Mayhem in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy, Book 2) (18 page)

I turned to look at him.

“That day during rehearsal when you collapsed. That wasn’t just because of the heat, was it? You thought you saw him out there. Out there in the—”

“Damn it, I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he said in a strained, raspy whisper.

His eyes flashed with anger.

“There’s got to be a way to stop him,” I said.

I stared back at him.

He was the angriest Santa Claus I’d ever seen.

“He’s burned down two buildings. Who’s to say he’d listen to me?”

“Because you’re his father,” I said. 

Sarah snapped her head back at us, catching a whiff of the conversation.

She had to have known. That was why she acted so strange that day when Ronald collapsed.

She knew what spooked him. And she kept her mouth shut about it.

I ignored her.

“No. I can’t do it. He can’t come here and do this to me.”

Ronald had a disgusted look on his face.

“He’s not going to ruin this for us.”

He waved at a couple of smiling kids holding onto their mom’s hand.

Now I was the one who was disgusted.

I wondered how Ronald had duped the entire town into believing he was a wholesome school principal.

I didn’t say anything more to him.

I didn’t like passing judgment on people. But sometimes, they just asked for it.

Nick Calder burning down two buildings was inexcusable.

But I was beginning to understand that there was more than one villain in this drama.

Chapter 44

I bent down and made sure the buckles on my shoes were properly tightened.

When I stood back up and looked in the dressing room mirror, I jumped.

“Ha! Gotcha,” Warren said.

I turned around and gave him a great big hug.

“I told you not to come,” I said, pretending to be frustrated with him.

But I wasn’t really.

I hadn’t wanted Warren to come to the play in case something happened. But now that he was here, I was glad he did. I knew that was selfish, but seeing that old mischievous grin sure made me feel a lot better.

“Well I figured that since you’re here, I might as well be too,” he said. “And I just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to visit Mrs. Claus.”

He lifted my arms and looked me over.

“Santa is one lucky man,” he said.

Seeing Warren here really made me believe that things might just be okay.

“That’s enough blowing smoke for one afternoon,” I said, smiling.  

I kissed him on the cheek.

“Break a leg,” he said.

He left the room. I put on the last touches, making sure my wig was sitting straight on top of my head.

I took a deep breath.

“Here we go.”

Chapter 45

I knew he was watching me.

And it made my stomach do more flip flops than the Christmas River High gymnastics team.

Each stage light beaming down on me felt like an individual fireball. The humidity of the afternoon had crept into the auditorium, and the air felt thick and stagnant. Overhead, the sound of torrential rain could be heard pounding on the auditorium roof. There were occasional cracks of thunder in the distance, too.

It was the second act, and apart from stumbling over one of my lines during the Santa and Mrs. Claus argument-on-a-tropical-beach scene, I’d been doing okay in terms of my performance. I’m sure there were others who would have done better. But it wasn’t bad for having less than a week to memorize and practice my lines.

I’d started the performance with a good grip on my nerves. But now, I was struggling to get ahold of them.

It wasn’t the arsonist making me nervous. Even though there was a strong possibility he was out in the audience somewhere.

I was nervous because of Daniel.

He was off the stage, behind the curtain, keeping an eye on the actors. He stood in the shadows, watching Ronald and Sarah.

Or he should have been.

But I could feel his eyes on me. He was watching me, and it made my insides tremble. I didn’t know why. But it did. I couldn’t ignore it. I kept looking over at him. Missing the timing of my lines because I couldn’t focus.

“Now look here, Elves. Mrs. Claus says that vacation time is over,” Ronald said.  

The elves let out a round of grumbles.

“I know, I know. It’s not what I want either. But Mrs. Claus is being tougher than a bucking reindeer. She says that if we don’t go back and get to work, there won’t be enough toys for the children come Christmas.”

“But what about my tan?” Sandy Cooper, one of the elves asked. “My skin’s still paler than Frosty the Snowman’s.”

There were a few chuckles from the crowd, but not many.

The dialogue stopped. I realized that it was my line, and I scrambled for the words.

“Uh… and if you stay here any longer, it’s going to be redder than Rudolph’s nose,” I said.

The crowd was forgiving of my trip-up, and laughed a little bit.

I needed to focus if I was going to get through the rest of this play.

“She’s trying to spoil our fun!” another one of the elves said.

“Yeah, Santa! If she wants more toys, then she should make them herself,” another one said. “See how the other half lives!”

“Everybody just simmer down,” Santa said. “I’m sure that if—”

Suddenly, Ronald stopped mid-sentence. 

A hush fell over the auditorium as Ronald’s silence wore on.

I could see from the other side of the stage Sarah’s face turning bright red as she gestured wildly at him. 

He looked over at me and had that same expression that he’d had the day he collapsed. Like an animal with its paw caught in a trap.

I could see the fear in his eyes.

Then, I realized what was scaring him so badly.

The smell…

Sulfur.

And in a matter of moments, all hell broke loose.

Chapter 46

A hail of embers showered the stage.

My ears were ringing, and the screams from the actors and the audience sounded like they were coming from the bottom of a pool.

There had been a loud explosion and now flames were falling all around. I should have been running, but I couldn’t bring myself to move my legs. I was stuck, like an insect trapped in a jar of honey.

The audience was moving like one giant creature as people began standing up and running down the aisles.

I suddenly felt someone run into me, and my legs began to wake up. The person grabbed me and pushed me forward.

“Get off the stage!”

All of us were running. Flames caught onto my clothes and I could feel them singeing through to my skin. I beat at them with my hands while trying not to scream.

The shock wore off, and the fear kicked in. My heart raced.

“Keep going! Keep going!”

The man tightened his grip on me and we ran through the dark backstage and toward the exit.

