“Let me,” Ellie said, taking Spunky from Olivia’s grasp. The Yorkie calmed down at once. Olivia was impressed. Even in her agitated state, her mother could calm a beast driven to escape.
“I’m sorry it’s been so frantic,” Olivia said, “and it’s about to get more so. Mom, I’m really sorry, but I have to get right back down to help Maddie in the kitchen. We’ve got a crisis with Gwen and Herbie’s shower. Could you possibly help Bertha mind the store this afternoon? Maddie will be in the kitchen working like a madwoman until—”
“Yes, of course I will, but what about Jason?”
“Jason . . .” Olivia threw up her hands and flopped down on the sofa. “Jason is an idiot.”
“At the moment, I’d have to agree with you,” Ellie said as she sat next to Olivia. Spunky settled in her lap and curled into a ball. “So I assume he won’t recant his ridiculous confession?”
“Nope. And he still won’t talk to you or Allan.”
“Oh Livie, what are we going to do? How can we get Jason out of this horrible mess?” Tears filled Ellie’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Spunky sat up in her lap and whimpered.
Fighting her own tears, Olivia put an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “I don’t know. I’ll find a way.” It was a rash promise, but failure was unthinkable.
“How are we going to spring your brother from jail?” Maddie asked as she piped a pink yawn onto a round baby-face cookie.
“Cute,” Olivia said, glancing at the cookie. She was relieved that Maddie, after her bout of panic and guilt, had thrown herself into the task of decorating nearly eight dozen cookies in less than three hours. Together, they’d been able to finish almost two dozen already, and it was only two forty-five. “I’m afraid Jason will have to experience incarceration for some time, since he refuses to help himself. It’ll take time to dig up anything that might be useful.”
“But you have a plan, right?” Maddie looked up from the sparse blue hair she was piping onto another round baby-face cookie.
“Nope.”
“You have no plan? That’s worrisome,” Maddie said. “What did Del have to say?”
“That his hands are tied.” Olivia hated to keep secrets, especially since Maddie could be very helpful with problem solving. However, a promise was a promise. Del would stop trusting her if she revealed anything that might affect his investigation. On the other hand, there was no law against being sneaky. “Until I think of something, maybe we should work on our own mystery—what happened to Clarisse’s Duesenberg cookie cutter?”
“I looked everywhere I could think of,” Maddie said. “Unfortunately, I’ve run out of places to search. I mentioned it to Bertha—casually, so she wouldn’t get upset. She hadn’t seen it, didn’t even know it had disappeared.” Maddie picked up a cookie she had just finished. “You’ll love this one.”
“Hm?” Olivia was piping red and navy dots on a baby carriage.
“Who does this remind you of?” Maddie held the cookie under Olivia’s gaze. It looked like a baby face with blue dots for eyes, messy clumps of yellow hair, and a jagged red mouth.
“Now that’s just mean,” Olivia said.
“Yet cathartic. I’d eat it, but we need every cookie.” Maddie placed baby Charlene next to a pink-and-red teddy bear.
Olivia added her baby carriage to the row. “How sure are you that Charlene won’t be at the baby shower this evening?”
“Positive. Gwen gave me the invitation list, in case I was inspired to match any cookies to guests or their kids.”
“Can I see that list?”
“Sure, as long as you read and decorate simultaneously and with equal efficiency.” Maddie opened a kitchen drawer and drew out a folded sheet of paper, which she unfolded and placed next to Olivia. “We are on this list, in case you were worried.”
Olivia selected a baby bootie for her next project and gathered pastry bags of baby blue and navy icing. Since Gwen and Herbie had declined to learn their baby’s sex, Olivia and Maddie had decided to use a variety of icing colors. Before removing the covers from the metal tips, she put aside her pastry bags to look through the names on Gwen’s list. Charlene Critch wasn’t there, as Maddie had promised, and neither were Charlie Critch and Olivia’s brother, Jason. Her mother and stepfather were listed with “regrets” next to their names. They would be too upset to feel like socializing. Otherwise, at least half the people on the list had been in The Gingerbread House during the infamous “harvest” event on Tuesday.
“Excellent,” Olivia said, picking up her bag of baby blue icing. “I feel the onset of a plan.”
“Oh goodie,” said Maddie. “Do I get to help?”
“Check in with me when you bring the rest of the cookies to Gwen and Herbie’s house. By then I should know if it’s a dud.”
Olivia parked her silver PT Cruiser in the alley outside the kitchen of The Gingerbread House. She had bought it used, in excellent condition, and she loved its roominess. She’d splurged and had The Gingerbread House logo painted on both sides. Whenever she opened the car door, she smelled a faint spiciness left over from the dozens of decorated cookies she and Maddie had delivered to private events.
By three thirty, Olivia and Maddie had managed to finish decorating four dozen of the eight dozen cookies for the Tuckers’ baby shower. Olivia had packed them in single layers inside sheet cake pans to allow the icing to continue to harden. She wedged the pans in the back seat so they wouldn’t shift around during transport.
Before starting the car, she took a small flashlight from her pocket and wedged it into the glove compartment. Having learned her lesson the night before, she’d called Lucas at the hardware and asked him to drop off half a dozen flashlights of various sizes.
Gwen and Herbie Tucker owned a small farm west of town, about a fifteen-minute drive from The Gingerbread House. Olivia checked her watch. It was already ten minutes to four, but she couldn’t afford to speed, in case she hit a bump and sent the cookies flying. Before starting the PT’s engine, she called the Tuckers’ number from her cell and left a message that she was on her way.
Olivia barely noticed the scenery. The part of her brain not engaged in avoiding bumps in the road was busy trying out questions to ask the baby shower guests. She wished she could have gotten some information from Jason. Drat that boy. Didn’t he care how much trouble he was in? Or what he was doing to his mother and stepfather? How could he have gotten so hung up on Charlene that he’d even consider sacrificing his life on the off chance she’d killed her ex-husband?
Or did Jason know for certain that Charlene killed Geoffrey King?
As Olivia turned onto the long driveway to the Tucker farm, she asked herself one last question: Might Jason have killed Geoffrey King in an attempt to protect the woman he loved? Could he have been so stupid and misguided? As much as she loved her brother, her answer to her own question was a firm yes.
Chapter Eleven
Gwen Tucker opened the front door of her nineteenth-century farmhouse, took a pan of cookies from Olivia’s hands, and said, “If it’s a girl, I’ll name her Olivia.”
Following Gwen through a foyer crammed with muddy boots, Olivia said, “My brother calls me Olive Oyl. Just information you might want to consider.”
Gwen’s laugh had a frantic edge. “Maybe it will be a boy. I could name him Oliver.” She slid the pan onto an already crowded kitchen counter. “Although one of our dogs is named Oliver, so that might be confusing. Anyway, I want you to know how incredibly grateful we are to you and Maddie for pinch-hitting today. Poor Heather, she sounded awful on the phone. Here it is, hotter than jalapeno, and she manages to get the flu.”