by Meg Muldoon
They were shuffling through their notes up at their table on stage, discussing their viewpoints with a kind fervor that was worthy of a Sunday evangelical show.
It had been over an hour since the judges had finished their tour of the auditorium, and from their hushed, strained voices, it didn’t appear that they were any closer to deciding the winner. I noticed that Julianne Redding in particular had a lot to say. She was using wild hand gestures and interrupting the other judges before any of them could get two words in, showing more life than I’d seen since before Harley disappeared.
I just hoped that my house had impressed her enough to get her on my side. With all her years of judging cookie construction, she was a good person to have in your corner.
In the meantime, competitors and spectators alike had started to get antsy, waiting for the results. There was some grumbling, and a few folks had even started to step outside the auditorium, quitting on the event and opting instead to hear the results tonight on the 6 o’clock news.
I probably would have been feeling antsy about waiting all this time too, if it weren’t for the fact that my mind was somewhere else completely.
Brad’s words kept echoing in my ears.
“I didn’t want to go into Pepper’s shop the other day, you know, wanting to stay loyal to you,” Brad had said, pacing the hall outside the auditorium. “But you see, Will has this love for all things French. So I took him there during our lunch break yesterday. We ordered some bacon cheese croissants and were having a great time, but then I noticed that Will went stark white all of sudden. And I look at what he’s staring at, and it’s Pepper Posey, who’s just come out from the kitchen in the back. And he just looks like he’s going to lose his bacon cheese croissant all over the place.
“So I ask him, ‘Will, is everything okay?’
“And then he shakes his head and says ‘Let’s get out of here.’ So I’m like, okay. I guess he really hates these croissants. Then during the car ride home, I ask him what was the matter. And he says ‘That woman doesn’t deserve another cent of ours.’ And I was like ‘Will, what are you talking about?’ And then you know what he said?
“He says, ‘That’s the dog kidnapper who took Reginald six years ago. The college girl who took the reward money. The red head. That was her in there.’”
I’d been shocked by Brad’s story. Shocked beyond words.
And it didn’t really take much detective work to put two and two together.
The dogs started disappearing shortly after Pepper showed up in town. How could that have been a coincidence?
I’d wandered into the auditorium after that, finding a quiet spot near the back to think things through.
Pepper had fooled all of us, this whole time.
But was she really the one behind the dog kidnappings? I still couldn’t see the angle, even though the pieces seemed to fit. But maybe she was doing something else with the dogs, something outside what we had previously thought. Selling them into other homes that would pay a lot for a police dog, or a cute yellow lab, or a well-trained Australian Shepard.
Or maybe she was doing something worse with them: selling them to laboratories for science experiments. Something I’d read about before online.
Reginald the bull dog had been stolen and then returned several years ago. That was plenty of time for her to get good at stealing dogs and making money off of them. Plenty of time to become a grade-A dog thief.
But could Will have been mistaken? He hadn’t even had any proof in the first place that the girl who collected the reward money all those years ago actually ripped him off. From Brad’s retelling, it had been just a hunch. Meaning that even if Pepper was the same girl who’d found Reginald, it didn’t make her a thief. The whole thing could have been innocent. And she could have been really trying to do good then.
Or maybe not.
I swallowed hard, remembering the first time I met Pepper. It was during her shop’s grand opening.
She’d seen me walking Chadwick.
And then there was her gingerbread house: was it just coincidence that she’d chosen to build a dog house? Was she trying to send some kind of twisted message with it? A little wink at the Sheriff’s Office and the rest of the town maybe? Teasing us all with a clue, the way sometimes criminals did in television shows?
Was Pepper Posey really behind all of this?
Did she know where Huckleberry and Chadwick were at this very moment?
I had to find out.
And I had to find out now.
I started walking down the steps of the auditorium, heading for her station. But I quickly realized that while a group of spectators were still crowding around her gingerbread creation, Pepper herself was no longer there.
I skimmed the room, looking for that bright red hair of hers. But after several minutes of searching, I still hadn’t found her. The only person with hair that bright in the auditorium was Julianne Redding, and she was up at the judges’ table, still arguing her point of view.
I pulled out my phone, about to hit Daniel’s number on speed dial, when a hush fell over the crowd.
Julianne Redding had abruptly left her seat and had made her way up to the microphone.
There was a folded-up piece of paper in her hands.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a decision,” she said.
My heart hammered faster than a damned freight train bound for hell.
Chapter 52
I squeezed my eyelids tightly, clenched my jaw, and felt my hands roll up into fists at my sides.
The entire room fell under a nervous hush. The air was practically electric.
“And the winner, of, the 55th annual Gingerbread Junction, is…”
Julianne unfolded the piece of paper slowly, as if her hands were made out of wood.
My heart pounded hard in my chest and bile shot up the back of my throat. I opened my eyes for a second and the room was spinning. I suddenly felt like there wasn’t enough air in the auditorium. Too many people, not enough air.Too many people, not enough air. Too many people, not enough…”
“And before I announce this, I just want to let everyone know that this year’s winner is perhaps the best gingerbread house artistry we’ve seen in years… possibly ever,” Julianne said, smiling coyly. “This person went above and beyond the requirements to makes something truly spectacular.”
