The Christmas Cookie Killer
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About the Author
The Christmas Cookie Killer
Phyllis looked toward the living room, and the first thing she noticed was that the cookies she had left on the end table were now scattered across the floor. Some of them were crushed as if they had been stepped on.
Phyllis took an instinctive step backward, then stopped as she saw a couple of feet in fuzzy slippers sticking out between the sofa and a coffee table. She spotted one of the legs of a walker, too, and she could tell from its position that it was overturned.
Her heart pounding, Phyllis rushed into the living room, crying out, “Agnes!” She came around the sofa and saw the elderly woman lying on her side, unmoving. Agnes’s robe had fallen open.
Phyllis recoiled as she realized why the robe was open. The belt was wrapped around Agnes’s neck and pulled so tight, it was sunk into the flesh. . . .
MORE PRAISE FOR THE FRESH-BAKED MYSTERIES
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First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, October 2008
Copyright © Livia Reasoner, 2008
All rights reserved
OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Washburn, L. J.
The Christmas cookie killer: a fresh-baked mystery/Livia J. Washburn.
p. cm.
“An Obsidian mystery”—T.p. verso.
eISBN : 978-1-4406-3604-2
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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This book is dedicated to my husband, James Reasoner,
and my two daughters, Shayna and Joanna,
who helped make this book possible.
And to my brother Bruce
for his tasty ham recipe.
Chapter 1
There were probably a few things in the world that smelled better than freshly baked cookies, but right now, for the life of her, Phyllis Newsom couldn’t think of what they might be.
Throw in the scent of pine from the Christmas tree in the corner of the living room, and this had to be what heaven smelled like, Phyllis thought. The only thing that might improve it would be if she asked Sam Fletcher to start a fire in the big stone fireplace. Since this was Texas, where the winters were mild except for the occasional blue norther that came roaring down out of the Panhandle, the fireplace didn’t get much use. Phyllis’s late husband, Kenny, had gotten a fire going in it once or twice a year, on average, but it hadn’t been used since he passed away.
Phyllis felt a mental twinge and wondered if it would be disloyal to Kenny’s memory to have Sam build a fire. She decided that it wouldn’t. The hearth was there to be used, after all. And with a cold front blowing through, by tonight the heat from some flames would feel awfully good in this drafty old house.
Of course, there was a central heating and cooling unit humming away, but that wasn’t the same thing. It just wasn’t the same thing at all.
Phyllis stood in the big, arched opening between the living room and dining room and watched with a smile on her face as most of her neighbors milled around the dining table, which was covered with platters of cookies—all kinds of cookies: plain, fancy, some with frosting, some not. Holiday decorations abounded. Phyllis was sure the cookies tasted as good as they looked, too, but for now, no one was sampling them. This was the time to just admire them.
On a day like today, with so many guests, having a big house came in handy. Quite a few people lived in this neighborhood of older homes a few blocks from the downtown square of Weatherford, Texas, and most of them had come over on this Saturday afternoon for the annual Christmas cookie exchange. As busy and hectic as life was these days, folks didn’t see their neighbo
rs as much as they used to. It was good to catch up on what had been going on in everybody’s life. The get-together also served as an unofficial welcome party for people who had moved into the neighborhood since the previous Christmas.
Sam Fletcher moved up beside Phyllis and asked in a quiet voice, “Is there always this big a turnout?”
That reminded Phyllis that this was Sam’s first Christmas in the house. He was a relative newcomer, too. He had moved in only during the summer, although he fit in so well with Phyllis and her other boarders that it seemed as if he had always been here. Even Carolyn Wilbarger, who had been leery of the idea of having a man living in the house with three women, had accepted him.
