Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 6) (22 page)

“He told me, Mom. He told me that day. About the two of you, back when you and dad were going through a tough time. How you guys… how you had an affair with Rip. But how you never told him… never told him that… that I was his.”

Meredith’s hands were Jell-O.

“No,” Meredith said. “No. He was lying, honey. Rip was a liar.”

But Meredith’s voice held no conviction.

“And when he was murdered that night, I just… I just knew it had to do with what he told me. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“No,” Meredith kept saying, shaking her head. “He’d always been a good-for-nothing liar. He’d always been…”

“He was threatening to tell dad too, wasn’t he?” Haley continued. “He probably threatened to tell the entire town. And you were afraid. That’s why you killed him. Afraid that if he found out, then—”

“Rip wasn’t supposed to tell you!” Meredith said, her eyes filled with rage. “I paid him not to tell you! Thousands and thousands of dollars. But it was never enough. He always wanted more. More, more, more!—”

Crack!

A sound louder than any firework erupted, and the room was suddenly illuminated with a searing flash of light.

All of us screamed for our lives.

Chapter 54

“You hag psycho nut!” Warren cried.

Before I even understood what happened, the old man had jumped across the desk. He lunged for the smoking .44, yanking it from Meredith’s hands with a strength I didn’t know he still had. Meredith struggled to hold onto the gun, but was too surprised by Warren’s sudden movement to put up much of a fight. A second later, Warren had the weapon.

He landed a swift blow across the side of Meredith’s face.

The woman screeched like the hag Warren had accused her of being and clawed at my grandfather, not giving up on getting the gun back. Without realizing it, I reached over and grabbed a clump of her stringy hair, pulling it hard. She yelled again, clawing at Warren some more. The old man landed another blow on her with the back of the gun.

A split second later Meredith Drutman, and all her insanity, crumpled to the floor like a rag doll.

Warren leaned over, breathing hard. He glanced in Haley’s direction. She was leaning against the wall, sobbing, her hands over her face.

Satisfied that the daughter wasn’t going to be a threat, he turned his attention toward me.

“You okay, Cinny Bee?”

I nodded as I heard the sound of car brakes outside and a door slam.

“Cin?”

I let out a sigh of relief at hearing his voice.

I had had the feeling he might come.

“In here, Daniel!”

Warren had a small streak of blood running down his cheek from where Meredith had scratched him.

“Are
you
okay?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I’m gonna be just fine, Cinny Bee,” he said. “Just fine.”

He looked back down at Meredith. She was groaning softly in pain.

“That’s what you get for calling me a geezer, you old wench.”

Maybe it was inappropriate.

But I couldn’t help but smile a little bit when he said that.

Chapter 55

I stood by the kitchen window, nursing a strong cup of hazelnut coffee while watching the new day come to life.

Even though I awoke before dawn every day, it felt like it had been a long while since I’d really paid attention to a sunrise. So often, I was busy rolling out crusts or mixing up fillings, or writing notes to myself about new flavor combinations. So often the sunrise, in all its magisterial beauty, slipped right past me. One moment it was dark. And the next time I looked out the window, the sun would already be high in the sky.

But as I watched it this morning, as I watched the world emerge, the pine needles sparkle, the aspen leaves shimmer, the puffy white clouds on the horizon turn shades of crimson and coral, I never wanted to miss another sunrise again so long as I lived.

I never wanted to be so caught up in my life and business that I took such things like sunrises or a delicious cup of coffee or a mischievous grin from a certain precious old man, or a loving look from Daniel for granted ever again.

It had been a week since Meredith Drutman had cornered Warren at his brewery and tried to pin Rip Lawrence’s murder on him. A week since she tried to cover up her dirty deeds. And now, everyone in Christmas River knew exactly what she’d done… and why.

