The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  Largo shook her head. “Not that they’d admit to, anyway. I checked the records to see if there have been any burglaries or anything else like that in the neighborhood recently, but I came up empty.” She smiled. “Weatherford seems to be a nice peaceful town most of the time . . . not like where I come from.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Corpus Christi.”

  Mike nodded. The city down on the Gulf Coast was beautiful, but it also had a reputation among law enforcement agencies as a violent, dangerous place.

  “You were thinking that if there was a pattern of break-ins in the area, then this was likely just another burglary gone bad?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Largo said. “As for the victim’s family . . .”

  That was going to be Mike’s next question, so he was glad Largo had brought it up.

  “We weren’t able to contact them until they returned to Mrs. Simmons’s house,” the detective went on. “They’d gone to Fort Worth to shop and had no idea something had happened to Mrs. Simmons.” She checked the file in front of her. “Two sons, Frank and Ted Simmons, and one daughter, Billie Hargrove, plus their spouses and assorted children. Naturally, they were all quite upset.”

  “You believe them?” Mike asked.

  Beside him, Sarah said, “What do you mean by that? Of course they were upset!”

  “In any murder, you always look at the family first,” Mike said with a shrug. “A spouse if there is one, children if there’s not. Statistics will bear out that they’re the most likely suspects.”

  Sarah shook her head, as if she didn’t like to see her husband being so cynical.

  “We’re looking into the family,” Largo said. “In fact, I’m going back over there this evening to do more extensive interviews with all of them. Under the circumstances, I figure they’ll all alibi one another . . . but you never know.” She picked up a pen and toyed with it. “I’d invite you to come along with me, Deputy, but I’m afraid that would be pushing the bounds of protocol.”

  “That’s all right. Like I said, I don’t want to horn in on your investigation.” Mike got to his feet. “Thanks for talking to us—”

  “One thing,” Largo cut in as she got to her feet, too. “Can you tell me of anyone who might want to harm Mrs. Simmons?”

  “Me?” Mike frowned. “I never even knew her that well. She was just the old lady next door when I was growing up, that’s all.”

  “What about her children? Did you know them?”

  “Yeah, some, but not well. They’re all older than I am. The boys got married and moved out a long time ago, and Billie’s been gone for quite a while, too.”

  “What about your mother?”

  Mike’s frown deepened. “What about her?”

  “Is it possible the attack on her wasn’t connected to Mrs. Simmons’s murder?”

  “I don’t see how. Nobody would want to hurt my mother. Everybody loves her.”

  “Everybody has enemies,” Largo pointed out quietly.

  Mike shook his head. “You’re on the wrong track there, Detective. My mom got hit on the head because she walked in on the killer. That’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  “I think you’re probably right,” Largo said with a shrug. “I’m just covering the bases, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, of course. I understand.” They all shook hands again, and Mike added, “I’ll be in touch.”

  As they left the building, Sarah said, “Well, I believe that you never met Detective Largo before.”

  “Why’s that?” Mike asked.

  “As attractive as she is, I’m sure that if you’d met her, you would have remembered her.”

  “Is she that attractive? I didn’t really notice.”

  And why was it, Mike wondered, that guys always lied about things like that? Of course he had noticed that Isabel Largo was attractive. He knew it, Sarah knew it, and he knew she knew it. And yet he played dumb despite that.

  He took his wife’s arm and said, “Come on; let’s go get something to eat. What are you in the mood for, anyway?”

  Chapter 5

  Sam, Carolyn, and Eve came back to the hospital that evening for a visit, but the nurses didn’t let them stay long. Carolyn brought Phyllis a change of clothes in case she was released the next day as planned. Dr. Lee dropped by again and told her that the neurologist believed she didn’t have a concussion, so it was all right for her to get some rest.

  Phyllis was glad to hear that, since she had been fighting off drowsiness all evening.

  But despite her being so tired, her sleep was troubled and not particularly restful. She kept seeing Agnes Simmons’s face and the way that tightly drawn belt had buried itself in the stringy flesh of her neck. . . .

