The Gingerbread Bump-Off (22 page)

“You’re certain about that?”

Winthrop shrugged. “I’m sure I didn’t see him, and I think I heard Charles Cochran say something to his wife about the kid not being there. He was upset about it. Seems like Chris had promised to show up for the tour.” Winthrop shook his head. “I don’t know why it would be important to the doctor. Maybe he was just trying to work up some Christmas spirit in the family or something. I guess parents don’t ever like to give up on their kids.”

“That’s true,” Phyllis said. “Do you have any children?”

A slightly pained look came into Winthrop’s eyes. “We were never blessed that way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just tough luck, I guess. Everybody’s got some, of one sort or another.”

Phyllis knew that was true. No one made it through life without some misfortune. Even those people who appeared to have everything usually had some burden they were carrying, even if it wasn’t obvious to anyone else.

Winthrop went on, “What you’re not telling me is why the Cochran kid would want to hurt Georgia. As far as I know, she never had much to do with him. All her business was with his parents.”

Phyllis shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m really not at liberty to say anything about that.”

A grin tugged at Winthrop’s mouth again, but this was a more savage expression. He thumped his right fist into the palm of his other hand and said, “You’ve figured it out! By God, I knew you would, after everything I heard and read about you, Mrs. Newsom. Are you going to go to the police and tell them to arrest Chris Cochran?”

“I don’t have any proof that he did anything wrong,” Phyllis said.

“Yeah, but if they bring him in for questioning, surely they can find something. He’s bound to have slipped up somewhere.”

“Maybe. I don’t know . . .”

“We can’t let him get away with this.”

Sam spoke up, saying, “If there’s one thing you can count on, Carl, it’s that whoever killed Miz Hallerbee won’t get away with it.”

“I hope not.” Winthrop nodded and went on, “I’ll trust your judgment for now, Mrs. Newsom. If there’s anything I can do to help you get the proof you’re looking for, don’t hesitate to call on me.”

“I won’t,” Phyllis said.

“I guess I’d better get back to the car. My wife’s probably wondering what’s going on. She’s not in very good health. I tried to tell her she shouldn’t come out in this cold wind, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Georgia was her friend, too.”

Winthrop shook hands with Sam again, hunched his shoulders against the wind, and hurried back to his car. Phyllis and Sam were on their way to her Lincoln when another voice sounded behind them.

“You’ve got your nerve, coming to the funeral in the first place and then out here to the cemetery like this.”

Phyllis turned and saw Claudia Fisk standing there. Claudia was alone. Her husband was probably waiting for her in their car, Phyllis thought.

“Look, Mrs. Fisk,” Phyllis began, “I’m not sure what your problem is with me—”

“I’ll tell you what my problem is,” Claudia broke in. “You let Georgia get killed right on your front porch, and now you have the gall to come to her funeral.”

Sam said, “Now, ma’am, that’s not exactly the way it was. Phyllis didn’t
let
anybody get killed. She didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Then what was Georgia doing there? Explain that to me, why don’t you?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fisk, but I don’t owe you any explanations.” Phyllis wasn’t about to go into the whole thing about the trouble between Chris Cochran and Laura Kearns. It wasn’t anybody else’s business.

Except the police. She was going to have to talk to Warren Latimer again.

Claudia Fisk was red faced from more than just the wind. Sam took Phyllis’s arm and steered her around the irate woman. Claudia glared at them but didn’t say anything else, and Phyllis was grateful for that. She had already spent more time than she liked to think about brooding over the fact that indirectly, she actually had played a part in Georgia’s death. Georgia had been killed because she was there to tell Phyllis about something, and that something appeared to be Chris Cochran’s attempted rape of Georgia’s assistant, Laura. Carl Winthrop hadn’t been able to confirm that with his recollection of what Georgia had said that afternoon, but Winthrop hadn’t ruled it out, either. And Winthrop’s comment about Chris Cochran not being at his parents’ house for the tour that night was one more thing to weigh on the side of Chris’s guilt.

Winthrop was right about one thing: The police needed to bring Chris in for questioning. Once that happened, he might even confess. Phyllis knew the time had come to talk to Detective Latimer again.

