4 Malice in Christmas River (13 page)

“Is there anything I can do?” she said. “Do want me to stop by the house and bring you some stuff?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe later. You being here is the best thing you could do for me right now.”

We sat in silence for a moment, sipping our hospital coffee.

“I think everything’s going to be just—” she started saying, but then my phone started buzzing.

I fished around in my jean pocket, pulling it out, looking at the screen.

A feeling of disgust instantly coming over me as I read the name.

“Who is it?” Kara said.

I shook my head, rejecting the call.

“Erik Andersen,” I said. “The reporter. And I’m pretty sure he’s not calling just to see how I’m holding up.”

Chapter 29

When a sheriff gets trampled in a town this small, at a rodeo, no less, it becomes pretty big news.

Not only was Erik calling me, but the nurses at the counter were busy answering calls from the local TV station and stations clear out of Portland. Thankfully, the nurses couldn’t say much due to patient privacy laws, other than that Daniel Brightman was still a patient at St. Charles Hospital.

I tried not to pay much attention to the media attention. I spent the day sitting in Daniel’s room, watching him sleep, bargaining with God in my head. Asking that if Daniel made it out of this, then I’d stop taking everything in my life for granted, the way I had been doing.

I held onto Daniel’s hand, vowing that things would be different from here on out. If only he would get better.

Being in this hospital had a way of putting things in perspective. I was sure the walls of this place had heard all of this bargaining before.

At one point, I decided to stretch my legs. I went out into the hall and called Warren’s cell.

As much as I didn’t want to interrupt his Scottish adventure, I knew he’d want to know about the accident.

But the call went to his voicemail, and I couldn’t find the words to tell him what happened in a message.

I hung up and went back into the hospital room.

I stared out the window, listening to the mind-numbing beeps of the heart rate monitor, watching as the sun sank lower and lower in the smoke-filled sky.

Everything was a sickly shade of red.

Chapter 30

“Now, Ms. Peters, I don’t want you dealing with anything else but your husband’s recovery,” Trumbow said over the phone. “But as the former Sheriff of Pohly County, I want you to know that I’m takin’ charge. You don’t have a thing to worry about.”

I paced the ammonia-scented hallway of the hospital’s third floor.

It was now evening. Kara had been a real friend to me these past few hours. She’d spent all day with me and was on a run back to the house to take Huckleberry to her place, and to pick up some things for me to spend the night here.

Erik had called me two more times. On the last attempt, I’d half thought about answering and giving that slimy, no-good reporter a piece of my mind. But the reaction seemed like it would require more energy than I had, so I instead just let it go to voicemail.

But when I saw Trumbow’s name pop up on my screen, I slipped out into the hallway and answered. 

“I also want you to know that I’ve sent out a news release about…, about, uh,
the situation
,” he said.  

“What?”

“Believe me. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that this is the only way to get those media dogs to stop jumping. They won’t stop hounding us until we give them something to go on.”

I sat down in one of the free chairs. An old man in a hospital gown slowly wheeled his walker past me, his empty eyes sticking to me like glue.

I rubbed my face.

“Do you think a news release was really necessary?” I said. “I mean…”

“He’s an elected official,” Trumbow said. “We had to.”

Maybe if I hadn’t been awake for almost two days straight I would have put up more of a fight. But as it was, I was tired and disoriented. And frankly, at the moment, it didn’t seem like there was much I could do about it short of holding a press conference myself.

“Okay,” I finally said, letting out a sigh.

“Now, if any of them media people try to talk to you, you just call me, okay? You don’t have to say a darn thing to them.”

In some ways, this was laughable.

Imagine, Trumbow protecting
me
. After the way he’d almost arrested me for murder two and a half years ago.

The tables had sure turned. And if I’d been in a better state, I might have seen the humor in it. But just like I couldn’t muster any tears, I couldn’t muster any laughs either.

