Meltdown in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  He nodded. There was a hint of a smile on his lips.

  “But really Cin, be honest. You don’t have time for this—”

  “Pish-posh – I’ve got the time. Besides, it’ll be fun having a protégé. I’ve never had one before.”

  “You mean it, Cin?”

  I nodded.

  “Now finish off the rest of that pie and get out of here. We’ve got work to do tomorrow morning and you’ll need your rest.”

  That hint of a smile grew into a full-fledged bashful grin.

  Chapter 7

  As I discovered early the next morning, having a protégé wasn’t quite as fun as I thought it would be.

  Brad hadn’t been lying about his gingerbread building skills. And though I wouldn’t dream of saying anything but words of encouragement at this stage, I had to be realistic—

  Maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew by offering to help Brad compete in The Junction.

  It was perplexing to see someone with such crafting talent completely fall apart when it came to cookies, gumdrops, and frosting – but that was exactly what was happening. When it came to making the gingerbread dough, Brad seemed to be almost pathologically unable to correctly measure any of the ingredients. Nobody was going to be eating the gingerbread, but correct measurements were still important to get a crisp cookie base for building competition-worthy houses. Additionally, when it came to actually constructing the house and cementing pieces together, Brad was heavy-handed on the frosting, pressed the cookies with too much force, and ended up breaking the walls multiple times. His hands were clumsy and lacked their usual delicate touch.

  It was mean – but the thought did cross my mind that Brad and Frankenstein would have a lot in common when it came to their gingerbread house skill level.

  Crafting abilities, good… Gingerbread construction, bad…

  By the end of the early-morning session, all we had to show for the hours we’d both put in was a lopsided, jagged first floor of a cookie house that was more off-kilter than a melting snowman.

  I did my best not to let on any of my concerns during the session, though. Instead, I told Brad we’d meet up again the next morning, work some more on the basics, and go from there.

  After all of that, I was in dire need of a break. So I let Tobias and Tiana know I’d be back soon, grabbed my plaid wool jacket and knit hat off the coat rack, weaved my way through the packed dining room, and headed out the front door.

  A thick December mist hovered over Christmas River’s quaint downtown. The pines and aspen that lined Main Street were covered in a thick coat of sparkling hoarfrost. Bright, cheerful bulbs adorning the shops and small businesses glowed in the mist, lighting up the chilly morning. Plump ornaments and fragrant boughs of pine decorated the eaves, and Christmas acoustic guitar music spilled out of busy shops. The smell of smoke from wood-burning stoves perfumed the air.

  Shoppers and tourists strolled down the street, their arms overflowing with bags full of trinkets and gifts.

  It was as cozy a scene as anybody could picture. And I found myself walking slowly down the street toward Meadow Plaza, savoring every bit of it. I didn’t even mind when a stressed-looking young woman ran smack dab into me with her shopping bags and didn’t apologize.

  I guess you could say I was feeling full of holiday spirit.

  I got to the plaza and I stopped at the Christmas River Coffee Shack, where I ordered three extra-large hazelnut coffees to go. I grabbed a handful of cream containers along with the drink carrier, and headed toward the opposite end of town.

  As I weaved my way through the crowds, I mentally went over the Christmas presents I’d gotten for everyone and what I still needed to buy. And inevitably, I began thinking about Christmas itself and the big brunch I was having for all of our family and friends, and how someone would be missing at the table this year.

  I felt my heart sink a little at the thought.

  I knew that it wasn’t right. After all, this was Daniel’s job, and I knew exactly what I was getting into when I married him. But I couldn’t help feeling a little sad about him missing Christmas. Especially considering that he’d be missing our anniversary, too—

  “Ho, ho, ho, young lady!”

  I stopped dead in my tracks and looked up at where the voice had come from.

  Comet, Cupid, and Blitzen in Christmas River…

  Chapter 8

  “What in Kris Kringle’s name are you doing up there!?”

  I craned my neck and backed up to get a better look at the bearded man standing on top of the brewpub’s roof.

