The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  “I came here to question you, and I wound up telling you as much or more than you told me.”

  “I don’t mean to cause any trouble. I’m sorry.”

  Detective Largo shook her head and waved off the apology. “No need to be. You’re an intelligent woman. I get all these ideas swirling around in my head, and it helps to talk them out. I can see now how you managed to solve those other murders.”

  “I never set out to . . . to be a detective,” Phyllis said. “I just wanted to find out what really happened.”

  “Same with me,” Detective Largo said softly. “I’m just looking for the truth.” She put away her notebook and opened the briefcase. “Now, let’s get those fingerprints. If you’d get Mr. Fletcher and Mrs. Wilbarger and Mrs. Turner . . .”

  Phyllis found Sam, Carolyn, and Eve in the kitchen and wondered how much of the conversation in the living room they had overheard. Most of it, she would have been willing to wager if she had been the sort of person who made bets. They wouldn’t have been eavesdropping, exactly, but some of the walls in this old house were thin.

  Sam was the only one who had been fingerprinted before. “Uncle Sam’s got my prints,” he said. “I was in the army for three years, back in the early sixties, when I was still a kid.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Fletcher,” Detective Largo said. “These prints are just for comparison purposes. We know that you and these ladies were all inside Mrs. Simmons’s house at one time or another, so we can rule out the prints we found over there that match any of yours.”

  “That boy didn’t confess, did he?”

  Detective Largo hesitated for a second, then said, “No, he didn’t. In fact, on the advice of his lawyer, he’s refused to make any statement.”

  “Doesn’t mean he’s guilty . . . of the murder, anyway.”

  “It doesn’t mean he’s innocent, either.”

  Detective Largo put away the fingerprint equipment as Phyllis, Sam, Carolyn, and Eve wiped the ink from their fingers with the special wipes she provided. The latches on the briefcase clicked shut.

  “I’ll be in touch if I need any more information,” the detective said as she stood up. “Thank you for your cooperation, all of you. And thank you for answering my questions, Mrs. Newsom.”

  “I’m always glad to help,” Phyllis said.

  At Phyllis’s request, Sam got Detective Largo’s coat from the hall closet and then walked her out. As soon as the policewoman was gone, Carolyn said, “She thinks someone from the neighborhood did it! We overheard enough to realize that.”

  That confirmed Phyllis’s guess about her friends listening from the kitchen. That was fine with her, because as Sam rejoined them after closing the front door, she said, “Detective Largo didn’t come right out and say that, but I could tell she considers it a possibility.”

  “Well, you know the folks who live around here a whole lot better than I do,” Sam said, “but after livin’ here for a while, I got to say that nobody up and down the street strikes me as the murderin’ sort.”

  “I agree,” Carolyn said. “It’s ridiculous. That boy did it. I hate to say it, since Agnes was his grandmother, for goodness’ sake, but he’s a drug dealer and a fugitive. Of course he did it. Agnes probably threatened to turn him in.”

  The same thought had crossed Phyllis’s mind. Out of grandmotherly concern, Agnes had agreed to let Randall hide out in her attic, but after a while she had realized that she’d made a mistake by doing so. She’d tried to fix that mistake, and it had cost her her life. Everything fit, and as Detective Largo had said, it was the simplest, most likely explanation, by far.

  Phyllis still had a hard time believing it, maybe because she had seen with her own eyes that murder was often not a simple matter.

  “If anyone on this street had a reason to kill Agnes, it’s something we don’t know about,” she said. “Maybe something that Agnes knew, but nobody else did.”

  “A secret,” Eve said. “Everybody has secrets.”

  “I don’t,” Carolyn snapped. “My life is an open book.”

  “Yes, dear, but it hasn’t been checked out in a long time, has it? Someone could have written in the margins,” Eve said.

  Carolyn frowned. “What?”

  Phyllis moved over to the picture window, lifted a hand, and eased the curtain aside so that she could look out along the street. She turned her head, casting her gaze along the solidly built old houses with the trees in their front yards. Eve was right—everybody had secrets. There was no way of knowing what went on behind those walls, on the other side of those windows.