And, speak of the devil, she thought as Sam suddenly squeezed her arm and caused her to look up. She’d had her head lowered against the icy wind, but now she saw the solid-looking figure in an overcoat leaning against the front fender of her car.

“Hello, Detective Latimer,” she said.

Chapter 21

“ M
rs. Newsom,” Latimer replied with a polite nod. “And Mr. Fletcher.”

“How you doin’, Detective?” Sam asked.

“All right, I suppose. A little chilly.”

Phyllis said, “I didn’t see you earlier at the funeral. Or here at the graveside service.”

“I keep a low profile,” Latimer said. “I need to talk to you.”

“And I want to talk to you. Why don’t we get in the car, so we’ll be out of the wind?”

Latimer shrugged. “I was going to suggest the police station, but I don’t guess there’s really any need for that. The car’s fine.”

Phyllis took her keys from her purse and pressed the button on the little remote control that unlocked the Lincoln’s doors. She and Sam climbed into the front seat, while Latimer got in the back.

Even though it helped getting out of the wind, it was still cold inside the car. “Why don’t I turn on the engine so we can run the heater?” Phyllis suggested.

“That’s all right with me,” Latimer said, “but don’t do it on my account. I’m fine.”

Phyllis turned the key in the ignition. When the car started, Christmas music came from the radio speakers. Nat King Cole was singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Even though that was one of Phyllis’s favorite Christmas tunes, she reached over and turned the radio off. Once the heater had had a chance to warm up some, she would turn up the fan on it.

She turned a little in the seat so she could look back at Latimer. “Now, Detective, what can I do for you?”

“Well, you can start by explaining why you’ve been investigating Georgia Hallerbee’s murder when you don’t have any official standing in the case.”

For a second, Phyllis thought about denying that she had done any such thing, but from the determined expression on Latimer’s face, she knew it wouldn’t do any good. So she said, “I just asked a few questions, Detective, and I was going to tell you what I’ve found out. Didn’t I mention just now that I wanted to talk to you?”

“You did,” Latimer admitted.

“And aren’t crimes often solved by tips from civilians?”

“Yeah, but those tips don’t usually come from civilians who have been going around town questioning everybody involved in the case.”

“We were takin’ up a collection for some flowers,” Sam said. “You can see ’em right over there next to the grave with all the other flowers.”

Latimer grunted. “Yeah, I know that’s what the two of you told people. But just between the three of us, we all know that’s not the real reason you visited everybody whose home was on that Jingle Bell Tour.”

“How did you find out?” Phyllis asked.

“Because believe it or not, we question people who are connected to a homicide, too, and several of them happened to mention that you’d been to see them in the past few days. Some of them even seemed to think that you were working with the cops on the investigation.”

“We never told anyone that,” Phyllis declared.

“I’m sure you didn’t. You’re too smart for that. Which means you’re smart enough to listen to a warning: Butt out.”

Sam frowned and started to twist around more in the passenger seat. Phyllis knew he was about to say something angry to Latimer, so she lifted a hand and put it on his arm to stop him. She didn’t want him getting into any trouble because of her.

“You’ve delivered your warning, Detective,” she said in a voice that was almost as chilly as the wind blowing outside. “Now would you like to hear what we’ve found out?”

Latimer hesitated. After a moment, he said, “It wouldn’t be any good as evidence.”

“But it might be reasonable cause for you to dig deeper into some of the things you’ve been told.”

“I don’t guess it would hurt to listen,” Latimer said. “I’m not making any promises, though.”

“There were three people whose houses were on the tour who weren’t at home that night.”

“Meaning they don’t have ready-made alibis.”

Phyllis nodded. “That’s right.”

Before she could go on, Latimer said, “Holly Bachmann, Alan Trafford, and Joe Henning.”

Phyllis’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“What, you thought we didn’t ask those questions, too?” Latimer said. “That’s one of the first things we did. We know about the dispute over the taxes between Trafford and Ms. Hallerbee, but you can forget about him. He was at his office in Fort Worth talking to a guy in Japan.”

