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

by Meg Muldoon

  Most of the towns along the 101 coastal highway were small, and you were lucky to get any sort of coverage in them.

  I poured the pumpkin pie filling into the batter dispenser, and then started emptying the filling into the pie crusts.

  “So what is it you were saying before that meat head of a security guard came up to me the other day?” Warren asked. “Something about a ring and some fella or another?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The name’s Ralph Henry Baker. I found his class ring behind a brick in my pie shop.”

  “Hmm,” Warren mumbled.

  “Daniel looked into it since we last talked,” I said. “And it turns out that Ralph Baker disappeared in 1960. He just drove off one night, heading away from a party. Nobody in Christmas River ever saw him again.”

  “Uh-huh,” Warren said. “I’m familiar with it.”

  “You are?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Everybody in Christmas River knew Ralph. His disappearance was quite the shock. Especially for his family.”

  Warren cleared his throat in a strange way.

  “He, uh, he wasn’t a bad kid,” he said, the tone of his voice changing.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say the conversation about Ralph was making the old man uncomfortable.

  “Were the two of you friends?” I asked.

  “Us?” he said. “No. I mean, I knew him. We were friendly. Both worked at the mill together. But he was a few years younger than me and liked beer a lot more than I did back then. I guess time has had the opposite effect on me. Beer grows more and more appealing to me with each passing year.”

  Warren paused, clearing his throat oddly again.

  “So you didn’t really know him that well, then?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “But, uh, I think there’s something you should know about all of this Cin.”

  I set the batter pitcher down on the counter while Tiana whisked the pies away from me and tossed them into one of the ovens.

  “What is it?” I said.

  The tone of Warren’s voice was downright odd, and it worried me some.

  “Well, uh, you see…”

  There was another long pause, followed by a sigh.

  Whatever he was going to tell me appeared to be stuck in his throat.

  “Ralph Henry Baker?” he finally said. “He was your great uncle, Cin.”

  Chapter 23

  “What?”

  I closed the back door behind me, stepping out into the blustery, tombstone grey morning. The sky spit down a few raindrops, and they splattered across the side of my face. But I hardly felt a thing.

  “How can that be?”

  “Well,” Warren said, taking in a deep breath. “You see, your dad’s mom? Ralph was her brother. Her maiden name was Baker before getting married – though I don’t suppose your dad ever gave you much of a lesson in his family history. Bastard didn’t know much about the meaning of family to begin with.”

  I found myself speechless.

  When you live in a small town nearly your entire life, you think that you know everything there is to know about it.

  Then something like this knocks you clear off of your feet.

  I started saying something, but stopped, realizing I didn’t know where I was going with it.

  I didn’t have the words.

  “Your dad came from a good family, despite himself,” Warren continued. “The Bakers were respectable people. And Ralph was a good kid. His only flaw was the drink. He didn’t exactly have a problem with it, but he indulged a little too much for his own good. Which back in those days, was somewhat scandalous.”

  “How come I haven’t heard about any of this before?”

  Warren paused for a moment.

  “Well, Ralph’s sister – your grandma – was gone by the time you were born. She passed early of cancer, as you know. Your grandpa on that side moved back to his hometown back east after that and died when you were just a little girl. So it wasn’t like he was around to tell you. And since Ralph had disappeared such a long time ago, there wasn’t really any reason for you to know about him.”

  I let that sink in for a long moment.

  Ralph Henry Baker was my great uncle.

  It was strange to think of him in those terms now – the teen in those photos, who seemed like he had the world on a string, being related to me.

  “You there, Cin?” Warren said, the line cracking slightly.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, walking slowly to the porch railing. “I’m, uh, just… this is just kind of a shock.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s strange, you finding that ring of his in your pie shop, I mean…”

  He trailed off, not finishing the thought.

  “What is it, Grandpa?” I finally said.

  “Well, you see, back then, the pie shop used to be—”

  Warren’s voice suddenly cut out.

  “Grandpa?” I said, pressing the phone closer to my ear. “Can you hear me?”

  But if he could, it didn’t matter – I couldn’t hear him.

  The line was silent.

  “Damn it,” I muttered angrily.

  He must have hit another pocket of bad reception at the coast. And right when it seemed like he was going to say something important.

  I started calling his number again, hoping that I could get through.

  But just before hitting the send button, something stopped me.

  A smell.

  A bitter, acrid aroma that assaulted my senses.

  An unmistakable odor that I knew could only signify bad things.

  I turned around to see Tiana opening the left oven, a billow of black smoke escaping from it.

  Oh no.

  Chapter 24

  “Oh, Cin. I don’t know what else to say. I am so, so sorry.”

  A few sooty tears spilled down Tiana’s red cheeks as she gazed at the cookie sheets lined with the burnt remains of what had once been the Chocolate Hazelnut pies.

  I didn’t say anything for a long moment, gauging the damage myself.

