4 Malice in Christmas River (2 page)

She didn’t wait for me to call on her this time.

“It seems to me that you added
far
too much lemon there, Cinnamon,” she said, drumming her other hand in front of her again like a school girl. “I mean, Harry gets
terrible
heartburn if he eats anything too acidic. If I made this pie for him, it might just put him in the grave.”

I’m sure he wouldn’t mind that too much after all these years of being married to the likes of you,
I thought.

A moment later, I was quietly scolding myself.

That had been a downright mean thought right there.

But sometimes, you can’t help the thoughts you think. Especially when troublemakers like Jo Pugmire drive you to them.

“Well, Jo, perhaps this pie isn’t for Harry then,” I said. “But if you want, you could come to my next class where I’ll be making a pumpkin pie. I would think that’d be a better option for him.”

Jo sighed like it was the end of the world.

“Yes, but I signed up for
this
class,” she said snidely. “Not the class in October, Cinnamon. What good is this going to do me?”

I was close to pulling my hair out. Or at least
, somebody’s
hair out. A certain someone who used cheap red dye and teased her hair until she looked like some aging 80s soap opera sta—”  

“Gosh darnit, Jo,” a voice suddenly chimed out from the audience. “Would you please let poor Cinnamon make the pie already and quit going on about Harry’s special needs?”

I looked over to where the voice was coming from, finding that it belonged to Laurel McSween – a woman in her 40s who also happened to be married to a city councilor, and one of Harry Pugmire’s opponents for the upcoming mayoral election.

Laurel looked the spitting image of Faith Hill, and dressed better than any woman in the three-county area. She wore designer wear that I’d only seen in magazines like
Cowboys and Indians
,
clothes that were afforded only by wealthy ranch types. Which was fitting, because Laurel and her husband, Bernard, were those wealthy ranch types.

Heads immediately turned in Laurel’s direction, including Erik’s, who suddenly looked very interested in what was going on.

It wasn’t any secret that Jo and Laurel didn’t get along. In fact, when I’d seen both of their names on my roster, I had gone as far as to let both of them know that the other had signed up. Both of them were too stubborn to drop out, though. There were plenty of rumors about the source of the animosity between them. Everything from Jo’s husband having a major infatuation with Laurel, to rumors of a real estate deal between the two husbands going terribly wrong once upon a time. But whatever had caused the rift, it was a well-known fact by every resident in Christmas River that there was no love lost between Jo Pugmire and Laurel McSween.  

Jo shot Laurel a dirty look. The large woman’s ears flushed with anger.

“I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking, dear,” Laurel said casually. “We’re not here to hear about your mama’s cookin’.”  

I stopped stirring the pie filling. You could have heard a pin drop as everyone waited to see how the next act of the drama unfolded.  

Jo looked like an angry bull close to charging.

“You don’t talk to me that way,” she said. “You lyin’, no-good, coward of a woman.”    

Erik was furiously scribbling in his notebook.

Laurel looked as cool as ever.

“What did you just say?” she said, cupping a hand over her ear. “I couldn’t hear you that far down on Loser Street.”  

Jo’s face grew redder.

“You’re one to talk,” she said. “You and that family of yours might live up in that mansion, but you ain’t nothin’ but dressed up low-life trash coming after me and my—”

Laurel threw her head back and started laughing.

“Oh, come now, Jo,” she said. “
Trash
is the word everybody around here reserves for you and that rodeo-chasing slacker son of yours. They might not say it to your face, but they’re all thinking it, just the same.”  

Jo started getting up. She pushed over the legs of a couple of frightened old ladies who were sitting between her and Laurel.

Laurel stood up to meet her.

Things were escalating out of control.

“I’m gonna—”

“Now, now,” I said loudly, coming around the kitchen island, my legs shaking as I desperately tried to walk in the pointy heels. “Everybody just
calm
down. You all are here to learn something, remember? Not to fight each other.”

Jo gave Laurel a stare that would have frozen sunshine.

I could hardly believe it – they were acting like my pie shop was the Pine Needle Tavern, or some other bar where people drank too much and came to blows over stupid things.

