The Gingerbread Bump-Off (28 page)

Phyllis followed him into the kitchen as he turned around to leave again. She put a hand on his arm and squeezed. “Thank you, Sam,” she said quietly.

“You don’t really think there’s gonna be a problem, do you?” he asked, equally quietly.

“I hope not. Eve’s so worked up about everything, I’m afraid if anything goes wrong she’ll have a nervous breakdown.”

“Can’t have that. Keep your cell phone handy. I’ll call you when I know anything.”

 

 

 

Sam liked Eve; he really did. When he had first moved into the house, she had gone after him so blatantly that he sometimes wondered if the whole thing was an act. She had the whole predatory, man-hungry older-woman bit down so pat, he caught himself thinking that she was just playing a part, doing what was expected of her since she had been married several times before. He sometimes even toyed with the notion of responding to her not-so-subtle advances, just to see if she would turn tail and run.

He had decided that wouldn’t be a good idea, because she might not. And he had realized right from the start that the only woman in the house who really interested him that way was Phyllis.

But Eve had turned into a good pal, and he didn’t want to see her get hurt. If Roy had been leading her on for some reason .  . . well, he was old-fashioned enough that he might have to do something about it, Sam thought.

Maybe it wouldn’t come to that. He hoped not. And as he pulled into the motel parking lot, he spotted Roy’s SUV, so at least Roy hadn’t hightailed it out of town.

Sam parked the pickup and walked over to the room. Roy responded almost instantly to his knock, opening the door and smiling. “Hi, Sam,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

As far as Sam could tell, Roy was fine, dressed in slacks and an open-throated shirt and looking as fit as a fiddle. He stepped back and motioned for Sam to come in. As Sam entered the room, he said, “I just dropped by to see if you knew what you wanted to do tomorrow afternoon while the shower’s goin’ on. I tried to call your cell phone but didn’t get an answer.”

“That’s because the stupid battery in it has gone bad,” Roy answered without hesitation. “I’ve been out looking for a replacement, but I haven’t been able to find one for this particular model. If I order one online, do you think Phyllis would mind if I had it shipped to her house?”

“I can’t think of any reason why she would,” Sam replied honestly. He was relieved that he hadn’t had to pump Roy for answers about what was going on. Roy had volunteered everything he needed to know, and the story was more than reasonable; it was completely plausible. The only thing that hadn’t been explained in those few brief sentences was why he had failed to call Eve this morning like he had promised.

“Good,” Roy said. “I’ll have it shipped overnight, although it probably won’t actually get here tomorrow. Not on Christmas Eve! But it ought to be here the day after Christmas, or maybe Monday at the latest.”

“Sure,” Sam said. “I guess you can live without a phone for that long.”

Roy smiled again. “I suppose, although it’s hard, once you get used to all these modern conveniences.” He paused, then glanced at the bedside clock and said abruptly, “Oh, shoot! It’s after twelve o’clock.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “What about it?”

“I promised Eve I’d call her this morning.” Roy banged the ball of his hand lightly against his forehead. “I thought about it earlier, but then that phone battery was bad, so I figured I’d run out and get one, but then I couldn’t find the right one, and I forgot all about Eve!” He gave Sam a worried look. “She’s mad at me, isn’t she?”

“I don’t really know,” Sam said. That wasn’t a complete falsehood. Eve had been mad, all right, but she had been worried, too, even a little scared that something had happened to her fiancé, and Sam wasn’t sure which emotion was dominant.

“I’ll call her in a minute and apologize,” Roy said. “Now, what was it you wanted?”

“I just thought I’d ask you how you feel about bowlin’.”

“I love it. You want to roll a few games tomorrow afternoon while the ladies are having their shower?”

Sam nodded. “Fine with me. I’ll come by here and get you sometime between one thirty and two, all right?”

“That’ll work.” Roy clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Thanks, Sam. It’s been good having a friend here, as well as the lady I’m going to marry.”

“You’re sure welcome,” Sam told him as he left the motel room. They exchanged waves, and Sam went back to his pickup.

