4 Malice in Christmas River (19 page)

It seemed quite rude to me, what with him making the long journey here and all, to keep him waiting any longer.

Chapter 49

“So uh, Grandpa,” I said, filling up his mug with another serving of piping hot mountain roasted coffee made from Christmas Coffee Hut beans. “Who’s that lovely young lady you’ve got a picture of in your wallet there?”

I took his empty plate and served him up a second helping of the pie. It had been a hit, and between Daniel and Warren, it was already half gone.

I placed the full plate in front of him, and the old man dug into it with a kind of glee that just warmed my heart up the way a crackling fire warms up a room on a cold winter’s night.

He looked at me and smiled, the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes growing deeper with the effort.

Then he took another large bite of the pie.

“Aw, c’mon,” I said. “Stop making me wait so long. I’m dying to know.”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“Well, I guess you could say she’s my Scottish lady,” he said.

I grinned and clicked the top of my mouth with my tongue.

“You old dog,” I said. “I was hoping that’s who she was.”  

He was beaming.

Warren had been alone a long, long time. My grandmother had died when I was just a little girl, and even though Warren had the very occasional love interest over the years, nothing ever seemed to pan out for him. But he, of all people, deserved to find happiness. Even at his ripe old age.   

“How come this is the first time I’m hearing about her?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Well, I didn’t want to jinx anything,” he said. “In case it turned out to be, you know, like just an international fling or something?”

I laughed.

Only Warren would use a phrase like “international fling.”

“Well, I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like just an
international fling
to me if you’re carrying her picture around in your wallet.”

He grinned again.

“You’re right,” he said. “I think it’s turning into something more than that.”

He took in a deep breath.

“Cin, I’m plain smitten with the gal. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.”  

It was almost as though I could feel the happiness glowing from him. It was an infectious feeling.  

“I want to hear all about her,” I said. “Every detail about how you met and what she’s like.”

“Well, you won’t believe this, but guess what she does for a living?”

“What?” I said.

He grinned.

“She’s a brewer.”

I started laughing again.

Of course she was.

I punched him lightly.

“You old dog!”

He started laughing too and then started telling me about how they met. It was at a Scottish pub one night through some friends of Larry’s. I would have expected nothing less from my grandfather.

I spent the rest of the morning talking with Warren, and it felt just like old times. The two of us sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, enjoying each other’s company.

And for the first time in a long while, I was able to think about something else other than Daniel’s accident.

Chapter 50

I went in the bedroom to check on Daniel.

He’d been out cold all afternoon and most of the evening. I’d kept his serving of fried chicken and mashed potatoes warm under tinfoil in the oven. Part of me thought I should just let him sleep as much as he wanted. But it seemed to me that since he hadn’t eaten since this morning, he also might be hungry. Plus, it was about time for his next round of pain meds.

When I stepped into the darkened room, he was mumbling softly in his sleep. He was moving his head from side to side. His hands were clutching the bunched-up sheets and squeezing them.

I leaned over, pressing a hand lightly on his arm.

“Daniel,” I said softly. “It’s time for—”

He sat straight up in bed with a force that jarred me so badly, I had to stifle a scream.

He gasped and his eyes flipped open. He started breathing hard, sucking in air. His eyes scanned the walls of the room and then fell on me. There was a wild look in them. Like he didn’t recognize who he was looking at for a moment.  

It scared the living daylights out of me.

“It was
him
,” he said, his breathing labored and frantic. “I saw him.”

He clutched my arm tightly. Too tightly.

“It was who?” I said.

That wild, distant look was still in his eyes. Like some part of him was still elsewhere.

“Tex,” he whispered. “I saw him. By the horse trailers. He was looking at me, Cin. He was there.”

Bile shot up the back of my throat.  

“You remember?” I asked. 

He nodded.

“There was this flash of lightning and I saw him,” he said. “The Sandman. He was—”

He suddenly grabbed his head and let out a groan.

“Ughh, My head, Cin,” he said. “My
head
.”

He lay back in bed, clutching it like if he let go, his skull might just break apart.

I grabbed the glass from the nightstand and quickly went out into the kitchen, filling it with water. I heated up a rice-filled heating pad in the microwave, and came back to the bedroom with both. I unscrewed the medicine bottle and got him two pain pills. Then I placed the wrap on his forehead.

“My head…” he groaned again.

I got into bed with him and propped him up so he was leaning against me. I held him like that through the pain, humming something soft and sweet, rubbing his back, hoping the medication would kick in soon.  

Within 15 minutes, he’d dozed off. I watched him like a hawk, half frightened out of my mind that he might stop breathing.

The doctor had said he would probably get headaches. But I was still worried that it might turn into something worse.  

My poor Daniel, I thought.

Poor, poor Daniel.

I stared at the slit in the curtains.

The burnt orange light of the sunset filtered through, casting shadows on the bedroom floor.

But I didn’t really see any of that.

Everywhere I looked, all I could see were those piercing, haunted blue eyes of Tex.

Hating.

I held Daniel tightly, knowing for certain now that Tex Stevens had been there that night at the Rodeo. 

We’d both seen him there.

Chapter 51

I called Erik first thing the next morning, updating him about the latest developments.

Erik took down everything I said, but he didn’t have a lot of news on his end. He’d gotten the same answers from the department of corrections that Trumbow had, about Tex following his parole orders down to the tee. There was no evidence, Erik said, that Tex had been at the Rodeo that night. Other than what Daniel and I had seen.  

I was disappointed, but not surprised that he hadn’t turned up anything yet.

It was as if Tex was a ghost that had just breezed into and out of our lives. A ghost that nobody believed existed, but was there, all the same. A phantom, wreaking havoc and threatening everything Daniel and I had built.  

