Manic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 6) (11 page)

I swear. If Daniel wasn’t the sheriff, he would have made a fine salesmen. Folks, including grumpy old mayors, just seemed hypnotized when he spoke.

Daniel followed me as I weaved my way through the packed pub. It seemed like Geronimo Brewing Company’s grand opening had attracted just about every tourist in town, not to mention every alcohol-drinking local within fifty miles. Even Kara and John had stopped by briefly with baby Laila at the very beginning of the night, though they hadn’t stayed very long. Since then, I’d seen just about everyone from the Pugmires, to The Plaid Hipster who frequented my pie shop, to Christmas River Police Department Captain Lou Ulrich. I’d also seen Rip Lawrence, who, still dressed in his elf costume from the parade, sat at the bar, knocking back beers and making sour faces. I hadn’t forgotten about his little visit earlier, or the fact that he wanted to talk to me about something. But there was no way that was happening anytime soon with the way folks kept pouring into the small brewpub.

Haley Drutman was even in attendance with a pack of her girlfriends. The girls looked overdressed – or underdressed – depending on how you looked at it, with their low-cut shirts, Daisy Dukes, and skyscraper heels. Haley had that stupid poodle with her, of course. But tonight, she wasn’t laughing or even shooting me mean glares, the way she had earlier in the day. In fact, she was acting like she didn’t even know who I was. And she had a depressed expression on her face. The kind of look someone like her might get after getting dumped by a boyfriend.

I half-wondered what had happened to change her mood so profoundly from earlier when she’d stopped by and threatened me. But it wasn’t any of my business and I didn’t care to make it so. I was far too busy. With only Aileen, Warren, Ian, and me to take orders, we were all rushing around like turkeys on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

Luckily, the fireworks, which they shot off of the Christmas River Butte every year, were about to start any second, meaning that we might catch a small break before the night got really rowdy.

“Do you have a minute, Mrs. Brightman?” Daniel shouted over the country music as I filled up a fresh pint glass with the
Cinny Bee Saison
.

Daniel looked like he’d spent the day working construction outside under the hot, hot sun. His hair was matted down with sweat when he took off his hat. There were dark shadows under his eyes and his deputy shirt, which had been crisp and ironed when I had left early that morning, was wrinkled and had been sweated through multiple times.

Though I was one to talk – I was sure I wasn’t looking any better after the day I’d had.

“For you, I’ve got all the time in the world,” I said.  

“Out back in a minute?”

I nodded. Then I quickly weaved my way back through the crowd, delivering a crisp, perfectly-poured Saison to Harry Pugmire. His face lit up like a Christmas tree as he tasted the beer, and I made a mental note to tell Warren about it later – I was sure that impressing an old curmudgeon like Harry Pugmire would please the old man to no end.

After scanning the room to see if anybody else was in dire need of a drink, I headed for the back of the pub. I slipped through the screen door, taking in a deep, greedy breath of pine-scented air.

“God Bless America” echoed throughout the woods as the music blared down from the Christmas River Butte in the distance. The song meant we only had a few minutes to go before the big fireworks show started.

A pair of strong arms suddenly reached around my waist and pulled me off into the shadows.

“You got here just in time,” I said. “I thought you might miss the show.”

“No way,” he said, nuzzling my neck. “I wouldn’t miss it. Not even after a day like today.”

I knew the Fourth of July often brought out the worst in folks. The Sheriff’s Office was usually inundated with all sorts of emergencies.

“Was it that bad out there?” I said.

He shrugged.

“I’ll tell you about it all later,” he said. “What about your day?”

I leaned my head back into his chest.  

“Long,” I said. “And it’s still going, with no end in sight.”

“How can I help?” he said.

“Just hold me tight.”

“I can do that,” he whispered, pulling me closer.

“And maybe give me a nice long foot massage later?”

He chuckled.

“I’m pretty sure I’m the man for that job, too.” 

