4 Malice in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice.

  “You ask me, I was proud of her for breaking that horse’s leg. She could have done a lot worse, and let me tell you, he would have deserved it.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I can’t think the folks at Stanford would look too kindly at charges like that. I’m no expert, but I’m sure that’s grounds for expulsion.”

  A few more tears streamed down her face. She grabbed a perfectly folded, embroidered handkerchief from the pocket of her Lucky jeans and dabbed at the bleeding mascara.

  “Ashley’s not a bad girl,” she said. “She just let her emotions get the better of her. And you know, I’m sorry if you felt like I was trying to use you. But what could I do? It was going to ruin her. All that hard work, Cinnamon. Just flushed down the drain over some good-for-nothing boy. I’m sure you can relate to that – we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Your first husband, for instance. He must have been...”

  She sobbed some more.

  But I didn’t feel one ounce of sympathy. For her, or for her daughter.

  Maybe if it had just been the Pugmire horse, then I could’ve understood.

  But we both knew that the madness didn’t end there.

  “So was it you or her that let the horse out that night at the Rodeo?” I said. “Or was it a team effort?”

  My words came out seething, like cold water hitting a hot pan.

  Laurel looked dead into my eyes.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about,” she said. “I know you think I’m a horrible human being, Cin, but I would never hurt anybody over—”

  “Oh, enough already,” a forceful voice said from the French doors behind us. “Just tell her the truth already, would you Mom?”

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.

  I turned around in my chair.

  Ashley’s lips were curled up into a horrible smile.

  Chapter 60

  I watched as she stepped through the doors and made her way across the deck.

  Evil wore a pair of plastic pink-rimmed glasses, a pair of high-waist riding pants and tall leather boots today.

  I knew now that Jo’s bad feeling about the accident had been spot on.

  The innocent, sweet teenage girl who had brought Daniel flowers in the hospital was actually a monster.

  She still played the part of innocent girl, though. Her silky blond hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She wore a pink V-neck shirt and girly pink lip gloss.

  I was sure she had the whole town fooled.

  Ashley took Laurel’s glass of white wine from the table, and took a long drink.

  “Now, Ash, that’s something I won’t stand for,” Laurel said, feebly.

  She wouldn’t stand for her daughter drinking. But she would let her kill animals and attempt to murder people.

  Ashley didn’t listen to her mother. She took several large gulps and then smacked her lips together.

  “That’s the good stuff right there,” she said.

  “Ashley Anne McSween, you need to leave right now. I’m about fed up with—”

  “So, Cinnamon, what do you want to know?” she said, ignoring her mom and turning her attention to me.

  I imagined that this was the way it had always been between them. Laurel, weakly and uselessly pleading with her daughter. Ashley, spoiled and entitled, ignoring her mother like she was a fly buzzing around the room.

  I looked at Ashley, probing her calm eyes.

  “Did you do it?” I said, my voice trembling. “Did you unlock the trailer and spook the horse that night? Did you hurt Daniel?”

  She didn’t flinch a bit under my hateful stare.

  “Unlike Mom, over here, I’m not afraid to admit what I’ve done. Although it’s not like I wanted to do it. I’ve always kind of… well, I’ve always kind of liked the Sheriff. He’s got those beautiful aqua eyes that just…”

  She let out a long, dreamy sigh. All I wanted to do was reach over and rip that ponytail right out of her head.

  And tell her that his eyes were green, not aqua, while I kicked the living daylights out of her.

  But that would have been as futile as Laurel’s mothering techniques. There was no way to make a psychopath understand such things.

  I balled my hands into fists, trying to keep calm.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  She shrugged.

  “He didn’t buy my whole heartbroken, innocent girl routine when he questioned me about Michael’s horse,” she said. “I could tell. And Mom here wasn’t working fast enough on you. By the way, I never thought that was going to work.”

  She paused, shooting a sharp stare at Laurel. Then she picked up where she left off.

  “He would have figured out a way to charge me over that horse thing. And, well, I think my mom told you about Stanford, didn’t she? I just can’t afford a setback at this stage in my education. And I wasn’t about to let some small town sheriff get in my way. No matter how hot he is.”

  I was turning into a one-woman teapot. I was close to exploding. To burning everybody in a five-mile radius.

  Ashley smiled, noticing how close I was to losing it.

  “You know why I’m telling you all of this, Cinnamon?” she said.

  I was squeezing my fists so tight, my nails were digging into the skin of my palms.

  “Why?” I said, barely able to formulate the word.

  “Because you’ve got nothing,” she seethed. “Just some crazy, ludicrous story. There’s nothing that puts me at the Rodeo that night. I’ve got alibis. I planned the whole thing out.”

  She let out a shrill chuckle.

  “I never thought I’d get anything out of that stupid criminal forensics club I joined in high school, but I guess I was wrong. It just goes to show, you never know what you’ll get out of—”

  I stood up quickly.

