Menace in Christmas River (Christmas River 8) Read online

  “I’ve got an ambulance on the way,” Daniel said. “Should be here any minute”

  I bit my lip and looked away out into the storm.

  I could barely see five feet beyond the covered veranda through the swirling ice.

  I wasn’t any doctor either.

  But I knew in my very bones that if we didn’t get Cliff Copperstone to the hospital soon, then the Chocolate Championship was going to be the least of the day’s casualties.

  Chapter 26

  Daniel’s boots hit the ground in heavy restless steps behind me as he paced nervously on the thin strip of snowless concrete. Behind him, the muffled and hushed noises of a gathering crowd echoed against the auditorium’s brick wall.

  Bits and pieces of the conversations drifted toward me, carried by the stiff, icy wind.

  “That’s him! That’s Cliff Copperstone lying there.”

  “He must have slipped on some ice.”

  “How bad do you think it is?”

  “Have you ever seen a storm like this in all your life? You can’t even see the cars under all that snow!”

  “The weather station didn’t say it was going to be this bad.”

  “Is he going to live?”

  “I don’t even have snow tires.”

  “How are any of us going to get out of here?”

  I was still holding onto Cliff’s hand. Even though Daniel had tried to get me to go back inside to where it was warm, I had refused to leave, though I couldn’t exactly say why. I guess something about the man bleeding out here alone in the cold, bitter snowstorm and in need of help had erased whatever negative feelings I had about Cliff. Or at the very least, put them on hold for a while.

  I realized that it wouldn’t have mattered who it was – a complete stranger or my very best friend in the world. I would have been kneeling here in the ice, holding their hand, waiting for the ambulance to arrive alongside them, no matter what.

  But we’d been out here longer than we should have been – that ambulance was ten minutes late now, with no word as to the reason.

  And I knew I wasn’t the only one beginning to worry.

  I pulled Daniel’s jacket tighter around me with my free hand, the one he had draped over my shoulders after realizing I wasn’t going to budge.

  I was shivering hard now. So hard that it was taking all my might to keep my teeth from chattering together like a pair of castanets.

  I lifted my eyes, searching the vast white expanse that had once been the auditorium’s parking lot.

  There were no red lights. No blue lights. No sirens.

  Not a single sound except for the howling of the wind and the folks whispering in hushed and worried voices behind me.

  “Sheriff Brightman? Over.”

  A voice suddenly cracked through Daniel’s radio speaker.

  “This is the Sheriff. Over,” he said, walking away quickly, out of the hearing range of the crowd.

  I watched him as he held the speaker closer to his ear. I was unable to make out anything other than the intermittenent sounds of static and the mumbling of the operator.

  But I didn’t need to.

  The sudden, grave expression on Daniel’s face said it all.

  I dropped my head, looking back down at Cliff.

  A moment later, I heard Daniel’s heavy boots approach.

  “That was dispatch,” he said, raising his voice over the wind. “The ambulance skidded off the road and into a ditch on its way over here. Everyone onboard is okay, but…”

  He looked at me, and then at Lacey , who was kneeling on the other side of Cliff.

  “All the ambulances are presently engaged with other emergencies. Which means we can’t rely on the paramedics getting here anytime soon,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and let out a sharp breath.

  It was what I had feared.

  That the storm had turned the roads into hockey rinks.

  “Okay,” I said, quietly. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

  And I knew suddenly by the serious look on Daniel’s face what that plan would entail.

  “I’m going to take him in,” he said.

  He looked at the young med student.

  “Lacey, I would appreciate it if you could come too to monitor him on the way over.”

  She gave a sharp nod without hesitation.

  “You’re going to drive him to the hospital?” I said. “Through this storm. On those roads? Daniel, that’s—”

  “Our only option,” he said, cutting me off.

  “But there’s got to be—”

  “No,” he said again. “There’s not. And we’ve got to move. And soon. Mr. Copperstone can’t spare the time.”

  “But if an ambulance couldn’t get through, how’s your truck going to fare any better, Daniel?”

  I resented myself for having asked the question. He already knew the odds and the danger that awaited him out on those roads. And reiterating it didn’t help a damn thing.

  I let go of Cliff’s hand and pulled myself to my feet. I stood up, facing Daniel.

  “Look, if you’re set on going, then I’m coming with you, too,” I said. “I’m not just going to wait here and…”

  I stopped speaking as my teeth did a tap dance performance.

  Daniel pulled his jacket tighter around my shoulders and looked down at me with placid, calm eyes.

  “Cin, you’re not going anywhere,” he said.

  “But—”

  “Cin – we don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “I need you to stay here.”

  “But why?”

  He looked over my head, back at the crowd of people.

  Then he lowered his voice.

  “You’ve got to help keep things calm here,” he said. “Some folks are gonna try and go out in this mess to get home, but a lot of them will stay and wait it out until the roads look better. You’ve got to make sure panic doesn’t break out, you understand?”

