The Christmas Cookie Killer (11 page)

And she couldn’t help but remember how Agnes’s face had

looked with that belt knotted around her neck, choking out her life. If Randall was responsible for that, then he deserved whatever happened to him. Phyllis didn’t care as much about the attack on her. The effects of that weren’t going to last very long.

But Agnes was always going to be dead.

“We’d better be gettin’ back,” Sam said. “We’ve intruded on you folks for long enough.” He hesitated, then added, “The, uh, cookies are on the counter in the kitchen, for whatever that’s worth.”

Frank nodded. The bleak look on his face made it clear that nobody was all that interested in cookies at the moment. The rest of the family looked just as stunned by everything that had happened.

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Phyllis, Sam, and Carolyn left by the front door. The police cars that had been parked in front of the house had drawn plenty of attention. People were standing out in their yards all along the street, looking toward the house where, for the second day in a row, emergency vehicles had arrived with lights flashing and sirens wailing. Across the street, Monte and Vickie Kimbrough stood on their walk. Vickie turned and said something to her husband, then hurried across the street to intercept Phyllis.

Vickie Kimbrough was around thirty years old, a very pretty woman with medium-length blond hair. She wore jeans and a baggy, fuzzy pink sweater. She kept her hands in her pockets because the air was still chilly. “Hi, Phyllis,” she said. “I hope you don’t think I’m a terrible gossip, but what happened there today?”

The Kimbroughs had lived across the street for about four years, which meant that they weren’t old-timers in the neighborhood. But they had been there long enough to be friendly with most of the people who lived along the street. Vickie was, anyway; Monte, a tall, dark man, always seemed a little stiff and standoffish to Phyllis. They attended the same church as Phyllis, so she thought she knew them about as well as anybody did. She didn’t mind telling Vickie, “The police arrested Agnes’s grandson Randall.”

“Do they think he’s the one who killed her?” Vickie sounded both surprised and horrified.

“I don’t know. They didn’t really say anything about that.

Evidently he’s been in trouble with the law before and jumped bail on some drug-dealing charges.”

“Good Lord. To think that such a thing would happen

here.”

“It’s a rough world,” Sam said.

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LIVIA J. WASHBURN

“Yes, I know, but . . . this street especially seems like it could still be back in a . . . a better time, when there weren’t any murders or drugs or . . . or anything like that.”

“I know what you mean,” Phyllis agreed, “but I don’t think things were ever really like that. The bad things used to just be better hidden than they are now.”

Vickie nodded. “I suppose you’re right. I ought to know that, given the line of work I’m in.” She worked for a lawyer, Phyllis recalled, and probably saw all sorts of unpleasant things in her daily life. Vickie thrust her hands deeper in the pockets of the fuzzy sweater and went on. “I don’t hardly know what to hope for. I hate to think that Agnes’s own grandson could murder her, but I don’t like the idea that the killer could still be on the loose, either. He could come back here to the neighborhood.”

“Maybe he’s someone who
lives
in the neighborhood,” Carolyn suggested.

Vickie shook her head. “Now,
that
I refuse to believe. And I’m not even going to think about it.” She glanced across the street and saw that her husband had gone into the house. “I’d better get back. Monte’s probably wondering what’s keeping me. He doesn’t like it all that much when I stand around gab-bing with people.”

She took a hand out of a sweater pocket and lifted it in farewell, then turned and went back across the street.

Carolyn snorted and said quietly, “I wouldn’t stay married to a man who didn’t let me talk to people.”

“Monte didn’t try to stop Vickie from talking to us,” Phyllis pointed out. “He just went in the house.”

“Yes, but she looked a little worried, like he might be angry with her. That’s the sort of man who’s usually abusive.”

Phyllis didn’t really believe that Monte Kimbrough abused his wife. He just didn’t seem like the type to her, despite what THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE KILLER
• 85

Carolyn had said. But it was almost impossible to know what really went on in people’s private lives, she reminded herself.

She had seen more evidence of that than she liked to think about.

Eve had to hear about everything that had happened next door and was disappointed that she had missed out on all the

excitement.

