Meltdown in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  “Is something wrong, Liv?”

  “No, it’s just that—”

  She looked at me with big, deer-in-the-headlights eyes, unable to complete the thought.

  “Liv—”

  “I hope you’re okay with the Rosemary Roast Beef, Cin. The sandwich shop was out of your usual Turkey Cranberry—”

  Kara stopped dead in her tracks when she noticed Liv standing there.

  She’d been keeping me company here at the office this afternoon and had just gone to grab us lunch.

  “Oh, I didn’t know—” she started saying.

  Liv looked away quickly.

  “I’ve got to get back to the front desk,” Liv said.

  She turned and left the office fast, the sound of her heels fading as she disappeared down the hallway.

  Kara raised her eyebrows at me.

  “What’s that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, rubbing my chin.

  “She looks like she just ate some bad sushi or something. You know, I hear there’s a nasty stomach bug going around. Gertrude Baxter’s husband had to go to the ER earlier this month because he got so dehydrated from it. Maybe that’s what Liv’s got.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I mumbled.

  Kara handed me a brown paper bag.

  “Thanks for getting me lunch, Kara,” I said. “And for keeping me company this afternoon.”

  “I don’t know what kind of friend I’d be if I weren’t with you today,” she said, setting Laila up in one of the chairs. “If I were in your shoes, I’d be at home binge-watching some trashy TV show with a bucket of hot buttered rum mix. That cheap bucket, too – the one they keep on the bottom shelf at Ray’s Grocery.”

  I smiled.

  “Don’t think I didn’t consider doing just that,” I said.

  I unwrapped the rosemary roast beef sandwich from its paper sheath. Kara took a sip of her coffee, glancing past my shoulder at the news conference out the window.

  “Thank God they caught him,” she said. “I mean just think about it, Cin. A crazy guy like that? He could have…”

  I felt a round of chills work through my body as she trailed off.

  I was glad that she didn’t finish that thought.

  “But thank goodness nothing happened,” she mumbled. “Thank goodness.”

  I nodded, staring blankly at the wall.

  I didn’t want to think about any of it anymore.

  I just wanted it to be over.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Did you hear anything from Pam about your chapters?” I asked, glad to have something to change the subject to.

  Kara seemed equally glad to get off the grim subject, answering quickly.

  “No – not with everything that’s been going on. But she texted me and said she’ll be done with my chapters by tomorrow evening. She said I can pick the manuscript up from the lodge then. Pam actually invited me to dinner, too. I think that’s a good sign, don’t you? She hasn’t invited any other students up to the lodge for dinner.”

  “Well, it’s one humdinger of a book, Kara. And I’m sure Pam recognizes that.”

  Kara’s lips curled up into a sarcastic smile.

  “Wait – did you actually just say that word out loud, Cin?”

  “What word?”

  “Humdinger.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her.

  “Yes. I said it. What’s wrong with that?”

  Kara smirked.

  “Nothing. But you better watch yourself. You’re sounding like old Warren more and more every day.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “It’s not. But if you’re not careful, you’ll be growing a white beard soon and going around, rattling on about IPAs and Stouts to anybody with ears.”

  I let out a snort and Kara started laughing.

  And for the first time all day, that dark, uneasy feeling deep in my chest lifted a little bit.

  I would get through all of this.

  I was Cinnamon Peters, after all.

  And Cinnamon Peters was one tough cookie.

  Chapter 56

  Daniel picked at the three-cheese macaroni on his plate, staring past the reflection of the Christmas tree in the kitchen window. His eyes were fixed on something invisible out there in the dark, windy night.

  Being the incredibly thoughtful person that she was, Aileen had made a giant dish of the macaroni and brought it over, knowing that we wouldn’t be in much of a condition to cook tonight. The pasta had been delicious, with specks of bacon mixed into creamy smoked Gouda, white cheddar, and parmesan. It was just the kind of comforting, homey meal that I’d needed after the last 48 hours, and I’d practically cleaned my plate, leaving not even a crumb for the dogs.

  Daniel on the other hand had hardly eaten anything at all.

  He finally leaned back in his chair, tossing his napkin on the table.

  “Is it about Billy?” I asked.

  I didn’t need to be a detective to know that the deputy’s confession earlier was weighing heavily on him.

  He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shook his head.

  “I just can’t wrap my mind around it,” he said. “And that whole thing about greed being the reason just seems ridiculous to me.”

  He crossed his arms against the old Christmas River High Baseball shirt he was wearing.

  “A couple months ago, we were working on the Morrison robbery case out in Prineville. Billy touched something accidently without his gloves at the perp’s house. It was a big case, and he knew that it was a costly blunder. He could have not said anything, kept it to himself, hoping that it would never get back to him. But you know what he did? He told me about it right away. Didn’t even give it a second thought. A lot of law enforcement officers have too much of an ego to do something like that – but not Billy. He’s always been honest. Always, always.”

  Daniel tapped the table.

  “It just doesn’t fit.”

  “I never thought he’d be capable of something like that, either,” I said quietly.

