Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (12 page)

I watched Huckleberry and sighed.

“What are you doing back here, Daniel?” I asked. “You haven’t really told me. I mean, not really.”

“You know, I remember this park, now that I’m looking at it. There’s a baseball diamond under all this snow, isn’t there?”

“You’re avoiding my question,” I said.

He hesitated again.

“Let’s just say something happened back in Fresno, and that all I could think about for months after was coming back to these mountains. All I wanted was to see snow again, and to feel clean air in my lungs. You know? All I wanted was to get back a piece of something I lost a long time ago.”

He rubbed his neck, like it was sore.

“Is it helping?” I asked. “Being back here?”

I wanted to ask him more about what happened, but felt a wall when I started moving in that direction.

I got the feeling he didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet, anyway.

“There are moments when it seems like it is,” he said. “I see these Christmas lights and the snow coming down, and here I am walking down the street with a pretty girl in the middle of the night… everything back there seems very far away. But then other times…”

“Other times it’s all right there,” I said, finishing the sentence. “It’s there, because it’s part of you now. And there’s no way to outrun it.”

He looked over at me, and I thought I saw a hint of surprise in his eyes.

And then he nodded.

“I know a little something about moments like that,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “I can see it in you.”

I thought of what he said the night I dropped him off at his home.

I don’t want you to be sad anymore
.

I realized I didn’t want him to be sad anymore either.

“Copley intuition?” I asked.

“Is that why you’re drinking tonight?” he asked. “I mean the real reason why.”

“Finding a man you once knew dead in your backyard isn’t enough to drive someone to drink?” I asked.

“Maybe for most people,” Daniel said. “But you’re tough. I don’t think that’d rattle your cage so badly.”

I shrugged.

“There’s always a reason to drink if you’re looking for one,” I said. “In my case, I can blame it on an ex-husband and his lovely fiancée who just happened to be my bakery assistant in another lifetime.”

He winced.

“That explains a lot,” he said. “I don’t blame you for falling into a bottle.”

“If it were up to me, I’d spend a lot more time in a whiskey fog,” I said. “But you know, I’ve got things to do, responsibilities and what have you.”

“Plus, you’re tough. You wouldn’t fall off the tracks like that,” he said. “I remember that about you.”

I scoffed.

“You’d be surprised,” I said. “You want to know a secret?”

“What’s that?” he asked, leaning in closer to me.

“I’m not that tough,” I whispered. “It’s all a show.”

He shook his head.

“You’re not selling me on that,” he said. “No. I know the truth, Cinnamon Peters. That you’re nothing short of ruthless. Someone who’s won as many Gingerbread Junction Competitions as you would have to be, wouldn’t they? So don’t try and convince me of something else. I know you, Cinnamon.”

That made me smile.

And it suddenly made me feel a lot better.

That was something I remembered about Daniel.

He always had a way of making you feel special. Of making you feel like you were the only one in the world. Or at least the most important one.

Like he believed in you.Really believed in you.

“And what you said before? About you not knowing me? That’s not true either,” he said. “You know me.”

“We’ll see about that one,” I said.

Huckleberry started leading us down a street that led away from the downtown area. There weren’t many streetlights, but we kept going anyway. Christmas lights from the houses cast enough light to see by.

“So if I didn’t kill Mason Barstow, who did?” I asked.

“Someone who didn’t like him very much,” Daniel said.

I laughed.

“Wow. And you made your way all the way up to lieutenant back in Fresno?”

“The department’s an equal opportunity employer,” he said.

We stopped for a moment. The street was getting too dark to see by. I could barely make out Huckleberry in front of us, and I could barely see Daniel’s face.

“Should we turn around?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

We swung around, me clinging onto his arm while we walked back toward the lights of town.

“But really,” he said. “Do you have any idea who would have wanted him dead? Anyone else in the competition or in the town who didn’t like him?”

I thought about it for a moment.

“Not anyone in particular,” I said. “A lot of people disliked him. About the only person he did get along with was Gretchen O’Malley. He just thought she was some sort of artist with gingerbread. I never understood it. I guess they were cut from the same piece of mean and nasty cloth.”

Daniel nodded.

“One time, he called her a Picasso with gingerbread.”

Daniel laughed heartily.

“Sounds like a good name for a band, doesn’t it?” he asked. “
Picasso with Gingerbread
. It’s got a nice ring.”

I thought back to him playing guitar that night under the stars.

“Do you still play?” I asked. “I remember you and that guitar back in high school. I never saw you without it slung over your shoulder.”

“No, I haven’t played for a while,” he said. “It’s just one of those things I kind of lost along the way. I miss it though.”

“You should start back up,” I said. “Teach me how to play. Remember how you promised to teach me that night? Now’s your chance.”

“Yeah, uh, sorry for being a few years late on that,” he said.

“A few?” I said, looking up at him.

“Well, more than a few years. But, better late than never, right?”

We suddenly stopped walking, and I could have sworn the clouds up above broke for a moment, and a bright ray of winter moonlight fell on us. Light snowflakes floated magically through the air.

And in the white light of the moon, he looked the same. The same as that carefree teenager all those years ago, serenading me by the lake in the summertime.

“I’ve missed you, Cinnamon,” he said.

“You’re just saying that,” I said as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close. 

“Doesn’t make it any less true.”

He leaned over and his lips touched mine, and he kissed me tenderly, bringing me close to him in a passionate embrace. Making the cold night glow.

My heart pounded hard in my chest like it was a prisoner trying to get out of a burning jail cell.

He pulled away, smiling.

I felt my lips turn up. I was smiling too.

“Should you really have done that, Lieutenant Brightman?” I asked. “Kissing a murder suspect? Doesn’t that violate some code of some sort?”