  But you might catch a glimpse from time to time, especially if you spent your days sitting at your own window, watching, watching . . . as Agnes Simmons had done.

  A shiver went through Phyllis, and it had nothing to do with the cold wind that swayed the bare branches of the trees along both sides of this nice, peaceful street.

  Chapter 10

  Agnes Simmons’s funeral was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. Phyllis went to the doctor’s office that morning, where Walt Lee examined her and gave her a relatively clean bill of health.

  “The fact that you haven’t had any recurring headaches the past couple of days, or any dizziness, makes me think there aren’t going to be any aftereffects from the clout on the head,” he told her. “The stitches in your scalp look fine, no infection brewing there, and since they’re the sort that dissolve on their own, you won’t have to come back to have them removed. I want to see you again in a couple of weeks, anyway, just as a precaution. By then all the soreness in your knees should be gone, too.” The doctor paused, then went on. “I hear that Agnes Simmons’s grandson was arrested. Do the police think he killed her?”

  “I don’t really know,” Phyllis said. “I guess he’s what they always call ‘a person of interest’ in the newspapers.”

  “A suspect, in other words.”

  Phyllis shrugged. After the visit she’d had the previous day from Detective Isabel Largo, she didn’t know what to think anymore.

  The weather was sunny and had actually warmed somewhat. In this part of Texas it wasn’t unusual to have mild weather for Christmas. Phyllis could remember plenty of holidays where Mike had been able to go outside and play with all the new toys he’d gotten as presents on Christmas morning. Somehow, though, cold and overcast would have been more appropriate for a funeral, she thought as she parked at the church that afternoon. Sam, Carolyn, and Eve were with her, and they had all ridden in Phyllis’s Lincoln, even though the church was only a few blocks from the house.

  Quite a few people were going into the church already, many of them from the neighborhood. Phyllis saw Lois and Blake Horton, Phil and Belinda Stephenson, Keith and Darla Payne, Oscar Gunderson, Helen Johannson, and Monte and Vickie Kimbrough, among others. Some of the neighbors probably hadn’t been able to get off work, even for a funeral, something that Phyllis and her friends didn’t have to worry about, being retired. Frank and Ted Simmons stood at the doors of the sanctuary, solemnly shaking hands with people as they went in. Both of them looked pale and drawn. A death in the family was always an ordeal, even one from natural causes that was expected. The violent, unexpected nature of a murder just magnified everything and made it worse.

  When Phyllis reached the doors, she shook hands with Ted and Frank and murmured, “I’m so sorry.”

  Frank swallowed and said, “It’s even worse than you know, Mrs. Newsom. The police have charged Randall with Mother’s murder.” He shook his head. “They were going to have to let Dallas County have him on those other charges if they didn’t.”

  “That’s terrible.” Phyllis didn’t know what else to say. If Randall really was guilty, then he needed to be behind bars. But she knew that Frank didn’t believe his son had committed this particular crime, no matter what else he had done.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Frank said. His voice was heavy with grief. “It’s my fault, I suppose. Randall and I never did get along.
I drove him to do whatever he did.”

  Ted said, “That’s crazy and you know it, Frank. You didn’t cause anything. Randall just never was any good.”

  Anger flared in Frank’s eyes. “Don’t say that,” he warned his brother.

  Their sister, Billie, appeared behind them and said in a soft but urgent voice, “Can’t you two just let it go, at least for now? This isn’t the time or place to be having this argument.”

  “You’re right,” Frank said with a sigh. “Mother deserves a proper funeral. But when it’s over, I’ve got to get down to the courthouse. Randall is being arraigned later this afternoon.”

