The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  Before she could say anything, though, Eve called from the living room, “Phyllis, I can’t find It’s a Wonderful Life.”

  Phyllis took a deep breath to calm her emotions and called back, “It’s on the shelves with the other tapes.”

  “Well, I don’t see it.”

  “Oh, all right, hang on.” She quickly poured the hot chocolate into five cups, then looked at Sam. “I’d better go find that tape for her. The cocoa probably ought to cool a little anyway. It, uh, got a little too hot.”

  “I’ll go help you look,” Sam offered. “Sometimes two sets of eyes are better’n one.”

  They went out to the living room, where they found Eve standing in front of a large set of built-in bookshelves, a couple of which now held DVDs and videotapes instead of books. Most of the movies they watched these days were on DVD, but they still had quite a few older videotapes. The machine hooked up to the TV was a combination VCR/DVD player and recorder.

  Phyllis thought she knew right where the tape of It’s a Wonderful Life was located on the shelves, and sure enough, it was there. She reached to get it and then turned to hand it to Eve.

  Her grip on the tape tightened, though, as something seemed to break loose in her brain. For a second she was barely aware of where she was. All she could focus on was the videotape in her hand. For days now she had felt like someone was lying to her, but she had never been able to figure out who or why.

  Now, suddenly, she knew who, although why was still a mystery. And that knowledge stunned her so much, she couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Well, are you going to let me put it in the machine or not?” Eve asked as she tugged on the tape.

  Her words finally penetrated the thoughts swirling in Phyllis’s brain. She let go of the tape without saying anything, and Eve turned away to insert it in the VCR, not even noticing the look on Phyllis’s face.

  Sam saw it, however, and reached over to grasp Phyllis’s arm. “Something just came to you, didn’t it?” he asked. “What is it?”

  Before Phyllis could say anything, Carolyn and Mike came into the living room from different directions, Carolyn from the kitchen and Mike from the front hallway. Mike asked, “How’s that cocoa coming along, Mom? I really need to get going—”

  “Phyllis,” Carolyn said, interrupting Mike, which wasn’t like her. She had an agitated, worried look on her face. “Didn’t all the Simmonses go home earlier today?”

  Phyllis looked at her, still feeling a little breathless from what she had just figured out. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, they all left.”

  “Well, either some of them came back, or somebody else is in there,” Carolyn said, “because I just saw a light moving around in the Simmons house.”

  Mike frowned and said, “You’re sure about that, Miz Wilbarger?”

  “I’m certain,” Carolyn said, and the firmness of her voice showed that she had no doubt about what she was saying. “I saw it from one of the upstairs windows. Not only that, the light was shining through one of those ventilators on the end of the house, under the eaves. You know, like it was coming from that attic room where Randall Simmons was hiding.”

  Phyllis looked at Sam and blurted, “Jimmy Crowe!”

  “Who?” Mike asked.

  Now she had gone and done it, Phyllis thought. The authorities didn’t know yet about Jimmy Crowe and his connection with the case. But it was too late to call the words back now, and she knew from the intent look on her son’s face that Mike wouldn’t be satisfied until he had the whole story.

  Besides, it had to be Crowe skulking around over there in Agnes’s house. He would have read in the papers about Randall’s arrest and about how Randall had hidden in the attic of his grandmother’s house. Crowe was probably up there searching the place to see if Randall had hidden any money there—or anything that might be incriminating to Crowe. With this being Christmas Eve, he might think this was the perfect time to break in, when everyone would be busy with their own holiday celebrations and not paying any attention to the supposedly empty Simmons house.

  He would have gotten away with it, too, if not for Carolyn’s observant nature—which was a polite way of saying that she was nosy, of course, but right now Phyllis didn’t care about that.

  Those thoughts flashed through her head, and then she said, “Mike, there’s no time to explain right now, but I promise that I’ll tell you all about it if you call for help and make sure the man in Agnes’s house doesn’t get away.”

  “I was gonna do that anyway,” Mike said as he pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his coat. He turned toward the front door. “All of you stay here.”

  “What are you going to do?” Phyllis called after him. “You can call from in here.”

  “I need to get outside and keep an eye on the place, in case the guy tries to get away before the PD shows up.” He unbuttoned his coat, and as it swung open, Phyllis saw the gun holstered on his hip.

  “Mike, you can’t try to arrest that man alone. He’s dangerous!”

  “Don’t worry,” he said over his shoulder as he started out of the house. “I’ll wait for backup.”

  But as Phyllis looked around at Sam, Carolyn, and Eve, she had the awful feeling that Mike wouldn’t wait if Crowe tried to get away.

  She had just sent her son out into the night to face a man who might well be a killer.

  Mike didn’t call 911. He dialed the direct line of the police department dispatcher instead, identified himself, and reported a possible burglary in progress. The dispatcher said he’d have a unit rolling toward the address right away, with no lights or sirens to spook the guy in the Simmons house.

  Mike closed the phone and slipped it back in his pocket. With his hand on the butt of his gun, he walked across the lawn in front of the Simmons house and went up onto the porch. He eased the screen door open and tried the knob of the wooden door. It was locked and didn’t appear to have been tampered with. That meant the intruder had gotten in some other way, probably through the back door, or possibly a window.