  As usual, it seemed to take forever for the orders to be written and the paperwork to be drawn up for Phyllis to be discharged from the hospital on Sunday morning. Sarah showed up to help in any way she could, and so did Carolyn. Mike had to work, since he had taken off the previous afternoon during his shift. The sheriff was fairly lenient about personal emergencies, but Mike hadn’t wanted to push Royce Haney’s generous nature, Sarah explained.

  “Sam said to tell you that he’d see you at home,” Carolyn told Phyllis. “I don’t think he likes hospitals very much.”

  “I don’t blame him. Neither do I.” Phyllis frowned as a thought occurred to her. “That means he’s there alone with Eve.”

  Carolyn smiled. “Why, Phyllis, you actually sound a little jealous.”

  “Not at all,” Phyllis answered instantly. “Sam’s a grown man. He can take care of himself. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to throw too much temptation in Eve’s path.”

  “You’re just afraid that she’ll throw something in Sam’s path.”

  “I just hope she’s not like one of those spiders that devours the male afterward.”

  Both of them laughed.

  Sarah looked back and forth between the two older women and frowned a little. “No offense, ladies,” she said, “but I thought you two used to teach school. I didn’t realize you were still in junior high.”

  “When you get older, you’ll find out for yourself that a part of you will always be in junior high,” Phyllis said.

  “Anyway,” Carolyn said, “don’t tell me you wouldn’t be jealous if some good-looking woman was flitting around Mike like a butterfly.”

  Sarah’s mouth tightened, and Phyllis thought that Carolyn’s comment might have unwittingly hit a target. She wondered about that, but she didn’t want to press Sarah on the matter right now.

  A nurse finally arrived with a wheelchair. She didn’t have a chance to help Phyllis get dressed, since she had dressed herself at six o’clock that morning, right after the last time someone had woken her up to check her vital signs. The nurse did insist that she ride out in the chair—hospital regulations, she explained.

  Phyllis knew that already, so she didn’t put up a fuss. She just sat in the chair and allowed the nurse to wheel her out through the main entrance to the driveway, where Sarah had pulled up her car after hurrying out ahead of them.

  “Now, don’t forget that Dr. Lee wants you to come in to his office in a couple of days for a follow-up appointment,” the nurse said as Phyllis got into Sarah’s car.

  “I won’t,” Phyllis assured the woman. “I’ll call his office tomorrow.”

  The ache in her knees wouldn’t let her forget. The wound on her scalp was still tender to the touch, but the actual headache had gone away, proving what she’d been saying all along about having a hard head, she thought.

  When Sarah pulled into the street where Phyllis lived, with Carolyn following in her own car, Phyllis saw that a couple of strange cars were parked in Agnes Simmons’s driveway, and another vehicle was parked at the curb in front of the house. “I guess it wasn’t just wishful thinking,” she murmured.

  “What?” Sarah asked.

  “Those cars at Agnes’s house. Her family really d
id come to visit her.”

  That visit had turned tragic, though. A stray piece of yellow crime scene tape that hadn’t been removed from the porch was a mute reminder of that.

  “I’ll need to go over and see them,” Phyllis went on. “Let them know that if there’s anything I can do . . .”

  “I think you should be more worried about taking care of yourself,” Sarah said. “It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet since you were brutally attacked.”

  “Yes, I know. I just want to be neighborly, that’s all.”

  Sarah pulled into the driveway, stopped the engine, and got out to hurry around the car and open Phyllis’s door. Carolyn parked beside Sarah’s car. Sam’s pickup was in its usual spot at the curb in front of the house.

  Sam himself came out of the house. He must have been watching and waiting for them to arrive, Phyllis thought. Eve followed him, and Phyllis couldn’t help but wonder how much flirting had gone on while those two were alone in the house. Not that it was any of her business whom Sam flirted with, or even if he flirted with anyone. But Phyllis had known Eve for a long time, and she was confident that the former high school English teacher had relished the opportunity to spend some time alone with Sam.