  I knew it was rational for me to stay behind. With Daniel gone, there would be no law enforcement. The closest thing we had to authority would be Councilwoman Eleanor Tunstall and Julie Van Dorn. And while Eleanor could be trusted in a crisis, I didn’t exactly trust Julie to step up and do the right thing if it came down to it.

  I knew he was right.

  But the thought of Daniel going out into the storm, with such treacherous road conditions, and with just a first year med student to help him, didn’t sit well with me.

  “Daniel, I—”

  “Look,” he said in a hushed voice. “It’s more important than you know that you stay here.”

  I gave him a questioning look.

  “What do you mean—”

  “I can’t be sure – it’s just a gut feeling. But Cin… Cin, I don’t think Cliff Copperstone slipped on the ice out here and hit his head,” he said. “That wound of his looks like something more to me. You understand what I’m saying?”

  I furrowed my brow, pausing for a quick moment.

  “No, I—”

  “I think somebody did this to him, Cin. Somebody hit him with something and left him here to die. I can’t be sure, but something about all this just doesn’t seem like an accident to me.”

  I felt myself inhale sharply, sucking in frigid air.

  He gazed deep into my eyes.

  “I need you to keep an eye on things,” he said. “But don’t do anything rash, all right? Just… observe. Can you do that for me?”

  The words froze in my throat.

  I finally looked up into Daniel’s eyes, and nodded.

  He squeezed my shoulder.

  “After I get Cliff to the hospital, I’ll come back for you, Cin. And we’re all gonna get out of this just fine,” he said. “Okay? Just fine.”

  A hurricane-strength gust howled into us.

  “Promise me,” I said.

  He placed a hand to my face.

  “I promise.”

  I hugged him hard, wanting to believe that promise more than anythin
g.

  Chapter 27

  “You know that Daniel’s an expert winter driver, Cin,” Kara said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “He’s going to make it to the hospital just fine. You’ll see.”

  I watched from the hallway window as the truck’s high beams disappeared into the white wall of snow, and I closed my eyes and internally said a prayer as they did. Praying that it wasn’t too late for Cliff. That he and Daniel and the young med student would all be safe. That what Daniel had said earlier to me would be true – that by tomorrow morning, we all would hardly remember any of this.

  Kara squeezed my shoulder reassuringly, and we just stood there at the window for a long moment, staring into nothing.

  Then, when I decided that the high beams had truly disappeared into the white expanse, I finally pulled out the photo that Cliff had slipped into my hand just after we’d gotten him into Daniel’s truck.

  I gazed down at the weathered, wrinkled picture in the winter twilight, feeling the bumpy paper between my fingers.

  I knew the photo – I’d seen it before. It was the same one that Cliff had kept in his wallet. The one that had come tumbling out onto the floor of the resort hallway last night.

  The one of the blond woman standing on the bridge, smiling.

  “What’s that?” Kara said, looking down at the picture in my hands.

  “It’s something Cliff gave me before they left just now,” I said.

  She furrowed her brow in confusion.

  I looked back down at the paper.

  I didn’t know whether it was because this was the second time I was looking at it, or if there was something more to it. But the woman in the photograph suddenly looked familiar to me. Very, very familiar.

  “Do you think he wanted you to find this woman? You know, in case he…”

  She trailed off, and we both knew how that sentence finished.

  I bit my lip.

  I hadn’t told Kara that Cliff’s injuries might not have been accidental.

  And as I gazed at the photograph of the blonde, and remembered what Cliff was mumbling when he first came to, I wasn’t sure if keeping that secret to myself was the right move.

  The person who had hurt Cliff was, most likely, still somewhere in the building.

  And if Cliff died today, then it wouldn’t be just assault.

  It would be murder.

  And someone was going to have to take responsibility for that.

  “Cin?”

  I glanced over again at Kara. The look on her face told me it wasn’t the first time she’d said my name.

  “Yeah?”

  “Cin, there’s something—”

  “Did they take him away already?” a frantic voice suddenly rang out from behind me. “Oh, lord, is he… is he going to be okay?”

  I pocketed the picture and turned around to see Julie Van Dorn standing there.

  Strangely enough, she had been MIA these past few critical minutes, missing out on Cliff’s entire ordeal.

  Though I supposed that news traveled fast in a space this small.

  I couldn’t help but notice that Julie’s makeup was slightly smeared, and that there were black bags under her eyes.

  Julie Van Dorn was as frazzled as I’d ever seen her – and with good reason.

  In the matter of a half-hour, the Chocolate Championship Showdown had turned into a full-scale catastrophe for the PR woman. Stranded by a storm and with the most high-profile of the competition judges critically injured, Julie was going to be taking a lot of heat for the Chocolate Championship committee’s decision to continue on with the event despite the weather reports.

  “They won’t know anything for sure until they get Cliff to the hospital,” I said.

  “How was he?” she said. “Did… did he say anything?”

  Her eyes desperately probed mine for an answer, and I realized that there was real concern in them.

  Though I couldn’t tell if that concern was because a man was badly injured, or because of what it could mean for her career if a celebrity chef died at an event she had been in charge of.

