Meltdown in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  Moira really had been using her knowledge to blackmail people.

  “I got a note on my car the next morning saying that if I didn’t pay Moira $20,000, she’d tell the town that we stole money from the office,” Liv continued. “Billy and I talked about it. He didn’t have that much, but he wanted to borrow what he could from his mom. I didn’t want him to – she’s cruel to him and she’d never let him live that kind of thing down. But he asked her anyway. For me.

  “But even with the money he borrowed from his mom, and the rest that we could scrape together, it wasn’t enough. We were short on our payment to Moira. And she didn’t take that too well.”

  She shook her head again.

  “A couple of days later, those rumors about me and the Sheriff and the money missing ran through this town like a wildfire. Moira didn’t let all that she knew slip – just enough to create problems for me and throw some suspicion my way. Just enough to let us know that she was serious and that…”

  Just then, a loud voice boomed over the speakers.

  “Contestants and visitors, the judges will be announcing the winner of the annual Gingerbread Junction Competition in ten minutes. Please return to your stations as soon as possible.”

  Tears were now streaming down Liv’s face.

  And for the first time, I caught a glimpse of the real Olivia Kelley.

  “The reason I’m telling you this, Cinnamon, is because it was me that took that money. Not Billy. He was just trying to cover for me. And now I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.”

  All trace of that steely exterior was gone. The only thing left was a scared young woman who had been struggling in the shadows with hard choices.

  What she had done still wasn’t right.

  But I understood how she’d gotten here.

  “I know you must be worried about your job, but Daniel’s a very reasonable man and if you just tell him about all of this then I’m sure that—”

  “I don’t care about the job – that’s not what I’m worried about.”

  I waited for more.

  “I don’t know where Billy is,” she finally said. “He’s not answering his phone and the last time we talked, he…”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I know it sounds crazy to even think like this,” she said, her voice cracking. “But that night, at the brewery fundraiser? Billy told me something. He told me that he had feelings for me. That he’d… he’d fallen in love with me and that even if I wouldn’t ever love him back, he wanted to help me and Austin. He said that he’d do anything for us… Anything to keep us safe. Anything. I can still hear the way he said it. And he had this look in his eye when he did. Like…”

  She trailed off.

  “Like what? What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Like I think he was going to do something bad, Cinnamon. And then the next day, when I heard that Moira Stewart had been killed and that we no longer had to worry about paying her, I—”

  I furrowed my brow, suddenly realizing what she was implying.

  “Wait, wait, wait – you’re saying that you think…”

  I would have laughed at the notion that Billy Jasper was capable of hurting even a fly if Liv hadn’t looked so deathly serious.

  The front door burst open suddenly as a group of Junction attendees, trying to get in one last smoke, came out, talking loudly. Liv turned, shielding her tear-stained face so they wouldn’t see her crying.

  “Liv,” I said after they passed. “Kent Utley confessed to killing Moira. Billy couldn’t have done anything.”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “I want to believe that. But I’ve got a bad feeling and I don’t know where he is now. And it’s scaring me. We were supposed to have coffee today and talk things over, but he never showed up.”

  She looked at me with large, haunted eyes.

  “What if he did do something, huh? What if he did something terrible? Because of me?”

  The Junction announcer alerted the crowd that the winners of The Gingerbread Junction would be announced in exactly five minutes.

  “Listen, Liv. Let me drive you to the Sheriff’s Office. We’ll wait for Daniel there, and then we’ll get this all figured out. Alright? I think that’s the best plan right now.”

  She shook her head severely.

  “No. I need to keep looking for Billy. He needs me. Just… when you get a hold of Sheriff Brightman, tell him I need to talk to him. And that it’s really urgent.”

  She turned and started rapidly walking away through the waterlogged parking lot.

  “Liv, wait—”

  But before I could say anything more, she had already gotten in her car.

  A moment later, she was peeling out of the parking lot like the devil himself was on her tail.

  Chapter 62

  By the time I got a hold of Daniel and told him that he needed to immediately find Liv and talk to her, Mrs. Arnold was up at the podium, tapping the microphone several times with her finger, bringing on a case of ear-splitting feedback.

  I rushed into the auditorium just as the audience let out a collective groan.

  “Ladies and gentleman, silence yourselves!” Mrs. Arnold shouted.

  The place went quieter than a cemetery during a snowfall.

  It appeared that Brad wasn’t the only one afraid of the art teacher.

  I weaved my way through the crowd again, trying to get back down to Brad’s station. But the place was so packed, trying to get anywhere was like swimming upstream against the mighty Metolious River.

  Mrs. Arnold cleared her throat loudly.

  “Before announcing this year’s winners, we want to thank our sponsors who made the annual Gingerbread Junction possible this year. The Pine Needle Tavern, Babes in Toyland, The Christmas River Chamber of Commerce, The…”

  I let out a gasp as a sizeable elbow jabbed my ribcage.

  “Ow!”

  A big man wearing a trucker’s hat turned around to look at what he’d just hit.