  He was walking around like a man on a casual jaunt through the neighborhood – as if there wasn’t a slick layer of hoarfrost clinging to the shingles up there, and as if he wasn’t an octogenarian who’d been complaining of an achy hip lately.

  He held up a screwdriver as he met my unhappy gaze.

  “Oh, jest fixing my friend Lars Claus here,” he said, nodding to the 7-foot plastic Santa Claus that looked a lot like a smiling Viking. “Poor fella’s got a short somewhere and he won’t wave or sing. He’s not lighting up either.”

  I felt my stomach lurch as Warren took a step closer to the edge of the roof.

  He might not have been afraid of heights, but I sure as heck was. And right now, my palms were sweating something fierce.

  “Just… Can you come down from there, please?” I said.

  “And leave Lars Claus in the dark up here? No way.”

  “I’m sure he won’t mind,” I shouted up. “Besides, just where is your jacket, old man? Don’t you know you’ll catch pneumonia in this weather?”

  I felt the eyes of a few shoppers on me as they passed by.

  I supposed we were making a spectacle.

  “I’m right toasty, Cinny Bee,” he said, walking back over to the plastic Santa. “I’ve got the spirit of Christmas keeping me warm and—”

  Just then, the old man’s left boot hit an icy patch and he became a table with three legs. He wobbled and I watched in horror as he started stumbling toward the edge of the roof.

  I was on the verge of letting out a bloodcurdling scream.

  But then, miraculously, Warren regained his balance and stopped just short of the roof edge, narrowly avoiding a deadly face-plant into the concrete.

  “Old man!”

  My heart was pumping faster than the hooves of Santa’s reindeer during a Christmas snowstorm.

  But my grandfather, ever himself, didn’t seem to be in the least bit concerned about how close he’d just come to ending up as roadkill on the pavement outside of his own brewery.

  “Woo-eee. Almost lost my balance there, Cinny Bee.”

  “Get down here this minute – and use the ladder this time!” I shouted.

  He held up his hands and made a shooing motion – like I was the crazy one.

  “Okay, okay. If it means that much to you,” he finally said.

  I didn’t breathe easy again until his boots landed softly on the sidewalk a few moments later.

  “Why, Cinny, you look like you just saw the Ghost of Christmas Past. Is anything wrong?”

  “Wrong!? You know how close you came to becoming mincemeat? Someone your age shouldn’t even be up there in the first place. Do you know how—”

  “Your great grandmother used to make mincemeat pies,” he said, interrupting. “God awful things. Not meat at all, as it turns out. Jest a bunch of raisins and dried citrus peel. I always thought people shouldn’t call something meat if it wasn’t meat. Opposite’s true, too. Take sweetbreads, for example. Now what the pancreas of some poor animal has anything to do with sweets or bread is a mystery to me. Why can’t people just say what they mean, and mean what they say? Is that so hard—”

  Warren’s eyes lit up as they fell on the coffee carrier in my hands.

  “Say, is one of those for me?”

  “Stop changing the subject. Don’t go up on the rooftop again. Get Red or one of your other brewers to go up there. Someone
who’ll heal fast from a broken bone and who won’t—”

  “Oh, pish-posh,” he said, taking one of the paper cups out of the carrier. “I like Red, but that youngin’ wouldn’t know the first thing about how to repair my old friend Lars up there – he’s older than Red by a good sight many years. You know how long I’ve had that Santa for?”

  Lars Claus, who the old man had named so because of his plastic Nordic features, was Warren’s pride and joy this time of year. My grandfather had had the old thing for longer than I’d been alive, and each year, it seemed to have some electrical malfunction that required hours and hours of Warren tinkering around with a toolbox to fix.

  “I’ve had him for 45 years,” he said when I didn’t answer. “That makes our friendship one of my longest.”

  “Well, you’re not going to be friends for much longer if you keep dancing on rooftops like that,” I said, putting a hand on my hip.

