The Christmas Cookie Killer

by Livia J. Washburn

  Phyllis nodded. “That happens a lot, I suppose. What about Ted and Billie? Did they get along better with Agnes?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. They didn’t come to see her any more often, though, if that counts for anything. And there was a long period of time when Billie wouldn’t even speak to her mother. She held some sort of grudge against Agnes. I have no idea what it was about, some sort of petulance over something that happened when she was a child, maybe. But it was just recently that Billie started having anything to do with Agnes again. It’s terrible when hard feelings linger like that in a family.”

  “I’ve heard it said that no one can hate quite as hard as someone who used to love,” Phyllis said.

  Jada frowned at her. “I suppose that might be true. I’ve heard about brothers who have an argument and never speak again, and parents who disown their children. If I was poor Claire Simmons and it was my son who was in jail, accused of such a horrible crime—”

  Jada didn’t get to finish explaining how she would feel or what she would do if she found herself in Claire’s circumstances, because at that moment Claire herself emerged from the church with Frank beside her. He was as grim faced as ever as he held an arm around his wife’s shoulders. Claire dabbed tears from her eyes with a handkerchief. Their other children followed them; then came Ted and his wife and children, and finally Billie and Allen Hargrove and their kids. People’s conversations trailed away as everyone turned to look at the family of the murdered woman.

  As the oldest son and the spokesman for the family, Frank stepped forward and raised his voice to say, “I want to thank all of you for coming today. I’m sure my mother would have been pleased to see all of you here and to know that so many people cared about her.” His voice caught a little. “She’ll never be forgotten.”

  His emotion seemed genuine. If Frank really cared that much about his mother, Phyllis thought, he should have made the effort to show it more often while she was alive. Jada had told her an old, all-too-familiar story . . . the elderly relative who’s just a bother to the rest of the family, the one who sits alone while those who are younger and more vital go on about their lives. Thank God she hadn’t reached that point, Phyllis told herself. She hoped she never would. She stayed busy and had good friends, but the time would come when she couldn’t do as much, when those friends began to leave for one reason or another. She didn’t think Mike would ever abandon her, but it was so hard to know how these things were going to turn out.

  She shook herself out of that unpleasant reverie and joined the others who were shaking hands with the family and saying good-bye. Within a few minutes, she, Sam, Carolyn, and Eve were on their way back to the car, and Phyllis was glad to be able to put this funeral behind her.

  “Looked like you had a good talk with the preacher’s wife,” Sam commented.

  “Yes, Jada was telling me about how Dwight felt sorry for Agnes because of the way her family neglected her. I can believe it; I’ve hardly ever seen any of them over there, ever since the children got married and moved away.”

  Phyllis couldn’t get some of the other things Jada had told her out of her head, either . . . like the way Frank had asked Agnes for money to save his business, and she had turned him down . . . and the old, bitter grudge, possibly left over from childhood, that had caused Billie to stop speaking to her mother for years. For all Phyllis knew, Ted resented his mother just as much as his brother and sister did. He certainly hadn’t been any more attentive to Agnes than Frank and Billie had been.

  Rapid footsteps behind them in the church parking lot made the group slow down. Mike and Sarah drew even with them. “Hello, everybody,” Sarah said.

  “How are you today, Mom?” Mike asked. “You were supposed to see Dr. Lee this morning, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right, and he said I was doing just fine,” Phyllis replied. She couldn’t help but smile a little. She didn’t have to worry about Mike neglecting her, she told herself. If anything, he was a little too protective of her. She was going to get spoiled by all the attention if he didn’t watch out.

  “That’s good,” Mike said with a nod. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Heard anything more about the boy they’ve got locked up?” Sam asked.

  Mike shook his head. “No. I’m tempted to go talk to Detective Largo again, but I don’t want to make a pest of myself.”

  Sarah took hold of his arm. “No, you don’t want to do that,” she said quickly.

  “I reckon it’ll all come out sooner or later,” Sam said. “It’s not really any of our business, anyway.”

