The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  She cast her mind back over conversations she’d had with Agnes in the past and then said, “I think Randall Simmons was sort of the black sheep of the family. From things that Agnes said, I think Frank had a lot of trouble with the boy when he was growing up. They never got along very well. I didn’t know that Randall had disappeared, though.”

  “I can’t imagine a child going off like that so his family doesn’t have any idea where he is,” Carolyn said. “That must be a terrible feeling.”

  “Randall would be a grown man by now. He must be Mike’s age, at least.” Phyllis paused, then went on. “But I know what you mean. It doesn’t matter how old your child is; he’s still your child. And you still worry about him.”

  Sarah smiled and said, “You mean I’m never going to stop worrying about Bobby?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “No, dear, I’m afraid you won’t. That’s just part of being a parent. You worry about your kids, and your grandkids, and your great-grandkids. . . .”

  She knew that Agnes Simmons had worried about her grandson Randall. Phyllis could remember hearing the concern in the older woman’s voice when she talked about the troubles between Frank and Randall. It was unusual for Agnes to open up that much about family matters, especially since she and Phyllis hadn’t really been all that close. But that was a good indication of just how upset she was about the subject.

  Sarah stood up and said, “Speaking of my kid, I’ve got to go pick him up. Is there anything I can do for you before I go, Phyllis? Or anything you need from the store?”

  Phyllis shook her head and said for what seemed like the hundredth time, “No, I’m fine. And if there’s anything I need, I have these three here to help me.” She smiled at Sam and Carolyn and Eve.

  “And we’re not goin’ anywhere,” Sam said. “I reckon you can count on that.”

  Phyllis did. She had come to count on their friendship every day of her life.

  Chapter 6

  Later that morning, Phyllis dozed off in the recliner, and that sleep was actually more restful than what she had gotten in the hospital the night before. She supposed it had something to do with being home again.

  When she woke up, the smell of good food cooking filled the house. She smiled without opening her eyes. All rivalries aside, Carolyn really was an excellent cook, and Phyllis didn’t mind admitting that.

  She stood up and went to the kitchen, pausing just inside the doorway in surprise when she saw Sam standing at the counter with a saucepan in one hand and a spoon in the other. He was placing dollops of some sort of caramel mixture from the saucepan into the center of what looked like chocolate oatmeal cookies arranged on a long sheet of waxed paper. On the other side of the kitchen, Carolyn tended to food that was cooking on the stove.

  “Why, Sam Fletcher,” Phyllis said, “I didn’t know you could bake cookies.”

  Sam started a little and looked around, almost guiltily, like a little boy caught doing something he shouldn’t, Phyllis thought. “Well, you, uh, don’t have to bake these,” he said. “You just mix ’em up in a saucepan and cook ’em on the stove. Actually, I’ve made these before, and I think they’re pretty good. Just about the only thing I can make, except sandwiches.”

  From the other side of the kitchen, Carolyn said, “I know; you could have knocked me over with a feather, too, when he came in here and started rummaging around. But I didn’t think it would do any harm.”

  “No, of course not,” Phyllis agreed. She went over to where Sam was working. “What are you making?”

  “I call ’em fudgy peanut butter cookies,” he explained as he spooned the mixture from the saucepan into the depression in the center of the last cookie. “They’re sort of like oatmeal cookies. You mix up milk, sugar, cocoa, and butter in a saucepan, boil it a little, take it off the fire, and blend in some oatmeal and a little vanilla. Then you put ’em on the wax paper, gouge out a little place in the center while they’re still soft, and fill it with a mixture of peanut butter and corn syrup.” He hefted the saucepan in his hand. “This stuff here.”

  Phyllis looked over at Carolyn and said, “That’s sort of like your pecan pie cookies, isn’t it, only with peanut butter instead of pie filling.”

  Carolyn shook her head. “I’ve never gouged anything in my life.”

  Phyllis let that go and turned back to Sam. “If you knew how to make these, why didn’t you make some for the cookie exchange?”

