Menace in Christmas River (Christmas River 8) Read online

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Is something else going on that I don’t know about?”

  I didn’t say anything for a while, trying to assess the situation logically.

  Maybe she deserved to know the truth about what happened to Cliff – that it hadn’t been an accident.

  But I also knew that I couldn’t afford for the truth to get out to the rest of the folks here. Because if they found out that a possible murderer was somewhere among them, fear would follow close on the heels of that discovery. And that would be the most dangerous thing of all, given the fact that we were all snowed in together.

  But as I gazed into Samantha’s sad, tired face, I could tell that she was already making pieces fit.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It has to do with Cliff, doesn’t it? With what happened to him?”

  There was no use in lying now.

  She closed her eyes and looked like she was bracing herself for the worst.

  Chapter 37

  “Did you see that?”

  Kara’s sharp blue eyes narrowed and locked on something beyond the pane of glass.

  I followed her gaze, trying to see past the swirling ice that blurred the landscape, but I could see nothing beyond it.

  “I don’t—” I started.

  “There!” she said, pointing with an exaggerated motion, almost hitting the window. “There’s a light. I swear, I just saw it!”

  I squinted and cupped my hands against the pane, still unable to see anything.

  “I think I saw it, too,” Samantha Garner said, her eyes still puffy and swollen after I’d told her that Daniel thought it was a good possibility Cliff had been hurt on purpose. “Look! There it is again.”

  A dim, unsteady glow suddenly emerged from the darkness, growing brighter with each passing moment.

  I felt my heart skip a beat.

  He’d come back for me, just like he said he would.

  I looked at Kara, feeling for the first time a glimmer of hope that we would actually make it out of this auditorium before the spring thaw.

  Before I knew it, I was running down the hallway, busting through one of the heavy metal doors. I almost cried out in shock as the wind barreled into my body, meeting me with the wickedest of greetings.

  “Cin!” I heard Kara shout after me, her voice mostly drowned out by the shrieking gale.

  I forced my legs to move toward the light.

  I stopped when the pavement ended and the ice began. Knowing that if I took one more step beyond, I’d most likely be off my feet in two seconds flat.

  I peered into the whipping air, my eyes growing watery as I watched the light grow more vivid in the blackness.

  “Daniel?!” I yelled.

  But the sound had hardly come out of my mouth before it was taken by the wind like a dead twig in a fast-rushing river.

  “Daniel!” I shouted again, cupping my hands over my mouth.

  There was no answer.

  I shook and shivered from the chill, which cut right through my thin sweater.

  I watched as a dark figure came into focus.

  It was followed shortly by another.

  Daniel must have brought the med student back with him. That would have been the smart move. That would have been—

  “Heelllppp…” a small, distant voice cried out from the darkness. “Help us…”

  It didn’t sound like Daniel.

  And as I peered into the inky night, I realized that one of the figures was shorter and a good deal plumper than the other.

  “Right here!” I shouted out, my breath freezing. “Right over here!”

  A second later, the two figures came into view, one of them carrying a flashlight.

  I almost gasped at the sight of them.

  They looked like death walking out of the storm.

  Their cheeks were hollow in the dim light. Their skin-coloring was a lifeless shade of blue-grey. The only way I knew they were still alive and didn’t belong to the walking dead was the way they both trembled and shook, like dying leaves in the first winds of winter.

  “Barney?” I said, trying to steady myself as a gust attempted to knock me off of my feet.

  Barney McBride no longer had that righteous expression he’d had when he was proclaiming to the crowd of Chocolate Championship attendees that nobody could make him stay anywhere.

  Instead, he looked exhausted, half-frozen, and frightened.

  His wife, Libby, looked even worse.

  “The… the car… it…”

  His teeth were chattering so bad, he couldn’t finish the thought.

  It was no time for talking anyway.

  “Come inside,” I said.

  I led them back toward the metal doors, and as I did, I couldn’t help but notice the strange look on Barney McBride’s face.

  It wasn’t an emotion he was used to expressing:

  Gratitude.

  Chapter 38

  “The car went off… went off the highway… down an embankment and we…”

  Libby McBride’s teeth chattered like a truck full of seashells going down a ripped-up road.

  Her eyes still had a deadened, matted look to them, and she still had trouble speaking. But at least her coloring was better than it was when she first came in from out of the storm. Her skin had gone from a shade of birch bark to the color of poppies since we’d sat her down on a beat-up chair in the student lounge area of the culinary building.

  Between what she’d said, and what I’d gathered from Barney, it appeared that a mile into their drive, the McBrides’ car hit a patch of black ice, slid across the road, and rolled down an embankment. Barney had said it was pure luck that they’d been able to get out of the car with only Libby’s sprained ankle and a few bruises between them. From there, they had walked back to the auditorium in almost white-out conditions.

  Luck didn’t seem to accurately describe how they’d been able to find their way back. Miracle was a better word for it.

  It could have easily gone a different way out there in the snow and ice.