“You’re sure about that?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.” There was no doubt in Latimer’s voice. “His office door was open. The security guard and the janitor both saw him a dozen times while he was there, and I talked to some Japanese banker named Nakamura, too. Trafford was thirty miles away when somebody busted that ceramic gingerbread man over Ms. Hallerbee’s head.”

Phyllis winced at the reminder of the brutal way Georgia had been attacked.

“As for Holly Bachmann, she’s out of the picture, too,” Latimer went on. “She had an after-hours appointment with her dentist. A tooth-whitening emergency.”

Sam said, “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

“You’ve seen the lady,” Latimer said. “How she looks is just about the most important thing in the world to her. That was the soonest her dentist could work her in, so she was willing to miss the tour. I talked to the guy, and he backed up her story. So did the assistant who came in to help him and collect the overtime.”

“What about Joe Henning?” Sam asked.

Once again Latimer acted for a moment like he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “Henning’s an interesting character. My gut tells me he’s kind of sleazy, and if I was that old aunt of his, I’m not sure I’d trust him to take care of my businesses. But he’s got an alibi, too.”

“Not a strong one,” Phyllis pointed out. “We know when he left Ranger, and he could have gotten back here to Weatherford in time to attack Georgia.”

“Maybe he could have . . . if he hadn’t had a flat tire out by the Brazos River and had to call AAA to come out and help him. I’ve got the record of the phone call, and I talked to the guy from the garage who went out there and saw the paperwork on it. Henning was twenty miles away when the attack took place.”

Phyllis was impressed by the work Detective Latimer had done, but all these alibis didn’t really accomplish anything except to point the finger of guilt even more at Chris Cochran.

“All right,” Latimer went on. “I’ve been straight up with you, Mrs. Newsom. Now, what do
you
know that I don’t?”

It would have been nice if she had been able to get Laura Kearns’s permission to tell the police about what had happened at the Cochran ranch, but it appeared that wasn’t going to be possible. Phyllis didn’t want to make Laura’s discomfort and embarrassment over the incident even worse, but finding out the truth about Georgia’s murder came first.

“Have you talked to the Cochrans?” she asked.

“The couple who are both doctors? Yeah, sure. They were both home on the night of the tour, too. All evening, in fact, so one of them couldn’t have run over to your house, attacked Ms. Hallerbee, and then made it back in time for the tour.” Latimer shrugged again. “It’s true that they alibi each other, and when it’s a husband and wife like that, you can’t ever be sure, but given their reputation in the community and the fact that they didn’t have any reason to be upset with Georgia Hallerbee—”

“But they did,” Phyllis broke in.

“Did what?”

“Had a reason to be upset with Georgia,” she said. “You don’t know about what happened with their son.”

Latimer leaned forward sharply in the backseat. “With their son?” he repeated. “Blast it, Mrs. Newsom, if you’ve been withholding evidence—”

“Settle down, Detective,” Sam said. “Phyllis just found out about this today.”

“Tell me,” Latimer snapped.

“That’s the main reason I said I wanted to talk to you,” Phyllis pointed out, “so I could tell you about what I learned from Laura Kearns this morning.”

“Laura Kearns . . . That’s Ms. Hallerbee’s secretary, right?”

“Assistant is more like it, but I guess you could call her a secretary. She worked closer with Georgia than anyone else. The way Laura put it, Georgia wasn’t necessarily like a mother to her, but definitely like an aunt.”

“Get to the point.”

Sam said, “You ever hear the expression ‘hold your horses,’ Detective?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it,” Latimer said. “Sorry, Mrs. Newsom, but I don’t see any point in dragging this out all day.”

Phyllis nodded. “You’re right, Detective. Laura Kearns told me that when she went out to the Cochran ranch the day before the tour on some business for Georgia, Chris Cochran assaulted her and tried to rape her.”

“That’s the son you were talking about.”

“Yes. Laura didn’t want to say anything about it, but when she got back to Georgia’s office, Georgia saw how shaken up she was and finally convinced Laura to tell her what happened. Georgia said they should call the police, but Laura didn’t want that. She couldn’t talk Georgia out of telling Chris’s parents about it, though. The Cochrans didn’t believe her. Everyone was upset.”