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

by Meg Muldoon

  It was strange, but there was something about those eyes that was incredibly wise. It’d been that way on the album cover, too, even though he was a young man then. Something about them that seemed compassionate and understanding beyond their years.

  Daniel leaned forward in his seat, clearing his throat.

  “The reason we’re here today, sir, is because I wanted to ask you a couple of questions concerning what happened up at—”

  “My grandfather leant me ‘Songs About Christmas,’” I blurted out, cutting Daniel off.

  Tom looked down, almost as though he was embarrassed by the revelation and the fact that I knew who he was.

  “And, uh, and what’d you think?” he asked.

  “I thought it was brilliant,” I said. “Really, really great. I’m not just saying that, either. There’s something… I don’t know. Something special about it.”

  I was telling the truth, too. In the days since Wes’s ordeal, I’d listened to Tom’s record a few more times. Daniel had brought the record player down from the attic, along with some of Jared’s old albums. We’d been listening to a lot of them lately.

  I had the feeling that in a way, listening to those old records had also helped Daniel resolve some issues with his brother’s death.

  Tom Bullock shrugged his shoulders, as if to dismiss my compliment.

  “I thank you for the kind words, but that record’s just a lot of hogwash,” he said. “I didn’t know the first thing about anything back then. It’s a young man’s record, written by somebody who dreamed in silver and gold.”

  He glanced at me.

  “I don’t dream in those colors anymore,” he said.

  Daniel cleared his throat again, reaching inside the pocket of his jacket. He pulled out the old, faded yellow letter, held securely in a plastic zip-lock bag. A single gold coin was in it, too.

  The letter and the gold coin were the reason we had found out where Tom Bullock lived in the first place. After sitting down and talking to Wes about where he’d found the letter, Wes had confessed that he’d tracked down Tom Bullock after coming across the “Songs About Christmas” record. He’d visited him here, which is when Tom had shown him the Christmas Flynn letter – which the folk singer said he’d inherited from his father. But seeing the letter hadn’t been enough for Wes. He came back to the cabin one time when Tom wasn’t here. Wes had reluctantly admitted to stealing the letter, believing that it held the secret to the treasure’s location.

  Though it by no means pardoned him for his actions, Wes seemed to be wholeheartedly ashamed about what he’d done. It seemed that his desire to find the Christmas Flynn treasure had been so rabid, so all-encompassing; he was willing to steal from others and do things that were completely out of character.

  Daniel stood up and handed the plastic bag containing the letter to Tom.

  “I believe this belongs to you, Mr. Bullock,” Daniel said.

  Tom’s eyes shone slightly as he held the letter. He unzipped the bag, pulled it out, and ran his hands over the soft paper.

  “Now, if you want, Mr. Bullock, you can press charges against Wes Dulany for stealing your property here,” Daniel, said, nervousness in his voice as he spoke. “He confessed to it. So it’s your choice if you want to—”

  “I think it’d be more of a punishment for me than it would be for him,” Tom said, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine spending all that time talking to lawyers and sitting in court. All over a piece a paper, no less.

  “Besides, I take some responsibility for what happened. When Mr. Dulany came to visit me that day, I thought he was just a nice fellow who was interested in the history of the Christmas Flynn legend. He seemed like more of an academic than anything else. But I should have seen that plum-mad treasure look in his eyes that day. I should never have even shown him the letter in the first place.”

  Tom Bullock stared down sadly at the paper in his hands.

  “I feel partially to blame for that fiasco that took place out there in the woods last month,” he said. “I heard it was pretty bad and that Mr. Dulany was almost killed by his friend. Greed makes some men do terrible things.”

  He stood up, placing the letter down on the small and rustic dining room table. He went over to the woodstove, opened it, and stoked the fire some.

  “About that, sir,” Daniel said. “It’s the other reason we came here today. I wanted to ask you for my report – were you…”

  He paused for a split second, looking over at me.

  “Were you out in the woods that day?”

  Tom Bullock stared into the flames of the fire, a seemingly amused expression crossing his face.

  “I’m out in the woods every day, Sheriff,” he finally said with a small smile. “I live here, after all.”

  “But Mr. Bullock, I could have sworn that—”

  “I don’t have a TV, but I did eventually hear about everything that happened,” he said, interrupting Daniel. “About Mr. Dulany going missing. About nobody being able to find him for a while. Thank goodness you all found him when you did.”

  We waited for more, but Tom Bullock fell silent.

  Daniel glanced over at me again.

  That confirmed it – without a doubt. Tom knew exactly what Daniel was getting at – I could read it in his face.

  Tom had been the one to hurl the rock at Kevin that afternoon, creating the distraction that had saved our lives.

  I thought Daniel might press him further, trying to get more details for his report. But to my surprise, the Sheriff didn’t.

  I supposed he could see the measure of things. Tom Bullock didn’t want any attention for what he’d done. All he wanted was to be left alone out here. To live his life in peace.

  And for saving our lives, Daniel was going to grant him that.

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about that saddlebag of lava rocks we found in the cave,” Daniel said. “Or the two gold rings we found at the bottom of the bag. Or anything about that grave we found up there.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows slightly.