  “Oh, I didn’t figure they’d be good enough for somethin’ like that, what with you ladies almost bein’ professionals at bakin’ cookies and all.”

  “Nonsense,” Phyllis said. “You should have entered them in the newspaper contest, too.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Well, maybe next year.”

  “Better wait and see how they taste first.” He paused. “My wife liked ’em. I made ’em for her when she was sick, sort of a treat for her since I couldn’t make anything else, and, well, since you got hurt and were in the hospital . . .” His voice trailed away and he shrugged.

  Phyllis tried not to show how touched she was, but there was a lump in her throat. She managed to say, “I’m sure they’ll be very good, Sam.”

  And they were. She ate three of them for dessert after lunch, and of course Eve exclaimed over how good they were, too. Even Carolyn ate a couple of the cookies and grudgingly admitted that they were tasty. “Maybe you should enter the recipe in the contest next Christmas,” she told Sam.

  Still feeling a little tired, Phyllis went upstairs to her room to read for a while. Sam and Eve started watching a football game on the big-screen TV in the living room. Phyllis figured Eve was more interested in sitting on the sofa with Sam than she was in watching the game, but she also thought it was unlikely that Eve would be able to distract Sam very much from the Dallas Cowboys.

  The sound of car doors slamming caught her attention. She got up from the comfortable chair in her bedroom and went to the window, which looked out over the front yard. From here she could see the Simmons driveway and the street in front of the house. She saw people coming from the house and getting into the various parked cars. She thought she recognized Ted Simmons, who was taller and balder than his older brother, Frank. Billie, who was the baby of the family, had sandy brown hair, a slender figure, and the nervous mannerisms of a constant dieter. Phyllis saw a couple of women and a man she didn’t know and supposed they were the spouses of the Simmons siblings. Several children, a mixture of teenagers and adolescents, got into the cars, too. Then all three vehicles pulled out and drove off.

  The family was all going somewhere, Phyllis thought. The funeral home? Possibly. It wasn’t really any of her business, although she was curious about when Agnes’s funeral would be. She wanted to attend, even though she knew her presence might be a distraction, depending on how much the news reports played up her part in the older woman’s murder.

  An hour or so later, Carolyn came upstairs and appeared in the open doorway of Phyllis’s room. “Dwight Gresham is downstairs to see you,” she said.

  Phyllis set her book aside on the table beside her chair. “Dwight visited me in the hospital yesterday,” she said. “I wonder what he’s doing here today.”

  “I guess he wanted to make sure you were all right. And he has some sort of tape for you, I think.”

  “Tape?” Phyllis repeated with a frown.

  “A videotape.”

  The only way to find out what this was about was to go downstairs, Phyllis told herself. She followed Carolyn to the stairs and went down to the front hall. The preacher was waiting in the living room with Sam and Eve. Sam had muted the sound on the football game, but he hadn’t turned it off. Phyllis couldn’t help but notice that the Cowboys were leading the Washington Redskins 24 to 20 in the fourth quarter.

  Dwight stood up from the armchair where he’d been sitting—the same armchair where Frank Simmons had sat earlier, Phyllis noted—and extended a hand to her. As she took it, he said, “Well, you’re looking a lot better than t
he last time I saw you, Phyllis.”

  “Being out of the hospital will do that,” she said with a laugh. “Please sit down, Brother Dwight. Did you come by just to check on me?”

  “And to give you this,” he said as he picked up a videotape box from the little table beside the chair. “It’s the tape of this morning’s service, since you weren’t able to be there. I told you we have a homebound videotape ministry, so I moved you to the top of the list.”

  “Oh, goodness, you didn’t have to do that! I’m sure the Lord would understand why I wasn’t able to attend today.”

  “Well, it’s just for this week, since I’m certain you’ll be back in church next Sunday morning.” He held out the tape. “Go ahead and take it, and when you’ve had a chance to watch it, just call the church. I’ll come back by and pick it up to take to the next person, or one of the deacons will.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” Phyllis said as she took the tape from him. “Thank you, Dwight.”

