Cookie Dough or Die (23 page)

Gwen’s request sent Olivia’s mood on another trip down the slide. Everyone seemed so eager to cash in on Clarisse’s death, and Olivia’s own “stroke of luck” had happened for the same reason. She felt a sudden urge to take a shower, pack up the car, and move with Spunky to an undisclosed location.

Avoiding eye contact, Olivia worked through the line of customers in silence. If anyone started to ask a question, she pretended not to hear. By two o’clock, The Gingerbread House began to empty as cars and vans carted off four or five passengers at a time, hoping to beat the worst of the Baltimore and DC rush hours.

With only a few stragglers left in the store, Olivia gestured to Maddie that she was taking a stack of receipts into the kitchen. Once the door closed behind her, Olivia dropped the receipts in a heap on the table, sank into a chair, and let her forehead drop onto her folded arms.

Clarisse’s death and Olivia’s growing conviction it was murder, Sam’s hints about a grandchild, Sam’s possible poisoning, the inheritance from Clarisse—too much had been happening, much too fast. And now she was smack dab in the middle of the mess and well on her way to joining the suspects list.

 

 

O
livia took Spunky on a quick run in the alley behind The Gingerbread House, then sped through the receipts. Not a bad take, and the day hadn’t ended. Having finished business, she began to search the Internet for references to the Chamberlain cookie-cutter collection.

When she heard the kitchen door open and close behind her, Olivia called over her shoulder. “Hey Maddie, come here and see what I’ve found.”

“Livie, we need to talk.” The voice did not belong to Maddie.

“Del!” Guided by instinct, Olivia clicked closed the website she’d found, lowered the computer lid, and twisted around in her seat. “You surprised me. I was expecting . . .”

Del wasn’t his usual low-key self, and Olivia felt her muscles tighten. “What’s up?” She tried to keep her voice light and casual. As Del stepped around the corner of the kitchen table, she noticed he was carrying a rolled-up newspaper. “Spunky has more or less grasped the whole housebreaking thing, if that’s what you’ve brought the paper for.” Okay, that was pathetic. She instructed her mouth to stay shut.

Del unrolled the newspaper and held it out for her to see. “Did you know about this?”

Olivia recognized the front page of the local paper,
The Weekly Chatter
, which usually came out every Wednesday.

“Where did you get this?” she asked. “It’s only Tuesday.”

“It’s late on Tuesday, and I’m the Sheriff. Binnie always drops off an advance copy.”

“That’s mighty cooperative,” Olivia said, “for a newspaper editor.”

Del shrugged and shifted his gaze toward the cupboards. “Binnie used to babysit me when I was a kid.”

Olivia stifled an urge to laugh, but her amusement dissipated when she read the banner, “Chamberlain Death Suspicious.” She yanked the paper from Del’s hand. A photo accompanying the article showed Olivia dressed in the black pants and gray sweater she’d worn to the will reading. She was standing next to her Valiant, talking with a man whose back was to the camera. The photo caption read, “
Olivia Greyson, heir to fortune, consults with her lawyer.”

“What the . . . ?” Olivia muttered. “
My
lawyer? Heir to fortune?”

Del said nothing. He pulled a kitchen chair near her and sat down, his legs crossed in a casual way, one ankle resting on the opposite knee. Olivia’s peripheral vision registered the rapid wiggling of his left foot.

According to the byline, Binnie Sloan wrote the piece and Nedra Sloan was credited with the photos. Dread lay like a waterlogged tennis ball in Olivia’s stomach as she forced herself to begin reading the article. Binnie’s take on her surprise inheritance appeared to depend on comments from several “confidential sources,” who offered quotes such as:

Olivia heard a high-pitched whimpering sound and realized it had erupted from her own throat. The newspaper dropped on her lap. She glanced over at Del, who watched her with a thoughtful expression, as if he wasn’t sure what her reaction meant.

“Del, I check my phone messages and emails all the time, and Binnie never even tried to interview me.” “There’s more,” he said. “Go to page five.”

With a deep groan, Olivia did so. She found two more photos. The first showed her with Spunky in the store’s side yard. That explained the disturbing clicks they’d heard. The caption read,” Heiress Olivia Greyson enjoys a break.”

In the second photo, Bertha stared at the camera, her eyes so wide the whites encircled her pupils. The article continued with a quote from Bertha: “
I can’t believe Ms. Olivia would hurt her. Why, Ms. Clarisse treated her like a daughter.”
Olivia groaned again. She could hear Bertha saying those words in all innocence, but written down they could be read as conveying shock.

It came as no surprise that the attorney Mr. Willard, along with Hugh and Edward Chamberlain, had refused to comment. Tammy Deacons was not mentioned. Either she wasn’t there at the time of the so-called interviews, or she was one of the “confidential sources.”

Olivia sprang out of her chair and slapped the newspaper down in front of Del. It made a satisfying thwap, but Del barely blinked.

“When you first barged in here, you demanded to know if I knew about ‘this.’ If you think I’d have anything to gain from this kind of exposure, you’re nuts.” Olivia hauled herself up onto the table so she could look down at him.

Del uncrossed his legs and sat up straighter. “By ‘this,’ I meant the bequest Clarisse made to you. And by the way, I’m aware it wasn’t five million dollars plus a million in antique cookie cutters.”

“How do you know?”

“I called the Chamberlain house and asked. Apparently, I have more influence than the editor of
The Weekly Chatter,
because Edward answered the phone and assured me you’d received only one hundred fifty thousand dollars and a collection estimated to be worth about thirty thousand.”

