Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 7) (23 page)

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But it’s just a long way down from what I used to cover. And you know all that stuff Kobritz told me about working my way up to a better beat eventually? Well, it’s looking to be a long haul. He said earlier that he thinks I have a flair for these kinds of pieces. Which is code for, ‘We want to keep you exactly where you’re at.’”

Lou put the plate in front of me along with a napkin.

“That sucks,” she said. “But maybe it’s just the price you have to pay for your dignity, Freddie. You know? That’s more important, if you ask me.”

I felt my muscles tighten up at the serious turn of the conversation, reminding me why I was back here in Dog Mountain in the first place.

I didn’t feel like thinking about any of that now. Not when the clock was nearing 10 and I still hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

I nodded silently, then dug into the pesto in front of me. Lou had served me up a portion that was worthy of her post-divorce appetite. It was too much, but as I got farther into eating it, I decided not to correct her.

“How is it?” she said, watching me chow down like a hungry mutt.

I looked up, smiling.

“Just as good as mom used to make it,” I said.

“I’ll say,” Lou said, patting her gut and giving me one of her knowing smiles.

Chapter 4

I woke up in a cold sweat, feeling like a dragon was working its way up my throat.

It was stuffy in my bedroom.

I sat up in bed, catching my breath while simultaneously trying to keep the heartburn down.

Heartburn had become an ever-increasingly familiar ailment at this hour.

In the past year, I hadn’t once slept all the way through the night. Part of that I knew was to do with the fact that I rarely ate dinner before 8 p.m. these days, as Lou liked to constantly remind me.

But the other reasons I couldn’t sleep a whole night through were a little harder to remedy.

Noticing that I was awake, and never one to miss an opportunity for attention, Buddy got up from his snoozing spot at the edge of my bed and stalked toward me, his wide, heavy paws making big tracks in the soft comforter.

“Meooowww.”

He looked at me with a slightly confused expression when I didn’t immediately start stroking his fur. He rubbed his mouth against my shoulder.

I gave in, petting his soft head, and stared out my bedroom window. The window was partially open, and the white lace curtains were fluttering in a soft breeze that smelled fresh, like it was coming off the McKenzie River a few blocks away. It was a warm night. I could tell by the sounds of the crickets outside. They only chirped like that on warm evenings.

I stood up, to Buddy’s dismay, and went over to the window. I pushed it farther open, sucking in a deep breath of the night air. I looked out at the front lawn and the sleepy neighborhood, shrouded in shadows cast by the large cherry moon that hung high in the inky sky.

I’d been dreaming about mom again. Though I didn’t remember any of the specifics of the dream, she’d been there. I could tell by the sad feeling in my heart as I awoke, remembering that she was no longer with us.

I let out a sigh.

Sometimes I wondered if moving back home to Dog Mountain had been a bad idea. Other times, I felt bad that I hadn’t moved home sooner. What was the point of being here now, now that she was gone? She would have been happy that Louise and I were under the same roof again. That much was true. But sometimes I wondered if I’d been a fool to listen to her when she told me not to move back home after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had told her that I would – that I planned to quit my job and be here with her. But she’d insisted that I stay exactly where I was. She didn’t want me quitting such a good job at the state’s biggest newspaper to come back home and take care of her. She hadn’t wanted that on her conscious, she’d said. And besides, Dog Mountain was only two hours away from Portland. It wasn’t like I was living across the country. On a good day with no traffic, you could shoot back home in an hour and a half.

That’s what she’d told me, and selfishly, I had respected her wishes to the tee.

Most days, I had come to terms with the way that had played out. I’d been here through most of it, after all. Through the very worst parts, holding her hand all the way.

But maybe in some ways, I hadn’t really been here. Not completely. There’d been distractions. Stories I’d been working on in between. Times when I had to go off into the extra bedroom downstairs and conduct phone interviews with sources. Other things, too. Maybe I’d been here while she was dying, but maybe I hadn’t been here all the way.

But I was here now. All the way. Having quit that good, career-launching job in Portland.

The only problem now was,
she
wasn’t here.

I sighed again, looking down at the quiet, empty street.

My mother was a strong, practical woman. One of those women cut from the cloth of the old pioneers who fought so hard to get to this valley over 150 years earlier. Her entire life she worked hard, never complained, and while she had a good deal of charity in her, she did not suffer fools gladly.

The woman was tough as nails.

I knew that if she was still alive, she would probably be disappointed in me, leaving
The Oregon Daily
the way I did and for the reason I had.

It hadn’t been because I was standing up for what I believed in, or because I wasn’t going to take the long hours and low pay anymore.

No.

I had left my job because of a man.

Because I could no longer take working with him day in and day out. I couldn’t take seeing him in board meetings or on assignments or at the paper’s holiday parties.

I had to get out of there. Even if it meant a pay cut and a much lesser job at a small paper.  

I bit my lower lip, thinking of what she would have said about me being back here in this house. Working at the paper I interned for ten years earlier at the age of 18. 

