The Christmas Cookie Killer (25 page)

She remembered a time when people didn’t need to go to

rehab.

Actually, there were probably quite a few people who
had
needed it . . . but those treatments weren’t available back then.

So those unfortunates had drunk themselves to death instead, or died as hopeless drug addicts. Phyllis was a firm believer in the idea that the so-called good old days really had been better in a lot of ways . . . but she had to admit that progress had been made in some areas, too.

When the ambulance carrying Lois pulled out of the drive-

way and Blake followed it in his car, Phyllis stood for a moment on the front porch of the Horton house with Sam, Carolyn, Eve, Dwight, and Jada. Vickie Kimbrough hadn’t returned, but Phyllis thought she might have watched the ambulance leave from inside her house. Monte’s car still wasn’t in the driveway. He had missed all the excitement.

Phyllis almost wished that she had.

“I guess we’d better be going,” Dwight said. “I’ll stay in touch with the doctors at the treatment facility and go see Lois when she’s up to having visitors.”

Jada smiled and nodded. “Good night, everyone.”

When the preacher and his wife were gone, Carolyn said, “I hope you know that supper will be ruined by now.”

“We’ll throw it out,” Phyllis said. “There’s a pizza in the freezer that we can heat up.”

“Frozen, store-bought pizza,” Carolyn said. “Nothing says Christmas quite like that.”

Phyllis suppressed the urge to snap at her, knowing that it THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 201

wouldn’t do any good. Carolyn really wasn’t as unsympathetic as she sometimes sounded. She just didn’t suffer fools gladly.

Lois Horton certainly fit into that category. Phyllis happened to be of the opinion that both alcoholism and depression should be considered diseases, but at the same time, plenty of people had been known to conquer those two demons. A person couldn’t give up and descend into near madness, the way Lois had done. You had to at least put up a fight.

But maybe she was being too judgmental, she told herself, never having had to deal with either of those plagues. She understood, though, why Carolyn lacked a great deal of patience with Lois. Phyllis felt sort of the same way herself.

Carolyn and Eve walked ahead as the four of them started

back across the street. Phyllis found herself lingering behind, and Sam adjusted his pace to hers, although that couldn’t have been easy with his long legs. Phyllis turned her head and glanced at the shadowy area between the Horton house and the Kimbrough house. The glow from the neighborhood Christmas

lights made it brighter than it would have been otherwise, but the shadows under the trees were still thick enough to hide something—or someone.

“Problem?” Sam asked.

Phyllis shook her head. “No, I suppose not. I was just thinking that a lot goes on in a neighborhood that you never see unless you’re looking for it.”

“I’d say you’re right about that. I’ve lived across the street from those folks for six months now, and I didn’t have any idea the lady was a drunk—and a violent one, at that.”

The way Lois had gone after Blake with that fireplace poker was another thing weighing on Phyllis’s mind. Lois had been at the cookie exchange and she hadn’t seemed to be drunk, but she’d probably had plenty of experience at covering up her con-202 • LIVIA J. WASHBURN

dition. She could have slipped out, gone next door to Agnes’s house . . . Anyone who would try to crush her own husband’s skull with a poker was capable of choking an old woman to death, wasn’t she?

But why? Phyllis asked herself. What motive could Lois

have possibly had for murdering Agnes Simmons? Maybe Agnes had found out about Lois’s drinking . . . but no one would kill somebody over that, would they?

Who knew what Lois was capable of when she was under

the influence? Phyllis never would have dreamed that she would chase Blake around the room and try to kill
him
, yet obviously she had done just that.

Then there was the feeling Phyllis had about someone lurking between the houses, starting forward and then pulling back and disappearing. She didn’t know who that could have been . . .

or, indeed, if anyone had actually been there. As nervous as she was these days, maybe she was seeing suspicious characters everywhere she looked—a potential murderer behind every door in the neighborhood.

That was no way to be. She shook off the feeling and linked her arm with Sam’s. “It was a terrible thing,” she said, “but it’s over. Now it’ll be up to Blake to take care of his wife.”