Phyllis had started taking in boarders after Kenny’s death, when it became obvious that the house was too big for her alone. It wasn’t so much a matter of money. It was more that she couldn’t stand rattling around by herself in it. As a retired teacher, she had extended the offer to friends of hers who were also longtime educators and found themselves in need of a place to live. There had been other boarders along the way, but at the moment the inhabitants of the house consisted of herself; Carolyn Wilbarger, who was widowed like Phyllis; Eve Turner, who was divorced—or between marriages, as she liked to put it; and Sam Fletcher, who had lost his wife to cancer a couple of years earlier—all former teachers, and now all good friends. One of the rooms upstairs was vacant, but Phyllis hadn’t gone out of her way to look for another boarder. She didn’t want to disrupt the chemistry that had developed in the house. She knew from the years she had spent in a classroom that once a group of people got along well, you didn’t want to go messing with it too much.
“Yes, there’s usually a big crowd,” she said to Sam, tilting her head back a little so she could look up at the lanky, raw-boned former basketball coach and history teacher. Phyllis had taught eighth-grade history, so she had a love of the past in common with Sam. “People like to socialize at this time of year, and they’ll always come out for cookies, even on a chilly afternoon like this.”
A grin creased Sam’s rugged face. “Can’t argue with that. I’m a mite fond of cookies myself. When can we dig in?”
“In a little while. Just be patient.”
Sam shook his head. “I’ll try. But it won’t be easy.” He paused, then added, “When are you supposed to find out who won the contest?”
“The winner will be announced in the paper next week, a couple of days before Christmas.”
“Think you’ve got a shot at winnin’?”
“I always think I have a chance to win. Otherwise I wouldn’t enter.”
Carolyn had come up behind Phyllis in time to hear that comment. She said, “Yes, you have to get credit for perseverance. It’s a shame it hasn’t paid off for you very often.”
Phyllis turned her head to glare over her shoulder, but she didn’t really mean it. It was true that she and Carolyn had a long history of competing against each other in various baking contests, and it was also true that Carolyn won considerably more often than she lost, but Phyllis didn’t take the rivalry all that seriously. She didn’t really care who won as long as she had a good time coming up with the recipes.
At least, that was what she tried to believe. . . .
“We’ll see what the judges think next week.”
Phyllis and Carolyn had both entered recipes in the local newspaper’s annual Christmas cookie contest. The rules were simple: bake a batch of cookies and take them to the newspaper office along with the recipe, and a panel of expert judges would select the best cookies. The recipe would be published in the paper. Phyllis wasn’t exactly sure who those expert judges were—she suspected they were all the people who worked at the newspaper and that the contest was at least partially a way to get people to give them free cookies—but she didn’t care. What she enjoyed was creating the recipes and baking the cookies.
This year she had baked lime sugar cookies sprinkled with sugar and cut with a special set of snowflake cookie cutters so that each cookie was shaped a little bit differently from all the others. The cookies were unusual, looked good, and tasted great, so Phyllis thought she had at least a decent shot at winning.
Eve joined Phyllis, Carolyn, and Sam in the archway and scanned the crowd with avid interest, reminding Phyllis a little of a hunting falcon.
“If you’re looking for eligible men who have moved in since last year, you’re out of luck,” Carolyn said. “You’ll have to find husband number five—or is it six?—somewhere else.”
Eve smiled and took Sam’s arm. “Why, the most eligible man in the neighborhood is right here, don’t you think, dear?”
Carolyn snorted and Sam looked uncomfortable, and to change the subject Phyllis said, “I suppose I’d better put a plate of cookies together for Agnes.”
“I hadn’t noticed that she’s not here,” Eve said. “She’s always so quiet, you hardly notice when she’s there, let alone when she’s not.”
“She called and said she wasn’t coming,” Phyllis explained. “She’s getting around a little these days, but she still has to use a walker, and it’s not easy for her. I went over earlier and picked up her plate of gingerdoodle cookies, and I promised her I’d bring her a sampler of everyone else’s.”
“What in the world are gingerdoodle cookies?” Carolyn asked. “I’ve never heard of those.”
“I asked Agnes that same question when I picked up the cookies. She said that they were like snickerdoodles, but they have ginger in the coating.”
