The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  “That’ll be good for him,” Dwight said with a nod. “He can’t really do anything else to help her right away, so it’s probably best for him to get some distance.”

  “It must have been terrible for him,” Jada said, “trying to cope with such erratic behavior. Still, when you’re married to someone, you have to stand by them no matter what. The vows do say for better or for worse.”

  Sam said, “I don’t recall ’em mentionin’ anything about fireplace pokers, though.”

  Jada smiled. “Well . . . within reason, of course. Some things you can’t forgive.”

  Dwight went with Phyllis and Sam into the front hallway, where he paused to open a closet door and take out a jacket. “It’s been so warm this week, I haven’t needed a coat since Monday,” he said as he shrugged into it.

  Jada had followed them into the hall. She plucked something off the shoulder of Dwight’s jacket. “What in the world have you been getting into?” she asked with a laugh.

  He glanced down at the bit of pink fuzz in her hand and shrugged. “Beats me. Probably came off some Christmas decoration somewhere. They’re all over this year. People are really in the holiday spirit.”

  “Well, I’ll throw this away, and you should be more careful in the future.”

  That was just like Jada, Phyllis thought, not wanting even a harmless bit of fuzz to fall on her floor.

  “Be right back,” Dwight said to his wife. He went out with Phyllis and Sam and walked with them toward the church offices. They stopped at Sam’s pickup while Dwight went on to the building. “See you Sunday morning,” he called over his shoulder.

  “We’ll be there,” Phyllis said.

  “Have a merry Christmas!”

  “You, too,” Sam called in return.

  They drove off while Dwight was unlocking the front door of the office building. “Nice fella,” Sam commented.

  “He certainly is. And I’m glad that he’s got to worry about taking care of that check now, not me.”

  “Said he was gonna put it in a safe, didn’t he?”

  “That’s right. There’s a little safe in the main office where the offerings are kept after they’re collected, along with some of the church’s important papers. In case of fire, you know. The property deeds and everything really important are in a safety deposit box at the bank.”

  “Sounds like you know a lot about it.”

  “I worked part-time in the office for a while after I retired from teaching,” Phyllis said. “Then I decided that if I was going to be retired, I was going to be really retired. Somehow, though, I manage to stay almost as busy as I ever was.”

  “Solvin’ murders, here, lately.”

  Phyllis sighed. “Not this one, I’m afraid.” A thought occurred to her. She had discovered some things she hadn’t had a chance to tell Sam about, so she said, “Why don’t you drive around for a while, if you don’t mind. I need to talk to you without Carolyn and Eve around.”

  “Sounds serious,” Sam said with a slight frown. He turned at the next corner and drove west along a residential street, toward the old Chandor Gardens. “Shoot.”

  For the next few minutes, as Christmas music played softly from the pickup’s radio, Phyllis filled him in on what she had discovered about some of the neighbors and laid out her suspicions, none of which were really strong enough to deserve the name. Sam listened quietly and attentively, and Phyllis concluded by saying, “I don’t really know what to make of any of it. Randall Simmons is still the one most likely to have killed Agnes, but all my instincts tell me that he’s innocent. At the same time, nothing points strongly enough to anyone else for me to take what I’ve found out to Mike or Detective Largo.”

  Sam nodded and said, “Oscar Gunderson, huh? Who’d’a thunk it?”

  “You can’t say anything about Oscar or Helen. I have to respect their privacy. I only told you because . . .”

  Her voice trailed off as she realized that she confided in Sam for the same reason she had always confided in Kenny. She felt an easy trust in him, the sort of trust you only felt for someone with whom you were very close. Like a spouse or . . .

  “Yeah,” Sam said, his voice a little rough. “I know what you mean. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to anybody about those folks. It’ll be like you never told me.”

  “I appreciate that. But since you do know, what do you think? Could any of those people have killed Agnes?”

  “My impulse is to say no,” Sam replied. “But you remember that business last summer. I never would have guessed who committed those murders.”

  “No,” Phyllis said. “I never would have, either.”

