Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 6) (10 page)

“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. “What I do know is that you were pretty damn good at making her think you did.”

He smiled again.

“Aw, you’ve got it all wrong. That angel just came into my life at the wrong time,” he said, placing a hand over his heart. “I was involved with somebody back then, you see. And Kara was practically jail bait, anyway. I was only looking out for her.”

“No you weren’t,” I said.

I didn’t believe a single word that came out of that man’s mouth.

“Well, the past’s the past, as I always say,” he said, starting to close the door. “Unless of course, it isn’t. You have yourself a good day now, Ms. Peters. Bake them pies up real good, and I’ll be sure to find you later tonight.”

I watched as he shut the door and quickly walked away down the back steps.

I let out a disgusted sigh.

The creep had left his elf hat on the kitchen counter.

Chapter 19

By 1:28 p.m.,
Cinnamon’s Pies
looked like it had been cleaned out by looters.

There was no flour left. No berries. No peaches. No oranges. No milk. No cornstarch, tapioca, gelatin, evaporated milk, cream, coffee beans, butter, eggs or vegetable shortening.

Pretty much all that was left that Fourth of July afternoon was a nice stack of green bills in the cash register.

I’d sold four times as many pies as I ever had in a single day in the history of
Cinnamon’s Pies
. And the crazy thing was, I could have sold even more if we’d had more: the line hadn’t slowed the entire day.

It was an exhilarating, if not exhausting, feeling to know how far the pie shop had come in these last few years.

And as I surveyed the subsequent damage to the kitchen’s reserves, there was one thing I wanted, and one thing only:

A cold, delicious, icy treat to celebrate. 

“You feel like getting an ice cream shake, Ian?”

The teen looked over from where he’d been sweeping in the corner, a surprised expression on his face.

“It’s the least I can do for all the hard work you’ve put in today,” I said.

He shrugged, then put down the broom.

“Sure.”

I would have invited Tiana and Tobias along too, but Tiana had left as soon as I told her we were done for the day. She said she had thirty pages left of her romance novel and a bathtub of cold water with her name on it waiting for her at home. And, to my great surprise and delight, a blind date later in the evening with a man she’d met through a local online dating service. Meanwhile, Tobias had left in a hurry of sorts. After coming back from his break, he’d seemed strange: off somehow. Jumpy, I might even say. After we closed up, he’d left without saying so much as a word to any of us.

That left just me and Ian and less than three hours to kill before we had to head over to Geronimo Brewing Co. and start setting up for the grand opening.

I traded my apron for my purse and locked the door behind me. We walked down Main Street, which was littered with the flashy red, white, and blue remnants of Christmas River’s Fourth of July parade, and on over to the Christmas River Shake Shack on the north end of town. I ordered us a couple of strawberry shortbread shakes, and we wandered over to Meadow Plaza to sit and rest for a spell in the shade.

“Thanks again for helping me out today, Ian,” I said as we took a seat at one of the benches facing the river. “I know your grandmother probably made you do it, but I really appreciate it.”

He nodded quietly, sucking greedily at the straw.

“It wasn’t a problem,” he said.

I rummaged around in my pocket, pulling out several bills, and then handed them to him.

He stared at them for a long moment.

“What’s this?”

“Well, it’s not exactly legal, what with you not being a citizen. But I say we call this, uh,
a donation
of sorts to your travel fund this summer.”

He stared down at the money for a while, as if he was thinking hard about something. 

And then he shook his head, handing it back to me.

“No,” he said. “Thank you, but no. I couldn’t take this.”

I furrowed my brow.

A 19-year-old kid giving money back wasn’t exactly something you saw every day.

Ian was a mystery.

“But you earned it,” I said. “Fair and square.”

He just shook his head.

“I couldn’t. We’re family now,” he said. “You help your family out when they need you, and you don’t expect compensation. It’s the right thing to do.”

I couldn’t have been more stunned than if he’d spit out his strawberry shake all over the bench.

