Caught in Christmas River Read online

  Caught in Christmas River

  Christmas River Cozy Mystery Novellas

  2 novellas, 1 bonus short story, and recipes!

  by

  Meg Muldoon

  Published by Vacant Lot Publishing

  Copyright 2018© 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)

  Menace in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 8)

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

  Meltdown in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Book 10)

  The Christmas River Cozy Mystery Novella Series

  Roasted in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery Novella (Book 1)

  Caught in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery Novella (Book 2)

  Crushed in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery Novella (Book 3)

  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 Cozy Mystery Series

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

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

  The Holly Hopewell Cozy Mystery Series

  The Silence of the Elves: A Holly Hopewell Cozy Mystery Series

  The Broomfield Bay Mystery Series (with Jools Sinclair)

  Ginger of the West: A Witches of Broomfield Bay Mystery (Book 1)

  Dedication

  Thanks so much to my readers, and in particular, to those of you who have joined my Cozy Lodge Club. You guys have been absolutely amazing and I can’t express how much I appreciate your encouragement, support, and motivation!

  I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to Phyllis May, Cheryl Shoup, Helen Edwards, Amanda C., Chip Capelli, Deborah James Troop, Carol Schmidt, Jill K. and Wendy K. I’m so grateful for your generosity, kindness, and enthusiasm for Christmas River!

  With love and gratitude, Meg.

  Caught in Christmas River

  by Meg Muldoon

  Table of Contents

  Mystery at Agate Inn: A Christmas Cozy Mystery Novella

  Raspberry Clafoutis Recipe

  Warren & The Sparks Lake Mystery: A Christmas Cozy Mystery Novella

  Tillamook Cheese Bread Recipe

  The Haunted Nutcracker: A Christmas River Cozy Mystery Short

  Mystery at Agate Inn

  A Christmas River Cozy Mystery Novella

  Recipe included!

  by

  Meg Muldoon

  Published by Vacant Lot Publishing

  Copyright 2018© 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.

  Mystery at Agate Inn

  by Meg Muldoon

  Chapter 1

  “Santa in South Beach, Daniel! Don’t ever scare me like that again!”

  My heart thundered in my chest like the pounding surf below and even though my eyes told me that my husband was perfectly safe on solid ground, the rest of me was slow to catch up. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, and my mouth was still drier than the twisted forms of driftwood on the beach in the distance.

  Daniel smiled big, pure mischief in his pale green eyes.

  “It’s not funny,” I said, raising my voice over the whipping wind. “I thought you’d really gone over the edge.”

  After five long hours of driving, both Daniel and I had gotten downright giddy once the sharp smell of saltwater drifted into the car. When the cobalt blue waters of the Pacific had finally come into view, we’d pulled over at the first vista point we saw to take in a good eyeful of the magnificent landscape.

  It had been so long since we’d been able to go on vacation together. And I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been at the ocean. Five hours wasn’t much in the big scheme of things, but when you ran your own pie shop, that kind of free time wasn’t all that plentiful. And with Daniel’s hectic work schedule at the Sheriff’s Office, both of us being able to take time off for vacation simultaneously was more or less an impossible dream.

  But here we were this June, having turned that dream into reality. Somehow both of us had managed to pull a fast one, taking off for a weekend to enjoy one of the prettiest spots in the whole state of Oregon: Agate Beach.

  Only the entire trip had nearly gone down the drain a moment earlier when Daniel peered over the cliff at the ocean, and then before my very eyes, disappeared out of view.

  I’d been convinced he’d slipped away. Until I saw his head bobbing a moment later on a perfectly safe ledge just below what had looked like the edge of the cliff. I hadn’t been able to see that ledge from my vantage point by the small tower viewer – and Daniel had been counting on that.

  He stalked over to me with a sheepish expression, the whipping coastal wind running through his hair. He put an arm around me, but I kept mine folded tight against my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I thought you’d get a kick out of it.”

  “Out of seeing my husband drop off a cliff into 55-degree water? Oh, yes. That would have been an absolute riot.”

  But I was smiling as I said it.

  Even for all of his tomfoolery, I found that I could never hold much of a grudge against Daniel Brightman.

  He laughed, kissing the top of my head.

  “You’re right. Sorry,” he said again. “But just look at all that beautiful ocean, Cin. I mean… it’s spectacular here.”

  I followed his gaze, looking out at the endless expanse of water frosted by moving ridges of white caps. The sky was a clean shade of misty blue – a true rarity on the Oregon Coast, even in the summer.

