The Gingerbread Bump-Off (12 page)

Chapter 11

S
am claimed that he wasn’t trying to prod her into carrying out her own investigation into the attack on Georgia Hallerbee, but it sure sounded like it to Phyllis. By the next morning, after thinking it over, she was more sure of that than ever.

The problem was that he was right. The one guaranteed way to stop all the theories and suspicions from crowding into her brain was to sort out the truth from all the false trails. Mike had warned her that Chief of Police Ralph Whitmire didn’t want her interfering with any active investigations, and although Warren Latimer hadn’t come right out and said it, his attitude was that she ought to keep her hands off the case, too.

It might be possible for her to nudge things in the right direction, though . . . if she could figure out what direction that was.

She had an idea where to start, but first she needed to talk to Sam again, about the other matter that was weighing on her mind.

She found him in his room, sitting in his recliner and reading a Western. Phyllis tapped on the partially open door, smiled at him, and asked, “May I come in?”

“Sure,” he said as he sat up in the recliner. He slipped a bookmark into the paperback and tossed it onto the dresser. “What’s on your mind? Still thinkin’ about what happened to Miz Hallerbee and what might’ve been behind it?”

“Of course. And I believe you’re right about trying to figure out who’s to blame for it. But I came to talk to you about something else.”

He waved a hand at the neatly made bed. “Sit down and shoot,” he invited.

Phyllis sat. “Eve talked to me yesterday afternoon.”

“She’s not still upset with Roy, is she?” Sam asked with a slight frown.

“No, I wouldn’t say so.”

Sam looked at her intently for a moment and then said, “But you’re a mite suspicious of him, aren’t you?”

“They had another disagreement—based on what Eve said, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an argument—about where they should live if they don’t find a suitable house by the time they’re married. Roy still insists that they should get an apartment. He doesn’t want to live here.”

“Well, I suppose I can understand that,” Sam said. “They’re gonna be newlyweds, after all. Roy just wants ’em to have some privacy.”

“Technically they’ll be newlyweds. But you know good and well, Sam, it’s not the same at their age as it would be if they were in their twenties.”

Sam shrugged, obviously not willing to dispute that point.

“There’s no good reason I can think of why Roy would be so adamant about not staying here,” Phyllis went on.

“Unless he just doesn’t want to.”

“But Eve does. I don’t like the way he’s trying to control her.”

“Isn’t she tryin’ to control him just as much?”

Phyllis felt a flash of irritation that faded just as quickly as it came. Her first impulse was to argue with Sam that it wasn’t the same thing at all, but when she stopped to think about it, she realized that it was. Logically speaking, Roy had just as much right to his opinion as Eve did to hers.

But Eve was her friend and had been for years, so Phyllis didn’t see anything wrong with taking her side.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said to Sam, even though she hated to admit it. “But I still think they should be able to work this out. I was hoping you could talk to Roy again and find out why he’s so opposed to the idea. Maybe you can make him see that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

Sam nodded. “I sort of figured that was where you were goin’ with this. You know I’m not real comfortable with the idea of gettin’ mixed up in this.”

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Phyllis said. “But Eve’s happiness may be at stake. Men who . . . who isolate their wives from their friends sometimes don’t treat them very well in other ways, too.”

Sam looked dubious. “Roy doesn’t seem like that sort of fella at all.” He sighed. “You could be right, though. And Eve’s my friend, too, so I want what’s best for her. I’ll talk to Roy, soon as I get a chance. It’s kind of hard to catch him when Eve’s not around, though.”

“I’ll think about that,” Phyllis said. “Maybe I can arrange something to make it easier.”

“All right. Let me know.”

Sam’s recliner was close enough that Phyllis could reach over and rest a hand on his knee for a moment. “Thank you. I appreciate you putting up with my wild ideas.”

“Your ideas usually don’t turn out to be so wild,” he pointed out. “Whenever you’ve been suspicious of somebody in the past, there was a good reason for it.”

