Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery

by Muldoon, Meg

  He pulled away, smiling.

  I felt my lips turn up. I was smiling too.

  “Should you really have done that, Lieutenant Brightman?” I asked. “Kissing a murder suspect? Doesn’t that violate some code of some sort?”

  “You forget,” he said as we started walking again. “I’m not a Lieutenant anymore. And even if I was, Cinnamon. It wouldn’t matter.”

  We walked a little farther and ended up in front of his black pickup truck.

  “You know, I really liked you,” he said. “Sometimes, I’ve thought about what would have happened if I stayed behind.”

  I let out a sigh.

  “I’ve thought of that before too,” I said. “Would it have worked?”

  “Maybe we’ll get a chance to find out,” he said, opening the truck door for me.

  He drove me back home. It had stopped snowing.

  As I got out of the car, he leaned over to say something.

  “Do you forgive me yet?” he asked.

  I made it look like I was thinking long and hard about it.

  “Well, let’s just say you’re making some progress.”

  We made plans for him to stop by the shop the following day.

  And I knew that the chills wouldn’t come back that night.

  Chapter 29

  I woke up the next morning, feeling more awake and more alive than I had in a long time.

  If I thought about it too much, I might have felt bad about the way I was feeling.

  I might have felt bad that I was feeling so good with Mason dead. That I was feeling so good with me being a potential suspect in his murder.

  But I was doing a pretty good job of not thinking about any of those things this morning.

  I got dressed, shoveled the driveway, made coffee and breakfast for Warren and me, and got ready, thinking about Daniel Brightman’s arm around my waist and his lips on mine.

  That one image almost erased the fact that Bailey and Evan were getting married.

  Almost.

  But I promised myself I wouldn’t dwell anymore on any of it until after the competition. Bailey was playing dirty. She had chosen to drop that bomb on me because she knew it would jar me.

  I’d heard, through a friend who worked over at the Chamber of Commerce, that she was planning on opening up her own bakery soon. She was just looking for publicity at this competition, no doubt, and was looking to upstage me.

  But I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  I thought about what Daniel had said. That I was tough.

  He was right.

  I drove over to the shop in the dark wintry morning. Usually, it was silent and still and dead at this hour of pre-dawn. But today was the big Christmas parade. Burl Ives was already blaring from the speakers set up downtown as a flurry of behind-the-scenes parade people got the floats ready.

  It was going to be a busy day at the shop.

  The parade was always a high point in the tourist season. Because it took place right downtown, lots of locals and out-of-towner alike ended up wandering into my shop. I was going to be working hard, baking pies all day long to keep up with the stream of customers.

  But I had some good thoughts to keep me warm.

  I pulled up to the dark store and parked. I got out, and fished my keys out of my pocket, then opened the door.

  Right away, I knew something was wrong.

  A cold draft of wind hit me in the face, rather than the usual warm, cozy air that perpetually smelled of caramelized fruit fillings and buttery crust.

  I stood in the doorway for a moment, frozen by a paralyzing fear.

  I looked around the dark dining room. Nothing appeared to be out of order. Everything was neat and clean, the way I left it last night before I locked the front door and closed up.

  But I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  The blinds were moving with a draft that shouldn’t have been blowing through.

  And whatever was wrong had happened in the kitchen.

  I thought about calling the police or calling Daniel. But an uncontrollable need to know gripped me. That, and the fact that it was my shop, and I wasn’t going to wait 15 minutes before I found out what was wrong.

  I walked cautiously across the tile floor, leaving the front door open behind me in case I needed to get out quick.

  I walked behind the counter, and then took a deep breath.

  I went through the swinging door to the back, my throat dry like I’d swallowed a handful of sand.

  My eyes scanned the dark kitchen. I flipped on the light switch.

  I didn’t see it right away. But when my eyes drifted over to the far right corner of the kitchen and saw the crumbled mess in the corner, I nearly fell apart, right then and there.

  I dropped my bag and ran over to it, no longer caring if the burglar was still in the shop.

  No longer caring that a window was broken, with a gaping hole chilling up the kitchen.

  All I could see were the ruins in the corner.

  I screamed in a kind of mad, crazed anger. I felt like I might blow my top, like my anger might shoot upwards and break my skull into a thousand pieces as the rage looked for an escape from this pent-up body.

  My dreams of winning this year’s Gingerbread Junction Competition were lying in a crumbled, mangled heap on the kitchen floor.

  Chapter 30

  “So you locked up the store about 6 p.m. last night? Is that right?”

  I nodded solemnly.

  We were standing in the kitchen, the bright and cheerful sounds of the Christmas parade bleeding through the big hole in the back porch window.

  Sheriff Trumbow looked tired. A murder and break-in in the span of 48 hours would do that to a man. Especially a man that normally doesn’t do much more than push paper from one side of his desk to the other.

  “Any idea who would have done this?” the sheriff asked.

  I had plenty of ideas. Plenty.

  But it was just a matter of telling the sheriff without sounding like a jealous ex-wife.