  A film of smoke lingered in the air, even though I had opened all the windows and doors. And though I had turned the smoke alarm off in time before the sprinklers turned on, the high-pitched piercing sound was still echoing in my ears.

  “You told me to take those pies out,” Tiana continued, berating herself more than anybody else ever could. “I just… I just plain forgot about them.”

  She smacked a hand up to her forehead, and the color of her cheeks deepened with embarrassment.

  “I mean, I must be losing my mind to do something this stupid.”

  I didn’t believe that Tiana was losing her mind. Lately, she’d just been a bit forgetful. Nothing to this degree, but small things. Like forgetting to reset the oven to a certain temperature, or forgetting to lock the windows when we were closing up for the night.

  I wagered that the absentmindedness had less to do with Tiana’s mental health, and more to do with the high-flying status of her emotions lately.

  Tiana was in love. And I knew from personal experience that that kind of volatile emotion could even make you forget your own name.

  A few more tears popped over the rims of her eyes. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her sleeve.

  I couldn’t take seeing her beat herself up anymore.

  I went over to where she was standing and gently put an arm around her shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”

  I felt a creepy crawly feeling travel up the back of my spine when I said the last word: accident.

  It wasn’t lost on me that this one, despite being relatively harmless, came in as the third such one in just a few short days.

  “No, it is my fault,” she said. “I’ve just been spacy lately. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  I pat her shoulder some.

  “Look, it could have been a lot worse. We got to it before it got out of hand, and other than s
ome burnt pies, a smoky kitchen, and a roomful of spooked customers out in the front, everything turned out okay.”

  I wasn’t just trying to make Tiana feel better – everything had turned out all right. Although some folks out in the dining room had acted quite dramatic about the whole situation, as if they hadn’t heard a smoke detector alarm go off before in their lives.

  Tiana nodded, biting her lower lip, clearly trying to fight back some more tears.

  “And you know what else?”

  “What?” she said.

  “Because of this, I don’t think we’ll have to make those extra pumpkin pies today,” I said. “Seems like a lot of customers cleared out.”

  “Oh, Cin. That’s not a good thing,” she said, dabbing at her eyes some more with her sleeve. “That’s good business I scared off. Not to mention the ruined pies I cost you. I know hazelnuts aren’t cheap these days.”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “Besides, I could use an early day. And maybe you could, too.”

  She looked at me, searching my eyes to see if I was being serious.

  “Ian and Tobias here probably wouldn’t mind the afternoon off either, would you fellas?”

  “Not at all,” Tobias said, looking at Tiana with a loving expression.

  “Sounds good to me,” Ian said, taking off his apron.

  The youth smiled warmly at her, and that seemed to make her feel a little better.

  “Okay, everybody in agreement?” I said.

  They all nodded.

  “Let’s help the remaining customers and close up.”

  Everyone got to work, finishing up the last batch of pies and cleaning up the kitchen.

  The customers wouldn’t be happy about the shop closing so early, but sometimes, you just needed an afternoon off.

  Especially when you had a missing persons case to solve.

  Chapter 25

  “Is it my lucky day, or are you here about two hours earlier than you said you’d be?”

  I plopped down in the beat-up old leather chair opposite the desk.

  I couldn’t help but notice that stacks of files were obscuring not only the Sheriff’s desk, but also the shelves, the windowsills, and just about anywhere in the office that had enough space.

  To the layman’s eyes, Daniel’s office was in serious need of organization. However, I knew that he had his own special kind of system going with all of it – even if it wasn’t the most visually appealing.

  “Well, I don’t know how much luck had to do with it,” I said. “We had a fire at the shop.”

  Daniel’s eyes bulged slightly.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Everything’s fine. Just a few burnt pies and a few tears, that’s all.”

  He let out a sharp breath of air.

  “Your tears, or somebody else’s?”

  “Tiana’s,” I said. “But it was an accident – plain and simple.”

  “Hmm,” he muttered.

  He rubbed the stubble on his cheeks and looked past me for a moment.

  “Been having a few of those lately, huh?”

  I bit my lower lip, not answering the rhetorical question.

  “I found something else out about Ralph,” he said, changing the subject after a moment.

  “So did I.”

  He readjusted his positioning in the chair, leaning forward toward me.

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s not anything that will break the case,” I said. “But it’s a strange coincidence.”

  “Well, you go first, then,” he said.

  I told him what Warren had said – that Ralph Henry Baker was my great uncle.

  Daniel’s reaction was the same one I’d had when I first heard the news.

  “What?”

  I nodded.

  “On my dad’s side. My grandmother was Ralph’s sister.”

  Daniel made a sharp whistling sound, then shook his head in disbelief.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “His class ring falling out of your pie shop’s wall, and you not even knowing he’s your great uncle. What are the chances of that happening?”

