Missing in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 9)

by Meg Muldoon

  “Well, I’m sure it was just some stupid kids, anyway,” Kara said. “You know what it’s like around here when school begins. The little hooligans try to get their last hurrahs in before they have to buckle down and do their homework. Wreaking havoc all over town. Spraying graffiti and vandalizing things.”

  “Hooligans?” I said.

  The way she talked made the kids around here seem like they came straight out of the movie The Warriors.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen them hanging around the Snow-Cap Diner all summer. Dressed in black, wearing dark eye makeup and giving death stares to everybody who walks by. They create trouble wherever they go. I mean, really, Cin. You’re married to the Sheriff. You should know these things.”

  I found that the corners of my mouth had turned up into a near smile at Kara’s unique take on Christmas River’s crime problems.

  I was pretty sure she was blowing the danger of those goth-looking kids completely out of proportion. In my experience, it was usually the straight-laced, buttoned-up, perfect-seeming kids who raised the most hell. The goths and the punks and the hipsters were usually quiet and introspective and mostly respectful.

  “I guess Daniel forgot to mention that we had a crime wave on our hands,” I said.

  Kara didn’t seem to pick up on my sarcasm.

  “Yeah, I bet you $30 it was those hooligans who—”

  But she stopped midsentence as the back door suddenly flung open, and a bald 80-something-year-old suddenly appeared, red in the face and mad as a disturbed beehive.

  “I mean, jeez, Cinny,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Something like this happens, and you don’t call your old grandpa right away? I have to find out from the Sheriff?”

  He stomped through the kitchen past us, poking his head through the dividing door. He paused for a moment, surveying the damage in the dining room.

  “Lout,” I heard him mumble beneath his breath, obviously referring to whoever had chucked the brick. “Nobody does this to my Cinny Bee and gets away with it. Nobody.”

  He came stomping back in through the kitchen.

  “Anyway, how come you didn’t call me right away, Cinny?”

  He was obviously more hurt than angry about it. And I struggled to respond.

  “It’s just things were crazy here, and we didn’t want you to worry—”

  “Well, I would have appreciated somebody calling me right away,” he said, interrupting me.

  He started pouting.

  “I heard the sirens but I just thought that there was some medical emergency somewhere,” he said. “But to find out two hours later that the sirens were really going to your pie shop…Well that’s nothing short of enraging, Cin. That’s—”

  I stood up and mauled him with a big bear hug, thereby stopping his tirade in its tracks.

  “I’m sorry,” I said after a moment. “I just didn’t want to worry you. That’s all. Everybody’s okay, which is all that matters.”

  The words seemed to cool his anger a little bit, but not completely.

  “What am I, an emotionally fragile person or something?” he said, pulling away. “Didn’t want to worry me… balderdash, Cinny Bee. Pure balderdash.”

  But there was lightness in his tone when he said it, and I knew that he’d already forgiven me.

  “But are you really okay?” he asked. “Are you hurt at all?”

  “I’m okay,” I said in a calm and collected voice. “Really.”

  He shook his head.

  “That lout who did this is going to pay,” he said. “Mark my words. You mess with my Cinny, you mess with me.”

  He jabbed a thumb into his chest as he said it.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kara crack a big smile. Her body convulsed slightly, as if she was fighting back laughter.

  I knew she didn’t mean anything by it. She just got a kick out of my grandfather, the way so many of my friends and loved ones seemed to.

  I suddenly noticed that Warren was holding something square and flat under his arm.

  “What’s that?” I asked, nodding to it.

  He followed my gaze.

  “Oh, this,” he said, as if he too had forgotten what he was carrying. “Well, when the Sheriff called, I was already on my way to see you. Remember how you were asking me about the Christmas Flynn legend and I was telling you about how there was that folk singer in the early 70s who made an album about it all?”

  He handed me the record.

  “Well, I found it in storage for you last night. Thought you might want to have a listen.”

  I glanced down at the smooth square board in my hands. The cover was a photograph of a young man sitting in a rocking chair on a porch, his feet up, a guitar in his hands, and a Mona Lisa smile on his lips. Rugged dark eyes – almost black, even – peered out from below a pair of thick eyebrows. And, as typical of the time period, he sported a mess of unruly brown hair along with a thick mustache.

  The words on the album said “Songs About Christmas” and the name Tom Bullock was written beneath it.

  “Thanks for this, Grandpa. I really appreciate—” I started saying.

  But the sentence dropped off like a rock shelf into a lake as something in my brain suddenly clicked.

  I was too taken aback by the dark eyes looking up at me from the cover to finish my thought.

  And the fact that I’d seen those dark eyes somewhere before.

  Chapter 39

  I rummaged around in the afternoon heat of the attic, looking through stacks of boxes marked “Daniel’s Old Stuff.” Searching for the thing I knew I’d helped him pack when we moved into our new house here on the meadow a few years ago.

  It was early afternoon, and having nothing else to do with the shop being closed, I’d come home for the day. Both Warren and Kara had wanted to stay with me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I knew both of them had lots of work to do – at the brewery and the ornament shop, respectively – and I didn’t see why any other business should suffer because of the brick going through my business’s window.

