Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (9 page)

They’d pulled a dead man out of those woods.

Who was he?

And how did he end up in the woods behind my shop?

Had he died of hypothermia? Was he homeless? Did he trip and fall and hit his head? 

The strange feelings of the dreams came back to me. An unsettled feeling that I just couldn’t shake. Like the way I sometimes felt before a late afternoon mountain thunderstorm during the summer.

“Get it together, Cinnamon,” I said, looking at my reflection in the window pane.

I was looking pale and shaky and tired and older than I would have liked.

I needed a vacation. I needed two tickets to Maui. I needed to feel the sun on face, a warm breeze in my hair. I needed a break.

But I had to push those thoughts aside for now. I had to focus on getting through the season, and more than that, I had to focus on what would get me all of those things I wanted.

The Gingerbread Junction Competition.

I had to forget everything else and focus on what I was good at.

Which was building award-winning gingerbread houses, kicking ass, and taking names.

Making Bailey Jackson sorry she ever entered the contest. 

Making her sorry she ever wronged me.

I looked at my reflection and changed my expression of worry into one of determination.

I nodded.

Then, I preheated the oven.

Chapter 21

Kara came over at around 9:30 a.m. with two peppermint mochas and a worried expression her face.

By that time, I had baked the day’s pies and already built the second and third story of the gingerbread house.

“Did you lose your phone or something?” she asked, stomping loudly into the kitchen.

“What?” I said.

“I’m just asking because I figured the only reason you wouldn’t call your best friend about a dead body being found in the woods back there would be because you lost your phone. I mean, that’s gotta be the only possible explanation, right? Some best friends might even think that excuse wasn’t good enough, but you know, I’m a pretty forgiving person…”

I wiped the sweat from my brow that had accumulated from a long morning of opening and closing hot ovens and precariously balancing cookie panels on one another.

I looked up at a Kara. She was pissed off. That much was obvious, but she was also worried.

“Word’s gotten out?”

“Are you kidding?” she said, shoving the mocha into my hand. “It’s the biggest news to hit Christmas River since that tourist accidently stepped out in front of a car two years ago and almost died.”

“Small town living,” I said.

“That’s right. But I don’t see why I had to find out about the dead body in your backyard from Moira Steward instead of you.”

“He wasn’t found in my backyard,” I said, looking up. “And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t get a chance to. I barely made it home yesterday before I passed out from shock.”

“Well, a text message would have sufficed,” she said.

I took a sip of the mocha. It was rich and comforting, just like Kara knew it would be.

“Well, I’m sorry,” I said, knowing that we wouldn’t be able to move past it until she heard me say it. “Yesterday was just a... damn mess.”

I sighed. That pissed-off expression on Kara’s face disappeared, and only worry was left.

“And I just… I’m just trying to get myself back on track, you know what I mean? I can’t think too much about the dead body or Bailey entering the contest, or telling John that it’s never gonna work between us, because if I do, then I’m just going to freak out and turn into Cinnamon Peters’ best impression of a beet salad," I said. “Which I can’t let happen if we’re going to be the Gingerbread Junction champions this weekend, all right?”

Kara was quiet a moment. I went back to placing a gingerbread panel on the third story. Just as I set it where it needed to be, the cookie cracked in my stressed hands.

“Crap,” I mumbled, throwing it aside.

“Wait a second,” Kara said. “What was that you said about John?”

I smiled, amused.

Of course Kara would want to know that first, even before I told her more about the dead body. 

“That’s the least of my worries right now,” I said.

“But something must have made you decide that—”

“Does anyone know whose dead body they found in my backyard?” I said, interrupting her. “Being that the whole town knows now?”

She hesitated for a moment and then shrugged.

“Not that I’ve heard,” she said, taking a sip of her mocha. “Moira thinks it’s a homeless man or a meth head who wandered out of the backwoods and froze to death. But you know Moira. She’s been paranoid that she’s gonna get robbed by some derelict character from those woods for years.”