  “Pretty slim, I’d say,” I said. “Maybe about the same as a knife lodging in your shoe, but not cutting your foot in half. Or a worried mother backing her car up into you, but by some grace of God, not running you over.”

  Daniel rubbed his chin again.

  “None of those incidents are related, Cin.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said. “Some strange things have been happening lately. You can’t deny that.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But there’s nothing to tie any of those strange things together.”

  Except they all happened to me, I thought.

  “All I know is that I want to find out what happened to Ralph Baker,” I said. “It’s not just some stranger anymore: and it feels like there’s a reason I was the one to find that ring. You know? Like I’m the one who needs to figure this out.”

  I had never gotten the chance to meet anyone from my dad’s side of the family. And after he left, it didn’t seem to matter. It was like I just tried to pretend that none of them had ever existed – including him. It hurt less that way.

  But now, it felt like if I could find out what happened to Ralph, then maybe I could somehow salvage something from that side of my family. I wasn’t sure how, but that’s how it felt, anyway.

  Daniel studied me for a long moment.

  Then he stood up. He grabbed his leather Sheriff’s jacket from off the chair in the corner of the office, and pulled it on.

  “Well, in that case, let’s get going,” he said.

  I watched him for a moment, not understanding.

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 26

  “I haven’t found much on Hannah Templeton,” Daniel said, pulling up near the First Presbyterian Church on Mirth Avenue and killing the engine. “After 1960, she might as well have vanished, too. There’s no record of her living in Pohly County. There’s a woman by the name of Hannah Templeton living in New Hampshire, but she’s fifty-two years old – which would make her too young to be the Hannah we’re looking for.”

  I nodded, my eyes following the church’s tall pointy spire as it jutted high up into the sky above us.

  I still didn’t understand why we were here.

  “But I did find something else – something that might help the case a lot,” he continued.

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, I went to city hall this morning,” he said. “And I did a little research into the building your pie shop’s in. I dug up some history about what used to be there.”

  I turned toward him in my seat: he had my full attention.

  “During the timeframe we’re looking at – the fifties to the mid-sixties – the building housed a bakery called “Orvil’s.” And do you know who owned it?”

  “Well, Orvil, obviously,” I said.

  Daniel smirked at my silly comment.

  Sometimes I just couldn’t help myself.

  “Yeah, right. So getting back to what I uncovered,” he said. “The bakery was owned by a man named Orvil Morgan.”

  It took me a moment to put it together, but when I did, I suddenly understood why we were parked outside the First Presbyterian Church.

  “Morgan…? As in Pastor Frederick Morgan?”

  Daniel nodded, the corners of his mouth turning up just slightly.

  “Yep,” he said. “The very man who married Aileen and Warren just a few days ago. He’s Orvil’s son. How’s that for a coincidence?”

  There had been so many lately, it felt like they were becoming every day occurrences.

  “So you think Pastor Morgan might be able to shed some light on how Ralph Baker’s class ring ended up in the wall of his father’s bakery?” I asked.

  Daniel zipped up his coat, and reached in
the backseat where he’d placed his cowboy hat.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I figure it’s worth a shot. Don’t you think?”

  I nodded, feeling a kind of warm pride rising in my chest at Daniel’s good detective work.

  I squeezed his shoulder, before unbuckling my seatbelt.

  “Here’s to hoping the old pastor doesn’t make us listen to the rest of his speech about respect,” Daniel said, winking at me.

  He got out of the truck, and I followed. We made our way up the steps of the church, getting inside just as a gust of frigid wind knocked the remaining leaves down from the aspens in front of the foreboding building.

  Chapter 27

  “I hope I’m not in trouble, Sheriff,” Pastor Morgan said, slowly setting his old, arthritic-ridden body down on one of the church’s hard fold-out seats. “Though I take it that since you brought your wife along, the matter can’t be too serious.”

  He nodded toward me with a lukewarm expression, his old eyes meeting mine before slowly making their way back to Daniel.

  It was interesting – even though the Pastor was several years younger than Warren, he seemed to be infinitely older. Maybe it was his old-fashioned robe, or the stiff expression plastered across his face that had all the liveliness of a cardboard box. But for whatever reason, the Pastor looked as old as the lava fields on the south slopes of the Cascades. How he had managed to get through my grandfather’s wedding ceremony a week earlier was a mystery.

  Warren said time was slow to catch up to him because he always stayed young at heart. And as I examined the Pastor, and the dour, downcast look that had set itself practically in stone on his face, it became obvious that nothing about him – his heart perhaps least of all – had stayed young.

  When it came to showing age, the church itself hadn’t fared much better. Though I didn’t know exactly how old the building was, it looked like the congregation was struggling with its upkeep. The front door didn’t properly close, and a cool draft blew down the aisle toward the pulpit. The whole building creaked like an old ship in the wind.

  It seemed like if a big enough gust came, it might just knock the small building over, bringing that long skinny spire crashing down into the street.