Caught in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  My heart hammered in my chest at the thought of what he’d do when he reached the edge.

  Hucks was smart – but like all dogs, he had a weakness for birds. Down on the beach the day before, the pooch had run straight into the ocean in his attempts to chase down a big flock of gulls.

  Had one of those birds caught his attention just now?

  Would he realize what would happen to him if he didn’t stop running when he got to the cliff?

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  “Hucks! Come back here!”

  But the dog wasn’t listening.

  I watched in stupefied, helpless terror as he closed in on the edge of the cliff and—

  He came to a screeching halt just before flying off the side.

  He began barking furiously at something below, his claws digging into the grass in a ready stance.

  I ran up to him, stepping on the leash with my foot and yanking him away with all my might. He started barking more loudly and frantically. I still felt like I was going to be sick, but already, a huge surge of relief was rushing through my veins.

  I shuddered at the thought of how close my beloved pooch had come to being shark food.

  “C’mon, Hucks,” I said, tugging on the leash. “C’mon.”

  But the dog stood staunchly in position, fighting me as I tried to pull him back. He let out several shrill barks.

  That feeling of relief suddenly turned into something else as a realization hit me.

  Huckleberry rarely disobeyed me. He was a great walker, and over the years, there had only been a couple of times when he’d broken away and started barking at something.

  I gulped hard, remembering those times.

  Huckleberry always had a good reason for acting this way.

  I loosened my grip on the leash, letting the pooch go a little ways toward the edge. I followed him, taking careful, cautious steps.

  Then, I gathered up my courage and looked over the side.

  I gasped.

  A moment later, I heard a low groan.

  Chapter 13

  I sat at one of the inn’s maple dining room tables across from a baby-faced police officer who looked deathly serious.

  “So your dog led you there?” he said, writing something in his notepad.

  I nodded, confirming the answer yet again.

  I cupped my hands around the mug of hot tea in front of me, closing my eyes.

  “And when you got to the cliff, you saw one of the guests – a one Jason Parsons – on a rocky ledge twenty feet down or so?”

  I nodded again.

  The young officer, who introduced himself as Officer Reed with the Agate Beach Police Department, sounded like he was rehearsing a line from a cop movie he’d seen one too many times.

  “Then you ran back to the inn and called 9-1-1 from the landline because your cell phone had no service,” he said.

  I glanced over at Daniel, trying not to look as skeptical as I felt about the young police officer’s skills as a detective. I could see just a hint of the same skepticism in Daniel’s eyes.

  “Yes,” I said, looking back at Officer Reed. “I heard him groaning, so I knew he was still alive.”

  I bit my lip as the officer wrote something down on his notepad.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” I asked.

  The ambulance had come about ten minutes after I’d called. It had been a long process to fish Jason Parsons off the ledge. He was badly injured and his position was so precarious, the rescue workers had to be extremely cautious so they wouldn’t lose their footing and plunge into the ocean.

  When Patricia Parsons had heard the sirens and noticed her husband missing, she’d come running out of her room, still in her nightgown, screaming with panic.

  “It looked like a very bad fall,” Officer Reed said. “But then again, it was a miracle he was able to stay on that ledge and not fall all the way down. That would have sealed his fate, no question.”

  The officer cleared his throat and looked over at Adam.

  Adam had heard me making the phone call to the police and had emerged from the innkeeper’s quarters to see what was wrong. Now, the big man looked deeply concerned, dark bags clinging beneath his eyes.

  “So it was quite a party last night, is that right?” Officer Reed said, addressing Adam.

  “It was the grand opening of the inn,” Adam said.

  “A lot of alcohol being consumed?” Reed asked.

  Adam shrugged his shoulders.

  “It was an open bar for the guests, but I kept an eye on everyone. I didn’t think anybody consumed too much—”

  “Jason Parsons brought a bottle of scotch with him,” Daniel interjected. “He was drinking from it all night. I’m sure his wife can corroborate that when you talk to her at the hospital.”

  The officer nodded, writing something down in his notebook.

  Then he stuffed the notepad in his pocket, exchanging it for a large stack of business cards that he began handing out to Adam, Daniel, and me.

  “If any of you think of anything, please give me a call,” he said stiffly.

  “What do you think happened to Mr. Parsons out there?” Adam asked.

  “Pretty cut and dry,” Reed said. “I imagine he got too close to the edge, slipped, and fell. It happens more often than you think out here. Especially when alcohol is involved. That bottle of scotch you were talking about? We found it down there with him. It was empty.”

  “What hospital did they take him to?” I asked.

  “Sacred Heart, half an hour down the road in Newport. If his injuries are serious enough, they’ll probably transfer him to Emmanuel in Portland.”

  The officer’s response made me realize that while he looked young and inexperienced, he knew more than I would have given him credit for.

  “Once again, if anybody thinks of anything else, please don’t hesitate to call,” he said.

  A moment later, Officer Reed walked out of the inn and to the police cruiser parked in the gravel lot.