  It was a red carpet greeting and I suddenly felt so happy that we’d finally made it out here.

  After a long, long while, where it seemed like neither one of us was able to pull our eyes away from the beautiful views, I nudged him.

  “
Come on,” I said. “We better get to the inn.”

  He nodded, and we headed back to the car where Huckleberry and Chadwick were watching us anxiously from the back seat.

  “And for the record, I won’t be forgetting that little stunt you pulled anytime soon,” I added.

  “I’m not too worried,” he said, giving me a devilish smile. “I’ve got the entire weekend to make it up to you.”

  “Better bring your A-game. I’ve got a memory like an elephant.”

  “Oh, I’m bringing the whole alphabet, Mrs. Brightman. And then some.”

  Chapter 2

  Huckleberry and I climbed the steps of Agate Inn’s freshly-painted wrap-around porch. I peeled my eyes from the massive lighthouse a few hundred yards away and focused on the old woman rocking gently back and forth on the porch swing.

  She had a round face and jagged crow’s feet branched away from her eyes. Her hair was a salt and pepper gray and was braided down to her shoulders. She held an old-fashioned pipe up to her lips and puffs of smoke drifted around her. The smoke was tinged with the faint sweet aroma of vanilla bean.

  “Hi, there,” I said.

  Her stoic expression didn’t change in the least, and I wondered if she had heard me.

  I glanced back at Daniel. He was getting the suitcases out of the truck along with some cozy blankets we had brought and a pillow that I couldn’t seem to fall asleep without.

  I stopped at the top of the steps, clearing my throat.

  “Hi, there,” I said again, raising my voice much louder this time.

  She lifted her eyes at that and looked at me. She stood up with the help of a steel cane, then walked over slowly. The wrinkles on her face became more pronounced as her lips lifted into a hesitant smile.

  “Hi, young lady. Hope you weren’t standing there long. The winds out here have a way of distorting sound and making it hard to hear.”

  She reached a hand out.

  “Or maybe I just need to go see the ear doctor,” she added good-naturedly.

  I smiled, taking her hand and shaking it.

  “I’m Cinnamon,” I said.

  I nodded down to the car.

  “And that’s my husband, Daniel.”

  “You sure? He looks more like a porter than a husband.”

  I laughed, and she cracked a big, generous smile at that.

  “Well, it’s good to see. A man ought to carry his wife’s suitcase,” she said. “A sign of good character.”

  I nodded, trying to think of something witty to say back to that.

  I supposed that I’d improved on my small talk abilities over the years by running a pie shop. But I still wasn’t all that good at it sometimes. Especially when I was tired – like after a five-hour drive.

  But I hoped I’d snap out of it soon. This weekend promised to be nothing if not heavy on small-talk—

  “Hey! Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  A deep voice boomed from somewhere inside the stately inn, and I gulped hard.

  A moment later, a massive man in an orange hoody who looked like he could pick up a monster truck if he wanted to came marching out of the house, brushing right past me and Huckleberry, stomping down the steps of the porch.

  I watched in horror as he approached Daniel.

  “Just trying to check in for the weekend,” Daniel said in a cold, reserved tone. “That a crime around here?”

  “Depends on if you’ve got a reservation, son,” the beefy guy said, stepping closer to Daniel in an aggressive stance. “What’s your name?”

  Daniel dropped the bags and stood tall, facing the big man.

  “To tell you the truth, with the way you’re carrying on, I’m not all that keen to tell you what my name is. In fact, I’m not all that keen to stay here after this kind of mistreatment.”

  “I say good riddance,” the big man said. “We didn’t want your kind around here anyway.”

  The big man eyed Daniel for a long, long moment, his ham-sized fists curling up at his sides.

  Tension hung thick in the clear coastal air, and it seemed that at any minute, the innkeeper might just toss his arm back and let loose one of those fists right into the side of Daniel’s face.

  But then, after what had to have been one of the longest stare-downs in the history of stare-downs, the big man assaulted Daniel with a mammoth hug that caused the Sheriff of Pohly County to make an involuntary yelping sound as all the air was squished out of his lungs.

  “Brother!” the big man boomed, his voice causing the very floorboards of the porch to reverberate.

  A moment later, I could hear the muffled sounds of Daniel laughing.

  “Good to see you, man,” he choked out.

  I shook my head and glanced over at the old woman. She rolled her eyes, a thin smile on her lips. There was also a hint of something else on her face as she smiled – something I read as a subtle kind of pride.

