Virginia Lowell - A Cookie Before Dying

“Sorry,” Maddie said. “Of course you can. We were about to call a truce and break for coffee. Want some?”

“Tea,” Charlene said. “Coffee is bad for the blood pressure. I only drink herbal tea. No sugar, of course.”

Olivia shot a warning glance in Maddie’s direction. Aside from a surreptitious rolling of her eyes, Maddie allowed Charlene’s insistence on sugarless tea to go unchallenged.

As for Charlene, the fight had gone out of her. Her shoulders slumped as she glanced into her ruined kitchen. “I guess we’ll have to use the little microwave I keep in the store to make tea. I’ll get some water from the bathroom.”

Once Charlene was out of sight, Maddie said, “I’ll go to The Gingerbread House and grab some coffee for us. Won’t take long. Maybe I’ll bring some cookies.”

Watching Maddie’s retreating back, Olivia said to Del, “I’m afraid I had to run through the kitchen to see the intruder, but otherwise I don’t think I touched anything. The door to the back yard was already open.”

“What’s with all that paper I saw on your lawn?” Del asked as he surveyed the damage in Charlene’s kitchen. “I have to admit, I picked one up and read it. Looked like something Ms. Critch might write.”

“Charlene didn’t deny writing the notice, but she insists she didn’t throw all those copies on our property,” Olivia said. “And no, I did not race over here in a rage and destroy Charlene’s store for revenge.”

“I wasn’t implying that you did,” Del said with the faintest hint of a smile. “You seemed to be the only one not in a rage.”

Maddie rolled the trash can onto the lawn and began to toss paper basketballs.

“I suppose we should be recycling all this paper,” Olivia said.

“Or we could borrow a super-sized fan from the hardware and blow the stuff onto Charlene’s lawn. This humidity adds some real heft. It would be a shame to waste such an opportunity.” Maddie sank an overhead ball into the can. “Nailed it,” she said. “After I left, what did Del have to say about the break-in? Any suspects?”

“Not that he mentioned. At least he doesn’t seem to suspect us. However, in future you might want to control your irritation with Charlene, in public anyway. You did sound as if you’d happily thrash her with a ten-pound bag of sugar.”

“Oh that,” Maddie said with a dismissive laugh. “Del knows I’m harmless.”

Olivia found a tissue in the pocket of her shorts and used it to blot perspiration from her forehead. “This qualifies as aerobic activity,” she said, “for which it is way too hot. We need a rake.”

“I’ll pick one up from the hardware when I meet Lucas for lunch.” Maddie’s still newish love, Lucas Ashford, was the quiet and, to use Maddie’s description, yummy owner of the Heights Hardware. “Although it won’t be much use until the next time Charlene decides to decorate our lawn in her own special way. Why would you worry that Del would suspect us of trashing The Vegetable Pile?”

“The Vegetable Plate . As if you didn’t know.”

“Slip of the tongue.”

Olivia scooped up a paper. “The content of this flyer might look to some folks like a motive.”

“Point taken. It’s clear as day Charlene wrote these, and I could cheerfully stuff them down her throat.” With fists planted on her curvy hips and curls spiraling wildly, Maddie did resemble an avenging goddess. “If I were that sort of person,” she added. “Which I am not.”

Olivia dumped a load into the can and dried her arms on her shorts. “What do we really know about Charlene?”

“Not much from my end,” Maddie said. “I asked my aunt Sadie if she remembered anything about the Critch family. She thought they’d lived a few miles out of Chatterley Heights years ago and moved away when Charlene was little. She might have been thinking of another family, though. I don’t remember Charlene at all, but she is a bit younger than we are. Hence her juvenile behavior.”

“She’s somewhere around twenty-five,” Olivia said, “which would make her six or seven years younger than we are and a couple years younger than Jason.”

“Your brother is more mature than Charlene, which isn’t saying a lot,” Maddie said. “No offense meant.”

“None taken.”

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Maddie said. “Why would Charlene think it was such a good idea to dump a truckload of crinkled-up flyers on the dew-soaked lawn of The Gingerbread House? What does she get out of it?”

“I don’t think Charlene did this. I suspect it might have something to do with the man I saw running from her store.”

“The man who, according to Charlene, is a figment of your sugar-addled imagination?”

“Which made me very curious,” Olivia said. A lock of damp auburn hair fell across her forehead, and she blew it away from her eyes. “Why would Charlene deny the existence of someone who had vandalized her beloved store? She tried to blame us, but that didn’t go anywhere. I doubt she believed it herself.”

Curiosity sparked in Maddie’s green eyes. “Maybe she’s being stalked. If she knows her stalker, why wouldn’t she say so?”

“I don’t know about the stalking part, but she certainly clammed up at my description of the man I saw running from her kitchen. I’ll bet you a gingerbread cookie cutter family that she knows who it was but doesn’t want his identity revealed. Maybe it’s someone she cares about. Which is why we should learn more about Charlene Critch.”

“You can’t kid me, Livie Greyson. You are seriously addicted to mysteries. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the Agatha Christies you keep taking out of the library. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up with Nancy Drew, but you’ll have to unearth Charlene’s secrets by yourself. The less I know about her, the happier I’ll be.”

“I’ll grant she can be irritating, but why do you dislike her so much?”

Maddie scooped up some papers, balled them together, and smashed them into the full trash can. “Because Charlene is skinny and blonde and her hair always behaves no matter what the humidity.”

With a puzzled frown, Olivia said, “But you are curvy and have red hair with personality. What’s the problem?”

Maddie kicked at one of the few remaining wads of paper. “I guess it’s what Heather Irwin said to me last week. I stopped in at the library to talk about the cookies for Gwen and Herbie’s baby shower—did you know that Heather is organizing it? Anyway, Heather dragged me into her office to talk about some things Charlene had said while she was checking out a few books. She doesn’t like Charlene any better than I do, maybe even less.”

“Charlene reads library books?” Olivia’s question came out sarcastic, and Maddie grinned. In fact, Olivia was wondering why Charlene, with her vast and expensive wardrobe, didn’t buy her own books.

“Good question,” Maddie said. “Heather said they were mostly romances and some bogus reference book about poisons in the foods we eat. Anyway, if I may continue, Heather told me that Charlene asked a bunch of personal questions about Lucas and me. Like, are we really, really a couple? Why hasn’t Lucas ever married? He’s so attractive, is he afraid of commitment? And aren’t I running out of time to have kids? Not that I’m insecure.”

“Not since the seventh grade,” Olivia said. “Charlene, on the other hand, screams insecurity.”

Maddie brightened. “You always know the right thing to say. Anyway, it might be fun to watch her try to flirt with Lucas. He doesn’t know what the word means. Lord knows I wasted years getting nowhere with him, until I gave up and started treating him like the guy next door. Which he is. That’s when he finally noticed me.”