5 Mischief in Christmas River (17 page)

“That’s the Cinny Bee I know,” he said.

Chapter 49

I fought my way through the drifts of fresh snow in the high school parking lot, trying to go as fast as I could while balancing a 30-pound, three-story gingerbread ice palace in my arms.

When I had screeched into the lot five minutes earlier, every single parking space was taken. I had been forced to park my Escape a few streets down and hike it in, slipping and sliding on the slushy snow while cradling the cookie house like it was a child.

But for all the cars in the lot, the place was as abandoned as an old junkyard.

Everybody was already inside.

From the auditorium, the deep voice of this year’s host boomed over the intercom. He was introducing the judges. Loud cheering echoed across the parking lot.

“
And lastly, we have Julianne Redding on the panel. A retired chef, Julianne has a decade of experience judging gingerbread houses. She’s a lady who’s seen it all. This woman practically dreams in licorice, gumdrops, and peppermint candies. When Julianne’s not judging gingerbread artistry, she’s…”

I picked up the pace, my snow boots digging hard into the melting snow. Usually I dressed up for the competition, opting for fancy boots, a skirt and a nice sweater most years. But less than twenty minutes ago I’d been lying on the couch, having boarded the train to dreamland. Given that, I figured I’d done pretty decently for myself.

I could hone sweats tucked into snow boots in public, just so long as my sloppy style hadn’t all been for nothing.

I ran up to the front entrance. The metal doors were closed shut, and nobody appeared to be inside to help.

I tried backing up into the door, hooking the handle with my elbow and prying it open that way. But that didn’t work. I tried balancing the gingerbread house with one hand to free up my other one, but it started tipping back and forth like a seesaw. I placed my hand back just at the last second before losing my grip, saving the ice palace from shattering all over the concrete.

Another round of loud cheering erupted from inside, and my heart started fluttering like pine needles in the wind.

As stated on the registration form I had turned in, if I didn’t get inside the auditorium before the judging commenced, then I would be disqualified.

I started banging on the doors with my elbows, shouting like a nut in a looney bin.

“Anybody there?!” I cried.

There was nothing. Just the MC’s voice drifting out.

“
And now, the five judges will go house by house, critiquing each creation based on originality, difficulty, and execution.”

“Let me in!” I shouted, my throat thick with emotion.

But nobody came.

I looked around quickly, searching for any place to set the gingerbread house down while I opened the heavy metal doors.

But I quickly surmised that my only option would be the ground.

I began slowly lowering the heavy cookie house. I let out a sharp gasp as one of the spires on the cookie dome began leaning off to one side.

I stopped lowering it, afraid if I went any farther, the whole dome might be brought down.

Was this where it ended for me? Out here, pounding on a metal door in my sweats? Having no one to blame but myself for missing out on the judging?

In that moment, I realized just how badly I really wanted to win the competition this year.

I wanted it more badly than I wanted those red Lucchese boots from the
Cowgirl Depot
.

I wanted to show the town just what I was made of.

To prove to them that I still had it. No matter who else was competing.

But it was all over. I’d sabotaged myself. The judging had started, and I was—

There was a noise on the other side of the door. Then, it began to open, its heavy metal hinges squeaking loudly.  

I looked up, a flicker of hope in my heart.

I could have kissed him then.

“We were starting to get worried,” he said, the hint of a smile on his face.

I let out a sigh.

“You’re a lifesaver, Brad,” I said. “A
lifesaver
.”

He grabbed one side of the cookie house base, and helped me carry it through the door. We picked up the pace, my snow boots slapping hard against the linoleum floor.

A moment later, we had made it to the auditorium.

Morgan Brenneke sat at the check-in table, eyeing me up and down.

“It’s Cinnamon Peters,” I choked out, taking in shallow breaths. “And I’m here with my entry.”

“I
know
who you are,” Morgan said.

She crossed her arms, giving me a sharp look, as if I had just spoken back to her in her history class.

