The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  Largo was turned sideways at the desk, typing on a keyboard in a pull-out drawer under her computer monitor. She glanced at the doorway and said, “Deputy Newsom. Come on in. I’ll be with you in a minute, soon as I finish entering these reports.”

  “Always plenty of paperwork, isn’t there?” he said as he came in to the cramped office and sat down in one of the metal straight-back chairs.

  “That’s something about police work that’ll never change.” Largo clicked the mouse, and the hard drive purred as it saved her files. She swiveled her chair toward Mike and asked, “How come your mother makes a habit of showing up at crime scenes?”

  The blunt question took him by surprise. He grunted and said, “Just lucky, I guess. Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it. I hear she came across something else related to the Simmons case today.”

  Largo nodded. “I figured that was why you were here. I don’t have to share that information with you, you know.”

  “Of course not. I just thought—”

  “Professional courtesy and all,” she cut in.

  “Well, yeah.”

  Largo picked up a pen and toyed with it for a second before she said, “I’ll tell you what I know, Deputy, but I warn you . . . if you do anything to jeopardize my case, you’ll never get anything else from me.”

  “Don’t worry, Detective; I know how to be discreet.” Mike knew his voice sounded a little stiff, but he couldn’t help it. Isabel Largo seemed determined to rub him the wrong way.

  “I already knew Randall Simmons had been in the house.”

  Mike’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

  “We sent off all the fingerprints we lifted, and earlier this afternoon some of them kicked back from the fugitive database as matching those of Randall Edward Simmons, who has warrants outstanding on him in Dallas County for flight to avoid prosecution and possession of narcotics with intent to distribute. He’s a bad guy.”

  “What sort of narcotics?”

  “Cocaine. Both the regular stuff and crack.”

  Mike nodded. “Once the fingerprint match came back, were you going to get a search warrant for the house?”

  “That’s right. I was about to get that process started when I heard the disturbance call at the same address.” Largo smiled, which relieved the stern lines of her face a little. “That saved me some trouble. Randall Simmons was already in custody when I got there.”

  “Has he admitted to killing his grandmother?” Mike knew that was the main thing his mother would want to know.

  “He hasn’t admitted anything. His father showed up with a lawyer almost right away, and she told him to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Who’s the lawyer?”

  “Juliette Yorke.”

  Mike nodded. Juliette Yorke hadn’t been in Weatherford for very long—she was from back east somewhere—but a while back she had represented one of the suspects in that murder out at Oliver Loving Elementary School. Now she had picked up another client who might be mixed up in a high-profile killing.

  “What are you going to do if he won’t talk?”

  “We can hold him for a little while,” Largo said with a shrug, “but Dallas County wants him, and I guess we’ll have to give him to them unless we can come up with something tying him to the murder. If we can do that, we can hang on to him here. All I know to do is try.”

  “Yeah. At least he’s in custody. If he is the killer, he won’t be able to hurt anybody else.”

  “He’ll go away on the drug-dealing charge,” Largo agreed. “This day and age, he might get a stiffer sentence for that than for killing the old lady.” She sighed. “Still, it would be nice to know that he’s the killer.”

  “Yeah.” Mike got to his feet. “Thanks, Detective. If I run across anything that might help your case, I’ll let you know.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Mike paused to look at the picture of the baby in the photo cube on top of the filing cabinet. “Your kid?”

  “My son, Victor. He’s fourteen months.”

  Mike smiled. “Cute kid. My son, Bobby, is almost three. You and your husband have any others?”

  “No. And I’m not married.”

  Mike had noticed that she didn’t wear a wedding band but had figured that didn’t mean anything. A lot of cops wore little if any jewelry while they were on duty. Largo didn’t offer any explanation for having a kid but no husband, and Mike wasn’t about to ask, feeling he had already stuck his foot in his mouth. He knew he was being old-fashioned to even wonder about such a thing, but that was the way he’d been raised. Old-fashioned didn’t necessarily mean bad, either.

  “Well, I’ll be in touch,” he said into the somewhat awkward silence that had fallen.

  “So long, Deputy.”

  Cold wind gusted in Mike’s face as he walked from the building to his car. He wished he hadn’t even said anything about the baby in the photo. Detective Largo was already doing him a favor by sharing information about the Simmons case with him. He shouldn’t have put her on the spot by asking about her husband.

  But it was too late to worry about that. Anyway, he told himself, it was possible he wouldn’t ever cross paths with her again unless he went out of his way to do so.

  And as he took a deep breath of the chilly air, he decided it would probably be a good idea not to do that.

  Chapter 9

  From time to time during the rest of that day, Phyllis looked out one of the side windows in the living room that gave her a view of the Simmons house. She wondered what was going on in there, although she knew it was really none of her concern. She saw Frank leave and come back a short time later, and then leave again after that. She hoped he’d been able to find a lawyer for Randall. Getting someone to take on a case on a Sunday afternoon less than a week before Christmas might not be easy. But she supposed lawyers were probably used to being on call twenty-four hours a day, all year round, just like doctors.

