“That Christmas tour lady?”
Phyllis said, “That’s right. Did you know Georgia Hallerbee, Mr. Henning?”
Joe shook his head. “No, not really. Aunt Margaret introduced me to her once, I think, when she stopped by here to talk about that tour. I didn’t have anything to do with it, though.” He smiled. “That was all Aunt Margaret and Sophia.”
“Were you here the night of the tour?” That seemed to Phyllis like a natural enough question.
“Nope. I’d driven out to Ranger to check on Aunt Margaret’s store there, and I was late getting back.”
“Then you missed all the festivities.”
“Just as well,” Joe said. “I never cared all that much for crowds.”
“And there was certainly a crowd here that night,” his aunt said. “Everyone seemed to be having a splendid time, too. Of course, at that point no one knew what had happened to poor Georgia, so they just went on with the tour as if nothing was wrong.”
Laura Kearns and Carl Winthrop had known something was wrong, Phyllis thought, but the regular members of the tour hadn’t, other than the fact that one of the scheduled stops had been dropped. Naturally they had gone on and enjoyed their evening.
She thought they had learned all they could here, at least for the time being, so she stood up and Sam followed suit. “We need to be going,” she said.
“I expect you have some other stops to make,” Mrs. Henning said.
Phyllis nodded. “That’s right. Thank you for the donation, Mrs. Henning.”
With a frown, Joe asked, “You didn’t go overboard, did you, Aunt Margaret?”
“I gave them a hundred dollars,” Mrs. Henning answered tartly. “I appreciate your concern, Joe, but I am not one of those dotty old women who hand out big chunks of their money to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who stops by.”
“I know you’re not,” Joe said, “but you asked me to help you keep track of things, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Of course, dear. I meant no offense.”
“None taken,” he assured her. He reached for his wallet and went on, “And even though I didn’t really know Ms. Hallerbee, I’d be happy to contribute, too—”
“Not necessary,” Mrs. Henning said. “Phyllis, dear, can you put Joe’s name on the card or whatever you send with the flowers?”
“Of course,” Phyllis said. “I’d be glad to.”
“Well, in that case . . .” Joe shrugged again. “Thanks. And it was nice to meet you.”
He shook hands with Phyllis and Sam again, then stayed in the parlor with Mrs. Henning while Sophia showed them out. Sam waited until they were in the pickup driving away before he asked, “What do you think?”
“Obviously, even if she didn’t have an alibi, Margaret Henning couldn’t hurt anybody. She’s probably not strong enough to pick up even a little figurine of a gingerbread man, let along that big thing.”
“Maybe she sent Sophia to do it.”
“Sophia was here the night of the tour, remember?” Phyllis paused, then went on, “But Joe Henning wasn’t.”
“I figured you noticed that. He said he only met Ms. Hallerbee once, though, so what reason would he have to hurt her?”
“We only have his word for that,” Phyllis pointed out. “He comes in here from out of town, moves in, starts taking care of Mrs. Henning’s businesses for her . . . It would be easy enough for him to siphon off some money into his own pockets, I’ll bet.”
“And Miz Hallerbee’s business bein’ dollars and cents, she might’ve figured that out and threatened to tell the old lady,” Sam speculated.
“It’s a reasonable motive,” Phyllis said with a nod. “Unfortunately we have no idea if there’s any truth to it. But it’s one more place to start looking.”
“So we’ve been to two houses and got somebody at each one that we can’t rule out. You know what that means.”
Phyllis looked over at him. “What?”
“If this keeps up,” Sam said, “you’re not gonna have any shortage of suspects.”
Chapter 16
N
o one was home at the next two houses on the list, and by that time Phyllis thought they ought to head back to the house so she could get lunch ready.
As soon as Sam pulled onto the block, Phyllis spotted the car parked at the curb in front of the house and recognized it as an unmarked police car. She and Sam went in through the garage, and as they walked up the hall toward the living room, she heard a man’s voice she recognized as belonging to Detective Warren Latimer.
Carolyn was sitting in the living room with Latimer. Phyllis sensed a definite tension in the air. Carolyn wasn’t that fond of the police, which was understandable since both she and her daughter had been accused of murder at one time or another. Things like that tended to put a strain on a relationship.
