The Christmas Cookie Killer (26 page)

“Yeah, but I keep telling myself it’ll all be worth it.”

“I’m sure it will,” Phyllis said.

Blake said his good-byes and left. Phyllis laid the envelope with the check in it on the hall table, thinking that she probably wouldn’t get to the church to give it to Dwight until sometime early the next week. That would be soon enough, she

thought.

Less than an hour later, the doorbell rang again. They were getting plenty of visitors today, Phyllis told herself as she went to answer it. This time the man standing on the porch when she opened the door turned out to be the burly Frank Simmons.

“Just wanted you to know that we’re all leaving, Mrs. Newsom,” Frank said after Phyllis had invited him in and taken him into the living room. “Of course, you probably would have fig-THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
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ured that out when you saw that all the cars were gone from next door.”

“You’re not staying until after Christmas?”

Frank’s smile was sad. “Well . . . there’s not really any reason to, is there?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Frank. I didn’t think—”

He lifted a hand. “No, no, that’s all right. Don’t worry

about it, please. Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that she’s gone, too. But Ted and Billie and I all talked about it, and we decided that our families would rather spend Christmas at home instead of staying here, so we’ll be heading out after a while.”

“How’s Randall?”

Frank shrugged. “All right, I suppose. As all right as he can be, locked up in jail and charged with murder. But except for a sore throat, he’s pretty much recovered from . . . what he tried to do. I talked to both Detective Largo and Ms. Yorke this morning, and they said there was no reason for me or the rest of the family to stay around right now. The grand jury won’t meet until after the New Year. That’s the next step, the grand jury hearing to see if Randall will be indicted for the murder.”

“And he has to stay in jail until then?”

“Yeah, since we couldn’t raise the bail bond for him. I’ve put my store up for sale, and if I can sell it, I . . . I hope to get enough to bail him out and to pay his legal bills.” Frank shook his head.

“But I don’t know. It’s hard to get much money for a failing business.”

Phyllis said, “I don’t want to pry into things that are none of my business, but . . . your mother’s estate . . . ?”

Frank shook his head again. “Won’t be settled until some-

time in January, if not longer than that. And she didn’t leave much except the house, which means it’ll have to be sold in
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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

order to divide up the proceeds between the three of us, and there’s no telling how long that’ll take or how much it’ll sell for.”

Phyllis thought the Simmons house ought to be worth quite a bit. It was old, but it was large and solidly built and in a good state of repair, on a decent-sized lot with quite a few big old trees, close to downtown. She thought it might bring a couple of hundred thousand dollars, at least.

But as Frank had pointed out, that money would be slow

in coming, and he’d indicated that when it did it would be split into three equal shares among him and his brother and sister. By then Frank’s business in Dallas might have gone under entirely, if he hadn’t been able to sell it. Randall would probably still be awaiting trial, which meant his legal expenses would be ongoing. Phyllis had no idea how much Juliette Yorke charged, but the woman was a lawyer. Her services wouldn’t come cheap.

“Well, I hope it all works out for you,” Phyllis said. “I’m sorry for everything that happened, Frank.”

He gave a rueful shake of his head. “None of it was your

fault. If Randall just had any sense—” He broke off and waved a hand in dismissal. “Ah, it’s way too late to be wishing that now. If the boy had had any sense, he wouldn’t have gotten in so much trouble to start with. Now he’s gonna be convicted of murder, and he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get the death penalty. I mean, his own
grandmother
, for God’s sake!”

“But he didn’t do it,” Phyllis said.

“I don’t think he did, either, but without any proof . . .”

Frank shrugged helplessly.

Even though Phyllis didn’t like to think about doing it, she brought up what Frank had suggested earlier. “If I told the police I was sure it wasn’t Randall who hit me—”

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“It wouldn’t do any good now,” Frank broke in. “They’ve got their minds made up. They’d never put you on the witness

stand.”

“The defense could call me as a witness.”