  “We just followed the road…” Libby chattered away. “We just…”

  I piled another faded grey blanket – which had been stashed away in one of the janitorial closets – on top of her. Meanwhile Samantha, who said she had some mild medical know-how from her time as a Mormon missionary, checked Mrs. McBride’s eyes and injuries.

  “I thought… I thought we weren’t… going… to… to… make…” Libby continued.

  “I think she’s going to be okay,” Samantha said, standing up. “She’s just in shock right now. As long as we keep her warm and hydrated, and keep that sprained ankle of hers elevated, she should be fine.”

  I heard Kara let out a big sigh of relief from behind us. Samantha left Libby and went over to Barney McBride, who was also starting to look like he was coming back to life after being out in the storm.

  “Did you hear that, Libby?” I said to her, pulling the blanket tighter around her large shoulders.

  She nodded, and then did what she could to force her cold lips into a smile. That caused her teeth to dance like a live powerline.

  I pat her on the back reassuringly, then stepped away for a second, pulling out my phone.

  There was nothing more from Daniel.

  I prayed it was on account of the spotty reception, and not because he was lost out there in the storm, too.

  When I had seen that it wasn’t him out there with the flashlight, I’d been disappointed. But part of me had been glad, too. Glad that maybe he hadn’t been foolish enough to risk his life again out on the icy roads tonight. Comforted by the thought that maybe he’d made it back home instead, and was now sitting by the fire with Huckleberry, Chadwick, Warren, and Aileen, all warm and safe and sound.

  But something about that whole scenario just didn’t add up.

  Daniel wasn’t the type to just go home when I was out here, stranded with a possible killer.

  Like Eleanor had said: Daniel was one of
those old time sheriffs. And as much as I wished he was sitting at home, safe and cozy, I knew better.

  He would try to come and get me.

  Come hell, or high water, or a mountain of ice.

  “Everything okay, Cin?” Kara asked.

  I shrugged.

  Me complaining about the situation we were all in wouldn’t make it any better.

  She cleared her throat.

  “You know, something’s been bothering me,” she said.

  “Are John and Laila okay?”

  She put up a hand, shooing the question away.

  “Yes, they’re just fine,” she said. “Eating some leftover pork roast and having a Madmen marathon, no doubt. You see John never saw the show when it was on, but now he can’t stop binge watching it.”

  “Then what’s troubling you?” I asked.

  “Just something that that harpy said earlier.”

  “You mean Julie Van Dorn?”

  Kara nudged my elbow and pulled me over into the corner of the lounge area. Then she looked back at Barney, Libby, and Samantha, as if to make sure they couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “Remember how Julie implied that you… well… that you might have done something with Cliff last night after driving him back to the resort?”

  I felt my cheeks burn with anger at the mention of it.

  In the time since, I’d done my best to forget the fight that we’d had. I’d done my best to not think about the nasty, slanderous things she was probably saying about me to the folks here who were looking for ways to take their minds off their current depressing predicament. I’d done my best to focus on other, more important things – like who had tried to kill Cliff.

  But now, as Kara brought it all up again, I felt my blood boil with resentment.

  “Yeah,” I said in a low, controlled voice. “Being called an adulteress to your face isn’t something you forget too easily.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking… How did she know that? I mean, how did she know that you dropped Cliff off last night and that you were at the resort? I don’t imagine you told her about it.”

  I shrugged.

  “No, I didn’t tell her,” I said. “Which means it was either Cliff, or there was this concierge down at the resort’s reception who saw the two of us walk in together. I could tell she thought something was going on that wasn’t.”

  Kara glanced off to one side, looking as if she was trying to figure out the next move in a high-stakes chess game.

  “Yeah, but if the concierge told anybody, I can almost guarantee you that Moira Stewart would have found out about it. And as of early afternoon, old Moira didn’t have any inkling that you and Cliff might have, well, you know…”

  “We didn’t,” I said, reiterating it just in case my best friend had any doubts of her own.

  “Oh, obviously not,” she said. “I know you run true blue, Cin. But you see, Moira Steward would just jump at the chance to spread a rumor that juicy around. But the woman didn’t have the slightest idea.”

  “Well, maybe Moira’s just off her game,” I said. “She can’t know everything that goes on in Christmas River.”

  “No, but if Moira didn’t know, then it most likely wasn’t the concierge who leaked it,” Kara said. “And besides – they’re supposed to be discreet, right? Which means if it wasn’t the concierge, then Cliff would have had to have been the one to tell Julie.”

  Cliff probably had told her. Probably elaborated on it, too, putting those ideas in her head in the first place just to be spiteful after I’d refused his offer for a night cap.

  “I suppose it was him, then,” I said.

  I didn’t know why any of this mattered much, or why we had to keep talking about it.

  If I had known the trouble it would have made, I probably would have just left Cliff Copperstone at the Geronimo Brewing Co. pub the night before, right where he passed out on the bar.

  “Look, I know Cliff acted like a jerk,” Kara said, hushing her voice so that Samantha wouldn’t hear that last part. “But does he really seem like the type to kiss and tell?”

  “Well, there was no kissing,” I said. “Or anything else for that matter, so there was nothing to tell.”

