4 Malice in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  We were nearly up to the deck when his wallet tumbled out of his pocket, hitting the wooden slabs with a dull thud. I let go of his arm, leaned over, and picked the wallet up for him. It had fallen open.

  I couldn’t help notice that there was a new photo sitting alongside the photos of me, my mom, and my grandma.

  It was a woman who appeared to be in her early 60s. She had curly hair pulled off to one side, and she had a youthful, warm smile.

  In the photo, Warren’s arm was around her.

  “Who’s this?” I asked.

  He smiled rather mischievously, but didn’t answer. At least, not really.

  “We’ll save that for another time,” he said, winking.

  He was barely inside when his eyes started growing heavy again. He was talking about beer, and something about a certain critical stage in the fermentation process. But his eyes wouldn’t cooperate with his tongue, and soon enough, he was snoozing again.

  I made up the bed in the guestroom, kissed him goodnight, and told him that we had all tomorrow to talk about whatever he pleased.

  Chapter 44

  Once again, I couldn’t sleep.

  Daniel had again insisted that I spend the night at home, despite my protests.

  “They’re releasing me tomorrow morning,” he had said. “I’ll be fine here one last night. You need to get some rest.”

  I argued with him, but he wouldn’t hear it. I finally gave in, wondering why Daniel wasn’t taking this Sandman business more seriously.

  His life could have been in danger. And he was acting like Trumbow. Like it had all been an accident. Not even entertaining the possibility that someone was out to get him.

  Owen was back in town early from vacation, and I had called him to see if he wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Daniel’s room at the hospital overnight. I wasn’t about to let Daniel be left completely alone, no matter what he said. Owen had showed up within half an hour of me calling, even though he’d just gotten into town from Pittsburg not twenty minutes earlier.

  The deputy had become fiercely loyal to Daniel over the past year, and I knew that I could count on him. And more than Trumbow, I knew I could trust Owen.

  But that knowledge still didn’t help me with my insomnia.

  I tossed and turned, my thoughts bouncing around like a washing machine. Daniel’s accident, Tex, Tex’s dying wife, Kara and her affair with Brad, John’s sad and desperate face as he told me about it… The morals and ethics of it all. The wrong and the right. The things people did to hurt one another. All of it churned across the landscape of my mind like the stormy waters of the ocean.

  Finally, for yet another night, I gave up. It was early morning when I dragged myself out of bed and started getting ready.

  I needed to do the one thing that calmed me and brought peace into my life.

  I needed to make pie.

  Chapter 45

  .

  I took a sip of honey-infused Lemon Lift tea, letting the sweet and tangy liquid fill my body with warmth.

  I had an acoustic Willie Nelson album playing in the background, an old favorite that Warren used to play a lot when I was growing up. It never failed to bring me a sense of peace. I was wearing a pair of fluffy slippers as I worked. The combined effect of the tea, the music, and the slippers went a little ways to calming my nerves.

  I went back to whisking the eggs, which I had cracked into a large bowl. Working quickly, I ladled in a hot milk mixture as I continued to whisk, making sure the hot liquid didn’t curdle the eggs. When the eggs were tempered, I added them into the large pan of milk and sugar on the stove, and turned the heat back on.

  I was making a new pie that I’d only just gotten right recently and was planning to add to the menu soon. It was a Snickerdoodle Banana Mocha Pudding Pie – a pie that was intensive to make, to put it mildly, but that was worth every bit of effort. The final product was a smooth, creamy and lusciously rich pie that was decadent and to die for.

  I hoped Daniel and Warren would find it that way too. I had planned to cut them two heaping slices when we brought Daniel home from the hospital later that morning.

  I let out a little sigh and looked out the window.

  I couldn’t wait to get Daniel back home. To get him away from that hospital with its gloomy green walls and its smell of ammonia. Back home, where he belonged.

  The sun was just starting to come up. Muted flamingo-pink light filtered through the blinds in the pie shop, casting shadows on the floor. I hadn’t been outside much in the last few days, but it looked as though nothing had changed. The smoke was still trapping the heat of September, and the days and nights were warm and stuffy.

  Autumn couldn’t get here soon enough.

  It felt good being back in the shop. Even though some bad things had happened here and around it, I still always felt safe here. Christmas lights always hung around the kitchen. Delicious smells were always coming from the oven. There was always good music playing on the stereo. And no matter how stressed I got throughout the day, there was no place I’d rather be than in the kitchen, baking.

  It felt like home to me. It was mine. My little corner of the world where everything made sense. There were always answers here. If a recipe didn’t turn out well, then you messed up somewhere along the way, and all you had to do was find out where and fix it. Things were black and white here. Cut and dry.

  There weren’t any affairs or broken bones or concussions or dangerous felons who wanted to do harm.

  There was just flour. Sugar. Butter. Eggs. Fresh fruit.

  And love.

  I stirred the egg milk mixture quickly, watching as it started to bubble. A few minutes later, it began to thicken. When large bubbles started to form, I took the pan off the burner, and added some butter, powdered coffee, and melted chocolate.

  The smell of the mocha pudding was intoxicating, and it was all I could do to grab a spoon and start downing big globs of it.