“And the district attorney would break you down on cross-

examination and make you admit that you never really saw who hit you, because that’s the truth. You’re just not the type of person who can lie under oath. I realize that now.” He summoned up another faint smile. “But don’t think I don’t appreciate the offer, because I do.” He put out his hand. “Well, so long.”

“Good-bye, Frank,” Phyllis said as she shook his hand.

As he started down the porch steps, she called after him,

“We’ll keep an eye on the house for you, since it’ll be sitting there empty.”

He paused long enough to turn and lift a hand in farewell.

“Thanks.”

Phyllis closed the door and shook her head. She hated to

see Frank and the others go. In her mind, at least, whether she wanted to or not, she still considered them suspects in Agnes’s murder. The members of the Simmons family had alibis, but not ironclad ones. And from everything Phyllis had learned about the family history, some of them had motives, too. Old grudges that had festered for years could lead to unexpected outbreaks of violence. So could the desperate need for money—

and the anger at being turned down for help.

But Frank had been right about one thing—the police prob-

ably weren’t looking for any other suspects now. They thought they had their man in Randall Simmons, and they would be

concentrating on building a case against him, rather than seek-ing out other possible killers.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to build that case, given Randall’s criminal background and the fight he had put up when he was
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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

taken into custody. Throw in the jailhouse suicide attempt, and barring a rock-solid alibi or eyewitness testimony, a conviction was almost a certainty. The fact that Jimmy Crowe ought to be considered a suspect, along with some of the other people in the neighborhood, wouldn’t even come into play.

That was unless Phyllis revealed the secrets she had uncovered and shared her suspicions with the authorities, most nota-bly Detective Isabel Largo.

And who, exactly, did she have for suspects? Well, there was a widower who enjoyed dressing in women’s clothing; a young single mother who had acted to defend her own mother; a

woman who battled the twin demons of alcoholism and depression; and possibly her husband. Then there were the other members of the murdered woman’s family, who had allegedly been twenty-five miles away in Fort Worth at the time of Agnes Simmons’s death.

Detective Largo would probably be too polite to laugh in

her face, Phyllis thought . . . but the detective would feel like doing just that, more than likely.

She could talk to Mike, though. If she laid out the whole story for him, especially the part about Jimmy Crowe, he might be able to convince Detective Largo to take those things

seriously.

Nothing was going to happen about any of it until after

Christmas. The fact that December twenty-fifth fell on a Saturday this year meant that everything would come to a halt for the weekend. Even today, on Christmas Eve, a lot of offices and other businesses were closed so that their employees could have a long holiday weekend. The state and federal governments were shut down, so that meant the banks were, too. No mail would be delivered today.

The stores were still open, although most of them would

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close early, probably at six o’clock. Between now and then they would do a booming business, especially Wal-Mart, as last-minute shoppers descended on the place in search of gifts and food they had forgotten to buy. Phyllis had planned carefully.

She had everything she needed for Christmas dinner the next day. There was no way she was joining that last-minute mob unless an actual emergency required it.

She was sitting in the living room, looking through a magazine, when Carolyn came through the hall and stopped beside the table. “What’s this?” Carolyn asked as she picked up the envelope Blake Horton had left with Phyllis.

“It’s a check Blake wants to give to the church, in appreciation for Dwight’s help with Lois last night,” Phyllis explained.

“He’s going out of town, so he dropped it off and asked if I’d see to it that it gets to Dwight. I told him I would, but I didn’t see any point in making a special trip today, since the banks are closed anyway.”

“Yes, the government will seize any excuse for a long weekend, won’t it?” Carolyn said as she turned the envelope over in her hands.

“Well, Christmas isn’t really an excuse. It’s a good reason, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I suppose so.”

“Anyway, I thought I’d just take it to church with me Sunday and put in the collection plate. I don’t have any idea how much the check is for, of course, but I thought that would be all right. It has Blake’s name on it, so they’ll know who it came from.”

