The Christmas Cookie Killer (14 page)

She hated the sin . . . but loved the sinner. Whenever she saw someone straying from the paths of righteousness, she made it her goal in life to steer them back to the way they should be going . . . whether they wanted to be steered or not.” A faint chuckle came from him. “Some of you saw that for yourselves, in your own lives. Agnes wanted the best for everyone she knew, and she would do whatever it took to bring that about. If there was ever anyone who fit the description of being willing to go the extra mile for someone, it was Agnes Simmons.”

That was true, Phyllis thought. Agnes would even go so far as to let her grandson hide out from the law in her attic . . . but in her determination to help him wipe out his sin, would she have threatened, then, to turn him in? Everything Dwight was saying tended to make Phyllis believe there was a possibility that Agnes would have done just that.

Dwight dabbed at his eyes and went on, “Those of us who

knew her will miss Agnes, especially all her family and friends.

She was one of a kind.” He paused, then said, “At the request of the family—and this was Agnes’s wish as well, I know—there will be no graveside service. Let us pray.”

The congregation bowed their heads, and when the brief

THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 109

prayer was done, the organist began to play again. The funeral directors, a pair of sober, black-suited, middle-aged men, stepped forward and opened the casket so that the mourners could pass by for a final look at Agnes Simmons. This custom was one Phyllis didn’t particularly care for, and her will contained specific instructions that it not be done at her funeral.

But it seemed to be important to most people and was done at nearly every funeral she attended, so she stood up and dutifully passed by with the others who were sitting in the same pew when it was their turn. The line then led to the back of the sanctuary and outside, into the welcome sunshine.

Even though there would be no graveside service, many of

the people lingered a few minutes on the church porch and on the lawn in front of the building, talking among themselves and waiting to say good-bye to the Simmons family. Sam said, “I don’t know about you folks, but the preacher seemed a mite more upset than usual, almost like it was his own mother who’d passed away.”

Phyllis nodded. “I thought so, too. I think I’ll go talk to Jada and make sure Dwight’s all right.”

She spotted the preacher’s redheaded wife at the other end of the porch and walked over to her. Jada nodded to the couple she’d been talking to and then turned to Phyllis with a solemn little smile.

“Dwight’s taking Agnes’s death hard, isn’t he?” Phyllis asked.

“He always takes it hard when a member of the congrega-

tion passes away. You hear priests refer to the parishioners as their flock, but that’s just as true for Baptists, too.”

“And other denominations, I expect. Did they become close when Dwight was taking the videotapes of the services to her every week?”

Jada nodded. “That’s right. He always came back talking

110 •
LIVIA J. WASHBURN

about how Agnes did this or Agnes said that. It was quite touching, really. Dwight’s mother passed away some time ago, you know, so it was almost like Agnes became sort of his surrogate mother. I doubt if that would have ever happened if she hadn’t fallen and broken her hip, though. It was after that they became close.” Jada’s smile disappeared and a sigh came from her lips.

“That was a blessing, too, because Agnes’s own family certainly wasn’t as close to her as they should have been.”

“I know,” Phyllis said. “I hardly ever saw them visiting. Not that I watched to see who was visiting her or anything, but you can’t help but notice things when you’ve lived in a neighborhood as long as I have.”

Jada leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I really shouldn’t say anything, especially on a day like today, but Agnes’s children neglected her at times. She didn’t want for money or anything like that; her husband left her well off. But the children never came to see her unless they needed something. Why, Dwight told me that Frank Simmons expected his mother to invest all the savings she had left in his business, so that he could keep it afloat. She told him she couldn’t do that, of course.”

“I don’t think I even know what Frank does for a living,”

Phyllis said.

“He has a hardware store in Dallas. In one of the suburbs, actually, but I can’t keep track of which one is which. I think it used to be successful, but a Wal-Mart went in just down the street, and of course Frank’s having a hard time making it now.”

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.

THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 111

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
112 •
LIVIA J. WASHBURN

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.

THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 113

“How are you today, Mom?” Mike asked. “You were sup-

posed 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
114 •
LIVIA J. WASHBURN

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

I
t 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
116 •
LIVIA J. WASHBURN

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 thought 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 THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 117

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.