by Meg Muldoon
He stared off into the wall behind us, the whites of his eyes the color of aged papyrus.
“He didn’t deserve to go like that,” Warren said. “I don’t care what kind of fella he was. That’s no way to go.”
Warren’s words just hovered in the air above of us for a moment like a black moth.
I stole a glance at Aileen.
She was staring down vacantly at the diner table, appearing to still be in a state of deep shock.
“Was he alive when you got there?” Daniel asked Warren.
The old man nodded.
“Just barely,” he said. “He was blue in the face. All that blood just…”
“Did he say anything?”
“He started to,” he said. “But he didn’t finish. He said the word ‘hail.’ Maybe he was hallucinating. Then he…”
Warren trailed off again.
“There’s, uh, there’s something else,” he said. “I need to tell you about.”
He pulled something from the pocket of his jeans.
“Rip didn’t come to Geronimo last night just to try our beer,” he said. “I, uh, I invited him over special.”
“How come?” Daniel asked.
With trembling hands, Warren unfolded a piece of ruler-lined paper and straightened it out on the table.
I felt my gut tighten at the sight of it.
“I was hopin’ to have a heart to heart with Rip,” he said, tapping the paper. “I needed to talk to him about this.”
I felt my mouth drop open slightly, recognizing the jagged, unsteady scrawl on the page.
“YOU’LL REGRET TONIGHT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE,” it read.
“Cinny knows what this is,” he said. “I told her about it. Somebody had been leaving notes like these on the pub door for the past few weeks. Someone who I thought had to be Rip. Who else would care about us opening? So I called Rip over to confront him about it. That’s what he was doing there last night.”
“And did you?” Daniel said. “Did you confront him?”
Warren nodded.
“What’d he say?”
“That he didn’t do it,” Warren said. “That he wouldn’t dream of sabotaging a fellow brewer like that. That to do that would be a violation of his ethics.”
Warren bit his lip as a heavy silence fell over the room.
“Tell me the truth, Daniel,” he finally said. “As a law enforcement officer, this looks bad to you, don’t it?”
Daniel looked at the page and then back up to the old man.
He cleared his throat.
“The way something looks don’t matter a bit, Warren,” he said. “What matters is what actually happened. Which we’re going to find out. I give you my word.”
“Well I hope to God you do, son,” he said, his quaking hands reaching for the coffee cup. “Because right now, I got a feeling that I’m up a creek without a paddle, and I’m headed for a damn waterfall.”
He looked down glumly. Aileen grabbed a hold of his hand, but it didn’t appear to reassure the old man in the least.
Nobody had as much as touched their apple pie.
Chapter 28
“I just can’t believe something like that would happen,” she said, pacing the pie shop kitchen, the baby’s head resting peacefully on her shoulder. “I mean here in Christmas River? This isn’t that kind of town. People don’t just get… they don’t just get murdered.”
I looked up from the pan of recently roasted peaches in front of me.
Kara was saying the same thing that was said in countless small towns where a crime like this had taken place.
People always thought that small communities should be immune to murder, theft, and other crime, though I never understood why. The evils that existed in any big city existed easy enough in every wholesome, God-fearing small town in the world. All you had to do was go to a city council or school district board meeting to see that malice and other untoward sentiments did indeed exist in the hearts of small-town folk.
Murder may not have been a regular customer in Christmas River, but it sure as hell wasn’t a foreigner, neither.
“And I just… I just can’t believe that it was Rip who was murdered,” Kara continued. “Remember how crazy I was about him during senior year when he worked at the Gas Mart? How I made you come with me there to strut up and down the aisles and try to get his attention? For a while there I was convinced I was going to be the next Mrs. Lawrence.”
She shook her head at what I imagined was the memory of her misspent efforts.
“Well, I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way,” I said. “You make a much better Mrs. Billings.”
She smiled warmly.
“I think so, too,” she said, looking down at the precious baby in her arms.
These days, it was easy to forget that once upon a time, Kara had zero immunity to bad boys like Rip Lawrence.
“What do you think he wanted to talk to you about?” she said, peering hard at me.
I’d told her about Rip’s little visit to my pie shop. About how he’d wanted to talk to me about something. How odd it had been, considering how he’d never said so much as a full sentence to me before.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He said it had to do with a mutual friend. I thought he meant Warren. Maybe he wanted to talk about Geronimo Brewing or something.”
I wished to God that I hadn’t blown him off the way I had that afternoon. Now, I would never know what it was he wanted to tell me. Or whether it had any connection to his demise.
“Did he say anything else?” Kara asked.
I had debated not telling her about the last part. But I figured now that the man was dead, it wasn’t my place to censor the things he’d said.
“He mentioned you.”
“Me?” Kara said, lifting her eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I said. “He asked what you were up to these days. I told him, and he said to give you a message.”
“A message?”
