One Dead Cookie (23 page)

“One of my dumber promises,” Olivia said to her sleepy Yorkie as she nestled him on
the soft, embroidered seat of his favorite chair. With a whimpering sigh, Spunky collapsed
in a tired heap. “When all this excitement is over, you need a trim.” Olivia stroked
the silky hair cascading over his eyes. “Get some rest, little one. I may be needing
your fierce protection.”

The kitchen door opened, and Maddie poked her head around the edge. She looked entirely
too alert. “Hey, you’re back. How’s Stacey holding up? Has Del arrested Binnie yet?”

“For what? Evil blogging?”

“One can dream. I saw what Binnie wrote about us. She sure knows how to have a good
time at our expense…or at your expense, to be more accurate.” Maddie held the kitchen
door open, releasing a strong whiff of lemon blended with a subtler flowery fragrance.

“Sorry I was gone so long,” Olivia said. “Have you been working all this time?”

“I don’t think of baking as work, Livie. Cookies are my canvas, and icing is my paint.
Plus, decorated cookies taste good, so there’s really no downside.”

“Wow, you’ve been…” Olivia gazed in awe at the scene in the kitchen. Decorated cookies
covered the worktable, the counter, the chair seats, even her little desk. When she’d
run out of cooling racks, Maddie had spread the cookies on whatever she could find:
cake pans, lids, even kitchen towels. The kitchen looked like a huge abstract painting
covered with swaths of yellow, purple, and red, in every conceivable shade. The sweet,
flowery scent
of a garden in full bloom swirled around the kitchen. Olivia felt deliciously light-headed…and
hungry.

“I’ve been what?” Maddie prodded. “On fire with creative genius? Gloriously imaginative?
The van Gogh of the cookie world?”

“I was going to say you’ve been busy.” Olivia felt the need to sit down, but all the
chairs were occupied with cookies.

“Well, that’s true, though disappointingly prosaic,” Maddie said. “Jennifer met the
challenge and found all the ingredients we needed. I was inspired to get the baking
out of the way, so we could move on to other fascinating pursuits.”

“Such as your engagement party?”

“Well, that, too. I was thinking of the hunt for Trevor Lane’s killer. Not so much
for Wade’s sake, but for Stacey’s peace of mind, not to mention her child support
checks. Before you fill me in,” she said, “did you read all of Binnie’s latest blog
or just the highlights?”

“All of it, as did Allan and my mom. I’m not worried. Binnie had to go so far out
of her way to implicate me in Trevor’s murder, I doubt anyone will take it seriously.”

Maddie lifted a cake pan of cookies off a chair so Olivia could sit down. “Don’t count
on that,” she said. “Chatterley Heights is well supplied with gullible, gossipy citizens.”
Maddie opened a storage cupboard and shoved the pan on top of a folded pile of aprons.

“Are those new embroidered aprons from Aunt Sadie?” Olivia asked.

“No, just a few from her last batch. I forgot where I’d stored them. I’ll put them
out on the sales floor tomorrow.”

“Hand them to me, will you?”

“Livie, I’ll agree that Aunt Sadie’s aprons are stunning, and they sell quickly for
amazing prices, but right now we have other—”

“Just let me see them, okay? I want to check something.”

Maddie lifted up the pan of cookies and pulled the aprons off the shelf. “You’ll have
to put them back when you’re finished. Or we could put them out right now. They are
already tagged.”

While Olivia looked through the small pile of embroidered aprons, Maddie opened the
lid of her computer to awaken it. She pulled out the chair from under the desk and
found yet another pan of cookies. Unable to find a spot for it, she sat down and balanced
the pan on her lap. “The computer is open for business,” she announced. When Olivia
didn’t respond, Maddie twisted in her seat and said, “Earth to Livie, we don’t have
all night. Well, actually, we do, but eventually we’ll have to open the store, and
I’d like to clean up the kitchen and maybe have a shower before…Livie? Are you okay?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry, I was lost in speculation, probably pointless. Did the other aprons
from this batch sell already?”

“No, why?”

Olivia opened up the top apron and spread it on her lap. The embroidered scene depicted
a cocky gingerbread girl with puffy red braids. She was dressed as a lumberjack, held
an axe, and stood next to a partially cut tree.

“Oh, I love that one,” Maddie said. “Aunt Sadie named it the Lumberjill and said I
was her model. Put that aside; I want to buy it.”