Detective Latimer got to his feet and nodded to Phyllis. “Good morning, Mrs. Newsom,” he said. “I wish I was here on a more pleasant errand.”
“You came to tell me that Georgia Hallerbee is dead,” Phyllis said.
Latimer nodded. “I figured you might have heard the news by now, but I wanted to notify you officially.”
Phyllis didn’t say anything about Mike telling her before the police even released the information. She didn’t want to get her son in any trouble. Georgia’s death was public knowledge now, so Phyllis just nodded and didn’t make any comment concerning how she had heard about it.
“She never regained consciousness,” Latimer went on. “We were hoping she would.”
“So she could tell you who attacked her.”
Latimer’s burly shoulders rose and fell. “Yeah, sure, that and just hoping she would recover. But it would’ve been all right with me if she could have told us who to look for, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe she did anyway, in her conversations with people before she was attacked, or in the records from her home and business.”
If Latimer realized she was fishing for information, he didn’t give any sign of it. Instead, he just said, “Yeah, we’re looking into that. I don’t suppose there’s anything else
you’ve
thought of that you can tell us?”
“I’m afraid I told you everything I heard and saw that night, Detective, and everything Georgia said to me in the days before she was attacked.”
That was true as far as it went. Of course, she had uncovered some more information since then, Phyllis thought, but Latimer hadn’t asked her about that . . . exactly. She knew it was a bit childish fencing with him like this, but she did it anyway.
“Well, if you do remember anything else, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call. You’ve got my number.”
Phyllis nodded to confirm that she did indeed have his number.
“I’ll be going, then.” Latimer nodded to Carolyn. “Mrs. Wilbarger.”
“Detective,” Carolyn said coolly.
Latimer nodded to Phyllis and Sam as well and went to the front door. Sam followed him, said, “So long, Detective,” and closed the door after him.
“I can’t stand that man,” Carolyn said in the living room.
“You don’t like Isabel Largo, either,” Phyllis said.
“That’s right, I don’t. And what do they have in common?”
“They’re both cops,” Sam said as he came back into the room. “If anybody didn’t know you, Carolyn, they might think you were Ma Barker instead of a nice, law-abidin’ retired schoolteacher.”
Carolyn snorted. “That’s easy for you to say, Sam Fletcher,” she shot back at him. “
You
haven’t been arrested and unjustly accused of murder.”
“Yet,” Sam said with a glance and a wink at Phyllis. “Around here, there’s always a chance it could happen.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Phyllis said. “I’m sorry you had to deal with the detective, Carolyn.”
“When I saw who it was at the door, I thought about not letting him in,” Carolyn admitted. “But then I told myself it might be something important. He hadn’t been here long when you got back, only about ten minutes, but I was about to call your cell phone and ask when you were going to get here.” She paused, then asked, “Did you find out anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. We talked to Margaret Henning. Her house was one of the stops on the tour.”
“Margaret Henning!” Carolyn repeated. “Is she still alive?”
Sam said, “Hale and hearty and sharp as a tack, leastways as far as I could tell.”
“Her grandnephew Joe was there, too,” Phyllis added. “Evidently he’s living with her now and helping her manage her business affairs.”
Carolyn frowned in thought. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of him. One of Tom Henning’s shirttail relatives, I take it?”
“Something like that,” Phyllis agreed. “He wasn’t there at Margaret’s house on the night of the tour.”
Carolyn grasped what that meant right away. “So he doesn’t have an alibi for the time of the attack on Georgia.”
“Not really,” Phyllis said. “He was supposed to be driving back from Ranger about then. But we don’t know exactly when he left out there.”
“Maybe we can find out,” Sam suggested.
“How would we go about doing that?” Carolyn asked.
“Gimme a minute,” Sam said as he went over to the computer. Phyllis had a pretty good idea what he had in mind—what she figured was the same idea that had occurred to her—but she waited to see what Sam was going to come up with. He went on, “What’s the name of the business Miz Henning owns out there?”
“Henning Farm Equipment, I suppose,” Phyllis said. “Just like the other stores she owns.”
After a couple of minutes of searching on the Internet, Sam said, “I’ve got the phone number of the store. My Google-fu is powerful.”
“Where in the world did you get
that
?” Carolyn asked with a frown.