“He said that should you find yourself unhappily married anytime soon, that his door was open. And that he always did like you. He was, uh, just involved with somebody back in the day and that you were too young then. Jailbait, is what he called you. But nowadays, since you’re all grown up, he’d reconsider dating you.”
Kara stared out the window a long moment, mulling over the ‘message.’
Then she shook her head.
“I was a real fool back then, wasn’t I, Cin?” she said, letting out a sigh. “To fall for a no-good man like that?”
She could sense the BS in his words, even with me saying them for him.
“I guess I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” she said after a moment, biting her lower lip.
“You speak however you need to, hon,” I said. “If Rip wanted folks to say nice things about him when he passed, then he should have been nicer to them in life.”
Kara nodded, patting Laila on the back.
“How’s Warren holding up?” she asked, changing the subject.
She’d already asked the question at least three times already.
“He’s back at the apartment with Aileen, sleeping,” I said. “But he’s pretty shaken up about the whole thing.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Kara said. “A man was murdered in his brewery on opening night. That’s practically the worst thing that could have happen.”
I nodded, not meeting her eyes.
I didn’t want to let on that I was worried sick about the old man. He wasn’t a spring chicken. And while my grandfather had always been tough, this kind of event was upsetting enough to knock even a twenty-something off his feet. Let alone a man in his 80s.
Additionally, Christmas River was a small town that had its share of folks who liked to wag their tongues for entertainment’s sake. And I knew that at this very moment, their tongues were wagging to the tune of “Murderous Old Man Kills Rival Brewer on Fourth of July.”
It was the juiciest bit of gossip to hit Christmas River since I foun
d Mason Barstow’s cold and lifeless body in the woods behind my shop several years ago.
And it made me sick to my stomach to think about.
I started peeling the hot peaches too soon after they’d come out of the oven, and the tips of my fingers paid the price. I pulled my hands back and winced.
“Son of a…” I grumbled.
Kara scanned my face.
“It’s going to be okay, Cin,” she said, clearly talking about more than my singed fingers. “I know you’re worried about Warren. But he’s the toughest old man this side of the Mississippi. He’ll get through this just fine.”
“It’s not just that,” I said, biting my lower lip. “I hate seeing him so disappointed. He’s worked so hard to get the brewery running. It’s been his dream.”
To think of all of his hopes being crushed the way they had, well… kind of killed me.
Baby Laila Mae let out a screeching wail that seemed to reflect my own internal suffering. Kara rocked her back and forth a bit, trying to calm her down.
“Warren will pull through, Cin,” she said. “And who knows? Remember what they say about how there’s no such thing as bad PR? The brewery might do better than you think after this.”
“You’re saying that a man being murdered can be chocked up to bad PR?”
Kara always did have a unique way of spinning things.
She shrugged.
“Everyone knows Rip Lawrence wasn’t exactly a saint,” she said. “Speaking of which, you got any theories as to who actually did the deed?”
I grabbed a paring knife and started slicing the roasted peaches for the pie.
In all honesty, I hadn’t given much thought to it.
All I knew was who hadn’t done it.
“It could have been anybody,” I said. “It seemed like the whole of Christmas River was celebrating the Fourth at Geronimo’s last night.”
“They didn’t find the gun?” Kara asked.
“Not that I know of,” I said. “Though Daniel’s not on the case. It’s a conflict of interest.”
“You know, there were always rumors about Rip,” Kara said. “About him using the brewery as a front to move drugs through Central Oregon. That he was this big drug king pin.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Did you hear that from Moira?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe.”
“Well, forgive me if I don’t put too much stock in what Moira Stewart has to say,” I said.
Knowing what kind of woman Moira was, I reckoned she was also spreading nasty rumors about my grandfather being a murderer, among other falsities.
“Well, Moira is like one of those tabloid magazines, Cin,” Kara said. “She spews a lot of nonsense, but when the story’s true, she’s always the first one to get it. Anyway, she said that—”
“Uh, miss?”
I lifted my head and looked at the swinging divider door.
“That batch of Moundful Marionberries is just about done, Tobias,” I said. “They just need to cool another five minutes and—”
“Uh, no, miss,” he said. “That’s not what I wanted to ask. You see, there’s, uh, there’s somebody out front here asking to talk to you.”
I felt my stomach drop.
“Who?” I said, my voice having gone dry.
“A man, says his name’s Captain Lou Ulrich and he’s with the police.”
Kara and I looked at each other at the same time.
We were both thinking the same thing.
This couldn’t be good.
“Well, I don’t suppose there’s any use keeping him waiting,” I said. “Tell him to come on back.”
Tobias nodded and disappeared behind the door.
“Do you want me to stay?” she said. “For moral support?”
I shook my head.
“Thanks, but it’s okay.”
Kara squeezed my shoulder, then began collecting her purse and the baby bag.
“It’s gonna all be just fine, Cin,” she said again. “Just fine. I know it.”
