3.5 Roasted in Christmas River (6 page)

He cracked a toothy smile.

Just then, the pie shop door opened, the bell jingling. I glanced over Tobias’s shoulder.

She came waltzing up to the counter in long strides, her heels clicking hard against the linoleum floor.

“I know it was her,” she said. “I figured it out, Cinnamon. It was
her
.”

Chapter 15

For the second time that day, I placed a mug of steaming hot tea in front of a distraught Deb Dulany, trying to calm her down.

We were sitting in the back of my pie shop at the kitchen island. I had about a million things I should have been doing at the moment, but instead, here I was doing my best to console Deb again.

This time, however, there weren’t tears coming from her eyes. Her sadness had turned into rage. The words came pouring out of her faster than steam could escape a tea pot.  

“She’s had it in for me ever since that day in the principal’s office,” Deb spewed, her deep-set blue eyes growing large. “I bet she put him up to it. I bet she gave him the wire cutters to do it. How could they be so cruel, Cinnamon? How could they do something like this?”

I cleared my throat.

Deb was actually dressed for a change, and dressed nicely. She was wearing a nice pumpkin-colored turtleneck paired with a skirt, tights, and a pair of ankle boots. But if it wasn’t for her nice outfit, I would have thought she was a crazy person. Her ramblings sounded just like that: ramblings. And with the way her eyes were bouncing around, whatever she was talking about seemed like the misguided mumbo jumbo of a conspiracy theorist.

Still, I couldn’t tell that to her face. She was a guest in my kitchen after all.

“Who are you talking about, Deb?” I asked. “You came in here saying ‘It was her.’ Now you’re saying it was a man?”

She looked at me, a hint of frustration behind her eyes, as if she was disappointed that I hadn’t kept up with the speed of her thoughts.

“I’m talking about that heartless gossip of a woman, Meredith. And her son, Hunter.”

I furrowed my brow.

“Meredith Drutman?” I said. I could think of no other Merediths in Christmas River. “You think
she
stole Jack Daniels?”

She nodded with absolute confidence.

I rubbed my chin, trying to hide my skepticism.

Meredith Drutman, the lady who had been in here the day before to put in a late order for pies, and had also said some unkindly things about Tobias, had stolen Jack Daniels the turkey?

Not that Meredith didn’t have the mean spirit in her. She did, and I knew from experience that that little personality trait seemed to run through the family.

But it seemed a little farfetched to me that she would do something like steal a turkey just to spite Deb. I just couldn’t imagine Meredith, with her perfectly French manicured gel nails, using a pair of wire cutters and then busting a turkey loose in the middle of a frigid central Oregon night.

As much as I tried to picture it, I just couldn’t.

Deb seemed to notice me struggling to believe her.

“Well, what I mean is, she was probably behind it,” she said. “I think it was that bratty, bullying son of hers that stole our Jack.”

I furrowed my brow again.

“Are you sure, Deb? I mean, I don’t know what happened between your two families, but this is a bit of a strange way to get revenge, isn’t it?”

Deb didn’t seem to be swayed by my doubt.

She let out a beleaguered sigh.

“You know, Frankie and Hunter used to be best friends before this year?” Deb said, looking out the window. “Meredith and I were actually friends, too. She’s the one who inspired me to get into real estate. She was making all this money, and I was barely making ends meet doing hair. She said I had a good personality and that I’d go far if I got my license.”

She rubbed her face, hesitating.

“We were all just as happy as peas in a pod. Until… well,” she said, her face growing dark. “That son of hers? He changed this year. He started hanging out with these mean, older kids at school. And him and Frankie sort of had a falling out.”

She let out a long sigh, and her face fell.  

“Those boys locked Frankie in the school library Halloween night. By himself. All alone in the dark. He’s still afraid of the dark, Cinnamon. I must have been driving the streets until one that night looking for him, out of my mind with worry. I thought something terrible had…”

She trailed off, biting her lower lip.

Then her face flushed.

“And you know what Meredith said when I told her what had happened – that her son had been part of it? You know what she said to me?