  Phyllis, Sam, Carolyn, and Eve went on into the church, leaving the Simmonses to deal with their grief and with the new worry of Randall being charged with Agnes’s murder. Inside the auditorium, the organist was playing a hymn as people filed into the pews. A woman with red hair stood at the rear, handing folded programs to the mourners. She wore a neat black dress and a faint, appropriately sad smile. Phyllis took one of the programs from her and said quietly, “Hello, Jada.”

  Jada Gresham, the pastor’s wife, said, “Hello, Phyllis. How are you? You’re recovering all right from your injuries?”

  Phyllis nodded. “Yes, I saw the doctor again this morning, and he said I was doing fine.”

  “That’s wonderful. Dwight and I have been so worried about you.”

  “Yes, Dwight visited me while I was in the hospital and came by the house, too. He’s been very comforting.”

  “Well, that’s his job, you know, to minister to the sick and injured,” Jada said. “It’s a very important job.”

  “It surely is,” Phyllis agreed. “Thank you, Jada.”

  She moved on, with the others following her, and found places to sit in one of the pews about two-thirds of the way to the front of the auditorium. The church wasn’t going to be full. Agnes Simmons had been well liked but not widely known. Most of the people at the funeral either lived in the same neighborhood or had attended services here with her.

  Someone sat down in the pew behind Phyllis and reached forward to rest a hand on her shoulder. She turned her head and saw Mike and Sarah. She smiled at them, mouthed hello, and patted Mike’s hand. She was glad they’d been able to make it.

  Phyllis found her gaze drawn to the closed coffin surrounded by flowers, resting in front of the pulpit. The longer a person lived, the more funerals they attended, she thought. She had been to too many of them in recent years, beginning with her husband, Kenny’s. Sometimes she still didn’t believe that he was gone. When something puzzled her, she would find herself thinking I’m going to ask Kenny about that. Then the realization that she would never ask him about anything again would hit her in the pit of her stomach almost like a physical blow. The same thing had happened when she lost her parents. And now friends were gone, too; friends she would never see again, never argue with, never laugh with. The pain of losing her close friend Mattie was still fresh in her mind. It helped to look at her son, so young and handsome, with his beautiful wife, both of them so full of life, and it was even better when she held her grandson and thought about how life renewed itself and rolled on and on through the years. . . .

  But death was never far away, either, and it drew closer with each passing day. These funerals were vivid reminders of that. If she could get away with it, Phyllis thought, she would never go to another funeral—not even her own.

  After a few more minutes, the organist brought the hymn to a close, and Dwight Gresham, who had come out and sat on one of the benches to the side of the pulpit, rose and carried his Bible to the podium. He opened the thick black book, even though he had conducted enough funerals that he probably didn’t have to actually read the verses anymore because he had them memorized, and said, “In the book of Isaiah, the Lord says, ‘Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God.’ In the book of John, he advises us, ‘Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ Also in John, he makes this promise to us: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live.’ ”

  Dwight looked up from the Bible and began reciting the details of Agnes Simmons’s life: her birth in the town of Brock, Texas; her marriage to Johnny Lee Simmons; her three children, Frank, Theodore, and Billie; her numerous grandchildren—without mentioning any of them by name, Phyllis noticed, so that Randall wouldn’t be conspicuous by either his presence or his absence on the list—and finally the date of her death, after a life of eighty-seven years, ten months, and nineteen days. Preachers usually pinned it down like that in their opening remarks about the deceased, right down to the number of days, because every day was important, Phyllis thought.

  Dwight took his seat on the bench, and one of the ladies from the church got up to sing a hymn. As the last notes of the song were fading away, echoing against the stained-glass windows along both sides of the sanctuary, Dwight put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet again. His face was drawn, and Phyllis could see what a strain he was under. Clearly, he had been close to Agnes, and Phyllis remembered what he’d said about bringing the videotapes of the church services to her every week. A friendship must have grown up between them.