  “I guess the thing that upsets me the most is that he could have asked for help before this got out of hand, but he didn’t,” Daniel said. “I mean, seven-thousand is a chunk, but it’s not that much. I would have leant him the money if I’d known he needed it. I would have—”

  He stopped mid-sentence, tilting his head up to the ceiling and letting out a sad sigh.

  “It’s just a whole lot of nothing to throw your career away for. And I can’t believe he’d be so stupid to do it. After everything I taught him.”

  He shook his head again and fell silent.

  The bare branches of the aspen stand near the back porch groaned in a sudden gust of wind.

  “Is it just Billy?” I asked. “Or is there something else bugging you, too?”

  He stood up and started collecting the plates off of the table.

  “It’s nothing,” he mumbled. “Not worth talking about.”

  I reached for his free hand, stopping him before he went into the kitchen.

  “I’m here for you, Daniel. You can talk to me. You know that, right? You don’t have to carry it all alone.”

  He still looked like he didn’t want to talk about it. But after a moment, he set the dishes down and sat in the chair next to me.

  “Utley did it,” he said. “There’s no real way for him to have ended up with Moira’s wallet unless he was there that morning. And we’ve got what Pam Dallas said about seeing him at the lodge – which he confirmed to us, too, when Vicky questioned him. Utley admits that he was stalking Moira. He said that she was always the target. He said he wanted her dead. That she deserved to die. But…”

  He rubbed the stubble on his chin and pursed his lips.

  “I don’t know. Something feels wrong, Cin. I can’t explain why it feels that way, but it does. But then I think my judgement must be clouded because of what he did to you. You know, I couldn’t even go into the room
when we questioned him. I thought I might lose control and do something, so I stayed on the other side of the mirror while Vicky conducted the interview.”

  Daniel rested his forehead on his hand.

  “Maybe I’m just not thinking clearly. It’s like this whole day, everything’s been in a fog.”

  “Did he say why he was stalking Moira in the first place?” I asked.

  “No – nothing understandable, anyway. He started rambling, talking to someone who wasn’t there. More stuff about not doing that to your own kin. He should be on medication – he was diagnosed with schizophrenia back at the state penitentiary in Washington, and they had him on pretty heavy meds there. But it looks like he stopped taking them since he got out.”

  I supposed that didn’t come as a surprise – the man had displayed some pretty obvious signs of mental illness the times I’d seen him.

  “Did he say that he actually killed Moira?” I asked.

  “Utley claims she was already dead when he showed up that morning. He admits to stealing her purse from the trunk of her car. Then he started his crazy mutterings again and no one could make heads or tails of what he was trying to say. He kept talking about a bird lady flying away or something.”

  “A bird lady?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Then he got very agitated and started yelling. We had to get a doctor in to sedate him. That pretty much put an end to the interview.”

  “But he said… he said he didn’t do it?”

  “It doesn’t mean much. I saw the case file for that murder up in Washington he was convicted for. He denied doing it then, too. Most murderers won’t admit to what they’ve done. It’s like that saying – prisons are full of innocent men.”

  A chill passed through me as I flashed on Kent Utley’s eyes and the way they looked floating in the rearview mirror.

  I’d been all alone with him.

  All alone with a man who had most likely taken the lives of two people.

  Anything could have happened out in those woods the night before.

  Anything.

  The brutal truth of that seemed to be really hitting home for the first time.

  As if sensing what I was thinking, Daniel reached over, squeezing my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just haven’t been getting enough sleep lately and I think that’s why things feel off. We got our man. We should be feeling good tonight, Cin.”

  I squeezed his hand back.

  “All of this will be just a distant memory, soon,” he added.

  “You’re right,” I said, forcing Kent Utley out of my mind. “It’s over.”

  I stood up and started clearing the plates, but he stopped me.

  “Leave those and come over here with me.”

  We went over to the sofa nearest to the Christmas tree. My eyes fell on the small collection of haphazardly-wrapped presents sitting on the tree skirt.

  Even though gift wrapping clearly wasn’t his forte, I always got a kick out of seeing what Daniel put together for his Christmas presents. The sight of the exposed tape and numerous crooked edges on his presents would have made uptight Martha Stewart characters everywhere howl with horror. But I didn’t care about those mistakes. I could always tell a lot of love went into his efforts, and that was what mattered the most to me.

  “Look at all those pretty presents,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “Are you going to give me one tonight?”

  A thin smile crossed his lips.

  “What? Why would I? Christmas is still a week away,” he said, draping an arm around my shoulder and settling back into the leather sofa.

  “I know, but you’ll be working this Christmas,” I said. “And anyway, I’ve already picked all of those presents up and felt them when you weren’t looking. I know what half of them are already.”

  Daniel’s eyes grew wide.

  He let out an exaggerated gasp.

  “Cinnamon Ann Peters Brightman – you just broke the first law of Christmas. You can’t go around feeling presents like that. That’s cheating.”

  “I just couldn’t help myself. They all looked so nice.”

  “That’s beside the point. The point is that you broke the law, and that means there’ll have to be consequences.”

