When the Cookie Crumbles (6 page)

“Here’s a shady oak tree shape,” Olivia said as she handed her mother a shiny copper cutter. “Hermione seems to think Paine is depressed, although she didn’t use that word.”

“That would not surprise me,” Ellie said.

“And Karen?”

“Hmm?”

“Our esteemed mayor, the other person you’re worried about. Although if Karen is sad or depressed, I’ll eat an entire gingerbread house, dried tagliatelle and all.” Olivia found the last cookie cutter on her mother’s list, a rosebush. The cutter was no more than a lumpy oval shape, but Maddie would recognize it. Olivia slid the box back on the shelf before correcting the attached list to reflect the change in its contents.

“I wouldn’t call Karen sad, exactly,” Ellie said, “but she does seem overwrought. It isn’t good for her. She’s taking this town celebration far too seriously. History is important, of course, and our young people do need more exposure to the idea that time did not begin with their births, but still, one can become too involved in something.”

“This from the woman who takes yoga classes seventeen times a week?” Olivia escorted Ellie out into the cookbook nook.

“A gross exaggeration,” Ellie said. “Anyway, yoga is only yoga.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

Ellie tilted her head and smiled up at her daughter, who was taller by a good eight inches. “You’d understand if you would come to yoga class with me. I tried to get Karen to come along, but she insisted she’s too busy. She said yoga would only increase her stress, which is absurd. Karen is well into her forties. I told her, now is the time to lay the groundwork for a more flexible and graceful aging.”

“And did she take that well?”

“Not at all, dear.”

Olivia scanned the display of add-ons for decorated cookies and selected a large jar of white sugar sprinkles for snow on the gingerbread house roofs. “Mom, what’s your impression of Quill Latimer?”

“Quill, yes…” As Ellie tilted her head, the navy blue streak in her hair shone in the light, reminding Olivia of deep blue luster dust. “I’ve got it,” Ellie said. “Misplaced.”

“Um…could you use a few more words, Mom?”

A thought furrow formed between Ellie’s bright blue eyes. “Poor Quill always seems to me as if he isn’t where he ought to be, and he is terribly unhappy about it. Some years ago, I took a class taught by Quill at the community college. It was called the History of Chatterley Heights: Pre-Revolution to the Present. Although, as I recall, the present ended at World War II, which is significant, I think.”

“Misplaced, Mom? Quill?”

“That’s what I’m talking about, Livie. The class content said it all. Quill is obsessed with the past.”

“Aren’t most history professors focused on the past?” Olivia handed her mother the last jar of chocolate pearlized jimmies.

“Of course, Livie, just as literature professors are focused on literature, but most of them have other interests as well. One of my friends specializes in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. She goes into a trance when she discusses his work, but she is equally delirious when she bowls a strike.”

“Bowls a strike? Mom, I’m—”

“Confused, I know,” Ellie said. “What I’m trying to say is that Quill is happy only when he is lost in the past. He was a different person in the classroom—entertaining, good-natured, approachable. But when I visited his office to correct an error in my registration, he’d turned sullen and grumpy.”

“The Quill we all know and—”

“Exactly,” Ellie said. “Quill belongs in a previous era. He doesn’t fit in the twenty-first century. It makes him very uncomfortable.”

“That makes a kind of tortured sense, Mom.”

“Thank you, dear. Now, about the rolled fondant?”

As Olivia led the way to the store kitchen, she noticed several customers browsing while Bertha rang up purchases at the sales counter. “Let’s get the remaining items from the kitchen,” Olivia said. “Then I need to help out on the sales floor.”

“Can’t Maddie help me? She said she’d be back here in the afternoon.”

“Maddie is as frantic as Karen, but she handles it much better. You know she’s trying to finish all the gingerbread window scenes before heading over to the community center this evening to help decorate the houses.”

Olivia held open the door and followed her mother into The Gingerbread House kitchen. They found Maddie looking worried all right, but not about her gingerbread
window scenes. She wasn’t paying any attention to the partially decorated gingerbread cookies that covered the worktable.

Lucas Ashford, Maddie’s almost fiancé, sat in a kitchen chair with her arm around his shoulders. Lucas looked as angry as Olivia had ever seen him. In fact, she couldn’t recall seeing him even mildly miffed. Now his chiseled features were tinged with red, and she noticed his jaw work as he ground his teeth. Maddie flashed her a concerned frown. Even her wildly curly hair had deflated.