  But I restrained myself.

  I transferred the mixture to a cold glass bowl and then stuck it in the fridge to cool.

  Just as I was starting on the banana portion of the pie, my phone jingled.

  I wiped my hands off and pulled it out of my pocket. I clicked on the email in my inbox, my heart beating hard when I saw who it was from.

  Attached was a photo.

  I’ve got calls out to Tex Stevens’ parole officer and various agencies in California, but I haven’t heard much back. The penitentiary did forward me this picture, however. I’ll let you know when I find out more.

  Erik

  I clicked on the attachment. A moment later, I was able to put a face to the name.

  The man in the photo was in his early 60s and had deep, craggy wrinkles running down his cheeks. He wore his blond hair short, and he had a sharp, defined jaw line. He had piercing, haunted blue eyes.

  Shivers ran down my back as I gazed at the photo.

  Looking at it, I wouldn’t have guessed that the man in it had ever been a cop. He looked like a prisoner, through and through.

  But something about the face seemed familiar to me. Something around the eyes. I wondered if Daniel had had any photos of Tex that I might have seen in the past. Maybe that’s what accounted for the familiarity. Maybe—

  Just then, the front door bell rattled. A moment later, there was humming, and then the sound of footsteps echoing off the dining room floor. A few seconds later, Tiana, who’d I left in charge of the pie shop during what was supposed to be my honeymoon, came through the dividing doors, her arms full with grocery bags.

  She stopped singing abruptly and gasped when she saw that she wasn’t alone in the kitchen.

  “What on earth are you doing here, Cinnamon?” she said.

  I slid my phone back into my pocket and dusted my hands off on my apron.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “I felt like I might as well be doing something productive.”

  She nodded.

  “How are you? How’s th
e Sheriff doing?” she asked.

  Tiana had stopped by the hospital a couple of days after Daniel was admitted and had given us a nice zucchini bread. Warren had demolished most of it the day before.

  “Daniel’s coming home today.”

  “That’s just great news,” she said. “Great news.”

  She grabbed her apron from off the coat rack, and tied it around her plump waist.

  “Geez, I’m awful sorry about your honeymoon,” she said. “What terrible timing for this to have happened.”

  I sighed, thinking about where Daniel and I should have been today.

  We were supposed to go to Molokini this morning, that crescent moon shaped formation off the coast of Maui where you could go snorkeling with all sorts of beautiful sea life. Daniel had called a Maui outfitting agency and made reservations to go.

  I bit my lower lip.

  It was best not to think too much about it.

  “Oh, I meant to tell you,” Tiana said, pulling out some pie dough from the fridge. “There were a couple of people who came around here looking for you the last few days.”

  “Really?” I said. “Who?”

  “Well, Jo Pugmire stopped by. She wanted to talk to you, but wouldn’t say about what.”

  “Jo Pugmire?” I said, confused.

  Tiana nodded.

  Some nerve Jo had coming around my shop after the nasty way she’d treated me.

  But what did she want? And why had she stopped here and not the hospital? She would have undoubtedly heard what happened to Daniel.

  Maybe she was feeling guilty. Maybe she was feeling regretful, especially after the accident. Maybe she was looking to apologize for the way she’d talked to me.

  But whatever it was, I didn’t have much interest in talking to Jo Pugmire about anything.

  “You said a couple of people came by. Who else?” I asked.

  “The other one was this guy I’ve never seen. And, well, he didn’t exactly ask for you. But he was asking a lot of questions. About you and the shop. It just kind of struck me as strange. He was asking questions like, well, kind of like a cop. Except he didn’t look anything like a cop.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  “What, uh, what did he say?”

  Tiana shrugged, adding a handful of flour to the marble cutting board before rolling out a ball of pie dough.

  “He was just asking how long you’d had the shop here for, and how long you were married to the Sheriff for. He asked some questions about the Sheriff too, but I told him—”

  “Tiana, what did this guy look like?”

  She looked up at the ceiling, like she was reaching back in her memory.

  “Well, I’d say he was older, but not that old. Near 60 or so. Kind of reminded me of a biker type,” she said. “He had this long beard and hair that went down to his shoulders. Blue eyes, I think. I remember because—”

  I dropped the whisk I was holding.

  It bounced on the ground. Sour cream and coffee mixture speckled the floor.

  “You okay, Cin?” Tiana asked. “I swear you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  The pieces clicked together in my head.

  Now I remembered where I’d seen those blue, haunted eyes before.

  The man who’d been in my shop asking about me was the same man who’d been at the Rodeo – the guy who told me he hated pie, but who came back for seconds.

  The man who chatted with me, and asked if I wanted to see one of the Rodeo events with him.

  And that man, was the same man who…

  “My God,” I whispered out loud.

  I’d seen The Sandman.

  Chapter 46

  “It was him. I sam him at the Rodeo.”

  I was pacing back and forth nervously outside on the shop’s back deck, pressing the phone to my ear. The atmosphere felt stuffy and muggy, and I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs.