  “Yeah, but I’m curious,” Mike said. “I guess we all are. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  Mike and Sarah said their good-byes and went on to their car while Phyllis and the others stopped at the Lincoln. Mike’s comments had reminded Phyllis of her conversation with Detective Largo the day before, and she thought that the detective hadn’t seemed fully convinced of Randall Simmons’s guilt. Maybe that had been a hunch on her part, because the evidence, what there was of it, seemed to point to Randall more than anybody else. He was a fugitive from the law, he had been there in the house, and his grandmother could have represented a threat to him. . . .

  But it wasn’t just the people in the neighborhood who might have secrets they wanted to keep, as Detective Largo had speculated, Phyllis thought as she drove toward her home. There could be secrets inside a family, too, along with resentments and lingering wounds that had never healed. And as the detective had pointed out, the members of the Simmons family didn’t really have airtight alibis for the time of Agnes’s death. The words she had spoken to Jada Gresham kept going through Phyllis’s brain.

  No one can hate quite as hard . . . as someone who used to love. . . .

  Chapter 11

  It was three days until Christmas, Phyllis thought as she got out of bed on Wednesday morning. She had long since finished her shopping for presents; she liked to get that out of the way as early as possible. Under the tree in the living room, wrapped in bright paper, were a boxed set of John Wayne DVDs for Sam, a pair of new cookbooks for Carolyn, and a box of assorted bath oils for Eve. But there was still baking to do and other preparations to make for Christmas dinner. The thought of going to the store—which would be packed with people who hadn’t finished their shopping early—was a little daunting, but Phyllis didn’t see any way around it.

  After breakfast, when she announced that she was going to Wal-Mart, Eve spoke up and asked if she could come along. “I have just a bit more shopping to do,” Eve said.

  Phyllis agreed, of course, and a short time later they were ready to go. Phyllis opened the garage door, got in the Lincoln with Eve, and began backing the big car toward the street. She had to actually back onto the street to leave, but that was usually no problem since there wasn’t a high volume of traffic along her road.

  Today, however, she had to hit the brakes suddenly as a car backed fast out of the driveway across the street and almost plowed into the Lincoln’s right rear fender. Phyllis recognized the woman behind the wheel as Lois Horton. Lois didn’t glance in her direction and didn’t even seem aware that she had almost hit Phyllis’s car. Instead Lois took off down the street at a high rate of speed, so fast that the rear of the car slewed back and forth a little.

  “Oh, my!” Eve said. “Did you see that, dear? She almost hit you.”

  “I know,” Phyllis said with a nod. The close call had left her a little shaken. She watched Lois swerve toward the middle of the street, then back toward the curb.

  “Oh, no!” Eve said as Lois nearly sideswiped a car that was parked at the curb in the next block. She overcorrected as she continued on down the street, taking her half out of the middle, as the old saying went.

  “Something must be wrong,” Phyllis said, “some emergency, or Lois wouldn’t be driving like that.”

  Eve said, “It looks more to me like she’s as drunk as a skunk.”

  Phyllis th
ought so, too, but she had been casting about in her mind for another possible explanation. She shifted the Lincoln into drive and said, “I think I’d better follow her, just to make sure she gets where she’s going all right.”

  Maybe it was none of her business, she thought, but as a good neighbor she considered it her duty. She and Lois Horton weren’t close friends, but she had known the woman and lived across the street from her for years. Lois and her husband, Blake, had been at the cookie exchange along with just about everybody else in the neighborhood. Phyllis didn’t want her to wreck her car and hurt herself—or anybody else.

  How she was going to stop Lois was a question for which Phyllis didn’t have an answer. All she could do was follow along and hope for the best, and maybe have a talk with Lois once she got where she was going.

  After a couple of blocks, Lois turned onto South Main Street, making the turn wide and sloppy. That was the way Phyllis would have been going anyway. She stayed directly behind Lois, who headed south. Phyllis wondered if Lois was headed for Wal-Mart, too, since the big discount store was located in this direction.

