Menace in Christmas River (Christmas River 8) Read online

  Menace in Christmas River

  A Christmas Cozy Mystery

  by

  Meg Muldoon

  Published by Vacant Lot Publishing

  Copyright 2016© by Meg Muldoon

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance whatsoever to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Meg Muldoon Collection

  The Christmas River Cozy Mystery Series

  Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 1)

  Mayhem in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 2)

  Madness in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 3)

  Malice in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 4)

  Mischief in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 5)

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

  Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 7)

  Roasted in Christmas River: A Thanksgiving Cozy Mystery Novella

  The Cozy Matchmaker Mystery Series

  Burned in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Book 1)

  Busted in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Book 2)

  The Dog Town USA Mystery Series

  Mutts & Murder: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery (Book 1)

  Coming Soon to Amazon

  Bulldogs & Bullets: A Dog Town USA Cozy Mystery(Book 2)

  Ginger of the West: A Broomfield Bay Cozy Mystery (Book 1) (with Jools Sinclair)

  Missing in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 9)

  Menace in Christmas River

  by Meg Muldoon

  Prologue

  She could apologize all she wanted to.

  She could pout and cry and sob and tell him that she still cared about him. Tell him that she hadn’t meant to rip his heart out like a butcher discarding an undesirable cut of meat. That she hadn’t meant to feed that still-beating heart to the dogs for everyone to see.

  She could play the part of the sorry, remorseful ex.

  It wouldn’t change what happened.

  It wouldn’t change the last fifteen years, either.

  She was a bad actress.

  He stepped out from beneath the covered area and out onto the ice, as if daring it to bring him down.

  At times like this, he wished he smoked. Wished he could afford to burn and incinerate the things that had given him his livelihood. Wished that he could be left alone to sulk and smoke and think his sour thoughts uninterrupted.

  But nobody here would let him have so much as a moment to himself.

  And now, he was stuck in this place. Stranded. With all of them.

  He tilted his head up to the tombstone-grey sky, sucking in a deep breath of bitter, frosty mountain air, feeling the chunks of ice ping against his face.

  Sometimes he wondered whether she had ever truly loved him. Countless times, he’d awakened in the middle of the night, panicked, fearing that she hadn’t. Fearing that she’d been just as bad of an actress back then as she was now. Only he’d been blind to it then.

  The thought terrified him. Because if she hadn’t really loved him, then it meant that nobody had. Ever.

  They threw themselves at him. They shouted for him. They claimed all they wanted was him.

  But none of them really loved him. Not the real him.

  Only she had.

  But then, maybe not even her.

  The ice showering down from the cruel sky was as cold as the dead space where his heart used to be.

  Dead space that still somehow ached.A phantom pain that radiated out from the void, like a six-headed monster that just wouldn’t die.

  Nothing had been able to fill it, either. Not fame or fortune or glory.

  Nothing had—

  “Cliff?”

  There they were again. Wanting something. Always wanting something from him.

  Please… just leave me alone!

  He never knew what hit him.

  Chapter 1

  “Damn you, Cupid!” I muttered as the delicate chocolate wings broke apart in my hands. “Damn you and your stupid arrow, too!”

  The inflection of my voice rose as the three-dimensional chocolate cupid, which I had attempted to embellish with wings, collapsed altogether beneath my firm grip.

  “Oh, for the love of Eros!”

  For a few seconds, I just stood there, dumbstruck – completely stunned that not only had I just destroyed Cupid, but that I had destroyed him… yet again.

  I leaned my head back, looking up at the ceiling. Then I let out a long, long groan.

  The chocolate gods were punishing me. Though how I had ever ended up on their bad side in the first place was anybody’s guess.

  It was the third time that my endeavor to make a large, elegant and whimsical cupid sculpture out of marbled chocolate had ended up in a pile of unrecognizable broken hunks and shards. That alone was frustrating. But what made it even worse was the fact that I couldn’t afford such mishaps at this stage. The annual Valentine’s Day Chocolate Championship Showdown, the first one that Christmas River had ever hosted, was in less than four days. And if things continued like they were, then I’d be going to the competition this year with nothing but melted chocolate all over my hands.

  I tossed the broken pieces down on the marble counter and stifled another frustrated sigh. Then I folded my arms and went over to the window in an effort to regain my cool.

  Outside, the light spilling from the kitchen cast ghostly, ominous shadows on the forest floor as the trees swayed in a stiff February wind. A light layer of frost was starting to form on the branches, and though it was cold outside, it wasn’t anywhere near as cold as it could be this time of year. In fact, the past few weeks had been quite mild. Blue skies, temperatures in the high fifties during the day, and not a single snowflake… it had been unusual weather for February in Central Oregon.

