The Gingerbread Bump-Off (16 page)

“Mighty impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Phyllis said, “did you and your husband do all the decorating for the tour yourselves?”

“Dan handled most of it. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but he has a better eye for such things than I do. He really enjoyed playing the host when the tour came by.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Actually, I wasn’t here that night,” Holly said. “I had an appointment. Dan and our kids took care of everything.”

“It’s a shame you missed it.”

“Well, there are a lot worse things. What happened to Georgia is proof of that.”

“That’s true,” Phyllis said with a sigh. It wasn’t an act, either. She was still greatly disturbed by what had happened.

They said their good-byes, and Holly Bachmann showed them out. Once they were back in the pickup, driving away, Phyllis commented, “Well, we didn’t learn much there.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Sam drawled.

Phyllis looked over at him with a slight frown. “What do you mean?”

“You said it yourself. Miz Bachmann’s in mighty good shape. That weight bench was set up for a bench press. Not a lot of women can bench 175.”

“I certainly couldn’t. But I don’t see—” Phyllis stopped suddenly. “Oh, my. You’re talking about that gingerbread man.”

Sam nodded. “We’ve said all along it’d take a pretty strong woman to lift that thing high enough to have hit Miz Hallerbee with it. From what I saw, ol’ Holly back there looked like she might’ve been able to do the job.”

“And she wasn’t here Tuesday night when the Jingle Bell Tour came around. She said so herself. That’s one of the things that’s been bothering me. Most of the people whose houses were on the tour would have been home that night, getting ready and waiting for the tour to get there, instead of attacking Georgia on my front porch.”

“You’ve got at least one who wasn’t, and she said so herself. Question now is, what reason would she have had for doin’ it? She sure didn’t seem like she had anything to hide.”

“In that outfit she was wearing, she wasn’t hiding much at all.” Phyllis nodded. “That was good work, Sam.”

“Just call me Sherlock,” he said with a grin. Then he shook his head and added, “Actually, don’t.”

Chapter 15

W
ith Phyllis providing directions, Sam headed for the next house on their list. It was on the western edge of town, a big Victorian house on a hill overlooking Old Highway 80, which had been the main east-west thoroughfare in this part of Texas for many years.

“That’s an old house,” Sam said as he turned the pickup through an arched wrought-iron gate set into a stone wall that enclosed a large lawn. He started along the curving driveway that ran up the hill and went on, “I remember seein’ it up there as a little kid, whenever we’d pass through Weatherford on our way to Brownwood to see relatives.”

“Yes, I think it’s well over a hundred years old,” Phyllis agreed. “Some cattle baron built it, back in the days when there wasn’t much between this hill and the square downtown. There should be a historical marker around here somewhere.”

The house had three stories, with balconies along the upper two, and those balconies were festooned with lights and decorations. No cartoon characters had set up shop on the lawn at this stop on the tour, but there were a lot of more sedate decorations such as bells and candles made of lights. They weren’t that impressive in the daylight, but Phyllis was sure they would be beautiful at night.

“Who lives here?” Sam asked.

“Margaret Henning. She’s a widow, and quite a philanthropist. I’ve met her several times at school functions, but I don’t know if she’ll remember me.”

Sam parked in the circle drive in front of the house. Well-tended flower beds bordered the drive, but at this time of year none of the plants were blooming.

The two of them got out and climbed a couple of steps to a wooden gallery porch that ran from one corner of the house to the other. Poinsettias sat in decorative pots on both sides of each step. Pretty little trees sat on each side of the door, with poinsettias decorating them. A number of rocking chairs and porch swings were on the porch. This reminded Phyllis of her own childhood, when nearly everybody had front porches and rocking chairs, where they sat out in the evening and enjoyed the fresh air. In those days people hadn’t spent all their time in front of computers and fifty-inch plasma TVs. They had actually gotten out and looked at the world and talked to one another.

Not that she wanted to go back and give up all her modern conveniences, Phyllis reminded herself as she reached for an old-fashioned doorbell in an ornate brass setting. But it didn’t hurt anything to try to hang on to some of the old pleasures.

