The Christmas Cookie Killer Page 15

  There was no telling what a man in that much pain might do. Just no telling at all.

  “Anyway,” Frank resumed, “that’s the story. That’s why Randall did what he did. So you see, Phyllis, he’s not really a bad kid. Those drug charges aren’t as bad as they look. He was just trying to protect me. The bail jumping . . . that was just a matter of being young and scared and stupid. But none of that makes him a killer. Randall would never hurt anybody, especially his grandmother. And he wouldn’t have attacked you. I’m sure of it. That’s why I thought . . . maybe if you knew the whole story . . . you could see your way clear to sort of help him out.”

  “I wish I could, Frank,” Phyllis said. “I can’t lie to the police, though.” She paused. “And are you sure that this story about the loan shark . . . well, are you sure that it’s true?”

  A frown creased Frank’s forehead. “Randall’s too scared to be lying now. Anyway, that lawyer of his, Ms. Yorke, he told her about it, too, and she checked out that guy Jimmy Crowe with some contacts of hers in Dallas. He’s as bad as Randall said he is. That’s why Randall was so scared when he spotted Crowe over here in the neighborhood a few days ago. He was afraid Crowe had found him.”

  “Wait a minute,” Phyllis said as she leaned forward. “Crowe was here in the neighborhood?”

  “Yeah. Randall was watching from the attic window and saw him drive past.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last Thursday. And then Crowe was back on Friday. But he didn’t hang around, just drove along the street a few times and then disappeared, Randall said. I think he found out that Randall’s grandmother lived here, and he was staking the place out in case Randall showed up. He didn’t know Randall was already hiding in the attic.”

  “He still wants the money that he’s owed,” Phyllis mused.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figure, too.”

  “Do the police know about this?”

  Frank shook his head. “Randall’s too scared to tell them. He doesn’t want Crowe to know that he ratted him out. He’s afraid that he’s gonna be sent to prison, and he knows that with the contacts Crowe has in the penitentiary, he’d be dead in a month or less if Crowe gave the order. Ms. Yorke’s been trying to convince him to spill the whole story, but so far he won’t do it.”

  “But you just told me.”

  “Yeah. It’s a calculated risk, I guess you’d say. I wanted your help, Phyllis, so I figured you deserved to hear the truth.”

  “You’ve put me in a bad position,” she told him, her voice a little prickly with anger. “If the police ask me whether I know anything else about Randall, I’ll have to tell them what you told me.”

  “It wouldn’t be admissible in court. It’s just hearsay.”

  “Yes, but it would be enough to put them on Crowe’s trail and maybe tie him in to the murder.” Phyllis paused. “Or is that what you really want, Frank? Did you tell me all this hoping I would go to the police?”

  Alarm leaped into his eyes. “Good grief, no! I don’t want to make Crowe’s grudge against Randall any worse, either. I just thought . . . oh, Lord, I didn’t think. I didn’t think it through far enough. I was just desperate to come up with something that might help him. Instead, I . . . I may have doomed him.”

  Again, he covered his face with his hands.

  The whole thing would have seemed lurid and melodramatic, Phyllis thought, if it hadn’t been real. Real life sometimes put soap operas to shame when it came to convolutions and emotional turmoil.

  She said, “Take it easy, Frank. I’m not going to run to the police, at least not right now.”

  He lowered his hands and looked over at her. His eyes were wet. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m certain. I want some time to think about everything you’ve told me. Of course, if they come to me and ask me about it, I’ll have no choice but to tell them the truth, as far as I know it. But they’ve already questioned me several times, and I don’t see any reason why they’d want to ask me any more questions right now.”

  Frank wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that. I . . . I’m sorry I came over here and asked you to lie.”

  “You’re at your wit’s end, I know,” she said with a nod. “You just want to do anything you can to help your son.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Goodness knows, I’d feel the same way if Mike was in trouble.”

