The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  About the Author

  Livia J. Washburn has been a professional writer for more than twenty years. She received the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award and the American Mystery Award for her first mystery, Wild Night, written under her maiden name, L. J. Washburn, and was nominated for a Spur Award by the Western Writers of America for a novel written with her husband, James Reasoner. She lives in a small town in Texas with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs. Her Web site is at www.liviawashburn.com, and you can e-mail her livia@flash.net.

  Ready for another trip to Weatherford, Texas?

  Read on for an excerpt from

  Murder by the Slice

  Available in stores or at penguin.com.

  The sun blazed down on the sidewalk in front of the Wal-Mart located in Weatherford, Texas. Phyllis Newsom was glad she had worn a hat to shade her head. Unfortunately, that didn’t help the part of her sitting on the uncomfortable metal folding chair.

  According to the calendar autumn had started, but that didn’t mean the weather had begun to cool off. That was still a month away, maybe even longer. For now, it was still hot—Texas hot.

  From the chair beside Phyllis’s, Eve Turner waved at someone she knew and called, “Hello there, dear. Would you like to buy a cake or some cookies and help out the Retired Teachers Association Scholarship Fund?”

  The man she had spoken to looked a little uncomfortable, as well he might since his wife was with him. Eve had probably had one or more of their children in her English class when she was still teaching, and knowing Eve, she had flirted shamelessly with the man at every school function the parents attended. As she smiled brightly at the man, he said, “Ah, maybe when we come out.”

  His wife just tightened her grip on his arm and kept walking.

  Phyllis wasn’t surprised by Eve’s failure to sell anything. She had been out here for nearly an hour with Eve, Carolyn Wilbarger, and Sam Fletcher, the four of them sitting behind a folding table filled with cakes and plates of cookies, and they’d sold very little. The cookies were holding up fine, but the icing on the cakes was starting to melt against the clear plastic wrap that covered them.

  Phyllis glanced up at the sun. It would move around the building so that they would be in the shade in another hour or so, but it was going to be a long hour until then.

  She was as enthusiastic a member of the Retired Teachers Association as anyone—she had spent almost her entire adult life teaching, after all—but she wished she hadn’t let herself be talked into helping man this bake sale table.

  It was awfully difficult to say no to Dolly Williamson, the retired superintendent of the school district and the head of the RTA. Besides, the scholarship fund needed to be built up again. Each year the association awarded college scholarships to two deserving students who were the children of educators. The amount of those scholarships depended entirely on how much money the association could raise during the year.

  The fall bake sale was the first major fund-raiser each year. Dolly had persuaded Carolyn to help with it, and from there it was inevitable that Phyllis, Eve, and Sam would be drawn in, as well. The four of them shared the big house that Phyllis had lived in for years with her late husband, Kenny, and they were good friends.

  One thing you could say about Wal-Mart: The place didn’t lack for customers, especially on a sunny Saturday afternoon. A steady stream of people had gone in and out of the store since Phyllis and the others had set up their table and chairs and hung the signs Phyllis had printed on the computer announcing what the bake sale was for. A few of them stopped and bought cookies on their way back to their cars. Phyllis didn’t think they had sold a single cake.

  In a way, she could understand why. It cost so much to live these days that most folks really had to watch what they spent. But it was for a good cause, and the prices weren’t really that bad.

  A pickup drove by with country music blasting through its open windows. It was followed a few minutes later by another pickup with loud rap music coming from it. Phyllis was always a little amused by the sight of young white men in snap-button shirts and cowboy hats listening to rap, but it was becoming more common.

  She saw an attractive woman in her thirties emerge from the store and start toward the bake sale table with a couple of elementary-aged children in tow, a boy and a girl. The woman had shoulder-length light brown hair and wore blue jeans and a T-shirt with LOVING ELEMENTARY printed on it. Phyllis knew that wasn’t a declaration of affection but rather a reference to Oliver Loving Elementary School, one of several elementary schools in the Weatherford School District. It was named for the famous rancher and cattleman who had been the inspiration for one of the characters in Lonesome Dove, either Gus or Call; Phyllis never could remember which. Loving was buried here in Weatherford.

