Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (3 page)

“And that’s a bad thing?” I asked.

“It’s been torture. The woman won’t let me even try any of it. I swear, I feel like she’s watching me all the time, making sure I don’t take any of her gingerbread.” Larry said.

Warren started laughing, his whole body shaking. I shook my head.

“Well, Sheila means business,” I said. “I look forward to seeing her at the competition.”

“I’ll just be glad when it’s all over,” Larry said. “Cruel, inhumane woman.”

Warren finished the last of his beer.

“One of these days you’re gonna have to learn to stand up to her, Larry,” Warren said getting up off the barstool.

“It’s too late for that,” Larry said. “I’m about a century too old to change my ways.”

“Isn’t that the truth. Well, I’ll see all you degenerates tomorrow,” Warren said.

I waved goodbye. I hooked Warren’s arm to help him. As we walked away, I noticed a man sitting at a table in the corner. He was maybe in his thirties and he had a thick, dark beard. A cowboy hat sat on the table next to the double shot of whiskey he was holding. He was staring at the shot glass like he had a lot on his mind. 

I didn’t recognize him, but he didn’t look like an average tourist. The Pine Needle Tavern didn’t get many tourists, anyway—it had “local” written all over its aging paneled walls and sticky floors.

The man sitting at the table lifted his eyes for a moment and our eyes locked.

Then, he quickly looked away, like the moment hadn’t ever happened.

It left me with a strange feeling that followed me all the way out to the street.

Chapter 4

I drove Warren back home in my black Ford Escape. He liked walking to the tavern for his daily exercise, and then I would pick him up and drop him back at our house. When we got home, I made sure he took his pills and then set him up in front of the television to watch
Where Eagles Dare,
one of his favorite movies. He said I worked too much for a young beautiful woman. I rolled my eyes and then pecked him on the cheek. Then, I drove back to the shop.

I thought about Warren on the way over. I worried about him a lot lately. It wasn’t just the drinking, either. He was getting old and that worried me.

My grandfather and I were close. He’d raised me since I was 13. After my mother died, a lot could have gone differently for me. I was on the brink of going down a bad path. Warren looked out for me and made sure I stayed right. In the meantime, he taught me how to play poker and how to build a fire without using matches, and how to survive if I ever got lost in the woods.

But he was forgetting things lately. Sometimes he’d be as sharp as blackberry bush thorn. But every once in a while, he’d lose track of something.

Once, last year, he left one of the burners on after cooking breakfast. It nearly caused a fire at his house.

Since then, I’d been doing my best to take care of him. He’d moved in with me, even though he protested. He said he didn’t want to burden me and that he didn’t need someone to watch him all the time. But it wasn’t a burden, and I liked having him close by. Just in case.

I still worried about him a lot, though. 

I pulled up to the shop and got out of the car. I was met by a sharp and bitter wind.

The streets were dead as dead could be. I still had a lot of pies left to make for tomorrow morning. Starting on this year’s gingerbread house had really cut into my time.

I sighed as I opened the front door of the shop. I didn’t mind going back and putting in the extra hours. It was my own business after all, and I was grateful that it was doing so well. But I really needed to hire some help. I didn’t know if I’d be able to survive the season by myself in the shop.

I went inside, locked up the front door, and hung my jacket and scarf up on the coat rack. I stamped my boots free of snow, and then went in the kitchen to get down to business.

I turned the lights on, put some Otis Redding, The Four Tops, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes on the speakers to get me energized, and wrapped an apron around my waist. I pulled out the pie dough that had been sitting in the fridge since I’d made it earlier that morning. I pre-heated the ovens, and rolled out the crusts, taking care not to touch the dough too much with my hands. That was a secret my mom passed down to me. If you touch the pie dough too much, the oils in your hands will affect the flakiness of the baked crust.

I rolled out crusts for seven pies. I draped them over the tin pans, pressing them lightly into the bottoms and then cutting the overhang around the rim.

