on Olivia’s bedside table, under her reading lamp. She picked it up with reluctance and stared at the familiar handwriting. It had belonged to her dear friend, Clarisse Chamberlain. Maddie and Ellie had agreed that Olivia alone should read Clarisse’s letters.

  Olivia took a few moments to remember her friend, who had given her, in addition to friendship, untold hours of invaluable advice. Without Clarisse’s business acumen and unwavering belief in her, Olivia doubted she’d have had the courage to buy her sweet little Queen Anne home and open The Gingerbread House. She dreaded finding out that Greta had uncovered a reason to blackmail Clarisse.

  “Might as well get it over with,” Olivia said to Spunky. Olivia lifted the torn flap of the envelope and drew out the contents. She held three sheets of Clarisse’s familiar, pale lavender notepaper. The pages were folded separately. Olivia unfolded all three and discovered each was a separate letter, written in Clarisse’s favorite blue-black ink. Two were dated six months
apart. The third had been written only a few months before Clarisse’s death. Olivia realized all three letters had been composed during her own friendship with Clarisse . . . and long after Martin Chamberlain’s affair with Greta.

  Olivia’s curiosity finally overcame her reluctance. She picked up the earliest letter and began to read. The distinctive handwriting was firm and elegant. Clarisse’s confident, gently humorous communication style brought her back so clearly that Olivia could almost hear her voice. The letter’s content appeared friendly and made no reference to Greta’s brief affair with Martin. From Bertha’s account, Clarisse would have known about the incident for years by the date of the letter in Olivia’s hand. She assumed Clarisse had forgiven and moved on, which would have been typical of her.

  When Olivia turned the page over to read the end of the letter, she was startled to see her own name. Feeling voyeuristic, she skimmed through an entire paragraph that sang her praises. Clarisse had described her young friend Livie as “smart and focused, yet also creative” and “possessed of a strong business sense, which she uses to pursue a dream that transcends profit.” Yikes! Olivia was touched, yet also glad Clarisse hadn’t said those words directly to her. She would have felt overwhelmed.

  Clarisse’s second letter read much like the first. She never mentioned her husband or sons, but she did recount an evening she’d spent with Olivia. The episode had taken place more than a year before the date on Clarisse’s letter. She and Clarisse had discussed antique cookie cutters for hours, while they’d gone through Clarisse’s extensive collection. Olivia remembered feeling spellbound as Clarisse lovingly recounted the story behind each cutter, including its history, as far as she knew it; where she had come across the cutter; and what the cutter meant to her personally. They had never discussed monetary value. The collection had been evaluated and insured, of course, but that hadn’t been important, not to Clarisse.