The Gingerbread Bump-Off (3 page)

Mattie Harris’s old room was still empty upstairs. Phyllis hadn’t been able to bring herself to look for someone else to rent it after Mattie’s death. She told herself that it was a good idea to keep the room vacant so it could be used as a guest room if necessary, but that wasn’t the real reason. She missed Mattie, and besides, the four of them—Phyllis, Carolyn, Eve, and Sam—got along so well she hadn’t wanted to do anything to break up that chemistry.

She couldn’t use the guest room excuse to keep Eve’s room vacant once Eve moved out. It wasn’t that she needed the rent money, because she was well-fixed enough financially, even in the current less-than-stellar economy. She would have to admit that she just didn’t want anybody new to move in.

Sam had been new once, she reminded herself. And his arrival in the house had caused a certain amount of disruption—no doubt about that. Carolyn had been adamantly opposed to the idea of a man living there, even a gentlemanly widower like Sam. She had come around, though, and become grudging friends with him.

They might not be as lucky the next time, Phyllis thought now. Bringing in another boarder might turn out to be a disaster. You just never knew about these things.

Which meant that she wanted to resent Roy for taking Eve away and breaking up their old gang . . . but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it when he was standing there looking so pleasant and telling her how delicious the German chocolate cookies were. More important, he made Eve happy. Phyllis could tell that just by looking at her.

“Why don’t I put some of the cookies in a plastic bag for you to take back to the motel with you?” Phyllis suggested.

“That’d be great,” Roy said. Then he frowned. “But not really fair. Then you won’t have as many left here to eat.”

Eve laughed. “Oh, goodness, Phyllis doesn’t want there to be any left. Carolyn might see them, and then she’d know what recipe Phyllis is going to enter in the cookie contest this year.”

“Got a little rivalry going on, eh?” Roy asked with a smile.

Unaccountably, Phyllis felt her face warming a little. “Not really. I don’t care who wins.”

“Don’t believe her,” Eve said. “Phyllis isn’t as cutthroat about it as Carolyn is, but she likes to win.”

“Well, who doesn’t?” Phyllis said.

“I think that’s fine,” Roy told her. “And I’d be glad to help by polishing off another of these cookies and taking some of them with me when I go.” He looked at his watch. “Which ought to be soon. I need to go back to the motel and make some calls.” He leaned toward Eve and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back to take you to supper, though, like I promised.”

“Don’t be late,” she told him. “I’ll miss you.”

Phyllis stood up. “Let me get that bag for the cookies . . .”

After Roy was gone, Eve lingered to eat a couple of the cookies herself. Phyllis asked her, “Did you have any luck finding a house?”

“Not really,” Eve replied with a shake of her head. “So many of the new houses are those dreadful McMansions that look so much alike. I just can’t imagine being comfortable in a place like that, especially after living in a wonderful old house like this. Unfortunately, a lot of the older houses haven’t been kept up as well as this one has. Everything we looked at had things wrong with it, things that would have to be repaired or totally redone before we could move in.” She sighed. “Roy says that if we don’t find anything before the wedding, we’ll get an apartment and stay in it while we keep looking. I don’t like that idea. I told him we could stay right here just as easily.” Eve looked across the table at Phyllis. “I hope that’s all right, dear. I didn’t mean to speak out of turn . . .”

Phyllis waved off Eve’s worried comment. “No, no, that’s fine. I don’t have any objection.” She paused. “Carolyn, on the other hand . . .”

“Hey, she got used to me,” Sam pointed out. “And Roy seems to be even more civilized than I am.”

“He’s very civilized,” Eve said solemnly.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Phyllis said, although deep down she wasn’t sure she liked the idea at all. However, she wasn’t going to tell her old friend that she and Roy couldn’t stay here after they were married. “Maybe it won’t come to that. You and Roy could still find something before the wedding.”

Eve nodded. “We’re going to keep looking.”

Sam reached for the last cookie on the plate, then paused and looked at Phyllis and Eve, lifting one of his bushy eyebrows in a quizzical expression.

“Go ahead,” Phyllis said, and Eve nodded.