  “I wouldn’t pretend to be an expert on murder, but it seems to me that most of ’em are committed by people you’d expect to be killers. By that I mean criminals, like armed robbers, and folks who are on drugs, or people who go out and get drunk and get into fights. I’ve heard cops say that the simplest answer, the one you’d expect to be true, is nearly always the right one.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard Mike say that.”

  “But that doesn’t account for all the murders in the world,” Sam went on. “There’s a small percentage where it’s more complicated than that, where you’ve got things goin’ on under the surface. That’s where your secrets come in, and your folks who lash out and kill when they get pushed into a tight enough corner. Thing of it is, they’re the ones who decide when things get bad enough to do something like that. The breakin’ point for them might be a whole lot different than it would be for somebody else, so you can’t really predict what’s gonna happen.”

  “So what you’re saying is . . . you don’t know.”

  “That’s what I’m sayin’,” Sam agreed. “I just don’t know.”

  “Neither do I,” Phyllis said with a sigh. “But what I do know is that I need to get started on some of the things for dinner tomorrow, so I guess we’d better get back to the house.”

  “No more talk about murder?”

  “That can wait,” Phyllis said. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

  Chapter 20

  Phyllis stayed busy enough the rest of the afternoon that she didn’t really think about Agnes Simmons’s murder and all the questions that surrounded it.

  Carolyn was in the kitchen, working on the corn bread for the wild rice and cranberry stuffing. Phyllis asked her, “Would I be in your way if I started the stuffed zucchini?”

  Carolyn shook her head and waved her forward. “I’m almost finished here. Is there something I can do to help?” she asked as she poured the batter into two eight-inch-square pans. “I only need one of these pans for the stuffing since it also has wild rice, but I thought we could use one this evening with dinner. The recipe I used is a sweet corn bread, which should work perfectly for the stuffing. Since it has cranberries, I thought it should be a little sweet.”

  Carolyn popped the two pans into the oven and wiped her hands on her apron. When they weren’t competing, they worked efficiently together in the kitchen. Phyllis took the zucchini and eggplant out of the refrigerator. The tomatoes and a pretty red bell pepper were sitting on the counter. She washed all of the vegetables, and Carolyn patted them dry. Phyllis trimmed the ends of the zucchini with a knife and sliced them in half lengthwise.

  While Phyllis was working on the zucchini, Carolyn peeled and chopped an onion. She went ahead and chopped the whole onion, putting half into a freezer bag to be used in stews later. She also added a small bag of chopped bell pepper to the freezer after she had measured out the half cup that Phyllis needed for the recipe.

  While Carolyn was working on the filling, Phyllis scooped out the centers of the zucchinis using a long, narrow spoon. She removed the seeds and pulp, leaving plenty of the flesh to support the stuffing. Every so often, she had to pick up the knife to loosen some of the pulp so she could scoop it out.

  As Phyllis was finishing with the zucchini, Carolyn banged the flat side of her knife against the garlic, which made it pe
el easily, then put it into a press and squeezed out the minced garlic. Phyllis turned on the burner to a medium-high heat and put a sauté pan over the flame. She added olive oil to the pan, and Carolyn put the onion, pepper, and garlic mix in and kept it stirred as Phyllis peeled and chopped the eggplant. When the onion mixture became tender, she added the chopped eggplant to the pan. Carolyn added the salt and pepper.

  While Carolyn gently stirred the eggplant-and-onion mixture so it would heat evenly, Phyllis chopped the tomatoes and the fresh parsley and basil. She added them to the pan, and Carolyn stirred the mixture together. It smelled heavenly.

  This is where Phyllis decided to change the recipe. She quickly grated mozzarella and Parmesan and cut some bread slices into cubes. When the tomatoes and herbs had finished cooking and Carolyn took the pan off the burner, she added in the bread and cheese, and Carolyn blended it before the cheese had time to melt completely.

  While the eggplant mixture cooled, they cleaned up the kitchen.

  Phyllis looked through the cabinet and found the baking pan she wanted. With two cooks, sometimes the pans moved around a bit, so they weren’t always in the first place you looked.

