Cookies and Scream (A Cookie Cutter Shop Mystery) (4 page)

The front doorbell made Olivia jump. Spunky leaped to his paws and growled. “It’s okay, Spunks,” Olivia said. “Everyone we know is out of town, so it’s probably Binnie coming back for the kill. Or Snoopy Sam. We’ll ignore it.” Spunky poked his head under the arm of his chair, which allowed him to watch the Gingerbread House porch through the store’s large front window.

“Attaboy,” Olivia said. “You keep those nasty intruders at bay while I mentally reorganize the sales floor.” Holding her pen and paper, Olivia stood near the front of the store. She wanted to see what customers saw when they entered. The sales floor looked crowded with tables and mobiles, but wasn’t that part of its charm? The Gingerbread House was supposed to feel like . . . well, like a fairy tale.
Maybe what it needs is even more—

Olivia’s peripheral vision caught movement on the porch outside the front window, followed instantly by Spunky’s warning yap. “Oh no, not Binnie again,” Olivia said as she turned the front doorknob. “If I have to order her off my property, I will. That woman is—” Spunky’s yap lost its fierce edge and sounded excited. Olivia spun around to see a petite figure standing at the front window, peering into the store. “Mom?”

Chapter Four

Ellie Greyson-Meyers waved to her daughter and pointed toward the front door. By the time Olivia had crossed the foyer and unlocked the outside door, her mother was waiting for her. Ellie looked cool and relaxed in dusty pink shorts and a matching T-shirt. “Hello, dear,” she said. “You look surprised.”

“Uh . . . weren’t you and Allan booked at a spa until Monday?”

“A retreat, dear. I wouldn’t be caught dead at a spa unless it stressed exercise and adventure, which is what the retreat was supposed to offer.”

“But it didn’t?”

“I’ll be glad to share every detail, Livie, if you’ll invite me in. I assume you’ve cranked up your air-conditioning?” Ellie’s long gray tresses were gathered into a braid, which she lifted off her neck. “I’m about to melt into a puddle.”

“Oh, sorry, Mom.” Olivia stood aside to let her mother enter. “The foyer is still hot, but the store has cooled down fairly well.” She closed and locked the front door, while Ellie scooted into The Gingerbread House.

Spunky jumped off his chair and trotted over to greet Ellie. “I’ve missed you, too, little one,” Ellie said as she scooped him into her arms. With Spunky snuggled against her shoulder, Ellie gazed around the sales floor. “It looks so barren and sad in here,” she said. “Shall I help you put it together again?”

“Too much energy, Mom. Anyway, I’m thinking about changing the display to make it more enticing. I’m not sure what that means yet.”

“That’s easy, dear. Make it more whimsical. You might consider a dollhouse designed to look like a fairy-tale gingerbread house, and you could decorate it with cookie cutters. Maybe put a witch and little cookie cutter children inside.”

“Wouldn’t that terrify the real children?”

“I doubt it would bother the children,” Ellie said, “but I suppose their mothers might object. Mothers can be so overprotective these days. Well, you could simply have children playing in the yard. It would be fun to decorate the house for every holiday, especially Halloween.”

Although the idea sounded delightful, Olivia thought about the work involved in creating and maintaining such a display. “Why do I suspect you are taking a class on dollhouse construction?”

With a wistful sigh, Ellie said, “There is no such class, at least not within a reasonable distance from Chatterley Heights. I’m afraid I’ve taken every class available to me, many of them more than once. The supply has been dwindling.”

“Mom, you sound bored. I’ve never heard you sound bored before.” Olivia headed toward the kitchen. “You need coffee and a cookie. I’m afraid the cookie will come directly from the freezer. Maddie hasn’t been around to bake a fresh batch.”

“A frozen cookie sounds perfect,” Ellie said. “Shall I put Spunky back on his chair?”

“Bring the ferocious beast with you,” Olivia said as she held open the kitchen door. “No baking is going on in this kitchen until Maddie returns.”

“Your health code violation is safe with me.” Ellie settled at the kitchen table and snuggled Spunky on her lap.

Olivia poured fresh coffee into two cups and took a plastic container from the freezer. “Maddie baked a batch of lime cookies before she left town. She said the flavor sounded cool to her. Since the cookies are currently frozen, I’d say she was right.” Olivia opened the container and offered it to her mother.

“Yum,” Ellie said as she bit into her cookie. “It’s like eating frozen limeade right out of the can.”

“Okay, Mom, explain yourself. Why did you and Allan come home early from your retreat? Was it really that disappointing?”