  It’d been one of the things that had made the entire affair – Angie being pushed off a ridge, Wes nearly dying in that cave, and Kevin nearly killing both of them – even sadder. The fact that the old leather bag in the back of the cave had been filled with nothing but a bunch of craggy, jagged lava rocks with only a couple of tarnished wedding bands at the bottom. They weren’t even real gold ones.

  Altogether, the treasure found in that cave only amounted to something like $20.

  “I figured you might know something about it,” Daniel continued. “You know, since you’re Christmas Flynn’s grandson and all.”

  Tom’s eyes flickered. That amused expression spread across his face again.

  “Well, I can’t claim with absolute certainty that I’m related to Christmas Flynn,” he said. “But what I can say is that Lillian Reynolds was my grandmother. And that there were rumors that my father looked a lot like Flynn.”

  He smiled.

  “But what I can tell you positively is that I spent years of my life obsessing over the Christmas Flynn treasure. And that when I came across that letter in my dad’s house after he died, I learned everything there was to learn about the legend. When I got older and became hard-up for cash, I wrote some songs about it and made a record.”

  I swallowed hard, gathering up my courage to ask the question I’d been dying to ask since we first stepped foot in here.

  Then, I asked.

  “Did you find it, Mr. Bullock? Did you find the treasure?”

  He smiled sadly, a twinkle in his eye as he did.

  “You know, I met Rachel’s mother right after I made the record,” Tom said, nodding to the photograph on the wall of the woman and the child. “I found her in a shabby little run-down bar in Portland where I was playing. And I swear, when our eyes met, there were sparks big enough to light up the city for a week.

  “It was the kind of thing that only comes around once in a
lifetime, only you don’t know that in your youth. When you’re that age, you think you’ll live forever and that love will always be that way – that passionate and true.

  “I thought that. And I was stupid for it. I didn’t have my priorities straight. I was too busy singing about things I didn’t really understand, and too busy looking for gold. I didn’t know how little time Anne and I would have together.”

  He let out a deep sigh that sounded as if it was coming up from the base of his very soul. He sat back in his chair, resting his chin in his hand, covering up part of his face.

  “She died young,” he said. “A car wreck. She was driving me from Portland to Christmas River after a gig. We were going to spend a week out here, looking for the Flynn treasure up in the mountains. She’d been working double shifts that week at the bar, and she looked tired. I should have been paying better attention to her.”

  He paused. His eyes seeing things that obviously still hurt deep down.

  “She fell asleep at the wheel,” he said. “Flipped the car on the pass. That’s how come I got the limp and this scar on my face.

  “And that’s how come she’s not here anymore.”

  I swallowed hard, looking away for a second.

  The emotion in his face was suddenly so raw, it was difficult to look at.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said after a long moment of silence.

  He shook his head.

  “It was many years ago. I’ve had a lot of time to regret things. But these days, I look at what happened, and I see it as my greatest teacher. I wouldn’t understand the secret of life now if it hadn’t happened.”

  “And what’s the secret?” Daniel asked.

  Tom looked from Daniel to me, his dark eyes meeting both of ours.

  “That the only treasure on this green earth can be found right here,” he said, tapping the left side of his chest. “Love is the only thing worth a damn. Everything else is just a mirage that you can’t take with you. But like Christmas Flynn said in that letter – Love. True love. Brotherly love. Love for all wretched mankind. Universal love. Any and all love. Love, and only love alone, will save this bitter world.”

  A soft breeze drifted through the cabin, and Tom Bullock looked away out the window for a long, long moment.

  He smiled like a man who had found a truth.

  Then he stood up. He went over to the kitchen, opening one of the cabinets. He reached up, bringing down a medium-sized Mason jar.

  The contents of the jar caught the light of the sun streaming in through the open window, and it sparkled suddenly like fireflies.

  My jaw almost hit the ground.

  He handed the jar to me as if he was handing me a cup of coffee instead of gold coins that had to have been worth a fortune.

  I let out a short noise of surprise.

  Then I turned the jar over in my hands, mesmerized by the contents.

  “I found the treasure, all right,” he said. “I found the gold, too, as it turned out, in that cave. But it wasn’t worth nearly as much as the treasure.”

  The gold coins rattled against the glass, sending shivers down my spine. They were muddied with time, but they still shone and sparkled in spots.

  I couldn’t find the words.

  “It’s not all that I found in that cave when I discovered it,” he said. “I found a skeleton there, too, next to the bag of gold. That grave you found up there? That’s where I buried him. That’s Christmas Flynn’s final resting place.”

  And just like that, one of the biggest mysteries that the Pacific Northwest had ever seen – what happened to Leonard “Christmas” Flynn and what happened to all of those gold coins from the robbery – was solved.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “Accounts say there were a good many more coins than this,” Daniel said, nodding to the jar.

  “There was,” Tom said. “There were a lot more in that saddlebag before I switched it out with lava rocks and the wedding rings that belonged to Anne and me.”

  I bit my lip at that. The image of him placing his rings in that old bag after his wife’s death was so sad.

  “What happened to the rest?” Daniel asked.