“But I’d really like to pay you,” I said. “Isn’t there something you’d like to get for yourself with this?”

He shook his head again, looking across the plaza.

It was odd, but I swear. The kid looked sad for some reason.

“Nope.”

I finally shrugged, putting the money back in my pocket.

If he wouldn’t take it, then I’d figure out a way to get Aileen to slip it to him. But there was no use in arguing with him about it now.

“You know, you did really well today,” I said, taking a pull on my shake. “You have good instincts.”

“In the kitchen,” he said, shooting a quick look my way. “At the front of the house, I was ghastly.”

I laughed, the way he phrased it sounding so very Scottish.

“I wouldn’t say
ghastly
,” I said. “That sort of stuff just takes time to learn. You did really well.”

He shrugged.

“I was never good at it either at the bakery back in Glasgow,” he said. “I’d always get the orders wrong.”

“Did you like working in a bakery?”

He nodded.

“Loved it,” he said. “There’s something… something about it that just felt right, yeah? I didn’t even mind waking early. Because sometimes when you’re there at those early hours, when it’s just you and the bread… there’s just…”

He trailed off, seemingly unable to express the sentiment.

But he didn’t have to.

I understood it completely.

“There’s something peaceful,” I said, finishing the thought for him. “Like everything in the world is just…
right
.”  

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly.”  

We sat and sipped our shakes for a silent moment.

“So how come you’re not still at that bakery?” I asked.

Ian’s face darkened suddenly.

He paused a long while, and I wondered if I had just been rude somehow. Maybe in Scotland, it wasn’t polite to ask a question like that.

He finished the rest of his shake and then stood up quickly.

“Because I beat the living daylights out of the owner,” he said. “That’s why.”

I felt my mouth drop open in shock.

“You… you wha—?”

“I have some place I’ve got to go, Mrs. Brightman,” he said, tossing the paper cup into a nearby trashcan. “Thanks for the ice cream. I’ll see you at the brewery later.”

And with that, he walked quickly across the plaza, disappearing down Main Street before I could even ask him why.

Chapter 20

Warren adjusted the strings of his bolo tie while looking hard at himself in the bar mirror. He matted down a couple of unruly white-haired cowlicks at the back of his head.

I watched from the shadows of the pub as he dusted off his jacket.

He was one handsome devil, all right.

He took in a deep, unsteady breath and gave himself another nervous once-over in the mirror.

“Just remember how this place got its name,” I said, flipping over a barstool and placing it beneath a table. “Remember that story you told me?” 

He looked back at me in the mirror.

“Remind me,” he said, his voice a little shakier than normal.

Warren knew the story well enough, but I guessed he just needed to hear it again. It was a story from his childhood, something he told me a few years back when I’d come to a crossroads of sorts in my life.  

The story meant a lot to me.

“When you were just a boy, you and your friends used to go up to Elk Lake and jump into the water from an old tire swing they called
The Gallows
,” I said. “But then one of your friends broke his leg one day after jumping from the swing, and your mom found out and told you to never go to the lake again.”

He nodded.

“Yep, she did,” he said. “She was right angry with me after finding out we’d been so reckless.”

“Yeah. But it wasn’t just that. You were scared,” I said. “After seeing your friend break his leg like that? Why, that old tire swing had you lily-white scared.”

He smiled.

“That’s right,” he said. “I’d even get nightmares about it. The other kids saw the fear in me, too. They started calling me a sissy mama’s boy when I wouldn’t jump in anymore.”

I walked around the bar and stepped next to him.

“So what did you do then?” I said.

“I realized I couldn’t let my fear stop me,” Warren said. “Otherwise, I’d be afraid of that old tire swing my whole life. And that’s no way to live your life, Cinny Bee.”

“That it isn’t.”

He smiled.

“So one day, I gathered every bit of courage I had and I went up to that tire swing, got onboard, and swung myself out as far as I could over that lake, jumped, and screamed ‘Geronimooooo!!!’”

Warren raised his arms above his head and closed his eyes for a moment, as if he could still feel the wind off the lake rustling through hair that was no longer there.

