The Christmas Cookie Killer Read online

  “I just wish you felt good enough to attend the cookie exchange,” Phyllis said. “Maybe next year.”

  “Yes, next year,” Agnes said with that dry irony of the elderly, as if the thought of her still being around next year was almost too far-fetched to contemplate.

  “Would you like me to put them in the kitchen for you?”

  “Bring them over here first. I’d like to take a look at them and maybe try one.”

  Agnes was a small woman; not birdlike and frail, as so many elderly women are, but compact, with no wasted flesh on her. She wore a quilted pale blue robe. The cloth belt that went with the robe was decorated with fancy silver stitching that matched the stitching on the collar.

  Phyllis held the plate where Agnes could see all the cookies. The woman’s face, which bore the marks of the strain she had been under since her injury, lit up with a smile.

  “They all look wonderful,” she said. “I’m sure my grandchildren will love them.”

  “Oh? Your grandchildren are coming for a visit?”

  “They’re already here,” Agnes said. “Well, not here, exactly. Not right at the moment. Frank, Ted, and Billie, and all their families, came in earlier today. I’m not surprised you didn’t notice, since you were busy getting ready for the cookie exchange and all.”

  “Where are they now?” Phyllis asked.

  “They drove over to Fort Worth to go to the mall. They’ll be back later.”

  Phyllis nodded. She wasn’t convinced that Agnes’s sons and daughter and their families had actually arrived to visit her. Agnes might be saying that just so that Phyllis wouldn’t think she was going to be alone again on the holidays. But questioning her wouldn’t serve any purpose.

  “Well, I hope everyone enjoys the cookies.”

  “I’m sure they will.” Agnes took one hand off the walker and reached for the plate. “Look at these snowflakes! They’re so pretty!”

  “I made those,” Phyllis said, not trying to keep the pride out of her voice. When it came to baking, she didn’t believe in false modesty.

  Agnes broke off a piece, took a bite of the cookie, and exclaimed over how good it was. “How in the world did you get them cut in different shapes?” she wanted to know.

  “I have a special set of snowflake cookie cutters,” Phyllis explained.

  “Would you mind if I borrowed them, dear? I plan to do some baking with my granddaughters while they’re here, and they would love to make some cookies like that.”

  “Of course,” Phyllis said. “I’ll run next door and get them.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Thank you. That’s awfully nice of you, Phyllis.”

  Phyllis set the plate of cookies on an end table. “I’ll be right back.”

  She left the house and headed back toward her own, tugging her thick sweater tighter around her as she went. She cut across the yards this time, not wanting to be away from her house and the cookie exchange any longer than she had to. Being neighborly to Agnes was one thing, but she had a houseful of guests, and it wasn’t right to make Carolyn and Eve look after them for any longer than necessary.

  “How’s Agnes?” Carolyn asked when Phyllis went inside.

  “All right. I’m going to loan my snowflake cookie cutters to her.”

  Carolyn frowned. “Right now?”

  “Her granddaughters are visiting, and she wants to do some baking with them.”

  Carolyn’s eyebrows rose. She was as surprised as Phyllis had been by the idea that Agnes’s family had come to spend even part of the Christmas holiday with her.

  Before Phyllis could find the cookie cutters, Eve came into the kitchen. “There you are,” she said. “Joyce Portwood has to leave early, but she wanted to speak to you before she goes, Phyllis.”

  “Oh, all right,” Phyllis said as she started toward the living room. It wouldn’t hurt anything if it took her a few more minutes to get those cookie cutters over to Agnes. After all, it wasn’t like Agnes was going anywhere.

  Phyllis spent about ten minutes chatting with Joyce, who lived across the street on the next block to the north. She was effusive in her thanks to Phyllis for hosting the cookie exchange, but that was nothing unusual. Joyce was always effusive, no matter what the circumstances. She was apologetic, too, for having to leave early. Phyllis told her not to worry about it.

  Once she was finished talking to Joyce, Phyllis got the set of cookie cutters from the kitchen, although it took her longer than she expected to find them because during all the preparation for today’s get-together, they had been moved and put in a different drawer from the one where she usually kept them. She’d been gone long enough that she hoped Agnes hadn’t started to worry about her.

  When she left, she went out the back door this time, walking between the houses to the front yards again. A hedge divided the properties, and she heard a door shut somewhere on the other side of it, in Agnes’s house. Maybe the kids and grandkids were back from the mall.

  No strange cars were in the driveway, though, Phyllis noted as she reached the front of the house and climbed to the porch again. She planned to just knock and go on in, since Agnes was expecting her back, but she noticed that the wooden door was ajar behind the screen. She felt the heat coming out of the house before she even reached the door. That was odd, to say the least. Agnes never liked to let hot air out or cold air in.

  Phyllis pulled the screen door open and leaned toward the wooden door. “Agnes?” she called. “It’s just me again. I’ve got the cookie cutters. Sorry it took me so long.”

  No response came from inside. Phyllis supposed that Agnes could have gone into the kitchen or somewhere else in the rear of the house. She had heard that door shut, after all.

