Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 6)

by Meg Muldoon

  I brushed past him and swiftly walked down the hall. I descended the old creaky stairs of the courthouse, leaving Lt. Sam Sakai and his unbecoming attitude in my dust.

  I could write the story easy enough without anything from him.

  Chapter 3

  After rushing back to the paper’s small downtown office and cranking out 15 dry inches on the dog board hearing, I found myself tired and hungry and longing for the comforts of home.

  I got into my Hyundai – a car that was just about the only thing anybody on a small town reporter’s salary could afford, and I took that fuel-efficient puppy down Main Street, then Greenwood Avenue, winding around the base of Dog Mountain.

  In the decade I’d been gone from Dog Mountain, the place had changed tremendously. It used to be just a little town carved into the leafy, damp wilderness of the Willamette Valley. A town that wasn’t much different from any other small city in the valley. It rained a heck of a lot then, and it still did now. But the people had changed. They weren’t just blue collar working folks that populated the town anymore. In the last decade, plenty of new folks had moved in, attracted to the town by the area’s stunning landscape, fresh air, and proximity to Portland. Not to mention the attraction of Dog Mountain itself, a rolling butte that was renowned for its wildflowers and its stunning views of the entire valley.

  These newcomers to the town were the folks responsible for all this dog nonsense. Somehow word got out that Dog Mountain was a dog-friendly recreation mecca, most likely a strategy by our local visitor’s association trying to capitalize on the town’s name. It wasn’t long before the dog nuts started pouring in. The locals got in on the madness, seeing that there was money to be made by being the dog capital of the country. Dog gear stores, dog grooming centers, dog exercise gyms, and even a type of dog beer are all businesses that thrive in this town. The dog frenzy’s only gotten worse since Dog Mountain was declared Dog Town USA. They adjusted the welcome sign into town after that. It now reads:

  Welcome to Dog Mountain, Oregon a.k.a. Dog Town, USA.

  Population: 30,342 people, 25,212 dogs and counting.

  Mutts of all sizes, shapes and creeds welcome. Wipe your paws at the front door.

  Dog Mountain has become the kind of place where if you don’t have a dog, or say you should have some other type of pet, you’re immediately an outcast.

  I hooked a right down Labrador Lane – the street of my childhood home. Then I drove through the oak tree-lined road to the front driveway. I pulled up to the sunflower-yellow house, noticing that the lights were on inside. I got out, bringing my brown leather purse with me, and I walked up the steps.

  As I ascended them to the porch, I saw that Buddy was waiting by the door. He turned his head back toward me and gave me a pleading look before letting out a long, ghoulish wail.

  “Did Lou go and lock you out again?” I said, throwing my bag over my shoulder and picking him up. “Why that rude, inconsiderate lady. I have a mind to speak to her.”

  I pet his soft little orange head before unlocking the door. By the time we got inside, he was purring up a hurricane of a storm.

  I set the large, pudgy (though I wouldn’t dare call him that to his face), 14-year-old cat gently down on the wood floor of the foyer, then tossed my keys on the nearby counter.

  The house was hot and stuffy. I kicked my heels off as I watched the cat walk down the hallway, crying out for food like he hadn’t eaten in a week. But with his large gut that nearly touched the ground, Buddy, our family’s orange tabby, wasn’t going to fool anyone with his contrived cries of hunger.

  It wasn’t that I disliked dogs, exactly. In fact, when I was a seven, there was nothing I wanted more than the small, cute pug my best friend Heather had. That is, until that pug bit me and left me with a big scar on my wrist. And though it had been many years since I’d gotten over my fear of dogs, I still wasn’t particularly keen on them. Because unlike most people in this town, I knew that beneath Fido’s cute and unsuspecting exterior lurked something unpredictable and wild and possibly dangerous.

  “That you, Sis?” a familiar voice sounded from somewhere deep in the recesses of the old, wallpapered house.

  “Hey, Lou,” I shouted.

  Our mother had named Lou and me after her two favorite aunts on her father’s side – Louise and Winifred. Naming us that had been a nice sentiment. But when you shortened our names, the way we usually did, then we came out to Lou and Freddie. Growing up, we had often been teased about how our names made us sound like a pair of beer-guzzling brothers.

  “Poor Buddy was out there on the porch starving,” I yelled, looking down at the needy feline.

  Lou scoffed.

  “That cat’s the biggest drama queen I’ve ever known,” she said back. “I literally just fed him half an hour ago.”

  I smiled.

  I had suspected as much.

  I pulled off my blazer and hung it up on the coat rack near the door. It had been one layer too many on this hot, humid summer day in the Willamette Valley. But unlike most of the other reporters at the paper, I’d felt the need to wear more than a pair of jean shorts and a lazy top to work. Being relatively new to the job, I didn’t want anyone to get ideas that I didn’t take it seriously.

  I plodded down the hallway, following Buddy to the kitchen.

  Lou was already there, cracking open another can of cat food for him.

  She looked up at me.