  “Let me give you a hand,” Sarah said, and Phyllis didn’t argue. She still had a little dizzy spell every now and then, so she was glad to have Sarah’s hand on her arm steadying her as she went to the porch and climbed the steps.

  “Welcome home, dear,” Eve said with a smile.

  “How’re you feelin’?” Sam asked.

  Phyllis nodded as she came up the steps. “I’m fine. My knees are a little sore, but that’s all. No headache or anything like that.”

  “You’re lucky that monster didn’t bust your skull wide-open,” Carolyn said from behind her. “I hope the police catch him soon.”

  Sam nodded toward the house next door. “That little gal who’s the police detective was back over there a while ago. She stopped by here when she left and said to tell you that she wants to talk to you, Phyllis.”

  “I’ll be glad to answer any questions she might have, but I don’t know if I can tell her anything I didn’t already tell Chief Whitmire. You say she’s a female detective?”

  Sarah answered before Sam could. “Her name is Isabel Largo,” she said. “Mike and I stopped by the police department and spoke with her yesterday evening after we left the hospital.”

  “Oh.” Phyllis thought she heard a little tension in her daughter-in-law’s voice, as if Sarah didn’t care much for Detective Isabel Largo. “Well, I’ll be happy to talk to her whenever she’d like.”

  “Let’s get you inside, out of this cold air,” Sam said as he opened the front door.

  It was still chilly and overcast this morning, with the temperature in the thirties, Phyllis guessed. In less than a week it would be Christmas, so it was appropriate that the weather was cold. Chances were that it wouldn’t be a white Christmas, though. Those were rare in this part of Texas. In her more than sixty years of life, she could remember seeing only a handful of Christmases on which it had snowed. Even then, any snowfall was usually just flurries that didn’t stick, but melted when they hit the ground.

  The warmth inside the house felt good as it closed around her. The tree in the corner of the living room with the colorfully wrapped presents underneath it was another reminder of the season. This was the time of the year to celebrate birth—one birth in particular—instead of death.

  And yet Agnes Simmons’s death was inescapable. So far, Phyllis hadn’t been successful at putting it out of her mind for very long. She probably wouldn’t be able to until she knew that the killer had been brought to justice.

  “Why don’t you sit down here in your chair and make yourself comfortable?” Sarah said as she led Phyllis to her favorite recliner.

  “Can I get you something?” Carolyn asked.

  “Got coffee in the kitchen,” Sam put in.

  “And there are plenty of cookies left from yesterday,” Eve added.

  Phyllis laughed. “It’s a little early in the day for cookies, but I’d take a cup of coffee. They brought me some with my breakfast in the hospital this morning, but it wasn’t very good.”

  “Comin’ right up,” Sam said. He hurried out to the kitchen.

  “You know, I never did get to try your pecan pie cookies,” she said to Carolyn. “I suppose one wouldn’t hurt.”

  Carolyn smiled and brought one of the cookies from the kitchen. It was a round shortbread cookie with a depression in the center that was stuffed with pecan pie filling and topped with a pecan half.

  “I have a feeling this will be the winning entry in the newspaper contest this year,” Carolyn said as she gave the cookie to Phyllis, not even trying to conceal the pride in her voice.

  Phyllis took a bite and said, “My, it is good. You may be right, Carolyn. But have you tried my lime snowflake cookies?”

  “Yes, and they’re fine, but you know how people feel about pecan pie, and these are like having little pecan pies in the shape of cookies.”

  Sam returned from the kitchen with a cup of coffee for Phyllis before the rivalry could get out of hand. She took a grateful sip of the hot liquid, finished off the pecan pie cookie, and was ready to sit there and rest for a while as she drank the rest of the coffee.

  That plan might have worked if the doorbell hadn’t rung just then.

