Virginia Lowell - A Cookie Before Dying

“Wait for it,” Maddie said, her voice hushed with excitement. “There, see it? Right in front of the band shell.”

Whimpering softly, Spunky stood on his hind legs. His nails made a clicking sound as he steadied his front paws against the windowpane. Olivia placed her head next to his and looked in the same direction. She saw what looked like a curl of fog, almost ghostlike, an apparition. Which, of course, Olivia didn’t believe in. Except maybe in the middle of the night.

“Isn’t she amazing?” Maddie said. “It has to be a ‘she,’ don’t you think? It doesn’t look like the way a man would dance.”

“Dance?” Olivia readjusted her mental context and sure enough, she saw a slender, sylph-like creature twirling in the moonlight. She seemed to be wearing a diaphanous white midlength gown with a flowing white cape that swirled around her shoulders as she pirouetted. A curved arm swooped over the dancer’s head as she leaped into the air with a smooth grace Olivia could only dream of possessing. “Are those ballet steps?”

“Livie, my friend, you need to get out more. Of course those are ballet steps, and I’d be willing to bet my new silicone baking mats she has trained professionally. Who on earth could she be? I don’t recall Chatterley Heights producing anyone so skilled. She could be a beginning ballerina practicing for her first appearance. Wouldn’t that be exciting? I wish I could get a closer look at her. She seems tiny, but I can’t tell from this distance. I suppose she could be very young.”

Olivia said, “I remember my friend Stacey saying her daughter has been studying ballet at some school in DC. Maybe she sneaked out of the house to practice.” Her excitement waning, Olivia yawned. “We need to get back to bed.”

Maddie’s laugh was loud enough to distract Spunky for a moment. “That isn’t Rachel Harald,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Trust me. Rachel is bigger, and besides, I’ve seen her efforts. I went to her first-year recital last spring, just to relive the dancing days of my youth.” Maddie made a clicking sound that Olivia recognized as frustrated curiosity. “I’m going to sneak around behind stores and see if I can get a peek at her. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to concentrate again.”

“Maddie, it’s the middle of the night. Please go home and get some sleep.”

“Already slept,” Maddie said. “I’ll keep the phone on, and you tell me if she moves to another location.”

“Maddie, I’m tired. I—”

“Okay, I’m behind the hardware. Bless Lucas for leaving a back light on. Now I’m in back of Fred’s.” Like most town residents, Maddie shortened the full name of the men’s clothing store Frederick’s of Chatterley. “Once I get to the other side of the bookstore, I think I’ll be close enough to the band shell to see her. Is she still there?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m past Book Chat. I can see her,” Maddie whispered into her cell. “But I can’t see her face. It’s too dark, and she seems to be avoiding the lamplight. She looks small and very slender, almost like a pre-teen girl. It’s funny, though. . . .”

Now Olivia was hooked. “What?”

“Her hair,” Maddie said. “It’s long, nearly to her waist. And it looks pure white.”

“Maybe that’s why I thought she was wearing a cape,” Olivia said. “So she must be quite a bit older than we thought.”

“If only if I could see her face,” Maddie said. “She’s wearing something over her head, sort of a sack thing. She must be able to see through it, so it might be the same filmy fabric as her dress. Maybe it’s a costume.” Maddie sighed into her cell. “I’m losing her; she’s dancing into the shadows, away from the band shell. I guess I’ll have to try again another night. Anyway, I’m heading back to the store now, so you can run along to bed. And take that furry creature with you.”

Olivia gathered Spunky under one arm. “Okay, see you tomorrow. You can open, as penance for waking me up.” In the middle of a yawn, her brain registered Maddie’s words. “Wait, why are you coming back here? I refuse to stay up the rest of the night speculating with you about the identity of the mysterious ballerina in white.”

“Not to worry,” Maddie said, sounding far too alert. “I’ve got some baking to do, but I will be silence itself. And I can open the store, no problem.”

“What baking?”

“Oh, you know, a bit of this and that to fill out the display.”

“What display?”

“I thought you were exhausted.”

“What display, Maddie?”

“For our spontaneous morning event, the one we talked about.”

“We never talked about a spontaneous morning event. I’d remember. I’m not that sleepy.”

“Didn’t we? I guess I thought about it so much, I was sure I’d mentioned it. No problem, I’ve got the whole thing under control. You don’t have to do a thing, just sleep in a bit and show up whenever.”

Olivia was about to press the point, but she asked herself, did she really want to know? Spunky had gone limp against her chest, and she’d had enough excitement for one night. Maddie’s ideas could be on the wild side, but she was, for the most part, a sensible businesswoman. Maddie had learned a lot in the year or so they’d operated The Gingerbread House together, and she’d been wanting to plan an event entirely on her own. Besides, if you couldn’t trust your best friend and business partner, who could you trust?

Olivia placed a tray of iced vegetables—the decorated sugar cookie kind—on a display table in the cookbook nook. The nook was once a formal dining room for the succession of families who had owned the Queen Anne home before it became The Gingerbread House. In the dignified room, with its crystal chandelier and built-in walnut hutch with leaded glass doors, Maddie’s whimsical creations made quite a statement . . . like flashing neon lights in a medieval cathedral.

Olivia felt anxiety creep up her spine. The same worry had awakened her early that morning and sent her downstairs to the store well before opening. When she had seen Maddie cutting and baking cookies in vegetable shapes the previous day, Olivia was puzzled but not concerned. Even when Maddie returned to The Gingerbread House in the wee hours because she “had some baking to do,” and then insisted to Olivia that the two of them had agreed to host a “spontaneous morning event”—which Olivia was certain they’d never discussed—even then, she’d taken Maddie at her word. However, Olivia bolted awake before her alarm, one phrase of Maddie’s ringing in her head: “I’ve got the whole thing under control.” What “whole thing,” and why might it go out of control in the first place?

Olivia pondered the plate of cookies in front of her, with their wildly colored designs, and she knew the answers to her questions. Maddie was angry with Charlene Critch and convinced she had littered their store’s lawn with anti-sugar propaganda. All the cookies Maddie had prepared for their morning event represented fruits and vegetables. Charlene worshipped fruits and vegetables, and she despised sugar. However, decorated cookies are made with sugar. Lots of it. Charlene was sure to hear about the event and unlikely to be amused by the irony.

An electric blue cookie shaped like an eggplant and decorated with a hot pink smiley face grinned at Olivia from the top of a pyramid. She plucked it off. After glancing around to be sure Maddie wasn’t watching, Olivia exchanged it for a cookie from the middle of the stack, a sedate apple shape, mint green with a baby yellow stem. The eggplant’s bright skin peeked out, but at least she’d hidden that gruesome face.