  After the stuffing was cooled enough to handle, they each took a spoon and started filling the hollowed-out zucchini. It took only a few minutes to fill the twelve halves. As she was filling the last zucchini, Phyllis wondered how it would taste with corn bread instead of whole wheat bread. She was going to have to try that some day.

  All the zucchini were filled and looked nice, so Phyllis brushed the tops with a light coating of olive oil. She covered the pan with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator, ready to pop into the oven tomorrow. While she was doing that, the timer went off for Carolyn’s corn bread. She took the pans out of the oven. The corn bread in each pan was nice and golden brown. She set them on the wire racks to cool. It was pleasant, working together quietly like this, not having to think about anything but cooking.

  But something was still lurking far in the back of Phyllis’s mind, some sense telling her that she was right to have doubts about Randall’s guilt. Somewhere, sometime during the past week, she had seen something . . . or been told something . . . or both . . . that just wasn’t right. But since she had already tried going over everything she remembered and had even discussed the case with Sam, and that hadn’t worked, it was time for another tactic—time to push all the questions aside and concentrate on something else, in hopes that the answers she sought would come to her.

  It was a good idea, but it didn’t yield any dividends. By the time she was finished with her cooking for the day and supper had come and gone, she wasn’t any closer to those answers than she had been before.

  After an early supper, everyone bundled up and the four of them loaded into Phyllis’s car, which was the largest and most comfortable vehicle. “Are you sure it’s not going to snow?” Phyllis asked Sam as she got behind the wheel. “I don’t like to drive on snow or ice.”

  “Weatherman said there might be a few flurries later tonight,” Sam drawled. “He wasn’t predictin’ any accumulation, though.”

  “It’ll all melt when it hits the ground,” Carolyn said confidently from the backseat. “You wait and see.”

  Phyllis had told Sam to sit up front and help her navigate. Eve wasn’t happy about being stuck in the back with Carolyn, Phyllis could tell, but she didn’t put up a fuss about it. Eve would have much preferred having Sam with her in the backseat.

  Phyllis knew her way around Weatherford, having lived there practically her entire life, but the town had grown in recent years, and she didn’t see as well at night as she once had, so it was good having more than one pair of eyes watching the road. Sam was methodical in laying out a grid in his mind so they could cover all the ground they wanted to. And he knew the best neighborhoods for Christmas lights, too, since he and his wife had always come down here from Poolville to carry out their Christmas Eve tradition.

  The brilliant, elaborate displays of lights and decorations made Eve forget her resentment over Sam being in the front seat of the Lincoln. Carolyn lost her usual reserve and was almost giddy with excitement. Everyone joined in the oohs and aahs as Phyllis cruised through the brightly illuminated neighborhoods. As they passed one particularly impressive display, Sam chuckled and said, “I’ll bet they can see that one from space.”

  Phyllis had Christmas music on the radio. As Sam had said, it wasn’t hard to find a station playing it at this time of year. Even the ones that hadn’t gone all Christmas, all the time, weeks earlier were now in their twenty-four-hour window of nothing but Christmas music that would conclude at six o’clock on the evening of Christmas Day. It was a special time, a time when all the cares of the world seemed to recede, and people paused in their busy lives to realize what was really important to them . . . their families, their friends, their faith.

  And for that hour or so as they drove around, Phyllis didn’t even think about murder.

  At last it was time to head home. Everyone had seen enough lights. As Phyllis pulled onto the block where she and the others lived, she frowned as she saw a car parked at the curb in front of the house.

  “That’s Mike’s car,” she said. “I hope nothing’s wrong.”

  As she turned into the driveway, she saw her son getting up from the front porch swing, where he had been sitting. He was bundled in a heavy coat, and his breath fogged in front of his face as he walked over to the garage. Phyllis stopped the car and got out quickly.

  “Hi, Mom,” Mike said from the open garage door.

  “Mike, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Wrong? Nothing. Not a thing, as far as I know.”

  “Sarah and Bobby are all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, why in the world aren’t you at home with them on Christmas Eve, then?” Phyllis demanded.

  Mike grinned. “That’s where I’m headed. I had to work today; just got off duty a little while ago. I thought I’d stop by here first and wish you and everybody else a merry Christmas.”