She always made it clear that she expected me to be the next Katie Couric.

Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t lived to see that dream of hers die. But that thought sure didn’t make me feel better.

And it sure didn’t make me miss her any less.

A stiff wind rustled the leaves of the trees around the house and caused the curtains to flutter around me. They reminded me of tethered ghosts.

I sighed again.  

Sometimes I thought this house was haunted.

Sometimes, I thought it wasn’t just this house.

End of Sample

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Roasted in Christmas River

A Thanksgiving Cozy Mystery Novella

by

Meg Muldoon

Published by
Vacant Lot Publishing

Copyright 2014© 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.

Roasted in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

Chapter 1

I peered out the frosty window of my pie shop, looking down the street into the dim, foggy November morning.

I couldn’t quite believe what I saw.

I rubbed my eyes and then opened them again.

Nothing had changed.

Either I was hallucinating, an affliction possibly brought on by a lack of sleep, or my former hairdresser Deb Dulany was running down the middle of Main Street in nothing but a slip, curlers, and a pair of wobbly high heels.

Chasing after a turkey.

I watched as a car swerved around her, missing her by only a hair. It honked loudly, and I could see the driver shouting out the window, his shaking fist expressing something along the lines of “Get out of the street, Lady!”

Deb didn’t seem to hear him. That, or she didn’t care that she’d almost been mowed over. All her attention seemed to be fixed on a particular fowl that was running wild.

With only a few days until Thanksgiving, the bird must have seen what was coming his way and had made a break for it.

I craned my neck, pushing my face all the way up against the window, watching as Deb weaved around a few cars that had stopped in the middle of the road. The drivers all seemed to be gawking at her.

She jumped up on the sidewalk that ran on my side of the street, her legs pumping hard. But just as she landed on the concrete, her left ankle bent unnaturally. She stumbled, the heel of her shoe snapping clear in half.

Her face went ashen as she mouthed what looked to be an obscenity of some sort. She slowed down and began hobbling, taking slow and labored steps.

“Son of a gun turkey!” she yelled so loudly, the noise went through my pie shop window pane like it wasn’t there. 

I suddenly realized that the turkey, which was running for its dear life, was going to pass directly by my storefront.

I only had a small window of opportunity, but somehow, I snapped myself out of my own gawking. A split second later, I was running for the pie shop door and bolting out into the cold, frosty morning. I threw myself into the middle of the sidewalk like I was trying to apprehend a criminal fleeing from the law.

The poor turkey nearly slammed right into me.

He squawked and tried to dodge, running one way and then another, making me feel like a hockey goalie playing a feeble version of defense. A split second later, the turkey had squeezed himself under my black SUV. I ran around the other side of the car, blocking one of the exits.

A moment later, Deb was on the other side of the Escape, face down on the asphalt. The turkey started making loud gobbling noises as Deb clawed for him under the car. A second later she stood up, the bird flapping wildly as she yanked him from underneath the vehicle.

 She tucked him firmly under her arm and breathed hard, trying to catch her breath.

“Goodness gracious!” she said as turkey feathers floated all around her. “I thought he was a goner for sure!”

She sucked in wind like it was going out of style.

“Little bastard got out just as I was getting ready for work. I guess Jack Daniels knows what time of year it is, and he doesn’t much care for the idea of how we humans celebrate Thanksgiving.”

I grinned.

“
Jack Daniels
? You named the turkey Jack Daniels?”

She shrugged.

“Well, he
is
a Bourbon Red turkey after all. You see, my dad gave him to us earlier this year for our Thanksgiving meal before… well, before he passed on. I thought Daddy would like it if I named the turkey after his drink of choice.”

I smiled.   

The turkey was kicking its legs, trying to escape Deb’s clutches, but the effort was futile: she had a death grip on him. Soon enough, he stopped twisting. He started moving his head back and forth, looking around. His red jowls jiggled, and his beady eyes stared out into the dim fog.

I felt a wave of chills rush through me as I looked at the turkey’s scaly, bumpy and bald scalp.

Jack Daniels wasn’t the prettiest belle at the ball by any stretch of the imagination, and truth be told, he kind of creeped me out. 

Deb wiped away a little dribble of sweat that had trailed down the side of her face with the back of her free hand, and then forced a smile as she regained her breath.  

I tried not to stare too long at the woman’s disheveled, half-naked get-up, but it was a little hard not to. Only one side of her face seemed to have mascara and eyeliner. Her pink lipstick was smeared, and her curlers were coming undone. The slip she was wearing wasn’t really much more than glorified underwear.

I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that Deb Dulany looked like a hot mess.

Which was unusual for her. Before recently starting a new career in real estate, Deb had been my hairdresser. In both professions, she’d gotten a reputation as being one of the most stylish ladies in Christmas River.  She always had her hair done in the trendiest, most up-to-date ways. She actually wore heels on a regular basis, and since taking a stab at real estate, she’d started wearing fashionable suits.