Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 7) (16 page)

He paused, lacing his fingers together on the desk.

“I mean, you didn’t even know Ralph was your great uncle. People just forget, Cin. Like the way they forgot about Hannah Templeton.”

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“I still can’t believe that old Hattie is Hannah Templeton,” he said. “What a strange course of events.”

I had told Daniel everything about my visit to Hattie Blaylock’s house that morning, down to the last detail.

“Do you think if you could get Hattie to testify to what she saw in the bakery that day – about Frederick Morgan hiding Ralph’s class ring – that the Pastor could be charged with Ralph’s murder after all these years?”

Daniel broke eye contact with me and stared out the window, mulling the question over for a long moment.

“I don’t know, Cin,” he said. “So much time has passed. And if the only evidence is a ring that could have been put in the wall of that building by just about anybody, along with the testimony of an old recluse who many in the community believe to be of dubious moral character… I just don’t think it’s enough to hold up. Especially considering the fact that Frederick Morgan is a well-regarded man of the church in this community, and has been for several decades.”

I let out a disappointed sigh.

Outside, the braches of the bushes crowding near the window scratched against the pane in a stiff autumn wind.

“It just can’t end like this,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s just so…
wrong
. All this time, the people of this town has thought the Pastor was this moral pillar of faith. I mean,
jeez
– Warren even had the man officiate his wedding. But the Pastor is nothing but a murderous coward.”

I closed my eyes for a second, the image of Ralph Henry Baker’s class picture, him smiling like he had the world on a string, burning in my mind.

I knew that the world was an unfair place. That despite the crime shows that made it seem like every criminal got caught, the reality was that plenty of people never saw justice in this world. Their stories – their pain and suffering – went by the wayside.

Ralph Henry Baker’s story had been lost all these years. And while he hadn’t been perfect by most accounts, I believed that he still deserved some sort of justice.

Somebody needed to pay for what they did to him.

Daniel studied me for a long time from across the desk.

“You’re right, Cin,” he said. “It
is
wrong. But we need more evidence. Something more than a class ring and Hattie’s version of events that took place five-plus decades ago.”

“How are we going to get that?” I said, searching his eyes.

He leaned back, looking out the window again.

“I don’t know, yet,” he said.

Then he was quiet.

The silence said it all.

We’d hit another dead end. Except this time, it felt particularly
dead
.

The door to Daniel’s office opened suddenly.

“Uh, Sheriff?”

Deputy Billy Jasper stood there, red in the face, his chest heaving slightly.

“What is it, Billy?”

“We’ve got that meeting with the county commissioners in ten minutes, don’t we?”

Daniel’s eyes lit up.

“Damn,” he said, glancing at his watch. “You’re right. I clear forgot.”

He stood up abruptly.

“I better get going, Cin,” he said, coming around, kissing me quickly on the top of my head. “We’ll talk more about this later, all right? We’ll figure out what to do.”

I nodded, squeezing his hand, then watched as he put on his jacket and grabbed a file from off the desk before quickly following the young deputy out the door.

I sighed, looking out the window.

I believed that my husband was the best law enforcement agent in the state, if not in all fifty.

But even the best of the best couldn’t solve every case.

Chapter 39

I pulled out a pan of bubbling Cinnamon Pear Gingersnap pies from the oven as a hot burst of air flooded my senses.

It smelled of butter and sugar and spice – and seemed to encapsulate all the magic of autumn in one beautifully-balanced explosion of aromas.

But instead of savoring the magical moment, I found that my thoughts were somewhere else completely – in a place much more sinister than the cozy confines of the pie shop kitchen.

I was thinking about what it would have been like to kill your own best friend.

Frederick Morgan had motive. He had opportunity. And he had plenty of time to hide the body. Nobody noticed Ralph missing until a couple of days after the night he drove away, giving the Pastor plenty of time to do away with any evidence.

Finding that evidence fifty-five years ago probably would have been difficult. Today, I realized, it would be damn near impossible.

“Anything wrong, Cin?”

I looked up to see Tiana peering at me with a motherly expression of concern.

Though it had taken her a little while to get over the embarrassment of the kitchen fire, she had arrived that morning with her usual zest and spunk. And more than that, Tiana had been particularly attentive to her work – ensuring each ingredient was measured exactly, and that the ovens were set to the right temperatures.

I shrugged, going for some items in the cupboard.

“Nothing you want to hear about,” I said.

She put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows.

“Try me,” she said.

I let out a sigh, coming back to the kitchen island with a sack of flour and several spice jars.

“It’s just… sometimes it seems like there’s not a lot of justice in the world,” I muttered. “It’s not like television or in the movies. Even though everyone does their best, most bad guys get away with it.”

She scrunched up her nose for a moment, as if in deep thought.

“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But you know, once you start taking on the world’s problems, it gets to be a slippery slope. There’s always
something
to be down about if you look hard enough.”

I nodded.

She had a good point there.

“You want to tell me the details?” she said.

“Just this case Daniel’s working on,” I said. “There’s a man who’s done something, but he’s not going to pay for it because there’s no evidence to—”

I stopped midsentence as I felt a buzzing from my apron pocket.

Maybe it was Warren.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I should probably get this.”

Tiana nodded and smiled understandingly. She grabbed a pan of cooled pies from off the cold marble counter, and headed toward the front of the house with them.

I dusted off my flour-caked hands, and then pulled my phone from my pocket. I was about to answer it, but stopped completely when I saw the number show up on the screen.

Or, more like, the lack of a number.

Unknown
.

I felt my blood run cold.

I stood there, each vibration from the plastic sending a little shock through me.