“It became less disappointing once I’d explained to the retreat leaders how their approach could be made more effective and interesting.” Spunky sighed in his sleep as Ellie stroked the silky fur on his back. “However, I had a strong intuition that you were going to need me, so I told Allan we should leave. I think he was grateful, given how quickly he packed his bag.”

“I’ll bet. I imagine he whimpered when you dragged him to that retreat.” Olivia’s self-employed stepfather’s greatest love—after her mother, of course—was creating Internet businesses. “Why did you think I might need you?”

“It was intuition, dear, not an actual thought. Intuition is hard to explain.”

“Really? Mom, I came home early only because I ran out of books and got bored, not because I was in dire need of my mother’s assistance. And I found out about Greta Oskarson and her cutter collection about an hour ago, and I don’t need your help with that. Intuition? I think not.” Olivia felt rather pleased with herself.

Ellie smiled in her otherworldly way. Without a word, she selected a second cookie, took a delicate bite, and closed her eyes as she chewed. “Such a lovely flavor,” Ellie murmured.

Olivia took a gulp of her coffee, which tasted faintly of lime. “Okay, Mom, I’ll bet you came back early because someone called and told you about Greta Oskarson and her cookie cutter collection. Am I right?”

“Nearly right,” Ellie said, chuckling. “In fact, three people called to tell me all about Greta’s return. She has caused quite a stir.”

“Let me guess,” Olivia said. “One call had to come from Polly Franz. She’s got a great view of the town square from her second-floor office at the food bank.”

“And Polly has such powerful binoculars,” Ellie said. “She knows I count on her to keep me informed.”

“Then there’s Ida,” Olivia said. “People tend to ignore waitresses, so Ida hears all sorts of juicy gossip at Pete’s Diner. She always passes it on to you because, as everyone knows, Ida adores you. You are the daughter she never had. Polly is her main competitor.”

“Competition can be so helpful, don’t you think? Although in this instance, the two of them cooperated. Polly spotted a well-dressed, statuesque stranger visiting all the stores on the square. It was Greta Oskarson. When Greta stopped at Pete’s Diner for a bite to eat, Polly called Ida to find out who she was.” Ellie reached for the carafe and divided the remaining coffee between their two cups. “This is fun,” she said. “And who did my third call come from?”

Olivia hesitated. Chatterley Heights contained plenty of gossips, but who else might have called her mother right away? “Maybe Struts Marinsky? She isn’t a big gossip, but Jason might have mentioned that Greta wanted me to broker the sale of her cutter collection.” As soon as Olivia uttered her younger brother’s name, she knew she was wrong. Jason Greyson worked as a mechanic at the Struts & Bolts garage, but he paid no attention to town gossip unless it had to do with cars or free food. “Never mind,” Olivia said. “I have no idea who the third call came from.”

“Two out of three is an excellent score.” Ellie patted her daughter’s hand. “Maddie called me. She and Lucas are heading home, by the way. Aunt Sadie called Maddie with the news about Greta Oskarson.”

“Maddie . . . of course, I should have known.” Olivia had lived in Baltimore for ten years, and, as Maddie often pointed out, her small-town gossiping skills had suffered. “I’ll bet Maddie is practically exploding with excitement about Greta’s cookie cutter collection. But Mom, I still don’t understand
why
you rushed back home.”

Ellie pulled her long braid over her shoulder, unraveled it quickly, then began re-braiding. Olivia recognized the behavior; her mother was worried. Olivia started another pot of coffee. While Ellie unbraided her hair a second time, Olivia took the remaining frozen lime cookies from the freezer.

“Something is bothering you, Mom. What is it?” Olivia refilled their cups with coffee and delivered the cookies to the kitchen table. Her mother didn’t appear to notice. “Earth to Planet Mom,” Olivia said.

“What, dear? Oh, thank you, you’re a mind reader,” Ellie said as she reached for a cookie.

“No, I am most definitely not a mind reader.” Olivia added cream to both coffees. “I’m dying to know what you’re thinking. Your face has been going through all sorts of interesting contortions, but no actual words have come from your mouth.”

Ellie maintained silence long enough to finish her braid and secure it with a pink band. “After Maddie called me, I called Sadie,” Ellie said. “Not many people are aware of this, Livie, but Greta Oskarson has a . . . a history. Many years ago, Clarisse told me what she knew about Greta’s past, and it was disturbing. That’s why I called Sadie Briggs. I thought she might know more than anyone about Greta’s background. I was right. You know what dear Sadie is like; she wants to believe the best about everyone. However, even Sadie felt uneasy knowing you and Maddie would be involved in the sale of Greta’s cookie cutter collection. Though, of course, she would never interfere. She kept saying that her information was secondhand and, anyway, people change.”