He thumbed the speed dial for Phyllis’s cell on his own phone as he pulled away. When she answered, he said, “There’s nothing to worry about. Roy’s fine, and he’s not gonna leave Eve at the altar.”

“I know,” Phyllis said. “He just called. She’s talking to him now.”

Sam chuckled. “I’ll bet she was pretty mad.”

“The atmosphere sounded a little chilly at first, but I think it’s warming up now.”

“That’s good to hear,” Sam said. “I reckon everything’s full speed ahead from here on out.”

Chapter 27

P
hyllis was standing at the living room window that evening, watching the traffic stream past the house, the cars full of onlookers taking in the sight of all those Christmas lights and decorations. She was a little surprised when one of the vehicles turned into the driveway instead of cruising on by.

But she recognized it in the glow from the lights as Mike’s SUV. She smiled as she watched her son and daughter-in-law get out. Sarah opened the back door and unstrapped Bobby from his seat, then held his hand and led him up to the front porch. Mike was already there, about to ring the bell when Phyllis opened the door before he could push the button.

“Hi,” he said with a smile as Phyllis opened the storm door to let them in. “It’s like rush hour in Dallas out there.”

“Yes, a lot of people want to look at the Christmas lights,” Phyllis said.

“Bobby did, too,” Sarah explained as she knelt to unbutton her son’s coat. “We’ve been driving around town looking at them. Mike told him that you had the best lights, though, so we saved your place for last.”

“Hi, Gran’mama,” Bobby said as Phyllis picked him up and he wrapped his arms around her neck.

“Hi, yourself.” She hugged him and looked over his shoulder at Mike and Sarah. “Is his ear infection still all cleared up?” she asked, referring to the ailment that had kept him from visiting his other grandparents in California a month earlier. The infection had persisted for longer than any of them had expected.

“He’s fine,” Mike said. “Good as new.”

“I’m glad.” Phyllis smiled at the little boy. “Are you coming over here for Christmas dinner?”

Bobby nodded emphatically, wearing a big grin of anticipation on his face.

“Where is everybody?” Mike asked.

“Eve’s out with her fiancé, Roy. And Sam and Carolyn are both up in their rooms, I think.”

From the stairs, Sam said, “No, I’m right here. Hello, Mike. Good to see you again.”

Sam came down the stairs, shook hands with Mike, and hugged Sarah. He shook hands with Bobby, too, both of them looking solemn about it.

“You can stay and visit for awhile, can’t you?” Phyllis asked.

“Sure,” Mike replied. “Anyway, I’m not sure I could get back out on the street right now, what with all that traffic.”

“It’s been like that every night.”

“I guess even though the Jingle Bell Tour never got here, enough people read about the lights and decorations that they want to see for themselves.”

“I suppose so,” Phyllis said. “Would you like some hot cranberry apple cider?”

“Not the hard stuff, I hope,” Mike said with a smile.

Phyllis sighed and shook her head, secretly pleased by the teasing.

Carolyn must have heard the voices, because she came downstairs, too, and helped Phyllis with warming up the cider left over from the Jingle Bell Tour night. Carolyn had poured it in an empty water jug and put it in the refrigerator.

Having the rest of her family here made a pleasant evening even nicer, and Phyllis was able to forget all about Georgia Hallerbee’s murder for awhile.

But when everyone had finished the cider, Mike helped her carry the empty cups back into the kitchen, and as Phyllis put them in the sink, he leaned a hip against the counter and asked, “Have you heard any more about the Hallerbee case?”

Phyllis hesitated. It was bad enough that her theory had fallen apart and Detective Latimer had all but made fun of her as a meddling old woman.

She knew Mike wouldn’t do that, though, so she said, “I thought for a while that I was on to something, but as it turns out, I was wrong.”

“Tell me about it,” he suggested.

She did so. He listened intently, nodding every now and then. When she finished, he said, “Mom, that all makes perfect sense. It could have happened that way.”

“But it didn’t.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not. It was good thinking, anyway.”

“And I suppose I need to keep my brain active,” she said with a trace of bitterness creeping into her voice. “Maybe it’ll help keep the Alzheimer’s at bay.”