  “Exactly,” Kara said.

  I still didn’t understand what she was getting at.

  “I’ve got a theory I’ve been thinking about,” she said. “About who else might have bludgeoned Cliff Copperstone. Want to hear it?”

  I lifted my eyebrows in disbelief.

  Kara was one of the smartest people I’d ever met. But while I knew she liked gossip, I had never known her to be much of a sleuth.

  But maybe I had underestimated my best friend.

  “Okay,” she said, shifting her weight excitedly between her feet. “You know how I think Julie knew that you dropped Cliff off at the resort last night?”

  “How?”

  She took in a deep breath.

  “She knew because she was there, Cin. I know you’ve been busy all day judging the competition and haven’t had much of a chance to see the way she’s been looking at Cliff. But I tell you, those weren’t benign looks she was giving him. I’m good at reading people’s body language. And Julie’s had a heck of a lot to say whenever she was around Cliff Copperstone. And not all of it was good.”

  I crossed my arms and stared blankly at the beige wall in front of me, thinking it through.

  “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Kara,” I said. “She might just have been her usual flirty self, you know? It might not mean a thing.”

  “No, it might not,” she said. “It might be absolutely nothing, Cin. But it’s something, isn’t it? And wouldn’t you say that right now, that’s the best we’ve got to go on? I mean, if she was involved with Cliff, and he had… I don’t know, scorned her somehow, wouldn’t that give her motive? Wouldn’t that…”

  Kara trailed off, looking at me with a hopeful expression.

  “Don’t you see?” she said.

  I ran a hand through my hair and looked down at the ground for a moment.

  I knew that Kara disliked Julie. So did I. But that didn’t mean she was involved with what happened to Cliff.

  Bashing someone over the head wasn’t a dispassionate crime. It was something done by someone either desperate, or in a fit of passionate rage.

  It took a lot to do that to somebody. And the short period that Cliff had been in Christmas River didn’t seem like enough time to become that angry with—

  I gasped suddenly and felt my eyes bulge as something occurred to me.

  “What?” Kara said, her voice nearly trembling with excitement.

  “The smoke,” I said, glancing back at her. “Cliff doesn’t smoke.”

  She furrowed her brow, not understanding.

  I grabbed Kara’s arm without realizing it, squeezing hard.

  “When I dropped Cliff off last night and made sure he got to his room okay? He opened the door and asked if I wanted to come in. And when he did that, I smelled cigarette smoke. It was fresh, too.”

  Something sparked in Kara’s eyes, and I could tell that she suddenly understood what I was saying.

  “And you know who is a smoker, don’t you?” I said, hammering the point home.

  “Julie,” Kara said, blurting her name out so loud, it caused Samantha to glance over in our direction.

  “Oh my gosh, I was right, Cin,” she said, after a moment in a quieter voice. “I was actually right. She was in his room, waiting for him. He probably didn’t know it, either. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have invited you in. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe… I mean... Wow…”

  A silence fell over the conversation as we both came to terms with what this all meant.

  Publicists always said that old adage, didn’t they? That there was no such thing as bad publicity? Having a celebrity chef nearly die at an event would make national headlines. And while maybe Julie hadn’t done it for the sole purpose of the publicity, she was crazy enough to s
pin it to her advantage.

  And if she handled this fiasco well, there was no telling what kind of business it could create for her PR firm.

  Maybe she’d end up killing two birds with one stone. Making a lover pay for his near betrayal, while advancing her career at the same time.

  “What are we going to do, Cin?” Kara said. “Should we go confront her now? Or should we—”

  “No, that’s not a good idea,” I said. “If she did bludgeon Cliff, then there’s no telling what she’s capable of.”

  Kara rubbed her chin.

  “That’s a point,” she said. “But if not that, then what do you propose?” I don’t know if I can just sit back and do nothing.”

  I exhaled sharply and looked down at the ground again, trying to think it through.

  A little while later, it came to me.

  “Holly,” I said, looking back up at Kara.

  “Holly?” she said. “The gal who found Cliff when…?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s Julie’s assistant,” I said. “She keeps her schedule. She’s got to know something more. Something concrete that we could use to confirm this. Evidence we can hand over to Daniel when he gets back.”

  A slight smile spread across Kara’s face.

  And for the first time, I realized that I wasn’t alone in any of this.

  I had my best friend helping me – as always.

  I squeezed Kara’s arm, and then quickly headed back to the auditorium.

  Chapter 39

  “How are you holding up, Holly?”

  Holly Smith looked small and scared as she leaned forward in one of the auditorium seats. She chewed on a hangnail, staring down at the carpeted floor with a vacant expression.

  She didn’t acknowledge Kara or me at all.

  “Holly?” Kara said in a louder voice.

  That seemed to snap her out her daze. She lifted her head, revealing a pair of bloodshot eyes. She let her hand drop from her mouth.

  She still looked pale and shaken – not much had changed since earlier that afternoon when she’d found Cliff.

  “I’m okay,” she said, forcing a thin, weak smile.

  But I could tell by the strain in her voice that she wasn’t.