Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 6) (20 page)

The leashes felt slick between my sweating palms as I mulled it over.

I had to act.

Now.

I pulled my phone from my jean pocket and hit speed dial. Then I quietly stepped closer to the building, pulling the dogs with me.

There were plenty of windows into the pub, but keeping in line with the biker bar theme, they were all obscured by blinds. I quietly searched alongside the windows, looking for a broken blind or a crack to see in. I finally found one, and peered inside. 

I listened to the dull ringing of the phone as I placed my face up to the glass.

“This is Daniel Brightman, Sheriff of Pohly County. If you’ve reached this message, then I’m…”

Inside, the pub looked completely deserted.

“Daniel,” I rasped as quietly as I could. “You’ve got to get down here to
Back Alley Brewing.
Somebody’s in the—”

Huckleberry cut me off, letting out a piercing bark that cut through the night like a siren.

And that’s when I knew it was going to be bad.

A second later, all I could hear was the sound of glass shattering, followed by screams.

It was a long time before I realized the screams were coming from me.

Chapter 46

“Cin?Cin, are you hearing me?”

All I saw was slate grey and darkness. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t lift my eyes. Couldn’t do a thing but stare numbly down at the sidewalk.

“Cin?”

Though I had long since gone mute, my screams still echoed in my head like painful memories. The ground was scattered with shards of broken glass. Blue and red lights were dancing like a laser show all around me. Dogs were barking.

It had been so loud. So, so loud. The sound of glass and concrete and metal, all crashing against each other.

The sound of bullets whizzing by, only inches from my face.

“
Cinnamon
.”

I looked up to find a pair of concerned, large green eyes staring back at me.

He placed a hand against my cheek, and I was suddenly no longer frozen. No longer a statue lost among the glass and screams.

I was alive.

He brushed a hand through my hair. The sound of clinking echoed on the sidewalk as shards fell out.

“My God, Cin. My God.”

I buried my face in his chest as I felt his arms tighten around my body.

A few moments later, I was sobbing uncontrollably.

He stroked my hair and told me it was okay.

Chapter 47

The Moonshine Whiskey pies were burned beyond recognition by the time I got back to the shop.

And as Daniel drove me and the pooches, who had thankfully been unharmed, home, I couldn’t stop thinking about the blackened crust and sticky, evaporated filling.

It wasn’t often that I burned pies. And I had a feeling that those pies, in particular, were going to be excellent. The fact that they were practically cinder by the time we got back hurt on a level I could quite explain to Daniel.

But maybe I was taking it all too seriously because I was exhausted. Exhausted, and still in shock after being shot at.

Being shot at.

The phrase chilled me to the bone.

I rubbed my arms, trying to rub away the goose bumps. But I had a feeling it was going to be a long time before they went away.

“Cin, I’m going to find him,” Daniel said, stealing a glance at me just before making a right on Sugar Pine Road. “I’m going to find who did this and make him pay. I promise you that.”

His green eyes flickered, but faded a moment later. That haunted look that he’d had since finding me in front of Back Alley Brewing kneeling in a pile of broken glass with my hands covering my ears returned.

Just a few centimeters to the left… Hell,
who knew
. A few millimeters. And I would have joined Rip Lawrence, wherever he was.

I swallowed hard. My throat felt shriveled and dehydrated, like a piece of meat left out to dry beneath a hot desert sun.

“You think… you think it was the killer who shot at me?”  

The killer
. Saying the phrase made me break out in another round of chills.

I had come so close to the edge.

Daniel didn’t answer my question. Maybe because the thought scared him as much as it scared me.

We pulled up into the driveway of our house. Warren’s old beat-up truck was sitting out front.

Daniel must have called him and let him know what happened. And being the kind of grandfather Warren was, he had probably risen from some much-needed sleep to get over here and make sure his Cinny Bee was okay.

Daniel killed the engine.

Then he took a hold of my hand, staring deep into my eyes.

They were flashing steel.

“Cin, I’m going to get the bastard. Mark my words. I’m going to get him.”

I squeezed his hand back.

In the porch light, I saw the front door open and the silhouette of an old man standing there.

I took in a deep breath and tried not to think about how close I’d come to being shot

Chapter 48

“It’s madness,” she said, slurping the bottom of her extra-large iced mocha. “Pure madness. I can’t believe you were shot at, Cin. I mean, just what in the hell is this town coming to? What kind of world is Laila Mae growing up in? It makes me sick to think about it. Just
plain
sick.”

Kara placed her plastic cup down on the counter and picked Laila up, who, as if on cue, had started crying when her mother mentioned the kind of world she was going to inherit.

“There, there,” Kara said, patting her on the back. “It’s not as bad as all that. There are sunflowers and rainbows and Prince Charmings too in this mean old world if you know where to look.”

She turned her attention back to me, her blue eyes studying me hard for a moment.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Cin?” she said. “You seem a little, I don’t know,
distant
.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m just… tired. That’s all.”

When I had woken up at my usual hour this morning, it was as if all the events of the past week had caught up and rolled over me several times like a John Deere tractor. I found that even the thought of getting up to make coffee made my muscles ache even more than they already did.  

I had fallen back asleep and come into work late. Luckily, Tiana and Tobias had been good enough to run the shop the majority of the morning in my absence. Though when I finally did drag myself into work, I still wasn’t feeling all that energetic. I hardly had the energy to reassure Tiana and Tobias that I was okay after what happened the night before.

Meanwhile Kara was already on her second Venti iced mocha of the day, and was practically leaping off the walls in one of her highs.

She bounced baby Laila on her hip while I did my best impression of the living dead, stirring the filling for a batch of Lemon Gingersnap pies.

“Do you really think the killer got a good look at you, Cin? Or did they just hear something and shoot at it?”

