Free One Dead Cookie by Virginia Lowell Page A

like. She’d added a touch of lemon extract to the recipe, but not too
     much. Her worry was that lemon cutout cookies were so common. For Maddie’s engagement
     party, they would have to be special.
    Olivia reunited with her glass of merlot. “I wonder if Elsworth is just a name Jennifer
     made up or if she reallywas—or still is—married. And why wouldn’t she be open about her ties to this area?
     Jennifer told Maddie that she moved away from Twiterton as a child, but Jason met
     her as a teenager. If she was a junior in high school, she would have been sixteen
     or seventeen.”
    “You won’t let up on that poor girl, will you?”
    “Mom, aren’t you the least bit curious about why Jennifer returned to this area and
     won’t reveal who she really is?”
    “Well, maybe she wanted to come home but isn’t ready to deal with the sadness in her
     past,” Ellie said. “Either way, I think we should respect her privacy.” When the timer
     dinged, Ellie hopped up to put another batch of cookies in the oven. “I’m out of cookie
     sheets. I’ll clean one while you wield the cutter.”
    Olivia rolled the lavender dough one last time and cut as many cookies as she could,
     using her mother’s biscuit cutter. After the cookies went into the oven, she sacrificed
     the last remnants of the lavender batch. As she rolled and cut a first batch of lemon
     verbena cookie shapes, Olivia asked herself why she was so curious about her new clerk.
     She had no complaints about Jennifer’s work. She was respectful, attentive to the
     customers, knowledgeable about cutters and virtually everything else in the store…and
     yet so secretive. That bothered Olivia. Why would Jennifer return to this particular
     area of Maryland, secure a job near, yet not in, her hometown, and keep her identity
     under wraps? Why had Jennifer lied about the age at which she’d left Twiterton? And
     why, out of all the possibilities in Chatterley Heights, had she sought a job at The
     Gingerbread House? Olivia felt her skin prickle with foreboding. She couldn’t help
     worrying that her little store was about to become the epicenter of a category four
     hurricane.

Chapter Five

    On Wednesday morning, with only three days left before Maddie and Lucas’s engagement
     party, Olivia tried to quell her panic as she gazed out the window of Pete’s Diner
     and watched the early morning sun awaken the town square. Her table afforded a view
     of the statue of Frederick P. Chatterley, accidental founder of Chatterley Heights,
     and his ever-patient horse. She wondered what it said about Frederick P. that, after
     two hundred and fifty years of trying, he still hadn’t managed to mount his steed.
    “You gonna drink that coffee or just smell it?” Ida, Pete’s senior waitress in more
     ways than one, raised thin, gray eyebrows at the full cup of cold coffee Olivia held
     in both hands. “Must be nice having time to waste. Some of us have to work.” Ida had
     spent fifty of her sixty working years as a cook, waitress, and manager at Pete’s
     Diner. She usually wore an old uniform and a hairnet, and she treatedall customers with equal disdain. No one ever complained. At least not more than once.
    “What? Oh, Ida, you startled me.” Olivia spilled a few drops of coffee, which she
     dabbed with her napkin. “I was just enjoying the sunrise and feeling glad that spring
     is here.”
    “Spring will be gone before you get that cup emptied,” Ida said. “Here, let me do
     that. Lord knows I’ve got experience.” She pulled a damp rag from one of her uniform
     pockets and mopped the table clean. “Hand over the cup, I’ll get you some fresh coffee.
     When’s your mother getting here?”
    Olivia’s watch read 6:52 a.m. “In about eight minutes, give or take.”
    “Good.” Ida said. “Ellie’ll liven up the place. I suppose you want me to drag over
     more chairs, like I’ve got nothing else to do. How many?”
    Olivia counted on her fingers