  The big man let go of Daniel.

  “The road treat you all right?”

  “Great drive,” Daniel said, glancing up at me. “I mean, Cin and I ran into a little hiccup a mile or two down the road. I, uh, played a practical joke she didn’t take too kindly to. But we moved past it.”

  I let out a scoff.

  “That’s what he thinks.”

  The big man – whose name was Adam Colburn – turned and followed Daniel’s gaze up to the porch, settling on me for the first time.

  He grabbed one of the suitcases like it was packed with feathers and climbed up the steps toward me.

  “So good to finally meet you, Adam. Daniel’s told me so much about—”

  But before I could get that last part out, I, too, was suffocated in a massive hug of cotton fabric. All the air went out of my lungs.

  “Adam – you’re going to hurt her,” I heard the old woman rasp.

  After a long moment, Adam let go. He tapped my shoulders, a broad smile lighting up his face.

  “So this is the infamous pie lady of Christmas River, eh? Dan, you were holding out on me, man. You didn’t tell me your wife was this beautiful.”

  “I emailed you photos from our wedding, didn’t I?” Daniel said, coming to the top of the steps.

  “Yeah, but they didn’t do her justice, either.”

  I smiled, blushing a little.

  Adam Colburn was one of Daniel’s longtime friends from when he was on the Fresno Police force. The two of them had been partners a little while before Daniel left, and friends for even longer than that. They’d both been in the police academy together, immediately taking a liking to each other as they shared a mutual sense of humor.

  Though we had invited Adam to the wedding a few years earlier, he hadn’t been able to make it because his father had fallen ill that December. And though Daniel had had plans of making it down to Fresno at some point in the last few years to visit Adam, the trip never materialized. It seemed that something always came up when you were the sheriff of a small county, and it was hard to get away.

  But when Adam had called around Christmastime this past year, saying he was leaving the force to open up a B & B at the Oregon Coast and that he wanted us to come for the grand opening in June, Daniel and I made sure to clear our calendars so we could be here.

  “Cin, Daniel – I want to introduce you guys to my ‘ol ma, Betty. She moved out here from Hawaii to live with us.”

  “I told you, Adam, I don’t like you calling me that,” the old woman said, smiling a little. “Call me ma, or call me old. Just don’t call me ‘ol ma.”

  Adam let out a throaty chuckle.

  I nodded kindly at the old woman who I had already surmised was Adam’s mother. Daniel shook Betty’s hand, clasping his other hand over hers in a tender sort of way.

  “Nice finally meeting you, Betty,” Daniel said. “It’s been a long time coming.”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Yes it has, Dan. Yes it has.”

  “You must be a saint, putting up with this clown here all thes
e years,” Daniel said, nodding at his friend.

  Adam curled up his fist and let loose what I hoped was a gentle punch into Daniel’s ribs.

  “Hey!” Daniel yelped. “Just calling it like I see it, man.”

  Adam laughed again. Then he draped his arms around both of our shoulders and nudged us inside the inn.

  “C’mon, you two. Let’s get out of this wind. There’s someone else I want you to meet.”

  Chapter 3

  Maybe if I wasn’t a pie baker, I wouldn’t have noticed the hardly detectable look of stress on Angelica Colburn’s face when I met her a few minutes later in the impressive kitchen of the Agate Inn Bed & Breakfast.

  But as it was, I could easily recognize that kind of stress, the reason being that I knew a thing or two about running and operating a kitchen.

  “I’m so glad you guys are here,” Angelica said, wiping her hands off on her curve-hugging apron. “Adam has told me so much about Daniel.”

  She looked back at me.

  “I mean, not that he hasn’t said anything about you, Cinnamon. It’s just that, well, he hadn’t met you yet. But he said that if Daniel married you, then he knew you had to be just so great because…”

  She started rambling nervously, stopping only when I smiled and politely interrupted.

  “It’s great meeting you, too, Angelica,” I said.

  I was surprised to see how young she was. Daniel had told me that Adam’s new wife was more than a decade younger than he was, and she definitely looked it: Angelica couldn’t have been more than 25. She was tall and her slender figure was a complete foil to Adam’s football player frame. Her blond hair was piled up high in a ragged, sumo wrestler-style bun that was popular with a lot of young women today. I noticed, too, that she wore a lot of heavy makeup, her long eyelashes practically bending under the weight of a shiny black coat of mascara.