“Maddie dear,” Ellie said, dumping her baking items on the kitchen table, “what has happened?”

Olivia noticed the Mr. Coffee was empty and started a new pot. She could tell this was a time for cookies and coffee.

“Lucas just called his team off the mansion renovation,” Maddie said. She hesitated a moment, turning to Lucas to tell the story. When he said nothing, she added, “Paine Chatterley demanded that Lucas renovate their kitchen and put in all new appliances, free of charge.”

“What?!” Olivia and Ellie said at the same time.

Lucas sprang from his chair and leaned against the kitchen counter, his muscular arms folded tightly across his chest. “Paine said it’s the town’s fault the mansion was in such bad shape. He said that Harold and Sally’s will made us responsible for upkeep, in exchange for the use of the house as a tourist attraction after their deaths.”

“That’s absurd,” Olivia said. “Updating the kitchen has nothing to do with maintaining a historical building. If anything, the kitchen should be left as it was a hundred years ago.”

“Tell that to his lordship,” Lucas said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He isn’t letting the town show the mansion
this weekend, so I pulled my guys off the job. I wouldn’t care except…well, I’ve invested a lot of time and money in that restoration, and so has the town. Now it’s all down the drain.”

Maddie hitched herself up onto the kitchen counter next to Lucas. “Here’s the deal,” she said. “Lucas agreed to offer free labor and some of the materials in exchange for the opportunity to do a video of the restored house, inside and out. He wants to expand his business. In this economy, a plain old hardware store can’t really survive. Plus Lucas still has some debt from his parents’ medical care.”

Lucas’s shoulders slumped as his spent anger turned to dejection. “Some of the guys I recruited for the project, they were working for free, even though they needed to be out looking for paying jobs. They were all counting on me to get some new business out of this. They’ve got skills; I could have put them to work.”

Maddie’s arm wrapped around his waist as she leaned into him. “It’s not your fault, honey. None of this is your fault.” She caught Olivia’s eye and mouthed the word “cookies.”

Olivia nodded her understanding. She and Maddie believed in the power of decorated cookies to smooth social relations and sooth an aching heart, so they always kept a small stash ready for any such contingency. Olivia slid a tin off the top of the refrigerator and opened it. Inside were a dozen cookies, carefully stacked. She could feel the tension in the kitchen ease at once.

While Ellie handed out cups of coffee, Olivia arranged the cookies on a large plate and passed it to Maddie, who selected two heart-shaped cookies with marbled pink and red icing. Lucas attempted a faint smile as Maddie aimed one of the cookies toward his mouth.

The kitchen door opened, and Olivia saw Sam Parnell’s hawklike face appear. Not a welcome sight. Sam was a Chatterley Heights postal carrier with a fondness for gossip, and he wasn’t particular about accuracy. Hence his nickname, Snoopy.

“I’ve got this overnight priority package for you,” Sam said to Olivia. “I figured it might be important for the celebration, so I brought it right on over. That clerk of yours, Bertha, she’s real busy. I noticed she’s all alone out there.” When no one reacted to his barb, he slid through the kitchen door and shut it behind him. “Anyway, she said you were all back here.”

As always, Sam wore his United States Postal Service uniform, complete with hat, but he wasn’t carrying his mail bag. Olivia suspected he’d seen The Gingerbread House address on the package and made a beeline for the store, hoping for a free cookie and a chance to check up on her and Maddie. A few weeks earlier, Sam had hand delivered a package and found Olivia chatting with Del in the kitchen. For days afterward, folks dropped by the store only to ask Olivia when she and Del planned to “share their big news.” Binnie Sloan had come right out and announced in
The Weekly Chatter
that Olivia and Del were engaged. Which they absolutely were not.

Sam’s glance fell on the plate of cookies, now in Ellie’s hands. “Looks like you’re having yourselves a little party. Starting the celebration a bit early, are you?”

“Not at all,” Olivia said a shade too hastily. She could see the glint in Sam’s eyes. “We’re taking a break from our preparations for the big weekend. It’s a lot of hard work in not much time. Thanks for the delivery; we do need these items for Saturday’s opening ceremony.” She took the package from Sam’s hands and left it on the kitchen counter, unopened.

“I heard you got a visit from Paine Chatterley and that wife of his last evening,” Sam said. “He doesn’t look so good, does he? Maybe he came home to die.”