  That turned out to be the case. Lois managed to make it the dozen blocks or so without crashing into anyone, although she strayed far enough out of her lane a few times to cause other drivers to honk their horns at her. When she pulled into the giant parking lot in front of the store, she narrowly missed hitting a couple of cars, although in one case it wasn’t her fault, because the other driver was cutting across between aisles without looking, a careless habit that always irritated Phyllis. In a crowded parking lot it was hard enough keeping an eye on everyone who was driving where they were supposed to, without having to worry about rude people taking shortcuts from one aisle to the next.

  Thankfully, Lois parked rather far out, where there were several vacant spaces in a row. At this busy time of year, that meant she was a long way from the store’s front doors. She stopped with her car crooked between the lines. The rear third of it was actually over the line, sticking into the next space. Phyllis parked a couple of places away.

  “Definitely drunk,” Eve said with a disapproving sniff.

  Phyllis didn’t like it, either. Like any good Baptist, she wasn’t a drinker and didn’t enjoy being around alcohol or people who were drinking. She wasn’t the sort to tell anybody else how to live . . . but she was disappointed in Lois, anyway. It wasn’t even noon yet, for goodness’ sake! And worst of all was the fact that Lois had chosen to get behind the wheel and drive in her impaired condition.

  Phyllis and Eve got out of the Lincoln while Lois was climbing from her car, a late-model Toyota. She slammed the door and stumbled a little as she started around the car. She fumbled with the remote control on her key ring and finally pressed the right button to lock the car. The horn gave a short beep as the locks engaged.

  Then Lois stopped short as she saw Phyllis and Eve standing there. She was about forty, with dark hair lightly touched with gray, and wore oversized sunglasses.

  “Hello, ladies,” she said. Her voice wasn’t slurred, but Phyllis thought she caught a faint whiff of alcohol on Lois’s breath. Or maybe that was because she expected to smell liquor, she thought, after seeing the way that Lois was driving. Lois went on. “Come to finish your Christmas shopping?”

  “We just need to pick up a few last-minute things,” Phyllis said.

  “Me, too. Of course, it’s not actually the last minute, is it? There are still three days. But why wait, I say.” Lois started around them, unsteady on her feet despite being able to keep her voice under control. Now that Phyllis thought about it, she realized that Lois’s words were just a little too precise, a little too carefully spoken . . . another sign of someone who’d had too much to drink.

  Phyllis put out a hand, not taking hold of Lois’s arm but resting her fingers on it fairly firmly. “Lois, are you all right?” she asked.

  “All right?” Lois smiled and laughed. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s almost Christmas. The . . . the happiest time of the year.”

  Her voice had broken a little there at the end. Phyllis said, “I can tell that something’s wrong. Why don’t you sit down in my car, and we can talk about it.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” Lois insisted. “I told you, I’m fine. Everything’s fine. It’s a winter wonderland!”

  Her voice rose to a near screech as she spoke, causing people who were nearby to look around and frown. She reached up to jerk the sunglasses off. Eve gasped as she saw the dark bruise around Lois’s left eye. Phyllis managed not to show any reaction, but she felt it like a spear of sickness in her stomach.

  She moved forward, reaching out to put her arms around Lois as the younger woman began to sob. The sunglasses slipped from her fingers and fell to the parking lot, luckily not shattering. Eve bent to pick them up.

  Lois let Phyllis hug her for a second, then started trying to push her away. “Lemme ’lone,” she said, and the precise enunciation was gone. “None o’ your business. Jus’ lemme ’lone.”

  “I’m not going to do that, Lois,” Phyllis said, her own voice firm. “You’re my friend, and I want to help you.”

  “Nothin’ you can do.” Tears ran down Lois’s face. “Nothin’ anybody can do.”

