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

by Meg Muldoon

  A moment later, it came.

  I hit the asphalt with a hard, painful thud, my lower back taking the brunt of the hit. I let out a small gasp and waited for whatever bone-breaking lay ahead when the back tires of the SUV rolled over my body.

  But nothing happened.

  When I opened my eyes a few moments later, Daniel was lying next to me on the pavement. The car, which had backed up and narrowly missed us, had its headlights shining deep into the night.

  The driver’s door slowly opened.

  “Damn, you okay, Cin?” Daniel said, pushing himself up off the ground and coming towards me.

  I sat up, feeling a sharp pain radiate from my spine as I did. I looked down at my hands – they were red and raw from their impact with the rough asphalt.

  “Oh lordy, oh lordy, oh lordy…”

  A high-pitched, youthful voice sounded from somewhere behind the headlights.

  “Cin, are you hurt?” Daniel asked, kneeling over me and touching a hand to the side of my face.

  “I… uh…,” I mumbled, lost in some sort of fuzzy daze.

  “Oh, lordy. I am so, so, so sorry,” the high pitched voice continued.

  I glanced up, squinting through the headlights. The figure of a woman running flashed in front of the glare.

  A moment later, her red hair and familiar young face came into focus.

  “I didn’t even see you guys walking!” she said. “Are you okay, Mrs. Brightman?”

  Bethany Reid, Harold the bartender’s niece, who had started working at The Pine Needle Tavern this past summer, stood over us, a deathly worried expression on her face.

  Though whether her concern had more to do with us being hurt, or with her car insurance premium going up on account of this accident wasn’t immediately clear.

  Daniel stood up, ignoring her for the time being. He reached both hands out to me. I took them, and a moment later, I was standing on my own two feet.

  I would be sore tomorrow, that was a given. But as far as I could tell, nothing was broken.

  “We should get you to the hospital,” Daniel said.

  “No, no. I’ll be fine.”

  The thought of waiting for a doctor to see me at this hour wasn’t in the least bit appealing.

  But Daniel persisted.

  “It’s important, Cin,” he said. “If you hit your head, you could have a concussion. And that’s something that—”

  “I didn’t hit my head,” I said. “I’m okay. Really.”

  “Oh, thank heaven,” Bethany said, closing her eyes and placing a hand over her heart in a dramatic gesture. “I seriously don’t know what I would’ve done if I ran over you all.”

  Anger flashed across Daniel’s eyes, and I knew that Harold’s niece was in for a sharp scolding.

  “Have you been drinking tonight, Ms. Reid?”

  Her face turned whiter than a ghost. She clasped a hand over her chest again, her dark blue nail polish catching the glow of the headlights.

  “Absolutely not, Sheriff,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “Uncle Harold doesn’t let any of the waitresses drink on the job. And I would never do anything so irresponsible as drink and drive. That’s just not me.”

  She looked queasy, like she might just lose her dinner all over the concrete.

  “You see, the reason I pulled out in such a hurry just now was because the babysitter called, saying that Hayden’s come down with a 102-degree fever. He’s been sick all week and I’m worried about the pneumonia. That’s how come I’m leaving halfway through my shift.”

  Daniel stared at her hard, sizing the woman’s story up.

  She let out a short sigh.

  “I know that doesn’t excuse my erratic driving just now, Sheriff. But it’s foggy out here and hard to see. And you can ask Harold if you want to verify my story. Just please – please don’t press charges or sue me, Sheriff. I’m a single mother and I’m barely scraping by. I can’t afford a lawyer on my salary.”

  The white hot anger in Daniel’s eyes cooled slightly.

  He glanced over at me, giving me a once over.

  I nodded at him.

  He looked back at Bethany.

  “I’m gonna need your insurance information,” Daniel said.

  The young woman’s face fell.