  “I’ll get it,” Eve volunteered. She went into the front hall and returned a moment later with a heavyset man following her. Phyllis recognized him right away, even though he was a lot beefier and his dark hair was a lot grayer than it had been when he was a young man living next door.

  “Hello, Frank,” she said. “I’m so sorry about your mother.”

  Frank Simmons nodded in acknowledgment of her sympathy. “How are you, Mrs. Newsom? I heard that you were attacked by the same person who . . . attacked my mother.”

  “I’ll be just fine, Frank. Won’t you sit down?”

  He glanced around uneasily. None of the others in the room knew him very well, although like many people who had grown up in Weatherford over the past forty or so years, he had been in Eve’s English class when he was in high school. He had missed having Phyllis or Carolyn for teachers.

  Frank Simmons was in his midforties. Phyllis had lost track of him after he got married and moved away, but she seemed to remember that he lived in Dallas, which was about an hour to an hour and a half to the east, depending on which part of that sprawling city you were talking about. She had no idea what he did for a living. He sat down awkwardly in one of the armchairs and said, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m, uh, sorry about what happened to you.”

  “I appreciate that, Frank, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  Unless he had something to do with his mother’s death, Phyllis thought suddenly, then felt a little ashamed of herself for even thinking such a thing. She had been around murder too much lately, she told herself. It was making her overly suspicious of everybody.

  Frank clasped his hands together between his knees. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have gotten hit if you hadn’t been trying to help my mother. The cops said you were trying to find something to . . . to get that belt off of Mama’s neck when that guy attacked you.”

  “That did seem to be the way it was,” Phyllis said with a nod. “But it was just bad luck. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

  Sam grunted. “I’d say it was the fault o’ the no-good rascal who did it.”

  “Well, yes, of course,” Phyllis agreed.

  “Have y’all heard anything about whether or not the cops have any leads?” Frank asked. “Your boy’s a policeman, isn’t he, Mrs. Newsom?”

  “Mike’s a deputy sheriff. The police department’s in charge of the investigation.” Phyllis looked over at Sarah. “I believe he talked to the detective last night. . . .”

  Sarah shook her head. “We didn’t really find out anything. You’ve talked to Detective Largo since the last tim
e any of us have, Mr. Simmons.”

  Frank sighed and said, “I know. I just thought she might’ve said something, told you something that she wouldn’t tell the family. . . .”

  “I’m sure the police will keep you up-to-date on any new developments,” Sarah told him.

  “Yeah.” Frank put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. His face was red, and he seemed to be short of breath. Phyllis wondered what sort of shape his heart was in. “I guess I’d better be running along. . . .”

  “Are all of you going to be staying next door?” Phyllis asked.

  “Well . . . for a while, I suppose. We’d planned to visit for a week or so. Now, of course, we have to arrange for the funeral and . . . and take care of all that.” Frank grimaced at the thought, causing Phyllis to feel another pang of sympathy for him and the other members of the family.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” she said.

  “That goes for the rest of us, as well,” Carolyn added.

  Frank nodded. “Thanks.” He moved toward the front door. “I’ll be seein’ you.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Sam said.

  Frank stopped before he reached the hallway. He looked back and said, “You know my boy Randall, don’t you, Mrs. Newsom?”

  “I remember hearing Agnes talk about him, and I’m sure I’ve seen pictures of him,” Phyllis said, “but I don’t recall that I ever met him, Frank.”

  “Well, if you see him . . . if he happens to come by while we’re not around . . . I’d appreciate it if you’d tell him we’re looking for him. We, uh, haven’t seen him for a while.”

  Sam frowned and said, “You don’t know how to get in touch with him?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. He moves around a lot.”

  “All right,” Phyllis said, her voice gentle. “I really don’t think it’s very likely I’ll be seeing him, Frank, but if I do, I’ll be sure to tell him to talk to you.”

  “Thanks.” Frank Simmons lifted a hand and this time left the house.

  When Sam came back from closing the front door behind the visitor, he asked, “What the heck was that last bit about? You know anything about the guy’s kid, Phyllis?”