Olivia opened her mouth and closed it again. Was there any point in trying to reason with Binnie Sloan? She was so agreeable, so sure of herself, and so not of the planet earth.
Suppressing a sigh of frustration, Olivia said, “Look, Binnie, I know you’re only doing your job, but I have two requests. These may not seem important to you, but I would truly appreciate your cooperation. First, print a retraction in next week’s paper making it clear that the quotes you printed about me were inaccurate and not from knowledgeable sources. And second, stop taking photos of me without my permission. Especially on my own property.”
Binnie’s eyebrows shot up in astonishment. “Oh, I’m sure Ned wasn’t on your property, if that’s what you’re so upset about. I specifically instructed her to stay in the arborvitae, which are actually on your neighbor’s property. I looked up the plat map to be sure.”
“Ned?”
“Nedra, but she likes to be called Ned. She’s my assistant. Well, really my niece, my brother’s daughter, but also my new assistant. Fresh out of journalism school and full of energy. Well, it was actually a correspondence course online, but they said she was the best student they’d ever had.”
“Uh—”
“I’m glad we’ve cleared all that up. Now, I’m here to ask you a couple questions for next week’s issue. You’d be amazed how much interest you’ve stirred up in this quiet little town. Everyone wants to know everything about you, but of course I have space limitations, so I’ll stick to the most important issues. First and foremost, what do you plan to do with your five-million-dollar inheritance and Clarisse Chamberlain’s million-dollar antique cookie-cutter collection?” Binnie dug into one of the many pockets of her safari jacket and extracted a handheld tape recorder with a cracked plastic cover. “Speak into this, dear,” she said in that benign and terrifying voice.
Olivia’s vocal chords froze, along with her blood. She would have welcomed a customer about then, but they must have worn themselves out the day before. Olivia struggled to form a comment.
“Really, Livie, it can’t be that difficult,” Binnie said. “You must be fantasizing about how to spend all that money. Will you sell the store and travel around the world? Buy a villa in Italy?”
To her right, Olivia heard a slight click, followed by a creaking sound. She turned to see the kitchen door edge open and a furry little head pop through. When he spotted Olivia, Spunky yapped with joy. He cleared the entrance a moment before Maddie’s arms reached out to capture him.
Spunky escaped to the cookbook nook, from which came the thumping sound of books hitting the floor, followed by the clattering crash of metal pans and cooking utensils. Olivia ran toward the nook, arriving as Spunky bolted through the entryway and back into the main part of the store.
Binnie remained near the antiques cabinet, a bland smile on her face. She was holding her tape recorder toward the sales area to record the sounds of destruction. Spunky paused when he saw her. Ever the curious puppy, he tilted his head up toward the tape recorder. Olivia recognized the stance. He thought Binnie was offering him a treat or a toy.
“Binnie, put that down,” Olivia yelled. Binnie winked at her. A smug wink.
Spunky raced toward Binnie, with Olivia and Maddie in pursuit. Olivia reached out, grabbed the end of his tail. It slipped through her fingers.
To avoid capture, Spunky leaped onto a table, landing in the midst of an elaborate display of farm animal cookie cutters. The cutters sprayed out in various directions, some of them flying at Binnie. Her jaw dropped, along with her tape recorder, which hit the floor and cracked open.
Spunky lost traction on the slick table, skidded toward the edge, and landed in Olivia’s waiting arms. She held him firmly and rubbed the fur on his neck to calm him. As he relaxed in her grip, she whispered soothing words in his ear. Something about a week of extra treats for a job well done.
By midafternoon, The Gingerbread House had received only half a dozen customers. Olivia worried that fallout from The Weekly Chatter article had begun to accrue.
“Stop fussing,” Maddie said when she emerged from the kitchen to chat with Olivia on the sales floor. “Yesterday was a lucrative fluke. It’s inevitable things would quiet down.”
“I guess.”
“Anyway, since there’s no one here right now, I’ll catch you up on what I’ve found out.” Maddie hiked herself onto a sturdy display ledge. “Okay, the first thing I did was call my friend Kate—she’s a nurse at Montgomery General in Clarksville, where Sam Parnell is. Kate sneaked a peek at his file and called back from her car during her break.”
“I can’t believe she did that for you,” Olivia said.
“What can I say, I’m adored by one and all.” Maddie lifted her chin, crossed her jeans-clad legs, and fluffed up her mass of red curls from behind. “Anyway,” she said, dropping her pose, “I promised to set her up with Lucas’s cousin, who is almost as lovable and yummy as Lucas. Now, stop interrupting. Here’s the scoop: Sam’s blood glucose level was way off, but there was no evidence of any poison in his system. Kate said they can’t measure insulin in the body. Kate didn’t see any notes in the file about tests on the cookie crumbs from the bag. We’d have to hack into—”
“No hacking, I beg of you,” Olivia said. “If there was no poison in Sam, there probably wasn’t any in the cookies. However, I don’t think this was an accident. Someone left that bag of cookies to implicate us somehow.”
“Why?”
“To warn us off, maybe? Or to stop Sam from spreading rumors? I wish I hadn’t pushed him so hard about that letter Clarisse got. I’m afraid I convinced him he was on to something really important, and it would be like him to drop hints all over his route.”
“Sounds like our Snoopy,” Maddie said.
Olivia checked the store clock, designed to look like the witch’s edible house in Hansel and Gretel. It wasn’t the easiest clock to interpret, but Olivia’s mother had given it to her when the store opened. The time was somewhere between two and two fifteen, at least three hours from closing.
“Did you find out anything about Hugh and Edward’s alibi for the night of Clarisse’s death?” Olivia asked.
“Spunky’s little adventure interrupted me, but I did identify the conference they should have been attending. There was only one national business conference that week in Baltimore, so it wasn’t hard. It was held at the Rockwell Hotel, which is still newish and trying to corner the convention market.”
Olivia remembered reading about that conference. She’d thought of going, but Maddie would have needed help to run the store.
“I wrote the hotel phone number on a recipe card next to my computer,” Maddie said. She slid off her perch and stretched. “By the way, we need to order more recipe cards.”
“My name is Ms. Clark, and I am an administrative assistant at Chamberlain Enterprises in Chatterley Heights.” Olivia had come up with a story that she hoped would elicit information about Hugh’s and Edward’s whereabouts the evening and night of Clarisse’s death. “I am calling on behalf of Mr. Hugh and Mr. Edward Chamberlain concerning the conference for small business owners they attended at your hotel last week.”
Thank goodness she had remembered to block her phone number from caller ID.
“Yes, Ms. Clark, how may I help you?”
Olivia’s throat was going dry from nervous excitement. “The Chamberlains asked me to inquire about the session they attended the evening of Thursday, April 23. They are concerned about some materials a member of the panel loaned to them and which they wish to return. Unfortunately, they seem to have lost the presenter’s card, and neither can remember his name. Mr. Hugh Chamberlain thinks it was something like Robinson, and Edward insists it was Thomlinson. They are hoping someone at your hotel might be able to supply the correct name and business address.”