5 Mischief in Christmas River (19 page)

Daniel nodded, as if he too wanted something to occupy his mind.

“Well, for a while there, I thought Pepper Posey might have had something to do with it all. You see, that’s why I was in her pie shop that day... that day you found the receipt from. Owen had reason to run a background check for something to do with parking tickets, and he’d brought it to my attention that she had a few things on her record in regards to thefts related to pets. But after talking with her, I didn’t really dig up anything new. And then of course, she was at the shop when Hucks and Chadwick were taken that night. I could say that with certainty, because I was talking with her then.”

“So how’d you get to Julianne Redding?” I asked.

“You’re actually the one who broke the case for us, Cin,” he said. “That thing you mentioned to me about the dog court that Pete told you about? Well, it got me thinking. Thinking about that one time when they actually enforced something. It was when I first joined the Sheriff’s Office here, about three years ago. I vaguely remember being called out a few times to the BrightStar residential area. Seems that there was this dog that had been busting through coops killing chickens in that neighborhood. I took the reports and did a little investigating at the time. Found out that it was this yellow lab and pit bull mix named Harley doing the killing. He might have had the record on chicken killings in the county. He left behind a lot of carnage.”

He shook his head.  

“Harley’s owner was Hank Redding. You see, Hank was still alive back then. He took responsibility for the dog. That’s why I didn’t make the connection right away to Julianne. I only talked to Hank about Harley. Not to his wife.”

He shifted in his seat and then looked over his shoulder, drifting into the fast lane to pass a slow pick-up truck.

“So my reports from the chicken incidents finally went to the dog board, and they reviewed Harley’s case. I wasn’t part of that session, but they used my reports to make their decision.

“I remember hearing that they had given Hank and his family an ultimatum. They said that either Harley was going to be taken away from them and possibly euthanized. Or the family would have to move out of that neighborhood if they wanted to keep the dog. Either way, the dog had to leave that neighborhood.”

“So the Reddings chose the dog? They chose to move?” I said.

He nodded.

“But you see, from that, I figured out that everybody whose dog had been taken had been, in some way, shape or form, part of that dog board hearing. I’d been the one to conduct the investigation. Pete Burgess was on the board and from what I heard, had come up with the ultimatum idea. And Anna Stevens was the hearing recorder at the time. That was before she became a librarian.”

“What about Billy Jasper?” I asked.

“Billy’s mom was one of the folks whose chickens got eaten by Harley. She was at the hearing. From the recordings, she fought pretty hard to make the dog board actually enforce an ultimatum. But her own dog died a couple of years ago, and she doesn’t have any pets. Which is why I think Julianne went after Billy and Shasta.”

I shook my head.

This was all pretty hard to believe.

Julianne Redding had always seemed to me like such a down-to-earth, reasonable person. But maybe I hadn’t ever known the real Julianne.

“You see, that dog board decision is what connects all of us,” Daniel said. “What I got hung up on, though, was that Harley was one of the missing dogs. But then I started to think, maybe Harley wasn’t really missing. I mean, there was no real proof that he was, other than Julianne’s word. It was a perfect way to divert attention from herself, playing at being one of the victims. I think that’s what she’d been doing the whole time. I think when we get to her house, we’re gonna find Harley there with the rest of the dogs.”

I was quiet for a moment, trying to absorb the information.

It all seemed so hard to believe.

“So what happened earlier at the Junction?” I said. “With Pepper. How did you figure that she was returning the dogs?”  

“Well, I had a hunch about Julianne, but I didn’t really have any concrete evidence. Then Pete showed up drunk to the Sheriff’s Office this morning, going on and on about how he’d seen some redhead she-devil in a blue VW Bug driving with Daisy in the passenger seat around the time he was stumbling home from the Pine Needle Tavern early this morning. There aren’t too many redheads in this town who own that car make, so I brought Pete to the Junction to see if he could confirm that it was Pepper, thinking maybe my hunch about Julianne was off. I didn’t think it would get so out of hand there, with him yelling and screaming. But sometimes, that’s just the kind of thing you need to break a case open.”

