Cookie Dough or Die Read Online Free

of sight. You don’t have that option. You’re not in Baltimore anymore. But fear not, I’m right behind you.”
    The moment Olivia appeared, customers flowed toward her like water through a sieve. She felt like a starlet who’d stopped in to ask for directions. However, unlike adoring fans, Chatterley Heights residents behaved with subtlety and restraint. Usually, anyway. She recognized every face, including several she’d never before seen inside The Gingerbread House.
    For the next hour, customers vied for Olivia’s attention. Most of them bought something, if only a spatula or one of the less expensive cookie cutters, for the chance to talk to her for a minute. She tried to quell the most shocking rumors—especially the one that Clarisse was murdered by a motorcycle gang during a home invasion. When word spread through the store that, as far as Olivia knew, Clarisse’s death had been natural, the crowd began to shrink.
    Olivia busied herself restocking shelves, while Maddie went straight for Lucas Ashford in the cookbook nook, which had once been a family dining room. A red plaid flannel shirt tucked into jeans draped Lucas’s strong, lean body. He appeared to be testing the weight of a gray marble rolling pin as if he thought it might be useful at a demolition site. Maddie was nuts about him. Her descriptions of him always included words such as “yummy,” but to Olivia, he was simply Lucas, the guy next door. When Maddie appeared at his side, he smiled down at her, and she touched his arm. A prick of sadness caught Olivia by surprise. She remembered those feelings.
    “Sweetheart, how are you holding up?”
    Olivia started at the sound of her mother’s voice. “Mom. Sorry, I didn’t see you.”
    “You didn’t see me down here , you mean.” It was an old family joke, but Ellie Greyson-Meyers laughed as if she’d just thought it up. At four foot eleven, Ellie was a good eight inches shorter than Olivia, who had inherited her height from her six-foot-two father.
    “Maddie can handle the store for now,” Ellie said. “Come talk to your mother.” With a firm maternal arm, she pulled Olivia into the kitchen and closed the door. Ellie hoisted her small frame onto a stool. A child of the 1960s, now approaching sixty, Ellie still favored long, flowing skirts and peasant blouses. She’d long ago cut her waistlength hair, which now hung below her shoulders in loose gray waves.
    “Oh my,” Ellie said, eyeing the kitchen table. Maddie had managed to decorate about half of her flower cookies. “You and Maddie have outdone yourselves.”
    “All Maddie’s doing,” Olivia said. “She is the creative genius.”
    Ellie leaned forward and pointed to a cookie. “Is that a purple daffodil? If we were back in the commune, I’d wonder if Maddie’s genius got a boost from—”
    “Trust me, Mom, purple daffodils grow in Maddie’s world.”
    “And what about your world, Livie? You look tired. I know how close you’d become to Clarisse; her death must be a blow. Now don’t look at me like that, I’m not after gossip. It’s just that . . .” Ellie gathered her hair and pulled it behind her neck, giving it a twist so it wouldn’t fall forward. “When your father died, I grieved of course, but I also began to question myself. Should I have seen it coming? Should I have insisted he see a doctor sooner? Why didn’t he tell me about his symptoms until it was too late?”
    Olivia picked up a cookie that looked like a green and orange striped rose, snapped it in half, and handed one piece to Ellie.
    “I honestly don’t know how Clarisse died,” Olivia said, “but . . .”
    Ellie waited, nibbling the icing off an edge of her cookie half.
    “Right up until three days ago,” Olivia said, “I’d have sworn there was nothing wrong with Clarisse. She was as sharp and vibrant as ever. Then she came into the store Tuesday, and she seemed to be in a different world.”
    “Maybe she’d been given some bad news