  A rueful smile appeared on Frank’s face. “Mike would never get in trouble like this. He’s a good kid. Always has been.”

  Phyllis smiled back at him. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “So,” Frank said after a moment, “what do I do now?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Phyllis replied honestly. “In one way, it seems like it would be a good idea for Randall to tell the police why he did the things he did, but if that man Crowe is really as dangerous as he seems to be, Randall would be running a risk. I know it’s hard on him, being in jail and all, but it might be best to just wait right now and hope something else turns up. Juliette Yorke strikes me as a pretty sharp lawyer. She might come up with something that clears Randall without making Crowe’s grudge against him even worse.”

  “I don’t know what it would be,” Frank said.

  Phyllis reached over and patted his hand. “That’s why people conduct investigations . . . to turn up things that might otherwise be hidden.”

  “I guess so. Thanks, Mrs. Newsom . . . Phyllis.” He sat forward and put his hands on his knees. “I guess I’d better be going. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  “I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me the truth, Frank. Even if it might cause some awkwardness in the future. We’ll hope that it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Yeah. I’m gonna hope really hard.” He got to his feet, managed a weak smile and a wave, and went down the porch steps to turn toward the house next door.

  When he was gone, the front door of Phyllis’s house opened. She looked over and saw that Sam was standing there.

  “You and Frank were sure havin’ a mighty intense conversation,” he said. “I didn’t want to interrupt, though, and I didn’t eavesdrop.”

  Phyllis patted the swing beside her. “Come here and sit down. I’ll tell you about it.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” As Sam came onto the porch and closed the door behind him, Phyllis caught a whiff of the cooking smells inside the house. Those pies were going to be delicious.

  Sam sat down beside her, a little closer than Frank had been. “I’m not sure I should be telling you this,” she began. “You could wind up in the same uncomfortable position that I’m in, knowing more than you really want to.”

  “You look like you shouldn’t be carryin’ around that burden by yourself,” Sam said. “I’ll take a chance.”

  “All right. Remember, you asked for it.”

  She filled him in on everything Frank had told her, starting at the beginning with Randall Simmons’s connection to Jimmy Crowe, the loan shark and drug dealer. Sam frowned slightly during the story but didn’t say much, interrupting only now and then to ask a question and clarify one point or another. He shook his head sympathetically at the part of the story involving Agnes’s treatment of her children when they were young.

  Telling Sam all about it served a dual purpose. Phyllis knew that he had a keen mind, so she was interested in his opinions. And putting it into words herself allowed her to go over the whole thing again in her mind and make sure she had everything straight.

  When she was finished, he said, “Sounds like a pretty tangled-up mess to me.”

  “Me, too, but a couple of things jump right out at me.”

  “One of ’em bein’ the fact that this fella Crowe was here in the neighborhood last week?”

  Phyllis nodded. Oscar Gunderson hadn’t mentioned seeing any suspicious characters, and Jimmy Crowe certainly fit that description. But Oscar didn’t see everything that was going on
along the street, either. He was bound to have missed some things. Even Agnes, laid up with a bad hip and sitting at her window all the time, couldn’t have seen everything.

  “If Crowe knew that Randall’s grandmother lived here,” Phyllis said, “he could have decided to talk to Agnes and see if she knew where her grandson was. A man like that wouldn’t hesitate to try to force information from her, and things could have gotten out of hand. . . .”

  “Well, I don’t know the fella, but from what I’ve heard, he sounds more like the type to kill an old lady than anybody else involved in this business. You said there were two things that jumped out at you. What’s the second one?”

  “How terrible it must have been for Frank to have to go to his mother for help, and then how she made him feel like a failure. Like he was crawling to her to beg because he couldn’t take care of his own family and business.”

  “You think she was really that bad? I was around her some, and she always seemed pretty nice to me.”

  “I’ve heard it said that people have many different faces. That certainly seems to have been true for Agnes.”