  After a moment, I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in the window pane.

  My dark brown hair was tossed up high in a messy bun. My eyeliner had smeared, giving me a distinct raccoony look. And beneath my haphazardly-tied apron, I had misaligned the buttons on my cardigan.

  I shook my head silently at myself.

  I looked like the very definition of a woman who was in over her head.

  Why had I thought the Chocolate Championship Showdown would be as easy as The Gingerbread Junction? Why had I thought that little ol’ Cinnamon Peters – a self-taught baker with absolutely zero professional pastry training or expertise – could possibly compete with some of the best pastry chefs on the West Coast?

  Sure, when it came to cookie houses and marzipan and the occasional sugar sculpture, I could compete with the best of them. And not only that, but I could win in most cases. I had done just that at this past December’s Gingerbread Junction, where, like most years, I’d crushed the competition.

  But building art pieces out of chocolate… now that was an entirely different beast altogether.

  Unlike hard sheets of cookie, chocolate was volatile, difficult to work with, and wholly unforgiving if the temperature was so much as half
a degree off. In addition, the liquid stuff was messy, and it rebelled against the warm temperatures in my pie shop kitchen.

  And while I had heard warnings about working with chocolate before entering in this February’s grandiose competition, I’d been foolish enough to think that it couldn’t be any more difficult than working with cookie dough and frosting.

  Only now, mere days before the Championship, did I realize how foolish and overambitious I had been.

  The last Gingerbread Junction win must have inflated my head to the size of a small planet for me to think that I’d be able to have a breath of a chance at competing in the Chocolate Championship Showdo—

  “Ms. Peters?”

  Startled, I glanced over my shoulder to find that there were more than just regrets and feelings of stupidity here in the kitchen with me.

  A petite woman with a youthful face and eyes that were almost too big for it, stood in the doorway separating the dining room from the kitchen.

  I shot a quick glance at the clock on the wall.

  It was half past six, darker than a tar pit outside, and we’d sold out of every tin of Apple Whiskey, Chocolate Hazelnut, Cranberry Lime, Lemon Ginger, Mocha Chestnut, Pumpkin Gingersnap, Hubba Hubba Hazelnut Chocolate Cherry, and Moonshine Bourbon pie in the house hours ago.

  The young woman shouldn’t have been standing there, as the front door to the shop should have been locked when we’d closed. But I supposed in the hectic frenzy of the last few hours, I had clear forgotten to lock up.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my chocolate-stained hands off on my old apron. “I’m afraid I’m fresh out of pie for the evening. But if you come back first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll be sure to have whatever flavor you’d like in a pink box with your name on it. On the house, too.”

  I wasn’t the type who liked to say no to people. It just wasn’t in my nature. Whenever folks wandered in near or after closing time, I did my best to accommodate them with whatever I had on hand, even if it was with just a sliver of leftover pie and the last little bit of coffee in the pot. But tonight, I had far too much to do and so little time to be doing it in, to accommodate folks who wandered into my shop after hours.

  Namely, I had to make sure that I didn’t make a complete fool of myself in front of some of the top pastry chefs on the West Coast at this weekend’s Chocolate Championship Showdown.

  “But if you’d like a cup of coffee or tea, I can offer you that,” I said to the young woman, realizing that even though I knew I should, I just couldn’t turn somebody away outright.

  And anyway, something about the stranger made me feel kind of sorry for her for some reason, though I couldn’t say exactly why. She was short and small-boned, and below her oversized bulky coat, a skirt that was slightly too long for her short legs peeked out. She had a thin nose and thin mouth, which only made those big deer-in-the-headlights eyes of hers more out of proportion with the rest of her face.

  She wore her stringy blond hair in a high, tightly-wound bun, and she had a look about her of an overworked young professional – the kind that was more commonly seen in big cities. You didn’t often see those types in a small, easygoing town like Christmas River.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, smiling a taut smile. “But I’m not actually here for pie or coffee.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise as she stepped farther into the space, her uncomfortable-looking heels hitting the kitchen’s new tile floor with purpose.

  “You see, my name is Holly Smith,” she said, walking toward me with an outstretched hand. “I’m Julie Van Dorn’s assistant. She’s the public relations director and events coordinator for the Chocolate Championship Showdown.”

  I felt my stomach tighten slightly.

  “Sure,” I said. “I know Julie.”

  I looked down at my chocolate-covered hands, and then held them out in a sheepish kind of way so she wouldn’t think that I was being rude by not shaking hands.

  “I’m sorry – you’ve caught me at a… uh… well, at a messy moment.”

  A big smile lit up her face.