“Look, I know it’s hot in here,” I continued. “But there’s some delicious pie on its way if you all can just calm down and let me finish. Don’t you want to know the secrets behind my award-winning apple pie?”

Laurel let go of Jo’s hard stare and looked over at me, nodding.

She didn’t appear to be flustered or upset in the least. She was cool as a cucumber.  

“Cinnamon’s right,” Laurel said. “My apologies, everybody. It’s terribly rude of us to bring our personal issues here to this class.”

Jo scoffed loudly. Laurel mumbled something under her breath that was inaudible.

“Excuse me, what was that?” Jo said, the bull threatening to break free of its pen and charge full strength.

“Nothin,’” Laurel said, sitting back down, propping her elbows up on the back of the chair. “I was just wondering to myself if it was true that Michael failed
every
class his last semester, the way people around here say he did. Which makes me wonder what kind of bribing you and your husband did to get Principal Tisdale to graduate your son.”

Jo knocked her chair over. It came crashing down on the linoleum floor with a loud rattle. In large, ungraceful motions, she pushed her way through the row. She started coming toward me, and my heart raced, the way a matador’s did when they were facing a furious bull.

“What are you—?” I started stammering, afraid I was about to get mauled by an angry Jo Pugmire.

But it wasn’t me she was after, I realized.

She stomped up to the kitchen island, reached over into the bowl of apple pie filling, and grabbed a hunk of it.

My mouth dropped open and I let out a little gasp.

She
didn’t
.

But it was clear – oh so clear – that she had.

She walked a little ways back to the group of ladies, slung back the hand filled with warm apples, and let it fly in Laurel’s general direction.

“Oh, my lord!” I shouted. 

There were gasps in the room as ladies ducked for cover underneath their purses, recipe sheets, and anything they could grab.

Everyone, except Laurel, who hadn’t so much as flinched at Jo’s apple snowball.

She must have known something the rest of us didn’t: that Jo didn’t have much aim and didn’t know her own strength.

The pie filling sailed over the heads of everyone, hitting the back wall with a loud splat. It missed its mark by a mile.

Jo let out a loud, frustrated grunt, and then went back over to her overturned chair. She grabbed her bag from up off the floor and climbed over a few of the other ladies to get out from her row again. Her rhinestone flip flops slapped the floor loudly as she walked to the back of the kitchen. She pushed the dividing door open, and held it there for a moment as she paused.

“Don’t none of you trust that snake in the grass there,” she said, nodding toward the back of Laurel’s head. “That woman will bite ya if she has the chance. I should know.”

Jo flung herself through the door as everyone’s eyes followed her out.

“Well, I…” I started, wondering how to bridge over what just had happened.

But no one was listening to me. A moment later, everyone’s eyes were back on Laurel.

“My goodness,” she said, looking down sheepishly. “Cinnamon, I’m so, so sorry about that. That was horribly embarrassing.”

I cleared my throat and glanced over at Erik again, who was continuing to write in his notebook feverishly.

“That’s, uh, that’s okay,” I said.

There was stunned silence throughout the classroom.

I didn’t know what to say. I knew that Jo and Laurel didn’t get along, but this… this was outrageous.

What grown person threw pie like that? Let alone, a city councilor’s wife?

“Now, I’m sure I’m not the only one whose stomach is growling, am I right?” Laurel said, looking around, breaking the silence. “I think we’re all dying to find out the secret behind that pie of yours, Cinnamon.”  

“Well, uh, I’m afraid I’ll have to start over on the filling,” I said, still somewhat in shock over what had just occurred. “Jo contaminated it.”

“Well, practice makes perfect, am I right, ladies?” Laurel said, not missing a beat. “I don’t mind seeing you make the filling again. Besides, with Jo being such a loudmouth, I missed a lot of it the first time.”

There was a grunt of approval from the rest of the class, which made me feel better.

I started cutting up some apples and began remaking the filling. Meanwhile, Laurel was kind enough to clean up the apple filling bomb that had splattered against the back wall.   

Control had gotten away from me for a moment, but now I was beginning to regain some measure of it.