I whistled to
Pain in My Heart
. I kept stealing glances at the unfinished gingerbread house in the corner, making mental notes about additions that I needed to make. Kara and I had decided on the theme of a Western Christmas for the gingerbread mansion. It wasn’t that original of an idea, but it would be a winner with the judges. This was Central Oregon, after all. People loved their Western heritage here. Plus, we could add enough touches—enough peppermint candy boot spurs and licorice sheriff’s badges and marzipan Appaloosa horses and gingerbread sheriffs—to make it really special and unique.

I put the pans in the oven to pre-cook the crusts, and then started making the fillings. I was planning on making two Mountain Blueberry Cinnamons, three Christmas River Cherrys, a Lemon Gingercrisp, and if I had time, a Moundful Marionberry.

I started on the blueberry filling first, mixing together the blueberries, brown sugar, cinnamon and corn starch.

I caught my reflection in the glass pane of the window, suddenly.

I wasn’t looking that bad. My long brown hair was pulled back in a loose-fitting pony tail, and my bangs had maintained their shape throughout the day of hard work. I looked a little pale, but I was wearing a black sweater that seemed to bring the pale out in me. Plus, it was winter. I always got as pale as a vampire during the winter in the Central Oregon mountains.

As I mixed the pie filling, I thought about Maui. I thought about those warm sands, and the feeling of the hot sun browning my skin. Of the sound of the wind in the palm trees.

I couldn’t wait. I glanced at the gingerbread house base in the corner, and felt hopeful.

I suddenly heard a noise at the back door, and stopped mixing. I put down the spoon, and went to the door to look out into the blackness of the night.

I looked down to where the noise had come from.

It was the dog.

Huckleberry had come back.

His fur was dirtier than the last time I had seen him, and there was more desperation in his eyes. He was whining, too. A high-pitched whine that would have melted the coldest of hearts. 

And it was starting to snow out there. Large flakes of crystalized snow sailed through the air, carried by a wicked winter wind.

I went to the front and got the pan of leftover strawberry rhubarb pie from the glass case, and went back. I opened the door slowly, trying not to scare him, but it didn’t work. He bolted away into the black woods.

I wedged the pan into the snow on the back porch. The snow was getting blown sideways, and I wished so very much that Huckleberry would stop his skittish protest and just come inside for the night.

It sent a chill through my heart to think of him out in the cold snow, wandering those dark woods.

I called out for him, my voice carried off by the cold north wind into the woods.

“Come here, Huckleberry!” I yelled. “Come here, pooch!”

There was no sign of him, though. I started stepping back inside the shop, when suddenly I saw a shadow moving through the trees in the distance.

I squinted into the swirling snow.

“Come here, Huckl—”

The words got caught in my throat and was replaced with a muffled cry.

The shadow in the woods wasn’t Huckleberry.

Or any kind of animal for that matter.

It was a man.

I rushed back inside and locked the door, my mind racing with fear.

I’d suddenly stepped into a horror movie. The shadow in the woods was lumbering through the snow, and it looked like he was coming toward the shop.

“Damn it,” I said out loud.

Christmas River was a safe place—most of the time. But it was just like any other Oregon town bordering the boonies. Everybody knew about the meth houses out in depths of the Oregon woods. Everybody had seen those kind of people come to town every once and while.

I was a tough girl, but seeing a strange man in the woods behind my shop was enough to jar me. Hell, it would have jarred most people.

I turned off the lights in the kitchen and rushed for my cell. I pressed 9-1-1 into the keypad and hesitated before pressing send. The man was just about up on the back porch now.

My heart was racing out of control as I heard his heavy footsteps coming up the back steps.

“Hello?” a faint voice, muffled by the wind, said. “Is anybody there?”

I shivered. I didn’t know if I should answer. It was obvious that somebody was here, and he knew that. He would have seen the light go out.

“Hello?”

I took a deep breath and tried to steady my voice.

“Stay where you are,” I yelled through the glass, showing myself, and making sure that he saw the phone in my hands.