  Plus, a couple of reporters and photographers from local news stations had started to hover around outside the pie shop, having somehow been alerted to what had happened. I didn’t want to stick around and answer any more of their questions than I had to, so I decided to come back home and hole up here.

  The first thing I did after greeting and feeding the pooches was go straight up to the attic and start looking for the old record player that Daniel had inherited from his brother. Daniel’s older brother had loved music, and had owned a decent-sized record collection – which was packed away somewhere up here, too. Daniel had always talked about one day getting around to unpacking it all and bringing it downstairs to listen to, but I had the feeling that might not ever happen. I got the sense that for him, the prospect of seeing all those records that used to belong to his brother might be a little too painful to endure.

  I knew how that was. A box of my mom’s old stuff was somewhere in this attic, too. Some jewelry and clothes and some pictures that I hadn’t seen in years. I kept it taped up and out of view up here, mostly because I knew that the second I saw that pair of earrings – the orange garnet studs that she’d worn nearly every day of her life – the pain I’d feel would outweigh the nostalgia.

  I picked up the box of old baseball trophies and photos that I’d just gone through and set it down on the dusty attic floor, feeling a dribble of sweat slide down my forehead. I stripped the tape off the box beneath it, and opened it up.

  I smiled.

  Finally.

  I reached in and lifted out the black record player. I blew on it, causing the thick layer of dust covering the plastic to disperse into the air. I kicked aside a few boxes, making my way out of the mess I’d made, and then over to an old side table in the corner of the attic. I placed the record player on it, plugged in the cord, then picked up the album Warren had given me earlier. I slid the record out of its sleeve
and fit it on the turntable. Then I lifted the side lever, and with a delicate touch so as not to scratch the record, I flicked it back down. The needle gently dropped on the record.

  There was a scratchy sound, and then a long silence as it began spinning.

  A moment later, the strumming of a guitar broke across the speakers, followed shortly after by a man’s voice reaching out from four decades earlier.

  “Gather around for a story I’ll tell, about a man named Christmas who you’ll soon know well…”

  The voice carried through the musty attic. A strong, singular voice that hit you right in the gut – making you stop whatever you were doing to listen. I wasn’t a music critic by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something I immediately liked about the song as it bounced around the attic walls. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. And though it was just a lone guitar and that voice, talking about Christmas Flynn, it moved me right away. There was something real and honest about the chords. Something real and honest about the man singing, too.

  I hadn’t recognized him right away on the album cover – the mustache and brown color of his hair had thrown me, not to mention the fact that he was in his 20s when the picture was shot. But what tipped me off had been those eyes. All these years had passed, yet those dark eyes had looked the same in the photo as they’d looked up at the pass just over a week ago.

  The Good Samaritan who had helped me when my car broke down now had a name – Tom Bullock.

  I paced around the attic, rubbing my chin, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  It was an odd coincidence, to say the least. A very odd coincidence. And I had no idea what to make of it.

  I didn’t know, either, what I might learn from an album recorded in 1974 that could possibly help us figure out where Wes Dulany was. Or why Angie had ended up in the hospital. Or why someone had thrown a brick through my pie shop window. Or—

  There was suddenly a loud knock at the attic door, and I stopped dead in my tracks, spinning around.

  “Hey,” he said, sliding into the room.

  He took his cowboy hat off, revealing a mess of hat-head hair that almost made me smile.

  “Hey,” I said. “What are you doing home? I thought you had court.”

  “It finished early,” he said. “And I thought that since I’ve been putting in so many long hours at the office, I could come home early and get some rest in.”

  I crossed my arms and studied him for a long moment.

  “Is that really why you’re home early?” I asked. “To get some rest?”

  He nodded.

  “Cross my heart,” he said. “I’m burnt-out.”

  Though I could easily believe that he was tired, his words didn’t ring true in the least.

  “Oh, pish-posh,” I said, using Warren’s trademark phrase. “You’re here because you want to check in on me. Make sure I haven’t gone all mental after what happened at the pie shop this morning.”

  He cracked a smile, then looked down, pulling at a leather string on his hat.

  “Well, I didn’t think you’d gone mental, Cin,” he said. “But I thought you might want some company. That’s all.”

  I gave him a deadpan look.

  I knew that right now, there was nowhere Daniel wanted to be more than at the station or out in the woods, trying to track down his friend.

  And while I was flattered that he was here looking after me, I could handle what had happened this morning just fine.

  He walked over, seemingly knowing exactly what I was thinking.

  “I know you don’t need a babysitter, Cin,” he said. “But everything’s under control for the time being. We’ve got half the Search & Rescue force of the state out there looking for Wes right now. Owen’s on your vandalism case, and I have every confidence he’ll find whoever threw that brick through your window. Angie’s condition is the same, and there’s nothing we can do about it right now. Which means there’s no reason that I shouldn’t spend the rest of the afternoon home with you—”

  He stopped talking, his eyebrows lifting.

  “Say… what are you listening to?” he asked.

  I followed Daniel’s gaze to the turntable. Something flickered in his eyes as he recognized that it was the old one that belonged to his brother.

