Mayhem in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy, Book 2) (13 page)

“I’ll never know how the two of you ended up together,” I said. “I mean, you’re so different.”

He got a faraway twinkle in his eye and was quiet for a moment.

“Well, first off, she’s always been a much better person than me,” he said. “And it was love at first sight. I took one look at her, and I just knew that I was in for it. There was no turning back. No matter what.”

“Well, they say opposites attract,” I said.

“Sarah and I were always meant to be together. I believed it then, and I still believe it today. Even when she gets a big head and thinks she can boss people around.”

I wondered if Sarah saw it the same way. If she did, that would mean that she had a heart. Which the verdict was still out on, in my opinion.

“How are you feeling? Can I get you anything else?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” he said. “But thank you, Mrs. Claus. You’re not as mean as all the elves say you are.”

I smiled.

He stood up and folded the chair. I took it from him, and placed it off to the side of the stage. He was about to start walking down the steps when I stopped him.

“Did you see something out there?” I asked, nodding to the empty auditorium.

He looked back at me. His face had gone pale again, and there was something in his eyes. It was only there for a split second, but I could tell what it was.

Fear.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

His eyes said something else entirely.

“Right before you fainted, you were looking out there,” I said. “It seemed like you saw something.”

“What would I have seen?” he said.

“I don’t know. A ghost or something. That’s the way you looked.”

There was a moment of hesitation.

Then he started chuckling.

“No. I’m afraid there are no ghosts in this auditorium,” he said. “And don’t you be spreading that rumor around. The kids here will never let us hear the end of it.”

He smiled.

He walked down the stairs and then through the door that emptied out into Christmas River High’s cafeteria.

I suddenly realized that I was left alone in the auditorium.

Even though it was hot and stuffy in there, a chill reverberated through me.

I felt like I was being watched.

Then suddenly, I realized that I was.

“Doesn’t seem likely, does it?” A voice said from the audience.

I jumped about fifty feet in the air.

Chapter 30

“Daniel?” I said, squinting out into the dark auditorium.

He must have been somewhere near the back. I couldn’t see anything with the lights still shining down in my eyes.

“Back here,” he said.

I started down the stairs and followed his voice down the aisle. I found him sitting low in one of the chairs.

“Have you been here the whole time?” I asked.

He just looked at me with a broad, smug grin on his face.

“I wouldn’t have guessed it, but you actually make a pretty good Mrs. Claus,” he said. “It’s not easy for most girls to look that pretty beneath an ugly wig.”

I sat down next to him and punched him in the arm playfully.

“Did you just come down here to make fun of me?” I asked.

“Does Sarah really make you guys do dress rehearsal in this kind of heat?”

“She says you channel the character better when you’re in the clothes they would wear,” I said. “Or some such theater
BS.
I think she really just likes to see us sweat.”

“I don’t think it’d be so bad to have Mrs. Claus as a girlfriend,” Daniel said. “She’d make sure you’d eat right. Cook you some hearty North Pole food to keep you during the long winters.”

“I don’t think you need any help in that department,” I said, lightly patting his gut.

The extra pounds were hardly noticeable, but I always liked to tease him about it.

He grinned at me.

“Now you’re the one making fun of me.”

I smiled, and for the first time in a long while, felt relief. We were talking like we normally did. It felt like that distance between us that had been created when he pulled out that ring was now closing.

Last night had helped mend that distance. I could tell that he knew that I loved him. That I’d always be there for him.

Maybe it would all just work itself out. Maybe we could just go back to the way it was. Like none of this had ever happened.

“So what are you doing being a creeper out here in the audience anyway?” I asked.

“Looking out for you,” he said. “If I can’t talk you out of this, which I can’t seem to because you’re damn stubborn, then I’m going to make sure that I keep you safe.”

“Daniel, you don’t have to—”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes I do. Because you’re right. Something’s going on here with these people. What just happened with Principal Reinhart is something I need to find out more about”

“You saw the way he looked up there, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Ebenezer Scrooge was less frightened after seeing old Marley’s ghost,” he said.

“What do you think that was about?” 

“He was looking at me when it happened,” Daniel said. “But I think he thought I was someone else. Someone who must have scared the daylight out of him.”

“But who?” I asked. “He’s just about the nicest old man there ever was. I can’t imagine he’d be mixed up in anything… anything like what you’re thinking.”

“Don’t let the nice old man shtick fool you,” he said. “Just think of Warren.”

“Hey,” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean? What are you trying to say about my grandpa?”

“That old man can talk some shit, and you know it,” he said, smiling. “And I’m saying that the principal’s involved somehow. He knows something about those fires. I’ve got a gut feeling, and my gut’s never wrong.”

I sighed and rested my head on his shoulder.

“So much drama over a stupid play,” I said.

Daniel grabbed ahold of my left hand.

“So much drama lately in general,” he said.  

Chapter 31

I was driving home from the grocery store when I put it together.

I had the radio turned up loud, and I was going over dinner plans in my head. Stephanie was coming over later, and I had picked up ingredients to make some fresh Caprese salad, steaks, and some sangria.

A couple of khaki short, sandal-wearing tourists were in the middle of a crosswalk downtown, so I hit the brakes and watched them walk across the road. They were going just as slow as a pack of turtles in the dead of winter.

My eyes drifted over to the long line of people snaking away from the Christmas Coffee Hut on the other side of the street.

And that’s when I realized who the stranger at the play rehearsal had been. The lights guy whose face I couldn’t line up with a name.  

Craig Canby.

Of course.

Why had it taken me so long?

Though I didn’t know him well, I should have realized who it was sooner. Craig worked at the high school as a counselor, and occasionally, I’d see him at the Pine Needle Tavern. A school counselor frequenting a bar was pretty scandalous for a town our size. Town gossip said he had a thing for one of the waitresses who worked there.