“It won’t make much of a dent in his inheritance, or Hugh’s,” Olivia said. “Although it sounds huge to me, and it might look like a good motive for murder.”

“It probably would.”

“At any rate, the answer to your question is a definite no. I had no hint that Clarisse planned to leave me anything at all. When Mr. Willard called to tell me she had made a bequest to me, I assumed it would amount to a few of her favorite cookie cutters, the ones with sentimental value. I was stunned when Mr. Willard read the codicil. That’s why we were talking outside afterwards, when that photo was taken. He assured me that Clarisse had wanted the bequest kept secret. You can ask him, if you don’t believe me.”

“I already have,” Del said with a faint but definite smile. “However, he couldn’t know if you’d found out from another source. I needed to hear it from you.”

He didn’t add that he now believed her, and she didn’t ask.

According to the clock over the sink, it was five. Maddie would be straightening up the chaos left behind by a crowd of excited customers. On the one hand, Olivia wanted Del to leave so she and Maddie could get back to their own investigation. On the other hand, maybe this wretched newspaper article had opened Del’s mind a bit.

“Del, remember that conversation we had at the café right after Clarisse’s death?”

Del nodded.

“You seemed so certain it was an accident. In fact, you wouldn’t even talk about the possibility of suicide. I couldn’t believe it had been either one, but the possibility of murder didn’t occur to me then. Now it has. I’ve thought for some time that Clarisse was murdered, and now I’m convinced she was. Only I don’t know by whom.”

Del leaned forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the kitchen floor for what felt to Olivia like an hour. Anyway, it was long enough for her to move through a string of emotions from intense anxiety to curiosity to embarrassment that the floor hadn’t been swept in a week.

Finally, he looked up at her and asked, “What makes you so sure?”

She should have known he’d ask her that question. How could she be convincing without involving anyone else?

“And before you tell me,” Del said, “let me add that I already know Cody shared his so-called crime scene photos with you. We had a serious discussion about that.”

“Oh dear,” Olivia said, cringing. “I hoped I wouldn’t get him into trouble, but you were so insistent it wasn’t a crime, you can’t really blame him. Blame me, if you want, but not Cody. He’s serious about his job, and I, for one, think he’s on to something.”

“So do I,” Del said.

“You do? Really? When did . . . I mean, how . . . ?”

“Give me some credit, Livie. I realize television mystery series present small-town sheriffs as buffoons or bullies, but most of us speak in complete sentences and take pride in our jobs.”

“Um, I—”

“Furthermore, I am not required to tell you, at any time, what I might know or suspect in a certain case. It makes my job a lot harder when private citizens start asking dangerous questions and putting themselves in harm’s way because they think they are smarter than I am.”

“Wait a minute, I never, ever thought I was smarter—”

“I’m not finished, Livie. I’m saying this because I care about you.”

“Well, you have a strange way of—”

Del sprang from his chair and grabbed Olivia by the shoulders. He looked into her eyes with an intensity that sent a distracting shiver through her.

Del released her as the kitchen door opened.

“I’ll finish closing up,” Maddie said quietly, her eyes darting from Del to Olivia. “Then I’ll be heading on home.” The door clicked shut.

Del slid back onto his chair. “Now having said all that, let me add that I think you are intelligent, insightful, and I want to hear everything you, and I presume Maddie, have discovered.”

An hour later, Olivia had shown Del the financial information Maddie had gathered, the websites they’d searched, and Tammy’s notorious Facebook page. She told him that Sam Parnell delivered to Clarisse a letter he thought was from a private detective, and she urged him to connect the attack on Sam with that letter.

However, as she prepared to tell Del about the letters from Faith and Clarisse, his cell rang. He turned his back on her and answered. All she heard was, “I’ll be right there.” He turned around and said, “I’ve got to take care of something.”

Del slid an arm in his uniform jacket sleeve. “I want you to delete those photos of the scene.” When Olivia opened her mouth to protest, he added, “Not because I’m the sheriff and I think you shouldn’t have them. Although you shouldn’t. I don’t think it’s safe for you to have them.”

Del picked up his hat and reached for the alley door. In a lighter tone, he said, “I’d count it as a personal favor if you wouldn’t go all Miss Marple on me.”

“You needn’t worry,” Olivia said.

With a nod, Del opened the door.

“I’m really more the Tuppence Beresford type.”

“Really? The young Tuppence or the older one?”

Before Olivia could draw in enough breath for a comeback, Del was gone.

If Wednesday morning dawned clear and sweet with the scent of lilacs, Olivia Greyson didn’t notice. She barely noticed Spunky’s insistent tug on his leash, indicating his longing for a run. Lost in her own thoughts, she ran on automatic pilot back and forth along the alley behind The Gingerbread House. She wasn’t eager to show her face outside the store. Not yet, anyway.

“Come on, Spunks,” Olivia said as she nestled the squirming dog under her arm. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Tell you what, you were so good yesterday, why don’t you stay with Maddie and me today in the kitchen? In fact, I’ll move your spare bed and bowls down there. You have to promise to stay in the kitchen, though.”
Sure, that’ll happen.
At least if he escaped into the store, customers would make a fuss over him, which in turn would delay him long enough to ensure his recapture.

It was seven thirty a.m. when Olivia, with Spunky on a leash, let herself into The Gingerbread House, carrying a dog bed and water bowls, food, treats, and a few toys. She opened the door with the two fingers that weren’t already holding on to dog paraphernalia. With a whimper, Spunky whipped the leash from her other hand and bounded into the store.