Sam picked up the cookie and took a bite out of it, looking pleased as he did so. Phyllis got up and brushed the crumbs off the plate into the garbage can, then rinsed it and left it in the sink to go in the dishwasher later.

Sam swallowed the last of the cookie and said, “Phyllis got some news today.”

“Really? What’s that?” Eve asked.

Phyllis sat down at the table again. “I’m going to be taking part in the Jingle Bell Tour this year. One of the participants had to drop out.”

“You mean the tour’s going to be stopping here?”

“That’s right,” Phyllis said. “Georgia Hallerbee stopped by and practically begged me to help her out. I couldn’t say no, even with everything else we’ve got going on right now.”

“My goodness, that means you’re going to have to do a lot of work between now and . . . when is the tour this year, anyway ?”

Phyllis winced. That was one question she should have asked Georgia, she supposed.

“Next week sometime,” she said. “I don’t know the exact day. But there was a story about it in the paper, so we can find out.”

Eve reached over and patted Phyllis’s hand. “I’ll be glad to help as much as I can, but I’m going to be busy myself, you know . . .”

“Of course, looking for a house and getting ready for the wedding,” Phyllis said with a nod. “I understand. You just worry about that. Sam and Carolyn and I can take care of everything else.”

“Yep,” Sam said.

“And of course we’ll leave all the decorations up,” Phyllis went on. “That way the house will be even more festive for the shower.”

“Well, if I can help, just let me know.” Eve stood up. “I’m sure everyone will love what you do with it.”

After Eve had gone upstairs, Sam said quietly, “She’s got a lot on her mind these days. Probably she was more excited about this Jingle Bell Tour business than she sounded like.”

“Oh, I know that,” Phyllis said. “I understand. I just hope I haven’t taken on too much.”

“We’ll get it all done; don’t worry.”

She smiled at him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sam.”

“Well, I don’t plan on you havin’ to find out anytime soon.”

Without really thinking about what she was saying, Phyllis asked, “What do you think of Roy?”

The question appeared to take Sam by surprise. “What do you mean? He seems like a pretty good fella.”

Phyllis hesitated, unsure whether to voice any of the thoughts that had nagged at her during the past couple of weeks. After a moment, she decided that she could talk to Sam about this. He would probably understand and not think that she was just being a snoopy old busybody.

“It’s just that we don’t know much about him. Hardly anything, in fact.”

Sam shrugged. “We know he’s from Houston and that he’s semiretired.”

“Semiretired from what?” Phyllis asked. “He’s never mentioned what business he’s in, has he?”

“Not to me,” Sam admitted. “He just said that he was keepin’ his hand in, whatever it is. I suppose that’s why he had to make those calls. It’s obvious he and Eve are plannin’ to live up here in Weatherford, though, so I suspect after they’re married he’ll go ahead and retire the rest of the way.”

“That certainly appears to be the case.”

“Shoot, I didn’t know you were suspicious of him.”

Phyllis bristled a little at that. “Well, what do you expect? Eve shows up out of the blue with this man, a man none of us has ever met or even heard of until Thanksgiving Day, and announces that she’s going to marry him. Not only that, but it’s not one of those ‘we’ll get married sometime in the future’ things. It’s already December, and she’s planning on getting married before the year is over. But I’m not actually suspicious.”

Sam smiled as if he didn’t quite believe that. “When you get to be our age, plannin’ too far into the future usually isn’t a good idea.”

“Maybe not, but it just seems to me that they’re . . . I don’t know . . .” Phyllis lowered her voice even more. “Rushing things.”

Sam grinned. “Maybe they
got
to get married.”

Phyllis’s eyes narrowed as she said, “Only a man would find that funny.”

He held up both hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean anything by it. And heck, I understand why you’d worry some about Eve. The two of you have been friends for a long time. I worry about her, too, and I’ve known her for less’n three years. I guess when you get in the habit of askin’ questions, it’s hard not to wonder about folks.”

She knew he was talking about her tendency to dig for the truth in the murders she had solved in the past. She had certainly not set out to become any sort of detective. Circumstances and concern for her friends had forced her into investigating those cases.