  “I can’t believe the Sheriff would be so severe to his own wife.”

  Something mischievous flashed across his eyes then.

  A moment later, he was tickling me something fierce.

  I laughed so hard, a button on my sweater went flying across the room.

  Later that night, curled up in his arms, I remembered how Daniel had promised to always see me through the hard times.

  And I knew how lucky I was.

  Chapter 57

  I walked into the pie shop the next morning and found something magnificent sitting on the kitchen island.

  Visually stunning, the gingerbread house was a thing to behold with its glittering, sloped cookie rooftops, its sugar spun window panes, and its row of jagged candy icicles. Full of whimsy and wonder, Brad had left a large opening in the back of the chalet so that spectators could look inside and view the cozier-than-cozy indoor scene.

  Inside, a melted pineapple and peach Jolly Rancher candy fire was burning in a massive hearth made out of stacked pretzels. Marzipan people sat together on various cookie sofas, wearing ugly Christmas sweaters and holding drinking mugs made from hollowed-out gumdrops. A towering Christmas tree fashioned from green apple licorice and decorated with silver sugar glass ornaments anchored the room. There were even a few sculpted candy dogs curled up in front of the fire, and I let out a laugh when I realized how similar they looked to Huckleberry and Chadwick.

  Outside the chalet, the grounds were covered in a layer of swirling, powder-blue buttercream, and several families of marzipan people were engaged in a heated snowball fight of shredded coconut.

  I actually felt a twinge of jealousy as I gazed as those little people, so happy and joyful and worry-free in their cozy little Christmas scene.

  The cookie building wasn’t perfect structurally, and some of the marzipan people had odd, misshapen faces. But Brad’s completed cookie ski chalet knocked the wind right out of me.

  I couldn’t be prouder of him and his transformation from Frankenstein with a piping bag to bona fide gingerbread master.

  I just hoped the judges at The Junction later that afternoon would understand just how special his gingerbread house was, too.

  Seeing that first thing in the morning had put me in a good mood. And even though I still felt some dread left over from the past 48 hours, it felt like the clouds were finally starting to part. Knowing that Kent Utley was now behind bars and could no longer hurt anyone made me feel better. And the thought that things around here might just start getting back to normal also went a ways to lifting my spirits.

  Then, just after 10 a.m. – the phone rang.

  “Hello?” I answered, cradling it on my shoulder while tossing a pan of Hazelnut Cherry pies into one of the ovens.

  “Brava on surviving your little trial, Cin. You’re obviously a survivor.”

  She’d skipped formalities altogether. I supposed her thick New York accent did all the talking anyway – nobody else in Christmas River sounded like her.

  When I didn’t answer right away, she continued on like I had.

  “So I’m calling because I wanted to write a story about you,” Marla Browning said.

  The sound of papers rustling echoed in the background.

  “A story about your harrowing experience. Something about what it was like to be held at knifepoint by a killer in your own car. The kind of story that makes people sit on the edge of their seats while they read it.”

  I gritted my teeth so hard, I thought they’d sink right through my jaw.

  How had she found out?

  The press knew that there’d been an incident with a civilian being held at knifepoint by the suspect in Moira’s murder case, but as far as I knew, nobody had re
leased my name yet.

  “My readers would just eat that story up,” Marla continued. “I mean, an exclusive about the sheriff’s wife getting kidnapped like that? Oh, it’d just be so great.”

  I felt my mouth fall open.

  It’d just be so great?

  It’d just be so great.

  Anger lodged in my throat like a hunk of peanut butter, and I couldn’t bring myself to say a single word.

  That didn’t seem to matter much to Marla, though.

  “Now, I know you might be a little wary about throwing yourself in the public spotlight like that, Cin. But just think – maybe someone somewhere will read this article and be more careful the next time they get in their car. It could be a great educational piece. You can tell everybody where you went wrong and what you could have done to avoid getting yourself in such a calamitous situation.”

  The nerve.

  The absolute nerve.

  I was gripping the phone so hard, I was surprised it hadn’t shattered into a million plastic shards yet.

  “I’m hanging up now, Marla.”

  “Wait, before you do,” she said, unfazed by the rejection. “I did have one question.”

  I reached for the “end call” button on the screen.

  “Why’d Utley do it, Cin? Why’d he kill Ms. Stewart? I mean, I know they’re saying it was a mugging gone wrong, but I don’t know... I’m hearing other rumors. Was it blackmail of some sort? Did Moira have some dirt on this guy or someone he cared about?”

  I stopped just short of hanging up, the word “blackmail” catching my attention.

  “Why would you say that?”

  I could barely get the words out without my voice breaking.

  “A little birdy told me something about Moira putting all that knowledge of hers to good use lately. I heard that maybe she wasn’t the benign little old lady we all thought she was. I heard that she was planning to pull up stakes and leave town with a wad of cash tucked into her girdle, courtesy of some very calculated blackmail schemes she had cooking.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Nuh, uh, uh. Can’t reveal my source. But you give me an exclusive on your Driving Miss Brightman story, and maybe I’ll see what I can do—”