“I reckon he’ll be up to it,” Sam said. “When we were talkin’, I got the feelin’ that he really loves her. Folks will do ’most anything for somebody they love.”

“That’s true,” Phyllis said, and a thought that she didn’t particularly want leaped unbidden into her mind.

Some people will even kill for love.

Chapter 18

C
hristmas Eve morning dawned cloudy and considerably colder than it had been for the past few days. Phyllis had heard something on the news the night before about another cold front coming through, but she hadn’t really paid that much attention to the forecast.

Her thoughts had been too full of everything that had happened earlier in the day, from her discovery of Helen Johannson’s tragic and violent past, to the disturbing truth about Lois Horton being revealed, to the moment of possible paranoia on her part when she’d thought that she saw some mysterious figure lurking in the shadows. She’d been too concerned with all of that to worry too much about what the weather was going to be.

As the women sat at the table having breakfast, Sam ambled into the kitchen, looked out the window over the sink and studied the sky for a moment, and then sang in a deep voice,

“Snooooooow,” just like Bing Crosby in
White Christmas
.

“It is
not
snowing,” Carolyn said.

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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

Sam grinned at her. “No, but it looks like it might. Could be we’re gonna have a white Christmas after all.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Phyllis told him. “They’re rare around here.”

“I know that. I’ve lived in this area all my life, too. But it happens every now and then, and to me that sky looks like it’s got some snow in it.”

Carolyn snorted. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I hope it does snow,” Eve said. “There’s nothing much

more romantic than a nice soft snowfall on Christmas Eve.”

“You
would
think of it like that,” Carolyn told her.

“Somebody has to, dear. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any

romance left in the world at all.”

“Yes, well, if that were true, the world might be a better place.”

Eve stared at her, aghast at the very idea. “Don’t even
say
such a thing,” she admonished Carolyn.

“Why not? Think about how much harm has been done in

the world because of foolish romantic notions. What about the Trojan War? Even before that, and certainly ever since then, people have been fighting because of . . . of hormones! Either that or some misguided sense of honor that’s a close cousin to romance. And don’t get me started on all the murders that have been committed because of lust or jealousy or unrequited love.

No, I think the world would be a much saner, safer place if romance would just go away.” She glared around defiantly at the other three and added, “Anyway, at our age it’s all a moot point, isn’t it?”

For a moment there was silence in the kitchen as none of

the others rose to that challenge. Finally, Eve said, “I’m not going to argue with you, dear . . . but you’re wrong.”

With that she rose and left the room.

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Carolyn frowned and said, “I didn’t mean to make her mad.

I’ve got a right to my opinion, don’t I?”

“Of course you do,” Phyllis said. “But that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to agree with it.”

“You don’t agree with me? After all the murders you’ve

seen?”

Sam had heaped pancakes and bacon on a plate, and now as

he poured himself a cup of coffee he said, “Seems to me we’re due for a change o’ subject here. I don’t know what sort of tradi-tions you ladies have here, since this is my first Christmas in the house, but on Christmas Eve I’ve always liked to drive around and look at all the lights and decorations. Didn’t do it last year, but I think maybe I’d like to start again.”

Phyllis thought she knew why Sam had discontinued his

holiday tradition. The previous Christmas had been only a few months after his wife had passed away, and obviously he hadn’t felt up to doing anything festive, especially something that he had been in the habit of doing with her.

“That sounds lovely,” Phyllis said. “Usually we just have a quiet evening at home on Christmas Eve, but it might be nice to go out and see all the lights. There seem to be a lot of them this year.”

“That does sound nice,” Carolyn agreed in a grudging tone.

“Maybe Eve will be over her snit by then and want to come along, too.”

“I’m sure she would if you asked her to,” Phyllis said.

“Well . . . maybe later. After she’s had a chance to cool off.”

