A Catered Christmas Cookie Exchange (A Mystery With Recipes) (13 page)

I
t took the sisters ten minutes to get to Rose Olsen’s house.

“I think I like her house the best,” Libby said when she spotted the wooden bungalow with the wraparound porch that Rose called home.

“Her garden is amazing,” Bernie observed. She’d been there last spring to deliver ten cheesecakes and three trays of assorted cookies for one of Rose’s open houses and had been blown away by Rose’s inventive use of the wild grasses lining the path up to the house, as well as the way Rose had combined foundation plantings and a perennial garden.

“Rose really does love her plants,” Bernie said as she was debating whether to park on the street or in Rose’s driveway. “Someone told me she had a greenhouse built in her backyard. Maybe we should do something like that.”

Libby was just about to remind her sister that she had a black thumb when she saw Rose’s garage door open and Rose’s vehicle come flying down the driveway in reverse. “Damn,” she said as she watched Rose reach the street, take a hard right, and speed down Danbury Road.

“This definitely sucks,” Bernie agreed as she tracked the taillights on Rose’s vehicle disappearing around the bend. “She’s a better driver than I thought. And a faster one.”

“I wonder what’s going on,” Libby murmured. Somehow, Rose didn’t strike her as the kind of person to go running off someplace. Especially given her age and the time of night, but obviously she was wrong.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Bernie said, and with that she drove into Rose’s driveway, made a right, and went after Rose.

“You know we’re never going to catch her,” Libby observed. Rose’s vehicle could go at least eighty miles an hour easy, probably more, while Mathilda could make it to fifty at the very most. And she didn’t like doing that for very long.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Bernie retorted. “Even if we don’t catch her, maybe we’ll be able to figure out where she’s going.”

Libby grabbed for the strap and held on tight. “I wonder if she saw us parking. I wonder if that’s why she jetted out of her house.”

Bernie shook her head. “Because she didn’t want to talk to us? I doubt it. She was probably in the garage by the time we pulled up.”

“Although there are windows on the garage door,” Libby pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “The angle is wrong.”

“Maybe it’s some sort of domestic emergency,” Libby suggested.

“Maybe,” Bernie said automatically. She was concentrating on her driving and only half listening to what Libby said.

“Or maybe,” Libby continued, “Alma called her and told her we were coming to talk to her.”

Bernie grunted.

“Of course,” Libby went on, “Alma did just point us in her direction.”

“Yeah, but I bet Alma didn’t tell her that,” Bernie said as she got to the end of Danbury. She could see Rose’s silver vehicle under the streetlights in the distance. She’d taken a left and was about half a block away. “I think she’s heading for Twelve Corners, Libby.”

“Maybe if we’re lucky we can catch up with her there,” Libby said.

Twelve Corners was a large intersection with eight lanes of traffic leading off in all directions. Depending on the lane you were in, the traffic lights could take a long time to change.

Bernie grimaced. “I don’t want to catch up with her. I want to follow her and see where she’s going.”

“You think she’s going to Amber?” Libby asked. If you thought about it in purely physical terms, Rose was the strongest member of the group and thereby the most capable of an abduction and of putting the deer target in place and taking it down.

“I think it’s a possibility,” Bernie said. “Anyway, we don’t have anything to lose.”

Bernie sped up a little. She could see Rose’s vehicle was in the left lane waiting for the light to change so she could make a turn onto Riverside Street. A moment later, the light went green and Rose sped off. Bernie cursed under her breath and gave Mathilda more gas. She went across three lanes of traffic, cutting off a truck in her path, but by the time she got to the light it had turned red again.

“Drats,” Bernie said. This was a long light and she was positive that by the time it turned again Rose would be gone. Which she was.

“What now?” Libby asked as Bernie made the turn onto Riverside.

Bernie didn’t answer. She was too busy concentrating on the vehicles in front of her as she drove down Riverside. The traffic was relatively sparse, and she was hoping to catch a glimpse of Rose’s vehicle. After fifteen blocks she was forced to admit that wasn’t going to happen and she gave it up, turned Mathilda around, and headed back to Rose’s place.

“Let’s take a look around her house,” Bernie suggested.

“And see what?” Libby asked.

Bernie shrugged her shoulders. “Probably nothing,” she conceded. “But as long as we’re this close, we might as well take a gander.”