  The woman had a somewhat harried look about her—shopping at Wal-Mart with a couple of kids would do that—but she smiled pleasantly as she came up to the table and said, “Hello, Carolyn.”

  “Marie, it’s good to see you,” Carolyn said. “How’s Russ?”

  “Oh, all right, I guess.”

  Carolyn turned to Phyllis and asked, “Do you know Marie Tyler?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Phyllis said.

  Carolyn performed the introductions, adding, “And that’s Amber and Aaron. Marie and her husband, Russ, go to the same church I do.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Marie,” Phyllis said.

  “You, too.” Marie turned back to Carolyn and went on. “You know I’m on the PTO board at the school.”

  “No, I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised.”

  “Yeah, I’m the fund-raising chairperson. You know what that means at this time of year.”

  “The carnival,” Phyllis and Carolyn and Eve all said at the same time.

  Marie nodded. “That’s right.”

  Sam leaned back in his chair, propped a foot on the other leg’s somewhat knobby knee, and said with a smile, “Coachin’ at the high school, I never had much to do with the elementary carnivals, except one year when they decided to put on a donkey basketball game in conjunction with it.” He shook his head. “Before that was over, I sure wished I’d never agreed to let those donkeys in my gym.”

  “Well, we’re not going to have any donkey basketball games,” Marie said, “although we may have a pony ride. But it’ll be outside on the playground.”

  Phyllis had taught junior high history, but she had been involved in several elementary school carnivals when her son, Mike, was that age. She had been a member of what was then called the PTA—the Parent-Teacher Association—at the school he’d attended. These days it was called the Parent-Teacher Organization, but pretty much only the name had changed. The group was still composed mostly of parents and run by a board of half a dozen or so volunteers, almost always women. It was very rare to find a man willing to be on a PTO board. Finding enough volunteer moms to take care of everything was a big enough chore.

  The PTO spent most of the year raising funds. The money was spent on things the school needed that weren’t included in the budget, such as copy machines, extra books for the library, and playground equipment. One of the major fund-raisers was the school carnival, usually held sometime during October. In the old days, they had often been tied in with Halloween, but of course such things were forbidden now. They had to be called fall carnivals or harvest festivals or something noncontroversial like that.

  The classic school carnival was set up on the playground, with open booths around the edges, which were formed by bales of hay or sketchy wooden frameworks. Each homeroom in the school was responsible for one of the booths, where games designed to appeal to young children were played, such as ring toss, throwing a baseball at stacks of milk bottles, and “fishing” in wading pools filled with sand and little prizes. Other games that required more room were conducted out in the middle of the playground. There were also face-painting and temporary tattoo booths and sometimes dunking booths, pon
y rides, miniature trains, “bounce houses,” and anything else the PTO board could scrounge up to make a little money. There was no charge to attend the carnival, but to take part in any of the games required a fifty-cent ticket at each booth. Kids raced from booth to booth, clutching strings of tickets and the prizes they had already won. Inside the school, in the gymnasium and the cafeteria, other activities would take place, such as entertainment by local musicians and dancers, and there was a snack bar selling cold drinks, hot dogs, nachos, and candy.

  And there was usually a bake sale, too, Phyllis suddenly remembered, which was why it came as no surprise to her when Marie Tyler said, “I could really use some help, Carolyn, and from the looks of this, you and your friends have a lot of experience with bake sales.”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . ,” Carolyn said, as Phyllis was silently pleading, Don’t get us involved in this. Please, Carolyn.

  Marie leaned closer to the table and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial volume. “It would mean a lot to me if I could find somebody willing to take over the bake sale. There’s just so much involved in putting on one of these carnivals, and to tell you the truth, Shannon’s really been on my ass lately about getting it all done.”

