A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes) (10 page)

T
he next morning started off well for Bernie and Libby. It hadn’t snowed as much as Libby had feared, so it took Libby and Bernie five minutes, if that, to shovel and salt the pavement in front of their store. In addition, the weather report was good: it was going to be in the upper thirties, with no snow predicted, so that meant more people coming into the shop.

The muffins and the breads went in and out of the oven like clockwork. The mixer they were using didn’t break. The hazelnut buttercream they were using for the chocolate tortes didn’t curdle, and none of the cookie bottoms burned, so they didn’t have to throw them out. In addition, Libby and Bernie managed to complete the prep work for the dinner they were catering that night for the Sloans.

The dinner followed a French-bistro theme, and while onion soup wasn’t hard to make, browning the onions till they were caramelized and making the beef stock was time-consuming and laborious, and even though Libby had tried various methods to speed up the process, she always came back to the one outlined by Julia Child.

Having successfully finished with the onions, Libby went out front and unlocked the front door. She was tallying up the money in the cash drawer when Googie came in and said hello. Libby nodded hello back and went on with her count while Googie went into the back, hung up his jacket in the office, washed his hands, came out front, and started the coffee.

By now it was ten after seven. As Libby closed the cash drawer, she noted that Amber was officially ten minutes late.
We have to have a talk,
Libby thought as she went into the office to check on a delivery. When Libby clicked on the OPEN sign fifteen minutes later, Amber still hadn’t shown up.

“She’s half an hour late,” Libby observed to Bernie. “That’s way too much. I understand that she’s upset about Millie, but she needs to call if she’s not going to be here on time. It’s not fair to Googie. Or to you and me, for that matter.”

Bernie looked up from the potatoes she was peeling. “She’s probably working on her recipe and lost track of time,” Bernie said.

“According to Penelope, she already has the recipe,” Libby pointed out.

Bernie put down her paring knife and wiped her hands on the towel she had tied around her waist to protect the wool-and-silk tweed pencil skirt she was wearing. “I’ll call and tell her to get over here.”

But Amber didn’t answer her cell.

“Maybe she’s still sleeping, or maybe she’s in the shower. Or her cell could be dead,” Bernie posited after she’d left a voice mail on Amber’s phone.

“Great,” Libby groused as she took off her apron and got ready to go out front and help Googie with the customers. “Things were going so well too.” This was one of their busiest times of the day, and she and Bernie prided themselves on their quick service.

Bernie sighed. “I’ll go get her. Her house is just five minutes away.”

Only Amber wasn’t in her house, and none of her roommates had seen or heard from her since last night. In fact, they hadn’t even known Amber wasn’t there until Bernie had woken them up. The three roommates worked in a hospital and had the night shift.

At this point, Bernie called George and asked him to come in and cover for Amber. Then she called Libby and updated her on what was going on, after which she drove around looking for their wayward counter girl.

Bernie kept telling herself that she was overreacting, that she should be back at the shop working instead of driving around aimlessly and that Amber was absolutely fine, but no matter what she said to herself, Bernie couldn’t shake the bad feeling that had taken up residence in her gut.

Because even though Amber looked like a freak, underneath she was an extremely responsible person, and she’d never in the five years she’d been working for A Little Taste of Heaven not shown up for work without calling and letting Bernie and Libby know that she’d be late or absent. Ten minutes later, the bad feeling Bernie was carrying around got worse when she spotted Amber’s car in the parking lot of a small strip mall located over the town line.

None of the stores in the mall were open yet. It was too early. Amber’s car was the only one in the lot. Bernie parked beside it, got out, and tried the doors of Amber’s Taurus. They were locked. She brushed the snow off the windows and peered inside. The Taurus looked the way it always did—a mess. Used coffee cups and takeout bags were piled on the passenger’s seat, while newspapers were stacked up on the backseat, along with clothes that Amber was going to take to the Rescue Mission. After Bernie tried the trunk and found it locked, she called Libby and updated her on what was going on.

“What the hell was she doing there?” Libby demanded of Bernie.

“Damned if I know,” Bernie told her.

“That was a rhetorical question.”

“I know,” Bernie said, buttoning her jacket. The wind had started picking up again.

“Come home,” Libby told her.

“I thought I’d drive around some more,” Bernie replied. She decided she’d come back here later on when the shops were open and see if anyone had seen Amber.

“To what end?” Libby demanded Bernie admitted that she didn’t know.