“So Pepper was just trying to help her sister?”

Daniel nodded.

“She must have caught wind of what Julianne was doing,” he said. “She must have been trying to help her stay out of trouble. One dog at a time. Owen found Daisy in the BrightStar neighborhood not too long after Pete came stumbling into the office. The Shih Tzu looked as good as new. Its nails were even freshly clipped.”

I sat there again in silence for a moment, mulling over the information, thinking about Julianne and how distraught she’d been the day I saw her posting missing flyers for Harley.

I’d bought the act hook, line and sinker.  

“But that dog board ruling was three years ago, right? Why is Julianne doing all of this now?”

Daniel shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he said.

He slowed the car and drifted into the turn lane, taking a right off the highway onto Huntington Road. He pulled off to the side a few hundred yards down the gravel road, near a house with a long dirt driveway. Through the fog, I could see the outlines of a rundown structure.

Billy, who had been tailing us the whole way in his deputy car, followed suit, pulling in behind us.

“Cin, you need to stay here,” Daniel said, unbuckling his seatbelt.

I didn’t say anything, but he must have sensed my apprehension.

He turned toward me.

“I’ll find them,” he said. “Just trust me, okay?”

He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes softening.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Whether they’re in there or not.”  

He reached over, squeezing my hand. Then he got out of the car quickly.

“Be careful, Daniel.”

He put his hand on his holster, resting it there on the butt of his gun.

I took in a sharp breath as I watched him and Billy walk down Julianne Redding’s driveway, disappearing into the fog.

Chapter 56

I was far from the house and the windows of the car were rolled up tight.

But I still heard the scream.

The chilling, blood-curdling screech came from the direction of the house. The sound ricocheted like a bullet down my spine, sending waves of goose bumps throughout my body.

The bank of freezing fog wouldn’t let the scream die either, letting it just linger there in all of its wretchedness for what felt like an eternity.

Without thinking, I unbuckled my belt and opened the car door. I stepped outside into the cold mist. The cars from the highway several hundred yards away sped by, their headlights bouncing off the fog.

Then there was the loud creaking of the house’s front door in the distance.  

“You get your hands off me!” a woman’s voice screamed. “All of you had it coming. You had it coming!”

Her voice echoed.

“
You had it coming
!”

I squinted through the thick mist at the figures walking down the dirt road, watching as they came into view.

Julianne, still dressed in her Christmas sweater from the Junction judging, squirmed and twisted as she walked ahead of Billy Jasper. He held on tightly to her wrists, handcuffed behind her back. She stopped, pushing back up against him, but he nudged her along down the driveway, toward his car. She writhed like a trapped animal, a kind of madness in her face that I had never seen from the Gingerbread Junction judge.

I watched, almost as if in a trance. Unable to peel my eyes away from her horrid expression.

The mask that she had worn crumbled, revealing the real Julianne. A woman full of anger and rage. A woman full of bitterness spurred on by some unknown hurt.  

A woman who had snapped. And a woman whose sense of right and wrong had snapped right along with her.

Our eyes met for a brief moment as she passed me, and my breath caught in my throat.

Her eyes flashed with something wild.

“Those dogs are
mine
!” she shouted. “You don’t deserve them! None of you deserve them!”

She started screaming again, the noise drilling through my eardrum like a jackhammer.

I shuddered.

Billy opened the back door of his deputy car and pushed her head down. After she was in, still shouting incoherently, he slammed the door. A look of relief swept across his face, as if he’d been afraid that she’d somehow escape his custody in the time it took to get her into the car.

“Are the dogs in there?” I said.  

“Mrs. Brightman, I think you should stay here.”   

Had Billy seen something in there? Something bad?

I bit my lip until I tasted blood.  

“Are they, Billy?”