  “Agnes?” Phyllis stepped inside. “Are you still here?”

  She 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. The plate lay upside down on the floor next to the table.

  Phyllis gasped in surprise at the sight. She 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 the walker, too, and she could tell from its position that it was overturned.

  She knew in that moment what had happened. Agnes, none too steady even on the walker, had fallen again. She had probably reached out as she was toppling over, trying to catch herself, and hit the plate of cookies with her hand, sending it flying. Those slippered feet weren’t moving, so it was likely Agnes had either passed out or knocked herself out when she fell.

  With 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, revealing a pink flannel nightgown under it.

  Phyllis recoiled as she realized why the robe was open. The belt that had been around Agnes’s waist was no longer there to hold it closed.

  That was because the belt was wrapped around Agnes’s neck and pulled so tight, it was sunk into the flesh. Agnes’s eyes were wide-open, staring sightlessly from her twisted, lifeless face.

  Chapter 2

  For a moment, the enormity of what she was looking at failed to register in Phyllis’s stunned brain. She had seen dead bodies before—too many of them, in fact—but she would never become accustomed to making such grisly discoveries. It would have been bad enough to have come in and found that Agnes had fallen and injured herself again—worse still if the fall had knocked her out or even killed her.

  But this was no accident. Someone had taken the belt from Agnes’s robe, wrapped it around her neck, knotted it, and used it to choke the life out of her.

  This was murder.

  And remembering that shutting door she had heard a few minutes earlier, Phyllis suddenly realiz
ed that the killer could still be right here in the house.

  But maybe Agnes wasn’t dead, Phyllis thought as she fought down the panic that tried to well up inside her. She didn’t know how long it had been since the attack had taken place. Maybe Agnes could still be revived. Phyllis had been trained in CPR. She couldn’t let her own fear make her abandon Agnes if there was even the slightest chance the woman was still alive.

  Phyllis hurried forward, dropped to a knee at Agnes’s side, and struggled to loosen the belt around her neck. She was barely able to get her fingers under it, and even then she couldn’t budge the knot. She tugged at it for a moment, then realized she needed to get something to cut it.

  Her gaze darted around the room, searching for a sewing basket or something else that might have some scissors in it. But there was nothing. Agnes wasn’t much for sewing or knitting or anything like that. Mainly, Phyllis knew, she liked to sit by the picture window and watch everything that was going on in the neighborhood.

  There might be some scissors in the kitchen, Phyllis realized. Nearly every kitchen had a “junk” drawer, and among assorted screwdrivers, keys, loose change, little jars of screws and nuts and bolts, and all the other assorted clutter of everyday life, there was usually a pair of scissors. If not, there would be a knife.

  The thought took only a second to flash through her brain, and then she was up and hurrying into the short hallway that led from the living room to the kitchen. Phyllis walked quickly along it and turned to her left, stepping through an open door into Agnes’s simply furnished kitchen. She saw cabinets on both sides of her and had no idea which one contained Agnes’s junk drawer. She was about to start opening them at random when she heard a slight noise behind her.

  Then something struck her on the back of the head, hard enough to send her stumbling forward. She took a couple of steps and fell to her knees. Pain shot up her thighs, rivaling the pain in her head, as her knees cracked against the linoleum floor. She sobbed and clutched at the kitchen counter, trying to keep from collapsing.

  But her fingers slipped, and she stretched out full-length on the floor. Her head twisted to the side as her cheek pressed against the cool linoleum. Blackness closed in around her.

  Later, Phyllis knew she had passed out for only a few moments, but at the time she had no idea how long the spell lasted. It could have been mere minutes, or an hour, for all she knew. All she could really be certain of, all she could think about at first, was that her head and her knees hurt like the dickens.

  Then she remembered Agnes Simmons, and the belt knotted so tightly around the old woman’s neck.

  With a groan, Phyllis pushed herself to her hands and knees. She wondered how she had managed to hit her head so hard, and what she had hit it on. She remembered how Kenny had run into an open door one time, hitting his head on the edge of it with such force that it opened up a gash through one of his eyebrows and gave him a concussion. People always joked about running into a door, but he’d actually done it. Phyllis wondered if she had hit her head on a cabinet door—

  Then the memory of the sound she’d heard came back to her, and she gasped as she realized that it hadn’t been an accident. Someone had come up behind her and hit her. They had followed her into the kitchen. . . .

  Or they’d been hiding behind that open door.

  She jerked around, eyes wide as she looked for her attacker. The kitchen was empty, though, except for her. The house was quiet—so quiet, Phyllis heard the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the pounding of her own pulse inside her head.

  Whoever had struck her had fled, she told herself. And Agnes was still lying out there in the living room with that robe belt around her throat. With one hand on the counter to steady herself, and wincing from the pain in her head and knees, Phyllis started jerking open drawers as she searched for a pair of scissors.

  She found one in the third drawer she opened and turned to start back to the living room. As she did, the floor seemed to tilt and the world spun crazily around her, as if it had started revolving the wrong way on its axis. She slapped her free hand on the counter to catch herself. She didn’t want to fall again, especially while holding scissors.