Just then, the sound of the music coming from the Christmas River Butte got louder.

“It’s time, everybody!” Warren shouted from inside.

A moment later, the swarm of folks in the pub flooded out the backdoor like a tidal wave, surrounding us as the first bursts of red and blue flames exploded across the night sky.

I settled back into Daniel’s arms and watched as the sky came to life with green and purple flowers, expanding halos of ember, and long tendrils of fading light.

After a little while, I got the sense that I was being stared at.

I glanced back, finding that instead of watching the show, he was watching me.

“What?” I said.

Daniel looked to be in some sort of happy daze, a peaceful expression on his tired face.

“Nothing,” he whispered. “Just… you look beautiful, Cin.”

I shooed him away.

“I do not,” I said. “It’s just the light.”

He shook his head.

“No, darlin.’It’s you.”

I smiled, feeling a warmth spread out across my chest like one of them fireworks up in the sky.

Even after all this time, Daniel Brightman could still tickle me silly.

Chapter 22

Folks at Geronimo Brewing Company only got thirstier after the fireworks show.

In fact, most of them were acting like they’d been wandering the Badlands for a week without a single drop of water to see them through.

I pulled on one of the taps, filling up yet another pint glass with the Sparks Lake Stout just as another sloppy tourist shouted at me for a refill of their Waldo Mountain Weiss.

I was close to hitting a wall. The hours of baking pies, working cash registers, and then playing barmaid were catching up with me. My muscles screamed with exhaustion, and my feet were heavier than a couple of monster kegs.

There was one thing keeping me going, and one thing only:

The look of pure, unabated joy lighting up my grandfather’s face.

The evening wasn’t over yet, but it was safe to say that Geronimo Brewing Company’s opening night was a
rousing
success. The turnout had exceeded even Warren’s wildest dreams.

I hadn’t ever really realized it until now, but Warren had never quite had his moment. In the 80-plus years he’d been walking this earth, he’d been many things. He’d been a mill worker, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a friend, a hero, an active citizen, a Good Samaritan, and an all-around admirable human being.

But through all of it, Warren had never quite found his passion in life. He had worked a blue collar job because his family had depended on him, not because he was any great lover of the mill. Like so many men with familial responsibilities in his day, he had worked paycheck to paycheck to keep food on the table.

But he’d never found his real calling.

Not until this very moment.

And it was that knowledge, the knowledge of just how happy this was making him, that gave me the stamina to push through the exhaustion and made waiting on the increasingly-rowdy crowd worth ever second.

Even when someone called me ‘Honeybuns.”

“There’s something wrong with my glass,
honeybuns
,” a man with a handlebar mustache in a white tank top said to me, leaning across the bar and tapping on his glass.

I might have been more offended if I hadn’t been so distracted by the shade of the man’s bald head.

I swear, it made Rudolph’s nose pale in comparison.

Apparently, the man had never heard of a thing called sunscreen.

“What’s wrong with your glass?” I said, still trying to fulfill the last order.

“It’s got no beer!”

The man and his buddies started busting up like it was the funniest joke in the world. One of them started wheezing so bad, I thought for a second we’d have a medical emergency on our hands.

“Let me fix that,” I said, shaking my head silently to myself and grabbing him a fresh pint glass.

“That’d be right nice of you,” he said in a fake country twang. “I’d surely appreciate it.”

He leaned farther across the bar.

“Say,” he said, stretching the word out like it was a piece of taffy.

The smell of his bad breath practically knocked me off of my feet.

“What are you doing after your shift, honeybuns?”

I finished filling up the pint, feeling his eyes walking all over me. I pushed the beer toward him on a coaster.

“Going to see the Sheriff,” I said.

“Gonna report me?” he said. “‘Cuz you should. I’m a wanted man, you know. Wanted for
badassery
.”

He grinned.

