Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 7) (13 page)

Daniel shot a quick glance in my direction.

The issue of legalizing marijuana had polarized many in the community. Many, including the Pastor, believed that it would lead to all-out mayhem and chaos in the streets. However, since it recently became legal, nobody could have claimed to see such chaos play out. It had gone relatively smoothly, Daniel had said. Thus far, the school aside – which had always had some faction of students using the drug – there hadn’t been any significant problems related to its legalization.

Some law enforcement officers, like Daniel, hadn’t been exactly supportive of legalization leading up to the election. But now that it was here, I could tell he was appreciative of the lighter caseloads for him and his deputies. It was giving them a chance to get to more important cases.

Like Ralph Baker’s disappearance, for one.

“Well, Pastor, some compelling evidence has recently been discovered in relation to Ralph Baker’s disappearance,” Daniel said, leaning forward in his chair. “I know he disappeared a long time ago, but I don’t believe that justice should have a time limit. I’m just trying to see if we can’t figure out what happened to this young man.”

The Pastor nodded.

“Very admirable, Sheriff,” he said. “I respect your notion of justice, as does the rest of Christmas River. But I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you about Ralph. We weren’t exactly cut from the same cloth. Since an early age, I always felt the calling of God. And Ralph, well… he may have felt the calling of
someone
else.”

“What do you mean by that, Pastor?”

“Well, everyone knew he liked to drink,” the old man said, leaning back in his seat and lacing his old fingers together. “Ralph was a gambler. And toward the end there, I believe it was common knowledge that he was running with a group of young men who were what you might call
ruffians
. I firmly believe that whatever happened to him most likely had to do with his behavior, and like many a young man, it was his inability to resist the temptations of Satan that led to his downfall.”

Daniel jotted the Pastor’s account down on his notepad.

“Did your father or sister, or anybody else you worked with at the bakery, know Ralph?”

“Like I said, Sheriff. Everyone knew him. But to my knowledge, neither my father nor sister was friends with Ralph. And if anybody else who worked at the bakery was his friend, well, then, it was news to me.”

“The newspaper articles at the time said the last that anybody ever saw of Ralph, he was leaving a party and that he had gotten into a loud verbal argument with his girlfriend there. Did you know Hannah Templeton?”

The Pastor’s eyes flickered slightly.

He cleared his throat.

“I did,” he said. “But I’m afraid I can’t illuminate much for you there, either, Sheriff. Hannah was in Ralph’s crowd. Which was a crowd I did not interact with much.”

“Do you know what happened to Hannah after Ralph’s disappearance?”

“She left town,” he said. “With one of those ruffian friends of Ralph’s. It was quite the scandal at the time.”

“Any idea where Hannah Templeton is now?”

The Pastor shook his head.

“No,” he said, firmly. “I have not even heard that name in ages.”

Daniel tapped the bottom of his pen on the notepad.

“I see,” he said.

It probably slipped by the Pastor, but as the Sheriff’s wife, I could always tell when there was disappointment in his voice.

And it was there, now. Just below the surface.

It was obvious that this talk with Pastor Morgan had been fruitless.

The Pastor stood up, slowly.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” he said. “But I’m afraid I have a sermon to prepare for, and I really don’t know much about the case, Sheriff.”

Daniel nodded, understandingly.

“Of course, sir,” he said, standing up, too. “Thanks for your time.”

“Good luck with your investigation, young man,” he said, shaking Daniel’s hand, then mine.

His old hands felt as cold as the grave.

“I’m sure everybody in Christmas River would like to see this one solved. Just because something’s old doesn’t mean it should be forgotten.”

He looked around the old wood panels of the church for a second, and I half-wondered if he wasn’t trying to make some sort of proposition to Daniel regarding the Sheriff’s Office donating funds or time to the building’s upkeep.

“I hope to see more of you two in the future,” he said, smiling a flat, cardboard smile.  

We watched as he slowly walked away toward his office, leaving us with our disappointment in the dark, musty old church.