“You don’t know how much I hope that’s not the case this time,” Phyllis said.

 

 

 

That afternoon, Phyllis ventured into the traffic on South Main, which was even heavier than usual because this was the Christmas season and people were out shopping. She avoided the worst of it, though, because she turned off before the street reached the interstate and pulled into the parking lot of a small shopping center on one of the side roads.

This was where Georgia Hallerbee had her office, between a steakhouse at one end of the center and a real estate title company at the other. The OPEN sign was up on the door, Phyllis noted as she parked the Lincoln.

A woman in her thirties, with dark hair pulled back into a bun, and glasses, sat at the desk in the front part of the office, typing on a computer keyboard. Behind her were a hallway and a window that looked into another office. The light was on in there but the desk was empty because that was where Georgia worked.

The woman paused in her typing and looked up at Phyllis with a professional smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but unless you’re here to pick up some documents we’ve already prepared, we won’t be able to help you right now. We’re not accepting any new clients at the moment.”

Phyllis had never been here before because Georgia had never prepared her taxes. She had driven by and seen the office often enough to know where it was, though.

“I’m not a client, old or new,” she said.

“If you’re selling something, I’m afraid I can’t help you with that, either,” the woman broke in before Phyllis could go on. “The owner’s not here now, and I’m not sure when she’ll be back in the office . . .”

An emotional little catch in her voice stopped her right there. Phyllis said, “It’s all right. I know what happened to Georgia. My name is Phyllis Newsom. She was at my house when she . . . when she was attacked.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I’ve heard of you.”

It seemed that everyone had, like it or not, Phyllis thought.

“My name is Laura Kearns,” the woman went on as she got to her feet. “I’m the office manager and Georgia’s assistant. I’ve heard a lot about you, Mrs. Newsom. I helped Georgia put together the itinerary for the Jingle Bell Tour.”

Laura Kearns shook hands with Phyllis, who said, “I wish we were meeting under more pleasant circumstances, Mrs. Kearns.” She had seen the wedding band on Laura’s left hand.

“I do, too. Please, have a seat. What can I do for you?”

There were a couple of wood and leather wing chairs in front of the desk for clients. Phyllis sat down in one of them and started off with the question she always asked these days when she met one of Georgia’s acquaintances.

“Have you heard anything today about how she’s doing?”

Laura looked regretful and shook her head. “No, the hospital won’t release any information to anybody who’s not a family member.”

“I didn’t think Georgia had any family around here.”

“She doesn’t,” Laura said. “But she has a sister who lives in Waco who came up here to be with her. I guess she’s the only one the people at the hospital will tell anything . . . other than the police, of course.”

“I suppose Detective Latimer has been here?”

“You know him?” Laura asked, then said quickly, “Of course you would. He’s investigating what happened, so I’m sure he’s talked to you several times.”

“That’s right,” Phyllis said with a nod. “He told me they were going to search the files on Georgia’s computers. Have they already done that?”

The confident way she asked the question made it sound like she was privy to all the detective’s plans. Laura must have taken it that way, because she nodded and said without hesitation, “Yes, they copied all the files from Georgia’s desktop and mine, too, and they took her laptop with them. It was all right that I let them do that, wasn’t it? Detective Latimer had a search warrant that covered everything in the office, he said.”

“He didn’t show it to you?”

“He did,” Laura said, “but I couldn’t really make sense of it. It had too much legal talk in it.”

Phyllis thought it was a little odd that Laura could make sense of the Internal Revenue Service’s labyrinthine forms, documents, and instructions but a police search warrant threw her for a loop. Of course, it all depended on what you were used to, she supposed. Laura handled IRS paperwork all the time, but that was probably the first search warrant she had ever seen.

“You were right to let them look at whatever they wanted to look at,” Phyllis said. “They’re trying to find out who did that terrible thing to Georgia, and we want to help them as much as we can.”

