Menace in Christmas River (Christmas River 8) (16 page)

I walked quickly away toward the restrooms, each step filled with even more purpose than the last.

Chapter 32

It wasn’t pretty, but I would survive.

The skin on my upper left thigh was red and irritated and painful to the touch, but there was no blistering. I’d had worse burns in the pie shop kitchen, and I knew that all I would need was a little Neosporin cream, and some time to heal.

I grimaced as I walked over to the sink to wash my hands. I turned the faucet on, and as I did so, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

Maybe it was just the fluorescent lighting, but I couldn’t deny that I was looking haggardly. My skin was pasty, and my eyes didn’t look quite right after being mercilessly whipped by the wind outside.

I was exhausted. Even though I was used to working hard baking pies all day long, today had been a different kind of work, altogether.

It had been much more stressful than an average day at the pie shop – that much was certain.

And it wasn’t even over yet.

The thought of finding a quiet culinary classroom somewhere in the building and curling up underneath a desk sounded tempting.

But I couldn’t do that.

I grabbed a couple of paper towels and dried my hands off.

Because I needed to find somebody. I needed to—

I stopped mid-thought as I heard a voice coming from one of the occupied stalls.

I strained to listen as it became slightly louder.

Though it was faint, it didn’t take me long to figure out what I was hearing.

Somebody was sobbing behind one of the doors.

“Excuse me, are you ok—?” I started saying, but just as I did, I heard something I’d been waiting for since the moment I watched Daniel’s headlights disappear into the whiteout earlier.

I quickly walked out of the bathroom, pulling my phone from my pocket and answering it.

“Daniel?”

“
Cin
.”

I let out one of the biggest sighs of relief of my life at the sound of his voice cracking over the speaker.

Chapter 33

“It’s so good to hear your voice,” I said, trying to hold my own steady. “Is everything okay?”

“It was… It took us a… time to g… to the hosp...”

His voice wavered in and out of white noise.

I hung on every word I could make out.

“How’s every… there?” he said, his voice garbled.

“Everything’s okay here,” I said, raising my voice, as if that would somehow improve the reception. “The power came back on and most people decided to wait the storm out here.”

There was a long silence on the other side of the line, and I couldn’t tell whether or not Daniel meant it, or whether he was cutting out again.

“How’s Cliff doing?”

There was another pause, followed by some static.

“…He didn’t...”

My heart thundered in my chest.

“Say that again? You’re breaking up.”

“Cin, the doctor said… I think… Will try to get… soon… bad, but… will try…”

I couldn’t tell exactly what he said, but I’d heard enough to be able to piece it together.

“No,” I said. “Don’t come back yet. Wait until the roads are better, Daniel. We’re okay here for a while. Don’t risk it.
Please
.”

There was another long pause.

I hoped he had heard the important parts of what I had said, but I couldn’t be sure.

“Daniel?” I said after a few moments more of eerie silence. “Did you hear me? Don’t risk it.”

“…I can’t… be care…at… murder...”

“Daniel?”

But there was nothing more.

Just the hollow sound of the line having gone dead. 

I swallowed hard.

The little I’d heard hadn’t sounded promising in regards to Cliff’s condition.

And that hit me harder than a freight train.

I took in a deep breath, fighting back tears, trying not to let my fears overpower my sensibility.  

I prayed to God that Daniel would stay put and not try to get me.

I would have spent a dozen years in this place just so long as I knew he was safe and sound somewhere.

I quickly hammered out a text message to him, telling him what I had found out and reiterating the fact that I didn’t want him on those roads tonight.

Then I slid my phone in my pocket, and resolved to do the thing that I’d set out to do before I spilled hot tea all over myself.

I set out to find Samantha Garner.

Chapter 34

“Well, unless she’s hiding under a display table somewhere, I can say with certainty that there is no brunette soccer mom anywhere in this place,” Kara said.  

“Hey – I never said she looked like a soccer mom.”