“You shouldn’t feel like that. You couldn’t know that this guy Henning had a real alibi. All you had to go by was what people told you. That’s all any investigator has, when there’s no physical evidence, or at least not any that pays off.”

“I suppose so. They must not have been able to get any fingerprints off the remains of that ceramic gingerbread man, or else there would have been an arrest by now. I’m guessing that either the killer wore gloves, or else he used the Mrs. Claus costume to keep his prints off the ceramic surface.”

“Yeah. I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground, but I haven’t heard much. I think Latimer will keep pushing on that Cochran kid, but in the end, there may not be enough to charge him. Right now, the case against him is pretty circumstantial.”

Phyllis nodded. “I wanted to believe he was guilty, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Who’s left? Everybody else is accounted for, right?”

“I think so,” Phyllis said. Her brain ran through the list of everyone connected with the case and where they had been on the night of the Jingle Bell Tour. Something bothered her, a familiar feeling of unease, but she couldn’t isolate it. She tried to grasp it as she rinsed out the cups and put them in the dishwasher, but again the missing piece slipped away from her.

It wasn’t the only piece that was missing, she thought. She still didn’t have enough to put the picture together and make sense of it.

And she wasn’t going to find it tonight, so she might as well relax and enjoy the rest of the evening with her family, she told herself. With everyone’s busy schedules these days, people didn’t get together like they once did. They wound up seeing a lot more of the people they worked with than they did their own families. They had to grab moments whenever they could.

With that in mind, she took Mike’s arm and led him back toward the living room. “Do you think everybody would think I was terribly old-fashioned if I suggested we sing some Christmas carols?”

The smile that spread across his face warmed her heart. “I think it’s exactly the sort of suggestion we all need right now.”

 

 

 

The morning of Christmas Eve dawned cold, cloudy, and blustery. Phyllis worried that Eve would take the weather as some sort of omen. It wasn’t supposed to rain or snow, though. It just wasn’t as pleasant as it had been.

The night before, as they were all sitting around the living room singing Christmas carols—and none of that “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” nonsense; she had warned Sam before they even started—Phyllis had succeeded in forgetting completely about Georgia’s murder for awhile.

The memories had come flooding back, however, when she stepped out onto the front porch to wave good night to Mike, Sarah, and Bobby, and they still plagued her this morning as she fixed breakfast. She had prepared the dough for buttermilk refrigerated biscuits the night before. She took the dough out of the refrigerator, rolled it out, and cut them with a biscuit cutter, being careful to push down without twisting. Twisting would make the biscuits turn out tough.

While the biscuits were baking, Phyllis made some good old-fashioned sausage gravy to pour over them when they were done. She browned the sausage in an iron skillet, drained the grease, and stirred in a little olive oil and a little salt and pepper. Adding milk and flour thickened it into gravy. These were tasks she had performed hundreds of times before, and she thought they might distract her . . . but it didn’t work. She knew she wouldn’t be able to rest properly until Georgia’s killer was caught. Someone had come onto Phyllis’s porch . . . almost into her house . . . and committed unspeakable violence. Justice had to be done.

So she knew what she had to do. It was time to start over. She couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere along the way she had overlooked something vital, seen or heard something that would give her the answer even though she hadn’t noticed it at the time.

Joe Henning was out as a suspect, at least for now. So were the other people whose homes had been part of the tour, except for a few. Those were the ones she would start with, Phyllis decided.

Of course, Eve wasn’t going to be happy about this, she realized. Eve would feel like Phyllis was abandoning her on the day of the shower. But she would be back in plenty of time. She just wanted to pay a few quick calls during the morning. The shower wouldn’t start until two o’clock . . .

“You’re going to do what?” Eve reacted with predictable surprise and dismay when Phyllis said at the breakfast table that there were a few things she needed to check on that morning.

“I won’t be gone long,” Phyllis promised. “Most of the snacks are already prepared, and Carolyn can get the rest of the cookies in the oven and make the punch. Is that all right, Carolyn?”