  “Yeah, but bad enough that her own son would choke the life out of her?” Sam shook his head. “I don’t see it. And if Frank killed her, why doesn’t he just confess and get his boy off the hook for the murder?”

  “At this point, the police might not believe him. They might think he was lying and giving a false confession to try to protect Randall.” Phyllis sighed. “I’m afraid there’s only one thing that’s going to help Randall now.”

  “Proof that somebody else really killed his grandmother?” Sam guessed.

  Phyllis nodded. “That’s it. Exactly.”

  The question was, who was going to find that proof?

  Since the police thought they had their man, the only one still looking for the killer was her, so that sort of answered that . . . didn’t it?

  Chapter 15

  As late in the afternoon as it was, and with as much as had happened already, Phyllis didn’t want to get started on anything else today. Anyway, she had plenty to think about as it was. She didn’t for a second consider Oscar Gunderson a serious suspect in Agnes’s murder, but for half a second . . . well, it was hard to rule him out entirely.

  Jimmy Crowe, though . . . Now, there was an actual suspect. He was used to dealing with people violently, and when he wanted something, he wasn’t the sort to let anything stand in his way, not even an old woman.

  Of course, Phyllis reminded herself, all she had to go by were the things that Frank Simmons had told her. She didn’t know Jimmy Crowe and couldn’t make any real judgments about him. As far as she was aware, she had never even laid eyes on the man.

  So she set the investigation aside to mull over everything she had learned so far, and to do some more planning for Christmas dinner, which was now less than seventy-two hours away. In addition to the ham and the wild rice and cranberry stuffing, other dishes would be needed.

  One of Phyllis’s holiday standards was a sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and whipped cream, topped with crushed pecans. It was almost sweet enough to consider it a dessert, but since the main ingredient was sweet potato, Phyllis preferred to think of it as a vegetable.

  A green bean casserole was another classic. Phyllis didn’t care for it, but Carolyn always made one and Phyllis usually ate a little, just to be polite. Better was Carolyn’s fruit salad. While potato salad wasn’t a traditional Christmas dish, Phyllis thought it would go well with the ham, so she thought about making one on Christmas morning while the ham was cooking. Even if they didn’t eat it Christmas Day, it would go wonderfully with the ham for leftovers.

  Scalloped potatoes might be a little more festive, though, she decided. She’d do those instead of the potato salad. And of course they would need some nice, quick yeast rolls or maybe some cheese grits. . . .

  These plans were starting to go overboard on the starches, she realized. She pulled down a cookbook and started flipping through the table of contents for the vegetable section. An interesting recipe for zucchini stuffed with tomatoes and eggplant caught her eye. She found it in the cookbook, wrote down the ingredients she would need to buy, and marked the page for later. For dessert they would have the pies—and the cookies, of course. Carolyn had made both pumpkin and chocolate pecan pies for their dinner and the one at her daughter’s house. Now, if they could just get all the rest done by Christmas.

  It was nice to stop thinking about murder for a while and just concentrate on holiday preparations instead, but the situation forced itself back into Phyllis’s attention that evening when Mike called. Sam answered the phone and then gave it to Phyllis, telling her, “It’s that boy o’ yours. He sounds upset about somethin’, too.”

  Phyllis frowned as she brought the cordless phone to her ear and asked, “Mike? What is it? Bobby’s not sick, is he?”

  “No, Mom, we’re all fine,” Mike said, “but one of my friends at the police department called me just now and told me that Randall Simmons tried to kill himself this evening.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Phyllis exclaimed, causing Sam, Carolyn, and Eve, all of whom were in the living room with her watching a video of White Christmas, to look up in alarm. On the TV screen, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye were paused in the middle of arguing about something, Kaye grabbing Crosby’s arm in an attempt to elicit guilt from his old army buddy. “What happened?”

