Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 7)

by Meg Muldoon

  I thought about it for a long moment, feeling the warmth building in my heart.

  But the feeling didn’t last long. A few moments after Tiana left, that atmosphere of gloom that had been with me all day returned when I realized I was all alone in the kitchen.

  My eyes inadvertently drifted over to the sharp knife I’d had the run-in with earlier. It sat securely lodged in the wooden block, as if nothing had ever happened.

  In most ways, what had taken place earlier that day wasn’t such a big deal.

  The knife had, after all, missed my foot. I came away from the mishap shaken, but completely unhurt. And while the same could not be said for my sneakers, I was okay with retiring the pair for good.

  It wasn’t a big deal, I tried to tell myself.

  But on the other hand, it did seem like a big deal.

  In all my years working in a kitchen, I’d had plenty of burns and plenty of scrapes. But never had a knife come close to going through my foot. That was unusual, to say the least, and the fact that it had happened so soon after I’d seen The Witch of Christmas River… it didn’t sit well with me.

  And I couldn’t help think… had the knife falling been just a coincidence?

  Or was it something more?

  I found myself fighting off some chills as I finished rolling out a batch of pie dough. The sound of the bare, skeletal aspen branches scraping against the windows outside didn’t do much in the way of easing my mind, either.

  I wasn’t a superstitious person – or so I had believed. But something about old Hattie’s legend, and something about the time of year maybe, and something about the glare in the old woman’s eyes all sort of played off one other to—

  “Oh, pish-posh,” I said out loud, using Warren’s favorite phrase.

  I was being ridiculous.

  I shook out my arms and then went over to the stereo. I put on Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, one of my favorite albums to listen to in the fall, and turned up the volume. Unknown Legend boomed through the kitchen, its familiar chords immediately putting me at ease. Then I started pulling out ingredients for a batch of Mocha Pecan pies.

  I resolved to put the whole knife incident, and all the implications I had been dwelling on, out of my mind.

  Daniel was right. A small town like Christmas River was a breeding ground for legends and stories. Hattie Blaylock was nothing more than a sad old recluse with no money to fix her house. She wasn’t a witch, she hadn’t baked her husband into a pie or turned him into a cat, and she most certainly hadn’t caused people to have accidents or to die.

  I mixed the pecans together with molasses, brown sugar, and coffee, and tried to think about what it would be like to grow old alone in a big drafty house.

  Poor Hattie must have gotten lonely sometimes, the way anybody might. I wondered what she busied herself with all day. Sometimes, folks said that piano music could be heard coming from the house. But a person couldn’t play piano all day. How did she get her groceries? How did she even support herself? Did she ever wish she had remarried? Did she ever regret not having children? What really happened to her hus—

  Cracckkk!!

  I gasped suddenly as a loud crash erupted from the corner of the kitchen.

  I stopped mixing the pie ingredients together, holding the rolling pin out in front of me in a ready stance. The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up on end, as if an electrical storm was passing overhead.

  My heart hammered away in my chest as Neil kept on singing about desert highways and Harley Davidsons, oblivious to the loud noise that had come from the corner.

  I felt my stomach tighten as that familiar sense of doom wound its way up my throat.

  After a few moments of standing like that with no other sound, I felt my arms lower and my muscles relax slightly.

  “Dammit, Cinnamon,” I whispered to myself. “Pull yourself together already.”

  I wasn’t normally afraid of the dark or things that went bump in the night or legends made up by kids who had nothing better to do.

  But tonight, for some reason, I was.

  I fought off another round of chills. Then I forced my legs to move toward where the sound had come from. I side-stepped the plastic sheet in place on account of the renovations, and peered into the corner, looking for whatever had made the noise.

  I felt my fingers loosen their grip on the rolling pin when I saw it.

  There, on the floor, was a crumbled pile of plaster and brick, looking as harmless as anything I’d ever seen.

  A brick in the wall must have come loose during the renovation work, and the vibrations from the music rumbling through the kitchen must have pushed it over the edge, I reasoned.

  Realizing that there was no threat, I let out the world’s biggest sigh of relief, and felt my heart slow to a normal rhythm.

  Then all I was left with was a feeling of utter embarrassment.

  What was wrong with me?

  I headed for the broom that I kept on the opposite end of the kitchen. I set the oven to 375 degrees on my way back and then started sweeping up the broken brick and plaster dust.

  I must have been losing my mind, thinking that around every corner, some sort of terrible accident was waiting to befall me. I had only seen old Hattie for a split second the morning before, yet I was acting like she had personally leveled a threat at me – blaming her for everything from the knife incident earlier, to noises in my own pie shop. I was acting like a real—

  I stopped sweeping as something in the pile of rubble caught my eye.

  I knelt down and brushed away the white dust hiding the shiny object. I grabbed it, rolling it around in my hand for a moment, feeling its heaviness on my palm. I studied the piece for a long while beneath the lights of the kitchen.