I had no idea how teachers did this every day.

I started up again, launching into a long discussion about pie thickeners and the benefits and negatives of flour, corn starch, tapioca, and gelatin. It wasn’t long before Jo Pugmire seemed like a distant memory.    

And even though my mouth was running, and I was answering questions from the ladies in the class, my mind was somewhere else entirely.

Thinking of why I had decided to do these classes in the first place.

For those two long, lovely weeks out on the beach.

The sand, the surf, the tropical sun, and of course, Daniel.

That was going to make having to deal with the pie-slinging Jo Pugmires of the world worth it.

Chapter 2

I stood in the bathroom, scrubbing hopelessly at the caked blush on my face with a wet paper towel.

There wasn’t any other way of saying it: I was beat.

Playing referee between Jo and Laurel while showing the rest of the class the secrets behind making a soul-satisfying pie would do that to a person. That, in addition to an hour after class talking to a reporter about me and my pie shop… well, it wasn’t any wonder why I was so tired.   

But barring the near fist fight that had broken out and Jo’s tantrum, the session had gone well. The apple pie turned out just as good as always, and the ladies in class seemed quite satisfied by the end.

Erik, the reporter, even seemed to have trouble saying no to a second helping of the pie. Which I took as a compliment, given his lean and wiry frame. He didn’t strike me as a man with much of a sweet tooth. If I were to guess, I’d bet he took his coffee black and drank green juice smoothies for breakfast. I was sure getting him to eat something as sinfully rich as pie was a real boon.

The interview with him afterwards went smoothly, too. The questions really weren’t all that hard, and I answered them with ease. I had rehearsed some of the answers the night before, and they came out sounding charming and spur-of-the-moment. Some of my responses even elicited a half-smirk from the stoic reporter.

All and all, save for the makeup that refused to give into my attempts to remove it, the evening had gone remarkably well. As I stood there in the restroom, looking at myself in the mirror, I found myself happier than a lark at the prospect of being featured in the paper’s Community Life section later this week.  

I just hoped that Erik wouldn’t mention much about Jo’s pie-throwing incident.

I suddenly heard the bell on the front door jingle. I threw the pile of damp paper towels in the trash and went out to see who had wandered into my pie shop at such a late hour.

“Now, Cinnamon Peters… did I just catch you taking off my masterpiece?”

Kara stood in the kitchen, looking a little melted and disheveled from the heat outside. Her eyeliner was slightly smudged, and her long blond hair was piled high into a messy and scrappy bun.

She placed a drink carrier on the kitchen island and put her hands on her hips in a feigned expression of resentment.

“You know how long it took me to get those fake eyelashes on you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And you know how long it’s going to take me to get all of this off?”

She shook her head.

“Say what you will now,” she said. “But you looked beautiful for your fancy photo shoot, and don’t be surprised if there’s a whole pack of men lining up outside the pie shop once the article comes out.”

I rolled my eyes.

Kara was exaggerating, the way she usually did about such matters. But maybe she was right — maybe I hadn’t looked as insane as I had first thought. It was still probably better than anything I could have done in the war paint department.

I had always been something of a tomboy my whole life and I got lost when I had to do anything beyond a little eyeliner and eye shadow.

“Well, I doubt that. But I did really appreciate your help, Kara. Thank you.” 

She waved her hand at me.

“Save it,” she said. “You don’t have to thank me. It was fun to see you actually dressed up for once at work and not just buried under flour and sweat, the way you usually are.”

She handed me one of the tall cups from the drink carrier. I recognized the familiar orange and white container immediately, and I felt a little pop of joy in my heart at the sight of it.

“You got me a pumpkin cheesecake milkshake from Benny’s Shake Shack in Redmond?” I said, grinning broadly.  

Outside of pie, a pumpkin cheesecake milkshake was my favorite treat. Growing up, Kara and I would make runs at the beginning of the school year to Benny’s Shake Shack in Redmond, a town that was 45 minutes away, for their famous shakes. They only made the pumpkin cheesecake milkshake for a few months out of the year, using pumpkins that Benny the owner had roasted and pureed down for the ice cream in the shakes.