“Sometimes in life, you’ve gotta do the things that scare you,” I said, squeezing his arm. “That’s what you told me, Grandpa.”

“‘Cuz otherwise, those things that you’re scared of lick you for the rest of your life,” he added, a newfound confidence in his voice.

I leaned in and kissed him on his wrinkled cheek.

“You’re looking like a million bucks, old man.” 

“You think so, Cinny Bee?”

I nodded, adjusting his bolo tie some more so that it sat perfectly.

“Tonight’s going to be great,” I said. “Don’t you worry about a single thing.”

He took in a deep breath and stared at himself in the mirror again.

“I
am
looking handsome, aren’t I?” he said, grinning. “All those young bucks better watch out for me.”

“Damn straight, they better,” I said.

He squeezed my hands, then went over to the front door of the pub.

He took in a deep breath, and then propped the door open, letting the hot late afternoon air into the cool bar.

“
Geronimo
,” he whispered.

Chapter 21

“Hmmm… I don’t think I’m in the mood for anything
too
hoppy,” Harry Pugmire said, adjusting his thick glasses as he studied the menu some more. “Now what about the
Cinny Bee Saison
? What’s in that?”

I tapped the pencil against the pad of paper in my hand, and rummaged around in the recesses of my mind to come up with the answer.

“Well…” I stuttered. “It’s a… Saison beer.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that from the menu already,” the mayor of Christmas River said.

“Now don’t be rude, Harry,” Jo, his wife, said.

She looked up at me apologetically, and then straightened out her red, white and blue visor.

The cantankerous Harry Pugmire grumbled something inaudible under his breath, which caused Jo, a portly woman, to shoot him a glare that would have sent most folks running for the nearest exit. 

I took advantage of the little tiff and scanned the bar area, looking for Warren, hoping he’d see that I needed bailing out. However, the old man wasn’t free himself. He was talking to Harold, who was laughing heartily and slapping the old man on the back while he poured another pint of beer from the tap.

I finally looked back at Harry Pugmire, who’d been grilling me for the past ten minutes about every single beer on the menu. I’d done pretty decent so far, able to dish out international bittering unit numbers and alcohol by volume percentages with the best of them. But my recollection of the bottom half of the menu was shaky, at best. Being no beer expert, I’d clear forgotten what a Saison was, never mind what kind of mouthfeel it provided or what made Warren and Aileen’s version different than others.

“It’s, uh, it’s a Belgian-style beer,” I said, trying to buy as much time as possible before it became obvious that I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about. “And, uh, it’s a… well, it tastes real good.”

Harry stroked his whiskers, looking none too impressed.

“But what kind of flavors does it impart, Mrs. Brightman? What makes this Saison any different from the three dozen or so that are made in the Pacific North—”

“Harry!” Jo said, exasperated at her husband. “Cinnamon is doing a fine job and you’re just being picky for no good reas—”

“The
Cinny Bee Saison
comes in at a healthy 7.1 percent ABV,” a familiar voice sounded over my shoulder. “As typical with a Saison, the
Cinny Bee
is low in bittering units, but high in flavor. It’s the perfect summer sipper for the man, or woman, who likes their beer strong. Furthermore, it has a nice refreshing finish thanks to the addition of orange zest, honey. and of course…”

He stepped beside me, looking down into my eyes.

“
Cinnamon
.”

I smiled, letting out a sigh of relief.

Daniel Brightman certainly had a knack for saving me when I needed saving.

“Now that sounds quite interesting,” Harry Pugmire said, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Is the
Cinny Bee
something
you
would endorse, Sheriff?”

“Whole-heartedly, sir,” Daniel said, nodding. “You know that when it comes to anything that involves cinnamon, I just can’t say no.”

He grinned down at me as the Pugmires broke out into a round of laughter.

“Well if it’s good enough for the Sheriff of Pohly County and his wife, then it’s good enough for me,” Harry said.

“I’ll be right back with it, then,” I said.