“I could scrub this stain for hours and it wouldn’t come out.”
Jason had spoken with pride, and Olivia swallowed her next retort. She knew what that job at the garage meant to him. He’d stuck with it for two years already, and he was earning a reputation for quality work. After quitting college and a string of other jobs, he needed to feel good about this one. However, he also needed to stop messing with her hair—and calling her Olive Oyl, a nickname given her as a young teen, after a dramatic growth spurt left her with long, skinny legs.
“This looks great, Mom,” Jason said. He piled several strips of bacon on a piece of buttered toast, folded it in half, and finished it off in three bites. “I smell pancakes and maple syrup,” he said.
“All gone,” Ellie said. “There’s plenty more toast and bacon.”
Jason’s forlorn expression reminded Olivia of Spunky when he hoped she’d forgotten that he’d already had his dinner.
Ellie sighed. “No, I can’t make more,” she said. “No more pancake mix, no eggs, no time to get any before you go back to work.” She pushed the bacon and toast closer.
Jason accepted defeat and rolled another half sandwich. “S’okay,” he said between bites. “The boss has been ordering pizzas every afternoon, ’cause we all get so hungry we start to slow down.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t gotten fat,” Olivia said.
“I’m surprised you’re not in jail,” Jason said just before forcing another half a sandwich into his mouth. He closed his eyes in ecstasy while he chewed, which left him unaware of the reason for the sudden silence. Only when he opened his eyes and reached for the last of the food did he notice the confused stares from his nearest and dearest. “Wassup? Do I have a piece of bacon up my nose?”
Ellie frowned at him, a rare occurrence. “That was an unusual statement you made about your sister,” she said.
“What? About her being in jail?” Jason looked from his mother to his stepfather and finally to Olivia. “You really haven’t heard, have you?”
“Heard what?” Allan’s tone was clipped, no-nonsense.
Jason wiped his mouth with his napkin and scraped back his chair. “We found out soon after it happened because a customer came in to get his car right after watching the ambulance arrive. Sam Parnell was rushed to the hospital, unconscious. I guess he finally got too snoopy for his own good and somebody tried to kill him.”
Olivia was first to break the stunned silence. “How do they know it was a murder attempt?” she asked. “And even if it was, what could it possibly have to do with me?”
Jason started to laugh, but the dangerous look on Olivia’s face sobered him quickly. “I don’t have the inside scoop or anything, only what’s going around town.”
“Which is?”
“Well . . . Look, Livie, don’t kill the messenger, okay? What’s going around is, Sam was eating a cookie when he collapsed, and he didn’t choke or have a heart attack or anything. He had a bag from your store, and there were still cookie crumbs and icing bits inside.”
“That doesn’t mean the cookies were ours. What do we sell in our store, for heaven’s sakes? Cookie cutters, that’s what. There are scads of people who’ve bought them from us and could have made that cookie.”
Jason said, “What about the bag?”
Ellie said, “Jason, I have a stack of bags from The Gingerbread House.” At a look from her husband, she said, “What? I like them.”
“I gave Sam a few cookies this morning but none ‘to go’ in one of our bags. Who found him?” Olivia asked.
“Ida, that ancient waitress at Pete’s Diner. I guess she’s off on Mondays. Anyway, she opened her front door and reached around to empty her mailbox and there was Sam, out cold on her porch. She called an ambulance.”
“None of which means that—”
“Sis, all I’m saying is, it doesn’t look good.”
Chapter Twelve
“What the heck is going on in this town?” Olivia paced around The Gingerbread House kitchen, moving objects from one place to another for no apparent reason.
“Don’t ask me.” Maddie sounded exasperated. “I’m as confused as you are, not to mention irate. It seems as though somebody went to a lot of trouble to make us look like bad guys. At least Sheriff Del hasn’t arrested us.”
“He hasn’t eliminated us as suspects—or me anyway. I don’t think he believed I didn’t know about Sam being diabetic. He sure packed away the cookies this morning.”
“You don’t get out much,” Maddie said. “Sam is funny about the diabetes. He’s so proud of being fit, I think he sees diabetes as something he shouldn’t have. It’s hard to believe he’d blow off his insulin after eating so many cookies, though.”
“If something was wrong with his insulin, I guess it’ll show up when they test his supply,” Olivia said. “Meanwhile, we need to get organized.” She removed a container of confectioners’ sugar from a cupboard and put it on a shelf.
“That’s the third time you’ve moved that sugar,” Maddie said. “That isn’t the type of organization we need right now. Stop moving, you’re making me nervous.”
“Right. You’re the one who can’t sit still, I’m the calm one. And if I ever find out that someone tried to set us up, I will calmly break their nose.”
“Good, that’ll leave a few appendages for me.”
They had returned twenty minutes earlier from the Chatterley Heights Police Station, where Sheriff Del had questioned them without any of his normal friendly teasing. He had confirmed Sam’s condition as serious and being treated as a diabetic coma. He hadn’t regained consciousness. The cookie crumbs, Del had said, were undergoing analysis, along with Sam’s stomach contents. Otherwise, all Olivia and Maddie had received was a warning to stay quiet and in town.
“I’ve known Delroy Jenkins since I was ten years old,” Maddie said. “As long as I’ve known you. He treated us like suspects!”
“That’s what sheriffs do. It’s pretty much their job. Although he didn’t have to be so officious about it.”
“You sort of like him, don’t you, Livie?”
“Yeah. I hate when that happens.”
They looked at each other and burst into laughter, with a tinge of hysteria. Minutes later, when they’d quieted down, Olivia said, “I feel better. Let’s get to work.”
“What can we do?”
“We can put our heads together. The attack on Sam, if it was an attack, must be connected with Clarisse’s death.” Olivia fetched her laptop computer from the kitchen desk and settled at the table. “I’m setting up a file to record everything we know about Clarisse’s death and everything we need to find out,” she said, her hands flying across the keys. “Give me a password only you and I will know.”
“Teal42,” Maddie said.
“Good,” Olivia said. “Now we need suspects and alibis. Edward and Hugh, of course. Presumably they will inherit almost everything, and I happen to know that Clarisse was worth at least a million dollars.”
Maddie whistled. “She told you that?”
“She wanted to show me what was possible. She and Martin started from nothing, made careful decisions, invested, saved. . . . They took calculated risks and admitted when it was time to cut their losses. Clarisse was trying to teach me.” Olivia felt herself slip into grief and yanked herself back to the present. “Hugh and Edward supposedly have alibis for the night of their mother’s death. Do they hold up? And what about the attack on Sam today?” She set up a table with suspect names down the left side.
“This is awfully linear,” Maddie said. “It hurts my brain, but here goes. Didn’t Del say Hugh and Edward were at a conference when Clarisse died?”
“In Baltimore. But he didn’t say whether he talked to them in person or left a message. We can probably check that. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what conference they attended.”
Olivia typed “Alibi” at the top of the first column in her table. “Martin and Clarisse used to visit all their businesses every Monday, and I know Hugh and Edward have carried on that tradition.”