“It’s nothing like that,” she said honestly. “I’m just curious about Roy—that’s all. I’d like to know more about him before he marries Eve. After all, if she had any family, I’m sure
they’d
want to know all about him. We’re as close to family as she has, at least that she’s close to. And don’t forget—he may be living here if they can’t find a house in time.”

“You’re right,” Sam said, nodding. “You’re absolutely right. So what are you gonna do?”

Now that her concerns were out in the open, Phyllis knew it was going to be impossible to ignore them. She said, “I don’t have time to do anything. I have to get ready for a shower, a wedding, and the Jingle Bell Tour before that. You’re friends with Roy, though, Sam, and you don’t have as much on your plate right now.”

He sat up straighter and frowned. “You want
me
to play detective? I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Phyllis. I never minded helpin’ you out, but I’ve told you all along that you’re the brains of this operation. I’m just the brawn.”

“I just think you should talk to him the next time you get a chance, maybe find out what sort of business he’s in. Men talk about business all the time, don’t they?”

“I suppose.”

“And . . . and you were married, too,” Phyllis said, hoping that she wasn’t crossing a line. “You could talk about being widowers and maybe find out something about his first wife.”

Sam’s frown deepened. “Men aren’t likely to sit around and talk about things like that. At least, men our age don’t. We weren’t raised to be all sensitive and open about our feelin’s, like fellas are today.”

“All right, I’m sorry. Just forget I said anything about it, okay?”

He shook his head. “No, no, it’s not a problem. It’s just gonna take some figurin’ out—that’s all. Don’t worry, I’ll find out what I can. I don’t want to insult Roy, though.”

“Oh, no,” Phyllis said. “That’s not what I want at all. I’d rather not know any more than we do now than offend him.” She wouldn’t be able to stand it if Roy was insulted, and Eve took his side and refused to have anything more to do with her, as she just might.

Sam reached across the table and squeezed Phyllis’s hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

“I really am a terrible busybody, aren’t I?”

“Not hardly. You’re a woman who cares about her friends more than anybody else I know, and nobody can hold that against you.”

Phyllis didn’t know if he was just trying to make her feel better. If he was, it worked. She turned her fingers in his and squeezed back.

Chapter 3

P
hyllis had planned on getting the Christmas tree and all the decorations up that weekend, anyway. She knew that some people put their lights up the day after Thanksgiving or even before. She had seen Christmas lights on houses as early as Halloween, which just seemed
wrong
to her. When she was a girl, the decorations had gone up two weeks before Christmas, at the earliest.

The first thing to do, she supposed, was to take inventory of exactly what she had in the way of lights and decorations. Like most people, she and her late husband, Kenny, had accumulated a lot of things over the decades, and she didn’t use all of them every year.

This year would be different, though. In order to decorate the house and yard properly for the Jingle Bell Tour, she would need every set of lights, every bit of tinsel, every plastic reindeer, every wooden cutout figure of Santa and his elves and the Grinch and the Whos from Whoville and Snoopy on his doghouse, and . . . and . . .

And every manger scene,
she thought as she stood on the porch the next morning, looking at the front yard and trying to figure out what was going to go where. The city had better not come in here and try to tell her she couldn’t put up a manger scene, or that any signs she put up had to say HAPPY HOLIDAYS or SEASON’S GREETINGS instead of MERRY CHRISTMAS. She would
not
take kindly to that at all.

“We’re going to need some of those lights that wrap around the tree trunks, aren’t we?” she asked Sam, who stood beside her.

He nodded. “Probably be a good idea.”

“And of course lights along the eaves and then up the ends of the house to the top of the roof and across. I’ll see if I can get Mike to do that, so you won’t have to clamber around up there.”

“I’m perfectly capable of climbin’ a ladder and gettin’ up on the roof,” Sam said. “No need to bother Mike with it.”

“I just wouldn’t want you falling off and hurting yourself.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m not gonna fall off.”

“You’re going to be stubborn about this, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “More than likely.”