“
Boys will be boys, Deb. Boys will be boys.
”

She shook her head in disgust.

“I took it up with the principal of the school, I was so angry. And after we had a sit down and Hunter got suspended for a week, Meredith stopped talking to me. Last month, she brought cupcakes to the annual Women Relators of Christmas River meeting. She made a point to hand them out to everyone. Everyone but me. Can you believe that? That
nasty
woman.”

I felt my insides cringe as I listened to the story.

Poor Frankie, trapped alone in the dark all night. Waiting for someone to come save him.

I had that fear growing up too. I was afraid of the dark a lot longer than most kids my age. I eventually overcame the fear, but to this day, I still shuddered at the thought of being trapped in dark places alone.

I was sure that Hunter was a bad apple, just the way his mother and older sister were.

But it didn’t mean that he had stolen Jack Daniels.

“But Deb, how can you be sure it was him?”

“I can’t,” she said. “Only that this seems just like the kind of dirty, low thing the Drutmans would do, Cinnamon.”

She stared past me out the window.

“It has to be them.”

Chapter 16

I put the last batch of the Gingersnap Pumpkin pies in the fridge, and then quickly went for my coat and scarf on the coat rack. I hurriedly put them on and checked to make sure I’d turned off the ovens and the burners. Then I hit the light switch, and the kitchen fell into darkness.

I quickly sped across the empty dining room and then stepped out the front door. I locked up behind me, shivering a bit as the cold, damp air bit at my cheeks.   

I dashed across the sidewalk and then climbed into the passenger seat of the truck.

Huckleberry assaulted me with a flurry of slobbery doggy kisses.

I laughed, running my hands through his soft fur. Then I pecked Daniel on the cheek before buckling up.

“Is the plane still on time?” I asked.

“Last I checked,” he said, throwing the car in reverse and backing up slowly. “Unless the old man is stalling it by talking the pilot’s ear off about Scottish beer. Which seems like a strong possibility, knowing him.”

“Hey now,” I said, pretending to be offended. “What is it you’re trying to insinuate about my grandfather?”

Daniel looked over at me and grinned mischievously.

“Nothing you don’t already know, honey,” he said.

I laughed.

I couldn’t argue. Warren would talk anybody’s ear off about most subjects, if given the chance.

Daniel pulled out onto the downtown streets, driving a few miles under the speed limit as his eyes scanned for ice on the road ahead. The truck’s heater was on high, blasting warm air into our faces. Huckleberry rested his front legs on my lap as we drove, leaning his head back as his way of asking for more scratches behind the ear.

“How’d it go with my car?” I asked, half afraid to hear what the monetary damage turned out to be.

Daniel and I did all right when it came to our finances. But we’d been on a bit of a spending spree lately between our wedding last December, our new house, and the honeymoon. Things were tighter than I would have liked, especially with the Christmas season ahead and all that that entailed. A big car expense was something that we just didn’t need right now.

He shrugged.

“Aw, it was okay,” he said.

But by the tone in his voice, I knew that it had cost more than he had expected it to.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“That bad?” I said.

He shrugged again.

“You know how it is,” he said. “You take it in for one thing, they find something else too. The cosmetic stuff wasn’t a big deal, but your brakes were squishy. Got you some new tires too. The ones you had were worn down.”

I bit my lip.

“How much all together?” I asked.

“A dime and some change,” he said.

I felt my gut twinge a little, the way it did whenever I got an unexpected bill in the mail.

“Don’t worry, though,” Daniel said. “I took care of it.”

I bit my lip.

That didn’t even include the car insurance premium, which was probably going to go up now that I’d mowed over those mailboxes.

I looked out the window into the dark night, and tried to push it out of my mind.

I’d been making all those pies earlier to go into my Christmas present shopping fund. But now I knew the money would be going somewhere else.

After a few moments of silence, I realized that there was no use in dwelling on any of this for much longer.

It was Thanksgiving tomorrow, after all. A time when you didn’t think about what you didn’t have – but all that you did have.

And compared to so many, Daniel and I were incredibly lucky. 