  “Oh, didn’t see you there,” he said in a not-too-remorseful tone.

  I rubbed my ribcage, stalled out for a few seconds.

  “And now, finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for—” Mrs. Arnold said, looking around the room from behind her cat eye-shaped glasses. “The winners of The Gingerbread Junction Competition.”

  Though I hadn’t entered this year, my heart still pounded hard in my chest as if I had it all on the line.

  This was it – the big moment. The rush, the high, the feeling of being right on the brink of victory…

  How had I forgotten about how much I loved this?

  “Third place goes to—”

  I held my breath.

  “Ethel Hodgens of Reno, Nevada!”

  I let out a sigh of relief as a round of clapping thundered through the auditorium. Ethel made her way up to the grand stage to collect her medal.

  I double-timed it, speeding through the crowd, avoiding men with trucker hats and holding my arms tight against my body.

  “Coming in as the runner-up in The Gingerbread Junction is…”

  Mrs. Arnold paused dramatically, and I felt my gut twist like a pretzel.

  “Yolanda Ramos of Baker City, Oregon!”

  Another big round of applause broke out.

  The stakes were as high as they ever got in the competition.

  Either Brad had taken the day with his cookie chalet.

  Or he hadn’t placed at all.

  I was more nervous than a skinny bear in late autumn.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, trying desperately to get to the station. I wasn’t that far now – I could make out Kara’s bright blond hair under the auditorium lights and Will’s blue argyle sweater.

  “And now, ladies and gentleman, for the big announcement…”

  I had stopped breathing all together.

  “The winner of this year’s Gingerbread Junction is…”

  The place was so deathly silent, you cou
ld have heard a gumdrop hit the floor.

  My heart hammered out of control in my ears.

  Mrs. Arnold took in a deep breath.

  Then she grinned.

  “Bradley Houston of our very own Christmas River!”

  I started pumping my fists in the air.

  “YESSSS!!! YESSSS!!! YESSSS!!!”

  I hadn’t even celebrated like this for my own victories.

  An earth-shattering round of applause boomed through the building.

  “Bradley, please come up to accept your trophy,” Mrs. Arnold spoke into the microphone.

  I struggled past a crowd of elderly ladies, finally making it over to Kara and Will at the station.

  “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh—”

  But I stopped mid-sentence the second I saw the flustered, confused expression on their faces.

  “What’s the—”

  “Brad just took the gingerbread house and left out the back door,” Kara rasped, looking around anxiously.

  “He… he what?”

  “I don’t know if it was nerves, or something else. But all he said was that he was done with this and then he took the gingerbread house with him.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “We don’t know,” Will said, looking worried. “He’s not answering his phone. This isn’t like him.”

  How could Brad miss this? After all the work he’d put in? After all his amazing effort?

  “I, uh, I guess I’ll go up there and say something,” Will said, clearing his throat and sheepishly heading up to the podium.

  I turned back to look at Kara.

  “Do you think Brad’s okay?”

  “I don’t know, Cin. I think the poor guy just lost it. The pressure must have been too much for him.”

  Kara glanced at her phone.

  “Shoot,” she mumbled. “And I’ve got to get going to Pam’s soon, too, or I’m going to be late for dinner.”

  She picked up Laila and looked around the crowd anxiously, as if Brad might be hiding somewhere among the elderly ladies.

  A minute later, Will was speaking somberly into the microphone, awkwardly explaining that Brad had just stepped out and would hopefully be back soon.

  In his big moment of glory, my protégé was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter 63

  He stood at the kitchen window with his back to me, humming along to the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack playing from the speaker.

  I gulped hard.

  For some reason, I’d had a feeling that this was where he’d be hiding.

  I cautiously stepped into the pie shop kitchen, not wanting to scare him and aggravate his already fragile psyche. I was happy to see that his gingerbread house masterpiece had made the journey intact, and was now sitting in the corner, seemingly unharmed.

  “Brad?” I said softly.

  He didn’t turn around, but he stopped humming.

  The stress of the competition must have made him snap like a twig.

  It wasn’t completely unheard of. I knew how stressful The Junction could be. I myself had come close to snapping on a few occasions, and there were other stories of contestants losing it. Betty Adler, a local plant nursery owner, had started screaming at one of the judges a few years ago when they pointed out that she might have overdone it with her Red Vine decorations. Another contestant, Willow Goff, had gotten in a fight with another competitor once and pushed the man’s gingerbread house off the table, thereby disqualifying herself from the competition.

  Those people had lost it.

  But Brad took the cake when it came to acting crazy at The Gingerbread Junction.

  Had I pushed him too hard somehow? Was this my fault?

  Should I have recognized how sensitive he was and told him not to enter?

  “We’ve all been worried sick about you,” I said. “Especially Will. Why did you leave like that?”

  He didn’t answer again.

  Oh, no.

  He was probably going to need a one-way ticket to the loony bin after all of this.

  He spun around suddenly and my breath caught in my throat.