  Phyllis’s balance began to come back to her as she forced herself to draw in several deep breaths. When she thought she could move without getting too dizzy, she tried again to reach the living room. She was successful this time, making it all the way to Agnes’s side. Using the sofa to brace herself, Phyllis knelt and started trying to work one side of the scissors under the belt around the older woman’s throat.

  Phyllis couldn’t have said how she knew, but she felt that the person responsible for this—undoubtedly the same person who had hit her—was gone. The house just had an empty feel to it. Phyllis was scared, but not for herself. Time was running out for Agnes.

  If only that belt hadn’t been so blasted tight!

  Tears began to roll down Phyllis’s cheeks as she realized that her efforts were being wasted. She stopped trying to cut the belt and laid a hand against Agnes’s cheek instead. It was cool. The warmth of life was gone. Phyllis had known, deep down, that Agnes was dead, as soon as she saw those horribly staring eyes. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it, even to herself. That was the reason for her stubborn determination to do something for Agnes—even though there was really nothing she could do.

  She dropped the scissors on the floor next to Agnes and covered her face with both hands for a moment. A shudder ran through her. This was not the first time death, even violent death, had struck someone close to her. But that was something no one ever got used to, either. At least, Phyllis hoped she would never grow accustomed to it.

  When her emotions were a little more under control, she got to her feet. She was still shaky, and she discovered that if she tried to move too fast, she got dizzy again. So she moved slowly and deliberately across the living room, touching a piece of furniture now and then to steady herself. She wanted to get home. She wanted to be back in her own house, where she would be warm and safe.

  She left through the front door, thinking as she did so that she was forgetting something. The porch steps were difficult. Every time she brought her foot down, a fresh surge of pain went through her head. Turning to her left, she went toward her house.

  But she didn’t go to the front door. She couldn’t go in the front door like this, with her face red from crying and her clothes rumpled from lying on the floor of Agnes’s kitchen. She had a house full of guests, after all. It wouldn’t do for them to see her in this condition. She had to straighten herself up.

  A small part of her brain told her that she shouldn’t be worried about such things. It was much more important that Agnes was dead and that someone had killed her—murdered her. Phyllis realized she needed to call the police. She would do that, she vowed, once she was back in her own kitchen.

  Sam was standing beside the punch bowl, using the dipper to fill a cup with the bright red liquid, when Phyllis opened the back door and came in. He turned his head to look at her as she weaved first one way and then the other. The dipper splashed into the punch as he dropped it and said, “What the hell!”

  Then, in the blink of an eye, he was beside her, and one hand gripped her arm while his arm went around her waist and steered her toward one of the chairs by the kitchen table. He was very strong, Phyllis thought. Instead of sitting down, she wished she could lean against him and rest her head against his chest. Maybe then it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

  “Carolyn!” Sam shouted. “Eve! I need some help out here!”

  Phyllis gazed up at him as he lowered her onto the chair. The memory of how Agnes had looked crowded back into her mind, and she said, “Oh, Sam. She’s dead. She’s dead, and somebody killed her. . . .” He touched the back of her head, carefully. It hurt anyway, and she said, “Ouch!” When he took his hand away, she saw something red smeared on his fingertips. “Is that . . . blood? My blood?”

  Then she moaned and slumped over
onto the table, and that was all she knew for a while.

  Mike Newsom took the corner too fast, the wheels of the cruiser sliding a little. He warned himself to slow down. As a deputy in the Parker County Sheriff’s Department, he didn’t really have any jurisdiction here in the city limits of Weatherford, didn’t have any reason to be rolling on this call—other than the fact that his mother had been hurt . . . attacked . . . right there next door to her own home, the house where Mike had grown up.

  He’d been out on the interstate, south of town, working radar, when he’d heard the ambulance call on the scanner and recognized the address immediately. That was enough right there to start him racing toward his mother’s house.

  But then the first call had been followed by several more, including a summons for the chief of police, detectives, and the crime scene team. Then Mike had known that something was really wrong, and he could only pray that his mother was all right.

  On the way across town, he’d listened to all the follow-up chatter on the radio and breathed a little easier when he heard that the suspected homicide victim was next door, a woman in her eighties. That would be Agnes Simmons, Mike knew, and although he felt a pang of sympathy at her passing, he couldn’t help but be relieved that his mother hadn’t been killed.

  Then he’d heard the report about the attack on the woman who had discovered the body, and he knew from the age given that it was Phyllis. Carolyn Wilbarger was two years older than her, Eve Turner a year younger. Mike’s foot had gotten even heavier on the gas after that.

  But he eased off the accelerator as he turned the last corner onto the street where he had grown up. He saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles parked in front of the houses a couple of blocks away. He brought his cruiser to a halt behind one from the Weatherford PD. Not taking the time to grab his Stetson from the seat beside him, he threw the door open and ran across the yards toward his mother’s house.

  A lot of people were crowded into the front yard, with police officers standing around as if to keep them there. Some of them were shivering in the chilly air and didn’t look happy about being detained. As they parted to let Mike through, he vaguely recognized a few of them as Phyllis’s neighbors.