Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 7) (11 page)

It didn’t take long before I found myself drifting far away into dreamland.

Chapter 22

“Just give them a few samples, and tell them to hold their horses,” I shouted over the clanging of bowls and whisks. “And tell them too that I’ve got a batch of pumpkin pies in the fridge that’ll be ready for consumption in exactly five minutes.”

Tobias nodded his head heartily and disappeared behind the swinging door.

I suppose with it being so close to Halloween, and with the leaves being at their most colorful and pristine in the Central Oregon Cascades, I should have expected this many visitors to the pie shop. But somehow, this morning I had found myself blindsided by the number of customers clamoring for pumpkin pie. While I had plenty of other flavors in the case, the pumpkin seemed to be the only variety that anybody wanted.

It was plain to see that I would need to make a heck of a lot more today if I was going to keep this pie shop ship afloat.

“Tiana, can you take those Chocolate Hazelnut pies out of the left oven before preparing some gingersnap crusts? And Ian, do you think you could take over here on peeling these apples while I get to the pumpkin filling?”

Both nodded their heads calmly, almost in unison, seemingly unaffected by the stress in my voice.

I supposed both of them were used to it by now.

I wiped away a bead of sweat trailing down my temple, and got to work. I grabbed a few cans of evaporated milk and pumpkin puree, along with some brown sugar. Lucky for me – the most popular pastry this time of year was also one that didn’t require as much work or as much cooking time as fruit or berry pies. Within fifteen minutes, I had just about combined enough filling for a dozen more pumpkin pies.

And then, my phone rang.

I fumbled around for it in my apron pocket, feeling my muscles tense at the thought of who was on the other end of the line. But as I looked at the screen, I realized I had nothing to worry about.

It was just the person I’d been waiting to hear from.

“Grandpa?” I said, pressing the phone to my ear and leaning it against my shoulder while I went over and set the right oven to 375.

“Well, howdy, Cinny Bee!”

I let out a short sigh of relief – there was a lightness in his voice that I reasoned would be very hard to muster if he was wearing an orange jumpsuit.

“Where’ve you been, old man?” I said. “Here I’ve been worried the last 24 hours that the casino floor boss threw you in jail.”

That evoked a hearty laugh.  

“Well, if they were gonna put me away for anything, it wouldn’t be for talking on a cell phone,” he said. “It’d be because we lit out of that casino like a couple of high rollers the other night.”

“You did?” I said, unable to conceal my surprise.  

Like I said, it had been ages since I’d gambled. But one of the reasons for that was because the last time I had, I lost $63 at the very casino Warren and Aileen had gone to. Though it wasn’t much, the memory of it still burned brightly in my mind. I was under the impression that most folks didn’t end up coming out ahead from those places.

“We sure did,” Warren said.

“How much did you two win?”

“Something to the tune of 150 whole dollars,” he said.

I smiled.

It wasn’t exactly high roller status, but then again, my grandpa had an old-fashioned sense of money. He still got excited at finding a spare dime on the sidewalk.

“Well that’s wonderful, old man,” I said, watching as Tiana pushed several tins of pre-made gingersnap pie crusts in my direction. “Do you know what you’re going to spend that on?”

“A night out on the town is what I’m thinking,” he said. “You know that fancy, highfalutin restaurant,
Tidal Raves
? Well, my baby and me are gonna order the most expensive thing on the menu.”

“Well, you guys deserve a fancy night out after all the work you’ve been putting in at the brewery lately.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s been a nice change of pace here. That’s for sure. But the cell phone coverage has been worse than an old, tattered blanket. That’s why it’s taken me so long to call you back, Cinny Bee.”

“Yeah, I figured it was jail or bad cell coverage,” I said. “I’m glad it ended up being the latter.”

Most of the towns along the 101 coastal highway were small, and you were lucky to get any sort of coverage in them.  

I poured the pumpkin pie filling into the batter dispenser, and then started emptying the filling into the pie crusts.

“So what is it you were saying before that meat head of a security guard came up to me the other day?” Warren asked. “Something about a ring and some fella or another?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The name’s Ralph Henry Baker. I found his class ring behind a brick in my pie shop.”

“Hmm,” Warren mumbled.

“Daniel looked into it since we last talked,” I said. “And it turns out that Ralph Baker disappeared in 1960. He just drove off one night, heading away from a party. Nobody in Christmas River ever saw him again.”

“Uh-huh,” Warren said. “I’m familiar with it.”

“You are?”

“Sure,” he said. “Everybody in Christmas River knew Ralph. His disappearance was quite the shock. Especially for his family.”

Warren cleared his throat in a strange way.

“He, uh, he wasn’t a bad kid,” he said, the tone of his voice changing.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the conversation about Ralph was making the old man uncomfortable.

“Were the two of you friends?” I asked.  

“Us?” he said. “No. I mean, I knew him. We were friendly. Both worked at the mill together. But he was a few years younger than me and liked beer a lot more than I did back then. I guess time has had the opposite effect on me. Beer grows more and more appealing to me with each passing year.”

Warren paused, clearing his throat oddly again.

“So you didn’t really know him that well, then?” I said.  

“No,” he said. “But, uh, I think there’s something you should know about all of this Cin.”

I set the batter pitcher down on the counter while Tiana whisked the pies away from me and tossed them into one of the ovens.

“What is it?” I said.

The tone of Warren’s voice was downright odd, and it worried me some.  

“Well, uh,
you see
…”

There was another long pause, followed by a sigh.

Whatever he was going to tell me appeared to be stuck in his throat.

“Ralph Henry Baker?” he finally said. “He was your great uncle, Cin.”

Chapter 23

“What?”

I closed the back door behind me, stepping out into the blustery, tombstone grey morning. The sky spit down a few raindrops, and they splattered across the side of my face. But I hardly felt a thing.