  “I, uh, I hope you don’t mind that I got it out from one of these old boxes,” I said, a little sheepishly. “It’s just, Warren let me borrow this old record of his and I—”

  “No, no – it’s fine,” he said, looking back at me. “I, uh, I’ve been meaning to bring it out of here for a while now.”

  He walked over to the side table, the sound of his boots reverberating through the hollow space. He picked up the album jacket next to the record player, peering at it.

  “Songs About Christmas?” he said with a questioning expression.

  “As in Leonard ‘Christmas’ Flynn, Daniel,” I said. “It’s Warren’s record. He said this folk singer was a bit of an underground sensation in the Pacific Northwest during the 70s, but that the man fell out of the scene a few years later and kind of disappeared. This was the only record he ever made.”

  Daniel glanced back down at the record.

  “He wrote a whole album about the Christmas Flynn legend?”

  I nodded.

  “And that’s not the only thing, either. Take a hard look at the cover.”

  Daniel furrowed his brow, studying it for a long moment. He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, running his fingers over the worn album jacket.

  “I don’t—” he started, but then he dropped the sentence.

  Suddenly, comprehension flooded his green eyes. He flicked the jacket with his finger, pointing to the man

  “Wait a minute,” he said, glancing back up at me. “Wait… you’re telling me that this folk singer… this guy is the same one up at the pass? The one who stayed with you until we got there and then sped off?”

  If I’d had any doubt that Tom Bullock was the same man as the Good Samaritan, it was now gone. I saw that it had to be him – Daniel had a good eye for recognizing faces, and the fact that he’d come to the same conclusion independently confirmed that I wasn’t just making connections where there weren’t any.

  Daniel rubbed his chin, deep in thought.

  “What are the odds of us running into him like that?” he asked. “And then less than two weeks later, coming across this record?”

  “I know,” I said. “I had that very same thought myself.”

  I supposed it could have been coincidence. But the timing of everything was uncanny.

  “He told you that he lives somewhere around here, didn’t he? Somewhere outside of Christmas River?”

  I nodded.

  “Hmm,” Daniel muttered.

  We stood silent for a while, listening to a couple of songs as they played out. Tom Bullock sang in a low timber about Christmas Flynn’s youth and his days as a bank robber – seeing the poverty of a nation and trying to make things right, the only way Christmas knew how.

  Tom Bullock had a nice sense of melody, and the songs went down easy – like a shot of top-shelf whiskey. So easy in fact, it stumped me as to why I’d never heard of him before and why he hadn’t become a bigger hit in his time. Though maybe that had something to do with the fact that this was the only record he ever came out with.

  “So what do we have?” Daniel said, crossing his arms and leaning against the side table. “We’ve got Wes who’s gone missing – an expert hiker who knows these woods as good as anybody – while looking for the Flynn treasure. Then there’s Angie – we still have no idea what happened to her out there. There’s Wes’s safe containing a mid-1800s gold coin that’s worth over $1,200 in today’s market. And then we’ve got an unverified love letter from Christmas Flynn to Lillian Reynolds which, if real, is probably worth a pretty penny on its own. And now this guy – a folk singer who Warren said practically disappeared only to resurface on a mountain pass…
”

  He held up the record with Tom Bullock’s photo on it.

  “Not two weeks before Wes goes missing out there.”

  He trailed off, furrowing his brow.

  “I mean, maybe this all means nothing. Chances are, Wes and Angie got caught in a rock slide on Mercy Face, and we just haven’t found Wes yet. And this folk singer, and the gold coin, and the letter don’t have a thing to do with the accident and can be classified as incidentals.”

  I swallowed hard as the image of Wes lying beneath a cliff, his body twisted from a fall, crept into my mind. I felt shivers run up and down my spine.

  As if the same image had come into his mind too, Daniel closed his eyes tightly for a second.

  “It’s just… Only a blind man would say that things are looking good for Wes right now, Cin…”

  His face fell into a glum, defeated expression as he trailed off.

  It killed me to see it.

  Daniel was a glass-half-full kind of guy. He was optimistic, even when the chips were down. A quality that I always loved about him.

  But I knew sometimes there were instances when keeping an optimistic outlook just felt phony and wrong.

  I sidled up next to him.

  “There’s always hope, Daniel,” I said. “Always. You know who I learned that from?”

  He put an arm over my shoulder and let out a sigh.

  “A certain bald old dude who drinks too much beer?”

  I pushed him.

  “No,” I said. “You, you fool. I learned that from you.”

  His lips turned up into just a hint of a smile at that.

  “Now, I think you should go back to the office and get some work done, all right? You don’t have to stay here. I’ve got Huckleberry and Chadwick to take care of me.”

  “Cin, if you keep up this line of talking, I’m going to start thinking you don’t want me here,” he said playfully. “I’m going to start suspecting that you met some plaid-wearing skinny-jean-sporting hipster in Portland and you’re hiding him in the house somewhere.”

  “Daniel Brightman,” I said, pretending to be utterly offended. “How dare you even joke about such a thing. You know that I’d never bring my hipster lover here to our home. I mean, do you think me that classless?”