The chimes attached to this doorbell rang a simple three-note summons. After almost a minute, the door opened and a stocky, middle-aged woman in an apron stood there. The expression on her face was pleasant enough but fell a little short of being a smile.

“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

“We’d like to see Mrs. Henning, if she’s available,” Phyllis said. “I’m Mrs. Newsom, and this is Mr. Fletcher. It’s about Georgia Hallerbee and the Christmas Jingle Bell Tour of Homes.”

“Oh, my, yes,” the woman said. “We heard the news on the radio earlier. Mrs. Henning was quite upset.”

“So she knows that Ms. Hallerbee passed away this morning?”

“Yes.” A faint look of suspicion came into the woman’s eyes. “Why exactly are you here?”

Before Phyllis could answer, another woman’s voice called from somewhere in the house, “Who is it, Sophia?”

The woman, who was probably the housekeeper and maybe the cook, turned her head and said, “Some people about Ms. Hallerbee, ma’am.”

“Well, bring them in.”

Sophia shrugged and held out a hand. “Won’t you come in? Mrs. Henning is in the parlor.”

A massive Christmas tree took up what seemed like half the parlor. The room was furnished with antiques, which suited the house’s age . . . and its occupant’s age as well, Phyllis thought. Margaret Henning had to be close to ninety, but her eyes were sharp and intelligent as she sat on a claw-footed divan with a Christmas quilt tucked around the lower half of her body. She had gray hair and wore a dark green dressing gown.

“Phyllis!” she said as the visitors came into the room. “It is so good to see you again.”

That took Phyllis by surprise. It had been five years or more since she had seen Mrs. Henning, but the woman remembered her.

Not only that, but Mrs. Henning went on, “I was so sorry to hear about Mattie Harris. How are Carolyn and Eve?”

“They’re both fine,” Phyllis said. “In fact, Eve is about to get married again.”

“I can’t say as I’m surprised.”

Phyllis went on, “I don’t believe you’ve met my friend Sam Fletcher.”

“Indeed I have not.” Mrs. Henning’s tone was crisp, and even though she had lived in Texas for decades, she still had her New England accent. Phyllis had heard that the late Thomas Henning, a very successful businessman who had inherited a string of farm equipment dealerships and made them even more profitable, had met his future bride while he was attending Yale as a young man. He had married Margaret there and brought her back to Texas with him. She held out a thin, somewhat bony hand to Sam and went on, “I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Fletcher.”

“Call me Sam,” he said as he gently shook her hand. “It’s my pleasure, ma’am.”

“My, you are a tall one, aren’t you?”

Sam grinned. “Yes, ma’am. I used to play and coach basketball.”

“I thought you must be a former teacher if you were here with Phyllis. My husband and I were quite devoted to the schools, you know, even though we did not have any children of our own.”

“We always appreciated the donations you made,” Phyllis said. “There was never enough money in the budget for everything we needed.”

Mrs. Henning gave a little snort. “There never is, according to those bureaucrats and bean counters who run things. People have to take up the slack when they can.” She paused. “But you’re here about poor Georgia. Please, sit down.”

They sat in armchairs that matched the divan. Mrs. Henning went on, “If you are here to break the bad news, I’ve already heard. I was afraid the poor dear was not going to make it.”

“We’re visiting all the people who were part of the Jingle Bell Tour this year and taking up a collection for some flowers for the funeral,” Phyllis explained, getting the excuse out of the way early this time.

“That is a very good idea.” Mrs. Henning turned to the housekeeper, who was standing just inside the parlor. “Sophia, write these people a check for . . .” She looked at Phyllis.

“Whatever you’d like to donate will be fine,” Phyllis said.

“Make it a hundred dollars.”

“Fifty would be all right.”

Mrs. Henning shook her head. “A hundred it is. I can afford it, my dear. And it is worth a lot more than that to express my sorrow at Georgia’s passing.”

Sophia left the room, and Phyllis said to Mrs. Henning, “Were you and Georgia good friends?”