  Adam let out a huge, sad sigh when he left. He crossed his arms, his head hanging low.

  “How could something like this happen?” he muttered.

  Daniel went over, patting his friend on the arm in support.

  “Ange is going to be so devastated,” Adam continued. “She’s known Jason for so long. And for something like this to happen during our grand opening? It’s just...”

  Adam trailed off.

  It was hard to see the normally-gregarious man looking so defeated.

  “I better go wake her up and tell her,” he said glumly.

  A moment later, he was walking down the hall to their bedroom on the far side of the house.

  I looked at Daniel.

  “I’m sorry you had to be the one to find him, Cin,” he said, shaking his head. “This weekend was supposed to be relaxing and—”

  I stood up and went over to him.

  Then I lowered my voice to a whisper.

  “I know,” I said. “But Daniel – I saw something else last night. Something I didn’t tell Officer Reed about.”

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “What do you mean? What did you see?”

  I drew in a deep breath, glancing back to make sure Adam had really left.

  “Something that I think could be bad.”

  Chapter 14

  “You’re sure it was Angelica you saw?”

  I nodded, taking a long sip from the steaming cup of dark roast coffee.

  Back at the pie shop, I took special pride in the local hazelnut coffee I served up to my guests. But this particular coastal brew had me wondering if I shouldn’t expand my offerings. It was called Agate Bay Slugger Dark Roast, and it was smooth and rich and each time the waiter came around in the little seaside café’s covered porch area, I kept getting a refill.

  “I’m sure – it was Angelica,” I said. “I saw her look back at the inn. Like she was making sure nobody was watching what she was doing. And then I
saw her go to the lighthouse. Somebody else was out there, waiting for her.”

  We’d come to the café to talk about what I’d seen, but to also give Adam and Angelica some space. Angelica had been in tears after finding out about Jason’s accident, and it had seemed best to let the couple process what had happened in peace.

  “What time was that again that you saw her?”

  “It was 2:30, I think,” I said. “I should have stayed awake and waited for her to come back to the house, but I ended up dozing off before I saw anything more.”

  Daniel rubbed his beard, looking off in the distance at the horizon.

  The sun had come up with an eerie crimson halo this morning, which had only added to the grimness of the day. The reports on the Weather Channel said that a storm system was moving in this afternoon, bringing with it plenty of rain and wind.

  Looking at the ocean now, you wouldn’t know that bad weather was on its way. The waves were glassy and calm this morning, and though the sun had come up red, the sky was a shade of clean powder blue.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked after Daniel didn’t say anything for a while.

  I’d noticed that he’d barely put a dent in the bagel sandwich he’d ordered, and both dogs were eyeing it greedily as they sat at our feet.

  He glanced back at me.

  “I’m thinking that just because she went out there doesn’t mean that she was going there to meet with Jason Parsons, Cin.”

  “No. But you heard how creaky that door to the Parsons’ room was last night when it slammed shut. I would have heard if somebody opened it again. Which means that whoever left the room – which I’m guessing was Jason Parsons – never came back.”

  Daniel rubbed his beard again.

  “Why would she go meet him at such a late hour?”

  Daniel asked the question, but I knew that given his intelligence, he’d already been entertaining many hypotheticals.

  Like maybe Angelica was one of those bad apples Daniel had feared she might turn out to be.

  That maybe she and Jason Parsons – the “family friend” – had been in cahoots to somehow rip Adam off.

  I thought about what I’d heard the Parsons arguing about. How Mrs. Parsons had said something about “a hussy.”

  Could she have been talking about Angelica?

  And if so, and if there was a larger conspiracy at play here, obviously something went wrong, and it ended up with Jason Parsons going off the side of a cliff.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” I said. “But you yourself said that Adam has a history of getting mixed up with manipulative women. You said he sold his house back in Fresno and drew out all his retirement money to buy Agate Inn and restore it. Who knows what kind of loans he took out, too? He’s done it all for Angelica. And suddenly this Jason Parsons guy shows up saying he’s a family friend. Then Angelica goes out there late last night to meet somebody. And in the morning, we find Jason clinging to life on a cliff ledge below. It’s just all so—”

  “Strange,” Daniel said, flashing his eyes at me. “I know, Cin.”

  He let out a slow breath and fell silent for a long moment.

  “Then again, one thing might not have anything to do with the other,” he said. “Maybe Angelica was just restless. Maybe she just wanted to go for a walk. Meanwhile, Jason drinks himself into a stupor and falls over the side of the cliff in a completely unrelated incident.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But that didn’t look like somebody going out for an innocent walk to me last night. And not to mention the fact that she didn’t come out of her room this morning until Adam went and got her up. Those sirens from the ambulance woke the entire inn up. They were impossible to sleep through. Don’t you think it’s strange that she didn’t check on what was going on?”

  Daniel didn’t say anything in response to that.

  I finished off my coffee, gazing out at the ocean.

  Doubt suddenly began to creep in.