I glanced over at Deputy Billy Jasper, who was stationed at the door, texting feverishly on his phone and not paying attention in the slightest to our conversation.

“I don’t know, but Daniel’s not taking any chances,” I said, nodding in the young deputy’s direction.

“Well, I hope Daniel gets that son of a…” she started, but then stopped herself midsentence, looking down at Laila.

She clasped her hands over the baby’s ears and began rasping in a hushed whisper.

“That son of a bitc—”

But before she could finish her thought, Billy Jasper abruptly interrupted her.

“Uh, can I use that television over there, Mrs. Brightman?” he said, nodding to the small set in the corner.

There was a kind of urgency about the request.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Go right on ahead.”

Sometimes, when I got bored with the music on my iPod in the kitchen, I’d watch a soap opera or some mindless daytime talk show. 

Kara and I watched as Billy grabbed the control off of the counter and turned the TV on, flipping it to the local news station.

“In a breaking news development, KRMZ has discovered that an arrest has been made in the July fourth murder of Christmas River resident Ripley Lawrence. We now go live to the Christmas River Police Department where Captain Lou Ulrich is issuing a statement.”

I felt my throat go bone dry. The image on the screen cut from the news studio to outside the police station we’d been at just the day before. Lou stood there in front of a podium, that smug look on his face that was always there. Only today, the expression was even more conceited.

“This morning, at 10:14, CRPD officers arrested Christmas River man George Drutman on the suspicion of the murder of a one Ripley Lawrence, also of Christmas River.”

My mouth dropped in shock.

“The gun that killed Lawrence was a .44 caliber. Drutman owns a .44 caliber gun that is registered with the state of Oregon. Though the gun has not been recovered, we believe that Drutman and Lawrence became involved in a dispute motivated by factors that we will not divulge at this time. Drutman was taken into custody, where he signed a written confession taking credit for Lawrence’s murder. His arraignment will take place this Friday. In addition to tireless hours put in by Christmas River Police Department Officers, the Pohly County Sheriff’s Office was instrumental with its help in this case…”

“Well, I’ll be,” Kara said, shaking her head. “George Drutman killed Rip Lawrence?”

I didn’t say it out loud, but I was just as stunned as she was.

George wasn’t at the pub that night. At least, I hadn’t seen him there.

What reason would he have to kill Rip? Was it over money? I hadn’t been aware that the two even knew each other. They didn’t exactly travel in the same circles.

Was it an accident of some sort? Had George shot Rip in one of his drunken episodes? Similar to the one we’d seen at the campgrounds earlier in the week?  

Then, out of nowhere, something occurred to me.

I remembered something Daniel had said. Something about a strange development in the case that could have been something, or nothing at all.  

“The animal hair…” I mumbled.

Kara raised an eyebrow at me.

“What was that?”

The pet hair. Rip had white animal hair all over his elf costume when he was killed.

And while there were plenty of dog owners with white pooches in Christmas River, not too many walked around carrying them everywhere they went, including into pie shops when they were told not to.

Jeez… that meant that… were Rip Lawrence and George’s daughter Haley romantically involved? Had George Drutman found out and lost it? Shooting the man, who had to be at least twice her age?

Rip did always like flirting with the younger girls. Even though he’d gotten older, I knew he probably wasn’t much different than the way he’d been when Kara and I were in high school.

I remembered back to the night Rip was killed. To the glum expression Haley had on her face the entire evening, sulking in the corner like a child.  

She must have known that her dad had found out about her and Rip. And that…

“Cin?”

Kara was still waiting for an answer to her question. I just shook my head, though. The revelation too much to explain at the moment.

“It’s nothing.”

“That didn’t seem like nothing,” she said. “It looked like you were plotting a murder just now.”

“Well, that was really out of left field,” Billy said. “Though we all knew George wasn’t the most upstanding citizen. The man’s a wild card in the worst sense of the phrase.”

Billy was right – George was a loose cannon. We’d all seen that just the other morning. And when it came to his little girl, I expected George Drutman could do just about anything.

Including shoot at me if he thought I was a threat.

The bastard
.

I supposed that was why Meredith had come by the other day, telling me about George dropping the lawsuit. She must have been trying to smooth things over, in her own strange way. Or perhaps she was trying to dig around for information to see whether the cops were onto George.

Meaning Meredith must have known, or at least suspected, that George had shot Rip.

“We’ll keep you updated as more information becomes available to us,” the news anchor said as the image cut away from Lou Ulrich.

Billy turned the television off.

“Well I guess you can breathe easy now, Mrs. Brightman,” he said, smiling that bashful, almost-adolescent smile of his. “Looks like they got him.”

“I guess they did,” I said, realizing that I was smiling back. “Thanks for keeping an eye on me, Billy.”

He tipped his hat graciously.

I pulled my phone out and hit speed dial. He answered on the second ring.

“Did you hear the news, Cinny Bee?!”

My smile turned into a full-blown grin.

The old man finally sounded like his old self again.

Chapter 49

“I know
exactly
how you operate, Daniel Brightman,” I said, dicing a cucumber and tossing the pieces into a large salad bowl. “You’d never say such a thing, but I know it was you who solved the murder. Lou Ulrich doesn’t have it in him to connect the dots like that.”

The edges of Daniel’s lips turned up just slightly as he rocked baby Laila back and forth in his arms. He leaned back in the kitchen chair

“No, you’ve got it wrong this time, Cin,” he said. “I hardly did a thing. Lou’s the one who figured it out.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who pointed him in the right direction, didn’t you?”

He shrugged, looking around the table at John and Kara.  

“It was the dog hair,” he said. “That’s all. The Sheriff’s Office just gave Lou the report about the dog hair. He figured out the part about George’s .44 and him having no alibi for that night.”