“Not that I don’t feel sorry for the family,” she said. “It’s terrible losing Agnes that way, and then having to deal with the possibility that her own grandson killed her.”

“What do you think, Phyllis?” Sam asked as the four of them sat in the living room. “Do you reckon he could’ve done it?”

“I don’t know Randall well enough to say either way. I really don’t know him at all. But Agnes must have known he was hiding from the law when she agreed to let him stay in her attic.

Maybe she got worried and tried to convince him to turn himself in. If he refused, she could have threatened to let the police know he was there, anyway. Or he might have believed that she would, whether that was true or not.”

Carolyn said, “That’s just pure speculation.”

“That’s about all we’ve got to go on,” Sam said. “I’m glad it’s not up to us to find out what really happened.”

Phyllis wondered for a second if that comment was directed at her. She supposed it probably was. And considering the events of the fairly recent past, it was probably well deserved, too.

Through the front window, she saw a sheriff’s department

cruiser pull up at the curb in front of the house. A smile appeared on her face. Mike often stopped by on his way home after his shift was over. She saw him get out of the car, wearing his cream-colored Stetson and brown leather uniform jacket, looking like a cross between a modern policeman and an old-86 • LIVIA J. WASHBURN

fashioned Western lawman. That was typical of Texas: the Old West was long since gone, the memories of it fading with each passing day of cable TV, broadband Internet access, and text messaging—all the technology that was doing its best to make every place like every other place—but a few vestiges of the past remained. Phyllis hoped they always would, at least as long as she was alive.

Mike came up the walk. She met him at the door and let

him in. He had a worried look on his youthful face as he said, “I heard there was more trouble at the Simmons house. Were you mixed up in it, Mom?”

“Sam and Carolyn and I were all over there when it hap-

pened,” Phyllis said.

“The cops have a suspect in custody in Mrs. Simmons’s

murder?”

“I don’t know about that. They arrested Randall Simmons

for jumping bail on drug-dealing charges. Sit down and we’ll tell you about it.”

Mike took a seat in one of the armchairs, and for the next few minutes, Phyllis and Sam filled him in on what had happened, with Carolyn adding the occasional semicaustic comment. When they were finished, Mike asked, “You don’t know how long Randall had been hiding up there in the attic?”

“I have no idea,” Phyllis said with a shake of her head.

“And with Agnes dead, unless Randall provides an answer, I don’t see how they’ll ever know. I suppose he could have been up there for weeks. I don’t think so, though, because I was over at Agnes’s house quite a bit after she came home from the rehab hospital, and I never saw any signs of anyone else being there.”

“Couldn’t have been too comfortable, stayin’ in an attic,”

Sam commented.

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“Part of it was finished out as a little bedroom,” Phyllis explained. “Agnes’s husband did that years ago. I know because Kenny helped him a little with some of it. The quarters are a little cramped, but not too bad.”

“Better than jail,” Mike said. “That’s where he’ll be spending his time now. Since he already failed to appear on those other charges, I’m sure his bail was revoked, and if there are any new charges, he’ll be considered a flight risk, and bail will probably be denied for those.”

“It’s such a shame,” Eve said. “I hate to see anyone locked up.”

“That’s where some people belong, Mrs. Turner,” Mike said.

“I can promise you that.” He reached for his hat, which he had placed on a little table beside his chair. “Maybe I’ll stop by the police department and see if I can find out any more from that Detective Largo.”

“She’s sort of a hard-boiled character,” Sam commented.

“Likes to act like one, anyway.”

“Yeah, but she seems to be good at her job.” Mike stood up and put his hat on, then stepped over to the sofa and bent to give Phyllis a kiss. “See you later, Mom.” He waved at the others on his way out. “So long, folks.”

Phyllis was glad that Mike was going to try to find out the status of the case against Randall Simmons. She was curious, and there was no point in denying that.

But she recalled the way Sarah had reacted at the mention of Detective Largo’s name, and she hoped that she hadn’t detected too pronounced a note of eagerness in her son’s voice when he mentioned stopping to talk to the woman again.