  Phyllis relaxed. “Goodness, you scared me. I thought something had happened.”

  “Nope. Just being a considerate son.”

  She laughed. “Well, that’s good, I guess. merry Christmas to you, too.”

  Sam, Carolyn, and Eve joined her in wishing Mike a merry Christmas, and then Eve said, “Why don’t you come inside and have a cup of hot cocoa with us? We’re going to watch It’s a Wonderful Life.”

  “That sounds mighty tempting, Miz Turner, but I’ve got a wife and boy waiting on me. . . .” Mike hesitated. “I can’t stay for the movie, but that hot cocoa sounds too good to turn down.”

  “It won’t take long to get it ready,” Phyllis told him. “I’ll even fix it for you to take with you, if you want.”

  “Okay. Sounds good, Mom; thanks.”

  They all went inside through the kitchen. Sam said, “I’ll hang your coats up, ladies, so you can get started on that cocoa.”

  He and Mike went on into the living room, Sam with three coats draped over his arm, while Phyllis and Carolyn got out a pan, measuring utensils, milk, sugar, vanilla, and cocoa. Eve went into the living room, saying, “I’ll warm up the television.”

  “Yes, she likes to warm things up, all right,” Carolyn commented when Eve was gone. “She would have warmed up the backseat if Sam had been back there, I’ll bet.”

  Phyllis didn’t admit that she’d had the same thought. She busied herself with preparing the cocoa. She measured the water into the pan and put it on the burner, setting the flame to medium. As the water started to heat, she added the sugar and cocoa. A moment later Carolyn said, “I’ll be right back,” and headed upstairs. Phyllis figured she was going to the bathroom.

  Sam wandered into the kitchen and looked surprised when he saw Phyllis by herself at the stove, stirring the chocolate mixture. “Left it to you, did they?” he asked as he leaned a hip against the counter.

  “Carolyn will be ba
ck in a minute, and, well, you know Eve. She’s not much of one for working in the kitchen. Anyway, it’s not like it’s that difficult to make hot chocolate. Where’s Mike?”

  “Callin’ Sarah to let her know that he’ll be there in a little while. We were talkin’ and I told him about us drivin’ around to look at Christmas lights, and I think he’s gonna suggest that they do that when he gets home. It’s still early enough.”

  “Bobby will go to sleep in the car if they do,” Phyllis said with a smile. “But that’s not a bad way to spend Christmas Eve. I read somewhere that nothing makes a child feel more secure than sleeping in the backseat of a car when his parents are going somewhere at night.”

  Sam chuckled. “I think that was in Peanuts. Seems like Linus said it, but it might’ve been Charlie Brown. Whichever one it was, there’s a lot o’ wisdom there.”

  A moment of companionable silence passed. Phyllis added the milk to the pan, stirred the mixture, then said, “It was awfully nice, driving around like that and seeing all those lights.”

  “My wife and I always enjoyed it. Last time we went was year before last. She’d already been diagnosed and had some radiation and chemo, so she didn’t feel just top-notch. But she wanted to go anyway, wouldn’t hear of stayin’ at home. She wrapped a scarf around her head so it wouldn’t get cold—her hair was pretty much gone by then, you know—and off we went.” Sam smiled. “She was like a little kid, laughin’ and point-in’ out all the decorations, just carryin’ on and havin’ a fine old time, like always. Got so’s I had a hard time drivin’ because just watchin’ her and listenin’ to her made me so misty-eyed. You wouldn’t think it, what with her bein’ sick and all, and already gettin’ worn out from fightin’ that stuff, but that was one of our best Christmases. One of the best times we ever had together, in fact.” Sam shook his head. “By the next Christmas, she was gone.” He looked around. “Your, uh, hot chocolate’s fixin’ to boil over, looks like.”

  Phyllis said, “Oh!” and looked down at the stove. She took the pan off the burner and turned off the flame. She had to blink rapidly to see as she added the vanilla, because her eyes were full of tears. She wanted to say something to Sam, but she had no idea what. This was the most he had ever opened up to her about his late wife and her struggle with cancer, and while she hurt for his loss, she was also glad that he felt close enough to her to talk to her about it.