Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery Read online

  Murder in Christmas River

  A Christmas Cozy Mystery

  by

  Meg Muldoon

  Published by Vacant Lot Publishing

  Copyright 2012© by Meg Muldoon

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance whatsoever to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Epilogue

  Murder in Christmas River

  by Meg Muldoon

  Prologue

  He went back to the scene of it all, deep into the woods, the place where his journey had started.

  The dog hadn’t liked the tone of the woman’s voice. There was something desperate in it. Something shrill and bad. Something ominous.

  His hairs bristled. He felt like growling, lifting his lips and revealing his sharp teeth, but he knew it would only be met by a scold and some yelling from his owner.

  This was an odd place they were in. The dog had been here before, but each time, it felt new and strange. The ground was cold against his paws, and white pieces of cold fell from the sky sometimes, getting in his eyes and making his fur damp and heavy.

  The dog was used to warmer weather.

  His master raised his voice, his thunderous sound echoing against the trees in the woods. The dog dug his claws into the snow. Sounds he couldn’t understand came out of his owner’s mouth.

  Then, there was movement. Fast movement. The dog readied for attack. His owner grabbed the woman’s arm. There was a struggle. The dog lunged for the woman’s leg. She screamed out.

  There was the sound of steel going into flesh. The dog dug his teeth deeper into the leg, tasting blood and salt.

  His master crumpled to the ground, a coppery smell filling the air.

  The dog felt a stiff kick to his rib cage that sent him flying back. The woman ran. The dog ran after her, nipping at her heels. She carried his owner’s smell with her.

  But then she reached a car, and the dog could only bark at her, snarling his teeth as the car backed up and peeled away from the trail parking lot.

  The dog didn’t have to go back into the woods to know his owner was dead.

  But he did.

  He stood over the body as white flakes fell from the sky and clung to his owner’s lifeless body.

  He watched as it accumulated. He barked, but his cries were muffled and carried away by the sharp winds.

  No one else came.

  The dog was alone.

  Chapter 1

  I’m not sentimental.

  I’m not sappy or soft or gooey. In the spring when Girl Scouts come to my business looking to sell me some overpriced thin mints, I send them packing. In the fall when all the ladies of Christmas River start planning the annual Christmas parade, I can be found back at my pie shop, working hard on getting the seasonal Christmas Pie just right. That, or I can be found drinking down at the Pine Needle Tavern with two old-timers who like to recount the glory days of Christmas River before the lumber mill shut down.

  During the annual Christmas River Gingerbread Junction Competition held every year the second week of December, I take no prisoners. I aim to kill, and I shoot to win.

  That’s me. My name is Cinnamon, and my mom had some foresight on her when she named me that.

  She knew that I had a kick to me.

  No. Sentimental isn’t normally something I identify with.

  But something about that dog out there, with his matted fur all thick with snowflakes, and the way he’s shivering and shaking in that cutting Central Oregon Cascade mountains kind-of-wind, and the way that he bolts every time I so much as go for the door knob, and the fear and sadness in his little eyes… looking like somebody did something bad to him. Looking like the way I did about two years ago.

  Something about him has turned me into a big bowl of hot pie filling, oozing and bubbling over the sides of the pan. All melted and gooey and sweet.

  Christ, I’ve even got a name I’m calling him now: Huckleberry.

  I watched him as he slopped away noisily at the almost empty tin pie pan while keeping his fearful eyes glued on me. He couldn’t even really enjoy the leftover pie like that, ready to jump if I so much moved from my statue-like stance at the backdoor window.

  The snow was coming down in heavy flakes, standing out against the dog’s black fur. It probably had been lustrous at one point, the way Australian Shepherd’s fur usually is. Now it was all matted and muddy. Tear stains clung to the corners of his sad little eyes, a desperation of hunger in them.

  He had a thin red collar around his neck, but no tag.

  I hated thinking how his little stomach must have grumbled.

  He could have been a poster dog for one of those humane society commercials, with words at the bottom of the screen saying something like, when will my next meal be?

  Poor thing.

  This was the third time this week he’d come to the back porch of my pie shop. He came out of the woods that bordered the back of my store. I didn’t know if it was the bright lights shining through the black night that brought him, or the smell of late-night pastries and the promise of scraps. But for whatever reason, he’d show up on my back porch.

  When it first happened, I opened the door and tried to lure him inside with some leftover Marionberry pie. He took off back into the woods, but an hour later, he was right back there, shivering on the steps.