  “Aw, you worry too much, sweet Cinny,” he said. “Your old grandpa has been climbing up on roofs since he made his first slingshot.”

  Warren took a sip of the coffee.

  “I tell ya, this caffeine jolt’s just what I needed. All this planning for the fundraiser has worn old Warren down to the bone.”

  “That’s why I came over,” I said. “I wanted to bring you and Aileen some coffee, and see if you guys needed anymore help.”

  He tilted his bald head to one side, as if mentally going through some to-do lists.

  “Well, Aileen’s picking up some more Christmas decorations as we speak, so we’ve got that pretty well covered. And I called Northwest Sam’s to make sure their food trucks are gonna have enough fried grub to feed all of our guests.”

  He rubbed his white beard.

  “Yup, I reckon everything’s taken care of. You still think you’ll be able to make enough pies for the bake sale?”

  As part of the fundraiser, I was donating my pies to be sold throughout the evening. All proceeds from the sales would go to The Pohly County Food Bank. It was another thing that I’d had to add to my massive holiday to-do list, but in this case, I was more than happy to do my part.

  “I’ve got the pies under control, old man,” I said.

  Well, mostly anyway, I thought. I was in for some long nights of baking ahead.

  “Thanks for doing that, Cinny Bee. It’s mighty generous of you.”

  “That’s calling the kettle black,” I said, taking a sip of my own coffee. “I know you must be nearly in the poor house yourself over this fundraiser.”

  Warren shrugged.

  “Well, you can’t turn your back on your neighbors. That’s something your great grandma taught me way back when. She always said that creed, race, culture, place of origin, and past mistakes don’t matter a lick. Any way you look at it, they’re your neighbor. And if they’re hurtin,’ it’s your duty as a human being to help. She always believed loving your neighbor was the foundation of a civilized society.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “That she was – that’s where you get all your smarts from,” he said, winking at me.

  I placed a hand on his back and I started gently nudging him toward the brewpub’s front door.

  The old man might have had the Christmas spirit to keep him warm, but my toes were starting to go numb.

  “Say, did I tell you about the spring beer Aileen and I have been experimenting with, Cinny?”

  I shook my head as we walked inside the warm, cozy pub. A fire was going in the hearth, and there were already so many Christmas decorations, I wondered how Aileen was possibly going to be able to squeeze anymore in.

  “Get a load of this, Cinny Bee – this new beer is going to be a wondrous banquet of deliciousness. Cascadia hops, hints of grapefruit, a few sprinklings of juniper berries to represent Central Oregon, and guess what else!?”

  His eyes were suddenly brighter than Lars Claus on the rare occasions he actually worked.

  “What?” I said.

  “Honey.Lots and lots of sweet, beautiful, local honey. Straight from an apiary out in Warm Springs. You should see this place. Bee’s paradise if I ever saw it. They got flowers and meadows and…”

  Warren rattled on and on and on about honey and juniper berries and the resurgence in popularity of pilsner beer for the next half hour as we sat by the fire.

  I supposed Daniel had a point about him.

  Warren would talk the ear off of a rattlesnake if given the chance.

  But I wouldn’t have had my grandfather any other way.

  Chapter 9

  Later that week I was in the middle of making the filling for a batch of Butterscotch Pillow pies when the kitchen’s back door swung open with such force, I thought a freak tornado must have hit the pie shop.

  Tiana, who was standing across from me working on a batch of salted hazelnut pie dough, let out a small gasp at the unexpectedness of the door bursting open. She backed up as a blur of blond hair and green glittery material came marching through the kitchen.

  “Are you gonna let me make a run for it or are you gonna turn me in, Cin?” the voice boomed.

  I dropped the wooden spoon I was using into the filling.

  “I…”

  “I know you’ll want to be loyal to Daniel, but we’ve been friends a lot longer than you’ve been married to him. You just keep that in mind when it comes down to it. Because things are about to get real, real ugly. I mean ax murderer kind of ugly, Cin.”

  It took me a moment to process what she’d just said, and even then, I didn’t have the faintest idea of what she was talking about.