Ellie lapsed into silence. When she reached for her braid, Olivia grabbed her hand. “Hasn’t your hair been tortured enough? Tell me what you learned about Greta from Clarisse and Sadie. If I’m to help Greta sell her cutter collection, I need to know if her ‘history,’ whatever that means, will be a problem.”

“Yes, I realize that, Livie. Otherwise, I would never breathe a word of this. So much of it is hearsay.” Ellie bit into her cookie and visibly relaxed. “I never really knew Greta when she lived in Chatterley Heights. She is at least ten years older than I am, so I would have been a youngster when she left for Europe. I was given to understand that she had been accepted by the Sorbonne in Paris. A few years later, when I was a young teen, I remember learning that Greta had married a wealthy French count, which sounded terribly romantic. That was the last I heard of her until a few years ago when Clarisse and I met for lunch one day.”

“When was this?” Olivia asked.

“While you were living in Baltimore, but not long before you moved back home.”

Olivia thought back to her return to Chatterley Heights, after her divorce from Ryan. She had arrived with a brand-new business degree and a dream. Olivia had always wanted to open a store that specialized in anything and everything connected to cookies. Clarisse Chamberlain, an experienced and very successful businesswoman, had encouraged Olivia to reach for her dream, which led to the purchase of her Queen Anne house and a business partnership with her childhood friend, Maddie Briggs.

Thinking back to her many long conversations with Clarisse, Olivia said, “It’s odd; I don’t remember Clarisse ever mentioning a Greta Oskarson. Yet according to Constance, Greta insisted that she and Clarisse had bonded over a mutual fascination with cookie cutters.”

“Oh dear,” Ellie said as she nibbled on her cookie. “I must have a chat with Constance as well.”

“About what, exactly?” When her mother didn’t answer, Olivia added, “Mom, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry, Livie, I’m just preoccupied. I wish I’d maintained my old contacts in the FBI and the CIA. Although perhaps I could reconnect—” Ellie laughed when she saw the expression on Olivia’s face. “I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to terrify you. Here’s the scoop: Clarisse told me that Greta’s French count—her first count, that is. I heard there were more, though I assume they didn’t all perish under mysterious circumstances—anyway, Greta’s first husband died barely a year after their wedding. The count—I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name, if I ever heard it, Count Number One, let’s call him—he and Greta were alone together on their yacht, supposedly enjoying a romantic cruise off the coast of France, when the count somehow wound up in the water. He drowned. Clarisse read a newspaper article about the incident. Apparently Greta was hysterical, quite devastated. Of course, she was a lovely and highly intelligent young woman . . . and I’m sure the investigating officers were men.”

Olivia dipped a frozen cookie into her coffee and let it dissolve in her mouth as she mulled over the implication in her mother’s account. Rich older man, pretty young wife, no apparent witnesses. “Weren’t the authorities at all suspicious? I mean, Del is male, but a pretty face wouldn’t cloud his investigative instincts.”

“A different time, a different culture, Livie. According to Sadie, this wasn’t the only troubling incident she’d heard about from Greta’s past.” Spunky stirred on Ellie’s lap, and she stroked his back until he quieted.

Olivia checked the clock above the kitchen sink. “It’s nearly one o’clock. I’ll spring for lunch at the Chatterley Café if you’ll fill me in on everything you’ve ever heard about Greta Oskarson.”

“I’ll do my best.” Ellie rubbed Spunky’s ears to awaken him. “I wish we could take Spunky along.”

“He has been spoiled quite enough for one day. Pete let him come to breakfast with Constance and me, and now he thinks the Gingerbread House kitchen belongs to him. He’ll be impossible to live with for months.” Olivia scooped up her snoozing pup and led the way into the store. “I’ll leave him on his chair. If he wakes up, he can watch out the window.”

Spunky barely stirred as Olivia and Ellie entered the foyer. While Olivia locked the store, Ellie opened the front door. A blast of hot air infiltrated the space. “Ugh,” Olivia said. “I really hate letting that awful stuff get inside.”

“Thanks a lot,” said a familiar voice behind Olivia. She turned around to find her best friend since age ten, Maddie Briggs, standing on the porch, key in hand. Maddie’s sunburned cheeks were redder than the curly hair that puffed around her face. Olivia gave silent thanks for her own blush- and burn-resistant skin. Her wavy auburn hair, on the other hand, invariably went limp in humid weather.