“The scenes on the aprons all related to professions, right? I remember one was in
a courtroom. There was a gingerbread judge in robes, and he was—”

With a squeal, Maddie said, “I remember that one, too. I don’t know why it hasn’t
sold yet. It was a hilarious
courtroom scene. There was a jury of gingerbread men and women all dancing around,
and the judge was holding a gavel in the air, trying to call the court to order. Hey,
you don’t suppose Trevor’s killer got the gavel idea from that apron, do you? That
means we’re looking for a woman.”

“Slow down a bit.” Olivia folded the Lumberjill apron and handed it to Maddie. “The
store was packed when Trevor, Dougie, and Lenora made their appearance. Granted the
audience was mostly women, but I noticed some men, too. Anyone could have seen that
apron. Now, if we could track down the gavel cookie cutter, that might lead us somewhere.
I know we’ve never carried one in the store.”

Maddie sighed. “Jennifer’s into cookie cutters, and she would certainly have seen
the apron. I sure hope the murderer isn’t Jennifer. She’s a fabulous clerk. I mean,
let’s face it: neither of us could sell that red mixer. And she found all the ingredients
we asked for in record time.”

“Jennifer is very talented,” Olivia said, “which is no guarantee of innocence. Let’s
leave our new employee for later. Right now, we don’t have any reason to connect her
with the murder except that her behavior has been a bit odd at times.”

Maddie reawakened her computer, which had drifted off while they talked about aprons.
“Okay, whither should my fingers goeth?”

“Let’s try Howie Upton,” Olivia said. “He seems to have held quite a grudge against
Trevor since high school. He hasn’t been very successful for a child genius, which
might explain why he can’t let go of the past.”

“Okay, this could take a while,” Maddie said. “I’m going to check professional and
social network sites. Howie strikes me as someone who might use the Internet to
provide himself with a social life. He can be anyone he wants online, but if he uses
his own name, I’ll find him.”

While Maddie tapped away, Olivia began to pack up the finished cookies. Many were
dry enough to layer in cake pans, which she stacked one on top of another. She had
cleared half the table before she began to tire. The remaining cookies were either
still cooling, or the icing hadn’t hardened yet. Olivia pulled up a kitchen chair,
rested her feet on another, and relaxed. Within moments, her head drooped forward
as she drifted toward a lavender, rose, and lemon nap.

“Yes!” Maddie announced at full volume. “I am Queen of the Internet!”

Olivia jerked awake and her feet slipped off their perch. Her chair began to wobble
backward. She grabbed for the table edge but missed. Hearing sounds behind her, Maddie
spun around and caught the chair before it reached the point of no return. “Whew,”
Maddie said. “Talk about a close call.” She righted the chair while Olivia clutched
the table edge to help pull herself upright.

“Maybe you should take a nap upstairs,” Maddie suggested. “In your own bed. At least,
I assume you don’t fall out of bed often.”

“Not more than once a week,” Olivia said. “Have you found anything interesting about
Howie Upton?”

“Interesting, yes.” Maddie righted the kitchen chair Olivia had pushed over with her
feet. “He seems to have trouble with women.”

“Not surprising. What kind of trouble?”

“They don’t like him.” Maddie settled in front of her computer again and awakened
the screen. “In fact, one woman complained quite vocally about his ‘clodishness.’
Is that even a word?”

“Maddie, you didn’t hack into his email, did you?”

“Don’t fuss, Livie. Hardly anyone is as easy to hack as you are, especially a child
mathematics prodigy who works in a bank. By the way, you have an email from Del. It’s
time sensitive, so you might want to read it soon. Anyway, I found plenty of posts
from Howie on a variety of blogs, plus a number of my own local Facebook friends allowed
Howie to become their friends, a decision many of them are reconsidering.”

“Wait, back up.” Olivia leaned against the counter so she could face Maddie. “You
hacked into my email and read a message from Del? That’s going too far, even between
best friends since age ten. This has got to stop.”

“I’ve tried, Livie, I really have, but it’s such fun to crack a password that’s in
French. It lightens the terrible psychological burden I carry from that D in high
school French. Besides, would you have checked your email before morning?”

“Probably not, but—”

“Then I rest my case,” Maddie said. “I might add that it’s sort of inconsistent to
get mad at me for hacking you when you’re always encouraging me to hack other people.”