  “Well, just look what the cat dragged in,” my older sister said, smiling. “My, my. The legendary ace reporter Freddie Wolf has decided to finally show up to dinner.”

  Lou scolded me, but I knew she didn’t mean anything by it.

  Most days of the week I was late to dinner. It’d always been that way and was always going to be that way so long as I was a reporter. Things constantly came up. And being the perfectionist that I was, it was hard for me to pull myself away from a story that I’d written when I didn’t feel that it was 100 percent perfect.

  Lou, though, hadn’t quite accepted my workaholic habits. We’d been roommates for just over six months now after we both inherited the house, and she still seemed to hold it against me when I didn’t show up to supper on time.

  “I guess that implies that there is a dinner?” I said, looking at her hopefully as my stomach growled.

  “Yes, but you’re lucky there is, Freddie” she said. “I made mom’s Pesto Genovese with basil from the garden. And let me tell you, I came close to finishing off the whole pot of it myself.”

  I stifled a grin.

  Since Lou’s divorce this past fall, her appetite had increased tenfold. She ate like there was no tomorrow. But Lou had our mother’s genes, meaning that she got away with eating like a 300-pound linebacker. She never gained a single pound of consequence. I envied that of her. I, on the other hand, had been unfortunate enough to inherit our father’s build, meaning that I was short, a few pounds over what I ought to be, and I could hardly stomach the occasional pastry or pint of beer without seeing it immediately converted by the scale.

  And I guessed that was why Lou could own a pastry shop in downtown Dog Mountain and still maintain a slender build, while I spent my days rushing around, tracking down stories, hardly eating a thing, and looking more akin to a piece of fruit for all my troubles.

  Life could be cruel, but that’s just how the chips had fallen. And frankly, I liked rushing around all day chasing down stories. It seemed more fun to me than being in front of a hot oven at the crack of dawn.

  Lou rummaged around in the fridge, grabbing all sorts of Tupperware containers. I grabbed a plate and a fork out of the dishwasher, trying to help where I could. It was the least I could do, considering that in the last six months since we both moved back into our childhood home, I had only cooked dinner twice.

  “So, I gather the meeting went long tonight?” she said, scooping out a great big helping of garlicky pesto pasta onto the plate.

  “Ugh, it was so boring, Lou,” I sai
d. “One more piece of evidence gathered from the Whitelaw property, and I would have taken a face plant into my notepad.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” Lou said, throwing the plate in the microwave. “It couldn’t have been that bad. I mean a dog’s life was at stake, wasn’t it? That has to make for a juicy story of some sort.”

  “Yes, but no matter which way you look at it, it’s still just a dog,” I said.

  She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  “Just a dog? Now that’s being rather cynical, Freddie. You better take care to keep that little viewpoint from your readers. I think a few bricks might go through the windows of The Chronicle if people in this town knew that was how you really felt.”

  I waved a hand at her.

  “It’s my job to be cynical,” I said. “And anyway, I’m just saying. Covering a dog board hearing isn’t the same as covering a murder trial.”

  “Well, I’m sure those poor murdered chickens would disagree with you there,” Lou said.

  I smiled.

  “Besides, I’m sure there had to be some drama at the meeting that kept you from falling asleep.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, Myra was the same old nasty person she’s always been,” I said. “Fern Whitelaw’s dog, Mr. Raffles, got off practically scot-free. Delia Davidson was upset with the verdict, which is to be expected. And other than one particularly rude cop, there really isn’t much else to tell.”

  Lou furrowed her brow.

  “A rude cop you say?”

  I nodded.

  “Lt. Sakai. He’s a real prick, if you ask me. He wouldn’t talk to me. And it wasn’t even like I was asking any hard questions. I just wanted a quote.”

  “Sam Sakai?” she said.

  “Yeah, you know him?”

  She smiled.

  “One of The Barkery’s most regular customers,” she said, referring to the name of her bakery. “He’s a tall drink of water, all right.”

  I shook my head silently. Somehow I knew that my sister would use that turn of phrase to describe the officer.

  “He’s got a real sweet tooth,” she continued. “He orders the same thing every time: a Key Lime bar and a cup of black coffee.”

  “Well, you’d be hard pressed to find a ruder person in this town,” I said. “I don’t care how good of a customer he is. He’s a poor source.”

  Lou shrugged.

  “He always leaves good tips,” she said.

  The microwave timer beeped.

  “Well, it sounds to me that if Sam was involved, the dog board hearing must have been somewhat interesting.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But it’s just a long way down from what I used to cover. And you know all that stuff Kobritz told me about working my way up to a better beat eventually? Well, it’s looking to be a long haul. He said earlier that he thinks I have a flair for these kinds of pieces. Which is code for, ‘We want to keep you exactly where you’re at.’”

  Lou put the plate in front of me along with a napkin.

  “That sucks,” she said. “But maybe it’s just the price you have to pay for your dignity, Freddie. You know? That’s more important, if you ask me.”

  I felt my muscles tighten up at the serious turn of the conversation, reminding me why I was back here in Dog Mountain in the first place.