He walked up to the glass to get a better look inside. And through the heavy snowfall, I got a better look at who he was.

I gazed at his face for a moment.

And when I recognized him, the phone slid out of my hand, hitting the cold tile floor with a crash.

Chapter 5

“What are you doing here?” I yelled through the glass.

“I… uh…” he started, pulling his cowboy hat off. “I followed the dog. Then I saw this place.”

I could almost smell the whiskey through the pane. I could tell by his glazed eyes and confused expression that he was inebriated.

Big flakes of snow were falling into his hair and his thick beard. He shook with a visible chill, but he tried to hide it.

I let out a sigh of relief and wiped my sweaty hands on my apron.

I looked hard at him, sizing him up.

I had the advantage now. I knew who he was.

And because I had that advantage, I decided to do something I wouldn’t normally have.

I decided to open the door.

I picked up the battered phone, put it in my jean pocket, and unlocked the door. I opened it slowly, cautiously.

He looked at me. He was surprised.

I got the sense he had no idea who I was.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked.

“What is this place?” he said.

I held the door open for him and he stepped inside, shaking the snowflakes from his hair.

He looked around slowly, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“I followed the dog through the woods,” he said, again. “And I saw this place… and it looked like heaven from out there. It smells like it too.”

I smiled nervously.

“It’s my pie shop,” I said.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, slurring a little. “It’s so warm in here.”

“Why were you following the dog?” I asked.

“I was coming out of the tavern and I saw him,” he said, still looking around in awe. “He looked like a stray. I wanted to catch him and bring him home.”

“I’ve been trying to lure him in for the past two weeks,” I said. “With no luck. But he keeps coming back here for scraps.”

“I can see why,” he said, looking around some more. “It smells like… like home in here.”

He looked at me for a moment, his bleary eyes locking into mine. I was waiting for him to say something. To say my name. For a look of recognition to pass over his face, and for him to smile at me.

But the recognition never came. Just an awkward silence, and a gaze that lasted a little too long.

And then he seemed to come out of his drunkenness a little bit.

“I should go,” he said. “You look busy and I’m taking up too much of your time.”

“No,” I said, the words slipping out of my mouth without my permission. “Stay until… until you can see straight, at least.”

He laughed.

“I’m sorry. I must stink of it.”

“Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see you’ve had a few. Can I take your jacket?”

He looked at me, confused for a moment. Like he didn’t know why I was being so nice to him, a strange man who’d nearly scared me half to death a few moments earlier.

He hadn’t realized it yet, but he wasn’t any stranger.

He took off his heavy, buffalo plaid jacket and handed it to me, hesitating a little. I took it from him along with the cowboy hat in his hands, and brought them out to hang in the front room coat rack. When I came back, I saw him looking intently at the gingerbread house in the corner.

“This is something else,” he mumbled. “Did you make this?”

I nodded, going for the oven doors and checking on the pie crusts. They were just about ready.

“That’s incredible,” he said. “Ha! Is that the sheriff?” he said, pointing to a small, decorated gingerbread man coming down the steps of the unfinished mansion.

I grinned.

Usually, we waited until right before the competition to start making the embellishments and decorations like that. But earlier that afternoon, I had worked on a few sheriff prototypes. They turned out so well, I added them to the partially-built house.

“Sure is. The sheriff’s heading into work. Can’t be letting those hooligans paint the town red, now, can he?”

That made him laugh some. He shook his head.

“But what’s this house doing here in the corner, all lonesome and sad-looking? It should be where people can see it.”

“It’s not done yet,” I said. “It’ll be a few days before it’s complete.”

“Ohhh,” he said, like he understood. “You’re one of those gingerbread competition ladies, aren’t you?”

I laughed.

“Guilty as charged.”

“I used to know a girl once who entered every year,” he said. “But that was a long, long time ago.”

I was quiet. He still didn’t recognize me.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

His eyes wandered over to the brightly lit oven.