  “As a precaution,” he added. “If Cinnamon is uninjured, then we won’t report this. But you need to pay better attention when you’re driving, Ms. Reid. You’re not gonna do Hayden any good if you get in an accident.”

  She let out a long-winded sigh of relief.

  “Oh, thank you, Sheriff,” she said. “Thank you, thank you. And I will pay better attention in the future. I promise.”

  I watched as she ran back to her car, her heels clicking hard against the concrete. She rummaged around in the glove compartment, looking for her insurance card.

  I noticed that Daniel was staring at me.

  “You really okay, Cin?”

  I looked back at him, biting my lower lip.

  “Honestly? I don’t know,” I said.

  “C’mon,” he said, gently nudging me. “I’m taking you to the hospital. Better safe than sorry.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s not that. I’m not hurt.”

  “Then what is i…”

  He trailed off, understanding suddenly why I was so shaken.

  And why I couldn’t stop shivering.

  “Cin, this has nothing to do with—”

  “Just like the knife this morning had nothing to do with me seeing her either?”

  Daniel didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just looked hard at me.

  He tried to hide it, but in the strong glow of the headlights, I saw it before he could.

  In Daniel’s steadfast eyes, there was something that looked out of place. Something foreign. Something that looked all wrong.

  Fear.

  Chapter 12

  The ring.

  I stared up at the ceiling, watching as the shadows of the aspen branches outside the bedroom window writhed across it like snakes.

  The alarm clock glowed a hollow 2:55 a.m.

  I’d been looking at the ceiling for the past half-hour, thinking about old Hattie Blaylock and all the stories I’d heard about her over the years. Specifically, the deaths that kids around here said she caused with her sinister black magic.

  There was Arnold Carrolton, the owner of the Christmas River GasMart back in the mid-90s. Legend had it that Arnold, who was only 53 when he died, had had an argument with his neighbor Hattie just a week before suffering a massive heart attack. I was in middle school then, and I remembered that the kids couldn’t stop talking about his death and the fact that his point of contention with Hattie had to do with her cat, Mr. Adams, using Arnold’s lawn as a litter box.

  According to the kids, one evil glare from Hattie had taken care of the problem.

  Then there was Suzanne Eagan. Suzanne was the Christmas River Library’s long-suffering head librarian. Legend had it that Hattie paid a visit to the Christmas River Library mere days before Suzanne’s car skidded off a rural country road and down a snowy embankment, where the poor woman died before a search and rescue crew could find her. Kids said Miss Eagan had crossed Hattie by not giving her the book she wanted at the library.

  There were more deaths said to be attributed to Hattie, but then I suddenly remembered something that had completely slipped my mind with the evening’s events.

  The ring.The one that I had found behind the wall.

  I carefully pushed aside the down comforter and stood up slowly, doing my best to not wake Daniel. Huckleberry’s ears pricked up from his end of the bed. He lifted his head and watched as I softly stole across the hardwood floor over to the chair in the corner, where I had tossed my jeans earlier that night.

  I rummaged around in the front pocket, finding nothing. I flipped the jeans over and searched in the opposite pocket. I had just about given up on it, thinking the ring must have slipped out on the floor, w
hen my hand hit something cold and metallic.

  I tiptoed over to the master bathroom, clutching the object tightly. Huckleberry was still watching me silently, while Chadwick and Daniel continued to breathe softly in the throes of deep sleep.

  I quietly closed the door behind me and flicked on the bathroom light. The severe contrast burned my eyes, and I blinked hard for a few moments, trying to regain my vision.

  When I could finally see, I opened my hand and looked down at the class ring. I rubbed the top of it, feeling the raised, tarnished letters, Then I flipped it over, tilting it toward the light, looking inside the band.

  There were initials there, but they were damn near impossible to make out beneath the dark stain.

