Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (8 page)

A feeling of absolute horror circulated through my body. I ran, falling into the brutally cold snow and getting back up again, and falling again and repeating the whole process like I was running from Jack Torrance in
The Shining
.

The sun had gone down, and the woods were falling into twilight, a gray dust settling over them.

It took me about five minutes of fighting through the snow to make it back to the shop. I rushed for the cell phone in my purse and called 9-1-1. I felt the snow melting on my jeans, and bleeding through to my skin. I couldn’t stop shivering.

I tried to keep my voice steady as I talked to the operator.

“Is he alive?” she asked, her voice calm and steady.

“I don’t know,” I said.

But I was lying.

I did know. There was no other possibility.

Whoever that hand belonged to out there in the woods behind the pie shop was dead.

And had been for a while.

Chapter 17

Sheriff Trumbow told me to stay inside the shop while they investigated the scene, so I did.

I could see their lights out in the woods and hear the frightened barking of Huckleberry as several deputies sectioned off the area.

I was still shivering. Daniel had put his coat around me, and had poured me a shot of the Bourbon I kept in the cupboard for the Bourbon Chess Pies I made in the summertime.

He’d come at five instead of five thirty like he said he would. He forgot about the revision in the plans. And when he showed up, he was greeted with a row of flashing cop cars parked outside my shop.

When I finished talking with them, telling the story of how I was led to the body, I repeated the story to Daniel. About how Huckleberry had come and eaten the pie scraps and then waited out in the woods for me.

“It was just like you said, like he wanted me to follow him,” I said, trying to keep the shakiness out of my voice. “Just like the other night. And then he led me to this clearing, and that’s where I saw…”

I trailed off.

He waited for me to continue. I took a deep breath. 

“Where I saw the
hand
,” I said, finishing the sentence.

“It’s going to be okay, Cinnamon,” Daniel said, placing the glass of bourbon in front of me. “Drink this.”

I did as he said, the liquid feeling sharp at first, but then warm as it traveled down my throat.

He poured me another, but I let it sit on the kitchen island.

“What do you think happened?” I said. “Who is he and how did he end up out there? Do you think he got lost, or did he…. Was he…”

“Shhh,” Daniel said. “Don’t think about that right now. It’s all going to be okay.”

Suddenly, I heard the front door open in the dining room. I had the sign turned to closed, but hadn’t locked the door. Whoever came in didn’t seem to care about the sign.

“Cinnamon? Are you here?”

I let out a short sigh. It was John.

“Back here, John,” I said.

“Cinnamon, I saw all those police cars out in front. Are you al—”

John entered the kitchen and saw me. And saw Daniel.

I saw a flash of anger cross his face. Anger that he tried to hide by averting his eyes.

“What’s going on? Are you okay?” he asked solemnly.

I nodded and stood up.

“I’m sorry, I was just about to head over to your office. But something got in the way.”

“But you’re okay?” he said, giving Daniel a sharp and jealous look.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just… I found something out in the woods back over there. I found a... it was a body in the snow.”

“What?” John said, surprised. “How? What were you doing back—”

“She’s already had to explain it to the cops several times,” Daniel said before he could finish. “She should rest.”

John’s eyes narrowed with anger.

“And who the hell are you?” John said. “Clearly I haven’t been made privy to that information yet.”

“An old friend,” Daniel said, standing up. “Now, I propose that we get you home Cinnamon. I’m sure the police will have more questions for you about what happened, but it can wait until the morning. You’re in shock, and you need to go home and rest.”

“Good idea,” John said. “I’ll take her.”

“I can’t yet,” I said, shaking my head. “I told Warren I’d pick him up from the tavern in a little while.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Daniel said.

“C’mon,” John said, coming over to me. “Let’s go.”

“I can drive myself,” I said. “I don’t need to be carted around.”

“No. You’re in shock,” Daniel said. “You shouldn’t drive.”

He looked at John.

“Make sure to get her home safe,” Daniel said.

John didn’t say anything. He just put his arms around my shoulders in an awkward and uncomfortable way. He led me out through the dining room and through the front door.

Any other time, I might have protested more.

But a deep exhaustion had settled over me. Maybe it was the discovery in the woods, or the extreme highs and lows of the busy day, but I felt like a zombie emerging from the ground as I walked out of my pie shop.

John opened the door to his car and I got in, nearly falling asleep on my feet.

Chapter 18

Once, when I was a teenager, I saw a pie eating contest at the Pohly County Fair where one of the participants ate too much pie and threw up all over the place before being rushed to the hospital.

There were rumors that a little girl riding the Ferris wheel found a regurgitated blueberry in her hair.

That was a hot mess.

But it was nothing compared to the kind of day I had had.

The only light at the end of the tunnel had been the fact that Daniel had been there for some of it.

I heard the front door slam just as I was dozing off to a rerun of
The Big Valley
, watching Victoria Barkley descend the stairs of her ranch mansion in an outrageous purple dress. I was lying in my room, wrapped in a pile of comforters and flannel sheets to get the cold out, but so far, it wasn’t working.

John had tried to stay, but I told him I was tired and just needed some rest. He said he would check up on me in the morning and that he was glad I was okay. I thanked him, and then felt guilty about the whole thing.

I should have talked to him on the way over in the car about what I had decided, but it just never came up.

I sighed. There were some voices downstairs. Warren’s, and then someone else’s.

It must have been Daniel.

I suppressed a smile. That must have gone over well. After the second week of me moping around when Daniel left 17 years ago, Warren finally got it out of me what had happened. He told me that of course Daniel was probably going through a rough time, but that he should have returned my calls at least. Warren got pretty angry and threatened to go to California and find both Daniel and his father, and have a real talking to them.
Nobody treats my granddaughter like that!
I remember him saying. But I begged him to drop it, and he did.