  The strain was evident in his voice, too, as he began speaking about Agnes—not preaching a sermon, really, just talking about the woman and her life and how it had touched others. Of course, those were the sorts of things heard at most funerals, about how the departed had been a good Christian and a faithful member of the church and how she had left the cares of this world behind and gone on to a better place. Dwight Gresham’s voice trembled with sincerity as he said, “Above all else, Agnes Simmons loved the Lord and wanted to follow his teachings. She hated the sin . . . but loved the sinner. Whenever she saw someone straying from the paths of righteousness, she made it her goal in life to steer them back to the way they should be going . . . whether they wanted to be steered or not.” A faint chuckle came from him. “Some of you saw that for yourselves, in your own lives. Agnes wanted the best for everyone she knew, and she would do whatever it took to bring that about. If there was ever anyone who fit the description of being willing to go the extra mile for someone, it was Agnes Simmons.”

  That was true, Phyllis thought. Agnes would even go so far as to let her grandson hide out from the law in her attic . . . but in her determination to help him wipe out his sin, would she have threatened, then, to turn him in? Everything Dwight was saying tended to make Phyllis believe there was a possibility that Agnes would have done just that.

  Dwight dabbed at his eyes and went on, “Those of us who knew her will miss Agnes, especially all her family and friends. She was one of a kind.” He paused, then said, “At the request of the family—and this was Agnes’s wish as well, I know—there will be no graveside service. Let us pray.”

  The congregation bowed their heads, and when the brief prayer was done, the organist began to play again. The funeral directors, a pair of sober, black-suited, middle-aged men, stepped forward and opened the casket so that the mourners could pass by for a final look at Agnes Simmons. This custom was one Phyllis didn’t particularly care for, and her will contained specific instructions that it not be done at her funeral. But it seemed to be important to most people and was done at nearly every funeral she attended, so she stood up and dutifully passed by with the others who were sitting in the same pew when it was their turn. The line then led to the back of the sanctuary and outside, into the welcome sunshine.

  Even though there would be no graveside service, many of the people lingered a few minutes on the church porch and on the lawn in front of the building, talking among themselves and waiting to say good-bye to the Simmons family. Sam said, “I don’t know about you folks, but the preacher seemed a mite more upset than usual, almost like it was his own mother who’d passed away.”

  Phyllis nodded. “I thought so, too. I think I’ll go talk to Jada and make sure Dwight’s all right.”

&nbs
p; She spotted the preacher’s redheaded wife at the other end of the porch and walked over to her. Jada nodded to the couple she’d been talking to and then turned to Phyllis with a solemn little smile.

  “Dwight’s taking Agnes’s death hard, isn’t he?” Phyllis asked.

  “He always takes it hard when a member of the congregation passes away. You hear priests refer to the parishioners as their flock, but that’s just as true for Baptists, too.”

  “And other denominations, I expect. Did they become close when Dwight was taking the videotapes of the services to her every week?”

  Jada nodded. “That’s right. He always came back talking about how Agnes did this or Agnes said that. It was quite touching, really. Dwight’s mother passed away some time ago, you know, so it was almost like Agnes became sort of his surrogate mother. I doubt if that would have ever happened if she hadn’t fallen and broken her hip, though. It was after that they became close.” Jada’s smile disappeared and a sigh came from her lips. “That was a blessing, too, because Agnes’s own family certainly wasn’t as close to her as they should have been.”

  “I know,” Phyllis said. “I hardly ever saw them visiting. Not that I watched to see who was visiting her or anything, but you can’t help but notice things when you’ve lived in a neighborhood as long as I have.”

  Jada leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I really shouldn’t say anything, especially on a day like today, but Agnes’s children neglected her at times. She didn’t want for money or anything like that; her husband left her well off. But the children never came to see her unless they needed something. Why, Dwight told me that Frank Simmons expected his mother to invest all the savings she had left in his business, so that he could keep it afloat. She told him she couldn’t do that, of course.”

  “I don’t think I even know what Frank does for a living,” Phyllis said.

  “He has a hardware store in Dallas. In one of the suburbs, actually, but I can’t keep track of which one is which. I think it used to be successful, but a Wal-Mart went in just down the street, and of course Frank’s having a hard time making it now.”