  Leaving the porch, Mike walked to the side of the house and looked up toward the roof. He could barely see the screened and louvered opening under the eaves. There was one at each end of the house for ventilation in the attic. He didn’t see any light there now, but he found it hard to believe that Mrs. Wilbarger had just imagined it. She wasn’t the imaginative type, and she certainly wasn’t the sort to cry wolf.

  Mike went about halfway along the side of the house, next to the hedge that separated the properties, then stopped again to listen. He slipped a small but powerful flashlight out of his pocket and held it in his left hand. Since it was Christmas Eve, there wasn’t much traffic on the roads, so the night was quiet. He heard very faint music coming from somebody’s house, or one of the churches, or maybe even some carolers getting in a few last-minute Christmas songs. But he didn’t hear anything suspicious. . . .

  Then something thudded at the rear of the house.

  It sounded like a foot had inadvertently kicked something in the darkness. A moment later he heard the scrape of shoe leather against the ground. Mrs. Wilbarger had been right—someone had been inside the Simmons house and was now trying to slip away into the night. Whether the guy had found what he was looking for or had given up, Mike didn’t know. But he intended to find out.

  A dark shape moved around the rear corner of the house. Mike drew his pistol as he leveled the flashlight in his other hand. Since the Weatherford police weren’t on the scene yet, he would have to take the burglar into custody himself. His thumb pressed the button on the flashlight.

  The brilliant beam shot out and pinned the man, who stopped short, freezing between the house and the hedge with one hand raised in an instinctive effort to block the sudden glare from his eyes. Mike shouted, “Police! Get down on the ground—now!”

  The man didn’t get down. Instead he broke out of the momentary trance brought on by the dazzling light, whirled around, and ran.

  �
��Stop!” Mike yelled, but the man didn’t. The corner of the house was only a few steps away. Mike realized that he should have let the guy get a little closer before he turned the light on. Too late for that now, though. The man whipped around the corner and disappeared.

  Mike went after him but stopped before he reached the back of the house. Charging blindly around corners was a good way for a cop to get killed. He pressed his back against the wall and listened again.

  A garbage can crashed and clattered. The fugitive had reached the alley that ran behind the houses along the street. Mike darted around the corner and broke into a run after him.

  The bobbing lance of light picked up the fleeing burglar. He was about forty feet away. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Mike shouted. But he knew he wasn’t going to fire his weapon under these circumstances, and evidently so did the guy he was chasing, because the man never slowed down. He pounded along the alley and ducked around an old van that was parked back there.

  Mike holstered his pistol in hopes that would help him run faster. His heart thumped heavily in his chest. He had been involved in foot pursuits like this before, and he didn’t like them, especially at night. There were too many places for a suspect to hide, too many places from which a desperate man might launch an ambush against an officer who was pursuing him.

  That thought had barely crossed Mike’s mind when his quarry lunged out of the shadows alongside the old van, crashed into him, and knocked him off his feet.

  Chapter 21

  “I’m going out there,” Phyllis said as she started toward the front door.

  Carolyn caught hold of her arm, and Sam moved to get between her and the door. “Don’t be insane,” Carolyn said. “You can’t do anything to help Mike.”

  “It’s my fault he’s out there maybe facing a killer,” Phyllis said. Fear grew inside her until it all but filled her.

  “Yeah, and he’s trained to handle situations like that,” Sam told her. “He’ll be all right, Phyllis. You raised him to be smart and levelheaded. He won’t do anything foolish.”

  “But if anything happened to him, and it was my fault—”

  “I’ll go,” Sam said.

  Immediately, a new fear surged up inside Phyllis. “No, you can’t.”

  “Better me than you. If somebody has to go—”

  “No, you’re right.” Phyllis forced herself to take a deep breath. “Mike is very capable. He’ll be just fine, and I’m sure that the police will be here any minute now—”

  She might have been able to keep on being reasonable about it, although that would have been hard, if at that moment she hadn’t heard her son shout for someone to stop. A moment later Mike yelled again, from farther back on the property.

  “Oh, dear Lord!” Phyllis gasped as she turned and ran for the back door.

  None of the others were quick enough to stop her this time. She dashed through the kitchen and out the door into the back yard.

  The hedge that divided the properties ran all the way to the rear alley. Running footsteps sounded on the other side of the hedge and then in the alley itself. Heedless of the cold, Phyllis headed in that direction, but she had taken only a few steps before Sam caught up to her and stopped her by grabbing both of her arms. As he pulled her to a halt, he said, “Blast it, Phyllis, you don’t know what you’re gettin’ into—”

  The sound of a collision came from the alley, followed by grunts and curses. Phyllis struggled to get loose from Sam’s grip as Carolyn and Eve came up behind them. Both of the women were panting from the exertion of running out of the house and across the backyard.

  Sam pushed Phyllis toward them and snapped, “Hang on to her!” Then he let go and turned to run into the alley, disappearing around the hedge.

  “Sam, no!” Phyllis called after him.

  But the darkness had already swallowed him.