Laura nodded. “That’s right. I hope they catch whoever it was soon.”

“So do I.”

“So what can I do for you?” Laura asked. “Or did you just stop by to talk about Georgia?”

“Actually, that’s true. I’d like to know if anything was bothering her in the last few days before she was attacked.”

“Isn’t that the sort of thing the police usually ask? In fact, Detective Latimer asked me that same question.”

“Oh, it’s standard for the police to do that,” Phyllis said easily. “But I was told specifically by someone who knows Georgia that she was upset about something and wanted to talk to me about it. I’d like to know what that was.”

“I’m sorry, all I can tell you is the same thing I told the police. Georgia seemed fine to me. She was really busy, of course, what with getting ready for the Jingle Bell Tour, but I was giving her a hand with it and there were several other volunteers, too, so everything seemed to be pretty much under control.”

“There were no problems with her work here?”

Laura smiled. “No, things won’t really pick up until after the first of the year, when tax season kicks in. December is busier than some of the other months because we’re helping some of our clients put together end-of-the-year statements and things like that, and there are always some early birds who want their taxes filed as soon as possible after the first of January, so we were already working on those returns.” She shrugged. “But really, this isn’t a bad time of year for us.”

“No angry clients? No disputes about anything?”

Laura thought about it and shook her head. “No, everything was fine, at least as far as I know.”

Working as closely with Georgia as Laura did, it was likely she would have been aware of any problems with the business bad enough for Georgia to seek Phyllis’s advice about them. The possibility couldn’t be ruled out, but Phyllis thought the odds were clearly against it.

Which meant that the trouble was probably in some other area of Georgia’s life. The main thing on Georgia’s plate these days had been the Jingle Bell Tour.

“You said you helped with the itinerary for the Jingle Bell Tour?”

“That’s right. I went on the tour, too, so I knew something was wrong when we got to your block and the police wouldn’t let us go to your house. But I never dreamed that . . . that . . .”

Again emotion overcame Laura, and she had to stop.

Phyllis nodded. “I know. It’s unbelievable that anybody could do such a thing to someone as nice as Georgia. I suppose the two of you must have gotten along well.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t say she was like a mother to me, but an aunt, maybe.”

“You wouldn’t happen to still have a list of all the tour stops, would you?” All the participants had been listed in the newspaper, along with their addresses, but if Laura had a list handy, that would be easier than trying to find the information, Phyllis thought.

Laura adjusted her keyboard a little. “Oh, sure, I’ve got it here on the computer. Wouldn’t take but a minute to print it out if you’d like a copy.”

“Thanks, I would.”

If the motive for the attack on Georgia was connected with the tour, that meant Phyllis would have to talk to the people who had been involved with it. The list that started coming out of the printer on Laura’s desk after a few mouse clicks and keystrokes would be very helpful.

“There you go,” Laura said as she handed Phyllis the single sheet of paper that contained a dozen names and addresses, including her own. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, that’s all,” Phyllis said as she stood up. “Thank you for the list, and for talking to me.”

“I was glad to.”

Phyllis turned toward the door but stopped herself and swung back around.

“I’ll bet you know Carl Winthrop, don’t you?” she asked.

Laura smiled. “Carl? He comes by here a lot. He and Georgia actually have quite a few clients in common. And they’re friends.”

“Good friends?”

Laura’s face reddened slightly. “Really, I . . . I can’t gossip about Georgia. She’s my boss, after all, and my friend, too.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I know Carl was involved with the Jingle Bell Tour, too.”

“Oh, yes, he was with us that night.”

Claudia Fisk had said the same thing, Phyllis recalled. That was important, because if Winthrop was accompanying the people in the tour, he couldn’t have attacked Georgia. The possibility that he might have slipped away from the others, smashed that gingerbread man over Georgia’s head, and then rejoined the tour seemed awfully far-fetched to Phyllis, but she didn’t think it would hurt to confirm Winthrop’s alibi.