“Now, it’s all going to be fine, Ms. Peters,” Trumbow said. “You just focus on helping Daniel get better.”

I noticed how he’d just called him
Daniel
and not the Sheriff, the way he’d done since Daniel got elected.

I half wondered if Trumbow wasn’t enjoying being back in the saddle again.

But I pushed the thought out of my head. I had nothing to hold against him. Trumbow was being good to me.  

“Trumbow, can you tell me again how you figure it happened?” I said. “I mean, I just… I’m trying to find some sense in it I guess, and I just can’t seem to.”  

I could hear a controlled sigh from the other side of the line.

“I’ve been a lawman for nearly 35 years, Ms. Peters,” he said. “And I’ve learned that sometimes, there ain’t no sense in why things happen. Sometimes it’s just a matter of the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s what happened here. Just a bad moment Daniel got
hisself
into. That’s all.”

I nodded silently.

Trumbow wasn’t all that intelligent when it came to a lot of things. But he had a point here.

Sometimes, bad things just happened for no reason.

“Now try and get some sleep, Ms. Peters. I’m sure you could use some.”

He was right. The exhaustion had settled deep into my bones, and I felt like more of a zombie than the old man with the walker who had just passed me by.

“Thanks, Trumbow,” I said. “I mean, thanks for—”

“It’s my job,” he said. “Just call me if there’s any news about Daniel’s condition.”

“I will.”

I hung up the phone. I went back into the room.

Daniel’s eyes were open, and he was looking around. There was fear in them as he took in the unfamiliar surroundings.  

I immediately felt horrible for leaving his side to go out in the hall.

When he saw me, a faint recognition flashed across his eyes.

“Cin? What happened?”

I ran over, burying my head in his chest.

That’s when the tears finally came.

Chapter 31

I placed the phone on top of a fresh copy of
The Redmond Register
at the cafeteria table, wondering where Warren was.

I had tried calling him again, but it’d gone straight to voicemail. I was beginning to worry, wondering if my life was about to turn into that old saying on the side of salt containers:
When it Rains… it Pours.

I took a sip of weak coffee. A half-eaten apple muffin sat in front of me on a cafeteria tray. I’d lost my appetite quick.

When Daniel had come out of his painkiller stupor the night before, I’d been relieved. It seemed like a good sign. But he was out of it and didn’t seem to remember anything about what happened. He kept talking about Maui and the trade winds, which kind of broke my heart a little.

The honeymoon was off. We were supposed to leave on a noon flight out of Portland today, and there was no way that was going to happen. Which was just fine with me right now, as long as Daniel would be okay. Maybe later, after he recovered, the pain of the missed honeymoon and the fact that we wouldn’t get another chance at it for at least a year would sink in. But right now, Daniel recovering was all I could really care about.

And at least I didn’t have the shop to worry over. Tiana was running everything at
Cinnamon’s Pies
these next two weeks, the way we had arranged months ago when I was planning out the honeymoon. I just thought I’d be in Maui during this time: not in a hospital.

I sighed and picked at the apple muffin in front of me. My thoughts returned to Daniel.

When I told him about what happened in the accident, he had stared listlessly at the pale green hospital wall.

“I guess that’s what happened, then,” he said, his words as numb and empty as I had felt when I got the news that he’d been hurt.  

A moment later, the nurse came around to administer some more painkillers. Daniel floated away into dreamland a few minutes later.

I tossed and turned that night, sitting in the chair across from him. At 6 a.m., I went downstairs to the mostly-empty cafeteria to get some coffee and breakfast.

It was little comfort.

I grabbed a copy of the newspaper and stared at the headline on the front page.  

“Sheriff Badly Injured at Christmas River Rodeo.”

The author was none other than Erik Andersen.

I read the article, and then read it a second time.