  I finally left a pie tin of scraps on the porch for him to eat in his own good time. And as I watched him nervously devour the leftovers, I gave him a name. Huckleberry. It really should have been Marionberry, but that sounded too much like a girl’s name. The dog was a boy dog, and needed a stronger name.

  Huckleberry.

  The next morning, I called the sheriff’s office about the
stray. But either nobody had any luck catching him, or catching a lost dog wasn’t high on anybody’s priority list.

  Since then, he’d visited the back porch a couple more times. Each time late at night. Each time, when nobody could catch him. Each time, I’d leave a tin of the day’s leftover pie for him. Each night, I’d watch him eat, and he’d watch me.

  I wanted to help him more, but he wouldn’t let me.

  I looked out the window and fought off a chill that traveled up my spine. A bitter winter’s chill that had stayed with me for the past two years. Sometimes it would just strike me out of nowhere. In the height of a summer day, I’d be hit with a bout of shivers. My body would go numb, and it was like I’d get caught in a thick fog for a while.

  I never had the chills up until two years ago.

  Huckleberry suddenly stopped slopping at the tin. His ears pricked up, and his hair bristled, and within a split second, he was gone.

  I watched him run back into the woods, disappearing into the darkness.

  I stared out into those black, frozen woods as the chills overpowered me.

  I wasn’t sentimental. But that didn’t mean I didn’t sometimes fall back into my own memories on dark, vacuous nights like tonight.

  Me and Huckleberry.Each in our own darkness.

  I didn’t feel warm again until the next morning.

  Chapter 2

  Christmas River: Where the Christmas Spirit Never Dies.

  That’s on the cheerful welcome sign when you drive through Christmas River. Beneath it, it lists the population: 5,030.

  It doesn’t say the truth, which is that the town died a long time ago. The real town, at least.

  The town was named after the crystal clean river it was built around. But when the lumber mill shut down 30 years ago, things changed. A lot. Christmas ornament shops suddenly started springing up. Gift shops and coffee huts and art galleries weren’t far behind. They put in an ice rink in the lumber mill parking lot. In a scramble to keep from dying, the town milked its name for all it was worth. Soon, Christmas River wasn’t just a town to drive through: it became a primary pit stop. A destination that people across the state would come to for a little bit of manufactured Christmas cheer year round.

  I’m 33, but I know what the town once was. My grandfather has enough stories in him about the way things used to be to write a book the size of War and Peace. He talks about the way Christmas River used to be populated by blue-collar workers, working hard to support their families and make ends meet. Good people. Not the casual, spoiled tourists that now outweighed the real residents most days of the year.

  My hometown has become a novelty. A place of forced smiles and customer satisfaction. Of little old ladies dressing up as Mrs. Claus and trying to sell you something. Of capitalizing and merchandising the magic of the season year round.

  My grandfather says it’s practically unrecognizable these days.

  But what’s bad is what’s good sometimes. The trees aren’t complaining, and I’m not either. The town’s reinvented façade is part of the reason why my pie shop, Cinnamon’s Pies, has done so well. It’s a lot of the reason why I can live back here and help take care of my grandfather.

  Plus, I’m not all gloom and doom when it comes to Christmas. I do enjoy some things about the holiday.

  Like perfecting my seasonal edition of Cinnamon’s Christmas Pie, or helping my neighbor’s kids build their first snow fort of the season, or lighting candles in windows during December blizzards.

  Or the annual Christmas River Gingerbread Junction Competition held the second week of December every year.

  Especially the Gingerbread Junction Competition.

  The grand prize is a four-day trip to Maui.

  But it’s not even about the trip to Maui. There’s much more at stake than tropical palm trees, warm waters and Mai Tai cocktails.

  It’s about the title. To be known as the Junction queen. To be recognized as more creative, crafty and clever than anybody else that year.

  I started participating in the competition when I was 15. When I was 17, I got my first win. There were a few years I missed while I was away at college, but ever since I was 23, I’ve been in every single gingerbread house competition.

  That’s 10 years of straight competitions.

  Every year, people come from all over the Northwest come to ogle the gingerbread art we create. Some of the competitors spend all year preparing for it, creating blueprint after blueprint for epic cookie houses with intricate decorations. For some of us, it becomes an obsession.

  Or maybe that’s just me.

  The past two years, I’ve become particularly obsessed with creating the grandest gingerbread house the world has ever seen.