There were a few grumbles from the crowd, as if everybody was as anxious as I was.
“The winner of this year’s Gingerbread Junction is…”
Cinnamon Peters.Cinnamon Peters. Cinnamon Pet—
“None other than Pepper Posey for Max’s Dog House!”
It felt like a rifle had just exploded at close range in front of me.
A round of applause roared throughout the auditorium. I opened my eyes to see if it was true, if I had indeed lost the competition to the new pie baker in town.
I had: the clapping wasn’t for me.
“Pepper, please come up here to collect your prize,” Julianne said above the noise of the cheering crowd.
I felt a hard lump grow at the back of my throat.
The exit by the stage opened, and I caught a glimpse of that fiery red hair briskly moving through the door, leaving a cloud of cigarette smoke in her wake. A moment later, Pepper Posey had jumped on stage. She was smiling bashfully, a grin on her face that was the equivalent of a Sally Field Oscar Speech. You like me! You really like me!
I clenched my fists tighter.
This woman had most likely stolen Huckleberry. This woman had most likely stolen Chadwick. This woman most likely stole Harley, Daisy, Dog Holliday, and Shasta. This woman was a thief. A liar.
This woman didn’t deserve the $500 top prize. She didn’t deserve the trophy. She didn’t deserve the recognition.
What she deserved was—
“I just want to let y’all know how grateful I am to be standing up here,” Pepper said, leaning into the microphone. “You know, it means so much to
me because I just moved here to Christmas River, and you all have really opened your arms to me and taken me in. And this—”
She looked down at the trophy with admiration, like it was that Sally Field Oscar.
My jaw tightened, a furious anger rushing up from the base of my chest.
“This is B.S.,” I said, feeling my voice suddenly get louder. “B.S.!”
“This just proves that I didn’t make a mistake by moving here. Christmas River is a community of such kind, hardworking, and generous people. I’m truly honored to be one of you now. So thanks for this, and for making my move so great. And please be sure to stop by my pie shop, Pepper’s Pies, Pastries and Other Pick-me-ups!”
I felt my hands start to tremble.
I felt myself losing control. I knew it was only a matter of time before something bad happened. I wasn’t sure what, but I knew that it would end with the whole town knowing why Pepper Posey didn’t deserve that trophy. And that most likely, I was going to embarrass and/or shame myself in the process.
But it wasn’t something I could stop. I couldn’t just throw the brakes on this. The anger welling up inside, built up from weeks of enduring Pepper Posey stealing my customers and then stealing my dogs, broke down all barriers of self-control.
“This is all a bunch of—!”
But then I realized that somebody else was shouting over me.
“That’s her! The redhead!” a man yelled from somewhere on the other side of the auditorium. “That’s the woman I saw driving with Daisy this morning!”
Chapter 53
In all the heated anticipation and build up to the judge’s verdict, I hadn’t noticed that Pete Burgess had slipped into the crowded auditorium.
Or that the Sheriff had slipped in right behind him.
I might have been nervous seeing the two of them in the same room after what happened at the Pine Needle Tavern earlier in the week, but whatever was happening now didn’t seem to have the slightest thing to do with Pete not keeping his hands to himself.
I stood on my tiptoes, trying to get a better look at the scene that was unfolding on the opposite side of the auditorium.
Pete kept yelling. Daniel gripped him by the arm and was saying something in a hushed voice to him. Knowing Daniel, I got the feeling that it was something along the lines of hush now, but Pete Burgess appeared to be on a mission.
Pepper’s victory speech had come to a screeching halt as her eyes drifted to the back of the auditorium. Her face had gone whiter than the first snowfall of the year.
“You know how much I cried, thinking I might not see that dog again?!” Pete shouted again, sounding like an angry drunk who’d woken up with a bad hangover. “You know what it was like not knowing if she was lying dead in a ditch somewhere?”
He broke free of Daniel’s grip and pushed his way through the crowd, charging the stage. There were some screams from a pair of little old ladies he nearly mowed over in his attempt to get to Pepper.
Daniel reacted fast as lightning, cutting down the distance between him and Pete within a matter of seconds.
“Why’d you do it, you cruel she-devil? Why’d you take my dog?” Pete started saying, but then Daniel grabbed him by his collar, pulling him back. Pete stumbled a little, nearly falling over.
“You’ll have to excuse Pete for his behavior, folks,” Daniel said, his voice booming around the room.
He pulled Pete back and hauled him up the steps, past the poor little old ladies who Pete had elbowed to get to the stage.
A moment later, all eyes were back on Pepper Posey.
She looked more like a corpse than I’d ever seen any living person look, her face having turned so white, it was almost blue. Her eyes were practically bulging out of her head as they darted back and forth across the faces of the citizens of Christmas River. The same citizens that she’d just been praising for their generosity and kindness in her victory speech. The same citizens who were questioning and judging her now.
She had a lot to learn about living in a small town.
“I…” she stammered.
She glanced back at Julianne and the rest of the judges, and then back out at the crowd.
Then she made a run for it.
Chapter 54
“It wasn’t me! I didn’t do any of this!”