“You forget,” he said as we started walking again. “I’m not a Lieutenant anymore. And even if I was, Cinnamon. It wouldn’t matter.”

We walked a little farther and ended up in front of his black pickup truck.

“You know, I really liked you,” he said. “Sometimes, I’ve thought about what would have happened if I stayed behind.”

I let out a sigh.

“I’ve thought of that before too,” I said. “Would it have worked?”

“Maybe we’ll get a chance to find out,” he said, opening the truck door for me.

He drove me back home. It had stopped snowing.

As I got out of the car, he leaned over to say something.

“Do you forgive me yet?” he asked.

I made it look like I was thinking long and hard about it.

“Well, let’s just say you’re making some progress.”

We made plans for him to stop by the shop the following day.

And I knew that the chills wouldn’t come back that night.

Chapter 29

I woke up the next morning, feeling more awake and more alive than I had in a long time.

If I thought about it too much, I might have felt bad about the way I was feeling.

I might have felt bad that I was feeling so good with Mason dead. That I was feeling so good with me being a potential suspect in his murder. 

But I was doing a pretty good job of not thinking about any of those things this morning.

I got dressed, shoveled the driveway, made coffee and breakfast for Warren and me, and got ready, thinking about Daniel Brightman’s arm around my waist and his lips on mine.

That one image almost erased the fact that Bailey and Evan were getting married.

Almost.

But I promised myself I wouldn’t dwell anymore on any of it until after the competition. Bailey was playing dirty. She had chosen to drop that bomb on me because she knew it would jar me.

I’d heard, through a friend who worked over at the Chamber of Commerce, that she was planning on opening up her own bakery soon. She was just looking for publicity at this competition, no doubt, and was looking to upstage me.

But I wasn’t going to let that happen.

I thought about what Daniel had said. That I was tough.

He was right.

I drove over to the shop in the dark wintry morning. Usually, it was silent and still and dead at this hour of pre-dawn. But today was the big Christmas parade. Burl Ives was already blaring from the speakers set up downtown as a flurry of behind-the-scenes parade people got the floats ready.

It was going to be a busy day at the shop.

The parade was always a high point in the tourist season. Because it took place right downtown, lots of locals and out-of-towner alike ended up wandering into my shop. I was going to be working hard, baking pies all day long to keep up with the stream of customers.

But I had some good thoughts to keep me warm.

I pulled up to the dark store and parked. I got out, and fished my keys out of my pocket, then opened the door.

Right away, I knew something was wrong.

A cold draft of wind hit me in the face, rather than the usual warm, cozy air that perpetually smelled of caramelized fruit fillings and buttery crust.

I stood in the doorway for a moment, frozen by a paralyzing fear.

I looked around the dark dining room. Nothing appeared to be out of order. Everything was neat and clean, the way I left it last night before I locked the front door and closed up.

But I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The blinds were moving with a draft that shouldn’t have been blowing through.

And whatever was wrong had happened in the kitchen.

I thought about calling the police or calling Daniel. But an uncontrollable need to know gripped me. That, and the fact that it was my shop, and I wasn’t going to wait 15 minutes before I found out what was wrong.

I walked cautiously across the tile floor, leaving the front door open behind me in case I needed to get out quick.

I walked behind the counter, and then took a deep breath.

I went through the swinging door to the back, my throat dry like I’d swallowed a handful of sand.

My eyes scanned the dark kitchen. I flipped on the light switch.

I didn’t see it right away. But when my eyes drifted over to the far right corner of the kitchen and saw the crumbled mess in the corner, I nearly fell apart, right then and there.

I dropped my bag and ran over to it, no longer caring if the burglar was still in the shop.

No longer caring that a window was broken, with a gaping hole chilling up the kitchen.

All I could see were the ruins in the corner.

I screamed in a kind of mad, crazed anger. I felt like I might blow my top, like my anger might shoot upwards and break my skull into a thousand pieces as the rage looked for an escape from this pent-up body.

My dreams of winning this year’s Gingerbread Junction Competition were lying in a crumbled, mangled heap on the kitchen floor.

Chapter 30

“So you locked up the store about 6 p.m. last night? Is that right?”

I nodded solemnly.

We were standing in the kitchen, the bright and cheerful sounds of the Christmas parade bleeding through the big hole in the back porch window.

Sheriff Trumbow looked tired. A murder and break-in in the span of 48 hours would do that to a man. Especially a man that normally doesn’t do much more than push paper from one side of his desk to the other.

“Any idea who would have done this?” the sheriff asked.

I had plenty of ideas. Plenty.

But it was just a matter of telling the sheriff without sounding like a jealous ex-wife.

“You know how the Junction gets,” I said. “It’s always very competitive. But this is never happened before.”

I rubbed my face.

“The only difference this year, that I can think of, is that Bailey’s entered the contest.”

I glanced at the sheriff. He lifted his eyebrows at me.

He didn’t know all the details, but he knew enough to know that Bailey and I hated each other.

“Do you think she was capable of doing this?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Honestly, I can’t answer that question objectively,” I said.

He rubbed his red face.

The back door opened, and a deputy who had been out on the porch looking at the broken window came in, holding something in his gloved hands.

“Did you leave this outside, Ma’am?” he asked, holding up something shiny.

I squinted at it, the light catching the steel and blinding me for a moment.

Then, with horror, I realized what it was.

The knife didn’t belong to me.

“Where was that?” I asked.

“In one of the empty pie tins on your porch out here,” he said. “Is it yours?”

I shook my head, feeling like I had just stumbled into some quicksand.

“Burglar must have left it,” I said. 

What was
that
doing on my porch?

How on earth did it get there?

I glanced over at the knife block on the counter. All but one was there, and that one was up in the front case.

Plus, I didn’t recognize this knife.