5 Mischief in Christmas River (11 page)

“Oh my goodness,
Mom
!”

Kara dropped her purse and pushed past the crowd of people in my living room to find Genevieve.

Genevieve was the spitting image of her daughter, only louder, brasher, and with a tendency to dress a little more provocatively.

The two embraced, and there was a gush of “Awws” from the rest of Kara’s friends.

I looked over at Brad and grinned.  

He’d really come through, driving over to Redmond and picking up Genevieve without Kara having the slightest idea that she was coming to town early ahead of the wedding.

“Cin,” Kara said, letting go of her mom. “I can’t believe you did this!”

I shrugged bashfully.

“Well, it was a team effort,” I said, nodding to Brad.

Kara’s eyes began to well up. She started fanning her face.

“This really means so much, you guys,” she said. “You know, I was starting to feel sorry for myself? Since I wasn’t really able to have a bachelorette party in my condition. But this…”

She trailed off, her voice getting shaky. She looked around the room.

“Thank you all for being here.”

She came over and gave me a big hug.

And I knew that despite me not knowing a drill bit from a Phillips-head screwdriver, I wasn’t a complete failure when it came to being Kara’s maid of honor.

When I pulled away, I saw that a couple of happy tears had rolled down Kara’s face.

I smiled.

“Now c’mon, bride,” I said. “I’ve gotten a couple of gals from the spa to do pedicures. You just sit over there, and I’ll fix you up a nice virgin margarita.”

She squeezed my arm. The look of appreciation in her tired and exhausted face said it all.

Chapter 28

The house was a giant mess and Chadwick was driving me up the wall.

The little dog had been barking nearly the entire length of the party, setting Huckleberry off too. I finally had to put both dogs outside, apologizing to the guests for the loud, incessant, and irritating barking.

But putting them outside didn’t help much: they just continued to bark out there.  

The guests had all been polite and kind, ignoring the racket for the length of the party. But as the night wore on, I couldn’t help but find myself frustrated with the situation.

After the guests had gone home and John had swung by to pick Kara up, I stood over the sink, scrubbing angrily at a stack of plates that had the remnants of the meat fondue and salmon cream cheese puffs that I had made for the occasion. Feeling frustrated.

Chadwick was part of that frustration. I truly enjoyed the little dog. But I hadn’t anticipated him barking
all
night. Of all the timing for Deidre to need a foster home for the dog, it had to be this weekend.

I bit my lower lip, the steam from the hot water rising up around me. The whoosh of the faucet almost drowning out the barking coming from outside.   

Almost.

I shook my head, tossing one of the plates into the dishwasher.

I tried to focus on how happy Kara had been at the party. How surprised and overcome with emotion she’d been at the sight of her mom. I tried to focus on what she said to me before she left.

“
Cin, you’re the best maid of honor anybody could have.
”

Hearing that from Kara, especially after all my previous failures at helping her with the wedding, had been touching. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t focus on the good.

It wasn’t just Chadwick or my own inability to say no to Deidre that was frustrating me tonight.

I tossed another plate into the dishwasher. It hit the plastic dividers with a loud crash.

I leaned forward, looking down at the full sink.

The truth of the matter was, what was really getting me tonight, was Daniel.

He knew that I’d been planning this party for Kara for weeks now. He knew that I had needed all the help that I could get. And especially given how Chadwick was carrying on tonight, I really could have used his help more than anyone else’s.

Plus, there was something else bugging me about Daniel and his trip to Portland.

I had called Billy earlier that day, just to check in and see if he had any luck locating Shasta. He hadn’t, but he’d asked me when Daniel was going to get back from Portland. I told him late tonight, unless something else came up in the case he was working on over there.

Then Billy said something that had turned my blood cold.

“What case?”

After that, Billy had tried to back track on his words, but it was obvious to me that either Daniel was keeping Billy in the dark about the case he was working on. Or, Daniel was up to something. Something that he’d lied to me about.

I hadn’t been able to think of much else all night.

Not that I suspected Daniel to be… well, to be doing anything behind my back. But it was mostly just the point of it. He had lied to me about what he was doing in Portland. And whatever it was, I wondered why it had to be tonight, of all nights.  

When I had needed his help the most.

I tossed another dish in the dishwasher and turned off the faucet.  

I was being unfair to him – I knew that. But I also knew that sometimes, no matter how you tried to put a logical spin on things, you couldn’t help the way you felt. And tonight, despite the fact that the party had been a hit and that Kara had left in happy spirits and that I knew Daniel loved me… despite all those things, I still felt as though I just couldn’t—

I stopped mid-thought as something suddenly occurred to me.   

It was quiet.

The soundtrack that had been playing for the last three and a half hours thanks to Hucks and the little cocker spaniel had come to a sudden halt.

I wiped my wet hands off on my kitchen apron, and then went over to the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. I opened it, peering out into the blackness, the light from the porch no match for the dark winter night.

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

“Come here Hucks,” I called. “Come along Chadwick.”

There was only silence.

“Hucks?”

Silence, again.

A bitter taste settled at the back of my throat as I stared out into the coal black night. I stepped out onto the deck in my socks, the blood suddenly pounding in my ears.

“C’mon, pooches,” I said, this time, my voice weak. “C’mon in—”

From somewhere out in the night, there was the sound of a car engine turning over.

I walked out into the yard, the damp grass soaking through my socks.

“Hucks?!” I called out, my voice now frantic. “Chadwick!?”

But there was only the sound of car wheels screeching, the noise echoing in the lonely night.

The barking had stopped for good.

Chapter 29

“Cin?!Cin, are you all right?”

He ran up to the porch, kneeling down next to me on the steps. He cupped his hands around my cold face, scanning my eyes for a response.