“Naw,” I said. “I think I’d rather tell him how you keep calling me honeybuns. I’m pretty sure, him being my husband and all, the Sheriff won’t take too kindly to that.”

The message had finally gotten through the man’s thick skull, and he turned a shade of white while his buddies started wheezing and laughing like it was the second funniest joke in the world.

I backed away from the bar, leaving the fools to it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked the time.

The pub was set to close in half an hour.

Only thirty more minutes, I told myself.
Only thirty more
.

It didn’t sound like much, but with the way my feet were aching, thirty minutes might as well have been eight more hours.

I hobbled back over to the bar. The man with the mustache leaned forward again toward me. I was thinking about getting Warren to kick the gentleman out, but then I realized he wasn’t trying to come onto me again.

“Uh, ma’am,” he said, the tone of his voice sounding serious. “I didn’t mean to offend, if that’s what I did.”

I wondered about all the women he had probably said inappropriate, demeaning things to who never did get an apology. I knew that I was only getting one now because of who my husband was and the possible threat that the man in the tank top thought he might pose.

“Well, maybe you should—”

But before I could finish the sentence, I found that he’d stopped listening.

In fact, nobody was listening to anything I had to say.

A scream worthy of a dropping missile erupted from behind the brew house door.

Chapter 23

“No, no, no, no…”

I looked around the room feverishly, my eyes passing over the stunned and shocked faces.

He wasn’t there.

“No, no, no, no…”

The thing I had feared, the thing that crept into my thoughts in the early hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep, the thing that scared the living daylights out of me…

The thing that I knew would be inevitable one day.

The dreaded, horrible, awful
thing
had finally arrived.

Warren…

He was…

I jumped over the bar and pushed my way through the crowd, wrestling past the stunned and unmoving mass to get to the brew house. I ripped through the plastic dividing door, a fear wilder than anything I’d ever known coursing through my body at the thought of what was waiting for me behind the door.

Warren’s lifeless body
.

His heart, which had beaten so strongly in life, had finally given out.  

“No, no, no, no,” I whispered again in a hoarse and fearful voice.

I ran into the brew house, terrified of what awaited me there.  

And that’s when I saw the blood.

Chapter 24

I stared at the body, feeling absolutely nothing.

Every part of me was numb. As if I’d been bitten by a rattler. As if I’d just jumped into a freezing river. As if my true love had just told me to leave forever.

He held out his hands.

Blood
was all over them.

“Oh my…”

Warren just stared up at me with vacant, empty eyes.

“Somebody call 9-1-1!” a woman’s voice shouted.

But the voice sounded distant and faraway, like she was crying from the bottom of a lake, and the words only came out as bubbles breaking quietly atop placid waters.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

He just kept staring at me.

“Cinnamon?”

The woman’s voice came through louder, now. Loud enough to get my attention.

I looked at Aileen and her scared eyes.

It snapped me out of my daze.

I reached inside my apron pocket and pulled out my phone, dialing the three numbers with trembling fingers.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“Someone’s… someone needs help at Geronimo Brewing Company,” I said, the words coming out slower than syrup.

“We’ll have someone right over, ma’am. Can you tell me what happened?”

I shook my head.

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

I looked at Aileen.

“There’s blood
everywhere
.”

I felt my eyes grow damp.

“Who’s been hurt, ma’am?”

I swallowed hard, looking back at the dead elf lying on the cold concrete floor.

Then I looked at Warren’s bloody hands.

“His name is Rip,” I whispered. “Rip Lawrence. He’s…
dead
.”

Chapter 25

I pulled the aluminum blanket tighter around Warren’s frail body, wishing the hollow look in the old man’s eyes would leave.

I followed his empty gaze and watched as the paramedics carried the brewer’s lifeless body across the room and out the back door to the ambulance.

Nobody had declared anything official.

But it was obvious to all of us:

Rip Lawrence, Back Alley’s brewmaster and elf in this year’s annual Christmas River Fourth of July parade, was dead.