  The object was blackened with years and years of tarnish. It was heavy and round, and felt substantial in my small hand. After a few moments of peering at it, I finally held it up to the light.

  “CRHS, 1958.”

  The lettering was bold and blocky across the metal face, and it suddenly became obvious to me what the object was.

  I looked back down at the pile of brick, and then at the hole in the wall that it had left. I reached into the dark opening, feeling for anything more that might have been there, but there was nothing but plaster and more dust.

  I turned my attention back to the class ring. I held it up to the light again, searching on the inside for the initials that usually accompanied these rings. But the layer of black tarnish was too thick, and I could hardly make out the first letter.

  It was strange that an old class ring had just fallen out of the wall like that. Though sometimes I forgot how old the building that housed my pie shop was. The place had seen many incarnations – everything from a diner, to a bakery, to an ice cream shop, and now, a pie shop. I didn’t know the exact age of the structure, but I knew that it dated back to sometime just after World War II. Just a smidge before Warren’s heyday.

  But how an old class ring would end up behind a brick wall was something that—

  “Boo!”

  I jumped like I’d just run smack dab into a tangle of electric fence.

  Chapter 9

  “Kris Kringle in Christmas River, Daniel! Don’t you know you can’t go around sneaking up on people like that in October? Don’t you know you’re liable to cause someone to have a heart attack?”

  I hunched over, my hands on my knees, my heart hammering away in my chest like a paint mixer. Meanwhile, my husband was busting up like an eleven-year-old who had just successfully gotten his teacher to sit on a whoopee cushion.

  The man couldn’t seem to stop laughing.

  After a few moments, I stood up, crossing my arms and glaring at him.

  I failed to see the humor in any of it.

  He finally stopped snickering long enough to flash me one of his million-dollar, get-out-of-jail-free-card smiles. Then he placed his hands on my hips.

  “Aw, c’mon,” he said. “I was j
ust having a little fun. Besides, all I said was ‘Boo.’ I could’ve done a lot worse.”

  “Not if you wanted to sleep in your own bed tonight, you couldn’t have,” I said, still mad as a disturbed ant hill.

  “I just couldn’t help myself, Cin,” he said, a hint of that smile still on his lips. “What did you say yesterday? That I was just a grown-up kid who still wished he could go trick-or-treating?”

  “Yeah, I said that.”

  “Well, what else did you expect then?”

  It was a question I didn’t have an answer to.

  I punched him playfully in the gut. He keeled over like I had really gotten him, then stood up a moment later, smiling big.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “What do you say to shopping and then dinner out tonight?”

  It only took a second of gazing into those bright green eyes of his for my anger to dissipate.

  I swear. Daniel Brightman could get away with murder if he wanted to.

  Luckily, he didn’t have a bad bone in his body.

  “You think you can get out of it so easily?” I said, pretending to still be angry. “Dangle some shopping and dinner in front of me and expect me to crumble like a Greek statue?”

  “No, not quite,” he said. “In fact, I’m hoping you’ll make me pay later for this.”

  He smiled wickedly.

  He was in one of his mischievous, fun-loving moods. Usually, there was nothing I liked better than to give into the spirit of it.

  “Daniel,” I said. “I’ve got only half the work done that I need to get done before heading home. Don’t you know folks will be demanding my head tomorrow if we run out of pie?”

  Daniel let go of me and headed toward the swinging dividing door that led to the dining room.

  “Let tomorrow be tomorrow, darlin,’” he said. “Let’s live for tonight.”

  He came back with my plum-colored corduroy jacket and the scarf I had come to the shop with this morning.

  “Daniel,” I said, exasperated. “Just what kind of shopping are we doing, anyway?”

  “You’ll just have to come along to find out,” he said, pure mischief in his eyes.

  I looked at the batch of half-made pecan pies, which were beckoning me to do my diligent duty and finish making them.

  But the devilment in Daniel’s eyes was just too alluring.

  And besides.

  I never was a goody two shoes.

  “Just so we’re clear, you’re still in the doghouse,” I said, pulling off my apron.

  He smiled.

  “Well, I’ve got the whole night to work on getting out.”

  I put away the half-finished pies in the fridge, then pulled on my jacket and scarf. I turned the ovens off on the way out.

  Daniel grabbed my hand, and I couldn’t help but feel excited for what the night had in store.

  I guessed Tiana wasn’t the only one with a hot date.

  Chapter 10

  “It just lodged into the shoe?” he said, before taking a swig of his porter. “Didn’t get your foot at all?”

  I shook my head, stuffing another sweet potato fry in my mouth.

  “It missed,” I said. “I don’t know how. But it did, thank God.”

  I pulled my sweater tighter around me in an effort to fight off some shivers. A round of laughter broke out at the other end of the bar from a rowdy group of Seahawks fans who were watching the game, and Daniel paused to let the sound pass before speaking.

