The Christmas Cookie Killer Page 16

  And at that moment, as if the videotape knew what it was doing, the movie came off pause and Bing Crosby said in exasperation, “Where’d you leave that? In your snood?”

  Phyllis’s sleep was restless that night. She couldn’t stop thinking about Randall Simmons, and also about Randall’s father, Frank, who had already been experiencing the torments of the damned over the unfortunate turns his son’s life had taken. This latest incident had to have plunged Frank into an even deeper, darker pit of despair.

  First thing in the morning, a welcome distraction landed on the front porch: the edition of the newspaper containing the announcement of the winner of the Christmas cookie contest. Phyllis was on her way downstairs to put on the coffee and start fixing breakfast when Carolyn appeared at the top of the stairs and hurried down.

  “The paper should be here by now, shouldn’t it?” she said as she passed Phyllis.

  “Probably. Oh, that’s right. It’s Thursday, isn’t it?”

  She was being a little coy. She knew good and well what day it was, and knew, as well, that the results of the contest would be in this morning’s paper. But she wasn’t going to race Carolyn to the door. If it was so important to Carolyn that she find out first who had won, then let her go right ahead, Phyllis thought.

  Anyway, it was possible that neither of them had won. There were plenty of good bakers in Weatherford besides them.

  Wearing a thick robe and house shoes, Carolyn opened the door and looked back and forth on the porch. Even though the past few days had been mild, the nights were still fairly chilly, and Phyllis felt a cool wind blowing in the door. She didn’t say anything, though, not wanting to spoil Carolyn’s fun.

  “There it is!” Carolyn said. She stepped out onto the porch and retrieved the paper from under the swing, where it had slid when it landed. She straightened and pulled the rolled-up newspaper out of its plastic wrapper. It unrolled in her hands. Her eyes scanned the front page, and an impatient look appeared on her face. “Where is it? I don’t see anything about the contest!”

  “Maybe it’s in the second section,” Phyllis suggested as she stood in the doorway in her robe, arms crossed over her chest and a smile on her face.

  “Maybe.” Carolyn pulled out the paper’s second section and dropped the first one on the swing. Her eyes widened as she said, “Oh. Oh, my goodness.”

  Phyllis stepped toward her. “What is it?” She couldn’t tell from Carolyn’s reaction if she was pleased, or if something was wrong.

  Carolyn turned the paper so that Phyllis could see the front page of the second section. There, in a large color photo, was a plate full of Carolyn’s pecan pie cookies. The headline underneath the photo said WINNING COOKIE A SCRUMPTIOUS TREAT.

  “Scrumptious,” Carolyn read. “They said my cookies are scrumptious.”

  Still smiling, Phyllis said, “I can see that. Congratulations, Carolyn. You deserved to win.”

  She wasn’t just saying that; she meant it. Carolyn’s pecan pie cookies really were delicious.

  “What about the runners-up?” Phyllis asked.

  “I’m sure you must be in second place,” Carolyn said as she studied the story that went with the photo. “No, wait; they didn’t rank the runners-up. They just have four other recipes, to make a top five. But yours is one of them, Phyllis!” She pointed at the paper. “You see? Right there.”

  Phyllis saw her name, along with the recipe for lime snowflake sugar cookies. There was no photo, but that was all right. She was just glad the recipe was in the paper, so that other people could try it and get some enjoyment from the cookies.

  Of course, it would have been nice to win . . . but considering all the blessings of family and friends she had, she didn’t need it.

  Carolyn brought the paper inside and called up the stairs, “Eve! Eve, come down and see who won the cookie contest!”

  Still smiling, Phyllis headed into the kitchen to get started on breakfast.

  Eve and Sam both congratulated Carolyn on her victory, and Carolyn was in a good mood all through breakfast, especially when it was interrupted several times by phone calls from friends who had seen the paper and wanted to congratulate her, as well. Carolyn’s daughter, Sandra, called to share in her triumph, too.