“Well, you said she had her hair up in a ponytail and that she was wearing tennis shoes and faded jeans,” Kara said. “What else am I supposed to think?”

I couldn’t argue with Kara – she hadn’t even seen Samantha Garner, but she had somehow described her better than I’d been able to.  

“I suppose she could have slipped out,” I said, with a sigh. “Maybe she was one of the ones who left shortly after Barney and Libby McBride.”

“Anything’s possible,” Kara said. “Though I still don’t know why you’re so fixed on finding this woman. I know you said you thought she should have won the championship today, but I don’t understand what that has to do with Cliff Copperstone.”  

“It’s got everything to do with him, Kara,” I said.

She scanned my face, still not understanding. Though I didn’t blame her. It’d taken me all this time to realize the truth.

“You see, that soccer mom? She was—”

I stopped speaking abruptly as it suddenly dawned on me where Samantha Garner was.

I stared off for a long moment, then looked back at Kara.

Samantha hadn’t left.

She was still right here in the building.  

“C’mon,” I said. “I know where we can find her.”

Chapter 35

“Samantha?” I said quietly, rapping on the silver stall door. “Samantha, are you in there?”

There was no response. The only sound was a faucet dripping water.

After a long moment, I tried again.

“Samantha, it’s Cinnamon Peters,” I said in a reassuring voice. “I’m one of the Championship judges?”

Still, nothing.

I cleared my throat, looking at Kara.

“Samantha, I—”

“Yes, I remember you.”

A small, wavering voice sounded from behind the partition.

“I… I just wanted to make sure that you’re doing all right,” I said. “I thought I heard someone crying.”

“I’m fine,” she squeaked out. “Just a little worried about getting home to my husband and kids any time before May. That’s all.”

I hesitated, considering how to bring up the subject I needed to talk to her about.

I didn’t know Samantha at all.

For all I knew, she was there in the stall, a hammer in her hands, Cliff Copperstone’s blood all over her.

For all I knew, she was like a scared animal who, when cornered, would lash out. And would lash out hard.

If Daniel had been here, he would have told me to wait. To not confront her. To let it go until the risk could be minimized.

But Daniel wasn’t here.

It was just Kara and me.

And I couldn’t just let it go.

I took in a big breath.  

“I know about you and Cliff Copperstone.”

There was a sudden, icy silence from behind the stall, and I swear, the entire atmosphere of the small little room changed.

I heard her clear her throat.

“I, uh, I don’t understand what that means,” she said, sniveling some.

I fished around in my jean pocket, retrieving the old, weathered photo. The one with Cliff’s blood on it.

Then I slid it through the crack in the door.

After a moment, I felt her take the picture from me.

That was followed by a profound silence.

Kara looked at me, brow furrowed, eyes still not understanding.

She would soon enough.

“Where’d you find this?” Samantha asked, her voice stretched as thin as overworked pie dough.

“Where do you think?” I said.

There was silence again.

And then, the door slowly opened.

Chapter 36

Samantha Garner wasn’t holding a hammer when she came out.

Nor did she have so much as a drop of blood on her. At least from what I could see.

What she did have were swollen, bloodshot eyes and a crumpled Kleenex clutched between her hands. She held onto it for dear life as she spoke, wringing it nervously.

And she also had one other thing:

A look of unmistakable remorse etched across her face.

“This wasn’t supposed to be how things went,” she said, biting her upper lip. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all.”

She stared vacantly out the hallway window. The sun had gone down, but the ice storm still raged on outside.

Her red and haunted eyes gazed into nothingness.

She didn’t look much like the young woman in the photograph. Her hair was no longer blond. Her face was wider somehow, and fine lines adorned the skin around her eyes. And she didn’t seem capable of that same carefree smile these days.

But none of that changed the fact that she was the woman in the picture. 

I swallowed hard, studying the effect that the last fifteen years had had on her.