He took off his deputy’s hat, shifting his weight nervously between his feet.

“Mrs. Brightman, I don’t think…”

I couldn’t listen.

My feet were suddenly flying down the dirt driveway, almost as if they were no longer under my control. My legs pumped hard as I blindly raced through the fog.

The blood thundered in my ears.

I’m coming Hucks and Chadwick. I’m coming.

Chapter 57

A small wooden cross stood over an outcropping of rocks in the middle of Julianne Redding’s backyard.

The cross was painted white. The paint wasn’t that old.

A few hot tears slid down my cheeks as I crouched down next to the rocky grave.

Had she really…?

Fiery bile shot up the back of my throat.

This crazy woman. This crazy, malicious, heartless, evil, wom—

There was a creaking sound suddenly from somewhere behind a stand of trees in the distance.

I looked in the direction of the noise, squinting through the fog.

There was a small structure behind those trees.

I stood up, swallowing back acid.

“Daniel?” I shouted.

There was no reply. Just the fog creeping in all around me.  

“Daniel?!”

A figure appeared from out of the mist, coming from where the noise had. He was running toward me.

When he saw me, his pace quickened. His brown eyes shone, even in the dull, muted light. And I swear on my best pie recipe, he was smiling at me.

“Oh my,” I said, dropping to my knees.

My throat went dry and the tears started up again, streaming down my cheeks in large rivers.

I opened my arms and caught him, hugging him with everything I had, digging my hands into his fur, kissing the top of his soft little head.

“Huckleberry,” I said, clutching onto him, my tears catching in his fur. “My sweet pooch, you’re alive!”

He licked my face and then rolled over on his back, the way he did when he was happiest. I scratched his soft pink belly and he barked playfully.

I thought my heart might just explode with joy.

He was okay. My sweet, loving, precious little dog was okay.

Then a dim shadow passed over Huckleberry and me.

I looked up.

I got to my feet and hugged him tightly.

“You found him,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief. “Like you said you would. You found him.”

Daniel just held me there for a moment. Huckleberry pawed at our legs, wagging his little nub for attention.

But then Daniel pulled away from me suddenly.

He wasn’t smiling.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I said.

He let out a sharp breath.

“They’re not all here, Cin,” he said. “It’s Chadwick. He’s missing.”

I swallowed hard, looking back at the white cross, standing ever so ghostly in the fog.

Chapter 58

I watched as the brown sugar and butter bubbled up around the bright red cranberries in the saucepan, filling the kitchen with a warm sugary tart smell that even after all these years of baking pies, still made me drool with the promise of its incredible flavor.   

I stirred the cranberries briefly, then added a bit of lime zest to the bubbling pan.

It smelled just like Christmas in the shop.

Of all the pies I made, the Santa’s Florida Vacation Pie was the one that had my number. Just one taste of that tart lime and cranberry flavor combined with the rich, creamy white chocolate filling was enough to drive me to gorge myself sick on it.

I grabbed a spoon and tasted the filling. It was incredible, but it still needed some time on the stove. Huckleberry looked up at me from his doggy bed, as if he could sense just how delicious the bite had been. His ears perked up and he lifted his head.

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’d say you had enough for one day,” I said. “Those two slices of Gingersnap Pumpkin Pie and half a slice of Blueberry Cinnamon ought to keep you happy until the New Year, little dog.”

He tilted his head to one side as if I’d asked a question. Then a small dribble of spit fell from his mouth onto the floor.

I smiled.

Huckleberry and I were both suckers for this pie.

“Oh, all right,” I said, dropping a spoonful of the filling next to him.

He lapped up every last bit off the linoleum.

I smiled.

My silly little Hucks.

It was so good having him back.  

Despite Julianne Redding’s shaky mental state, there was one good thing that she had done. She had taken good care of those dogs. Not a hair on Huckleberry’s head had been harmed, and he was even slightly plumper than he’d been before being stolen. And for all of that, I was incredibly grateful.