  Maybe I was out of my element here. After all, Jason could have been down on the cliff ledge the entire night for all we knew. There was nothing to say that Angelica went out to meet him. She could have been out there to meet somebody else, or nobody at all, even. I hadn’t gotten a good look at that shadow. And maybe my eyes had been playing tricks on me in the dark.

  And as for this morning, maybe she really did sleep through the ambulance sirens. After all, she must have been tired after all the kitchen work the night before.

  Maybe I had just been watching too many cop movies myself, lately.

  Maybe—

  “You know for a few years there, Adam was my only friend, Cin,” Daniel said.

  I looked back at him – he was smiling sadly to himself, and something about it just broke my heart.

  I reached across the table, holding his hand.

  “It might all be coincidence,” he said. “But if it’s not, if Angelica is doing him wrong somehow, then I need to know. I don’t want to see him hurt again.”

  I nodded.

  “Adam can never know about any of this,” he said. “Not until we have something real. I mean if we have something real.”

  “Where do we start?” I said, not missing a beat.

  Chapter 15

  “He’s been in and out of consciousness,” Patricia said, wiping at her nose with a freshly-plucked Kleenex. “The doctor said he has a concussion. He doesn’t remember what happened. He broke several ribs. They think he might have internal bleeding, also.”

  If I hadn’t been told that this was the same woman from the grand opening party the night before, I wouldn’t have ever recognized Patricia Parsons.

  She still had parts of last night’s makeup on her face, but much of it had been smeared off. She looked pale and shaky, and she rocked back and forth slightly as she spoke. Her clothes were wrinkled and she smelled of stale vending machine coffee.

  “We’re so sorry for what happened,” I said. “Is there anything we can get you?”

  She shook her head.

  “We should have never come here,” she said. “I mean, I should have never come here. I don’t know why he even invited me.”

  “What do you mean exactly by that?” Daniel asked after a moment.

  She rubbed her eyes.

  “Things have not been good between us for a long time. I thought he was just a little bored with me. Then one day I looked at his phone and saw that he’s been texting some… some woman. Telling her that he can’t stop thinking about her. That all he wants is her. That he’s going to leave me for…”

  She drew in a deep, ragged breath.

  I bit my lip.

  Patricia Parsons seemed to be a stuck-up, all-around unpleasant person – but I couldn’t help feel sorry for her.

  I’d been where she was before with my first husband, Evan. And it wasn’t a place anybody would want to be.

  “The text messages were going to somebody simply called G,” Patricia said. “I found out right before our trip here. I thought about confronting Jason before we left, but some small, weak part of me thought maybe we’d get out here and… I don’t know. Maybe I’d be able to salvage something of what we had.”

  There was a pained expression on her face as she spoke, but I could see that she felt relieved to be talking about this. Even if it was more or less to complete strangers.

  “But then last night, he started drinking and I… I figured if he was going to act like an ass, then so would I. When I got drunk enough, I told him what I’d seen on his phone. He got so angry at me for snooping. We got into a big fight, he left the room, and…”

  She shook her head.

  “I should have gone after him and made sure he was okay. Maybe if I had, then…”

  Her face scrunched up and it looked like she was fighting back tears.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, patting her arm a little awkwardly.

  Daniel cleared his throat.

  “Mrs. Parsons, how long have you and your husband known Angeli
ca for?”

  “Eight years or so,” she said. “Since her dad became one of Jason’s clients. Of course, I can’t say that I really know Angelica very well at all. Jason and her dad were golfing buddies until he passed on very suddenly from a heart attack in 2013.”

  Patricia sniveled a little bit.

  “Jason’s tried to be helpful and look in on her every once and awhile. Poor girl really had nobody left in the world. Her mom ran off to South America with some second rate Paraguayan pool boy years ago.”

  The judgmental tone of her voice as she said the last part combined with her derogatory phrasing really rubbed me the wrong way. But I held my tongue. She was telling us plenty of information without us having to pry too hard, and I didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Mrs. Parsons – did your husband know anybody else at the inn other than Angelica and Adam?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t think so. Jason spoke with that school teacher couple for a little while during the party, but we didn’t know them beforehand.”

  She wiped at her nose and looked like she was about to say something more, but then she stopped.

  Suddenly, her face caved into an expression of anger.

  “Wait, why are you asking all of these questions?”

  She looked from me to Daniel.

  “What’s it matter to you?”

  “We’re just trying to get a better idea of the circumstances,” Daniel said.

  “Circumstances? It was an accident.”

  Mrs. Parsons narrowed her eyes at Daniel.

  “You’re a sheriff or something, aren’t you? For some backwoods town. Hickville, isn’t it?”

  Her eyes flashed with steel when she said that.

  “It’s not just a town. It’s Pohly County, ma’am,” Daniel said in a humorless tone. “And all I’m doing here is trying to help.”

  She stood up from her seat abruptly.

  “I’m done talking.”

  Daniel stood up, too, looking sympathetic.