“The world doesn’t stand still for very long, does it, Sam?”
“No, sir, it sure doesn’t. I don’t guess we’d really want it to, but sometimes I wouldn’t mind if it just slowed down a little.”
Roy grinned. “Eve’s right. That’s the good thing about being retired. You can live life at your own pace, at least part of the time. I intend to slow down and enjoy the time I have left, and Eve’s a big part of that.”
“She’s a fine gal, all right,” Sam said. He didn’t say anything about how Eve had had her cap set for him for a while after he moved into the house. He didn’t figure Roy needed to hear about that.
“I guess we’d better get the other piece of that board cut,” Roy said. “You’re going to put it on the back of some bookshelves, right?”
“Right.” Sam nodded toward the shelves, which were put together, just lacking the back to stabilize them before he could start staining them. He moved around the board sitting on the sawhorses and positioned the saw. Roy caught on fast. This time he didn’t need Sam to tell him where to stand or which part of the board to hold.
A moment later, sawdust and the racket of the saw filled the air in the garage again.
Chapter 4
“ S
o, you see, I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Sam said later that evening as he and Phyllis sat alone in the living room, talking quietly about the conversation Sam had had with Roy Porter that afternoon. Eve and Carolyn were both upstairs, in their rooms, with the doors closed. Phyllis had checked on that before she motioned for Sam to follow her into the living room, although she felt a little bad about it, almost like she was spying on her friends.
“But he didn’t actually tell you the name of the company he worked for?” she asked.
Sam shrugged and shook his head. “No, he didn’t. But I don’t see anything fishy about that. If he’d told me the name, it wouldn’t have meant anything to me. He talked enough about all that engineerin’ stuff to convince me that he was tellin’ the truth. I mean, how many people this day and age would even know what a slipstick is?”
“A what?” Phyllis asked with a frown.
“Slipstick,” Sam repeated. “That’s another name for a slide rule.”
“Oh, I know what that is, of course. Or was. I don’t think I’ve even seen one for years. They don’t make them anymore, do they?”
“You got me,” Sam said. “You can probably buy ’em online.”
Phyllis shook her head. “That doesn’t really matter. What’s important is . . . you got the feeling that Roy is . . .”
“All right?” Sam finished for her when Phyllis’s voice trailed off. “Not an ax murderer who’ll chop Eve up and put her in the freezer?”
“Sam! I never said
anything
even
remotely
like that—”
His grin made her stop. “I’m just joshin’,” he said. “I know you just want Eve to be happy. I talked to Roy for a good thirty minutes out there, and he seems like a good, solid, decent guy. I think he’ll take good care of Eve.”
“Did he say anything about his first wife?”
“Not much. He mentioned that she’d been in real estate in Houston.”
“Did he tell you her name?”
Sam nodded. “He mentioned it, just in talkin’ about her, you know. Julie. That’s what he called her.”
“Julie Porter,” Phyllis repeated.
“Sounds like a nice lady.”
“You can’t go by somebody’s name,” Phyllis said, thinking of some of the murderers she had uncovered. Some of them had seemed just as respectable as they could be, but they’d had a fatal flaw that had led them to become killers. Maybe a lot of people had that same flaw, she had thought in her darker moments, but they never committed murder because circumstances never forced them into it.
She went on, “Roy didn’t suspect that you were . . .”
“Interrogatin’ him?” Sam asked with a twinkle in his eye. “No, I don’t think so. We were just two fellas shootin’ the breeze while we cut up a board. Nothing suspicious about it.” He grew more serious. “I got to admit that I didn’t care much for it, though.”
“I’m sorry I asked you to do it,” Phyllis said, and she meant every word of it.
By the next morning, Phyllis had convinced herself that she’d been crazy to even worry about Roy, and she felt bad about dragooning Sam into digging for information. She thought about apologizing for involving him, then decided it would be better just to let the whole thing go.
Anyway, she had Christmas decorations to buy, and by the time she and Sam headed for Fort Worth in her car, that was all she was thinking about.
The Christmas store took up a big storefront in Ridgmar Mall, on the west side of Fort Worth. Phyllis loved browsing in places like this when she didn’t have anything in particular to buy. That wasn’t the case today, however.