  But instead of the emotional, haggard expression of a deranged person who had come to the end of his rope, there was a peaceful, serene look in Brad’s eyes.

  He stared at me for a long, long moment.

  “Because it didn’t matter anymore,” he said, quietly. “That’s why I left, Cin. None of it mattered.”

  I searched for some way to respond to that.

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t expect you to understand. But while I was there, waiting for the judges to make up their minds about who was the best, something occurred to me, Cin. I figured something out.”

  He nodded to the cookie chalet.

  “This house here? This is beautiful. But not because Mrs. Arnold says it’s beautiful. Or any of those other judges, for that matter. It’s beautiful because it represents a little bit of my spirit. And a little bit of your spirit, too, Cin.

  “And no judge – no ski lodge owner’s wife or bitter old art teacher who gets her kicks telling little kids they’re not talented could ever tell me this isn’t perfect.”

  He walked around the kitchen island, coming over to me.

  “When you know the truth of who you are, you realize that it’s enough just to be,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “And when you understand that, there’s nothing left to prove.”

  I furrowed my brow, trying to wrap my head around what sounded like a lot of New Age mumbo jumbo.

  “But Brad – You won The Gingerbread Junction. You took the whole thing.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Cin. Winning isn’t the point. The point is that for too long, I let somebody’s judgements about something I did affect my life and I forgot who I was deep down. And now… now I’ve remembered.”

  “But you won,” I said again, unsure whether he heard me before. “A first-time contestant. Do you know how big that is? Don’t you know the news media are waiting to talk to you? Don’t you know that—”

  “Cinnamon,” he said abruptly, uncharacteristically using my full-name.

  A knowing look crept across his face.

  “I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me,” he said. “I can honestly say I’ve never had a truer friend. Thank you.”

  Without warning, he tackled me with a giant hug, knocking any more words about what a huge thing it was to win the competition right out of my mouth.

  “Now, I’ve got to go find Will and apologize,” he said, pulling away. “He must be very worried.”

  Brad looked at me for one moment longer, letting out a content sigh.

  “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “To be free of what others think.”

  Before I could say anything else, he was walking out of the kitchen at a hurried clip, tossing his jacket on and humming again to the music.

  I still wasn’t sure whether it was enlightenment or whether he really had gone off the deep end.

  But I did know one thing.

  Brad seemed to be happier and more at peace with himself than I’d ever seen him.

  Chapter 64

  I was tempted to just go home after that.

  But Daniel had called and said he was still out dealing with the Billy and Liv situation. I knew that it might take a while to resolve, so I decided that I might as well stay at the pie shop and get some work in to prepare for the busy Christmas week ahead.

  I put Tony Bennett’s Snowfall on the stereo, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work on a batch of Butter Pecan Cinnamon pies. The pie flavor had about a million calories on account of all the butter that went into it, but for my money, it was worth every pound-packing bite. When people asked about it, I always told them it was like a Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tart that had spent the weekend getting pampered at the spa – new and improved and hardly recognizable. People usually got a kick out of that description.

  I went to the pantry,
pulling out some brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and whole pecans. I spread the nuts out on a baking sheet and liberally seasoned them with the cinnamon and sugar before tossing them in the oven to toast for a few minutes.

  Tony sang about the winter weather, and in the background, the steady drumming of snow melting and dripping off the roof gave some added percussion.

  I got started on the filling, mixing brown sugar, eggs, and some softened butter together, all the while my mind working overtime thinking about Billy Jasper and Liv.

  And what she had said about him.

  How he would have done anything for her.

  Anything.

  I gazed out the window absentmindedly, stirring some cinnamon, cloves, and flour into the butter mixture. I watched as the layer of melting snow gave way to patches of dark, damp earth before my very eyes.

  Liv had to be crazy.

  But where was Billy? Why wasn’t he responding to either Liv or Daniel’s calls?

  Had he gone MIA over losing his job?

  Or was it over something more?

  He hadn’t been at work the day of Moira’s murder. He’d been at home nursing a bad hangover.

  Or at least, that’s what he told Daniel when he’d called in sick.

  I’d known Billy Jasper for years now. I knew him to be kind, bashful, introverted, and unassuming. Not the typical traits of somebody who commits murder.

  Billy didn’t seem like a killer.

  But if there was anything I knew for sure, it was that love could make you do crazy things.

  Obsession could, too.

  Was Billy capable of killing an old woman to protect Liv?

  Was he capable of killing for love?

  When it really came down to it, weren’t we all?

  Weren’t we all—

  I stopped stirring.

  What the—

  I let the wooden spoon drop into the butter mixture. Then I went over to the back door window, squinting as the slanted orange light of a winter sunset lit up the woods with an ethereal glow.

  In a sea of muddy whites, greens, and browns, there was a color that didn’t belong.

  Something that was out of place.

  I opened the door, stepping out into the last rays of warm December sunshine. I jaunted down the porch, traversing the slush and heading into the muddy forest soil. I walked quickly through the woods toward the object.