  “Now, Ms. Peters. I think you’ve just been under a lot of stress lately. The mind has a funny way of—”

  “Listen to me, Trumbow,” I said between gritted teeth. “I’m perfectly sane right now, and I’m telling you that I saw him. At the Rodeo that day. Don’t you understand what that means? For Chrissakes, can’t you see the implications?”

  Trumbow paused and I heard the sound of the police radio in the background.

  I heard him clear his throat free of phlegm.

  “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. Hell, I’ve checked in with Tex Stevens’ parole officer. He said Tex hasn’t missed a check-in. He’s done everything by the book so far, says the parole man. So there’s no evidence, you see. If I had more to go on, well, maybe I could do more. But frankly, sweetheart, you’re sounding a little worse for wear. I think you oughta just take it easy and—,”

  “I’m not making this up, Trumbow,” I said in a raised voice. “And don’t you dare start acting like I’m crazy. I’m just trying to do the job that you can’t seem to do.”

  Trumbow scoffed.

  “I’ve been rather… rather cordial with you, Ms. Peters,” he said. “But I’ve gotta tell ya, I’m getting a little fed up with this.”

  “You’re getting fed up?” I said in disbelief. “Well, I’m getting fed up with you not doing your job. In the meantime, my husband – your boss – is in danger.”

  “Well, Daniel is on sick leave right now. Which means, little lady, that he ain’t my boss for the time being. Which means that I think I’ve heard you out, and frankly, I’ve got a car break-in on Miracle Avenue to tend to. So if you wouldn’t mind, Ms. Peters…”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  Trumbow had to be one of the worst sheriffs, let alone deputies, there ever was in Christmas River. I wondered just how many crimes had gone unsolved or mismanaged because of his poor detective skills.

  I wondered how he’d ever gotten elected in the first place all those years ago.

  “Daniel might be on sick leave,” I said. “But he’ll be back at work one of these days, and I don’t think he’s going to much like the way you’re treating me.”

  He scoffed again.

  “Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there, sweetheart.”

  “We will at that,” I said, my voice shaking with rage.

  I was about to hang up, but Trumbow had one last thing to say to me.

  “Wait—Ms. Peters?”

  “What?”

  “Now, I know you’re probably going to call that reporter you’ve been talking to and go to him with this, but let me tell you, that’s a bad idea,” he said. “Those media folks will stab you in the back in a heartbeat. And frankly, the department’s got enough on our plate right now. We don’t need the likes of him digging into our records.”

  That gave me a little bit of satisfaction.

  At least Erik was doing his job. At least he was looking into what actually happened that night.

  “Well, I don’t have many other options,” I said. “You’re not helping me, so I guess that’s that.”

  I hung up the phone and wiped away my sweaty face with the arm of my shirt.

  I swear. I’d had enough of Deputy Trumbow to last me a lifetime.

  Chapter 47

  Maybe I should have told Daniel right away that I’d seen Tex at the Rodeo that day.

  But it seemed like the wrong occasion for it.

  He was so happy when I walked into the hospital room that morning, I just couldn’t bring myself to dampen his good mood.

  Plus, as I’d been mulling over all of it in my mind, I started having some doubts. Was the man at the Rodeo actually Tex? All I had to really go on were those bright blue eyes. Other than that, he had looked completely different than the prisoner in the photo Erik had forwarded me. Was it possible that I’d just jumped to conclusions?

  A small part of me wondered if Trumbow didn’t actually have a point, as much as I didn’t want to admit it.

  I’d
been under enough strain lately to drive a dozen people mad. I was hardly sleeping. And most hours of the day, it felt like I had only a little bit more energy than a corpse.

  Was Trumbow right? Was my mind playing tricks on me? Making up conspiracies, superimposing faces, connecting dots where there just wasn’t any connection whatsoever?

  The plain truth was, I didn’t know.

  All I knew was that when you started having to tell people you weren’t crazy, well, that right there was a dangerous road to start down.

  So I decided to push the whole thing off, at least for the time being, and focus on bringing my husband back home from the hospital.

  There would be time later to tell him about it. And as long as we were surrounded by family and friends, I felt as though we would be safe.

  I walked into the hospital room and felt a bright smile flood my face.

  Daniel was sitting at the edge of the bed, dressed, and ready to go.

  I felt my heart soar. And for the first time since the accident, I actually believed, without a doubt, that everything was finally going to be okay.

  “Going my way?” he said, sticking out a thumb as if he was hitchhiking.

  “Well, that depends,” I said.

  “On what?”

  “On what you have to pay me with,” I said. “I don’t just pick hitchhikers up for free, you know.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, as if deep in thought.

  “Hmm,” he said. “What about this.”

  He reached out, pulled me down to him, and laid a lovely, tender kiss on my lips. I felt my heart speed up a little.

  It was going to be so good to finally have him back home.

  “Hmm. Let’s just call that a down payment. I’m not cheap, Mr. Brightman. I’ll be expecting more later.” I said, looking deep into his eyes.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” he said.

  “Uggh.”

  I jumped a little, and glanced back at where the groan had just come from.

  Warren was holding a cardboard cup holder with three coffees. He was feigning a grossed-out look on his face, but his eyes were smiling.

  “Enough necking, you kids,” he said. “Let’s get this man back home.”