“I’ll tell you how much it’s for,” Carolyn said as she switched on the overhead light in the hall. Then she held up the envelope so the glare shone through it, and squinted at it as she tried to read the numbers on the check it contained.

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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

Phyllis started to tell her not to be so nosy, but then Carolyn lowered the envelope abruptly and turned toward her.

“You really don’t know how much this check is for?”

“I don’t have any idea,” Phyllis said again. She guessed,

“Fifty dollars? A hundred?”

“Try five thousand,” Carolyn said.

Chapter 19

P
hyllis was hardly aware that she set the magazine aside as she stood up and stared at Carolyn. “Five thousand dollars?”

she said in disbelief.

Carolyn gestured toward the light. “Come and see for

yourself.”

Phyllis had never considered herself a snoop—despite the

fact that she had solved several murders in the past six months—

but she went over to Carolyn and took the envelope from her, anyway. Surely Carolyn had to be making a mistake about the amount on the check. She had just looked at it wrong; that’s all.

It was probably for fifty dollars. Phyllis held the envelope up to the light and squinted just as her friend had a moment earlier.

There was the five . . . and she made out three zeros after it . . . then a dot and two more zeros. . . .

“Oh, my Lord,” Phyllis said. “It
is
five thousand dollars.”

“Just like I told you,” Carolyn said.

Phyllis lowered the envelope, put it back on the table, and stepped back quickly, almost like it was some sort of wild ani-216 • LIVIA J. WASHBURN

mal. “Blake didn’t tell me how much it was. If he had, I would have asked him to take it on over to the church right then and there. I don’t want the responsibility for that much money.”

“Where did Blake get that much?” Carolyn asked. “He’s an

accountant, isn’t he? Do you think he could have embezzled it from some of his clients? Maybe he’s laundering money through the church!”

“Stop that,” Phyllis said. “Blake’s not an embezzler or a money launderer.”

Carolyn crossed her arms over her chest. “Then where
did
the money come from?”

“I assume he makes a good living at his job. They both drive fairly new cars. And five thousand’s not really
that
much, this day and age. It just seems like a lot to us because we remember when that was a year’s salary.”

“You could buy two good cars for that amount,” Carolyn

said. “Now you can’t even get a very good used one for five thousand.”

From the other end of the hallway, Sam asked, “What’s this about five grand?”

Phyllis and Carolyn both started a little and looked around hurriedly at him. As he ambled toward them, he smiled and went on, “You ladies look a mite guilty about something. What’re you up to, if you don’t mind my askin’?”

“Nothing.” Phyllis pointed to the envelope on the table, still not really wanting to touch it. “Blake Horton stopped by and left this check. He wanted me to give it to Dwight.”

“I didn’t think preachers took pay like that.”

“It’s an offering for the church.”

“Five thousand dollars,” Carolyn said.

Sam’s bushy eyebrows rose slightly. “That’s a lot o’ money.

I’m sure the church can put it to good use.”

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Phyllis nodded. “That’s what Blake said. I just wish he hadn’t entrusted it to me.”

“Oh, I think you’re trustworthy enough,” Sam told her. “It’s not like you’re going to run off to Las Vegas with it or something.”

Carolyn laughed. “The very idea! Phyllis in Las Vegas?” She shook her head. “No, I can’t see that.”

Phyllis wasn’t quite sure whether to take that as a compli-ment or an insult. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a wild side. . . .

Well, actually, she
didn’t
, she supposed. . . . She said, “I just don’t want the responsibility for that much money that belongs to somebody else.” She reached a decision. “I’m going to take it over to the church now, instead of waiting until Sunday.”

“Will the office be open today?” Carolyn asked.

“I don’t know, but even if it’s not, the parsonage is right next door.” Phyllis looked at Sam. “Would you mind coming with me?”

“I was about to suggest the same thing,” he said. “Lemme

get my coat.”

“I’ll need mine, too.”

“I’ll guard the money,” Carolyn offered. She planted herself in front of the table, arms crossed and a fierce glare on her face.