“You’re very, very late, Ms. Peters,” she said. “You should have been listening better to the rules on registration day.”

My stomach dropped.

She paused, her attention now on my gingerbread house.

She looked back at me.

“But you’re lucky,” she said. “You made it by just a hair.”

I looked at Brad, and then let out a long sigh of relief.

I had made it.

“You’re on the south side of the auditorium,” she said, pointing behind me. “Spot number 73.”

I nodded quickly, then Brad and I carried the cookie house down the steps, weaving our way through the throngs of people.

A few moments later, we set the
Dr. Zhivago
cookie ice palace down on spot number 73.

I gave Brad a big, grateful hug. He looked a little taken aback by it, but I didn’t care.

He’d saved my neck just now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Pepper was standing just a few feet away from me in spot number 74, her eyes glued to my gingerbread house.

And for the first time since I’d met her, Pepper wasn’t smiling.

No.

Pepper Posey looked like she’d just been punched in the gut.

Chapter 50

“Listen, Cin,” he said, just barely above a whisper. “As much as I like being here to support you, cookie houses aren’t exactly my cup of tea. I’m here because I
really
need to talk to you.”

Brad shot a paranoid glance over my shoulder, as if he was afraid someone was listening.

I looked over at Kara.

“You’re really going to want to hear this,” she said in a dead serious tone.

I furrowed my brow.

“Can we go out in the hall?” Brad asked.

The judges had just come by, all five of them doing a very thorough inspection of my
Dr. Zhivago
ice palace. They had taken copious notes while asking me difficult questions on the concept behind the house. Their stoic expressions had been hard to read. Julianne Redding in particular had a cold and empty expression on her face that surprised me a little bit. In years past, she’d always been the nicest of the judges. Yet she’d hardly acknowledged I was there. But I tried not to take it personally: with Harley’s disappearance, I knew that she hadn’t been herself lately.  

Besides, the judges had treated all the contestants distantly this year, including Pepper.

A wave of relief had coursed through my tired muscles when the judges had finished looking at my gingerbread house, moving on down the line. I realized that no matter what happened: whether or not I won, and whether or not Pepper Posey proved that she was better than me, at least I could take pride in the fact that I hadn’t given up. I hadn’t been beaten, even if I didn’t end up taking home the $500.

Pepper’s house was, hands down, the most beautiful gingerbread house I had ever seen. Shimmering with silvery pastels, sugar ice sculptures, and lit up with colorful lights from the inside, her gingerbread dog house was nothing short of magic. It was more than gingerbread: it was a work of art. I couldn’t deny it, and neither could the crowds. Out of all the gingerbread houses on display this year, hers drew in the biggest throng of spectators. People were ogling her cookie dog house like it was made out of 24 karat gold.

And Pepper deserved all that attention. Just like she deserved the attention from folks for her delicious pies and pastries. Quality was quality, and if anything, her talent should have been an inspiration for me to step up my own game.

From here on out, I wasn’t going to wallow in self-pity, afraid that Pepper Posey was a better baker and business woman than me. I wasn’t going to lie on the couch, feeling defeated, anymore. Instead, I was going to do everything I could to do better, to set higher standards for myself. To do the best that I could, no matter what new pie shop sprang up in Christmas River.

And I most certainly wasn’t going to lie down and let Pepper take all my customers. That just wasn’t the kind of gal Cinnamon Peters was, contrary to the way she’d been acting recently.

I was going to fight. Even if it meant standing out on the sidewalk in the cold wearing elf shoes myself, offering free samples of pie.

I was thinking about all of this when Brad and Kara had come up to me, both of them with serious and dour expressions on their face.

Brad led me up the steps and out into the hallway, which was mostly deserted. The hustle and bustle coming from the auditorium echoed down the corridor.

He started pacing nervously.

“First off, I just want to say that I detest finger-pointing,” he said. “I’m not the type to accuse a person of something without having all the facts. I think people are too quick to jump to conclusions in this day and age. That’s what I think, anyway.”