  “That’s perfectly okay,” she said, lowering her outstretched hand.

  Her eyes drifted over to the pile of chocolate that a few moments earlier had been a half-completed chocolate cupid.

  “I understand,” she added.

  I wondered if she could tell that I was in over my head, too.

  “How, uh, how can I help you, Ms. Smith?” I asked.

  “Well, Julie Van Dorn sent me to ask you to attend the Chocolate Championship Showdown Committee’s meeting tonight,” she said.

  “Me?” I said, having trouble concealing my surprise. “Uh… was something wrong with my application?”

  The application to enter the Chocolate Championship had been about three times as long as the Gingerbread Junction’s usual entry form. It had required not only a written essay, but a resume as well with references. Part of the reason that the application was so intensive was because the competition was a very established and well-known event in the professional culinary world. Each year, the chocolate artistry affair was held at a different location on the West Coast, favoring big cities as well as small towns. Somehow, someone on the committee had caught wind of little ol’ charming Christmas River, and our quaint town had been notified last year that it had been selected to host the event.

  In the year since, the local culinary institute, which had been in the process of constructing a new, state-of-the-art auditorium, completed the building and the Chocolate Championship Showdown would be the first large-scale event to take place there.

  The top prize for the championship matched the application process: it was epic. The winner would receive $5000, two plane tickets to Paris, and would have their chocolate artistry featured in a popular regional food and travel magazine.

  It was just about as high-stakes as a culinary competition could get.

  “I’m not at liberty to tell you why the committee wants to see you, Ms. Peters,” the young woman said. “But the committee would be very grateful if you could attend tonight’s meeting. It’s going to be held in a conference room at the Lone Pine Resort.”

  “The Lone Pine Resort?” I asked, unable to hide my surprise, yet again. “Tonight?”

  She nodded.

  The resort was a twenty minutes’ drive from downtown Christmas River, and was nestled up in the mountains not far from some of the Cascades’ best skiing spots. It was practically brand new, having only been built last year. And while I hadn’t been up to see it myself, I did know that it cost an arm and a leg to stay there, and that folks in Christmas River were divided over its presence. Some thought it could only bring good things to our little economy, while others believed having a resort that upscale only brought in more wealthy, arrogant, and obnoxious tourists.

  But since I hadn’t seen the place for myself, I hadn’t decided one way or another about it.

  I searched Holly Smith’s bright and earnest blue eyes for a hint as to what she knew, but they betrayed nothing.

  “Well, I won’t lie to you,” I said. “I’m not particularly keen on driving up there at night without knowing why I’m going in the first—”

  “I can drive you if that’s the issue, Ms. Peters,” she said, interrupting me.

  It wasn’t the only issue. The other part had to do with the fact that I’d be losing valuable time, and that wasn’t something I could afford if I was going to save any face at this weekend’s competition.

  But I couldn’t deny that something about her persistence intrigued me.

  “The meeting starts in an hour and will be held in the Holiday Brook Room of the resort,” she said.

  There was a sudden bossiness in her tone that I didn’t much care for it.

  But then, as if realizing she had overstepped a line, she cleared her throat and shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I can be a little rude when I’m under pressure like this.”

  She
drew in a sharp breath.

  “Ms. Peters, my mother always told me that when opportunity knocks, don’t leave it waiting long. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

  I didn’t. Not in relation to this situation.

  “Would you like a ride up there?” she offered again.

  “No thank you,” I said.

  I preferred to drive myself up so I was free to leave the moment I wanted to.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Just… just please be there. Ms. Van Dorn wants you to know that it’s quite important.”

  There was a strange sense of urgency in her voice when she said that.

  I watched her exit through the dividing door, utterly confused.

  Opportunity? What opportunity?

  A moment later, the front door jingle rang as she left, followed by a cold blast of February air that wound its way back through the kitchen.

  I looked down at the counter that held the broken and battered chocolate remnants of Cupid, and let out a sigh.

  I supposed the next chocolate catastrophe could wait a couple of hours.

  Chapter 2

  The streets of Christmas River were as devoid of people as a mining town after the silver had run out. And it was about as dark as an abandoned mining town, too, for that matter.

  Though Christmas River purported to keep the holiday spirit burning 365 days a year, it couldn’t be denied that a certain hangover atmosphere fell over the small town in the months of January and February, much the way it did in other parts of the country. With most of the Christmas tourists long gone, and with the short days and long nights, the place felt almost as want of Christmas Spirit as any other town in February. Because it was Christmas River, plenty of folks left their Christmas lights up year round. But rarely did the homeowners or shopkeepers turn them on anymore, generally electing to resume the tradition only when the tourists returned in the summer.