  Phyllis was glad that Carolyn wasn’t here. If she had been, she would have wanted to go and find Blake Horton and read him the riot act, possibly dispensing a few well-placed wallops to go along with it. As it was, Phyllis was able to say, “Calm down, Lois. We’ll call the police—”

  Lois began shaking her head emphatically. “No. You can’t!”

  “Then, there’s bound to be some sort of shelter where you can go—”

  Again Lois interrupted her. “Forget it, Phyllis. I’m not goin’ anywhere . . . ’cept into Wal-Mart to buy what I need for . . . for Christmas.”

  “You can’t go in there like that, dear,” Eve said.

  Lois glared at her. “What? You mean drunk off my ass?”

  “I mean your face is all red from crying. Even in Wal-Mart, a lady should always look her best, don’t you think? And you’re always so dignified. You don’t want people to see you while you’re upset.”

  Lois frowned. “You . . . you think I’m dignified?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then, you don’t know me very well, Eve. You don’t know me at all.”

  “I think I do.” Eve’s voice was sharper now, taking on some of the same timbre it had possessed whenever one of her students challenged her authority in class. “I know you well enough to be absolutely certain that this isn’t like you. Here.” She opened her purse and took out a handkerchief, which she pressed into Lois’s hand. “Dry those tears, and then we’ll get in your car and do a little touch-up job on your makeup, and then we’ll march right in there and do our shopping. We’ll look so good, we’ll give the old geezer at the door a heart attack, too.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that,” Lois said as she wiped the moisture from her cheeks.

  “Well, maybe we won’t give him a heart attack. Just palpitations.”

  Lois laughed. Since Eve seemed to have things under control, or at least getting there, Phyllis stepped back. She let Eve steer Lois back into the Toyota, where she sat beside her in the front seat and talked to her as Lois calmed down. When they emerged from the vehicle ten minutes later, Lois had the sunglasses on again and seemed much steadier as she started toward the store with Eve. Phyllis wished they could have straightened up Lois’s car so that it wasn’t parked crooked, taking up two spaces, but she supposed that she had better leave well enough alone.

  Phyllis followed them into the store. The area at the entrance where the carts were kept was almost empty, which was a good indication of how busy the place was. Christmas music came from the public address system, although Phyllis supposed that it had to be referred to as holiday music now, since even here in Weatherford political correctness had dictated that Christmas couldn’t actually be called by its real name.
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  She pushed that thought out of her mind. She couldn’t solve the problems of the world. She had to be content with doing the best she could for her family and friends. Today, though, it was Eve who had salvaged a bad situation, stepping in to somehow get poor Lois Horton halfway straightened up. Phyllis still thought it would be a good idea to call the law and report what Blake had done, but that decision should be Lois’s.

  Eve and Lois were actually laughing together as they shopped. From time to time Lois was still a little unsteady on her feet, but Eve was right there to help her as they made their way through the crowded aisles. Satisfied that she was no longer needed, Phyllis told them that she would be in the grocery section and pushed her cart in that direction. She was looking for a good ham, and Carolyn had given her a list of a few things she still needed for the wild rice and cranberry stuffing.

  There were a lot of children in the store, most of them wide-eyed with happiness because Christmas was almost here. Some things never changed, Phyllis thought . . . and even if they did, they didn’t go away entirely. She remembered how the kids in her classes, even though they were eighth graders and tried hard to be oh so mature and sophisticated, started looking forward to Christmas as soon as Thanksgiving was over.

  Phyllis started at the back of the grocery section and worked her way toward the front of the store, not really hurrying because she didn’t know how long Eve and Lois were going to be. The more time Lois spent in here before getting behind the wheel again, the better. Phyllis wondered if the woman would consider just being a passenger and letting Eve drive her car back home. That might be the safest way to proceed.

  Phyllis was almost finished when Eve and Lois appeared. Lois was pushing a basket, and that helped to steady her. It was full of clothes and gadgets and electronics, and Phyllis didn’t know who was buying what. All three women went to get in line at the busy checkouts.