  Phyllis halfway expected that Isabel Largo would come back to question her and take her fingerprints, along with those of Sam and Carolyn. But the detective never showed up, so Phyllis went to bed that night with that interview still hanging over her head.

  The next morning, Carolyn announced, “I think we need to get our minds off all that trouble next door and pay attention to something much more pleasant—Christmas dinner.”

  “It’s less than a week away,” Eve agreed. “We need to decide what we’re going to make this year.”

  If Phyllis had wanted to be uncharitable, she could have pointed out that Eve never made anything in the kitchen. She claimed that her culinary skills were limited, usually adding that she made up for that with her talents in other rooms of the house.

  Phyllis let Eve’s comment pass without any reaction this time. Instead she said, “I was thinking about cooking a ham this year.”

  “Nothin’ much better’n a good ham,” Sam put in.

  Carolyn frowned. “Christmas dinner is usually a turkey.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be,” Phyllis said. “Plenty of people cook hams for Christmas. And I was thinking about a special way to prepare it that might make it even better. Remember the roast we had that was cooked in cola?”

  Sam smiled and licked his lips. “I sure do,” he said. “It was mighty good.”

  “I was wondering if you couldn’t cook a ham the same way.”

  “Basting it in cola the way you did the roast?” Carolyn asked.

  “That’s right. But I was also thinking that you could get one of those meat injectors and put the cola right in the ham. Baste it from the inside out, so to speak.”

  “Soundin’ better all the time,” Sam said.

  “I don’t know,” Carolyn said with a dubious frown. “Injecting cola into a ham? It sounds pretty far-fetched to me.” She paused. “What about stuffing? You have to have stuffing for Christmas, whether you cook a ham or a turkey. I have a recipe for some wild rice and cranberry stuffing that I’ve been wanting to tr
y.”

  “You mean you combine the stuffing and the cranberry sauce?” Phyllis asked. “That’s an interesting idea.”

  “It’s settled, then. I’ll make the stuffing.”

  “And I’ll cook the cola ham.”

  Sam said, “And I’ll do my part by eatin’ both of ’em.”

  There was some more talk about other side dishes and desserts, although Phyllis thought they had so many cookies left, they might not need any extra desserts. Still, it wasn’t really Christmas without a pie or two, was it?

  Carolyn was right; the discussion about Christmas dinner took Phyllis’s mind off of Agnes Simmons’s murder, and she didn’t really think about it again until that afternoon, when the doorbell rang and Phyllis opened the door to find Detective Isabel Largo standing there on the porch. The overcast had broken, but the temperature was still pretty cool. A chilly wind whipped Detective Largo’s long black coat around her calves, and across the street Vickie Kimbrough was huddled in her heavy sweater again as she came outside to get the mail.

  “Hello, Mrs. Newsom,” the policewoman said. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Not bad,” Phyllis replied. She stepped back and ushered Detective Largo into the house.

  “No problems from what happened to you a couple of days ago?”

  Phyllis shook her head. “No, but I’m going to see the doctor again tomorrow, just to be sure.” She had called Walt Lee’s office and made the appointment like she was told to when she was released from the hospital.

  “That’s good. If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Of course. Let me take your coat.”

  Phyllis hung the coat in the hall closet and then took Detective Largo into the living room. The woman had a short-barreled revolver holstered on her right hip. She wore black slacks and a dark red silk shirt and looked more stylish than Phyllis expected a police officer to look. She also carried a small briefcase that she placed on the floor next to the coffee table as she sat down on the sofa.

  “I’ll need to take your fingerprints, too, as well as those of the other people who live here.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Of course. Anything we can do to help.” She hesitated. “I assume that Randall Simmons hasn’t confessed yet.”

  A faint smile touched Detective Largo’s lips. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss the case.”

  “Of course. That’s fine. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Anyway, she would ask Mike about it later, Phyllis thought, then felt a little embarrassed at the idea—not enough to keep her from doing it, though.

  “Now, I know you’ve been over all of this before,” Detective Largo began, “but I’d like you to tell me again exactly what happened Saturday afternoon. Everything that you can remember. You never know what’s going to turn out to be important, so if you can recall any details now that you didn’t think about before, please don’t hesitate to include them.”

  Phyllis nodded and said, “I understand.” She launched into yet another recital of the facts, casting her mind back to the moment she had started gathering up a sampler of cookies to take next door to Agnes.

  She didn’t think there was anything new in her story this time. She laid out all the facts for Detective Largo, who nodded and made notes as she let Phyllis tell the story in her own way, at her own pace. The detective was a good listener, Phyllis thought. In her job, she probably got plenty of practice.

  When Phyllis was finished, Detective Largo asked, “Can you tell me who was here at the party Saturday afternoon?”

  “Oh, just people from the neighborhood. The cookie exchange is sort of a tradition. We always have it here on the last Saturday before Christmas.”

  “Do you send out invitations?”

  “No, people just know to come and bring a plate of cookies.”

  “What about people who are new to the neighborhood?”

  “We make sure they know about it. Really, it’s not any trouble spreading the word.” Phyllis wasn’t sure why Detective Largo was so interested in the cookie exchange when the crime had taken place next door, not here.

  “So you don’t have an actual invitation list, or anything like that? People don’t have to RSVP?”