  If I stayed any longer, my nails would be digging into something else other than my palms. Ashley’s neck.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” I said. “You almost killed someone, Ashley. You don’t see how horrible that is?”

  She smiled.

  “You just tell the Sheriff that it’d be a real bad idea to go ahead with those animal abuse and trespassing charges. Could be he’s the victim of another accident. Or maybe more worrisome, could be that you’re the victim of an accident, Cinnamon. Probably plenty of opportunity for those at your pie shop. Hot ovens, burners, wet floors… gas leaks. So many options.”

  All I could see was red.

  I came real close in that moment.

  Real close to lunging at her. I wanted to beat her until there was nothing left. Until everybody in Christmas River could see just what she was.

  A monster.

  I stared at her a long moment. Then I looked over at Laurel.

  She looked horrified. As if the secret she’d been keeping all these years had finally been exposed to the outside world.

  I didn’t say anything. I bit my lip and walked out of there without so much as glancing back.

  Laurel cried after me.

  “She’ll be away at Stanford in a week, Cinnamon. Just let her have the week, and you’ll never hear from us again.”

  I shook my head, thinking of Daniel laid up in the hospital all these days. Of him stuck in that wheelchair. Of his headaches and the pain meds and the nightmares.

  Thinking of the time Ashley had taken from us.

  Of the honeymoon she’d stolen.

  Her going away to Stanford in a week just wasn’t going to be good enough.

  Chapter 61

  I pulled over to the side of the road, my insides jangling like a wind chime in a tornado.

  I stopped the car, pulling the phone from my pocket.

  I pressed “stop” on the recording function. I hit playback, making sure it had actually been recording.

  I heard my voice come through the speakers, and then Laurel’s. Then Ashley’s. />
  The sound quality was faint, but it would work.

  I let out a sigh of relief. My fingers trembled as I hit save. Then I spent the next few minutes making sure the recording went out to everyone: Daniel, Trumbow, Owen. And Erik Andersen.

  A few minutes later, I called Trumbow. He didn’t answer. I left a message telling him he needed to check his email right away. It was urgent.

  He’d probably get some satisfaction that I’d been wrong about Tex Stevens being the one to hurt Daniel, but I didn’t much care. All I wanted was for him to at least do some of his job. If not the solving cases part, the arresting and pressing charges part.

  I gripped the wheel for a moment, resting my forehead on the back of my hands, trying to get a handle on what I’d just done.

  Ashley had thought she was so smart. She thought she could get away with anything, as long as she could bat those long eyelashes of hers and play the innocent, good girl card.

  She thought she could beat the consequences.

  But her arrogance had been her downfall. She hadn’t even considered that I’d gone to the McSween house with a plan. That I wasn’t there just to throw accusations around.

  She didn’t seem to have any idea that I’d been there to get her confession.

  Maybe I’d seen too many cop movies, thinking I could do something like that. That I could draw a confession out and record it. But it had worked, and now, Ashley McSween was going to get what was coming to her.

  Chapter 62

  I felt my cheeks grow hot and darken as he shook his head angrily at me.

  “How could you do this to me, Cin?”

  His tone had come as a total shock. My knees grew weak and I felt my stomach lurch into my throat.

  He held himself up with the crutches, his arms trembling slightly. It was the first time I’d seen him use them.

  He was doing it to make a point, I realized.

  I had just walked through the door. Feeling victorious. Feeling relieved.

  But I’d been shot down the second I stepped over the threshold.

  “You… you heard it?” I said, having trouble finding my voice.

  “Yes,” Daniel growled in a low tone.

  He glanced over at Warren, who was sitting at the kitchen table by the computer.

  I had the feeling Daniel was holding onto his anger as best he could out of consideration for the old man. But I could tell he was losing the battle.

  “I heard it all right,” he said. “Do you know how much danger you put yourself in by going over there? Do you know what could have happened to you?”

  He shook his head.

  “That girl’s a sociopath. She could have killed you, and her mom would have helped bury the body. No one would ever have heard from you again. I would have never heard from…”

  He sucked in wind. The effort of standing was too much after so many days of being laid up in bed.

  “And maybe what’s worse is that you lied to me, Cin,” he said, his tone rising. “You flat out lied about where you were going. You jeopardized yourself. You jeopardized us.”

  “I did it for us,” I said, trying to hold back tears. “I couldn’t just sit by and let someone do this to you. I love you too much, don’t you see that? Don’t you see that someone had to bring this monster to justice?”

  I could tell he wasn’t buying it.

  “You should have come to me first,” he said. “You can’t make decisions like that alone. Not something that big. You can’t sneak off and play Nancy Drew.”

  Tears were streaming down my face now. I couldn’t hold them back anymore.

  Daniel had never been so angry with me before.

  I wiped them away, but it was useless. More replaced them.

  Warren cleared his throat.

  “Listen, kids, I’m going to give you two some room,” he said.

  He grabbed his wallet from the kitchen counter and walked passed me, patting me on the shoulder.