Now, here Daniel was picking him up from the tavern. I was sure Daniel got an earful on the car ride over.

And maybe he did deserve it, in some ways.

I heard heavy, slow footsteps up the stairs, and then they stopped in front of my door. It creaked open, the hall light crept in across the wood floor.

“You awake, Cinny?” Warren whispered.

I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up,” I said.

He came in and sat at the edge of the bed. He hadn’t taken off his jacket and hat yet.

“Don’t you worry about that,” he said, patting my leg. “Your friend told me what happened.”

I sighed and adjusted the pillows so I could sit up.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been a weird day.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

I pulled the covers around me tightly to lock out the cold.

“I didn’t even see the body,” I said. “Just a hand. It wasn’t a big deal.”

I was trying to brush it off, that same old defense mechanism kicking in. The one that tried to make others believe I was strong, to show that I couldn’t be touched.

But Warren could see through all that. He always could. Like when I dyed my hair black in the seventh grade, or got a lip piercing a year later. Most parents would have freaked about those kinds of things. But Warren never did because he always saw those little acts for what they were—ways to feel like you had control over yourself and life when the truth was, you had none. 

“Don’t give me that,” he said. “You’re shook up. I can see that easy enough.”

There was no use in trying to hide it. It’d just be a waste of time for both of us.

I rubbed my face, trying to erase the image of the frozen hand sticking up from the snow field that kept running through my head, but it was no use.

“I just keep wondering who he was,” I said. “And how he ended up buried under the snow like that. It’s just… it’s a lonely way to go.”

“Every way’s a lonely way to go,” Warren said. “In the end, we all come in this world alone, and we leave it alone.”

“Yeah, but there’s a difference between dying in your bed at home and being found in a snow drift.”

Warren shrugged.

“His time was just up,” he said. “One way or another. And there’s nothing you could’ve done about that. Hell, nothing any of us could’ve done about it. He’s just lucky you came along. He might have been there until the spring thaws.”

Warren was right, but I was having a hard time hearing it.

I felt too close to all of it to see it from such a practical angle. 

“But what do you think happened to him, Grandpa? How did he get back there, behind my shop?”

Warren stood up and leaned over, kissing the top of my head.

 “Sometimes life throws us a curve ball like that. But don’t let it get you down, darling. The police will do right by him,” he said.

I nodded again and looked up at him. I flashed back to the time in the eighth grade when I fell off my bike riding home from school and scraped my knees to hell. He had that same look on his face then. He was concerned, but also confident that I was strong enough to get over it. He knew because my mother had raised me that way, and so had he. To be resilient and strong, even when things got rough or you hit a few bumps in the road.

That was the kind of person I was. He knew that, and seeing that he knew that sometimes gave me the strength to believe it was actually true.

“Now, do you need anything?” he asked. “Something to drink maybe? Some whiskey?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll be fine. Just some sleep.”

He nodded and started walking out the door, but stopped as he got to the doorjamb.

“So he’s come back, has he?” he asked.

It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about, but then I realized.

“Like I said, it’s been a weird day,” I said.

“A lot of nerve he’s got showing his face around here again after leaving the way he did,” Warren said. “I let him know it, too.”

“I’d wouldn’t have expected anything less, Warren,” I said.

I thought I saw him smile as he closed the door.

Chapter 19

The hand in the snow and the body that it belonged to wasn’t the first dead body I’d ever seen.

But it’s not like that thing ever got any easier. Especially when you weren’t expecting it.

That night, I dreamed of that other time I saw someone dead. So many years ago, back through the haze of time and the fog of the dream world. Distorted and distant and empty.

I was out in the snow, with Huckleberry leading the way. The snow was rosy under the setting winter sun, the way it had been earlier. Huckleberry kept getting farther and farther ahead. I tried to keep up with him, but kept stumbling in the deep snow.

I looked up, and he was suddenly gone.

But there was something up ahead. Something I felt compelled I had to get to. Something that was calling my name.

I kept going and made it to a clearing, an area that must have been a meadow when it wasn’t buried under winter snows.

She was standing there, waiting for me. Dressed in the same outfit she had been when she went skiing that fateful morning, all those years ago.

She looked the same as she did then. With her short brunette hair pulled back into a pony tail, that same slightly flat nose that I saw when I looked in the mirror every morning. Those rosy cheeks and porcelain skin color that almost seemed to glow.

It was a strange sensation seeing her, realizing that she wasn’t much older than I was now. That I was almost as old as she was when she died.

“It’s been so hard to find you,” I said.

Every step I took toward her, I seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the snow.

“Where’ve you been, Mom?” I asked.

She didn’t respond. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. I looked up at her. She was staring at me intently with a worried expression.

I followed her gaze, and gasped.

Blood was gushing from my chest, running down the side of my fleece jacket, staining my jeans black, dripping down onto the bright white snow.

The blood was spilling from a giant gash across my heart. A long, straight wound. 

I looked back up at my mom, but she was gone.

I woke up crying in the cold winter morning.

It had been years since her skiing accident, but sometimes, the pain of her death still felt very fresh.

Chapter 20

When I got to the shop in the early-morning darkness, all the patrol cars were gone from the parking spaces in front. I went in, hung up my coat and scarf, and brewed up a pot of steaming coffee. Then, I went to the back window to look outside.

The empty pie tins were still there on the back porch, empty and sadly dilapidated in the cold snow.

I sighed, and looked out the window. I couldn’t see much of anything. Just silhouettes of the trees swaying in the cold breeze, and a faint grayness at the edges of the sky.

I shivered.