“That’s hacking for the greater good,” Olivia said. “It’s important.”

“So is your love life. Read Del’s email.”

“Fine,” Olivia said. “You clean the kitchen.” She took Maddie’s place at the computer,
and read:

Olivia checked the clock over the sink. “It’s about two a.m.,” she said. “That should
leave plenty of time for more hacking…I mean investigation. To be followed by a nap,
and a shower.”

“If you’re worried about the timing,” Maddie said, “I can clean up. I’ll open in the
morning, too. Bertha and Jennifer both agreed to be here by eight thirty to help handle
the curious crowd we can expect by opening time.”

“Del has to leave the restaurant by eight, so I’ll be back in time for opening.” Much
as Olivia wanted to see Del, at the moment she was more interested in what he might
be willing to tell her about Trevor Lane’s murder and the evidence against Wade Harald.
Olivia wrote a quick acceptance for breakfast and hit send. “Okay, breakfast with
Del is a go.”

“Excellent.” Maddie punched the on button for the dishwasher. “Shall we begin with
my summary of the Howie Upton hack—? Sorry, ‘investigation’ has too many participles.”

“Syllables. Could we move on to Howie?”

Maddie threw a wet towel at Olivia. “Isn’t this fun? Okay, on to Howie Upton. I found
a blog all women should know about, devoted to warnings about men. It’s for women
only. You have to sign in to access it, so first you have to answer some questions
and give an email address that can be traced back to a person. Obviously, a male hacker
could get in without breaking a sweat, but the real purpose of the blog isn’t obvious
unless you’re in. Apparently, the women are keeping the secret pretty well. My guess
is they’ve got several members who are electronic geniuses, so…”

Olivia cleared her throat.

“Right, interesting but not relevant,” Maddie said. “The
bloggers all use aliases, but they don’t hesitate to name names. Howie Upton came
up several times, and never in a good way.”

“Any indication that he’s violent?” Olivia asked.

“Not physically, no. One woman called Howie ‘self-obsessed’ and ‘arrogant,’ but we
knew that. He doesn’t like to be rejected, but who does? The most interesting entries
came from a woman who said she dated him for about four months before breaking off
with him.

“During the time they were together, she said, Howie seemed to change. At first, he
acted attentive and confident. He complimented her, brought her gifts, and so on.
Then he started taking her for granted. Worst of all, she said Howie seemed obsessed
with hatred for other men. He kept pointing out how stupid they were, or that they
didn’t deserve the attention they got from women. The blogger finally broke off the
relationship when Howie began criticizing her own older brother, who she loved dearly.”

“Sounds like our Howie,” Olivia said. “Although, when it comes to nasty comments,
Trevor was the clear winner. Howie and Dougie were his victims.”

Olivia’s mind was spinning with ideas, though the rest of her had begun to wilt. “That
makes me wonder if Trevor was the original source of Howie’s anger issues with other
men. Maybe he fell back into the victim role around Trevor.”

“Which is, of course, pure speculation,” Maddie said. “Not that I myself don’t indulge
in the purest of speculation from time to time. For instance, maybe Howie’s father
was hypercritical, and men like Trevor remind him of daddy. Or was that over-the-top
Freudian?”

“Don’t ask me. All I can do is add and subtract.” Olivia brushed her tangled hair
back from her forehead and
wondered if she’d have time to wash it before breakfast. “I’m convinced Howie hated
Trevor, that’s what counts. Although it isn’t enough to accuse him of murder. What
we need are some solid motives. Did you find anything that might explain why Howie
hasn’t achieved the career heights he seemed destined for?”

“So glad you asked that, Livie. I don’t yet have the absolute, most final answer to
that question. However, I did happen on a few mentions of the name Howie Upton in
connection with an investment-banking firm in DC. Howie was at one time an up-and-coming
investment banker. Then he fell off the radar. I am highly motivated to find out why.”

“Good.” Focused on her next step in the investigation, Olivia picked up Maddie’s wet
towel and began to fold it. “I’ll email Allan. Maybe he has some DC financial-type
buddies he could tap for information. Allan loves building businesses on his own,
but he makes friends easily. He might be able to find out if Howie was simply laid
off from his investment-banking job—as in ‘last hired, first fired’—or if he was let
go for something worse.”