  I opened the top left drawer of the cabinet, rummaging around until I found the ultrasonic jewelry cleaner that Kara had gotten me a couple of Christmases ago. Though the gift had been thoughtful, I hardly ever used it. I wasn’t like Kara – most days, the only piece of fancy jewelry I wore out was my wedding ring. And even then, I often took it off while I was working, afraid that if I wasn’t careful, it’d end up in one of my pies.

  I pulled the cleaner out and plugged it in. Then I opened the top lid, plopping the ring into the liquid. I hit the start button, and waited as the machine did its magic.

  Waiting gave me a chance to reflect a little on what I was doing.

  I shook my head at myself in the mirror.

  I must have been crazy, getting up from my warm bed at three in the morning to clean an old ring that I’d found in the kitchen of my pie shop.

  Just like I was crazy to think that an old woman could cause people to die just by looking at them the wrong way.

  And just like I was crazy to believe that I was going to be next.

  After a few more minutes of watching the tarnish dissolve, I retrieved the ring from the liquid and held it up to the light.

  There it was:

  RHB.

  I stared at the initials, waiting for a feeling of illumination to come.

  I said the letters out loud.

  “R-H-B.”

  That didn’t do the trick either.

  After a few moments, I realized that the letters meant nothing to me.

  Though why I had expected them to mean anything in the first place was a mystery. But for some reason, I felt as though they should. As though I should know the name they represented… somehow.

  I stood there for a full five minutes, feeling the ring in my hand, closing my eyes, trying to think of what name I knew that the initials could stand for.

  But I could think of nobody in town with those initials. Living or dead.

  I let the vanity lights of the bathroom dance off the clean pewter for a little while longer, until I suddenly heard something from the other side of the bathroom door.

  Something was clawing at the wood frame, wanting in.

  I placed the ring in the pocket of my robe and unlocked the door.

  Huckleberry stood on the other side, looking up at me, his angel eyes drawn together in a questioning look of concern.

  I felt my heart melt a little looking down at the sweet pooch.

  “You’re right, Hucks,” I whispered quietly, kneeling down to run my hands through his soft fur. “I don’t know what I’m doing up either.”

  I planted a kiss on the top of his sweet dog head, reassuring him that everything was okay. Then I hit the bathroom light.

  I tiptoed back to the bed, sliding in quietly next to Daniel, who was out like a candle in a snowstorm.

  Huckleberry jumped up, nestling in next to me. In a few moments, I felt his breathing go from shallow, to deep and steady as the pooch drifted off into dreamland.

  It took me a lot longer to fall asleep.

  Chapter 13

  “Uh, Ms. Peters?”

  I glanced up to find Tobias standing in the doorway, looking wide-eyed, his chest heaving slightly as he struggled to catch his breath.

  I’d grown accustomed to that expression in recent months: it meant that the pie case was looking sparse out in the dining room, and that the line was long with impatient customers.

  I wiped away the pool of sweat that had settled on my upper lip, feeling like the chunky orange wool sweater I had selected for today’s outfit had been a bad choice.

  The morning had been busy, to say the least. With the beautiful fall weather that had descended upon Christmas River, so had the fall tourists, here to see the leaves of the aspens turn to fiery shades of orange and red. And though these crowds weren’t as numerous as the ones that came into town during the summer and winter seasons, it was enough to keep me and all my employees – Tobias, Tiana, and Ian – up to our elbows in flour, butter, sugar, and pumpkin puree from sun-up to sundown.

  On top of that, this week was the final phase of renovation work in the kitchen. Which meant a two-fold increase in the hammering and sanding coming from the far side of the kitchen.

  “We’re running real low on the Chocolate Hazelnut,” Tobias yelled over the sound of a table saw revving up.

  He poked his head back out into the dining room.

  “And the Pumpkin Gingersnap? It’s flying out of here like a bat who stuck his tongue out at the devil on his way out of hell.”

  I smirked.

  I always did appreciate Tobias’s turn of phrase. Even when it came under duress.

  “Thanks, Tobias. We’ll get you some reinforcements soon,” I said.