  I didn’t feel like thinking about any of that now. Not when the clock was nearing 10 and I still hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

  I nodded silently, then dug into the pesto in front of me. Lou had served me up a portion that was worthy of her post-divorce appetite. It was too much, but as I got farther into eating it, I decided not to correct her.

  “How is it?” she said, watching me chow down like a hungry mutt.

  I looked up, smiling.

  “Just as good as mom used to make it,” I said.

  “I’ll say,” Lou said, patting her gut and giving me one of her knowing smiles.

  Chapter 4

  I woke up in a cold sweat, feeling like a dragon was working its way up my throat.

  It was stuffy in my bedroom.

  I sat up in bed, catching my breath while simultaneously trying to keep the heartburn down.

  Heartburn had become an ever-increasingly familiar ailment at this hour.

  In the past year, I hadn’t once slept all the way through the night. Part of that I knew was to do with the fact that I rarely ate dinner before 8 p.m. these days, as Lou liked to constantly remind me.

  But the other reasons I couldn’t sleep a whole night through were a little harder to remedy.

  Noticing that I was awake, and never one to miss an opportunity for attention, Buddy got up from his snoozing spot at the edge of my bed and stalked toward me, his wide, heavy paws making big tracks in the soft comforter.

  “Meooowww.”

  He looked at me with a slightly confused expression when I didn’t immediately start stroking his fur. He rubbed his mouth against my shoulder.

  I gave in, petting his soft head, and stared out my bedroom window. The window was partially open, and the white lace curtains were fluttering in a soft breeze that smelled fresh, like it was coming off the McKenzie River a few blocks away. It was a warm night. I could tell by the sounds of the crickets outside. They only chirped like that on warm evenings.

  I stood up, to Buddy’s dismay, and went over to the window. I pushed it farther open, sucking in a deep breath of the night air. I looked out at the front lawn and the sleepy neighborhood, shrouded in shadows cast by the large cherry moon that hung high in the inky sky.

  I’d been dreaming about mom again. Though I didn’t remember any of the specifics of the dream, she’d been there. I could tell by the sad feeling in my heart as I awoke, remembering that she was no longer with us.

  I let out a sigh.

  Sometimes I wondered if moving back home to Dog Mountain had been a bad idea. Other times, I felt bad that I hadn’t moved home sooner. What was the point of being here now, now that she was gone? She would have been happy that Louise and I were under the same roof again. That much was true. But sometimes I wondered if I’d been a fool to listen to her when she told me not to move back home after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had told her that I would – that I planned to quit my job and be here with her. But she’d insisted that I stay exactly where I was. She didn’t want me quitting such a good job at the state’s biggest newspaper to come back home and take care of her. She hadn’t wanted that on her conscious, she’d said. And besides, Dog Mountain was only two hours away from Portland. It wasn’t like I was living across the country. On a good day with no traffic, you could shoot back home in an hour and a half.

  That’s what she’d told me, and selfishly, I had respected her wishes to the tee.

  Most days, I had come to terms with the way that had played out. I’d been here through most of it, after all. Through the very worst parts, holding her hand all the way.

  But maybe in some ways, I hadn’t really been here. Not completely. There’d been distractions. Stories I’d been working on in between. Times when I had to go off into the extra bedroom downstairs and conduct phone interviews with sources. Other things, too. Maybe I’d been here while she was dying, but maybe I hadn’t been here all the way.

  But I was here now. All the way. Having quit that good, career-launching job in Portland.

  The only problem now was, she wasn’t here.

  I sighed again, looking down at the quiet, empty street.

  My mother was a strong, practical woman. One of those women cut from the cloth of the old pioneers who fought so hard to get to this valley over 150 years earlier. Her entire life she worked hard, never complained, and while she had a good deal of charity in her, she did not suffer fools gladly.

  The woman was tough as nails.

  I knew that if she was still alive, she would probably be disappointed in me, leaving The Oregon Daily the way I did and for the reason I had.

  It hadn’t been becau
se I was standing up for what I believed in, or because I wasn’t going to take the long hours and low pay anymore.

  No.

  I had left my job because of a man.

  Because I could no longer take working with him day in and day out. I couldn’t take seeing him in board meetings or on assignments or at the paper’s holiday parties.

  I had to get out of there. Even if it meant a pay cut and a much lesser job at a small paper.

  I bit my lower lip, thinking of what she would have said about me being back here in this house. Working at the paper I interned for ten years earlier at the age of 18.

  She always made it clear that she expected me to be the next Katie Couric.

  Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t lived to see that dream of hers die. But that thought sure didn’t make me feel better.

  And it sure didn’t make me miss her any less.

  A stiff wind rustled the leaves of the trees around the house and caused the curtains to flutter around me. They reminded me of tethered ghosts.

  I sighed again.

  Sometimes I thought this house was haunted.

  Sometimes, I thought it wasn’t just this house.

  End of Sample

  To continue reading Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery, click here.