Libby looked at her watch. It was getting late and they were no closer to finding Amber now than they were when they’d started. “You know,” Libby mused, “the yoga teacher told us that Amber willingly got into the car that pulled up next to hers in the parking lot.”

Bernie looked over at her sister. “Your point is?”

Libby frowned. “Well, she could have gotten in the car with anyone. It could be the new guy she’s seeing, or his sister, or some old friend that she hasn’t seen since fifth grade. We don’t know that it was the car of one of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club ladies.”

“No, we don’t,” Bernie agreed. “But the odds are, given the circumstances, that it was. That’s the most logical conclusion and the one that I think it would serve us best to follow,” Bernie said as she pulled into Rose’s driveway.

Libby opened her mouth and closed it again. Her sister was right. There was nothing more to say on the topic. Instead, she pointed to the security company sign planted near the door. It was half obscured by the snow. “I guess we could have saved ourselves a trip.”

“We’re not breaking in, we’re just walking around. As far as I know, that’s not illegal yet,” Bernie countered as she turned off Mathilda, put on her gloves, buttoned her jacket, and got out of the van.

Libby followed suit. She and Bernie were peering through the windows in the garage door when someone said, “Can I help you?”

The two sisters jumped and spun around. A man was standing behind them. Someone Bernie and Libby hadn’t seen before. He’d never been a customer of theirs, because Bernie and Libby remembered everyone who came into their shop, even if they’d just come in once or twice. Bernie decided the guy looked somewhere between sixty and seventy. He was of average height and average build, with a gray beard and mustache that could use a little shaping, and he was wearing a black watch cap pulled down over his ears, a parka buttoned up to his neck, and L.L. Bean boots on his feet.

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to startle you ladies. My name is Dan, and this is Rosco,” the man said, pointing to the small, furry dog in the red plaid coat at the end of a leash that was sniffing Libby’s boots. “I live across the street. And you are?”

“Bernie and Libby Simmons,” Libby said. “I’m Libby,” she said, pointing to herself, “and she’s Bernie. We own A Little Taste of Heaven.”

Dan peered at them suspiciously. “What is it?”

Libby moved away from the dog. She didn’t like the way he was lifting his leg. “A shop. We sell baked goods and food to take out. We also do catering. We’re on Main Street. I’m surprised you haven’t seen us.”

“My wife does most of the shopping,” he explained. “I’m more of a homebody. It’s an odd name, though,” he added. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it.”

“That’s the idea,” Libby told him.

Bernie’s eyes narrowed. “My mom picked out that name.”

Dan frowned. “Sorry. No offense meant. My wife says I have no verbal filter.”

Bernie nodded. “No offense taken.”

“Good,” Dan said. He gave Roscoe a sharp tug on the lead and the dog trotted over and sat beside him. “Can I help you with anything?” Dan asked, gesturing toward Rose’s house.

“Well,” Bernie said, thinking fast, “we were supposed to pick up our niece, but no one seems to be home.”

Dan rubbed his beard with his free hand and waited for Bernie to say something else.

“We were just wondering where she and Rose had gone off to,” Libby added, filling in the silence.

“You think she’s in the garage?” Dan asked.

“My sister and I were checking to make sure that Rose’s car wasn’t there,” Bernie explained.

“I see,” Dan said, although Libby reflected that he sounded as if he didn’t. “We’ve had a lot of breakins around here recently.”

“That’s terrible,” Bernie said, giving Dan her most reassuring you-can-trust-me smile.

“Yes, it is,” Dan replied. “That’s why we formed the Neighborhood Watch.”

“Of which you are a member,” Bernie guessed.

“Leader,” Dan volunteered.

Great, Bernie thought. Just what we need. “I probably heard the message wrong.”

“Rose doesn’t get a lot of visitors,” Dan informed Bernie. “Except for the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club ladies. Right, Roscoe?”

Roscoe barked.

“He agrees with me,” Dan said. “I think it’s time we went in. Roscoe’s arthritis is bothering him. The cold doesn’t agree with him.”

“Or me,” Bernie said.

She waited for Dan and Roscoe to leave, but they didn’t. Dan and Roscoe just stood there, and Bernie got the definite feeling they weren’t going anywhere until she and Libby departed, which made her suspect that Dan didn’t exactly believe the story she’d just told him.