  Afterward, Sam volunteered to wash the dishes, as he often did, and Phyllis dried them and put them away. They could have put everything in the dishwasher and left it for later, of course, but that seemed almost like too much trouble. Besides, both of them enjoyed spending this time together. Carolyn and Eve were upstairs again, and Phyllis and Sam were alone in the kitchen.

  “You’re takin’ defeat mighty well,” he commented with his hands immersed in the soapy water.

  “Oh, I don’t regard it as defeat. Carolyn may have won, but I don’t feel like I lost.”

  “One o’ the runners-up, with your recipe in the paper . . . That’s not bad, all right.”

  “That’s the way I feel about it,” Phyllis agreed. “Here in Texas it’s hard to beat anything connected with pecan pie . . . and Carolyn’s cookies are awfully good.”

  “That they are,” Sam said with a nod. “Of course, the same thing’s true o’ the ones you made.” He rinsed the skillet Phyllis had used to scramble the eggs and then handed it to her to dry. That finished the washing, so he dried his hands as he went on, “I’ve been thinkin’ about that Simmons kid. Tryin’ to kill himself that way just made him look even more guilty.”

  “I know,” Phyllis said as she dried the skillet. “Everyone’s going to think that he did it now.”

  “Everybody but you,” Sam said, “and maybe me.”

  “Oh, I’m not convinced either way. I just have . . . doubts, I guess you’d say. And that reminds me, there must have been something about it in the paper this morning.”

  She put the skillet away in the cabinet and then went to the living room, where Carolyn had left the newspaper after showing off the photo of the winning cookies to Sam and Eve. Phyllis picked up the first section, which was lying on the coffee table. Sure enough, there was a story below the fold headlined MURDER SUSPECT ATTEMPTS SUICIDE.

  The details were the same as Mike had told her on the phone the previous evening. From the sound of it, Randall had been discovered pretty quickly, and while there was severe bruising to his throat and possible damage to his trachea, he was expected to recover fully. He had been kept overnight in the hospital under police guard but, depending on his condition, might be transferred to the county jail today, according to the story. He had been held in the city jail at the police station until now, but since he wasn’t able to make bail and would be in custody for quite some time, pending indictment and trial, he needed to be in a facility better suited for long-term incarceration, Chief Ralph Whitmire was quoted as saying.

  If Randall was at the county jail, that would make it easier for Mike to talk to him, Phyllis thought. Maybe Mike could confirm that story Randall had told his father and Juliette Yorke about the loan shark Jimmy Crowe. . . .

  But that would mean telling Mike all about it, Phyllis realized, and then as a law enforcement officer, he would be duty bound to share the information with Detective Largo and the district attorney. No, she decided, she wasn’t going to drag her son into the middle of a mess like that—not unless she had proof that Randall hadn’t murdered his grandmother.

  And that meant going back to asking questions.

  When she was dressed in jeans and a pullover Christmas sweater, she gathered up another plate of cookies. As Sam watched her, he asked, “Goin’ visitin’?”

  She hadn’t told him about what she’d discovered next door at Oscar Gunderson’s house. She had been too embarrassed to—embarrassed for Oscar’s sake, and her own. Of course, he had a right to live his own life as he saw fit, but still . . .

  “I thought Helen Johannson’s kids might like some cookies,” she said. “They weren’t here last Saturday, so they didn’t get any.”

  “That’s thoughtful of you. D
on’t suppose that while you’re there you might ask the lady about whether or not she’d noticed any unusual goin’s-on around the Simmons house before the murder?”

  “If the subject comes up . . . ,” Phyllis said.

  “I reckon you’ll be safe enough with that girl. She probably doesn’t weigh more’n a hundred pounds drippin’ wet. I’ll come along with you, anyway, if you want.”

  “No, that’s all right,” she said as she finished tucking plastic wrap around the plate of cookies. “I think I can handle this by myself.”

  Of course, she’d thought the same thing about taking cookies over to Agnes’s house the previous Saturday, and look how that had ended up.