  “He managed to hang himself in his cell. Evidently he swiped a plastic knife from a food tray and sharpened it until he was able to use it to rip some strips of cloth off his jail outfit. He tied them together to make a rope. He wasn’t on suicide watch, so he was able to get away with it, but one of the officers found him before he choked to death.”

  “So he’s still alive?”

  “Yeah. They rushed him to the hospital, of course, and it’s close by so they got there in a hurry. The guy who called me said the word is, Randall will probably survive.”

  “I hope so,” Phyllis said. “His poor family has already been through enough.”

  Carolyn mouthed, What?

  Phyllis held up a finger to tell her to wait a minute. When all the young people started using that gesture, it had annoyed her, but she had to admit that it came in handy sometimes.

  “My friend knew that I was connected to the case through you and thought I’d like to know,” Mike went on. “And I was sure you’d want to know.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you for calling.” She was about to hang up, but paused long enough to ask, “You and Sarah and Bobby are coming over here for Christmas dinner, right?”

  “You bet. Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “All right. See you then, if not before.”

  Phyllis thumbed the button to break the connection, then walked over to the table and returned the phone to its base. Carolyn had been patient for as long as she was going to. She asked, “For goodness’ sake, what happened?”

  “Randall Simmons tried to commit suicide by hanging himself in his cell this evening.”

  Sam said, “But I heard you say he’s still alive?”

  Phyllis nodded. “Yes. The police took him to the hospital. I don’t know how badly he’s hurt, but supposedly he’s going to recover. I’m sure he’s under police guard at the hospital, and they’ll have him on suicide watch from now on.”

  “What a terrible thing,” Eve said. “I’ve never understood how anyone could want to end their own life.”

  “Randall’s scared,” Phyllis said. She looked at Sam and saw that he understood what she meant. She hadn’t explained everything to Carolyn and Eve the way she had to him. He knew that Randall was not only frightened because he was locked up in jail and accused of murder, but also because he had the threat of the vicious loan shark Jimmy Crowe hanging over his head, as well. Randall might have thought that if he was dead, Crowe would forget about the money he’d lost and leave the rest of his family alone. That seemed unlikely to Phyllis, but truly desperate people didn�
��t always think straight.

  “Well, I’m glad they were able to help him in time,” Carolyn said, “but the ones I really feel sorry for are that boy’s family. Doesn’t he know that he’s putting them through hell, first with what he did to Agnes and now this?”

  “I’m not convinced that Randall did anything to Agnes,” Phyllis said. “In fact, from everything I’ve seen, there are other suspects who are just as likely to have done it, if not more so.”

  Carolyn gave her a shrewd look and repeated, “Suspects? You’ve been doing detective work again, Phyllis?”

  “No, not really.” Phyllis shook her head as she felt a flush warm her face. “I’ve just been thinking about the case. You can’t blame me for being interested. I mean, it happened right next door. And I got hit on the head. I have a personal stake in seeing to it that the police get the right man.”

  Carolyn nodded, a smug expression on her face now. “And since you’ve been successful at solving murders before, why not this one, right?”

  Phyllis felt like she was being challenged, and she didn’t care much for it. “I just want justice to be done. Agnes may not have been the best person in the world—”

  “What was wrong with Agnes? She always seemed like a sweet little old lady to me.”

  “You don’t know everything about her. None of us do, really. Regardless of that, she didn’t deserve to be killed. And I’ll admit it—I just don’t believe that Randall is guilty.”

  “Hanging himself is not the act of an innocent man.”

  “We don’t know that. I’d say that it was the act of a scared, desperate man.”

  Carolyn frowned at her for a long moment, then said, “Well, just be careful; that’s all I’ve got to say. Good grief, Phyllis, you’re not Miss Marple.”

  “More like Nancy Drew, I’d say,” Sam drawled.

  Phyllis had to laugh. “I haven’t been that young for a long time.” She took her seat on the sofa again. “Anyway, I’m not going to be doing any detecting tonight. We have a movie to watch, remember?”