Free A Cookie Before Dying by Virginia Lowell Page A

need to wake up and look out your living room window. I know you’re there; the light is on. So drag yourself over to that window and check out what’s going on in the town square.”
    “Why?”
    Maddie ignored the irritation in Olivia’s voice. “Come on . I’m afraid it will disappear any minute. It’s . . . it’s amazing. Enchanting. Fantastical. Please, go to the window now . Oh, and turn the lights off. And bring your cell.”
    Spunky jumped off Olivia’s chest and trotted to the front window, as if Maddie had communicated with him telepathically. By then, Olivia was awake enough for curiosity to overtake crankiness. She slid off the sofa, switched off the light, and joined Spunky at the window.
    “Come on, Spunks,” Olivia whispered. “Let’s see what Aunt Maddie has cooked up for us this time. It had better be worth losing sleep over.”
    “I heard that.” Maddie’s voice crackled from the forgotten cell phone in Olivia’s hand. “Talk to me.”
    Olivia pulled aside the edge of the damask curtain covering her front window, while Spunky jumped on top of the small Queen Anne–style desk centered under the windowsill. “Okay, we’re looking out on the park,” Olivia said into her cell. “What’s so amazing? All I see are sleeping stores, moonlight on the rump of Fred P. Chatterley’s horse, about half of the band shell in lamplight, and—Oh. . . . What on earth . . . ?” Olivia pressed her nose against the glass. She’d caught a glimpse of shimmery movement near the band shell, but now the park looked deserted.
    “Wait for it,” Maddie said, her voice hushed with excitement. “There, see it? Right in front of the band shell.”
    Whimpering softly, Spunky stood on his hind legs. His nails made a clicking sound as he steadied his front paws against the windowpane. Olivia placed her head next to his and looked in the same direction. She saw what looked like a curl of fog, almost ghostlike, an apparition. Which, of course, Olivia didn’t believe in. Except maybe in the middle of the night.
    “Isn’t she amazing?” Maddie said. “It has to be a ‘she,’ don’t you think? It doesn’t look like the way a man would dance.”
    “Dance?” Olivia readjusted her mental context and sure enough, she saw a slender, sylph-like creature twirling in the moonlight. She seemed to be wearing a diaphanous white midlength gown with a flowing white cape that swirled around her shoulders as she pirouetted. A curved arm swooped over the dancer’s head as she leaped into the air with a smooth grace Olivia could only dream of possessing. “Are those ballet steps?”
    “Livie, my friend, you need to get out more. Of course those are ballet steps, and I’d be willing to bet my new silicone baking mats she has trained professionally. Who on earth could she be? I don’t recall Chatterley Heights producing anyone so skilled. She could be a beginning ballerina practicing for her first appearance. Wouldn’t that be exciting? I wish I could get a closer look at her. She seems tiny, but I can’t tell from this distance. I suppose she could be very young.”
    Olivia said, “I remember my friend Stacey saying her daughter has been studying ballet at some school in DC. Maybe she sneaked out of the house to practice.” Her excitement waning, Olivia yawned. “We need to get back to bed.”
    Maddie’s laugh was loud enough to distract Spunky for a moment. “That isn’t Rachel Harald,” she said.
    “How do you know?”
    “Trust me. Rachel is bigger, and besides, I’ve seen her efforts. I went to her first-year recital last spring, just to relive the dancing days of my youth.” Maddie made a clicking sound that Olivia recognized as frustrated curiosity. “I’m going to sneak around behind stores and see if I can get a peek at her. Otherwise, I’ll never be able to concentrate again.”
    “Maddie, it’s the middle of the night. Please go home and get some sleep.”
    “Already slept,” Maddie said.