  Sam sat forward suddenly on the sofa, drawing her attention. A sheepish grin appeared on his face as he said, “Cowboys just kicked a field goal. Now it’s gonna take a touchdown and an extra point to tie, or a touchdown and a two-point conversion to win.”

  “Yes, but it’s still a one-possession game,” Dwight pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Sam admitted. “Up to the defense now.”

  Dwight turned back to Phyllis. “Well, I’d better be going. Got the sermon for the evening service to work on, you know, and Jada said something about some other chore she wanted me to take care of this afternoon.”

  Jada was Dwight’s wife, a pretty redhead of about thirty who worked at one of the local insurance agencies. She’d always struck Phyllis as being a little high-strung, but that wasn’t unusual for a preacher’s spouse. The same held true, or even more so, for children of ministers. Having a preacher in the family seemed to put a lot of pressure on people. They felt like they had to be shining examples of just about everything. Jada Gresham, for example, kept about the cleanest house Phyllis had ever seen.

  “Nice fella,” Sam said when Dwight was gone.

  “Yes, he is,” Phyllis agreed as she looked down at the videotape in her hand. “I sort of wish he hadn’t gone to so much trouble, though. Now I feel like I have to go ahead and watch this tape right away so that it can go on to somebody who’s really homebound.”

  Sam gestured toward the big screen, where time was ticking down as the Redskins drove toward the Cowboys’ goal line. “You want to use the TV?”

  Phyllis laughed. “I wouldn’t do that to the two of you,” she said. “The game’s almost over, isn’t it?”

  “That’s all right, dear,” Eve said. “We don’t mind, do we, Sam? We could go watch the rest of it on the TV in my room.”

  “No, you can finish it up right here,” Phyllis said. “I insist. And I hope the Cowboys win.”

  “Well, okay,” Sam said as he settled back against the sofa cushions and turned his attention to the game again.

  Phyllis left the room with the videotape before Eve had a chance to glare at her.

  Despite what she’d said about it not being necessary, Phyllis enjoyed watching the church service on the videotape. She didn’t think anybody would want to come back and get it today, but she told herself she would call the church office the first thing in the morning and let them know she was done with it.

  She went downstairs in the late afternoon and looked around the kitchen for a snack. No one ate a formal dinner on Sunday evening in her house. The custom was for everyone to sort of fend for themselves.

  Phyllis was surprised when she saw the half dozen round plastic containers on the kitchen counters. They were full of cookies, all of which she recognized from the cookie exchange the day before. It looked like more than half of them had been left from the get-together.

  She found Carolyn in the living room, working on some knitting. The whine of power tools from the garage that had been audible in the kitchen had told her where Sam was. There was no sign of Eve, who was probably upstairs.

  “I thought you said people took cookies home with them yesterday,” Phyllis said.

  “They did,” Carolyn replied as she looked up from her knitting.

  “Then, what are all those in the kitchen?”

  “Well . . . after what happened to Agnes . . . and after everyone had been questioned by the police . . . I guess people didn’t feel as festive as they would have otherwise. Not everybody took cookies with them, and some of the ones who did probably didn’t get as many as they might have if all that hadn’t happened.”

  Phyllis supposed that made sense, but even so, she couldn’t help but be disappointed. The cookie exchange was one of the highlights of the Christmas season for her, and it bothered her that people hadn’t enjoyed it as much as they should have.

  “I wonder if the Simmonses would like some of them, since we have plenty left,” she said.

  “You already took cookies over there, remember?” Carolyn asked. “I mean, I know you remember. You’d have to.”

  “What with finding Agnes’s body and all, right after that.” Phyllis nodded. “Yes, I’m not likely to forget that. But those cookies were knocked off the table and stepped on and ruined. I’m sure someone cleaned them all up and threw them away. But I could take a nice fresh batch over there.”

  “You’re supposed to be resting,” Carolyn pointed out.