“I don’t think he’s—” Maddie’s cheeks flushed as she realized she’d fallen for Sam’s exploratory gambit. “I mean, are they receiving mail so soon?”

“They got a package already. From London, England. I thought I’d hand deliver it. I always like to meet new folks on my route,” Sam said. “I was glad to see they didn’t bring along a dog.” He shot a glance at Olivia. Getting no reaction, he said, “Mr. Chatterley looked like he just got out of bed when I saw him. Must have tied one on last night. I heard he was quite a teenage drinker back when he lived here, so I figure he kept it up in Europe. They drink all the time over there.” Again, Sam’s contribution was met with stony silence. “Well, I can’t hang around and chat,” he said without moving. “I’m on duty.”

Ellie bestowed a beneficent smile on Sam and held the plate out to him. “Do take a cookie with you, Sam.”

“I don’t know, what with my diabetes and all,” Sam said as he scooped up two cookies. Without so much as a murmur of admiration, he tore off a paper towel, wrapped the cookies, and shoved them into his uniform jacket pocket.

Olivia unlocked the alley door and held it open for Sam, who exited in silence. She knew he’d be back, angling for gossip, but it didn’t bother her much anymore. She was learning how to handle him. Sometimes she could get more information from Sam than he could wheedle out of her. Whether any of it was true was another matter. She wondered…was Paine seriously ill or perhaps a heavy drinker, as Sam had implied? Either might explain his inconsistent behavior and desire to be left alone.

As Olivia relocked the alley door, the kitchen phone
rang. Maddie answered and said, “Let me see if she’s able to come to the phone.” Holding her hand over the receiver, Maddie whispered, “Livie, it’s Karen. She sounds frantic. Should I tell her I don’t know where you are?”

“Tempting, but no, I’ll handle it.” Olivia took the phone. “Yes, Karen, what is it?” She heard the brusqueness in her own voice and tried to soften it. “Is anything wrong?”

“Is anything
wrong
? Are you kidding me?
Everything
is wrong. The entire celebration is hanging by a thread. Now I hear that Lucas Ashford has stopped work on the mansion, without so much as a word to me. Even the mansion’s exterior won’t be finished by Saturday. At least Matthew agreed to keep working, but he only does that Victorian gingerbread trim. If Paine thinks he’s going to get away with—”

“Matthew Fabrizio is still working on the mansion?” Too late, Olivia remembered Lucas was in the kitchen. She watched his features harden and tried to shift the direction of the conversation. “Karen, you know Lucas and his team have all been volunteering their labor, and Lucas donated supplies. It’s unfair to expect them to keep working when the mansion is now off-limits to the public. After all, Lucas is busy, he has Heights Hardware to operate.”

“I’m tired of hearing about stores that have to be run. It’s just a store, for goodness sakes, it can survive another day or two. I’ll be a laughingstock if we can’t even finish a paint job in time for such an important event.” Karen’s normally alto voice was scaling up into a panicky soprano range.

“Karen, none of this is a personal reflection on you.” Olivia couldn’t help rolling her eyes at Maddie, who shook her head in disgust. A flush spread up from Lucas’s neck, while Ellie smiled benignly at nothing in particular.

“Not personal? Are you completely clueless? This celebration is my baby. It was my idea, I planned it, and if anything goes wrong…well, nothing can go wrong, that’s all there is to it. You must get the Chatterleys to understand that if they intend to live in this town, they’d better learn to cooperate with us. I have a long memory.”

Olivia felt increasingly confused and uneasy about Karen’s emotional investment in what was essentially a birthday party for Chatterley Heights. “Karen, I think it might be helpful if you’d step back for a few moments. If we can’t bring visitors into the Chatterley Mansion, it won’t ruin the celebration. We do have photos of the mansion, and of course we have all the gingerbread houses, and—”

“You just don’t get it!” As Karen shouted into the receiver, Olivia held the phone away from her ear. Everyone in the kitchen heard the outburst. Karen lowered her voice and said, “Okay, we got off on the wrong foot. I should have explained to you that the
press
will be there, at the mansion, this Friday morning. Not just reporters from the little weeklies, either. Binnie got them interested, which was easy, but then she dropped the ball, so I convinced the big DC and Baltimore papers to come. I promised they could get pictures of the mansion, inside and out. Maybe even a quote or two from Paine Chatterley, if he’s sober enough. I’ll meet them in front of the mansion and give a statement about our celebration and our history and…so forth.”