  “It’s just part of marriage,” he whispered to me on his way out the door. “But don’t worry. You’ll work it out, Cinny Bee.”

  He left, leaving the two of us just staring at each other.

  “I can’t believe you’d lie to me like that, Cin,” Daniel finally said. “I didn’t think you’d ever hurt me like this.”

  I went over to him, reaching for his arm, but he pulled away.

  “Daniel, I—”

  “I don’t even care that it was her,” he said. “I could have been happy the rest of my life if I never found that out. So long as you never put yourself in danger like that.”

  “Daniel, that’s not—”

  “There’s nothing you can say,” he said, hobbling away. “If I could, I’d go out for a long drive right now. But I can’t. All I can do is take the couch tonight, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  I let out a gasp when he said that.

  We weren’t that kind of couple. For as long as we’d been together, nobody was ever relegated to the couch. We didn’t have fights like this.

  I just stared at him, my heart aching for a minute. I brushed away the tears.

  I didn’t know how he could be so cruel. So cruel after everything I had done for him. After I’d cared for him. After I’d cooked for him. After I’d given up our honeymoon because of his job.

  For Chrissakes. After I’d figured out who had tried to kill him that night.

  I had done it because I loved him. And this was the thanks I got for that.

  It was me who should have been angry. Not him.

  My emotions changed in a split second. I stopped crying and felt anger bubbling up deep from my core.

  “Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. “You do what you want. But you don’t know the half of what I’ve gone through these last few weeks, Daniel Brightman. Everything you put me through, and this is what I get? It’s B.S.”

  I grabbed my purse.

  “And you know, you can get on your high horse and say I lied to you. But you’ve been lying to me too,” I said. “You held back on that story about Tex all these years. Maybe if you actually told me things, I wouldn’t have to go around acting like Nancy Drew.”

  I stomped angrily into our bedroom, slamming the door as hard as I could.

  I threw my purse across the room and then threw myself onto the bed.

  I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.

  Then I fell into an exhausted, hollow sleep.

  Chapter 63

  I didn’t know whether it was the bright flash or the sound of the sky splitting overhead a few seconds later that woke me up.

  I felt my eyes fling open. With blurry vision, I searched the walls of the room, trying to remember where I was. Who I was. What I was doing alone in the bed.

  When I remembered that I was home, I thought for a moment that Daniel was still back in the hospital.

  But it didn’t take long for the fight, in all of its ugly intensity, to come back to me.

  I sat up, turning on the nightstand lamp. I fumbled for the glass of water next to it, and brought it to my lips, chugging it until there was nothing left.

  Rain began to splatter against the windows in random patters. A gust of wind wailed against the panes.

  I was placing the water glass back down on the nightstand when another noise jarred me.

  My phone rang. I glanced at the alarm clock. It was just after midnight.

  I answered

  It was Trumbow.

  My heart sped up

  “Hello?” I croaked.

  “Ms. Peters?”

  “Did you get her?”

  He had called me earlier, shortly after getting my message and email. He said they were going out to the McSween Ranch to arrest her, just as soon as they got a warrant to do so, and that he would call me as soon as she was at the station.

  “Well, uh,” he stammered. “You see, there’s no need to worry. It’s just, uh, well, that mother of hers got in our way, you see, when we tried to bring her in. The McSwee
n girl took off on one of the horses on the ranch. We were trailing her for a while, but it’s dark in those fields, Ms. Peters, and we weren’t prepared for that kind of chase. She got into the woods, and then we…”

  “You lost her?” I said in a harsh whisper.

  I didn’t know what else I could have expected from Trumbow.

  I’d been a fool to think he could have handled something like this cleanly.

  “Now like I said, there’s no need to worry,” he said. “We’re sending Deputy McHale over to your house as we speak.”

  I furrowed my brow.

  When I had walked in earlier, a cop car had been sitting outside the house, the way one had been since Daniel upped security earlier in the week.

  “Are you…” I stammered. “Are you telling me nobody is here right now?”

  Trumbow cleared his throat.

  “Well, you see, George had an emergency back at home. Seems his mother…”

  I didn’t hear the rest.

  I dropped the phone and killed the nightstand light. I tiptoed over to the window, searching the dark night frantically.

  I couldn’t see a damn thing out there. Just the rain.

  I shuffled as quietly as I could across the wood floor. I opened the bedroom door and walked down the hallway.

  The guest bedroom was shut, and I pressed an ear to the door. I heard Warren softly snoring.

  He would be safest in there, I reasoned. The window in that room faced the backyard, and was too small for anyone to get into.

  I let him be and then went out into the living room. I walked over to the sofa, leaning over it.

  “Daniel,” I rasped.

  But I realized he was already awake. His eyes shined up from the sofa. He saw me and placed a finger up to his lips. As if to say, shhh.

  “Come here,” he whispered.

  He sat up. I came around and took a seat next to him.

  He looked at me as if the fight had never happened. As if we both hadn’t said those ugly things to each other.