  “He didn’t say anything that made sense,” I said.

  She chewed on her upper lip.

  “How’s Holly holding up?” I asked.

  The last I had seen of Julie’s assistant, she still had that deer-in-the-headlights look about her and was sitting on a bench in the hallway, completely mute.

  “She’s pretty shaken,” Julie said. “But she’s just going to have to realize that it’s not all about her. I mean, Cliff’s the one who…”

  Julie trailed off.

  She looked a bit shaken herself, which is why I tried not to judge her insensitivity toward her assistant too harshly.

  “What a disaster,” she finally said. “Just… what a complete and total disaster.”

  She rummaged around her purse for a long moment, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She popped one of the sticks in her mouth and lit it.

  I was about to tell her that smoking was prohibited in the building, but stopped myself before saying anything. It was, after all, a highly stressful thing that had just happened. And it wasn’t as if she could go outside easily and smoke there.

  After a long moment, she shook her head.

  “This is all the city police department’s fault, you know,” she mumbled. “It was their call whether to carry on with the Chocolate Championship. They should have known what a danger it was to let us continue with the event. The Sheriff’s Office should have stepped in, too. Daniel knows what a fool Captain Ulrich is.”

  I felt my jaw come unhinged slightly as she said it.

  “It’s their job to protect people, isn’t it?” she continued. “What good is law enforcement if they don’t look out for the people they claim to protect?”

  It was obvious that Julie was doing what PR professionals did best – she was spinning things. And in this case, she was spinning things to draw attention away from herself and the committee.

  I wasn’t one to point fingers. But I particularly hated when people who were responsible for something didn’t own up to it and tried to pass the blame onto somebody else. Because though Julie was technically right about it being the city police department’s call, I was sure that she’d applied a good deal of pressure to them to let the event continue.

  I bit my lip, trying to keep myself from starting down a path I might regret.

  But my teeth just weren’t strong enough.

  “I’d say there’s probably more than enough blame to go around, Julie—”

  But just as I was about to launch into a tirade, there was a loud noise and the lights above us flickered.

  A moment later, the fluorescents came on full force.

  There was a giant rushing sound of relief that made its way through the crowd in the hallway, followed by nervous talking, and a few chuckles.

  At least if we were going to be stranded here, we’d have electricity and heat going for us.

  When I looked back at Julie, seeing her clearly in the glow of the overhead lights, she had her arms crossed defensively, and her face was scrunched up into a look of disdain.

  “What was that you were saying, Cinnamon?” she said.

  She said it with a measure of intimidation. As if she was offering me a chance to back down from what I was saying.

  But I wasn’t the type to back down like that. Not when she had practically accused Daniel of being irresponsible to my face.

  “I was saying that it’s not only the city police department’s fault that we’re here,” I said. “And it’s not the Sheriff’s Department’s fault, either, Julie.”

  “Oh, so I take it you’re implying it’s somehow my fault, too?” she said, lifting her eyebrows.

  “I’m saying that you and the event committee saw the weather reports, same as everybody else. And I’m also saying that you could have called off the event too, but you chose not to. So before you start trying to level blame at everybody else, you o
ught to remember that your hands aren’t clean either.”

  She took a drag from her cigarette, then let out a smoky scoff before stepping closer to me.

  “Look, honeybuns. I know you’re only trying to save your husband’s reputation, so I’ll try not to hold it against you,” she said. “But if you’re a smart woman, you better not whisper a word of what you just said to anybody else. Because I’ve got a little dirt on you I’d be happy to make public if you’re looking to get into a sparring match.”

  I felt my head snap back in surprise.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I growled. “What dirt?”

  “I know where you were last night, oh, around 10:40 or so, Cinnamon,” she said. “And that’s something I’m sure the rest of the town would be very interested in hearing about, too.”

  Her eyes narrowed like a snake’s, and I finally caught a glimpse of what I had somehow always known existed beneath the fake smile and plastic façade.

  The wench.

  She was referring to me dropping Cliff off at the resort the night before.

  And in addition, she was implying that there was more to what happened last night than that.

  I felt my fists curl up at my sides as I met her nasty stare.

  “You can say whatever you want about me,” I finally said. “It won’t make any of it tru—”

  “You better just back the hell off, Julie,” Kara said before I could finish. “You don’t talk to my friend like that. And if you want to go down that road, then maybe we should talk about the real reason you left the Pohly County PR department – that you left because you were too embarrassed to keep working there after the Sheriff asked you to stop hitting on him. I’m sure a bit of juicy gossip like that could go really far in a town this size—”

  “Ladies, ladies!”

  Kara stopped mid-sentence, her eyes having the look about them of a scrappy dog in a territorial brawl.

  Kara always was the kind you wanted on your side in a fight.

  “Ladies, this simply won’t do,” Councilwoman Tunstall said in a hushed whisper, stepping up and looking hard at each of us. “Look… I know we’re all feeling a little on edge right now, given what happened to Mr. Copperstone. But now is not the time to let our lower natures get the best of us.”