Erik also said he was looking into Daniel’s recent deputy logs, on the off chance that there was anything unusual in any of them that could have had something to do with what happened.

I didn’t know why he was bothering to do that. How was that going to help us prove Tex was behind Daniel’s accident?  

“You never know,” Erik had said when I asked. “That concussion of his might have caused him to forget something. Something important.”

I didn’t argue. Erik was trying to get to the bottom of this and I was thankful for the help.

I had just hung up with him when the doorbell rang.

I smiled.

Kara had sent me a text message the night before saying she’d come by in the morning to drop Huckleberry off. She’d been kind enough to take care of him at her place all this time. But now, it was time for my little pooch to come home.

As I went for the door, I found myself a little nervous at the thought of seeing her, what with the icy way she’d ended things the last time I saw her at the hospital cafeteria.

But as I peeked through the eyehole, I realized that I didn’t need to be nervous.

Because it wasn’t her on the other side of the door.

I opened it cautiously.

Chapter 52

Bradley Houston looked as young and handsome as ever. And even though more than a decade had gone by since I last saw him up close, it looked as though he hadn’t aged a day.

“Kara wanted to come and drop the dog off herself, but she’s really busy over at the shop,” he said, handing me the leash. “She said she’d call you later.”

After I leaned down and greeted my sweet little Huckleberry, I stood back up and gave Kara’s not-so-secret lover a once over.

He was wearing a pair of glasses and a tight t-shirt that hugged his muscles. He dug his hands into the pockets of his tapered jeans, and leaned back a little nervously.

Even though he was wearing glasses, it didn’t hide those bad-boy, troublemaking eyes of his. Those same eyes that had caused Kara to practically lose her mind and chase him around all those years ago.

Brad was younger than John. Better-looking than John. And probably more exciting than John.

But he wasn’t as kind-hearted as John. He couldn’t have loved Kara as much as John. And it was clear as day to me that Brad Houston was only trouble for someone like Kara.

Plus, I couldn’t say I was too happy that she had just shoveled Huckleberry off onto him without asking me first. After all, I didn’t know the first thing about Brad. He could have been a dog-napper for all I knew.

“Uh, thanks for bringing him over,” I said, trying to keep the resentment out of my voice.

“Not a problem,” he said.

“So, uh, how long have you been back in town?”

“A few months, now,” he said. “I was living in Portland but decided to bring my business here to the tri-county area. I always did like it here. And Kara’s been really great helping me adjust back to small-town living.”

I bet she has
, I thought.

“Have you met John?” I asked.

“Uh, not officially,” he said, with a measure of discomfort. “But I’ve heard a lot about him. Seems like a good guy.”

“Hmm,” I said.

Maybe it was rude of me not to invite Brad inside. But part of me felt like I was betraying John in some way by even talking to the man. Not that John and I were best friends or anything like that, but I’d gotten to know him over the past few years. And he deserved better than this.

He deserved better than having his girlfriend run off with a thoughtless heartbreaker like Brad Houston.

I couldn’t help thinking it: Kara should have known better.  

He seemed to pick up on some form of my disapproval, and shifted nervously between his feet.

“Look, uh, I don’t know what Kara’s told you, but it’s not—”

I held up a hand.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just tell Kara that when she’s ready to talk, I’ll be here, okay?”

He shrugged.

“Okay,” he said.

“Thanks again for bringing Hucks back. I appreciate it.”

“Sure.”

I closed the door.

It was against my nature to be so rude and it felt wrong to act that way.

But I didn’t like people who tried to break up good relationships.

I’d had some experience with people like that. They never cared about the path of heartbroken, devastated folks they left behind in their wake. About the destruction they caused.

All they could think about was themselves.

If Kara wanted to run off with someone like that, then it was her choice.

But that didn’t mean I had to be nice to him.

Chapter 53

“I don’t remember saying that.”

Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table, his leg propped up on a nearby chair, the cast sticking out like the large branch of a birch tree.

I’d just dropped Warren off at The Pine Needle Tavern. Now that Daniel was out of the woods, Warren had wanted to say hi to some of his old poker buddies. He was meeting them for lunch, and if I knew Warren, for a couple of pints of beer too.

Daniel had woken up just after noon, feeling a lot better, and with a hunger that was akin to a bear’s in late October. I served him up a plate of leftover mashed potatoes and fried chicken. He practically inhaled it.

It made me happy to see him eat that way. Kind of reminded me of the first time he came back into my life that one cold and snowy night two and a half years ago. He’d been chasing Huckleberry out in the woods when he saw my pie shop and wandered on over. I recognized him as I boy I’d been in love with in high school, and invited him in for some pie.

That winter felt like a real long time ago.  

“Damn, this is good,” he said, shoveling away another bite.

When he finished, he put his plate down on the ground and let Huckleberry lick the remainders. He stared at the Australian Shepherd fondly, rubbing his head. Then he looked up at me.

He reached across the table for my hand.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “You look so tired, Cin.”

And that’s when I decided to tell him about seeing Tex at the Rodeo the day of the accident. About how Tiana had said he’d come around the pie shop, asking about me. And about what Daniel said the night before after waking up from a nightmare – that he’d seen Tex over by the trailers just before the accident.

Daniel had no recollection of what he’d said. I wondered if he hadn’t been talking in his sleep.

He didn’t speak for a while after I told him. He just stared out the window.

“I just can’t believe it was him, Cin,” he said. “I mean, you know how you always hear about cop intuition in the movies? That’s what I have right now. And my gut’s telling me it’s not his style. If he wanted to kill me or hurt me, he wouldn’t have let a horse do it.”