We pulled out onto the highway that led to the Redmond Airport and sped along, the junipers along the side of the road swaying in the dark wind.

“Any luck finding who stole Jack Daniels?” I asked, changing the subject.

I had promised Deb I would convey her theory on Meredith and her son back to Daniel, though I still wasn’t completely convinced.

“Not anything concrete,” he said. “But, uh, well, I talked to a few of Deb’s neighbors. One of them had something interesting to say that could explain what happened.”

I listened attentively.

“Seems that one of them saw a homeless guy outside the Dulany’s front yard a couple of times in the past week.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Really?” I said.

Daniel nodded.

“I asked Deb about it, and she said she hadn’t seen him. But I asked Frankie, and he said he saw the homeless man too out there once.”  

I swallowed hard, as a thought occurred to me.

Deb Dulany’s house wasn’t all that far from Christmas River’s Main Street.

Not all that far from the drug store where…

“Uh, what did they say this homeless guy looked like?” I asked.

Daniel shrugged.

“The neighbor said he was scruffy looking, like just about every other homeless guy in Christmas River,” Daniel said. “And that he kept staring at the turkey. The neighbor came out once and asked him what he was doing. He said the homeless guy got scared and ran away.”

I bit my lip.

“Did they say anything else about how he looked?” I asked.

Daniel heard it in my voice. He looked over at me, eyeing me a little suspiciously.

“Yeah,” he said. “The neighbor said this guy was wearing an old brown jacket and a green beanie.”

I let out a ragged sigh.

“Do you know this guy?” Daniel asked.

“I think I might,” I said. “His name’s Tobias Jones. He’s that man who sits out front of the drug store across the street. I invited him into my shop the other morning for pie and we talked a little while.”

Daniel furrowed his brow.

“I think I’ve seen him before,” Daniel said. “He kind of keeps to himself most of the time, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. He seems like an okay guy,” I said. “I think he’s just had a hard time of it. But he doesn’t seem bad, you know?”

“When’s the last time you saw him?” he asked.

“Today, as a matter of fact,” I said. “He came into the shop right before Deb came by and…”

I swallowed hard, remembering how I had offered Tobias a slice of pie earlier, and how he had turned me down.

Because, he said, he had a big meal to eat later that afternoon.

I had thought he was talking about the free Thanksgiving meal the local homeless shelter offered every year the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

But maybe… maybe he had meant something else.

I rubbed my hands together anxiously.

“Deb has a different theory about who stole Jack Daniels, though,” I said.  

“You talked to Deb again?” Daniel asked.

I nodded.  

“She seems to think Meredith Drutman and her son Hunter were behind it,” I said.

“The real estate agent?” he asked.

“Yeah, seems like Hunter and Frankie used to be best friends. But then this Halloween, Hunter and some punk friends of his locked poor Frankie in the school library overnight. Deb was furious and Meredith’s son got suspended. Deb thinks Hunter stole the turkey or let him out of the cage as some sort of revenge.”

Daniel shook his head.

“Poor Frankie,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And either way, it doesn’t seem like the family is going to get their turkey back.”

I looked out the window, letting out a disappointed sigh.

I still didn’t know why it bothered me so much.

Had he stayed in his pen, Jack Daniels would have ended up on the Dulany’s dinner table. Now it appeared the turkey at least had a chance of surviving. That is, if Tobias wasn’t eating him right now.

The mystery of who stole Jack Daniels didn’t much matter to the turkey, wherever he was.

But it did matter to Deb and her family.

And I was sure it mattered to Frankie.

Something about that kid’s face haunted me. It was more than just the worried expression he’d had. It was in his eyes.

There was a sadness in them.

And something in me felt like I couldn’t quite bare for him to have any more sadness in his life.

I thought of their small Thanksgiving table this year. Of the empty spot in the middle where the turkey was going to be.

I shuddered.

I knew it was as simple as buying the Dulany family another turkey. But in some ways, it wasn’t. Because after Thanksgiving, all those problems the kids faced, of growing up poor without a dad, would still be there.