  He nodded back and quickly vanished behind the swinging divider door.

  I let out a sharp breath and glanced at the clock on the far wall.

  It was nearly noon. Though with the way things were going, it didn’t look like I was going to be able to take my lunch break anytime soon.

  Normally, that wouldn’t have mattered. But it did today. I had somewhere I needed to be, and the place I was going wouldn’t be open past 3 p.m.

  I suddenly felt a pair of eyes on me.

  “Is time running out?” Ian said in his heavy Scottish brogue.

  “Huh?” I said, startled.

  I looked in his direction. He was rolling out a batch of pie crusts at lightning speed on the opposite side of the kitchen island.

  It was one of the things that impressed me so much about the young pastry chef: he had the rare talent of being able to not only do things quickly, but to do them with a high degree of quality as well. The crusts he made always ended up being perfect.

  “You keep looking at the clock,” he said, nodding at the round white face on the wall. “Like time’s going to run out if you don’t keep an eye on it.”

  I let out a short breath and forced a smile.

  It seemed like every little thing made me jumpy lately.

  “No, I’ve just got a few errands I wanted to run at lunch,” I said. “But it’s looking like we’re too slammed for me to duck out.”

  Ian let out a little noise that reminded me of the same kind of utterance Warren made whenever he was about to say “pish-posh.”

  The kid must have picked up a few Warrenism’s during his time under the old man’s roof.

  “I’ll cover for you,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that,” I said. “I’ve got to get started on some more pumpkin pies and those Chocolate Hazelnuts aren’t going to make them—”

  “I’ll make them,” Ian said.

  I studied him from across the kitchen island.

  “C’mon,” he said. “You can trust me not to screw them up. I promise.”

  “Ian, that’s nice, but—”

  “I’m getting started on them, whether you like it or not,” he said, going over to the pantry and grabbing some cans of pumpkin. “And if you’re not out of this kitchen in five minutes, well, I might just rethink my offer.”

  I watched as he gathered some more ingredients, and with his trademark speed, began combining the base of the Pumpkin Gingersnap pies.

  He looked up again at me after a fe
w moments.

  “Well? What’s it going to be?”

  “You sure you can handle it?”

  “I already am.”

  “I’m just a call away if you need anythi—”

  “As my grandmother would said, ‘Get on about it,’ Cinnamon.”

  I didn’t need to be told a third time.

  “I owe you one, Ian.”

  “No you don’t,” he said with a warm smile.

  I untied my apron and went for my coat and purse on the coat rack. Then I snuck out the back door, making my way around the pie shop and out to Main Street where my car was parked.

  But a moment later, I found myself stopped dead in my tracks, a fear gripping my heart so hard, I thought it might explode.

  She’d been waiting for me.

  Chapter 14

  “Can… can I help you?”

  Her yellowed eyes had a hollow, empty look to them that sent feverish chills running down my spine. Her long, wispy grey hair blew around her like Medusa’s snakes in the harsh wind. She wore a long, tattered dress and a wool jacket that looked as though it hadn’t seen the light of day for decades.

  She didn’t answer my question.

  She just kept staring at me.

  Seeing her up close for the first time, I noticed that her face was a complicated and convoluted series of deep, craggy wrinkles.

  “Mrs.… Mrs. Blaylock?” I stammered.

  She was standing squarely between me and my car, blocking the driver’s door. I felt my muscles tighten as I fought the urge to bolt.

  All I wanted to do was turn around and run back inside the pie shop for my life the way a third grader might at the sight of The Witch.

  But I wasn’t a school-aged child. I was a grown woman. And real women didn’t run away from their fears. They faced them head-on, no matter the terror they felt in their heart.

  She didn’t say anything, and I felt my fists curl up at my sides.

  Just what was she doing here, scaring me like this? What right did she have to give me these kinds of looks? I had done nothing to her, as far as I knew. Yet here she was, haunting me the same as any restless ghoul.