  “Not at all. It’s a very informal get-together.”

  “Can you tell me who was here, anyway?”

  Phyllis frowned. “You mean . . . everybody?”

  Detective Largo nodded and said, “As many of them as you can remember, anyway.”

  Phyllis leaned back in the armchair where she was sitting. “Goodness. I don’t know if I can come up with all the names. . . .”

  “As many as you can,” Detective Largo prodded.

  Phyllis thought about it. She knew everyone on both sides of the street for at least three blocks, which was about the limit of the area where people considered themselves a little community within the community. She began naming them, omitting the ones she couldn’t remember seeing at the cookie exchange. Not everyone was able to make it, of course. In this hectic, modern-day world, people sometimes had commitments they couldn’t get out of, even for an old-fashioned pleasure like getting together with neighbors, eating cookies, and drinking punch.

  When she got to the end of the list, she said, “That’s all I can think of, Detective. Of course, Carolyn and Eve and Sam were here, too, but they live here.”

  “Sounds like quite a crowd. There must have been, what, fifty or sixty people here?”

  Phyllis nodded. “At least. The house was packed. But that’s the way I like it when it comes to the cookie exchange.”

  “So . . . you couldn’t keep your eye on everybody at once, I don’t imagine.”

  “No, but why would I want to? Maybe it’s naive of me, Detective, but these people are my neighbors. I trust them.”

  “I’m sure you do. I just wanted to establish the fact that you couldn’t be sure where everyone was all the time.”

  Phyllis thought about that for a second, then said, “Good heavens! You think somebody at the cookie exchange could have slipped next door without anyone noticing and murdered Agnes Simmons, then come back over here with no one being the wiser?”

  Detective Largo shook her head. “I didn’t say that, Mrs. Newsom.”

  “No, but that’s the only reason I can think of why you’d want to know exactly who was here and whether or not I was able to keep up with what they were doing all the time!”

  The detective’s lips thinned. “It would be better if you didn’t speculate about such things.”

  It was too late for that advice to do any good. Phyllis’s mind was already racing.

  She had an answer to her earlier question now. Randall Simmons hadn’t confessed to killing his grandmother. If he had, then Detective Largo wouldn’t be worried about who had been at the cookie exchange or what they had been doing. The case would have been wrapped up. Detective Largo probably wouldn’t even be here.

  “I never did feel like Randall would have done such a thing,” Phyllis said.

  “I didn’t say that, either, Mrs. Newsom. Randall Simmons is still our primary suspect.” Detective Largo grimaced a little, as if she realized that she shouldn’t have said that. “We’re just trying to make sure that no line of investigation is overlooked.”

  “I understand that, but . . . what possible reason would any of my neighbors have for killing poor Agnes?”

  Detective Largo looked at her and said, “You tell me, Mrs. Newsom.”

  Phyllis couldn’t. The idea that one of the people from the neighborhood could have committed murder was as foreign to her as the fact that a murder had been committed in this peaceful community. But it had been, and if Randall Simmons wasn’t guilty, then the killer was still out there on the loose somewhere.

  “There’s still the possibility that Agnes surprised a burglar,” Phyllis suggested.

  “Yes, but we know that her grandson was staying up in that attic room. If Mrs. Simmons encountered a burglar, why didn’t she
shout to Randall for help?”

  From the sound of it, Detective Largo was giving up on the idea of not discussing the case with her, Phyllis thought. The detective’s curiosity was getting the better of her, as it always did with Phyllis.

  “Maybe she didn’t have time to call for help. The burglar could have choked her with his hands before he wrapped the belt from her robe around her throat, or perhaps he hit her from behind and knocked her out, like he did with me.”

  Detective Largo shook her head. “The autopsy ruled out both of those possibilities. There were no bruises or finger marks on her throat; just the marks from the belt. And she hadn’t been struck on the head or anywhere else. There were no defensive wounds, no skin or tissue under her fingernails. Somehow the killer got hold of the belt, wrapped it around her neck, and strangled her with it without her yelling out for help. That doesn’t seem like something a burglar would do, does it?”

  Phyllis had to admit that it didn’t. “It sounds more like Agnes knew her killer.”

  “Which brings us back to the people from the neighborhood . . . or her grandson.” Detective Largo shrugged. “Or one of her other family members.”

  “But they weren’t even there,” Phyllis said. “They’d gone together to Fort Worth.”

  “Where they went to Ridgmar Mall and split up for an hour and a half while they were shopping. You can get from the west side of Fort Worth to Weatherford and back in less time than that.”

  “I didn’t see any of the cars come back.”

  “They could have parked down the street, or around the block, and gone into the house through the back. Anyway, you were busy. You might not have noticed a car arriving and then leaving again a few minutes later. That’s all the time it would have taken. It’s just a theory, and not a very plausible one at that.” Detective Largo’s voice hardened. “I don’t want to miss anything, though.”

  “It sounds like you’re being very thorough,” Phyllis said.

  The detective’s stern demeanor eased as she smiled again. “And you’re very slick, aren’t you, Mrs. Newsom?”

  “I don’t know what you mean—”