“I don’t really know—heard it or read it somewhere—but it stuck with me.” Sam took his cell phone from his shirt pocket, opened it, and put in the number he had gotten from the computer. After a moment, someone answered, and he said in a brisker tone than his usual lazy drawl, “Hi, I need to speak to your manager if he’s available, please. It’s an insurance matter . . . No, son, I’m not selling insurance. I’m an investigator.”
He winked at Phyllis again.
A few more moments went by, and then Sam said, “Is this the manager? Yes, sir, my name is Art Acord. I’m an insurance investigator.” He named one of the giant companies everybody knew, then added, “Out of Dallas. One of our insureds was involved in an auto accident on Interstate 20 a few days ago near Thurber, and we’re trying to locate witnesses. I’ve got a partial plate number that we think belongs to a fella named Joe Henning . . . Oh? You do know him? That’s great. We haven’t been able to get hold of Mr. Henning yet, but we have information that says he was at your store in Ranger on the day in question and started back to Weatherford about the right time to put him on the scene of the accident . . . No, no, he’s not in any trouble at all. He wasn’t involved in the accident. We just need to talk to him and get a statement from him in the event that he did witness the accident. The date was . . . let’s see here . . .” Sam gave the date of the Jingle Bell Tour as if he had just found it on his paperwork. “Uh-huh . . . You happen to remember when he left? . . . No, that’s too early. I don’t think he would have been where the accident took place at the right time to have seen it happen. See, that’s why I took a chance on calling you. Now I can cross him off my list of potential witnesses and won’t have to spend any more time trying to track him down. Won’t even have to bother him . . . I sure do appreciate your cooperation, partner. You have a good day now.”
Sam closed the cell phone, breaking the connection, and smiled at Phyllis and Carolyn, who looked at him with an attitude that bordered on flabbergasted.
“Where in the world did you learn how to do that?” Carolyn asked.
“Movies and TV, of course.”
“Who’s Art Acord?” Phyllis wanted to know. “You didn’t just make the name up, did you? It sounds vaguely familiar.”
“He was an actor in silent Western movies way, way back when. I figured the chances of anybody under the age of fifty ever hearin’ of him were pretty slim. Heck, most people under the age of eighty probably wouldn’t know who he was.”
“What did you find out about Joe?”
“He left Ranger between five thirty and five forty-five,” Sam said. “That’s as close as the fella could narrow it down.”
“It takes a little over an hour to drive from here to Ranger,” Phyllis mused. “Probably less if your foot’s heavy and you don’t get stopped by a state trooper.”
“So Joe could have gotten here in time to hit Miz Hallerbee with that gingerbread man,” Sam said, “although that would’ve been cuttin’ it pretty close.”
Carolyn said, “But if he was in Ranger that afternoon, how would he have known that Georgia was going to be on the front porch at that particular time?”
“Maybe she called him and told him,” Sam said.
Phyllis nodded. “That’s right. If she’d uncovered something fishy about how he’s been handling Margaret’s business, she could have called him to threaten him and told him she was coming to see me about it.”
“Why would she threaten him and tip her hand?” Carolyn asked. With a decisive nod, she went on, “It’s more likely she was blackmailing him.”
Phyllis’s eyes widened. “Blackmailing him? That doesn’t sound like Georgia at all! Do you really think she would do such a thing?”
“You never know what somebody will do,” Carolyn said with a shrug. “I mean, according to the police, I killed somebody a couple of years ago.”
“Yes, well,
I
knew with absolutely no doubt that you hadn’t done such a thing and never would. And I can’t see Georgia Hallerbee as a blackmailer, either.”
“Well, then, she let it slip to this Joe Henning that she suspected him, and he figured out somehow where she would be. I don’t know. I’m not a detective and never claimed to be one.”
“Of course, Henning’s not the only suspect,” Sam pointed out. “There’s the Bachmann woman, too.”
“Who?” Carolyn asked.
Phyllis filled her in on their visit to Dan and Holly Bachmann’s house. “But we have even less reason to think she might have done it,” she went on. “The only things that make her suspicious at all are the facts that she wasn’t home that night, so she doesn’t have an alibi—that we know of—and she looked strong enough to have picked up that gingerbread man.”