But I remembered when he had a thing for somebody else once.

Last year, Kara had gone out on a date with Craig. And the way Kara had recounted it, the date had ended with Craig accidently spilling coffee all over himself, and Kara breaking out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Could that have been enough motive to burn down her shop?

For most people, it wouldn’t have been. But it was clear that the arsonist was a very particular kind of lunatic.  

The car behind me tapped on the horn, snapping me out of my thoughts.

The tourists were now long gone from the crosswalk. I waved apologetically behind me and pressed down on the accelerator, speeding to get home.

I called Kara as I pulled up into the driveway.

“Hey Cin, can I give you a call back? I’m in the middle of—”

“How come you didn’t tell me about Craig?” I asked.

“What?”

“Craig Canby,” I said. “You know, the lights guy for the play? The Craig Canby you dated last year?”

She didn’t answer right away.

“Well, it just didn’t occur to me,” she finally said. “And for the record, we didn’t date. We went on
one
date.”

“But it was a particularly bad date, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but we’ve all had our share of those, haven’t we?”

“I guess,” I said, deep in thought. “It just seems like an odd coincidence to me that he’s part of the play and the two of you have a history.”

“What? You think he would have burned my shop down because of that one bad date?” she asked.

She snorted.

“No way. I mean, I might have hurt his feelings then, but the way he’s been chasing after Laurie Rollins, I doubt he even remembers that date.”

“But how can you be so sure?” I asked. “Maybe he’s a wacko and he’s been holding a grudge all this time.”

“But why burn down Valley Corson’s shop?” she asked. “What did she ever do to him?”

She was right about that. As far as I knew, Valley didn’t have any connection to Craig.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he got a taste for it or he just snapped or something.”

“I just don’t see it,” Kara said. “I mean, he’s a school counselor. As docile and harmless as they come.”

“Or maybe that’s what he wants people to think.”

I wiped away a trickle of sweat rolling down the side of my face.

It was getting too hot to sit in the car any longer.

“Cin, I’ve got to go. The insurance guys are here to ask me a few questions.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry to bring all this up.”

“We’ll talk more later,” she said, hanging up.

Maybe it didn’t make complete sense, but it was something to go on at least. A possibility.

I got out of the car and grabbed the plastic grocery bags from the trunk.

I reminded myself to tell Daniel about all this later after dinner. It might be important.  

Chapter 32

I had no right to, but I was feeling pricklier than a young Ponderosa pine tree.

I stood in the kitchen, making us up another round of sangria. I could hear their voices drifting inside from the back deck. They were laughing hard about something.

Not that I didn’t want them to. I had no right to have a dinner for one of Daniel’s old friends and not expect that they’d talk about the good old days. In fact, I knew that sometimes with old friends, the past was all you could really talk about because most of the time, your lives had drifted so far apart you didn’t have much left in common.

But there was something in their conversation that I didn’t quite like. And it wasn’t only because I was feeling left out. 

Stephanie was the picture of niceness, and I felt guilty for having the thoughts I was having.

But maybe that was just it. She was too nice.

And if I was being honest, I didn’t like the way she’d been looking at Daniel all night. 

I’d never considered myself to be the jealous type. But maybe I’d been fooling myself all these years. Maybe that was exactly what I was.

Or maybe Daniel just brought it out in me.

I chopped up some more oranges and lemons, threw in a few more grapes, and crushed the fruit with the back of a wooden spoon. I added more red wine, orange juice, and more vodka than I probably should have.

I was going to need it. 

I took a deep breath, trying to collect myself before I went out there again.

He wouldn’t do that to you
I told myself.
You’re just being foolish.

Daniel is not Evan.

I grabbed the pitcher and carried it through the sliding glass door out onto the deck where the two of them were sitting. I had invited Warren along, but he was over at Larry’s house for a beer brewing night. Besides, this dinner party wasn’t exactly his kind of scene. 

I walked out, my flip-flops slapping the wooden deck. I placed the sangria on the table in front of them.

Daniel was leaning back in a chair. Stephanie was dressed nicely in a white tank top and gold hoop earrings that brought out her aqua blue eyes.

“That guy was such a loser,” she was saying while laughing. “I can’t believe he lasted on the force that long.”

“They shouldn’t have let him on in the first place,” Daniel said. “Could have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“Oh thank goodness, Cinnamon,” she said, looking over at me. “I just had to have another glass of that sangria. You’ll have to give me the recipe sometime.”

I refilled her glass.

“It is good, Cin,” Daniel said. “Kind of dangerous, though. It sneaks up on you when you’re not looking.”

“And that’s just how I like my drinks,” Stephanie said, winking.

“I remember,” Daniel said.

My stomach tightened and I started to grind my teeth. But I stopped when I realized what I was doing.

It was little quips like that that set me on edge.

But I tried to let it go as best I could. I tried to refill Daniel’s glass, but he said he was good. I refilled mine, giving myself a little more than Stephanie. I had a feeling I would need it.

“I hope we’re not boring you with our conversation,” Stephanie said. “We’ll stop talking about the old days from now on.”

“No, no, no,” I said, trying to sound graceful and at ease, the way a good hostess should. “Don’t let me stop you. In fact, I want to hear what Daniel was like back then.”

I pulled on an apron and started up the grill.

It was good that I was making dinner. The more I could focus my mind on something else other than the sparks flying between Stephanie and Daniel, the better I’d be able to get through the night.

“Let’s not talk about that, please,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes. “Not while I’m right here.”

“Dan Brightman, are you being bashful?” Stephanie said.

I stabbed one of the raw pieces of steak that I’d set aside on a plate with a prong and threw it on the grill.