Today she was on a mission.
She bought strings of multicolored lights. She bought white icicle lights to hang from the eaves. She bought sheets of lights to wrap around tree trunks. She bought lighted lawn ornaments. She couldn’t help but wonder just how much electricity all these lights were going to use, even though she bought the more energy-efficient LED lights, and she would have sworn that at one point she heard Sam mutter under his breath, “Visible from space.”
There was a lighted manger scene that had to be assembled, and a mechanical Santa that waved, turned from side to side, and said, “Ho, ho, ho,” in a booming voice. There were plastic reindeer made to perch on the roof, and they came with their own spotlight to illuminate them. There were bells and white lights that would also work as decorations for Eve’s wedding, which would take place in the house on New Year’s Eve. There was so much stuff, it took Sam several trips to load all of it in the trunk and backseat of Phyllis’s car. By the time he was finished, it was almost noon, so they took the escalator to the mall’s upper level and went to the food court to get some lunch.
Since there were fewer than three weeks until Christmas, the mall was crowded, of course. As they sat at one of the tables and ate pizza, Sam watched all the people streaming past them. After a few minutes, he said, “The schools haven’t let out for Christmas vacation yet, have they?”
“I don’t think so,” Phyllis said. “Why do you ask?”
“There are all these little kids, and a lot of ’em look old enough that they ought to be in school.”
Phyllis knew what he meant. Even though there weren’t as many children in the mall as there would have been if the schools were out for Christmas vacation, a large number of the women shopping had youngsters with them, and not just preschoolers, either. Phyllis saw plenty of kids from the ages of six or eight to fourteen or fifteen.
“I guess they’re all homeschooled,” she said. “Either that, or their parents just don’t make them go all the time.”
“That’s just crazy,” Sam said as he shook his head. “It wasn’t that long ago you’d never see a kid more than five years old out anywhere when school was in session. Maybe one every now and then who couldn’t go because he was sick. What are people thinkin’ when they just can’t be bothered to send their kids to school? I swear, parents these days just do whatever’s the most convenient for them without ever thinkin’ about the kids.”
Phyllis reached over and patted his hand where it lay on the table. “I know,” she said, “and they get on people’s lawns, too.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You’re makin’ fun of me.”
“Maybe a little.”
“After you bought enough Christmas stuff, you could enter a giant lights and display contest. Find the true meanin’ of Christmas. Win money, money, money.”
“That’s right, Charlie Brown.”
Sam laughed. “Pardon my French, but I’m damn glad I met you, Phyllis Newsom.”
“I’m damn glad you did, too,” Phyllis said. “Oh, goodness. There’s something I forgot.”
“Couldn’t have been something in the Christmas store. We bought everything there already.”
“No, I’ll probably have to go over to the craft store for this. I need to find patterns so I can make Mr. and Mrs. Claus outfits for the gingerbread men.”
Sam frowned. “Come again?”
“Those ceramic gingerbread men on the front porch. Georgia Hallerbee suggested that it would be cute if I dressed them up.”
Sam thought about it for a moment and then nodded slowly. “I can see that,” he said. “Of course, sittin’ up on the porch the way they do, folks won’t be able to see ’em very well.”
“Why not?”
“Because everybody’ll be blinded by the glare from all the lights.”
Phyllis gave him a mock frown. “There aren’t going to be
that
many lights.”
“Maybe not, but I reckon the power’s gonna drop in the rest of the town when you switch ’em on.”
They sparred like that for several more minutes as they finished their pizza, then left the mall and took their soft drinks with them. A large craft store was only a couple of blocks away, so Phyllis went there to look for the patterns she needed while Sam browsed in a nearby used-book store. She knew she wouldn’t be able to find patterns made specifically for gingerbread men, but she found patterns for stuffed bears that she thought she could adapt.
She met back up with Sam and went to one more place she had thought of while browsing the pattern books. They stopped at Sam’s Club, where she bought industrial-sized bottles of ground cinnamon. Looking around, she also bought a few more decorations.