Phyllis let it go at that. Carolyn could think whatever she wanted to, but Phyllis refused to believe that the world would be better off without romance. She and Kenny had had their ups and downs, of course, the same as all couples did, but over-all they’d had a long, happy marriage that Phyllis wouldn’t have
206 •
LIVIA J. WASHBURN

traded for anything in the world. And even though Kenny had been gone for several years, she still missed him and occasionally still caught herself thinking that she was going to ask him about something or tell him some funny thing that had happened to her during the day. At first, moments like that had caused her pangs of grief and loss, but by now the pain had dulled and she realized all it meant was that she would carry his memory . . . would carry
him
. . . with her forever.

And that was all right. That was the way it should be.

At the same time, just because she would always love Kenny didn’t mean that there was no room in her heart for anyone else.

The driving passion of youth might be gone, but there were even deeper longings that the young knew nothing about. She thought about a late-night moment she had shared with Sam Fletcher in this very kitchen a couple of months earlier, a simple moment when he had rested his hand on hers as they stood side by side at the counter. That touch, brief though it had been, had brought smiles to both of their faces, and a few times since then, when they were alone, his hand had squeezed her shoulder for a second or she had reached over and brushed her fingertips against his arm as they passed. Whatever was between them had grown slowly, and it might never progress any further than where it was right now . . . but it might, she realized, and for the first time she was willing to admit that to herself. She thought about how nice it would be to ride around with Sam, looking at Christmas lights, and a tiny shiver went through her, announcing its presence for the first time in . . . in . . . well, in she couldn’t remember when!

It felt good, too.

“And when we get back,” Carolyn was saying as Phyllis

forced her thoughts to return to the kitchen, “we’ll watch our old tape of
It’s a Wonderful Life
, as usual.”

THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
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“Sounds mighty fine to me,” Sam agreed.

“Yes,” Phyllis said. “It certainly does.”

She hoped that nothing happened before tonight to ruin

those plans.

Around the middle of the morning, the doorbell rang, and when Phyllis opened the door she found Blake Horton standing on the porch, his breath fogging in the cold air.

Phyllis opened the door and said, “Come in, Blake. I was

wondering how you were doing this morning.”

Blake smiled a little as he came into the house and Phyllis closed the door. “You mean you were wondering how Lois is doing.”

“Well, that, too,” Phyllis said. “But I really was wondering about you, as well.”

“I’m fine—or as fine as I can get, anyway, under the circumstances. I thought you’d like to know that I saw Lois a little while ago, and she’s doing better.”

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. How long will she have to

stay . . . where she is?”

“It’s all right to call it rehab. That makes it sound like she might have broken a hip or something.” Blake’s smile took on a pained look. “She begged me to get her out of there and take her home. She said she couldn’t spend Christmas locked up like that. But the doctors all agree that she still has a long way to go.

She’ll probably be there until after New Year’s, at least.”

“I’m so sorry,” Phyllis told him, and meant it.

“So am I, but I keep telling myself it’s for the best. If I can get her back, healthy and happy, that’s the best Christmas present I could ever hope for, even if it’s after Christmas by the time I get it.”

“We’ll be praying for Lois . . . for both of you.”

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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

Blake took a deep breath. “That’s another reason I came

over here, to ask if you’d pass along my appreciation to Dwight Gresham. You know that Lois and I have never been, ah, very faithful about going to church. But Dwight was right there to help us, anyway, when we needed him.” Blake reached inside his coat and took out an envelope. “Could you give this to him?

It’s a check.”

Phyllis hesitated. “I’m sure Dwight doesn’t expect any sort of payment. . . .”

“It’s an offering. For the church. I figured he could put the money to good use.”

“Oh. Oh, of course.” Phyllis took the envelope. “I’ll see that he gets it.”

Blake smiled and nodded. “Thanks. I’d drop it off there myself, but I’m going to stay with my brother and his family up in Gainesville until after the holiday. The doctors said I couldn’t see Lois again until sometime next week.”

“That’s going to be hard for both of you.”