“Oh, my, yes. She came by here at least once a month. She brought me flowers, little gifts, things like that, but those were just excuses, I think. She was checking on me, making sure that I was doing all right.”

“Why would she do that? Just because you were friends?”

“Well, that and the fact that we were related, you know.”

Phyllis shook her head. “No, I didn’t know that. I don’t think I ever heard her mention it.”

“Well, it was by marriage, and it was a distant relation, at that. Her grandfather and my husband’s father were second cousins, or something like that. So she wasn’t a blood relative to me, but I still considered her part of the family, you know, out of respect for Thomas.”

“I didn’t know that at all,” Phyllis said. “Of course, Georgia and I weren’t really close. I liked her, though, and I hate to think about what happened to her.”

“Especially since it happened on your front porch,” Mrs. Henning said. “I keep up with the news. A dreadful thing, just dreadful. You didn’t get to take part in the tour after all, did you?”

Phyllis shook her head. “No, Georgia was attacked before the tour got there, and by the time it did, the police had our entire block closed off.”

“I am sure your house was decorated just lovely.”

“I like what you did here,” Phyllis said. “Very tasteful.”

Mrs. Henning smiled. “Well, at my age, I do not care for gaudiness. The simple pleasures are best.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Phyllis said with a nod. “When Georgia talked to you about being part of the tour, did she seem upset or worried about anything?”

“No, not that I recall,” Mrs. Henning replied with a slight frown. “Although she did say something that puzzled me.”

“What was that?” Phyllis asked when the elderly woman paused and didn’t go on.

“I do not want to betray any confidences . . . but at this point, I suppose that is not really an issue, is it? Poor Georgia is gone.”

Phyllis waited, sensing that this was a good moment to be patient.

“She said that she wasn’t going to be involved with the tour after this year,” Mrs. Henning continued. “She had been doing it for years, you know. I didn’t understand why she wanted to quit, but when I asked her about it, she said she had gotten to where she did not like going into people’s homes. She said that sometimes she found out things she would have just as soon not known.”

Phyllis tried to keep the excitement from showing in her face or voice as she said, “Is that right?” What Mrs. Henning had just told her tied right in with what Carl Winthrop had said about something bothering Georgia. Not only that, but it also added weight to Phyllis’s theory that whatever had been on Georgia’s mind was connected with the Jingle Bell Tour and the homes that were part of it.

Sophia came back in then with the check, which she handed to Phyllis. Phyllis put it with the one Holly Bachmann had given her. At this rate, they were going to have enough money to get a fine arrangement of flowers for Georgia’s funeral.

It would be even better, though, Phyllis thought, if she could discover the identity of Georgia’s killer, too.

She was about to ask if Georgia had said anything else to Mrs. Henning when a man walked into the parlor. He stopped short and said, “Sorry, I didn’t know you had company.”

“No, that is quite all right, Joe,” Mrs. Henning said as she lifted a hand to beckon him into the room. “These are friends. Mrs. Newsom and Mr. Fletcher. Phyllis, Sam, this is my grandnephew, Joe Henning.”

“How do you do?” Joe Henning said as he came over and shook hands with Phyllis and Sam. At first glance he seemed like a young man, but that was only because he was the youngest person in the room. He had to be at least fifty, though, with graying brown hair and a weathered, somewhat florid face.

“Joe’s come to stay with me and help me manage my affairs,” Mrs. Henning explained. “I cannot get out and visit all the businesses like I once did, you know. And in these bad economic times, I need someone who knows something about finances, of course, to keep track of things.”

“You know about finances, Mr. Henning?” Phyllis asked.

Mrs. Henning said, “He should. He was a banker in Dallas for many years.”

“I was an officer in a bank,” Joe Henning said quietly. “Until I was downsized earlier this year.”

Sam said, “That’s tough luck.”

Joe shrugged. “It left me free to come and help Aunt Margaret, here. You know what they say about one door closing and another door opening.”

“It sounds like it worked out well for both of you,” Phyllis said.

“Are you two here on business?”

Mrs. Henning said, “Goodness, no, they’re just friends. They’re taking up a collection for a flower arrangement at the funeral of another friend of ours.”