I started piping some decorative frosting onto the gingerbread windows. On a different day, that crack about Moira being a paranoid old lady might have made me laugh. But I wasn’t in much of a mood for laughing this morning.

Kara placed her cup down on the kitchen island and came over to me, placing a hand on my shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, looking at me with a worried look that made me feel like I was acting insane.

“Just dandy,” I said.

Suddenly, I heard the front door bell jingle. A gust of wind blew back through the kitchen.

I placed the pastry bag down and wiped my hands off on my apron.

“I’ve got to help a customer,” I said.

“Wait, Cin,” Kara said. “They can wait a minute. Let’s finish talking.”

“I don’t need to talk,” I said. “I just need to forget.”

“Cinnamon?” A man’s voice said from the front.

Kara looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

Knowing right away that it wasn’t John’s voice.

“Yeah,” I yelled. “I’m back here, Daniel.”

Kara’s eyebrows were just about through the roof by now.

I heard his boots against the tile floor, and then he came through the back door.

He took off his cowboy hat, and revealed his clean cut hair and beardless face that even after everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, still kind of made my breath catch in my throat.  

I felt immediately better seeing him. It was a gut reaction that I had no control over.

“Well,” Kara said, a dumbfounded look on her face. “I’ll be. You’ve really been holding out on me, haven’t you Cin?”

She went silent, even though she looked as though there were more things she wanted to say. She was giving Daniel the once over.

Daniel looked at her, and then back to me.

“You don’t remember me at all, do you Daniel?” Kara said.

Daniel had that look on his face—the same one that he had when I called him by his name and drove away. That look people get when they realize that someone else knows them, but they don’t know that someone. That unsettled look.

He cleared his throat.

“Uh, no. I’m sorry to say I don’t.”

“Don’t take it personal,” I said to Kara. “He didn’t remember me either.”

I looked at him and smiled, and he grinned sheepishly back.

“Kara,” she said. “Kara Carmichael. U.S. Government and Politics? Ring a bell? You sat right next to me for half the year.”

Daniel thought about it some, and then his eyes brightened.

“That’s right,” he said. “With old Mr. Stevenson. How could I forget?”

“Well, what happened to you?” Kara said. “You just disappeared our sophomore year without so much as a word, breaking Cin’s heart without even calling.”

If I wasn’t already hot and sweaty from a morning of baking, I was now.

“She’s just being dramatic,” I said, shaking my head at him, and then shooting Kara a dirty look. “You didn’t break my heart or anything.”

“Now you’re just being dishonest,” Kara said, devilishly. “Remember? I was the one holding your hand while you cri—”

“I’m sorry to just barge in here like this,” Daniel said, interrupting Kara. I breathed a sigh of relief. “But I need to talk to you, Cinnamon, if you can spare a minute.”

He looked at me intently, his eyes filled with some sort of urgency I didn’t quite understand.

Kara threw her hands up.

“By all means,” she said. “I was just gonna leave.”

“No need for that,” I said. “We’ll step outside. If that’s okay with you, Daniel? I could use the fresh air.”

“Sure,” he said.

I took off my apron, and he held the back door open for me.

We stood outside on the back steps where the empty pie tins remained wedged in the snow. We stood in the frosty air, looking out into the shadowy woods where ribbons of yellow tape were still strung across trees, marking the scene of where I had found the dead man.

Chapter 22

“That old timer’s gotta be a handful,” Daniel said.

I laughed, the frosty air feeling sharp and good in my lungs at the same time.

“Warren isn’t the most forgiving person, I’m afraid,” I said.

“Can’t say that I don’t deserve it, though,” Daniel said. “If I hurt you then, you don’t know how sorry I am. I was in a dark place for a while. There was no light for a long, long time after my brother…”

“You had a good reason for it,” I said. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not really,” he said, sighing. “Your grandfather’s right. I was a real jackass to you.”

“Yep,” I said. “Definitely sounds like Warren. Thanks for driving him home last night, by the way.”

“Well, I’d say it was a pleasure, but I’d be telling lies just to get on your good side.”