The door of Isabel Largo’s office was open when Mike got there, but he paused in the hall and knocked on it anyway, out of cour-88 • LIVIA J. WASHBURN

tesy. The cop on duty at the front desk today had known him and sent him on back without announcing him.

Largo was turned sideways at the desk, typing on a keyboard in a pull-out drawer under her computer monitor. She glanced at the doorway and said, “Deputy Newsom. Come on in. I’ll be with you in a minute, soon as I finish entering these reports.”

“Always plenty of paperwork, isn’t there?” he said as he

came in to the cramped office and sat down in one of the metal straight-back chairs.

“That’s something about police work that’ll never change.”

Largo clicked the mouse, and the hard drive purred as it saved her files. She swiveled her chair toward Mike and asked, “How come your mother makes a habit of showing up at crime

scenes?”

The blunt question took him by surprise. He grunted and

said, “Just lucky, I guess. Or unlucky, depending on how you look at it. I hear she came across something else related to the Simmons case today.”

Largo nodded. “I figured that was why you were here. I

don’t have to share that information with you, you know.”

“Of course not. I just thought—”

“Professional courtesy and all,” she cut in.

“Well, yeah.”

Largo picked up a pen and toyed with it for a second before she said, “I’ll tell you what I know, Deputy, but I warn you . . . if you do anything to jeopardize my case, you’ll never get anything else from me.”

“Don’t worry, Detective; I know how to be discreet.” Mike knew his voice sounded a little stiff, but he couldn’t help it. Isabel Largo seemed determined to rub him the wrong way.

“I already knew Randall Simmons had been in the house.”

Mike’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

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“We sent off all the fingerprints we lifted, and earlier this afternoon some of them kicked back from the fugitive database as matching those of Randall Edward Simmons, who has warrants outstanding on him in Dallas County for flight to avoid prosecution and possession of narcotics with intent to distribute. He’s a bad guy.”

“What sort of narcotics?”

“Cocaine. Both the regular stuff and crack.”

Mike nodded. “Once the fingerprint match came back, were

you going to get a search warrant for the house?”

“That’s right. I was about to get that process started when I heard the disturbance call at the same address.” Largo smiled, which relieved the stern lines of her face a little. “That saved me some trouble. Randall Simmons was already in custody when I got there.”

“Has he admitted to killing his grandmother?” Mike knew

that was the main thing his mother would want to know.

“He hasn’t admitted anything. His father showed up with a lawyer almost right away, and she told him to keep his mouth shut.”

“Who’s the lawyer?”

“Juliette Yorke.”

Mike nodded. Juliette Yorke hadn’t been in Weatherford for very long—she was from back east somewhere—but a while

back she had represented one of the suspects in that murder out at Oliver Loving Elementary School. Now she had picked up another client who might be mixed up in a high-profile killing.

“What are you going to do if he won’t talk?”

“We can hold him for a little while,” Largo said with a shrug,

“but Dallas County wants him, and I guess we’ll have to give him to them unless we can come up with something tying him
90 •
LIVIA J. WASHBURN

to the murder. If we can do that, we can hang on to him here.

All I know to do is try.”

“Yeah. At least he’s in custody. If he
is
the killer, he won’t be able to hurt anybody else.”

“He’ll go away on the drug-dealing charge,” Largo agreed.

“This day and age, he might get a stiffer sentence for that than for killing the old lady.” She sighed. “Still, it would be nice to
know
that he’s the killer.”

“Yeah.” Mike got to his feet. “Thanks, Detective. If I run across anything that might help your case, I’ll let you know.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Mike paused to look at the picture of the baby in the photo cube on top of the filing cabinet. “Your kid?”

“My son, Victor. He’s fourteen months.”

Mike smiled. “Cute kid. My son, Bobby, is almost three. You and your husband have any others?”

“No. And I’m not married.”

Mike had noticed that she didn’t wear a wedding band but

had figured that didn’t mean anything. A lot of cops wore little if any jewelry while they were on duty. Largo didn’t offer any explanation for having a kid but no husband, and Mike wasn’t about to ask, feeling he had already stuck his foot in his mouth.