“Well, if you see Rose,” she said to Dan, “tell her that we were looking for Amber.”

Dan nodded. “Will do.”

“What was that all about?” Libby asked once they were in their van and backing out of the driveway.

“What was what all about?” Bernie asked as she watched Dan and Roscoe finally cross the street and go into their house.

“The whole ‘tell her we were looking for Amber’ thing.”

Bernie shrugged. “Just giving Rose a little push.”

She looked at her watch. On the one hand, it was late to try and talk to anyone else. On the other, Sheila Goody was a well-known insomniac.

S
heila Goody was probably the richest of the Christmas Cookie Exchange Club ladies. She lived up on Babcock Hill in a five-bedroom, four-bathroom colonial set on half an acre of land. Married to a cardiologist, she’d inherited everything, much to her children’s dismay, when her husband had plummeted off a small mountain in Canada.

Since Sheila had been the only one with him at the time, and since the marriage had not been a happy one, rumors had immediately begun swirling around town. But that had been fifteen years ago, and those rumors had been largely forgotten by now. It didn’t hurt that Sheila contributed lavishly to a number of local philanthropic organizations, something her husband had not done, since he was a well-known cheapskate and general all-around boor. It was generally agreed in Longely that all things being equal, the trade-off of the wife for the husband had been a positive one. After all, as one of Sheila’s friends had put it, everyone has to die sometime, and for some people sooner is better than later.

Bernie was thinking, as she pulled up in front of Sheila Goody’s house, that despite what people say, money can indeed buy happiness as well as forgetfulness.

“I wonder if she did,” Bernie said out loud, as she admired the white lights strung around the crab apple trees fronting Sheila Goody’s house and the wreath made out of pinecones and red and pink velvet bows tacked to the door.

“Did what?” Libby asked.

“Push her husband off the mountain,” Bernie said.

“I would have if I were her,” Libby replied, thinking of a couple of encounters she’d had with him. “But you certainly wouldn’t think she was capable of anything like that from looking at her.”

“No. You wouldn’t,” Bernie agreed. Her mother’s expression “She looked as if butter would melt in her mouth” leaped to mind. “I think it’s the blue eyes and the white hair that does it. She looks like everyone’s favorite grandmother. Even fifteen years ago, she just looked sickeningly sweet.”

“Which she is so not,” Libby said as Bernie parked and she and her sister got out of Mathilda and started for the front door. “I hope we’re not too late.”

“We’ll see,” Bernie said, thinking of Alma’s reaction to their visit.

They’d taken about ten steps when the front door opened and Sheila stepped out. She was dressed in a pair of dark blue fleece lounging pants and a light blue cashmere hoodie. “I’ve been waiting for you two,” she said. “What took so long?”

“I take it Alma called you,” Bernie said.

Sheila smiled. “Who else?”

“What did she say?” Libby asked.

“She said that you were looking for Amber, and that she’d disappeared, and you thought that one of us might have had something to do with it, and that this whole thing was tied up with Millie’s accident.”

“That about covers it,” Bernie said as she took a step inside Sheila’s house. “Except for the part about Millie’s missing recipes and the fact that her accident really wasn’t an accident at all.”

“Interesting,” Sheila said. “I’ve been hearing rumors to that effect myself. I just find the whole thing terribly odd.”

Libby asked for clarification. “Millie’s death? Amber’s disappearance?”

Sheila briefly touched her earrings before replying. “The effect that this television show has had on everyone,” she elucidated. “You think you know people, then
Baking for Life
comes to town and everyone goes balmy.”

“Maybe it’s more a question of someone needing the hundred-thousand-dollar prize money,” Libby said.

“Or,” Bernie added, “wanting to enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame.”

“Perhaps,” Sheila said. “But I still think some people—mind you, I’m not saying who—have blown this whole thing way out of proportion.”

“I think it’s easy to pooh-pooh money when you’re well off,” Bernie said, giving Sheila’s earrings a meaningful glance.

Bernie didn’t know much about jewelry, but she figured the diamond studs Sheila was wearing had to be at least one carat and possibly two.

“I may not have as much money as you think I do,” Sheila told Bernie in a frosty tone. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“No. I suppose it’s not.”

“And these earrings were a gift from my late, lamented husband. They’re not to my taste, but I wear them in his memory.”