I nodded at her gratefully for the kind words. She gave me one last reassuring look before heading out the door.
I took in a deep breath.
I wished that I could believe her.
Chapter 29
The woods smelled of pine needles, juniper, and grasses all baking beneath a searing summer sun.
Above, a stiff wind stretched the branches of the trees. Strong sunlight filtered down through the canopy, casting dancing shadows on the forest floor.
It was a beautiful, hot summer afternoon in the woods of Christmas River. The kind of afternoon that you might dream of when stuck in the middle of a February storm while watching the snow pile up outside.
But as it was, I was having a heck of a time appreciating the weather.
Because my mind was on a certain chubby police captain who had been trying to siphon information out of me for the last half hour.
I walked briskly along the dirt path that led through the forest, my mind rehashing every bit of the conversation that had taken place.
Lou had been given lead on the investigation, since Daniel being involved would constitute a conflict of interest. And since the Sheriff’s Office was too shorthanded to investigate the murder on its own, and since the crime had taken place in the city proper, Lou Ulrich, the Christmas River Police captain, had first dibs on heading the investigation.
“Describe to me what you saw when you walked into the brew house last night,” Lou had started his questioning with. “Every detail.”
I closed my eyes, sucking in a deep breath of woodsy air as the words from my answer floated around in my head.
“I heard Aileen scream and I thought something had happened to Warren. But when I got there, I saw that it wasn’t Warren. It was Rip Lawrence lying dead there on the floor by the far tank.
“Blood was everywhere.”
“But you didn’t see any kind of weapon in the brew house when you walked in?” Lou had asked.
I had shaken my head then.
“Does Warren own any firearms, Cinnamon?”
I had been expecting a question of that nature when Tobias had told me that Lou Ulrich was there to see me. But for some reason, it still blindsided me.
“Warren’s always said he doesn’t believe in guns,” I had said. “He’s always said folks get lazy and let guns sort out the things which logic and love could settle easy enough.”
“Now, has this always been his philosophy, or did he only come to it after fighting in Korea?” Lou had said.
I had let out a disgusted scoff then.
If Lou Ulrich thought he had something there, he was barking up the wrong tree. Warren had only been deployed at the very end of that conflict, and hadn’t fired his weapon once.
“You’ll have to ask him yourself,” I said. “Though what I can tell you is that Warren served his country faithfully, Captain Ulrich. And you’re in no position to judge him.”
Lou Ulrich had just smiled at me. Amused.
The questioning had gone on from there.
I caught sight of the bridge and made a run for it, forcing my legs to pump hard against the dirt path. I was wearing a pair of jeans, a sleeveless shirt, and flats: an outfit that I had no business running in. But sometimes, a person just needed to run. What you were wearing made no difference.
The bridge shook under my weight. I stopped when I got to the middle and leaned over the railing, watching as the fast water wound like a snake around boulders and submerged branches.
When it came to my life, sometimes it just seemed like the notion of peace and quiet was this fleeting, unattainable dream that would never fully materialize.
Like anytime things got too quiet, too peaceful, too easygoing and smooth, something would jump out into the middle of my path and completely sucker punch me. And the next thing I knew, I’d be flying back in midair with nothing to hold onto.
I thought back to the way Warren had looked this m
orning. About the dark bags under his eyes and the grey parchment color of his skin.
I gripped the bridge railing hard, feeling my nails dig into the wood.
He should be spending his days fishing up at the lakes, savoring another beautiful summer in Christmas River. Not having to defend his good name, livelihood, and dreams against a sneaky, no-good cop like Lou—
The bridge started shaking under somebody else’s weight. I brushed away the lonely tear drop that had started to slide down my face, and I leaned over, keeping my eyes glued to the water while the stranger passed.
But a moment later, the footsteps had stopped.
His body jolted slightly when our eyes met, causing the cigarette dangling from his lip to nearly drop into the rushing river below.
Chapter 30
“I, uh, I didn’t expect to run into you here,” he said, taking the smoldering cigarette out of his mouth and hiding it behind his back.
Ian looked like he’d had too much coffee and not enough sleep, which wasn’t all that different from the rest of us. Today, he was wearing a Pearl Jam T-shirt, and ripped, frayed jeans, looking like he’d stumbled straight out of the mid-90s.
I smiled warmly at him.
In everything that had taken place in the last 24 hours, I hadn’t given much thought to Ian. But if I were in his shoes, I probably would have done just about anything for a one-way ticket back to Glasgow right about now.
I was sure he’d been hoping for a lot more fun out of his American vacation. Not to be overworked, underpaid, and to have his grandmother discover the body of a murdered man.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” I said, nodding to the hidden cigarette. “I’ll skip the lecture too if you want, but you should know that you’re going to want those taste buds one day when you become a world-famous chef.”
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.
“Who said anything about being a world-famous chef?” he said.