Chapter 28

For the first time in ages, I found myself at home alone on a weeknight: free and for once not exhausted beyond repair.

The free and not exhausted parts I enjoyed. But the home alone part could have been improved. Though I did have Huckleberry and Chadwick to keep me company, conversation skills weren’t exactly the two pooches’ strong suit.

Daniel was working late, dealing with a massive traffic back-up out on Highway 97 that occurred when high mountain winds knocked down an enormous pine tree onto the road. Meanwhile, Kara had a date night with her husband while Edna Billings spent some quality time with Laila. Something I knew that Kara wasn’t exactly pleased about – she would have much rather had me or just about any other responsible adult look after her daughter over Edna Billings. But the old woman had been harassing her son and daughter-in-law about seeing more of her grandchild for a long while now, and Kara had finally weakened and given in.

I had tried calling both Warren and Aileen several times, but kept getting sent straight to their voicemails, which I took to mean that the cell coverage at the coast hadn’t improved. It was really too bad, because in addition to checking in with my grandfather about his trip, I was dying to know what more he knew about my great uncle, Ralph Baker.

But it was clear that I was just going to have to wait on that information. And in the meantime, with nothing more to do concerning the case, I decided to take the free night I’d been given, and do something I’d been wanting to do all October:

Carve a pumpkin.

I hadn’t planned on getting a pumpkin at Harrington’s Pumpkin Patch, knowing that usually at this time of year, I just didn’t have the time or energy to be cutting triangles out of gourds. But at the cash register, while Kara was buying Laila’s pumpkin, a small, misshapen, lopsided one caught my attention. In the world of pumpkins, it was the equivalent of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree – small, imperfect, and not a prize-winner by any means. But the sad, lopsided gourd spoke to me, begging me to take it home and place it up on my mantle.

And who was I to refuse?

Now, I reckoned it was time to give the old gourd a good face.

I put on an old Dean Martin record, poured myself a hefty glass of red wine, and began carving the pumpkin while intermittently stuffing fun-size Milky Ways in my mouth. I had bought several bags of candy in anticipation of Halloween night, but I now realized that I’d been foolish buying them so far in advance.

With the way I was going through them, the gooey chocolate caramel nougats weren’t going to last until the big day.

Outside, the wind was blowing something fierce, and raindrops hammered the window panes with brute force, as if someone was throwing a handful of marbles at the glass. I felt lucky to be inside my cozy, comfortable house, with the familiar crooning of old Dino and the companionship of my two pooches – even if they were both curled up snoozing on the couch, completely ignorant to the fact that I was home.

The only thing that would have made it better was if Daniel was here, too, and not somewhere out there in the storm.

But like every other time when he was out doing his job, I told myself that worrying about the potential dangers wasn’t going to do a single thing: for either me, or him.

So instead, I tried to focus on the task at hand.

Using a small orange saw from an old pumpkin carving kit, I cut into the gourd, tilting the stem back and forth until the lid was loose enough to remove. Then I scooped out the gooey insides into a bowl and separated the seeds from the pulp. I preheated the oven, then seasoned the seeds with liberal amounts of salt, cinnamon, and brown sugar, before spreading them out on a baking sheet.

While I went about it, I found my mind drifting back to Ralph’s case and our earlier conversation with Pastor Morgan.

On the drive back from the church, it had been very quiet in the car. Both of us knew that the Pastor had been a dead end. And not only that, but what he’d said about the building being vacant for several years after the bakery shut down meant that any number of people could have put the class ring behind the brick. The building might have fallen into disrepair at that point, with plenty of opportunity for the killer to hide the ring and—

I stopped mid-thought, realizing that I had just made the jump from a mysterious disappearance to cold-blooded murder.

Perhaps I was leaping to conclusions, the way I did sometimes. But the more we delved into my great uncle’s disappearance, the less it seemed like a case of him blowing town and changing his name, and more a case of foul play.