She was crying and sobbing, mascara streaming down her face in thick, sludgy trails.
There had been a round of gasps when Pepper Posey bolted from the stage the way she had, lunging for the nearest exit like a woman with her hair on fire. Then it was as though people were paralyzed by the shock of it. Not a single person in the audience appeared to be able to move.
Daniel had rushed through the throngs of unmoving onlookers, trying to chase after Pepper. But the crowd didn’t part easily, and Pepper went flying out the auditorium’s back entrance like a bat out of hell.
Thank God for Billy Jasper.
Billy had been sitting in his deputy car in the parking lot, the way Daniel had asked him to, when Pepper came shooting out of the auditorium. Billy got out of his car lickety-split, and though she had a sizeable lead on him, the pudgy deputy was faster than he looked. He apprehended her before she could get to her blue VW Bug.
She was now leaning against Billy’s deputy car, sobbing as Daniel questioned her. I watched on from a distance.
“You’re saying you didn’t take those dogs?” Daniel asked, his voice sharper than a razor blade.
“No!” Pepper sobbed, those perfectly-shaped lips of hers turning down hard at the corners.
“With a history like yours, I’m supposed to believe that?”
I took in a sharp breath.
So Will had been right about her. It was the same woman from the dog park in Portland.
I wondered just how long Daniel had known about Pepper’s past, and just what kind of record she had.
“I stopped all that a long time ago,” she said, her voice quivering. “It’s not who I am. I just fell in with a bad guy back then. You have to believe me. I didn’t steal these dogs.”
“Then why’d you run just now if you’re as innocent as you say?”
She looked past him, into the cold hard grey afternoon, and didn’t answer.
“So that wasn’t you driving around with Pete Burgess’s dog this morning? That was some other red head in a blue VW?”
“It was, but…”
“Then it was you?” Daniel said.
She nodded, convulsing with some more sobs.
“Where are they Pepper? What’ve you done with the dogs?”
“I can’t!” she wailed.
I looked behind us. The crowds of the auditorium were starting to empty out into the parking lot. A group was making its way toward us, the worst gossipers in town leading the way.
I heard a few car engines start up in the distance. At least some people were going home instead of waiting around to see Pepper’s collapse.
Daniel peered into her face with a kind of brutal intensity that I never wanted to be on the other side of.
Then he said something I didn’t understand.
“You’re covering for her, aren’t you?”
Pepper’s eyes grew wide. She stopped bawling.
“She’s the one who stole the dogs, am I right?”
“No,” she said.
“Tell me the truth,” Daniel said, his voice full of fire.
“You don’t understand,” she choked out, the sobs starting up again. “She isn’t a well woman. Ever since her husband died. You can’t hold Jules responsible. She’s gone mental, Sheriff. It’s not her fault.”
Jules? Who were they talking about?
Daniel’s eyes lit up with understanding.
“So you didn’t steal those dogs, you were just doing damage control, right? First with Shasta. Then with Daisy this morning. Giving the dogs back one at a time so that she wouldn’t get in trouble. Am I right?”
Pepper didn’t respond for a long while.
Then s
he nodded her head, ever so slightly.
“But why? Why cover up for her, Pepper. Who is Julianne Redding to you?”
I gasped.
Julianne Redding? The first dog kidnapping victim and long-time Gingerbread Junction judge had stolen the dogs?
But why?
Pepper swallowed hard and looked over at me. Her body was trembling. There was an unmistakable expression of shame in her eyes.
“She’s my sister,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Julianne is my half-sister.”
Chapter 55
We sped down the highway, following it as it wound up over a ridge, and then as it took a dip down a steep hill through the forest.
An inversion had moved in across the land and ghostly, freezing fog now clung to the trees and brush along the road.
Daniel’s eyes were fixed dead ahead on the highway and had a look in them that reminded me of the way an owl might gaze at a rodent, right before latching onto the small creature with its talons.
After Pepper’s confession, Daniel and Billy did a thorough search of the crowd, looking for the Gingerbread Junction judge who appeared to be behind the dog kidnappings. But Julianne Redding was nowhere to be found in that audience, or anywhere near the auditorium.
Now, we were doing the only thing we could: going to Julianne’s house.
Inside, my nerves were going off like fireworks.
What if Huckleberry and Chadwick weren’t at her house? What if she had them stashed somewhere else, a place that we could never find?
Or what if she’d done something to them? What if Shasta and Daisy had been the lucky ones of the group?
I shuddered, contemplating all the terrible possibilities.
“Tell me how you figured it out,” I finally said, looking over at Daniel, unable to take my own thoughts any longer.
Daniel nodded, as if he too wanted something to occupy his mind.
“Well, for a while there, I thought Pepper Posey might have had something to do with it all. You see, that’s why I was in her pie shop that day... that day you found the receipt from. Owen had reason to run a background check for something to do with parking tickets, and he’d brought it to my attention that she had a few things on her record in regards to thefts related to pets. But after talking with her, I didn’t really dig up anything new. And then of course, she was at the shop when Hucks and Chadwick were taken that night. I could say that with certainty, because I was talking with her then.”