  Dinner and beer down at the Pine Needle Tavern wasn’t exactly my idea of a romantic, candlelit dinner date with my husband, but I couldn’t deny that I was having a good time. And even if most of the decent restaurants in town hadn’t been closed by the time we finished shopping, I might have elected to come here anyway. There was something to be said for having a cozy, familiar place you could come to after work. The beer was good, the food was tasty, and though plenty of other wives might have disliked their date night taking place at the local tavern, I didn’t mind so much myself. It was the place I used to come to drown my sorrows a while back when I was depressed about the dissolution of my first marriage. These days, it was a satisfying feeling to come in here, having found the love of my life and having no sorrows to drown.

  I figured there was no better place to catch up on things with my husband in the whole of Christmas River.

  Especially after the hours and hours of Halloween décor shopping that we’d just done. The consequences of which were now sitting in heaps of shopping bags in Daniel’s truck. I swear – the man had cleaned out the stores with his enthusiasm for the holiday.

  I finished the last of the sweet potato fries as Daniel studied me.

  “Well, that sounds like good luck actually, since the knife missed your foot,” he finally said. “When you started the story, you said it was bad luck you were worried about.”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It didn’t feel like good luck. In fact, it felt more like…”

  I trailed off, that shadow of doom suddenly creeping up on me from out of nowhere.

  “Like what?” Daniel said, putting his pint glass down, his face fixed in an expression of concern.

  I pushed my plate forward across the bar.

  “Like a warning,” I said. “Like maybe…”

  I trailed off again.

  It sounded too dramatic and ridiculous to say out loud, so I kept it to myself.

  But that didn’t prevent it from rolling around in my head.

  Like maybe that little incident was just the beginning.

  Daniel furrowed his brow and reached over, rubbing my back.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s all fine, Cin. It was just an accident. Kitchens are dangerous places, right? You’re the one who’s always telling me that. And there’s no way that you seeing Hattie yesterday had anything to do with a knife falling off the counter.”

  I forced a weak smile.

  Daniel could always figure out my pattern of thinking – even if it wasn’t the most logical.

  “Everything’s fine, okay?” he said. “I promise. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You know why?”

  It was a redundant question that I already knew the answer to, but I asked anyway.

  “Why?”

  He smiled.

  “Because I need your help putting up the decorations.”

  I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and hit his hand back playfully.

  “Daniel Brightman,” I said, shaking my head and taking another drink of my IPA.

  “Cinnamon Peters,” he quipped back, gazing at me with a loving expression.

  “What am I ever gonna do with you?” I said.

  He smiled.

  “Anything you like, darlin,’”

  I laughed.

  I loved it when Daniel got like this: loving and flirtatious, he was making it clear that he was trying to sweep me off my feet tonight.

  “If I knew that a few orange and black lights could make you so happy, then I’d hang ‘em up year round,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s not just those,” he said.

  “Then what else has got you in such a jolly mood tonight?”

  He shrugged, spinning the coaster in front of him.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess you’d say that I’m just… satisfied. Simple as that. Things are just good.”

  “They are, aren’t they?” I said, gazing into his eyes.

  He nodded.

  “I’m a hell of a lucky man,” he said. “And by some grace of God, I know it.”

  I felt my cheeks glow red.

  I knew a little something about the feeling myself.

  “You know, the other day I was just thinking about how much my life has changed since I moved back here to Christmas River. About how different things are for me now.”

  He leaned in close to me, his face grazing mine.

  “My life used to be Chinese take-out, late nights chasing bad guys, and
insomnia,” he said. “I don’t even know who that guy was anymore. Because now, I’ve got the love of a beautiful woman and a job where I get to protect the community I care about. Not to mention all the pie I could ever want.”

  I smiled.

  Daniel had a way of making light of things, but the sentiment behind his words was 100-percent true.

  “I’m sorry you ever had to live any other way, hon,” I said, meeting his burning stare.

  He reached out a hand, stroking my cheek briefly like I was the most beautiful thing his eyes had ever beheld.

  “What do you say we get out of here?”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” I said, hopping off the barstool and standing up.

  I started wrapping my scarf around my neck, as he pulled on his coat.

  “But if you think all that sugar and honey you laid down on me just now gets you out of the doghouse, then I’m afraid you’ve underestimated your wife’s ability to hold a grudge,” I said.

  He smirked. Then he stood up, grabbing my coat and holding it out for me.

  “I thought as much,” he said. “I figured it’d take a lot more to get outta there. But you know me…”

  I slid into my jacket and he leaned down, pressing his lips close to my ear.

  “Whatever it takes,” he whispered.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  I turned around.

  “Daniel Brightman,” I said again, pretending to be shocked by what he was implying.

  He winked at me, then settled up our tab.

  Chapter 11

  “Cin, watch out!”

  I heard the warning too late.

  By that time, the SUV had already started peeling out backwards, roaring like a red monster in the darkness of The Pine Needle Tavern’s parking lot.

  I watched in stunned horror as it rumbled toward me like I wasn’t even there at all.

  It was too late to do anything, I realized.

  There was no way of getting out of this one.

  I shut my eyes tightly, bracing myself for the inevitable impact.