  “You know how the Junction gets,” I said. “It’s always very competitive. But this is never happened before.”

  I rubbed my face.

  “The only difference this year, that I can think of, is that Bailey’s entered the contest.”

  I glanced at the sheriff. He lifted his eyebrows at me.

  He didn’t know all the details, but he knew enough to know that Bailey and I hated each other.

  “Do you think she was capable of doing this?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Honestly, I can’t answer that question objectively,” I said.

  He rubbed his red face.

  The back door opened, and a deputy who had been out on the porch looking at the broken window came in, holding something in his gloved hands.

  “Did you leave this outside, Ma’am?” he asked, holding up something shiny.

  I squinted at it, the light catching the steel and blinding me for a moment.

  Then, with horror, I realized what it was.

  The knife didn’t belong to me.

  “Where was that?” I asked.

  “In one of the empty pie tins on your porch out here,” he said. “Is it yours?”

  I shook my head, feeling like I had just stumbled into some quicksand.

  “Burglar must have left it,” I said.

  What was that doing on my porch?

  How on earth did it get there?

  I glanced over at the knife block on the counter. All but one was there, and that one was up in the front case.

  Plus, I didn’t recognize this knife.

  The deputy looked at me hard for a moment and then placed the mystery knife into a bag.

  I had a bad feeling about that. A real bad feeling.

  “A lot of strange things going on in and around your shop lately, Miss Peters,” the sheriff said.

  “Don’t I know it,” I said, trying to sound calm. “What about this break-in? What c
an you do, Sheriff?”

  He put his notepad away into his top pocket and readjusted his Smokey the Bear forest ranger hat atop of his balding head.

  “We’ll do what we can,” he said. “We’ll test the doorknob for fingerprints, and see about what Deputy Greene found out there. Hopefully, we’ll find something.”

  “I don’t suppose the penalties for destroying a gingerbread house are too severe?” I asked, feeling a drop of sweat form on the side of my temple.

  “Well, no,” he said. “But breaking and entering is serious.”

  I nodded.

  “That is, if anyone actually did break in and enter,” he said, clearing his throat.

  I was about to ask him something else, but then realized I didn’t understand what he was talking about.

  “What do you mean? Of course someone broke in. How do you think that window was broken?” I said.

  He stuck out his upper lip, like he didn’t believe what I was saying.

  “We just have to wait and see,” he said.

  He tipped his hat and then him and his deputy went out the front door, leaving me with a mess of glass and broken gingerbread on my floor, and an uneasy feeling in my gut.

  That last thing he said just wasn’t sitting well.

  What was that supposed to mean?

  Did the sheriff think I had something to do with the break-in?

  Did he think I would have done that to my own shop? That I would self-sabotage myself in some sort of elaborate scheme?

  The front door bell jingled, and I realized that I needed to get to work, otherwise one of the biggest money-making days of the year would be ruined, just the way the gingerbread house had been.

  And I couldn’t be a victim twice over. Not when there was something I could do about it.

  Chapter 31

  “I’m going to murder that…”

  I thought I could see steam coming out of Kara’s ears as she tried to find the right word to describe the soulless person who would destroy a work of art with such malicious hatred.

  She struggled for the word, and finally just settled on looking down at the crumbly cookie frosting mess at our feet.

  Eventually, we would have to clean it up. But not yet. It was still just too painful.

  I was rolling out pie crust when Kara came in. I had phoned her earlier to let her know what happened. She was at the shop about five seconds flat after that. I didn’t want to think about how she got here through all the parade traffic outside. I could just imagine her weaving her car around the Christmas River High School marching band and the news channel weatherman’s float while honking and yelling at them to get out of her way.

  “I mean, is she insane?” Kara said, rubbing her temples. “Doesn’t she know that by doing this, she’s put her life in danger?”

  “Best not to even joke about those things,” I said. “Given what happened to Mason.”

  Kara crossed her arms.

  “Who said I was joking?” she said. “And Mason’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “I don’t know what in the hell’s been going on lately. But it all seems to be happening around my shop. I’ve been thinking, and I’m not sure that it’s all just coincidence.”

  Kara looked up at me, catching my eyes.

  “There’s something else I haven’t told you,” I said quietly.

  “What?” she said.

  “The sheriff found something else when he was here,” I said. “Something out on the porch. Somebody left a knife out there.”

  “A knife?” Kara asked, saying the words so quietly, it was like she was lip syncing them.

  “I’m really worried, Kara,” I said. “I feel like something’s going on and I don’t have a clue what it is.”

  “It’s gotta be Bailey,” Kara said. “She’s messing with you. But do you think she killed…”

  Suddenly, there was loud yelling and hollering coming from outside. The parade was turning down Main Street. Santa’s float couldn’t have been too far behind given the loud screaming going on.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Bailey’s stupid and she’s a homewrecker, but a murderer? I doubt she’d have the guts for that.”

  Kara nodded.