“It’s locked!” one of the elves said after trying the door.

We were all jammed together in the back. The smell of smoke was getting stronger and stronger.

He left me and pushed his way through to the front of the line.

He started kicking the metal doors. The actors were panicking, some of them turning toward me like they might stampede in my direction in a matter of seconds.

Finally, the door busted open, and light flooded into the dark hallway. Fresh air came streaming in. He held the door open and pulled me outside.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?”

I tried to nod, but I was still in shock.

“Did you see Ronald?” he asked, looking back at the group of actors staggering out into the pouring rain.

Sirens were wailing in the distance.

He looked at the backstage door and then back at me.

“Don’t…”

“I have to,” he said, grabbing my shoulder.

Daniel brushed past me and went back inside the burning auditorium.

Chapter 47

“Damn it, you’re not a fireman!” I shouted.

I pulled the silver sheet tighter around me as I stood under a Red Cross tent. I was drenched, my velvet dress having soaked up water like a sponge. A sharp wind was blowing, chilling me to my bones. Warren rubbed my shoulders, trying to get me to warm up.

The blaze had been put out by the firefighters who’d responded within minutes to the scene. From the outside, the auditorium didn’t look any worse for the wear. It was fortunate that the rains had killed the heat wave. If it had happened any earlier, who knew how far the fire might have spread.

Nobody knew yet what exactly happened.

They were loading Ronald up into an ambulance. His eyes had been glassy and glazed over with smoke, but he’d been talking when Daniel had dragged him out of the auditorium.

Dragging was in no ways an exaggeration. Ronald had been kicking and screaming as Daniel pulled him away.

It seemed that Ronald had wanted to stay in that burning building.

Daniel should have been in that ambulance, too, but he’d told them that he didn’t want to go. The medics were treating him at the scene.

Rainwater from his dark hair was dripping down the sides of his face. He was leaning against one of the benches. He looked sickly and pale.

But that didn’t stop me from berating him.

Those few moments when he’d gone back inside had felt like a lifetime. The kinds of thoughts that had passed through my mind… I thought I’d never live through it.

“Do you know what could have happened in there?” I said. “How could you be so reckless?”

My ears were still ringing from the explosion, and I was sure I was saying everything louder than I needed to. But I didn’t care.

He’d scared me half to death. 

“Easy, Cin,” Warren said. “It’s okay. You just need to sit down and rest. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay,” I said. “Not in the least. You should have thought before you went back in there, Daniel. You should have…”

I trailed off, the words hard to say.

You should have thought about me.

Suddenly, an alarm sounded in the distance.

It was another fire truck.

Daniel shook off the silver blanket and stood up, looking at the distant flashing lights.

But the engine wasn’t coming to the auditorium. It was headed in the opposite direction.

Toward downtown.

I saw a look in Daniel’s eye, and knew he wasn’t going to listen to the medics treating him.

“Don’t you—”

“I’ve got to go,” he said, interrupting me. “Take care of her, Warren.”

He left the covered area and I watched him take off across the parking lot.

“Daniel!” I shouted.

But it was no use.

He didn’t hear me.

Or he just pretended not to.

Chapter 48

I was back at the house, staring out the sliding glass door as rain splattered across the pane. The news on the TV blared behind me.

The reporters were saying that it had been some kind of explosion in the auditorium. There were rumors someone had rigged fireworks in the rafters.

That’s what they pieced together so far.

But the incident at the auditorium hadn’t been the only fire of the day. 

Downtown, Sarah Reinhart’s tutoring office had gone up in a blaze of its own.

Despite the rains, the shop looked to be badly damaged from the news footage.

The fire department had been so preoccupied with the auditorium blaze that it took them some time to realize what was going on and to respond to the call.

Which, if I were to guess, was what the arsonist had wanted.

It was just lucky that nobody had been at the tutoring business when it caught fire.  

“Holy smokes, Cinny,” Warren said from the sofa. “Can you believe any of this? In all my years living here, I’d never seen so much excitement in one day.”

Even though I’d changed out of my wet clothes and into some fresh, comfortable ones, I couldn’t stop shaking.

I couldn’t stop worrying about Daniel. He should have been in the hospital right now, not out at another crime scene.

The same line kept running over and over in my head.

He could have died.

The thought petrified me. Struck me with a fear as heavy and ruthless as an iron crowbar.

“Cinny?” Warren said, turning around after I didn’t respond.

“I have to go,” I said.

“What?” he said. “Where?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be okay.”

I grabbed my keys and pulled on my rain jacket.

Then I ran out the door, through the pouring rain to the car.

Chapter 49

I tried calling him but only got his voicemail.

Halfway on my way to what remained of Sarah’s tutoring office, my phone buzzed with a text message.

He would meet me at the pie shop when he was done. He told me to close up for the day and make sure all the doors were locked.

The pie shop.

In all the mayhem of the day, I hadn’t had a chance to think about it.

I needed to check and make sure everything was okay.

I drove over, my wipers flashing back and forth quickly across the windshield.

I hoped Daniel was okay, and that he wasn’t working himself into the ground.

He really should have been at the hospital. But he was stubborn and wouldn’t listen to me.

All the time I spent trying to go undercover in that stupid play and what was the point of any of it?

I hadn’t been able to do one damn thing.

And in the meantime, I’d jeopardized the most important relationship in my life.

And I couldn’t really say why.

Until I suddenly saw it all clearly.

It all made sense to me. Why I’d wanted to do this stupid play so badly, even though I knew it could be dangerous.

It wasn’t about getting revenge for Kara or about stopping a madman from burning down the town. Or about carrying on the tradition of the Christmas River in July festivities.

It had been about insecurity. About distraction.