  But she couldn’t have Sam tagging along as her bodyguard everywhere she went, she told herself. She had already called on him too much in that regard.

  “I’ll see you later.”

  “I’ll be here,” he told her.

  Two days until Christmas, she thought as she walked along the street. Christmas Eve Eve, Mike had called it when he was little. Several front yards along the street sported giant inflatable snowmen and Santa Clauses. There was even a Grinch at one house. Most people used those icicle lights now, and they sparkled in the sun as they hung from eaves and porch roofs, almost as brilliant in the daylight as they were at night. Murder might have dampened the holiday spirit in the neighborhood for a while, but it was still there, symbolic of the hope that not even death could take away.

  Helen Johannson lived on the next block, but right on the corner, so her house wasn’t really very far from Phyllis’s. It took only a couple of minutes to walk over there. The garage door was open, and Helen’s compact car was inside, so Phyllis knew she was home. Helen was around twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a daughter in first grade and a son in preschool. She worked as a hostess at the Applebee’s out on the interstate and had been divorced for a couple of years. Before that, her husband had lived here, too, but he’d moved out after Helen caught him cheating on her with one of her coworkers at the restaurant, which had made for quite a bit of tension until the other woman had quit her job and moved to Granbury with Helen’s ex, who got a job there driving a sand and gravel truck for the county. Life really was like a country song sometimes, Phyllis mused.

  An index card taped over the doorbell button read, BELL DOESN’T WORK. PLEASE KNOCK. Phyllis wondered whether Sam ought to volunteer to come over here and fix that doorbell for Helen. She knew Kenny would have, if he’d still been alive. She knocked as the sign instructed, rapping her knuckles pretty hard against the door.

  A moment later the door swung back, and Helen’s six-year-old daughter, Denise, stood there smiling a gap-toothed grin up at Phyllis. Helen hurried through the foyer after her, saying, “Denise, what have I told you about not opening the door when you don’t know who’s there?” Then she looked up, saw Phyllis on the porch, and said through the storm door, “Oh, hi, Mrs. Newsom.”

  As Sam had said, Helen Johannson probably didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. She was small but not fragile looking. Her long blond hair was so pale, it was almost white. She wore jeans and an old shirt with the tails hanging out, which made her look younger than she really was.

  Phyllis smiled and held up the plate with the cookies visible through the clear plastic wrap. “I thought you and the little ones might like some of these, since you couldn’t come to the cookie exchange the other day and we have plenty left over.”

  “That’s awful nice of you.” Helen opened the storm door. “Come on in. Denise, go play with Parker.”

  “I don’t wanna play with Parker,” the girl said. “He’s a baby.”

  “He’s only two years younger than you,” Helen pointed out. “A little less than that, really.”

  “That’s enough to make him a baby.”

  “Don’t argue with me. Scoot.” Helen gave her daughter a light swat on the rump to hurry her along.

  “Some people would call that child abuse,” Phyllis said when Denise had disappeared into a room along the hallway. She smiled to let Helen know that she didn’t fall into that category.

  “Yeah, well, some people don’t have any common sense. I’d never hurt my kids, but sometimes you gotta let ’em know who’s boss.” Helen reached out to take the cookies from Phyllis. “Don’t these look good. I’m sorry we couldn’t come for the cookie exchange this year, Mrs. Newsom. Parker’s preschool scheduled their Christmas program for the same afternoon, and of course he had to go to that.”

  “Of course,” Phyllis said. “I planned all along to bring you some cookies; I just hadn’t gotten around to it until now.” She paused. “It’s been a busy week.”

  “Yeah, I’d say so, what with a murder right next door and all. Would you like some coffee? I don’t have to be at work until one, so I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “That would be nice,” Phyllis said. “Thank you.”

  “And you can tell me all about what happened,” Helen went on. “I haven’t heard any good gossip in a long time.”

  Well, this was working out all right, Phyllis thought. Helen wanted to talk about the exact same thing that she wanted to talk about.