I thought about not answering it. Letting it go straight to voicemail, or answering and hanging up right away. Letting the caller know that I wasn’t interested in whatever threat he was trying to level at me.

But as I stood there, weighing my options, I realized that I had no choice.

We’d hit a dead end again.  

And about the only thing that might keep the case going was this phone call from the mystery man who didn’t want me digging around in the Ralph Baker case.

I took in a deep breath, trying to prepare myself emotionally.

Then I answered.

Here went nothing.

Chapter 40

“I
explicitly
told you not to pick at the scabs of the past,” the gravelly voice said. “I told you that it would bring only pain and misery. But you did not listen. You’ve made some people
very
upset, Mrs. Brightman. Now you must suffer the consequences of your actions.”

I bit my lower lip, fear coursing through my body like a runaway train.

But deep down, I felt a spark of something. Something that couldn’t be silenced.

Courage.

And righteousness that comes with knowing the truth.

Something that the man on the other side of the line professed to know something about, but in reality, didn’t know at all.

“What about the consequences of your actions, Pastor?” I said in a powerful voice. “Or do you still think you can get away with murder?”

I couldn’t be certain that it was Pastor Frederick Morgan who was calling me.

But I took a wild shot in the dark – because there was no one else I could think of who would have wanted to see Ralph’s disappearance remain a cold case.

There was nothing but an icy silence on the other side of the line.

“I know you did it, Frederick,” I said. “I know you killed him. So does Hattie. And so does the Sheriff. You might have gotten away with it all these years, but we’re on to you, Frederick. We know that—”

I stopped speaking, realizing that the Pastor wasn’t there anymore.

He had hung up.

I let out a strained breath of air, staring up at the ceiling.

Feeling mad as hell at myself.

Not only had I scared the murderer off the phone, thereby missing out on any opportunity to get him to say something incriminating, but I had told him that we were on to him. Laying out our cards before I even knew what cards we actually held –like a fool who was still learning how to play poker.

I bit my lip, feeling my cheeks grow red.

I’d
completely
blown it.

Chapter 41

“Get in.”

I had only noticed the Sheriff’s truck sitting in front of the pie shop by happenstance. Tiana, Tobias, and Ian had all gone home for the evening, and I was the only one left in the shop. I had just finished baking the last batch of Whiskey Apple pies, and was doing some final cleaning in the dining room when I saw the truck parked there next to my black Escape.

I wondered how long he’d been there for.

After receiving the phone call from the mystery man, who I was now almost certain was Pastor Morgan, I had called Daniel and told him about it. He had taken the news rather calmly. He told me not to worry – and that he would handle it.

I now realized that part of that promise meant setting a watch on the pie shop to make sure that the Pastor didn’t come by and make me “suffer the consequences” of digging into the past.

When I saw Daniel sitting there in the truck, I had abandoned my cleaning efforts, going for my coat and my bag in the back. I turned off all the lights in the shop, double checked that the ovens were indeed off, and then I went through the front door. I locked it behind me, then checked twice that the lock was really working.

It was a bitterly chilly night. There was a dampness in the air that seeped right down into your bones. The kind of dampness that threatened frost and possibly ice later in the evening.

Daniel had a deathly serious look in his eyes when I climbed in the truck, and I immediately got the sense that we weren’t heading home.

“What’s going on?” I said, buckling my seatbelt.

“Pastor Morgan is missing,” he said. “He didn’t attend a church function yesterday. The volunteers over at the First Presbyterian haven’t seen him, and are getting worried. He hasn’t returned any of their calls.”

We pulled out onto Main Street, and the engine revved as Daniel pressed hard against the gas pedal.

“But I’m not going to sit back and wait to see where he reappears again, Cin,” he said. “This isn’t an old case anymore. At least, not to me.”

“No,” I said. “Not to me either.”

He shot a long sideways glance in my direction.

“Well, let’s see what we can do about it, then,” he said.

Daniel took a right onto the empty highway that led up toward the mountains, and we sped off into the cold, wicked night.

Chapter 42

The trees along the highway that led to Drablow Road swayed and twisted and creaked in the wind as we drove past them and headed even deeper into the inky night.

I pulled my down jacket tighter around my body, then reached for the truck’s vent, turning up the heat. Though I wasn’t sure if the chill I felt in my bones could be stamped out by anything other than a hot shower and a steaming cup of tea. And maybe not even then.

“Times have changed, Cin,” Daniel mumbled. “Back in the old days, if you killed somebody, you weren’t thinking about DNA. Not like if you killed somebody today. The Pastor might have left behind something at that old house of his, and not known it.”

I hoped Daniel was right – that in this case, maybe time really was on our side.

But deep down, I had my doubts.

We hooked a right and then traveled across a long bridge that straddled the dark waters of the Metolious River – a waterway that sluggishly paralleled the much smaller Christmas River for a ways, before flowing into the Columbia about 150 miles west. Then we turned left, following Drablow Road for several miles until the much-neglected pavement emptied out into dirt.

“Do you really think we’ll find something, Daniel? After all these years, do you really think there’s still something there at his old house?”

He slowed the truck down as the road got bumpier.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But a lot of these places were abandoned in the late 70s – turns out this area nearly got burned up several times in a series of forest fires. Because of the way the houses are situated and the way the winds come down off the mountains, officials decided to permanently evacuate the homes. If the Pastor’s old house is still here, then maybe it’s like one of those ghost towns you see on television. If we’re lucky, maybe things were preserved as is.”

I took in the information in silence.

Daniel didn’t say anything else the rest of the way, his eyes fixed ahead on the road in front of us like the dirt might fall away at any moment.