Agnes Simmons had lived next door to Phyllis for more than thirty years. They were friends but had never been close. Agnes was in her late eighties, more than twenty years older than Phyllis, and they had little in common besides being neighbors and attending the same church.
A month earlier, when Agnes had fallen and broken her hip, Phyllis had pitched in to help her because that was what neighbors did, whether they were close friends or not. Once Agnes returned home from the rehab hospital, Phyllis visited often, bringing food, cleaning up around the place, running any errands that needed doing. Sam had gone with her a time or two to do some carpentry and yard work.
Phyllis went into the kitchen and got a large plate from the cabinet. She had made a big bowl of punch and had it sitting on the kitchen counter along with a stack of plastic cups so that people could help themselves. Young people would probably be horrified at the thought of visitors milling around unattended in their houses, some of them almost strangers. But Phyllis had been raised in a more hospitable time, a more innocent time, she supposed, and despite her own brushes with violent crime over the past six months, she liked to think that she maintained some of that bygone innocence—mixed with a healthy dose of reasonable caution, of course.
She returned to the dining room and filled the plate with cookies from the various platters, taking two or three of each kind for Agnes Simmons. When the plate was full, she covered it with plastic wrap. Catching Carolyn’s eye, she said, “I’ll be right back.”
“Would you like some company?”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll be fine.” It would take only a couple of minutes to walk next door.
Phyllis felt the chilly wind on her face as she stepped out onto the porch. The cold front that had come through wasn’t strong enough to be considered a blue norther, but it would drop temperatures to a respectable December level. The sky was thick with clouds.
She followed the walk to the sidewalk by the street and turned right, preferring to follow the concrete path rather than cutting across her own lawn and Agnes’s yard. That was another vestige of her upbringing. You didn’t walk on the grass if you could avoid it.
Agnes’s two-story house had a large front porch, like Phyllis’s, with a big picture window that had the curtains pulled back, but unlike Phyllis’s, it had no swing hanging from chains attached to the porch roof. The porch had a rather bare look to it, in fact. Agnes had been widowed for fifteen years. She had children and grandchildren, but they seldom vis
ited. Knowing that made Phyllis’s heart go out to the older woman. She had only one son herself, but Mike stopped by nearly every day, and Phyllis saw her daughter-in-law, Sarah, and her grandson, Bobby, fairly often, too. Whenever she stopped to think about it, although she missed Kenny, she still considered herself to be a lucky woman, surrounded as she was by family and friends.
Phyllis rang the bell, and a moment later she heard the clumping of Agnes’s walker as the woman approached the door. “It’s just me, Agnes,” she called.
The clumping stopped as Agnes replied, “Come on in.”
Phyllis opened the screen door and then the wooden door and stepped into the house. Heat washed out at her in waves. Agnes liked to keep the place warm—more than warm, actually. It was stifling in there a lot of the time. Phyllis had learned to put up with it, though. She herself was more prone to getting chilled than she had once been, and Agnes was considerably older. Age thinned the blood, one of many drawbacks to getting on in years.
If only the alternative hadn’t been so much worse.
Phyllis saw that Agnes had sat down in an armchair in the living room, next to the big window. The room was well furnished, with a thick rug on the hardwood floor and heavy, plush upholstered furniture. The chairs had lace doilies on the backs. Sitting in a corner by itself was an old-fashioned console TV in a cabinet of dark wood, the top of which held a lace doily, along with several framed pictures of children and grandchildren and a layer of dust. Nothing in the room was less than thirty or forty years old, but that suited Agnes. The television, for example, still had vacuum tubes, but she insisted that it worked just fine and she wasn’t going to get a new one until it didn’t.
Agnes grasped her walker and pushed herself to her feet again as her gaze landed on the plate of cookies.
“Oh, my,” Agnes said. “Don’t those look good! You’re a dear to bring them over to me like this, Phyllis.”