Even without the obvious hammer in hand and bloodstains, it became apparent to me that Samantha most likely had tried to bludgeon Cliff Copperstone to death.

But saying that outright wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

Her eyes turned glassy as she looked at me. She knew I was waiting to hear her side of the story.

“I loved him,” she finally said. “I still… I still do, in a way. But I couldn’t… he never understood.”

She took in a deep breath.

Her hands were shaking now.

“For the most part, I’ve lived my life as a decent person,” she said, looking from me to Kara. “I’ve tried to do good by God, by others, and by my own conscience, too. Ninety-nine percent of my life, I’ve lived correctly, without any mistakes.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Kara steal a glance in my direction.

I knew we were both wondering the same thing:

Just what did that one-percent represent?

I had a feeling we were about to find out.

“I met him the first week at the Portland Culinary Institute,” she said. “You see, I always wanted to run my own cake baking business. That was my big dream. But I thought it would be important to get proper training to distinguish myself from the competition. And even though my parents didn’t want me to, I enrolled at the school.

“I met Cliff during our first knife skills class. You see, I was having trouble getting the julienne cut right, and he came over, all macho and full of himself, and showed me a trick to make it go faster.”

She smiled.

“I thought he was really pretentious for doing that. I mean, I would have figured it out on my own soon enough. But he came over, thinking I was some damsel in distress who was going to flunk the class if he didn’t help me.”

The smile faded.

“But the funny thing was, even after he embarrassed me like that, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I mean, I was convinced he was the most annoying, arrogant man I had ever met. He always raised his hand in class and acted like he knew all the answers. And then there was that horribly obnoxious knife tattoo he had on his neck… I really thought he was… well, a
tool
.

“Then one day he came up to me after class, and he was all nervous. I thought he was having a heart attack or something, but turns out, he just wanted to ask me to dinner. And I was completely stunned. So stunned, that I said yes. And it wasn’t long after that that I realized I didn’t hate Cliff. I didn’t hate him one bit, in fact. In fact, I
really
liked him. I was just too blind to see it.

“It was just one of those things that felt so right, you know? I felt like he was the man I’d been dreaming of since I was a little girl… He was a knight in shining armor come to life for me. He was…”

She inhaled sharply and grimaced, as though it pained her.

“He was my Westley.”

I watched as she wiped at her nose some with the Kleenex, and I couldn’t help but wonder if we were talking about the same man.

It was hard for me to imagine Cliff Copperstone as the Prince Charming type.

“He was so good,” she said. “Once you got past the rough exterior and saw the real Cliff, he was a really, really good man. Genuine and thoughtful and charming as can be. He wasn’t Mormon like I was, but he was going to convert for me. And that was all I wanted. It was enough.”

She sniveled, looking away with waterlogged eyes.

“But it wasn’t enough for the rest of my family.

“He proposed to me our last year of culinary school. By then, he’d gotten a job as a line cook at this really trendy restaurant in Portland. The owner just thought the world of Cliff, too. She gave him every opportunity. You see, even at that young age, Cliff was going places. He had this light around him whenever he was in the kitchen. It wasn’t just somebody enjoying their work, either. He… I can’t explain. I just knew that he was destined for something big, something great. He would start every other sentence by saying ‘One day, when I’m a successful chef and we have lots of money…’ And I never ever doubted that he would be and that we would.”

She bit her lip.

“One night, the night after we got our engagement photos taken – one of which you have there – I woke up from a bad dream in a cold sweat. I just stared up at the ceiling for the rest of the night, these thoughts swirling around in my head:
I’m going to drag him down. He’s going places, and I’m going to be the one to keep him from getting there. And aside from that, he’s never going to be home. He’s never going to see our children grow up. He’s never going to be able to be there. He’s going to be working all the time, and I’ll be at home alone with six children to raise on my own
.
My parents are right: if I marry him, I’ll be signing up for a life of loneliness. I won’t ever be happy…
”