I smiled. Warren hadn’t ever gotten along very well with Evan. I’d always thought it was just him that Warren didn’t like, but maybe it was anybody I dated. Warren was like a father in many ways. No one was ever good enough for his little girl.

“So how are you dealing with all this?” Daniel asked, nodding out to the woods where one of the strips of yellow tape had broken loose and was flying like a flag in the wind.

“I’m fine,” I said, feeling that rigid expression settle on my face. “I don’t come across dead bodies every day, you know. But I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?” Daniel asked.

I was sick of being asked that question.

“Of course.”

“Because I’ve got a few things I’ve got to tell you about,” he said. “And I want to make sure you’re okay with this conversation before it begins.”

“Tell me what?” I said, looking at him, confused.

He took a breath and leaned his foot against the wooden railing.

“The body you found out there?” he said.

I nodded.

“It was somebody you knew.”

My mouth went dry. I felt the blood drain out of my face.

My mind raced with every possibility. 

“His name was Mason Barstow,” Daniel said, looking at me. “He was a judge for the Gingerbread Junction contest.”

My jaw nearly came unhinged.

All that talk from Kara about the dead man probably being homeless or a druggie who wandered too far away from his meth lab made me think it could have been true.

But Mason Barstow? The Gingerbread Junction judge of almost ten years who spent most of the year in a vacation home in Arizona, who came back to Christmas River every year just to judge the contest, who wore designer clothes and jackets and stuck out like a sore thumb in a former logging town, who was stodgy and harsh, and who was particularly harsh when it came to my gingerbread houses, it seemed.

What was he doing in the woods back there?

Mason wasn’t the type to take nature walks. He would’ve been too afraid the trails would scuff up his plush leather shoes.

So how did he end up there?

And how did he end up dead?

A sudden gust of wind ran through the pines and shook my back door wind chime. I shivered.

“Do you want to go inside?” Daniel asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s better out here,” I said.

“Well take my coat at least,” he said, taking off the buffalo plaid coat and draping it over my arms. The second time in less than 24 hours.

I tried to say no, but it felt too nice to return it.

“Did you know him very well?” Daniel asked, shoving his hands in his jean pockets.

“No, I…” I stopped mid-sentence, struck by a thought.

Why was Daniel telling me this? How had he known about Mason Barstow?

It was something in his tone when he had asked me if I knew Mason well.

It wasn’t just friendly concern. No. There was more to it.

“What’s going on, Daniel?” I asked, looking back at him, catching those green eyes.

He pulled at a leather string on his cowboy hat, averting his eyes.

“We never got around to talking about what I did before I came back here,” he said.

“No,” I said. “We never did.”

He took a breath.

“Well, Cinnamon, I’m a cop,” he said. “Or, I was before I left my job.”

A cop.

Things were beginning to make sense now. This wasn’t just a friendly social call.

I cleared my throat and looked at him.

“And you’re working with the local police on this? Is that right?”

He didn’t meet my gaze.

“I should have told you earlier,” he said. “Last night, Sheriff Trumbow asked me to help out with the investigation. I was a lieutenant back with the department in Fresno.”

“I see,” I said.

I wasn’t sure why, but I immediately felt anger. For some reason, I felt deceived. It was innocent enough—given Daniel’s background—that they’d ask him to help out. But I felt like somehow, he hadn’t been honest with me. And I felt foolish thinking that he had stopped by to see how I was doing.

“Well, did Sheriff Trumbow say what happened to Mason?” I said, trying not to sound bitter.

“You’re angry with me,” Daniel said, cutting through my poor attempts at covering up my feelings.

“I’m not,” I lied. “You’re just trying to help out. Why would that make me angry?”

“Because you didn’t know that about me, and you probably feel like I’ve been dishonest,” he said. “But I haven’t been dishonest about everything, Cinnamon. You know that, right?”

He leaned in toward me.

“Right?” he said, looking directly into my eyes.

I held his stare and then shrugged and looked away. Playing it cool, even though I definitely didn’t feel that way.