Trumbow said Sheriff Brightman was inspecting the trailer area after a complaint was lodged about some children running nearby without a guardian. Trumbow said it is believed that thunder spooked one of the horses in a trailer owned by Bill Bryerson of Meadowlark Ranch in Alfalfa, causing the animal to bolt and trample Brightman.

Trumbow said all signs point to Bryerson improperly securing the animal, and that when tested, the owner had a blood alcohol level of .07. This is just below the legal limit.  

Brightman was taken to St. Charles Hospital. He received serious injuries, though the extent of these injuries was not revealed to The Redmond Register due to HIPAA privacy laws.

Calls placed to Cinnamon Peters, Brightman’s wife, were not returned.

Trumbow said the investigation into this incident is ongoing.

I sat there, mulling it over.

So Trumbow hadn’t been completely honest with me. The accident had been someone’s fault, even if it hadn’t been malicious.

I shook my head silently.

“Damn Rodeo,” I said, biting my lip. 

I had never heard of Bill Bryerson. But I had been there at the Rodeo. I saw the amount of drunkenness that went on at the event.

And though Bryerson hadn’t been drunk outright, he still had no business handling a horse after a few drinks. 

I let out a little sigh and pushed the rag across the table. My thoughts returned to Daniel.

It looked like he was doing better. But I wasn’t any less worried than I had been. Things could turn quickly, and I told myself that I had to be prepared in case they—

“I’m sorry about the Sheriff.”

I looked up from my empty coffee cup, at first happy that there was somebody else here in the vacant cafeteria to talk to.

But any happiness I felt at having a fellow companion quickly evaporated when I saw who it was.

“I’ll call Deputy Trumbow,” I said, grabbing my phone. “That’s what he said if any media types start harassing me. I won’t hesitate to call him.”

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to,” he said, taking a seat across from me in one of the plastic chairs. “I’m not here to harass you. I’m here to give you a chance to talk, if you want it.”

I scoffed.

“And why, on God’s green earth, would I talk to
you
?”

Erik Andersen met the worst of my cold, hard stare without flinching. I was sure he’d had a lot of experience looking into the faces of angry people.

“You’ve given me no reason to trust you,” I said. “No reason to think you wouldn’t just drag my name through the dirt, the way you did with—”

“Look,” he said, cutting me off abruptly.

He took in a deep breath.

“I
suck
when it comes to writing about pie shops and business owners and all that small town bull that you’re all so fond of reading around here. That’s not what I do. What I am good at, what I really excel at, is covering real stories. Stories that actually
mean
something.”

He was inferring that a story about my pie shop didn’t mean anything.

“So ‘Housewives of Christmas River’ actually meant something? Is that what you’re saying? That it wasn’t just a lot of tabloid garbage?”

He cleared his throat and gave me a sharp look.

“I can do better than that,” he said, his tone serious and unwavering. “I know it. Even if my editor doesn’t.”

He was earnest.

I rubbed my face.

But no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t justify trusting Erik Andersen ever again.

And more than that, I couldn’t justify helping the little weasel in his quest to prove his editor wrong either.   

“I think you should leave,” I said coldly.

He nodded slightly, not missing a beat, as if he had expected that response all along.

“Okay,” he said. “You don’t want to share. So let me be the first. I talked with Bill Bryerson this morning. You know, the owner of the horse? He told me something off the record that I think might interest you.”

He paused, waiting for me to bite.

It took me a few moments, but I finally couldn’t keep from going after the bait.

“So?” I said. “It was an accident. Trumbow said it was just—”

“Bill said he’d swear on a stack of bibles, in the court of law, that he locked that trailer up tight,” Erik said. “He said there’s no way he would have left it unlocked.”

“Of course that’s what he’d say,” I said. “He’ll be facing charges for this. And he’d been drinking.”

Erik shook his head.

“I believe him, Cinnamon.” he said. “And if he’s telling the truth, then that means something pretty major. Don’t you see?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Erik, you don’t really think that—”

“Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your husband, Cinnamon?”

Chapter 32