  Phyllis tried not to let her lips tighten in disapproval at Marie’s crude language. She didn’t like to be judgmental, and she knew perfectly well that this was a different day and age from the one in which she had grown up. But it still bothered her to hear a lady talk like that, especially in front of little ones.

  Carolyn looked over at her and asked, “What do you think, Phyllis?”

  I think you’re trying to pass the buck to me and make me be the bad guy, Phyllis thought. But she said, “We pretty much have our plates full with the Retired Teachers Association—”

  Before she could actually say no, another woman walked up to the table. She was older and heavyset, and the brightly colored dress she wore made her look even bigger. Her hair was dyed a startling shade of black. She said in a booming voice, “Hello, ladies. And you, too, of course, Sam.”

  “Howdy, Dolly,” he said with a nod. “Good to see you again.”

  “Marie, how are you?” Dolly Williamson said as she put her arms around Marie and gave her a hug. Phyllis wasn’t surprised that Dolly knew who Marie was. The former superintendent was still so plugged in to the school district that she probably knew all the PTO board members from every campus.

  “I’m fine, Mrs. Williamson,” Marie said. “I was just trying to recruit Carolyn and her friends to run the bake sale for the carnival at Loving.”

  “Why, I think that’s a wonderful idea!” Dolly beamed at the four people behind the table. “I know you’ll all do a fine job.”

  “Wait a minute,” Phyllis began, but she had a sinking feeling that it was already too late. Once Dolly got an idea in her head, she was the original unstoppable force.

  “After all,” Dolly went on as if she hadn’t heard Phyllis, “you’re doing so well here.”

  “Haven’t sold much,” Sam said.

  “You will, you will. Everything looks so good.” Dolly turned back to Marie. “This was lucky for you, my dear. Now you can concentrate on the rest of your job.”

  “I know,” Marie said. She gave Phyllis and the others a smile and added, “Thank you, guys, so much.”

  Phyllis felt like pointing out that she wasn’t a “guy,” and neither were Carolyn and Eve. But there was no point in worrying about such things now, she told herself. What mattered was that she had been roped into helping with the carnival bake sale, along with her friends. They might have been able to withstand the pressure from Marie, but once Dolly had walked up and found out what was going on, they were lost.

  Dolly gave Marie another hug and waved a pudgy hand at the others, then went into the store. Marie said, “I’ll give you a call, Carolyn, and let you know all the details you’ll need to know. Thanks again.”

  Carolyn nodded and smiled weakly. “You’re welcome.”

  “This’ll help keep Shannon from giving me so much shi—I mean, trouble.” Marie waved and added, “Bye, guys,” as she led her kids into the parking lot and headed for the family SUV.

  Carolyn turned to the others and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Dolly happened,” Sam said. He chuckled. “Sort of like a force of nature, isn’t she? Doesn’t have to stay around very long, but when she rolls through, she brings changes.”

  “Well, maybe it’ll be fun,” Carolyn said. “It might be, you never know. And we do have experience at putting on bake sales.”

  Eve said, “Perhaps you do, dear. I was never really the domestic type.” She smiled over at Sam, with whom she had been flirting ever since he had rented a room from Phyllis and moved into the big old house on the tree-shaded street a few blocks from the courthouse square. “Which isn’t to say that I couldn’t still learn if I needed to. If the right man came along and asked the right question . . .”

  Sam called to a family going into the store, “You folks want to buy some cookies?”

  Phyllis leaned over to Carolyn and asked, “Who’s this Shannon that Marie was talking about?”

  “Shannon Dunston,” Carolyn replied. “She’s the president of the PTO board at Loving. And from what I hear, she runs things with an iron fist, as the old saying goes.”

  “That’s odd. Usually you try to get people to do things by being nice to them, especially when you’re relying on volunteers.”

  “That’s not the way Shannon looks at it. Although I shouldn’t say that, since I don’t really know her. I’m just going by what I’ve heard.”

  “Well, maybe with our help, she’ll get off Marie’s, uh, posterior.” Phyllis looked at the other three. “Right . . . guys?”