I nodded slowly, unable to guess at what this could possibly be in relation to.  

He rubbed his beard, and then let out a short sigh.

“But having said that…”

He lowered his voice.

“Cin, there’s something important I’ve got to tell you about. Something that you need to know.”

He paused, and I waited for him to continue.

He let out an unsteady breath, and dug his hands deep into the pockets of his tapered jeans.

He was as uneasy as I’d ever seen him.

“What is it, Brad?” I finally said.

“It has to do with those missing dogs,” he said, his eyes reaching for the ceiling. “I think… I think Pepper Posey might be the one behind the disappearances.”

Chapter 51

I’d been to over twenty Gingerbread Junction competitions in my time as a gingerbread artist, and never before had there been so much disagreement amongst the judges.

They were shuffling through their notes up at their table on stage, discussing their viewpoints with a kind fervor that was worthy of a Sunday evangelical show. 

It had been over an hour since the judges had finished their tour of the auditorium, and from their hushed, strained voices, it didn’t appear that they were any closer to deciding the winner. I noticed that Julianne Redding in particular had a lot to say. She was using wild hand gestures and interrupting the other judges before any of them could get two words in, showing more life than I’d seen since before Harley disappeared.

I just hoped that my house had impressed her enough to get her on my side. With all her years of judging cookie construction, she was a good person to have in your corner.

In the meantime, competitors and spectators alike had started to get antsy, waiting for the results. There was some grumbling, and a few folks had even started to step outside the auditorium, quitting on the event and opting instead to hear the results tonight on the 6 o’clock news.

I probably would have been feeling antsy about waiting all this time too, if it weren’t for the fact that my mind was somewhere else completely.

Brad’s words kept echoing in my ears.

“I didn’t want to go into Pepper’s shop the other day, you know, wanting to stay loyal to you,” Brad had said, pacing the hall outside the auditorium. “But you see, Will has this love for all things French. So I took him there during our lunch break yesterday. We ordered some bacon cheese croissants and were having a great time, but then I noticed that Will went
stark
white all of sudden. And I look at what he’s staring at, and it’s Pepper Posey, who’s just come out from the kitchen in the back. And he just looks like he’s going to lose his bacon cheese croissant all over the place.

“So I ask him, ‘Will, is everything okay?’

“And then he shakes his head and says ‘Let’s get out of here.’ So I’m like, okay. I guess he really
hates
these croissants. Then during the car ride home, I ask him what was the matter. And he says ‘That woman doesn’t deserve another cent of ours.’ And I was like ‘Will, what are you talking about?’ And then you know what he said?

“He says, ‘That’s the dog kidnapper who took Reginald six years ago. The college girl who took the reward money. The red head. That was
her
in there.’”

I’d been shocked by Brad’s story. Shocked beyond words.

And it didn’t really take much detective work to put two and two together.

The dogs started disappearing shortly after Pepper showed up in town. How could that have been a coincidence?

I’d wandered into the auditorium after that, finding a quiet spot near the back to think things through.

Pepper had fooled all of us, this whole time.

But was she really the one behind the dog kidnappings? I still couldn’t see the angle, even though the pieces seemed to fit. But maybe she was doing something else with the dogs, something outside what we had previously thought. Selling them into other homes that would pay a lot for a police dog, or a cute yellow lab, or a well-trained Australian Shepard.

Or maybe she was doing something worse with them: selling them to laboratories for science experiments. Something I’d read about before online.  

Reginald the bull dog had been stolen and then returned several years ago. That was plenty of time for her to get good at stealing dogs and making money off of them. Plenty of time to become a grade-A dog thief.

But could Will have been mistaken? He hadn’t even had any proof in the first place that the girl who collected the reward money all those years ago actually ripped him off. From Brad’s retelling, it had been just a hunch. Meaning that even if Pepper was the same girl who’d found Reginald, it didn’t make her a thief. The whole thing could have been innocent. And she could have been really trying to do good then.