  I’ve won five competitions altogether, and come in second place most of the other times, except for two years ago, when I bombed out of the competition completely. It ended in a week-long depression-driven pie binge where each night I’d go home, drink glass after glass of white wine and eat leftover pie and sob while watching late-night soul music infomercials.

  There were obviously other reasons for my meltdown. But the loss and utter humiliation of not even placing in the competition really killed me.

  But I was determined to redeem myself from that experience. This year, I was determined to show everyone that I was back. I wanted to show them that I couldn’t be beaten so easily. That I wasn’t a has-been. That I could still create works of art through sugar, flour, and spices.

  I had to prove to them that I was a winner.

  If only my gingerbread house building partner was as focused.

  “Next thing I knew, he was looking at me with this absolutely horrified expression on his face. I can’t even describe it, Cin. The kind of pain the man must have been in. I mean, the coffee spilled all over him,” she said. “And the most horrible thing about it all was that for some reason, I just wanted to start giggling. I mean, I just had the worst time containing myself.”

  Kara’s face broke out into a smile, revealing two perfectly straight rows of perfect white teeth.

  I shook my head, hunching over the first story of the gingerbread mansion we were working on.

  “I can’t believe you,” I said.

  “I know, I can’t believe myself either sometimes,” she said. She was still smiling. “There oughta be a law against me.”

  We were in the back of the pie shop. It was late afternoon—a time of the day that rarely saw visitors. We were in the kitchen, working on the first step in the week-long process of building an elaborate, award-winning gingerbread house.

  Well, at least one of us was working. Kara was talking more shop than slaving away, but that was okay. It was going to be a long evening.

  Kara had been my best friend since high school. She was a platinum blonde who, true to her hair color, had a lot of spark and tenacity. She was loud and abrasive, and acted like a bull in a china shop sometimes. But despite her general noisiness, Kara had a deep love for crafting and was a hard worker. Her store, Ornate Ornaments, did well, especially during the winter and summer tourist seasons. People would buy ornaments in Christmas River even when it wasn’t Christmas.

  She was a smart business woman.

  Even though we’d been best friends for a long time, it wasn’t always that way. When I moved away from Christmas River to go to college, we lost touch. It wasn’t until I moved back five years ago to take care of my grandpa and set up shop that we started talking again.

  I never completely understood why Kara had never left Central Oregon. She always seemed like she was made for a big city, but Kara had never gotten much farther than Farewell, a town 30 minutes west that was about three times the size of Christmas River. She had met and married a man out there, and moved there for him. But four years into the marriage, things fell apart. And when they did, Kara came back home to this side of the mountains, and opened up her ornament shop.

  We were similar in that way. We both knew what it was like to h
ave the rug ripped out from underneath us. To have it all fall apart.

  “Well, are you going to see him again?” I asked. “Or are you going to let the poor man die of shame?”

  Since her divorce, Kara had been going through what seemed like hundreds of dates. She must have dated just about every eligible bachelor in Christmas River and the surrounding towns.

  Nothing ever seemed to work out, though. But her dates did always make for good stories.

  Part of me wondered if Kara wasn’t just going through the motions of it, and that she was still hung up on her ex. She was likeable enough, and despite what she wanted it to seem like sometimes, she did have heart. She was pretty, too. Kara could easily have had just about any of those eligible bachelors if she really wanted to.

  “I seriously don’t know if I’ll get that image out of my head,” she said. “I mean, I can try, but I just know, knowin’ me, that sometime he’ll be talking to me about something serious, and it’s going to pop back in my head and I’ll start laughing.”

  I shook my head again disapprovingly.

  “You can’t build a relationship with that kind of starting point, can you?” she continued. “Sometimes you just have to quit while you’re ahead, you know what I mean?”

  “But what if he’s a really nice guy?” I asked while gluing together the walls of the main floor grand entrance with powdered sugar frosting. “What if he’s your soul mate and he had one bad moment where he lost his grip on his mug? You can’t hold that against him, can you?”

  “All’s fair in love and war, which includes dropping a guy because he spilled coffee all over himself on your first date,” Kara said, shrugging. “Anyway, I’ve stopped believing in soul mates. Mine’s been way overdue for too long. I’m beginning to think he’s forgotten about me.”

  Kara tossed a used-up pastry bag into the trash can, like she was tossing out Craig Canby’s hopes at a second date with her as well.

  “Don’t give me that look Cinnamon,” she said, catching my gaze at the sad pastry bag in the trash can. “I’m not as heartless as all that, and you know it. But sadly, we can’t all find doctors to ride off into the sunset with like you.”