A few years into Meredith’s marriage, and about the time Kara had had that wild crush on Rip Lawrence, Meredith had started a lengthy affair with Rip Lawrence. But, having married the heir to the Drutman fortune, and having entered into a prenuptial agreement that gave her diddly-squat should she want a divorce, Meredith was reluctant to leave her husband for Rip. She kept the affair – and the fact that Haley was really Rip’s daughter and not George’s – a secret from everyone. Except that at some point, years later, Rip put two and two together. Finding himself in dire need of money to keep his brewery afloat, he decided to blackmail Meredith, threatening to tell Haley and George the secret she had so desperately tried to cover up. The blackmail payments went on for a few years. Only, Rip always came back for more. On the evening of July Fourth, Meredith went to Geronimo Brewing Co. to tell Rip she wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. She claimed she brought the gun – George’s gun – just to scare Rip off. She claimed it went off accidently, the same way it went off accidently in Warren’s office later that week.

Daniel didn’t exactly buy into her claims. He thought she deliberately lured Rip Lawrence into the brewery and shot him just at the height of the Fourth of July fireworks show so that nobody would hear the gunfire, thereby giving herself enough time to escape before anybody noticed that a man had been murdered.

I tended to agree with Daniel on that score, being that the woman shot at me when I surprised her at Back Alley Brewing. Though she didn’t admit being there and firing the gun that night, Daniel figured she was most likely at Back Alley to make sure Rip hadn’t left behind any evidence of the blackmail transactions.

Later, when the police arrested George, Meredith saw that the only way to get the entire family out of the mess she created was to tie it back to Warren and make him the fall guy.

Meredith denied the entirety of what happened in Warren’s office that day. She told the cops that Warren had beat her with a gun until she confessed. Which, as her own daughter knew, was a complete lie.

Meredith wasn’t just a liar – she was a cold-blooded killer. She’d left behind a trail of dead and wounded in her wake, including her own daughter. And while there was no love lost between me and Haley Drutman, I did feel sorry for the girl. Her entire notion of family had been wrecked in a matter of a few days.

Whatever Meredith Drutman had coming to her now – the trials, the prison sentence, the orange jumpsuits… it was no less than she deserved.

Rip Lawrence wasn’t a good guy. But even he was worthy of some kind of justice.

I took a sip of my coffee, glancing down at the letter on the kitchen counter.

The letter Rip Lawrence had left in one of my old cookbooks the day that he’d shown up in my pie shop kitchen without warning.

I hadn’t thought to check the cookbook. Not until this morning, when I suddenly flashed on him here in the kitchen the day he was murdered, wanting to talk to me.

Now I understood why.

The letter he had left was a two-part note. One page had been addressed to me, asking me to deliver the second part to his daughter: Haley Ann Drutman.

Maybe I shouldn’t have read the second letter. But I did, anyway. It was an apology of sorts to Haley. For not figuring out that she was his daughter sooner. For missing seeing her grow up. For not being there for her, even though he only recently realized that she was his daughter. All he wanted now, the letter had read, was to make sure she knew that he was there to help her if she needed it. To make up for lost time.

Rip must have felt like something bad was going to happen to him that night. And while giving the letter to me was as much a way to expose Meredith’s secret to one of her arch-enemies as anything else, the portion he’d written to Haley left me close to tears.

It reminded me of something, something that was easy to forget. Most good people weren’t all good, and most bad people weren’t all bad, either. We were all a work in progress. We all had our good moments and our bad moments.

Rip had more bad moments than good, but the letter he left Haley was one of the good ones.

I planned to deliver it to her just as soon as I could.

“How are ya this fine morning, miss?”

Tobias came walking into the back, taking off his weathered sheepskin coat and placing it on the coat rack. He pulled his apron from off the wall, and wrapped it around his waist.

“I’m just fine, Tobias,” I said. “And yourself?”

“Just fine,” he said, smiling a sad little smile.

I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to Tobias since he’d told me about seeing Ian and Rip arguing that day.

“You got anything in particular I should be working on this morning?” he said.  

“Not anything outside the usual.”

He nodded, and was about to head out into the dining room to mop the floors when I stopped him.

“Uh, Tobias?”

“Yes, miss?” he said, turning around to look at me.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but I haven’t found a good time…” I said, setting down my cup of coffee.

He furrowed his brow.