  “But I wouldn’t put it past her to… arrange something,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t either,” Kara said.

  “But I just don’t see the angle,” I said. “I don’t know what killing Mason would have gotten her.”

  I shook my head.

  “And why is she doing this all of a sudden? She’s getting married to Evan for Christsakes. She’s got the ring. She’s got everything. Why all this now? I haven’t even seen either her or Evan in months.”

  Kara shrugged.

  “Who knows why crazy bitches do what they do,” she said. “All I know is that we’re screwed.”

  I sighed. She was right. There was no way we had enough time to make another Gingerbread mansion.

  The contest was lost before it had even started.

  All my dreams of bright, sunny skies and warm sandy beaches and tanning oil lay somewhere among the broken cookie paneling of the gingerbread house on the floor.

  And I couldn’t even grieve for it properly. I had too much work to do in the kitchen for the hordes of tourists who would be coming into the shop after the parade finished.

  Kara saw the look in my eye. That tired, exhausted, stressed-out as a one-legged table kind of look.

  “Listen,” she said. “I should get back to my store, too. But I’ll be back tonight with some wine and we can plan on how we’re gonna exact our revenge, all right?”

  I nodded, wiping away a drop of sweat that was running down my temple.

  “There’s a lot going on that I don’t understand,” Kara said. “But there is one thing I know, Cin. She’s going to be sorry. Very, very sorry when we get through with her.”

  I tried to smile, but no matter how much I willed myself to, I couldn’t do it.

  “I’m sorry, Kara,” I said. “I’m sorry if she did this to get back at me. Going after the gingerbread house is a low blow. She shouldn’t have included you in her warpath.”

  Kara half-smiled.

  “She involved me the day she betrayed you, Cin,” Kara said. “And the bitch doesn’t even know the meaning of warpath. Wait until she sees what we’ve got in store for her.”

  Kara left, and I could hear the screaming of the crowd as Santa Claus’s float meandered down the street.

  The sharp noise grated on me like I was a chunk of hard cheese.

  Which was exactly how I felt. Cold and hard, and completely devoid of holiday cheer.

  Chapter 32

  I felt like I could have slept for a decade.

  The tourists were coming in and out of the shop like there was a food shortage in town, and my place was the only one with supplies.

  I was running back and forth between the front counter and the kitchen, bringing out fresh pies and taking money and doing loads of dishes. It was utter madness, and it reminded me that I really needed to get someone to take Bailey’s place. It had been far too long since I had help at the shop, and I kicked myself for getting into this situation again. Owning my own pie shop was a dream fulfilled, but I didn’t bank on playing cashier or waitress when I had set up this place.

  Finally, around late afternoon, the tourists were steadily filtering out, which was a good thing because I was nearly out of pies and even ingredients to make pies.

  On the bright side, I had made a lot of money for the day. I tried to focus on that as I loaded up the dishwasher with another batch of plates.

  I heard the front door jingle and washed my hands before going out to meet the customer.

  “What can I get you to—”

  I stopped mid-sentence.

  “I’ll take a piece of the blueberry,” the woman said, pointing at the glass, her big, clunky wedding ring catching the light.

  “Well,” I said. “Th
is season’s full of surprises. I didn’t ever expect to see you here, Gretchen.”

  Her graying hair was puffed out from the winds outside, and she had on her trademark big fur coat. The muted light of late afternoon fell harshly on her wrinkled face. She looked like a mummy who was in need of a drink of water.

  But there was something different about her then when I normally saw her from across the Christmas River auditorium, standing in front of her gingerbread house.

  That arrogant look that was normally on her face was no longer there. She actually looked almost normal. Not the archnemesis enemy she’d been all these years during the competition.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” she said. “And I just wanted to see how you’re doing. I heard about… Mason.”

  I handed her a slice of pie, raising my eyebrows.

  I looked at her hard for a moment.

  Gretchen, in all the time I had known her, had never so much asked me how I was doing in casual conversation.

  Now, after my gingerbread house was destroyed by an unknown assailant, she was here, snooping around.

  Was this her way of gloating? Had she been the one to ruin my hopes of ringing in the New Year on a tropical island?

  “I’m fine,” I said. “As for Mason, he’s most definitely not, as you’ve probably heard.”

  She winced. The first time I had ever seen any form of emotion on her face other than arrogance or jealousy when I took the competition from her.

  I was speechless for a moment. I didn’t expect the news about Mason to have that effect on her.

  I mean, Mason loved her creations. Loved them. But Gretchen was such a snob that I never got the feeling she looked at Mason as anything other than a minion of sorts. He was someone she could depend on at the competition to give her the win. This perhaps was why she was lamenting his death.

  She knew with Mason gone, she couldn’t count on anything.

  Not that it mattered, though. With me out of the picture, she’d take it, easy. I didn’t give Bailey a chance against the experienced Gretchen O’Malley.

  “It’s just so shocking, isn’t it?” she said. “I just can’t believe that could happen in a town like Christmas River. I thought this was a safe place.”