I’d spent the last hour wandering the woods around our house, calling out desperately for the dogs. It had started to rain, a bitter drizzle falling from the dark skies above. At one point, I slipped on a patch of melting snow, falling to my knees, staining the jeans I was wearing with mud.

But the woods had remained deader than dead. No sound, no response, no nothing other than my defeated cries at the end, when I realized that Hucks and Chadwick were really gone.

Somehow I had managed to stumble back to the steps of the front porch. I’d been sitting there numbly when Daniel’s truck pulled up into the driveway.

I had barely registered the fact that the headlights were shining in my face.

All I could think was…

I should have known better. After all those dogs went missing, I should have known better.

“Cin?” Daniel said, pulling me up. “What happened, baby?”

I stared up into his frantic, worried eyes, the rain coming down in sheets all around us. I started saying something, but the words came out choked and hoarse.

And then I lost it.

The tears came flooding down my cheeks and the next thing I knew, I had buried my face in his chest, my body convulsing with great sobs.

“They’re gone,” I yelled above the driving rain. “The dogs… They’re gone!”

Chapter 30

The coldness I felt in my heart the next morning when I woke up to the quiet and empty house was unlike anything I’d known before.

I rubbed my eyes, wishing I could rub away the image that had plagued me throughout my dreams.

The image of Huckleberry and Chadwick outside, shivering in some unknown corner of the woods, their coats dripping with rainwater and melted snow, the harsh winter wind howling into them. Scared and frightened and alone.

And I knew that that image wasn’t even the worst-case scenario.

Because the worst case scenario was much, much worse.

I sat up in the empty bed, looking out the window at the meadow. 

The rain had turned into snow late in the night as an arctic blast hit the Cascade Mountains. A fresh blanket of white covered the grasses and the trees.

I shuddered, thinking about those poor pooches.

My mind racing with the same question that had haunted me the night before.

Why our dogs?

Chapter 31

“I’m so, so sorry, Cinnamon,” Tiana said, peering into my face. “I just can’t believe something like that would happen here in Christmas River.”  

We were in the pie shop kitchen. I had just walked in after spending the better half of the morning wading through powdery snow, searching the woods around the house again for any trace of the two dogs.

But just as the night before, there was nothing out there in those woods. Just a cold, hollow emptiness that echoed the feeling inside my own heart.

When Daniel got home from his trip to Portland the night before, I’d been practically catatonic, sitting there on the porch. Unable to tell him what had happened.

Because I didn’t really know what had happened. All I knew was that I had put Huckleberry and Chadwick outside in the backyard for the last hour of the party. And that they’d been barking practically the entire time while they were out there.

Then the barking stopped. And shortly after there was the sound of a car’s engine turning over and wheels screeching against gravel.

That was it. That was all I could tell Daniel.

After inspecting the backyard and finding that the wooden gate appeared to have been tampered with, Daniel had made a sweep of Christmas River in his car, looking for the pooches. When he came back home, empty handed, he spent the rest of the night trying to console me. He looked tired from his trip. Dark bags clung to the bottom of his eyes, and his hair was matted with sweat. Yet despite being exhausted and coming home to crisis, he handled everything calmly. He held me most of the night, telling me that it was going to be okay. That he’d get to the bottom of what happened.

That he’d find Huckleberry and Chadwick, no matter what.

This morning, on his Sunday, his day off, he woke up early and went into work to figure out just what in the hell was going on in Christmas River.  

Meanwhile, after a few hours of searching the woods again this morning, I found my mind racing with every terrible thought under the sun.

I needed distraction, something to do. Something to take my mind off of the fate of Hucks and Chadwick.

So I ended up in the only place that could offer me all of that: my pie shop.

Business was slower than usual for this hour on a Sunday. The crowds had officially migrated across the street to Pepper’s shop. I tried to ignore that and focus on baking the most difficult, time-consuming pies that I could. Ones like the Banana Mocha Pudding Pie, which took hours to make its three labor-intensive layers.

I rummaged through the kitchen like a mad woman, trying to keep my hands busy, and therefore, my mind busy too.  

At one point I glanced up, and caught Tiana studying me while I feverishly crushed a package of Snickerdoodle cookies with a rolling pin for the pie crust.  

There was a frightened expression on her face, which faded into a look of grandmotherly concern when she saw that I’d caught her looking.

She cleared her throat.

“Maybe I’m just not as smart as some,” she said. “But who would do such a thing, Cin? Who would be taking dogs like that?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know, Tiana,” I said. “I just…”

I thought back to what Brad had said, about the dog kidnapper.

Like Daniel had said: it was a good theory. Save for the fact that as far as I knew, none of the owners had heard from the thief yet. Julianne Redding’s dog, Harley, had been missing more than a week now, and she hadn’t heard anything from anybody as far as I knew.

Neither had Billy Jasper heard anything about the police dog. Neither had Pete Burgess about his pup, Daisy.

It was as if all those dogs just vanished into thin air.

I shuddered to think that Huckleberry and Chadwick would join their sad ranks.  

“Cin?” Tiana said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Do you think that you should go home and rest?”

I shook my head.

“I’m just saying that you’re looking like you didn’t get a single wink of sleep last night,” she continued. “And, well, I think we’ve got enough pies to fill the case for the day. Nobody’s asked for one of them Banana Mocha Pudding Pies for a while now. I don’t think you need to make them.”

I didn’t say anything. I just kept attacking the plastic bag of cookies with the rolling pin.

“Cin, I really think…”

“This is the only place that I can be right now, okay?” I said.

I winced.

It came out harsher than was necessary, and I
immediately
regretted it. For a second, Tiana’s face fell, a flash of pain coming across her brown eyes. She quickly forced them down, and started vigorously stirring the filling for the Whiskey Apple Pies.