  Her face was red and splotchy and there was a kind of crazed desperation in her voice. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

  She was clutching a stack of papers to her chest.

  “Uh… Tiana?” I said.

  “Huh?”

  My baking assistant sounded as if I’d just interrupted her watching some sort of horror movie.

  “I’m sorry, but do you think you could make some fresh coffee out in the dining room? I was going to do it earlier, but I forgot.”

  Tiana stole another glance at Kara.

  “Sure thing, Cin,” she said. “I, uh, I was going to tell Toby something anyway.”

  She dusted her hands off on her apron, then quickly left the kitchen, looking glad to get out alive.

  Mere seconds after Tiana was gone, big fat tears began streaming down Kara’s face.

  I rushed around the kitchen island and gave my friend a hug.

  “Jeez, what happened to you? Is Laila okay? What’s going on?”

  “Laila’s fine,” she choked out through some more tears.

  I pulled away, placing a hand over my heart in relief.

  “But I just need to know what you’re gonna do,” she continued. “Let me run? Or turn me in to the Sheriff.”

  I peered into her face.

  “I’m sorry… I don’t understand what that means. Did you do something?”

  She drew in a deep breath, biting her lip.

  Then she held out the stack of papers in her arms.

  Red scrawl peppered the crisp black type like morbid Christmas decorations.

  “Not yet, I haven’t done anything,” Kara said. “But I’m about to, Cin. Because that old wench is going to finally get what’s coming to her.”

  “Who?” I said, searching her angry eyes.

  “Moira Stewart,” she said between gritted teeth. “I’m going to kill her, Cin. Mark my words, I’m going to kill her!”

  Chapter 10

  I poured Kara another cup of peppermint tea and took a seat across from her at the kitchen table.

  My poor friend looked about as distraught as I’d ever seen her. Tear tracks cut through her foundation and stained her face, and her mascara was smeared like she’d gotten caught outside in a thunderstorm. And speaking of thunderstorms, her hair – which was usually nicely curled – appeared as electrified as the Bride of Frankenstein’s.

  The last time I’d seen he
r like this was a year earlier when Laila came down with bronchiolitis.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She drew in a ragged breath, cupping her hands around the mug of hot tea.

  “Moira Stewart,” she said, dragging the name out like a heavy ax behind a madman. “That’s what happened.”

  I didn’t quite understand yet, but it didn’t surprise me that Moira was somehow connected to this. The woman, who had become somewhat of a local legend for knowing things she shouldn’t, had probably made more people cry in this town than all of their financial worries, family illnesses, and unexpected bills put together.

  “That old woman’s getting hers, Cin. So help me God, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to…”

  “What’d she do this time? More rumors about you and Edna?”

  Kara had somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Moira, who lived only a few houses down from her. Kara enjoyed town gossip as much as the next person, so the old woman often invited her over to chew the fat. But then a few months ago, things had taken a sour turn.

  Kara had gotten into a fight with her mother-in-law, Edna Billings, and somehow, the embarrassing details of that fight had become town gossip shortly after one of Kara’s little tea times with Moira.

  Moira never fessed up to it, but she didn’t have to. It was obviously her who had spread the details of the fight around town.

  Their relationship had been on icy ground ever since.

  “It’s got nothing to do with John’s mom this time,” she said. “Who knows why, but Moira has suddenly decided that she too wants to be a writer and nabbed a spot in Pam Dallas’s writing workshop. When I saw her car parked outside of the lodge before our first session this week, I just knew it was going to be bad, Cin. I knew something like this was bound to happen.”

  Kara let out a sigh, dunking the bag of tea absentmindedly up and down in the mug.

  “I’ve been acting civilly to her – not particularly friendly, but as civil as I can. We’ve been doing critiques in the writing workshop. Every participant brings a couple of chapters from their book and gives everyone a copy to read. Pam Dallas says that’s one of the best ways to get better at your writing – to have your peers review your work and offer constructive criticism.”