  They went into the kitchen, where Helen already had coffee ready. They sat down at the table with their cups, and Helen said, “Shoot. I’ve read about it in the paper, of course, but I want to hear it from you, Mrs. Newsom. It’s almost like something you’d read in the tabloids, with a grandson hiding out in his grandmother’s attic like that and then killing her. Say, you got hurt, too, didn’t you? How are you doing?”

  “Back to normal,” Phyllis said. “No lasting effects from the attack, except that my head hurts a little where the stitches are if I happen to bump it against something.”

  Helen shook her head. “Wow. Getting knocked out by a murderer. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I know.”

  “So, tell me,” Helen said. “What happened?”

  Phyllis didn’t particularly want to go through all the details again, but she didn’t see that she had any choice. Besides, if she wanted to draw any new information out of Helen, this was the best way to go about it.

  “You never noticed anything unusual going on at Agnes’s house before she was killed?” Phyllis asked when she was finished with the recitation. “From what I gather, Randall was there for several days before the murder.”

  Helen shook her head. “No, I never saw anything out of the ordinary. Of course, I wasn’t looking for anything, and it’s not like I live next door to the Simmons house, or right across the street.”

  “Well, I never noticed anything, either,” Phyllis said, “but in talking to people after it happened, I’ve found out that several of them noticed a suspicious character hanging around the neighborhood for a few days before the murder.”

  Helen’s eyebrows arched as her eyes opened wider. “Really? That’s kind of scary. It really would be frightening if the police hadn’t already caught the killer. He could still be lurking around here.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Phyllis said. “What if Randall Simmons didn’t kill Agnes?”

  “But the police have charged him with the murder.” Helen frowned. “They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t know he was guilty, would they?”

  “It’s happened before. People have been charged with crimes they didn’t commit. They’ve even been convicted for them.”

  A shiver went through Helen. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve read about things like that. Why would anyone want to kill a harmless old lady like Mrs. Simmons, though? I didn’t know her well at all, but I can’t imagine why anybody would want to hurt her.”

  Phyllis decided it was time to push a little harder. “Well . . . Agnes sat in front of her picture window all the time, especially since she broke her hip, watching everything that was going on in the neighborhood, and I thought maybe she saw something she shouldn’t have seen, or found out something that someone wanted to keep secret—”

  Before Phyllis could
go on, Helen suddenly bolted to her feet. The smile was gone from her face, as was the gossipy glint in her eyes. Instead her expression was a mixture of anger and terror as she pointed toward the front of the house and gasped, “How—how dare you! Get out of my house! Get out right now!”

  Chapter 16

  Phyllis was too shocked by Helen’s reaction to do anything except sit there for a long moment and stare at the furious young woman. Helen continued to sputter, “You come in here and accuse me . . . I never did anything to you . . . You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Helen . . . Helen, take it easy,” Phyllis said when she finally regained her voice. “Just calm down. I never said you killed Agnes.”

  Helen stood on the other side of the table, trembling and wild-eyed, and then her head jerked around as a small voice asked, “Mama . . . did you kill somebody?”

  Phyllis turned her head and saw Denise and Parker, Helen’s two children, standing there in the kitchen doorway, looking confused and frightened. Helen looked at them, too, and then she covered her face with her hands and slumped back into her chair as she started to sob.

  Phyllis stood up and went over to the doorway, where the children watched her with wide eyes. She knelt down to put herself on their level and said in a calm, quiet voice, “Why don’t you two go play in another room or watch television or something? Your mother is upset right now, but she’s all right, I promise you.”

  “But did she kill somebody?” Denise asked again.

  Phyllis reached out and hugged the little girl. “Of course not, dear. Now, you need to run along—”

  The legs of the chair where Helen sat scraped against the floor as she pushed it back. “Get away from them!” she said. “Get away from my children!”

  Phyllis let go of Denise and straightened to her feet. “Please, Helen, you know I’d never hurt them,” she said.