  Mike found himself on the bottom, pinned to the ground by the weight of the other man, who was considerably bigger than he was. The guy had his left hand clamped around Mike’s throat. The fingers dug in cruelly, like iron bars. The man lifted his other arm, and his raised fist was poised to come crashing down into Mike’s face.

  Instead there was a huge clang of metal and the guy toppled to the side, letting go of Mike’s throat. The upraised fist never fell. Mike wasn’t sure what had happened, but he rolled over and scrambled after the man anyway. His head was spinning from being choked, but his instincts and training still worked. He landed with a knee in the middle of the guy’s back, grabbed one of his arms, and snapped a cuff around that wrist before the man knew what was going on. He seemed to be half-stunned now and wasn’t putting up much of a fight. Mike dug his knee into the small of the guy’s back and managed to get hold of the other arm as it flailed around. He brought it back and down and found the other cuff. It locked into place with a satisfying snick.

  “You get him?”

  That was Sam Fletcher’s voice, Mike realized as he pushed himself to his feet and dragged air into his lungs. The flashlight he had dropped when the suspect tackled him lay a few feet away, still burning, with its beam pointing down the alley. Mike stepped over to it and picked it up. He turned the light toward Sam. The glare revealed the rangy older man standing there with a metal garbage can in his hands. The can had a huge dent in the side of it.

  “That . . . that’s what you hit him with?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah. I saw the two of you fightin’, and I could tell the other guy was on top, so I grabbed the first thing I could find and whaled the tar out of him.” Sam hefted the garbage can. “Worked pretty good, too.”

  Mike couldn’t help but chuckle. “It sure did. You shouldn’t have gotten involved, though, Mr. Fletcher. It was too dangerous.”

  “Are you kiddin’? You know what your mama’d do to me if I stood by and let that fella choke you? Now that would’a been dangerous.”

  “It’s pretty dark back here,” Mike said as he drew his gun and covered the handcuffed suspect. “How did you know he was on top and not me?”

  “There’s a little bit o’ light. Enough to shine on that dome o’ his.”

  Mike turned the flashlight beam toward the suspect. Sure enough, the guy was as bald as an egg. There hadn’t really been time to notice that during the brief confrontation at the side of the house. The suspect wasn’t that old, in his late thirties or early forties, Mike judged, but he’d either lost his hair at an early age or else shaved it all off. It didn’t really matter either way. What was important was that he was in custody.

  “Is this . . . What was the name Mom said? Jimmy Crowe?”

  Sam shook his head and said, “I wouldn’t know. I never laid eyes on the fella before.”

  More voices sounded nearby. A couple of uniformed officers carrying flashlights came into the alley from the backyard of the Simmons house, followed by Phyllis, Carolyn, and Eve. With all those lights, the alley was brightly illuminated. Phyllis hurried over to Mike, who holstered his gun. He identified himself to the Weatherford officers and told them briefly what had happened. They hauled the suspect to his feet, and one of them said, “We’ll find out who he is. Don’t go anywhere, Deputy.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Mike assured them. “I’ll be around.” Then he turned to his mother, who hugged him tightly.

  “Are you all right?” Phyllis asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Banged up a little, but it’s nothing to worry about . . . thanks to Mr. Fletcher. I wouldn’t have caught the guy without his help.”

  Phyllis let go of Mike and turned to Sam, hugging him, too. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Sam looked embarrassed as he said, “All I did was wallop the fella with a garbage can.”

  Mike extended a hand. “Well, I appreciate it.”

  “So do I,” Phyllis said as Mike and Sam shook hands.

  Then Mike nodded toward the street and said, “Let’s go talk to the officers. And Mom . . . I want to hear all about Jimmy Crowe.”

  Detective Isa
bel Largo didn’t seem too happy about being taken away from her family on Christmas Eve, and Phyllis couldn’t blame her for that. She listened patiently as Phyllis explained for the third time about Jimmy Crowe and his connection to the case. She had already told Mike all about it, and then the two officers who had Crowe in custody in the backseat of their car. Crowe had had his driver’s license on him, so he hadn’t bothered trying to deny who he was.

  Phyllis felt a little like she was betraying the confidence of Frank Simmons and Juliette Yorke, but now that Crowe’s involvement was out in the open, she didn’t see any point in keeping what she knew a secret. Anyway, it was all hearsay. Detective Largo would have to confirm everything with Randall. What was more important, at least in the short run, was that the police would now have to consider Crowe a suspect in Agnes’s murder. He had broken into the house once—tonight, through the rear door—and he certainly could have done it before that, like on the previous Saturday, when Agnes was killed.

  The problem, Phyllis thought, was that Crowe really had no connection to the thing she had figured out earlier this evening. She still didn’t know how that fit in, if indeed it did.

  But maybe Crowe would confess to killing Agnes, and all of that would be moot. Phyllis hoped it would turn out that way.

  When Phyllis was through telling Detective Largo what she knew, the woman closed her notebook and stood up. “I’ll go talk to Crowe now,” she said. She gave Phyllis a stern look and added, “You really should have come to me and told me about this before now.”

  “I didn’t know if any of it was even true,” Phyllis said.

  “Neither do I . . . but I plan on finding out.”