  I furrowed my brow, wishing Daniel hadn’t asked the question.

  It was obvious what had happened to it – Tom must have spent it. He must have used it to live on for all of these years.

  “I’ve been giving it away, little by little,” Tom said.

  I lifted my eyebrows in surprise.

  “You… you what?” Daniel said.

  “I think it’s what Christmas Flynn would have wanted,” he said. “To see that money go to charity. I’ve been sprinkling it around Goodwills, Salvation Army’s, and other charities all up and down the West Coast, making sure folks who could use it got it.”

  He drew in a deep breath.

  “You know once, a ways back, I left a piece in the mailbox of a poor Christmas River family named Dulany.”

  He glanced at the plastic baggie that held the single gold coin.

  “Now I wish I hadn’t done that. I started something there I didn’t mean to.”

  I thought back to that newspaper clipping in Wes’s office – the one about some of the coins from the Christmas Flynn robbery supposedly turning up at a charitable organization.

  It made sense now what had sparked this obsession for Wes. As a poor kid, finding a gold coin in the mailbox like that must have made quite the impression.

  I handed the Mason jar to Daniel, giving him a chance to look at it. He held it up to the light peering at it in his hands.

  “You haven’t used any of the money for yourself?” Daniel asked, clearly surprised by the revelation.

  Tom looked around his small, rustic cabin.

  “I don’t have much need for it, as you can see,” he said. “By the time I found the treasure, money didn’t matter much to me anymore. The only reason I kept any of it was because I saw it as a way to spread more love in this world. I figured it was divine providence that brought me to that treasure when so many had missed it. And I figured it was my destiny to use it in the right way. A way to bring a little bit of light in the darkness.”

  I smiled at hearing the familiar words.

  Then I gazed at the man for a long moment, deep in thought.

  Tom Bullock had been much more than just a Good Samaritan to me that day up at the pass. He had played that role to countless people over the years.

  And the more I thought about it, the more I believed that he was right. That it was divine providence that brought him to the gold.

  I could think of nobody else who would have done as much good with it as he had.

  I saw Daniel looking at me, then. There was a satisfied, almost content, look on his face.

  He stood up.

  Then he handed Tom Bullock all those gold coins back.

  Daniel could have taken them – after all, they were stolen property. It may have been over 80 years since they’d been stolen – but such things could still be claimed by a lot of folks.

  But instead, Daniel opted to do the right thing.

  Tom took the jar back, returning it to the kitchen cabinet.

  “Thank you for taking the time for our visit, sir,” Daniel said, sticking his hand out. “We really appreciate everything you’ve done for us.”

  Tom gave just a hint of a smile, then came over, taking the Sheriff’s hand and giving it a firm shake.

  I stood up, holding out the pink pastry box that had been on my lap.

  Tom looked surprised, almost as if he hadn’t noticed me sitting there with it all this time. Or maybe he didn’t think the box had been for him.

  “I hope you like Marionberry,” I said. “I wanted to give you one of these that day up at the pass, but you disappeared before I could thank you properly.”

  He looked genuinely touched by the gesture.

  “Aw, that’s very thoughtful of you,” he said. “This is a real treat. Marionberry’s my very favorite.”
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  I’d had a feeling.

  “Well, we don’t want to take up anymore of your time,” Daniel said, putting his hat on. “We’ll leave you to your privacy.”

  Tom glanced from Daniel to me.

  “You know, I can tell the two of you have got a lot of treasure in your hearts,” he said. “If I could offer you some advice?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “Don’t ever let it tarnish,” he said. “The world’s short on treasure these days.”

  Daniel smiled back warmly at Tom Bullock and tapped his hat. Then he headed for the door.

  I was about to follow him, but then I stopped.

  Maybe it was too forward of me, and maybe I was crossing a line.

  But the way I saw it, the world was short of good people like Tom Bullock, too.

  I stood on my tip toes and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  “Thank you for everything,” I said.

  When I pulled away, he looked a little dumbstruck, rubbing his cheek where I had kissed it.

  I glanced around the rustic little cabin once more. Then I walked over to the door where Daniel was waiting for me.

  I left the woods that day, feeling like a changed person.

  Chapter 67

  It wasn’t the kind of event that Tiana had envisioned when she first started planning her wedding.

  There was no elaborate ceremony. No bountiful flowers adorning the aisles. Hell, there wasn’t even an aisle at all. No wedding cake, either.

  A lot of crucial planning time had been lost on account of the fiasco that Tiana’s ex-husband had brought to town. And instead of the barn, like she’d wanted, the wedding had taken place down at the courthouse with just a few witnesses to see it through. Daniel and myself, Tiana’s sister, Kara and John, Laila Mae, Warren and Aileen, Ian, Wes Dulany – who’d come along mostly because he’d been moping around the house in a state of depression for some time and needed to get out – and finally, Rattlesnake Henry. Rattlesnake – the hippie Kombucha-fiend who I’d spent a long afternoon talking to – unbeknownst to me was a good friend of Tobias’s. The two of them were both veterans, and Rattlesnake had helped Tobias through his alcoholism recovery.