“I hope you don’t think I’m nosing around where I shouldn’t be,” I continued. “But I was wondering… you know that day when you saw Rip and Ian arguing in the woods? You told me you had something pressing on your mind that you had to walk out of you. I was, uh, I was just wondering what that was. And if I can be of any help to you.”

At first, he looked surprised and a little shell-shocked. He shuffled his feet awkwardly.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be a bother to you, miss,” he said. “It’s my own problem.”

I grabbed a mug from the cupboard and filled it up with coffee, making sure not to add anything as Tobias liked his coffee black. Then I walked over to him.

“It wouldn’t be a bother at all,” I said, handing the steaming cup to him. “I mean, only if you want to talk about it. I understand if you don’t.”

“I, uh, I… well…”

He looked down at his coffee. He was quiet for a few moments, and then he cleared his throat.

“It’s just, I was thinking about Tiana, if you want to know the truth.”

A troubled expression came across his face.

“Thinking about Tiana?”

“Well, that day I heard that she was going on a date, and, well…I was thinking, miss, that I like her a whole lot. A
whole lot
. She’s a real Christian, kind, caring woman. She looks at me in a way that makes me feel… I don’t know… real good inside. Like she sees past everything, and kind of sees the me that I wish I actually was.”

His words came out labored, as if all the saliva in his mouth had just about dried up.

“Well, I don’t mean to betray anybody’s confidence,” I said. “But from what I can tell, she likes you an awful lot too.”

He rubbed his face.

“And that’s the problem,” he said. “You see, I know you know about my past. And she does too. But she doesn’t know about Pauline.”

“Pauline?”

He nodded.

“Pauline was my wife, before my tour of duties,” he said. “She stuck through it all, went through hell right along beside me. She was there, right up until the addiction got the upper hand on me. And that’s when she got some sense to leave. She knew I wasn’t any good. She knew I’d never…”

He trailed off, swallowing hard.

“You see, I mistreated that woman. I let her love me, but the truth was, I loved the booze more than her. She knew that she’d become second best. That’s why she left.”

He readjusted the mug in his hands.

“The way I took her for granted and broke her heart after she already put up with so much… it still troubles me to this day, miss. I can’t shake that guilt, no matter how hard I try.”

He looked away sadly.

“The last thing I want to do is hurt Tiana the way I hurt Pauline. I know I’m just not good enough for her. She deserves somebody good. Somebody honest and unselfish, like her. And I know that just ain’t me. I’ve done too much bad in my life. I don’t deserve that kind of happiness.”

He ran his hands through his salt and pepper hair.

“That’s, uh, that’s what I was thinking about out there, in them woods that day, since you wanted to know.”

He took a nervous sip of his coffee, then wiped his hands off uncomfortably on his jeans.

I studied him for a long while, thinking.

It occurred to me that the world was hard on all of us.

But sometimes, it seemed like we were harder on ourselves than the world could ever be.

Here Tobias had come leaps and bounds in his recovery. He had a good job, a roof over his head, food on his table. He even volunteered, trying to give back what he felt he owed.

I didn’t know how he had been in his past. I didn’t know about the woman whose heart he had broken. I didn’t know him back then.

All I knew was how he was now.

And that person deserved to be happy, the way we all did.

Ian’s words, the ones he had spoken to me on the bridge that day, asking whether I believed in forgiveness, echoed in my head.

I finally had a real answer.

I did believe in forgiveness.

Self-forgiveness, most of all.

I smiled at Tobias.

“That is a lot to think over,” I said, stroking my chin. “Want to hear my opinion?”

He looked up from his coffee cup.

“I’d appreciate any insight you could spare,” he said.

“Well, it’s only my view, Tobias, so don’t make anything more of it than it is. But knowing both you and Tiana, I believe you should stop being so damn bullheaded.”

“Bullheaded?” he said, looking confused.

I nodded.

“Yes, sir.
Bullheaded
. Let Tiana make her own decisions and stop making them for her. She’s a woman of sound mind and she knows who you are. Tell her what you just told me, and stop trying to sabotage her chance at happiness. And for that matter, stop trying to sabotage your own. You’re a good man, Tobias. And you do deserve to be happy.”