The Christmas Cookie Killer (2 page)

“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,
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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

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.

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• 7

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 visited. 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
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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

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.”

“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.”

THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 9

“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, tug-

ging her thick sweater tighter around her as she went. She cut across the yards this time, not wanting to be away from her
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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

house and the cookie exchange any longer than she had to.

Being neighborly to Agnes was one thing, but she had a house-ful 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 THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 11

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

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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

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

F
or 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 realized that the killer could still be right here in the house.