Cookie Dough or Die by Virginia Lowell Read Free Book Online Page A

was it? Monday I think.”
    “Do you know what was in it?” Olivia asked.
    Bertha shook her head, and a tendril of gray hair escaped from the tight bun at the nape of her neck. “Sam handed me the mail at the door, and I delivered it straight to Ms. Clarisse. Before she opened it, she asked me to leave. Usually she opened all the mail with me there, so she could hand me the household bills and such like. Anyway, right after that she got quieter.”
    “What happened to that envelope? Do you know?”
    Bertha looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “I never saw it again. And mind you, I looked for it. I should have asked Ms. Clarisse directly, but I figured she wouldn’t tell me anything. I knew it was bad news, had to be.”
    “Could Clarisse have been ill?” Olivia asked. “Maybe seriously ill?”
    Bertha snorted. “That girl had the constitution of a workhorse. Why, she had her physical only last month. I drove her, so she could get her eyes checked at the same time. I was right there when her doctor told her she passed everything with flying colors. He said her blood pressure belonged in a textbook, it was so perfect.”
    “Did you mention the envelope to the police?”
    Bertha shook her head firmly. “I didn’t like the questions they were asking: Was Ms. Clarisse getting confused? Was she depressed? All that nonsense. Even if she did make a mistake with her sleeping pills, that doesn’t mean she was senile.”
    “What about Hugh and Edward? Did you hear either of them say anything about Clarisse getting bad news or being worried about something?”
    “Oh those boys,” Bertha said in an indulgent tone. “They don’t notice things.”
    “By the way,” Olivia asked, “where are they?”
    “They came home today because of what happened, then back to Baltimore for the end of some business conference they were at all week. We can’t bury Ms. Clarisse until the police give her back to us, so the boys are keeping busy. They’ll be home tomorrow.” Bertha opened the refrigerator. “I made their favorite, blueberry pie. Had to use frozen blueberries, but it’ll taste the same.” She cut two slices, slid them onto plates, and brought them to the table.
    Olivia was stuffed, but Bertha would be insulted if she turned down dessert. She got through half of it before saying, “Bertha, this is so delicious, but I’m too full to finish. Could I take the rest home for a bedtime snack?”
    Bertha, who had finished her slice, put Olivia’s leftovers in a plastic container and left it on the table. While she covered the pie plate with plastic wrap, she said, “There’s something I didn’t tell the police. It probably isn’t anything, but . . . well, Ms. Clarisse did mention your name.”
    “My name? When?”
    “A couple weeks back, it was. When she got that other envelope in the mail.”
    “Wait. Clarisse received a previous envelope?”
    Bertha avoided Olivia’s eyes. “I didn’t think about it until now because the first envelope didn’t make her so upset. Right after we went through the bills, she opened that envelope in front of me and pulled out a letter. She looked sort of startled as she read it and then put it right back in the envelope. I never saw that one again, either. Then a few days later, I passed her office and she was having one of her little talks with Mr. Martin.” Bertha saw Olivia’s confusion and added, “I wouldn’t tell this to the police, but you are family, or near like it. When Ms. Clarisse was chewing on a problem, she’d discuss it with Mr. Martin’s portrait—you know, the one that hangs over the fireplace in her office.”
    Olivia knew it well. Clarisse’s husband had died years earlier of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty-seven. The portrait showed a handsome man with a confident smile, an older version of Hugh, his elder son. Clarisse once told her that chain smoking killed her husband, and Olivia remembered noticing the ghostly swirl forever spiraling from