“How can that be?”

“Well,” Warren said, taking in a deep breath. “You see, your dad’s mom? Ralph was her brother. Her maiden name was Baker before getting married – though I don’t suppose your dad ever gave you much of a lesson in his family history. Bastard didn’t know much about the meaning of family to begin with.”

I found myself speechless.  

When you live in a small town nearly your entire life, you think that you know everything there is to know about it.

Then something like this knocks you clear off of your feet.

I started saying something, but stopped, realizing I didn’t know where I was going with it.

I didn’t have the words.

“Your dad came from a good family, despite himself,” Warren continued. “The Bakers were respectable people. And Ralph was a good kid. His only flaw was the drink. He didn’t exactly have a problem with it, but he indulged a little too much for his own good. Which back in those days, was somewhat scandalous.”

“How come I haven’t heard about any of this before?”

Warren paused for a moment.

“Well, Ralph’s sister – your grandma – was gone by the time you were born. She passed early of cancer, as you know. Your grandpa on that side moved back to his hometown back east after that and died when you were just a little girl. So it wasn’t like he was around to tell you. And since Ralph had disappeared such a long time ago, there wasn’t really any reason for you to know about him.”

I let that sink in for a long moment.

Ralph Henry Baker was my great uncle.

It was strange to think of him in those terms now – the teen in those photos, who seemed like he had the world on a string, being related to me.

“You there, Cin?” Warren said, the line cracking slightly.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, walking slowly to the porch railing. “I’m, uh, just… this is just kind of a shock.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s strange, you finding that ring of his in your pie shop, I mean…”

He trailed off, not finishing the thought.

“What is it, Grandpa?” I finally said.

“Well, you see, back then, the pie shop used to be—”

Warren’s voice suddenly cut out.

“Grandpa?” I said, pressing the phone closer to my ear. “Can you hear me?”

But if he could, it didn’t matter – I couldn’t hear him.

The line was silent.  

“
Damn it
,” I muttered angrily.

He must have hit another pocket of bad reception at the coast. And right when it seemed like he was going to say something important.

I started calling his number again, hoping that I could get through.

But just before hitting the send button, something stopped me.

A smell.

A bitter, acrid aroma that assaulted my senses.

An unmistakable odor that I knew could only signify bad things.

I turned around to see Tiana opening the left oven, a billow of black smoke escaping from it.

Oh no.

Chapter 24

“Oh, Cin. I don’t know what else to say. I am so, so sorry.”

A few sooty tears spilled down Tiana’s red cheeks as she gazed at the cookie sheets lined with the burnt remains of what had once been the Chocolate Hazelnut pies.

I didn’t say anything for a long moment, gauging the damage myself.

A film of smoke lingered in the air, even though I had opened all the windows and doors. And though I had turned the smoke alarm off in time before the sprinklers turned on, the high-pitched piercing sound was still echoing in my ears.

“You told me to take those pies out,” Tiana continued, berating herself more than anybody else ever could. “I just… I just plain forgot about them.”

She smacked a hand up to her forehead, and the color of her cheeks deepened with embarrassment.  

“I mean, I must be losing my mind to do something
this
stupid.”

I didn’t believe that Tiana was losing her mind. Lately, she’d just been a bit forgetful. Nothing to this degree, but small things. Like forgetting to reset the oven to a certain temperature, or forgetting to lock the windows when we were closing up for the night.

I wagered that the absentmindedness had less to do with Tiana’s mental health, and more to do with the high-flying status of her emotions lately.

Tiana was in love. And I knew from personal experience that that kind of volatile emotion could even make you forget your own name.

A few more tears popped over the rims of her eyes. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her sleeve.

I couldn’t take seeing her beat herself up anymore.

I went over to where she was standing and gently put an arm around her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”

I felt a creepy crawly feeling travel up the back of my spine when I said the last word:
accident
.

It wasn’t lost on me that this one, despite being relatively harmless, came in as the third such one in just a few short days.

“No, it
is
my fault,” she said. “I’ve just been spacy lately. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

I pat her shoulder some.

“Look, it could have been a lot worse. We got to it before it got out of hand, and other than some burnt pies, a smoky kitchen, and a roomful of spooked customers out in the front, everything turned out okay.”

I wasn’t just trying to make Tiana feel better – everything had turned out all right. Although some folks out in the dining room had acted quite dramatic about the whole situation, as if they hadn’t heard a smoke detector alarm go off before in their lives.

Tiana nodded, biting her lower lip, clearly trying to fight back some more tears.

“And you know what else?”

“What?” she said.

“Because of this, I don’t think we’ll have to make those extra pumpkin pies today,” I said. “Seems like a lot of customers cleared out.”

“Oh, Cin. That’s not a good thing,” she said, dabbing at her eyes some more with her sleeve. “That’s good business I scared off. Not to mention the ruined pies I cost you. I know hazelnuts aren’t cheap these days.”

I shrugged.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “Besides, I could use an early day. And maybe you could, too.”

She looked at me, searching my eyes to see if I was being serious.

“Ian and Tobias here probably wouldn’t mind the afternoon off either, would you fellas?”

“Not at all,” Tobias said, looking at Tiana with a loving expression.

“Sounds good to me,” Ian said, taking off his apron.

The youth smiled warmly at her, and that seemed to make her feel a little better.

“Okay, everybody in agreement?” I said.

They all nodded.

“Let’s help the remaining customers and close up.”

Everyone got to work, finishing up the last batch of pies and cleaning up the kitchen.

The customers wouldn’t be happy about the shop closing so early, but sometimes, you just needed an afternoon off.

Especially when you had a missing persons case to solve.

Chapter 25

“Is it my lucky day, or are you here about two hours earlier than you said you’d be?”