“Exactly,” Libby said. “Come home,” she repeated. “We need to formulate a plan of attack.”

“You’re right,” Bernie said, and she hung up.

She hated to admit it, but for once Libby was correct. The only thing she was doing now was wasting gas. But on the way to A Little Taste of Heaven, Bernie made a detour and stopped in at the bed and breakfast Amber’s mom, Linda, ran. She hadn’t seen or heard from her either, but then, as Linda pointed out, that wasn’t unusual. She and her daughter didn’t exactly get along.

“I agree that it’s worrisome,” Sean’s friend Clyde said, referring to Amber’s disappearance as he took a small bite of parsnip pie.

Sean put his cup of coffee down on the dining room table after taking a sip. It was now three o’clock in the afternoon and no one had heard from Amber, which was why he, his two daughters, and Clyde were gathered in the apartment above the shop trying to decide what to do.

“That’s why we called you,” Sean said to Clyde.

“In an unofficial capacity, of course,” Libby said.

Clyde nodded. “Of course. What else?” Not only was Clyde Sean’s best friend, he was also a member in good standing of the Longely Police Department. “Anyway, what other choice do you have?”

“None,” Bernie said.

“Exactly,” Clyde responded. “The police won’t do anything,” he added. “Amber’s over eighteen. The most they’ll do is write up a report and file it.”

“Who should know that better than I?” Sean retorted, thinking back to his twenty years on the force. In all that time, only two of all the people who were reported missing hadn’t shown up eventually. “After all, I used to be chief of police.”

“The place was a lot better off when you were,” Clyde told him. Then he turned to Libby and Bernie. “By the way, I have to tell you that this pie is wonderful. When you told me it was made with parsnips I had my doubts, but I’m a firm believer now. What’s in it anyway? Besides the parsnips, that is.”

“Just some orange juice, orange rind, cream, butter, orange marmalade, and Grand Marnier,” Libby told him. She’d discovered the recipe in an old cookbook she’d found at a garage sale last summer and had been anxious to try it ever since. So far, despite Bernie’s skepticism, it was selling well.

“Ah,” Clyde said, making a doleful face. “I should have known it wasn’t healthy. Nothing I like is.” He took another bite. “So why,” he asked when he had swallowed, “did you call me here in the first place? Not,” he said hastily, “that I’m not always happy to come over and visit.”

“We want your opinion,” Bernie said promptly, after which she proceeded to lay out the backstory to Amber’s disappearance.

Clyde listened attentively to the story of Millie and the TV show and the accident without interrupting.

“Well?” Bernie asked Clyde when she was through. “What do you think?”

Clyde added a smidgen of cream to his coffee, stirred it, and took a sip before replying. “So,” he said slowly, “you really believe that someone caused Millie’s accident? That it wasn’t an accident at all. It was just made to look like one.”

“Absolutely,” Sean said, answering for Bernie.

Clyde shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m having trouble believing that someone would kill someone over winning first place in a bake-off.”

“Maybe the intention wasn’t manslaughter,” Sean said to Clyde. “Maybe whoever did this just wanted to rattle Millie and put her out of commission for a while. Or maybe this was just a prank gone awry.”

“True,” Clyde said.

“On the other hand, as you well know, people have killed people over a cigarette,” Sean pointed out.

“Indeed they have,” Clyde said.

Bernie wiped a drop of cream off the table with the end of her napkin. “I agree with Dad. Maybe whoever did this really just meant to slow Millie down,” she said. “Maybe they didn’t mean to kill her. At least it would be nice to think so.”

“Yes, it would,” Sean agreed. “The thing is,” he said to Clyde, “when you put all the facts together, such as the disappearing cookies and the ransacked house, it’s the most logical conclusion.”

“Then someone kidnaps Amber because she’s going to appear on the TV show?” Clyde said skeptically. “You’re making a huge jump here.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just don’t buy it. How could one of these ladies—all of whom are in their seventies and early eighties—kidnap Amber, who is what?”

“Twenty-two,” Libby answered.

“Exactly,” Clyde said. “I don’t think that it would be physically possible. It would make more sense if the producer of the show did it. For the publicity,” Clyde explained, catching the looks on Sean’s, Bernie’s, and Libby’s faces.

“That’s ridiculous,” Libby said.

Clyde leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “That’s exactly my point,” he said.

“Then where is Amber?” Libby demanded.