When they got back to the outskirts of Weatherford in the middle of the afternoon, Phyllis took the old highway into town, rather than fighting the traffic where South Main crossed the interstate.
“Let’s just leave everything here in the garage except for the cinnamon,” she suggested when they reached the house. “I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. I’m not as young as I once was.”
“Most days I don’t even remember bein’ young,” Sam said as he climbed out of the car. “I can stack some of the boxes on the workbench. I won’t be needin’ it for a while.”
“What about the shelves you’re making?”
“They’re ready to stain,” Sam explained. “Thanks to Roy givin’ me a hand with them yesterday. I don’t plan on startin’ any other projects until after the New Year.”
“Why not?”
“Well . . . I figure with all you’ve got goin’ on, you’ll be needin’ my help a lot.”
“That’s nice of you, Sam. I don’t want to take you away from what you really like to do, though.”
“You won’t be,” he assured her. “You may not realize it, but you’re a lot better lookin’ than a circular saw.”
“I’m flattered . . . I think.”
They unloaded the boxes, stacking them on and below the workbench and putting the mechanical Santa in a corner. Carolyn had heard them drive in, so she came out into the garage to help them.
“Goodness, Phyllis, did you leave anything in the store?” she asked.
“There’s not really
that
much stuff,” Phyllis said. “Besides, this is probably the only time the house will ever be part of the Jingle Bell Tour, so why not go all out?”
Sam frowned. “So you’re sayin’ you bought all of this because you’ll probably never use it again?”
“No, I . . . well, I guess it did kind of sound like that . . . but what I meant was . . . I don’t know. Maybe I just got carried away by the Christmas spirit!”
“There’re worse things,” Sam said.
That was Thursday. The Christmas Jingle Bell Tour of Homes was scheduled for the next Tuesday evening. That gave Phyllis four days to get ready, leaving Tuesday during the day for any final touches. She took full advantage of the time. On Friday she sketched out a diagram of the yard and house, indicating which decorations she wanted where. She also planned to work on the Mr. and Mrs. Claus outfits for the gingerbread men, but when Carolyn heard about that, she immediately volunteered to make the clothes. Since Carolyn was an excellent seamstress, Phyllis happily turned that part of the project over to her old friend.
Eve had promised that she and Roy would take time off from their house hunting that weekend to help out, and although Mike had to work Saturday, Phyllis’s daughter-in-law, Sarah, and grandson, Bobby, would be there to lend a hand as well, and Mike was coming on Sunday afternoon, after church. There would be plenty of willing hands, and Phyllis had a feeling they would all be needed.
In fact, it was almost like a party, with people going in and out of the house, lots of talk and laughter, and plenty of food. Phyllis persuaded Sam to wait until Sunday afternoon to put the lights and decorations on the roof and in the trees, so Mike could be there to help. She explained that Mike really enjoyed doing that sort of thing, which was true enough, but what Phyllis really wanted was for Sam not to be clambering around up there by himself. Sam was smart enough that he probably realized that, too, but he didn’t make an issue of it.
The place got even more crowded during the weekend as several of the neighbors saw all the decorating going on and came over to help. For quite a few years, everyone in the neighborhood had gotten together at this time of year for their annual Christmas cookie exchange, but after what had happened a couple of years earlier during that holiday event, the tradition had gone away. In fact, the house next door to Phyllis’s where Agnes Simmons had lived for so many years was still vacant. Between the terrible housing market and the fact that a murder had been committed in this particular house, interested buyers were practically nonexistent.
But it was good to see Lois and Blake Horton again, as well as Vickie and Monte Kimbrough. Both couples had had some very rough patches in their marriages, and Lois had been away for a while in rehab, but at least they were together at the moment and seemed to be reasonably happy. Helen Johannson from the corner of the next block came down to Phyllis’s, bringing her young children, Denise and Parker. Oscar Gunderson ambled over, another of the retirees who were common in this neighborhood. He was carrying a pair of live pine trees in nice pots that he set on the porch for the ladies to decorate. Phyllis knew secrets about all these people, she thought as she greeted them, but they were still her friends and she was glad to spend time with them.