Bernie and Libby were careful not to look at each other. If they had, they would have burst out laughing.

“That’s very sweet of you,” Bernie said after she’d composed herself.

“I try to be nice to everyone,” Sheila said. “I try to follow the Golden Rule.”

Libby managed not to roll her eyes. Instead, she decided to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand.

“Did Alma also tell you that she pointed us in your direction?” she asked.

Sheila laughed. “No. She most certainly did not. I suppose I’m your number-one suspect, given what people were saying about Carl’s demise.”

“She actually didn’t mention that,” Bernie said.

Sheila made a tsk-tsk noise with her tongue. “How remiss of her. I’m surprised. So what did she say?” Sheila asked.

“She said that Millie tried to steal your boyfriend.”

Sheila laughed harder and put her hand to her throat. Bernie could tell that she’d had work done. “Oh dear me. That is too funny. First of all, that was over twelve years ago. Second of all, Mario wasn’t my boyfriend; he was my friend. Third of all, he was gay, so the whole thing was completely ridiculous. Talk about being unclear on the concept. However, I am surprised Alma didn’t tell you about my BMW.”

“What about it?” Bernie asked.

“The fact that Millie ran into it.” Sheila threw up her hands in a gesture of disgust. “Honestly, that woman should never have been allowed to get behind the wheel of a car. She was a bad driver when she was younger, and she only got worse as she got older. Then, to top everything off, she refused to pay for what she’d done.”

“Surely your insurance covered the damage,” Bernie observed.

Sheila frowned. “Of course it did. But that wasn’t the point. The point was how she acted and what she said.”

“Which was?” Bernie asked.

Sheila shook her head. “Let’s just say it was insulting to the memory of my dead husband. And me.” She took a look at her watch. Bernie noticed that it was a Cartier.

“Are we keeping you from something?” Bernie asked.

Sheila smiled again. “As a matter of fact, you are. My television program is starting soon. So if you don’t mind . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she gestured toward the door.

“So you’re not going to answer our questions?” Bernie asked.

“I think I already have,” Sheila replied.

“We haven’t asked anything yet,” Libby pointed out. “You’re the one who’s been doing all of the talking.”

“I was trying to make things easy for you.”

“I appreciate that,” Bernie said.

“Good,” Sheila said. “Since you didn’t get it the first time, let me summarize for you.”

“I don’t think that’s what Bernie was saying,” Libby told Sheila.

Bernie watched Sheila try to widen her eyes, but she couldn’t. Botox, Bernie figured. Sheila was trying to say something when Bernie heard a door open and close in the back of the house.

A moment later, a voice called out, “Yahoo. I’m here.”

Bernie and Libby looked at Sheila, and Sheila looked back at them.

“Rose?” Bernie asked, having recognized the voice.

Sheila crossed her arms in front of her chest. “So what if it is?”

“I’m not saying anything,” Bernie said.

“But you look as if you want to,” Sheila told her as she shifted her weight from her right foot to her left and crossed her arms more tightly over her chest.

“Want to what?” Rose asked as she came bounding around the corner. She was wearing jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, a black motorcycle jacket, and black Uggs on her feet. Even at this hour, her hair was in a perfect French twist. She stopped dead when she saw Libby and Bernie. “Oh dear,” she said, putting her hand over her mouth. “Am I interrupting something?”

“It’s fine,” Sheila told her. “They want to know where Amber is. Evidently, they’ve misplaced her.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Libby said.

“Then what would you say?” Sheila asked.

“I’d say that she’s missing,” Libby answered.

“Oh dear,” Rose said, putting her hand to her mouth. “How upsetting. What can I do to help?”

“Funny you should say that,” Bernie told her. “We stopped at your house to ask you a few questions, but we just missed you.”

“In fact,” Libby added, “we saw you take off out of your garage. It looked as if you were in a little bit of a hurry. Is everything all right? It looked like some sort of emergency.”

“Well, I guess it was, in a manner of speaking,” Rose replied. She was standing ramrod straight, with her feet slightly turned out. “I had a brilliant new idea for a cookie. I was so excited. But, unfortunately, I realized after I’d broken the eggs in the mixing bowl that I was out of vanilla and walnuts. So stupid of me. Normally, I’m so well organized.”

