“Oh no.” She was too late. Edward was about to drive off with her puppy and get away with murder. She heard sirens coming nearer, but would they be in time? She kept running.
Edward was being unusually slow about starting his car. When she got close enough, she heard Spunky’s distinctive bark. He’d jumped into Edward’s lap. When Edward tried to shove him off, Spunky dug his teeth into Edward’s shirt sleeve and tugged, as if they were playing a game. Edward lifted his arm and tried to shake off the tiny dog.
Olivia reached the van first and grabbed the door handle. It was locked. Spunky spotted her outside. He let go of Edward’s sleeve, plopped down on the seat, and began to yap excitedly. Edward aimed his key toward the ignition.
“No!” Olivia banged on the driver’s-side window. She stopped when she heard a loud thump to her left. Edward’s key was in the ignition, but he froze. He stared out the front windshield, where eighty-five pounds of black Labrador balanced on the hood, barking at his little friend inside.
Edward recovered, turned the key. Someone yanked Olivia aside right before she heard a brief explosion. Cody stood in front of the van, holding his revolver. Air hissed out of the left-front tire. The ignition caught, and Edward shifted into drive, flat tire or no flat tire. Dogs or no dogs.
Del appeared. “Sorry about this, Livie,” he said. Olivia thought he was talking about her puppy. Then she noticed what he held in his hand—her lovely gray marble rolling pin. Del swung it at the driver’s-side window.
Marble isn’t the hardest stone on the planet, and Del didn’t swing as hard as he might have, but it did the trick. Edward ducked sideways as Spunky leaped into the backseat. Buddy the Lab skittered off the hood, taking some of the car’s finish with him. A maze of cracks spread across the glass. Del held the marble rolling pin like a baseball bat, ready to smash the window again, if he had to. Cody aimed his revolver at the windshield.
Edward sat up and switched off the ignition. He sat very still, one hand tight on the steering wheel. After a few moments, his hand slid to his lap. Olivia heard the van’s locks snap open as Edward Chamberlain, for perhaps the first time in his life, gave up.
Chapter Twenty-five
Olivia and Maddie sat cross-legged on the floor of The Gingerbread House, lights dimmed, mourning over the crushed remains of their antiques cabinet. It lay where it had fallen the afternoon before, facedown, vintage cookie cutters snug inside.
“Like a mommy protecting her babies,” Maddie said.
“Let’s hope so.” Olivia stroked Spunky’s ears as he snuggled beside her. “From the size of those cracks in the side, I doubt the poor thing is reparable. I suppose we should turn it over and assess the damage to our cutters.” She took her time getting to her feet. The pain from her injuries had lessened, but her muscles felt stiff and tight.
Maddie hopped up and offered a steadying hand. Together, they pulled the cabinet onto its side. The contents clattered and tinkled into a heap on the floor. Maddie turned up the lights, while Olivia closed Spunky into the kitchen to keep his little paws off the glass shards. When she returned with a whisk broom, Maddie was already sorting vintage cookie cutters from broken glass.
After a half hour of work, interrupted only by whining from the kitchen, Maddie asked, “What time will everyone start arriving?”
“I suggested anytime after two.” Olivia checked the Hansel and Gretel clock on the wall. “We have somewhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour to get this cleaned up. Del called and said he’d come later. So will Hugh and Tammy. Mom and Jason will probably be on time, and Mr. Willard will bring Bertha along shortly. Del called this morning and filled me in on a few details from Edward’s confession. It seems Edward was getting desperate. Clarisse had found out from Faith’s letter—the part we didn’t see—that Jasmine died soon after giving birth to Hugh’s child.”
“But not that Edward killed her?”
“Not something you add to a letter asking a stranger to come rescue a grandchild she didn’t know she had.”
“Good point,” Maddie said. “Clarisse would have become very suspicious of Faith’s motives. So who was Faith?”
“Faith Kelly, Jasmine’s closest friend. Jasmine went to live with her after disappearing from Chatterley Heights. Apparently, Faith grabbed baby Lily and ran when Edward showed up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jasmine told her to. Jasmine was smart; she probably began to suspect that Edward had lied to her about Martin wanting her to disappear forever.”
“One thing I don’t understand,” Maddie said. “If Faith wrote this letter saying she was dying of cancer, why did Clarisse hire a private detective agency to find Lily? Why not just get her from Faith?”
“Ah, because Faith collapsed and was rushed to the hospital before she could post the letter. Social Services took Lily. Faith never went home again. After she died, her landlady found the letter, already stamped and addressed, so she dropped it in the mail. It reached Clarisse nearly a month after Faith wrote it.”
“But if Clarisse never actually met Faith, how did she find out that Edward killed Jasmine?”
Olivia picked up a gingerbread man with a tilted hat and a red aluminum handle. She smoothed her fingers over the cool metal. “The same way we did: she searched the Internet. Clarisse had the advantage of knowing about when Jasmine died. She was so upset, she called Edward at that conference in Baltimore and said she was thinking about contacting the police. She couldn’t have been completely sure at that point which of her sons killed Jasmine, but she knew one of them was guilty, and I think she suspected Edward. He begged her to wait until he could talk to her. That’s why she asked Bertha for a full bottle of wine: she was expecting Edward.”
Maddie balanced on her rear and stretched out her arms and legs. “Pilates,” she said. “Your mom taught me.”
Olivia spotted a small crack in a plastic Hallmark Lucy and reluctantly added it to the pile of damaged cutters. Lucy still had value. Someone would love her, crack and all. As much as one could love Lucy. “It’s sad, really,” she said. “Because of his drive and intensity, Edward was a successful businessman, but he felt trapped in Hugh’s shadow. Then Edward met Jasmine and fell in love. And Hugh won again.”
“Love isn’t business,” Maddie said.
“So right,” Olivia said. “Love isn’t coolheaded and rational. Hugh would have defied his father to marry Jasmine, and of course, Clarisse would have been thrilled. But Edward couldn’t let go. He thought he could convince Jasmine that Hugh cared more about what their father thought than for her and her child. He wanted to look like her knight in shining armor. Edward was only trying to convince Jasmine to marry him instead of Hugh, but his lies about Martin’s disapproval frightened her into hiding. He still managed to keep tabs on her and tracked her down probably thinking he had one last chance to get her back into his life. But when she refused him, things turned violent.”
Maddie began filling two boxes, one with unscathed vintage cutters and the other with damaged ones, while Olivia whisked up the glass shards.
The Gingerbread House door opened, and Ellie Greyson’s head appeared. “Are we early? We brought food and drink, in the form of pizzas and wine. Jason brought beer, of course. I’ll warm some pizza in the oven, shall I?”
Lucas arrived, followed by Mr. Willard and Bertha with more wine and a sweet potato pie. “My mother’s recipe,” Bertha said. “And sweet potato is so good for you, too.”