I thought about what the Pastor said – about how he firmly believed that Ralph met his end because of his associations with bad people, and because of his inability to resist the devil’s temptations.

I respected Pastor Morgan, but I didn’t much like his take on Ralph’s disappearance. I suppose being a man of righteous faith, the Pastor would be inclined to think that way. But just because somebody didn’t live their life within the norms of society didn’t mean that they deserved to be murdered, or that their disappearance or death was any less of a tragedy. Though Ralph seemed like he liked to drink and gamble, there was no record that he’d done anything bad or illegal, or hurt anybody. And aside from that, Ralph was only 20 years old in 1960 – he didn’t deserve whatever had happened to him. And the Pastor had no right to imply that he did.

I tossed the pan of pumpkin seeds into the oven, set the timer, then went back over to the gourd. With a marker, I drew two triangles on the pumpkin for the eyes, one for the nose, and a row of jagged teeth before using the small saw to cut along the lines.

20 years old
… that was so, so young. I thought back to where I was at 20. I was at the University of Oregon in Eugene, studying advertising and public relations, in love as ever with my high school sweetheart – the man who was to become my husband of 10 years.

The wrong man, that is.

And not to mention all that studying I was doing was for the wrong career, too.

It would be many years before I learned either one of those facts, though. Before I realized that instead of being an inauthentic mouthpiece for some company, I just wanted to be immersed in the pure aromas of sweet simmering fruit and flaky pastry all day. Or that instead of being with a charming, yet morally dubious man, all I wanted was one who was strong and faithful and loved me more than anything.

Looking back now, it seemed that at 20 years old, I knew absolutely nothing about what I wanted in life or who I really was.

I was sure that Ralph Baker wasn’t all that different at that age. I’m sure he was—

I gasped suddenly as a huge gust of wind, seemingly out of nowhere, railed against the house.

A moment later, the living room and kitchen were shrouded in complete darkness.

Chapter 29

“Blast it,” I muttered, feeling around blindly on the table for the matches I could have sworn had been there at one point.

But after several moments of searching in the pitch darkness, I realized that I’d been woefully mistaken.

If the matches weren’t on the table, then they had to be in one of the kitchen drawers, I reasoned.

I moved slowly through the living room, trying to avoid running into any furniture, and headed toward the far kitchen counter. Huckleberry and Chadwick, awakened by the sound of the wind, had started barking. A few moments later, I heard their claws scrambling on the hardwood floor as they jumped down from the sofa.

Outside the wind howled like a wolf with its paw caught in a trap.

I suddenly felt cold and alone and scared, and I wished that Daniel were home. And that he wasn’t out there somewhere in the storm.

I ran into something hard, and realized I had successfully made it to the far side of the kitchen near the window. I felt around, opening the first drawer, rummaging through glue sticks, rolls of ribbon, broken light strands, and other unidentifiable objects, searching for the matches that I knew had to be there.

My hand finally struck a small, square, cardboard box.

“Thank goodness,” I muttered, relieved that we hadn’t run out.

Blindly, I opened the small box and pulled out a match. I fumbled around, striking the side of the—

Craaacccck
!

The box of matches fell out of my hands and landed on the floor at the loud noise.

I peered out the window, into the utter darkness of the night, trying to make out past the shaking trees and thick sheets of rain what had caused the eardrum-busting sound.

And then, I saw her.

For a split second, there at the window, staring back at me.

Those eyes of hers as empty and soulless as two black coals.

A moment later, the ground shook beneath my feet as something massive crashed down.

Chapter 30

Enough
was
enough
.

I pulled up to Santa’s Nightmare Lane, parking several houses away from the one I intended to visit. I sat in the car for a long moment, gripping the wheel until my knuckles turned white.

I thought it all through again.

First, her showing up at my pie shop, leering at me with those empty eyes of hers. Then all the strange accidents: the knife falling on my foot, Harold’s niece almost backing up over me with her car, the kitchen fire, and then last night, the pine tree getting knocked over by the wind, coming within inches of taking out our kitchen.