“How would I know,” Clyde said. “Maybe she ran off with her boyfriend.”

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Bernie said.

“Maybe she does now. Or maybe she got stoned with her friends and passed out somewhere,” Clyde suggested.

“She’s straight as an arrow,” Libby told Clyde.

“Meaning?” Clyde said.

“That she doesn’t drink or do drugs,” Bernie replied.

“You could have fooled me,” Clyde said as he unclasped his hands, picked up his fork, and finished the last morsel of the parsnip pie on his plate. “I’m sorry,” he said when he was done. “But I don’t know what I can do to help you here. Millie’s death has officially been ruled an accident, and Amber’s only been gone for less than twenty-four hours.”

Sean smiled. “That’s what I figured you’d say.”

“I’ll snoop around, but I doubt if I’ll come up with anything,” Clyde said. Before Libby or Bernie could say another thing, Clyde had grabbed his parka and was out the door.

“H
e seemed in a hurry,” Bernie noted of Clyde.

Sean nodded. “Family stuff.”

“Like what?” Libby asked.

Sean shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“That’s so guy,” Bernie observed.

“That’s because I am a guy,” Sean replied.

“Do you think he’ll come up with anything?” Libby asked.

Sean drained his coffee cup and put it back down before answering. “No, I don’t. I think he thinks we’re overreacting.”

“But you don’t think so, do you?” Libby asked her dad.

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” Sean replied. “But I think it’s always better to err on the side of caution in cases like these.”

“So what should we do?” Libby asked.

“Good question.” Sean pushed his chair back from the table, stood up, and made his way over to his armchair because he got stiff when he stayed in one position for too long. “I’ve been asking myself that,” he said as he gingerly lowered himself into the chair and propped his feet up on the ottoman.

“And?” Libby inquired.

“The first thing we have to do is call the area hospitals to make sure she’s not there. I’ll take care of that.”

Bernie and Libby both nodded. They’d been about to suggest that themselves.

Sean put a pillow between his lower back and the chair and leaned back, but, dissatisfied, took the pillow out and placed it on the floor. “Damn thing,” he muttered. “It makes things worse instead of better.”

“Dad,” Libby said, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just trying to organize my thoughts and get comfortable.” Another moment went by, and he said, “Okay, correct me if I’m wrong, but we are going on the assumption that Amber called up one of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club ladies—at least one and possibly more—and told them that she either had or knew where to get her aunt’s recipe and that she was entering the contest?”

“And that one of the ladies took exception to that,” Libby said.

“Exactly,” Sean said.

“Especially since whoever she is has gone to considerable trouble to get Millie out of the picture,” Bernie added.

“Yeah,” Libby said, “I can see where Amber coming into the picture would be extremely annoying to that person. Maybe terminally annoying.”

“If I were you,” Sean said, thinking out loud, “I’d want to have a talk with the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club ladies.”

“And ask them what?” Bernie inquired.

Sean stroked his chin. “Just see if you can get them talking. Maybe they’ll let some information out. Even if you don’t get anything out of them, maybe the conversations will stir the pot and get something going.”

“Hopefully not like someone else disappearing,” Bernie said.

“Heaven forbid.” Libby pulled a chocolate kiss out of the pocket of her hoodie and popped it in her mouth. “God, I hope Amber’s all right.”

Bernie shook her head. “I’m still having trouble seeing one of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club ladies mixed up in Amber’s disappearance.”

“I am too,” Libby agreed. “It just seems wrong.”

“And yet,” Sean said, “we’re positing that one of these ladies assembled and dragged a deer target into the middle of the road for the express purpose of running Millie off it.”

“Yeah, but whoever did that didn’t overpower Millie. Amber is a whole different proposition,” Bernie said.

“We don’t know what happened with Amber,” Sean pointed out as he leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers together. “Story: This was before you were born, but I remember this eighty-year-old man, a man who couldn’t have weighed more than one-hundred-fifty pounds, bashed his two-hundred-pound grandson over the head with an ax handle. Killed him.”

“That’s terrible,” Libby cried.

“Mr. Clark didn’t seem to think so. He thought his grandson deserved it. My point,” Sean went on before either of his daughters could say anything else, “is that you shouldn’t write someone off because of their physical condition or their age. If someone really wants to do something, they will find a way to do it. Age doesn’t necessarily make people nicer. Sometimes it has the opposite effect.”

Everyone fell silent for a moment.