She leaned forward. “The events of the last couple of days are just so upsetting that half the time I don’t know what I’m doing,” she confided to Libby and Bernie. “And now this thing with Amber. Of course,” she continued, “there is always the chance that Amber is having a fun weekend down in Cancun or someplace like that. I know at that age that’s what I would be doing.”

“It would be nice to think so,” Bernie said.

“You have to be more positive,” Rose told her. “You have to send positive messages out into the universe.”

Bernie wanted to slap her.

“So, Rose,” Libby said, quickly changing the subject, “did you get the walnuts and vanilla?”

“I couldn’t,” Rose replied. “The store was closed.”

“The supermarket in Longely is open twenty-four-seven,” Bernie pointed out.

Rose moved her feet into third position and did a demi-plié. “I wasn’t going there. I was going to Pierre’s.”

Pierre’s was a shop that specialized in high-end baking supplies. Bernie raised an eyebrow.

“The supermarket doesn’t carry Madagascar vanilla and black walnuts,” Rose informed Bernie, “as well you know.”

“In fact, I do,” Libby told Rose, who was now standing on her tiptoes. For a moment, before she turned to Bernie, Libby had a vision of Rose pirouetting around the entryway. “You know,” Libby said to her sister, “it’s funny, but I thought Rose was heading off to where she’d stashed Amber. It just goes to show.”

Bernie nodded. “So did I, Libby. So did I.”

“I mean,” Libby continued, “I figured that she’d just gotten a phone call from Alma telling her we were on our way to see her, and she decided to get out of the house before we could get there.”

“After taking care of a few things,” Bernie added.

Libby snapped her fingers. “But wait. Could it be that Rose had Amber hidden in the house and decided to relocate her to a safer place?”

Rose came down on the soles of her feet. “You two are nuts,” she cried. She pointed to herself. “Do I look like I’d be capable of forcing Amber to do something she didn’t want to do?”

“You’re in pretty good shape,” Libby told her.

“Yes, I am,” Rose told her. “But I’m sixty-eight, and Amber’s twenty-two. Youth wins every time.”

“Maybe you had help,” Bernie suggested.

“Or used drugs on Amber,” Libby put in.

Rose shook her head in disgust. “Why would I do something like that? What could I possibly gain?”

“Revenge is always a good motive,” Bernie said.

“Revenge?” Rose scoffed. “On Millie? Where are you getting this stuff from?”

“From Alma,” Sheila answered.

Rose rolled her eyes. “You’re kidding me,” she said to Bernie and Libby.

“Not in the slightest,” Bernie said. “Alma seemed to think you were a likely candidate,” Bernie said to Rose. “She told me to talk to you.”

“And me,” Sheila said, pointing to herself. “Don’t forget me.”

“Who could do that?” Bernie said.

“Who indeed,” Libby echoed, before continuing her conversation with Rose. “Alma is the reason we went to your house, Rose,” Libby told her.

Rose breathed in and out. Then she did another demi-plié. “Alma is . . . quite the storyteller,” she said when she was through. “She’s the one you ought to be questioning. She’s the one who threatened to kill Millie, not me. She’s the one who was jealous of Millie—pathologically jealous.”

“So you weren’t upset about what Millie did to your mother’s lilac bushes?” Bernie asked Rose, pointedly ignoring Sheila.

“Of course, I was upset,” Rose replied. “Why should I deny it? Everyone knows I was upset. Those bushes had been my great-great-grandmother’s. They’d been in my family for generations. They were irreplaceable. I’m still mourning their loss.” For a moment Rose’s eyes flashed, and her mouth formed itself into a sharp line. “The worst of it was that I had asked Millie to park in the street, but she refused. Said it was too far to walk, but she could spend hours traipsing through the mall. Millie was selfish to the core. The only person she cared about was herself.”

“And the twenty dollars she owed you?”

Rose stood even straighter, if that were possible. “I believe that debts should be paid off. I believe it is a breach of trust not to do so.”

“Fair enough,” Libby said. “Just out of curiosity, what would you do if you won the
Bake for Life
contest?”

“That’s easy,” Rose said. “I would donate the money to the dancer’s retirement fund.”

“Are we done here?” Sheila inquired before Libby could ask another question. “Because if we are, Rose and I have things to discuss.”

“I thought you had a TV program to watch,” Bernie said.

“That too,” Sheila replied.