  “I feel fine. Goodness, I’m getting tired of saying that! But it’s true. I’m sure it won’t hurt me just to walk next door. My knees don’t even hurt that much anymore.”

  Carolyn set her knitting aside. “All right, but I’m coming with you, just in case.”

  “Just in case what? Do you think I’m going to pass out or something?”

  “Well, I certainly hope not, but you never know.”

  Phyllis didn’t waste time or energy arguing with her. Besides, she wouldn’t mind having Carolyn’s company.

  She went to the kitchen, put an assortment of the leftover cookies on a paper plate, then slid it into a plastic Ziploc bag and sealed the bag. The two women put on their coats and left by the kitchen door, walking up the shrub-bordered space between the houses. A chilly north wind whistled through the opening, rattling the bare branches of the post oak trees. Phyllis heard a scraping sound and glanced up to see that one of the branches was rubbing against the shingles on the roof of the Simmons house.

  At the same time, someone pushed back a curtain in one of the second-floor windows, looked down at her and Carolyn, and then disappeared. In that brief glimpse, Phyllis wasn’t able to tell who the person was, but she supposed it had been one of Agnes’s children, in-laws, or grandchildren.

  When they reached the front yard, Phyllis saw that none of the cars that had left earlier had returned. “I guess they’re not back yet from wherever they went,” she said, “but I know someone’s here. I just saw somebody at one of the second-floor windows.”

  “Well, we can give them the cookies,” Carolyn said as she went up the steps to the porch. “Maybe they won’t eat all of them before the rest of the family gets back.”

  She rang the doorbell while Phyllis held the plate of cookies. Moments went by, but no one came to the door. Carolyn rang the bell again but still got no answer.

  “Are you sure you saw somebody?” she asked with a frown.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Phyllis said, although as a matter of fact she was starting to doubt herself. “At least, I saw the curtain move. I know that.”

  “Maybe it was the cat.”

  “Agnes didn’t have a cat.”

  “Maybe one of the others brought a cat with them.”

  “It wasn’t a cat,” Phyllis said, a little exasperated. “I think I saw somebody look out at us. I just couldn’t tell who it was. Ring the bell again.”

  Carolyn pushed the button for the bell several times, then shook her head when there was still no answer to the summons. “Whoever it was doesn’t want to
come to the door. Maybe the person’s sick, and that’s why they didn’t go with the rest of the family.”

  “I suppose that’s possible.”

  “You could leave the cookies here on the porch. They’d see them when they came back in.”

  “Then a cat would come along and get them,” Phyllis said.

  Carolyn shrugged. “We’ll have to bring them back later, then, I suppose.”

  “Agnes hardly ever locked her door. Try it and see if it’s unlocked.”

  Carolyn turned toward her and frowned. “I don’t like the idea of going into someone’s house uninvited.”

  “We wouldn’t actually go in,” Phyllis said. “All we’d have to do is just set the cookies inside. There’s a little table in the hall I could put them on.”

  “Well . . . all right.” Carolyn opened the storm door and tried the knob of the wooden door. It wouldn’t turn, and she sounded relieved when she said, “Agnes might not have kept things locked up, but her family obviously does.”

  “Let’s go around back and try the kitchen door,” Phyllis said.

  “Why are you so obsessed with taking those cookies inside? If somebody is here, you’re going to disturb them.” Carolyn’s eyes suddenly widened as she must have thought about what she’d just said. “If somebody’s here, it could be . . . Oh, my goodness! It could be the person who killed Agnes and hit you!”

  Phyllis hadn’t thought about that—but then she wondered if that suspicion had been lurking in the back of her brain all along, ever since she’d seen the curtain flick aside in that upstairs window.

  “I’m sure that’s not the case,” she said. “That business about the killer returning to the scene of the crime only happens in books and TV shows.”

  “And in real life, too, sometimes,” Carolyn insisted. “I’ve read about just such things happening.”

  “Well, it’s not like we’re going to search the house or anything like that. If the back door’s open, we’ll just put the cookies on the counter and leave.”