Then Libby said, “We’ve got to find Amber. We have to. I just hope nothing bad has happened to her.”

“She’s a very resourceful young lady,” Sean reassured her. “I’m sure she’ll be able to figure out what to do.”

“One hopes. But in the meantime we should start looking for her,” Bernie said.

“Agreed,” Sean answered.

“But where?” Bernie wondered. “She could be anywhere.”

“She could be,” Sean replied. “But I think we have to assume she’s relatively close by. Now, can I make a suggestion?”

Bernie cocked her head and waited.

“Before you tackle the ladies, why don’t you talk to Amber’s roommates again, maybe take a look at her room. Perhaps she left something behind that could point us in the right direction. And then, after that, talk to the clerks at the strip mall you found her car in and see if they can tell you anything. You might dig something up that will help you when you talk to the members of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club. At the very least, it might help put a time line on Amber’s disappearance.”

Libby nodded. “What about talking to Amber’s mom as well?” she asked her dad.

Sean shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt.”

“But I don’t think it’s going to help either, considering that she and Amber never speak,” Bernie commented, remembering what Linda had said when they’d talked. She was about to explain when Libby looked at her watch.

“Bernie, it’s five,” she cried. “We gotta go downstairs and help behind the counter.”

“That late?” Bernie said, jumping up. Between five and six
PM
was their second-busiest time of the day.

“Go on,” Sean said. “I’m going to stay here and cogitate for a while.”

Bernie smiled. “I see you’ve been doing the crosswords again.”

Sean laughed and nodded. After Bernie left, he settled back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began to think about where he would stash Amber if he were one of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club ladies. It had to be someplace that was extremely difficult to get out of. Someplace off the beaten path.

In the meantime, Libby and Bernie went downstairs to help out Googie and George. Even though the shop was crowded, it wasn’t as crowded as usual, and by six the crowd had dissipated enough so that Bernie and Libby felt comfortable leaving their dad in charge of the register and taking off on their appointed tasks.

“Hey, good luck,” Googie called out to the sisters as they went out the door.

“I have a feeling we’re going to need it,” Libby said.

“Me too,” Bernie agreed.

As they walked to the van, Libby admired the shop’s window. She’d created a holiday village out of gingerbread and marzipan. There were skaters on a sugar-glass lake, and a boy and his dog walking home along a gumdrop path to a house decorated with peppermint candy canes. In the back, a marzipan father was sawing a chocolate log in half as sugar-cookie cows looked on and a cat stalked a meringue bird near a gingerbread schoolhouse.

“We did good,” Bernie said, echoing Libby’s thoughts.

Libby smiled. “We did, didn’t we?”

Bernie flicked a feather off her parka and inspected her sleeve for a rip. She’d gotten the jacket in Vail five years ago, and she liked it as much now as she had then. “So are we starting with the strip mall?” she asked Libby.

“Does white stick to rice?” Bernie responded.

Libby laughed. “I never understood that expression.”

“Me either,” Bernie confessed. “I just like the way it sounds. I figure,” Bernie went on, “strip mall first, because that way we’ll get to talk to everyone before the shops close. Then we’ll talk to the roommates, and then we’ll drop in on the members of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club. That make sense to you?”

“Yeah,” Bernie said as she pulled out onto the street. “So which of the ladies should we talk to first?”

Libby shrugged. “I vote for Alma. So far she seems to have the best motive for running Millie off the road.”

“You mean Millie getting her kicked out of her quilting club?”

Libby nodded. “And bad-mouthing her cookies.”

Bernie leaned back in her seat, raised her arms above her head, and stretched. “On second thought, maybe it doesn’t make any difference who we start with.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the moment we leave, whoever we’ve talked to is going to be on the phone. Those women have a better alert system than the Pentagon.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Libby admitted. “On the other hand, this discussion may be irrelevant. Maybe they won’t want to talk to us.”

Bernie snorted. “Are you kidding me? They’ll latch on to us like a vampire latches onto a vein.”

“That might be overstating things a little,” Libby observed.

“Not by much,” Bernie rejoined. “Remember, you couldn’t get rid of them in the shop.”

“True.” Libby rat-tat-tatted on the dashboard of the van with her fingers, something she did when she was thinking. “Maybe,” she said after a minute had gone by, “we can make that work to our advantage.”

“How?” Bernie asked.

“I don’t know,” Libby admitted. “Yet.” And she lapsed into silence for the rest of the ride.