3 Madness in Christmas River Read online

  “There’s no need to go all quiet, Cin,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you too.”

  He leaned in close, and I could feel his hot breath on the back of my bare neck. I shivered.

  “You know, I wish sometimes that I could go back and change where we went wrong,” he said. “I wish you’d believe that I’ve changed. That I’ve really changed.”

  “Have you?”

  He sighed.

  “I’m sorry, Cin. How many times do I have to say it before you believe that I mean it?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that.

  I didn’t think that he would ever be able to say it enough for me to believe him.

  “Now there’s been something I’ve been dying to ask you,” he said. “Are you really going to marry him? Because if you’re not sure about it, if there’s even so much as a sliver of doubt in your mind, then we could—”

  “We could what?” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “We could give it another shot.”

  Unbelievable.

  Absolutely unbelievable.

  I tried to keep the disgusted expression off my face and focus on why I was there.

  “You know,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “I can’t stop thinking about that weekend at the cabin.”

  “Yeah?” he said, putting a hand on the small of my back.

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I was trying to remember whether or not you had a stash of diamonds buried in the backyard when we were dating then. For the life of me, I can’t remember.”

  His hand dropped from my back, and that smug, self-satisfied expression fell off of his face quicker than a lump of coal could fall down a chimney stack.

  Chapter 53

  “You need to lower your voice, Cinnamon,” he said sternly, looking around. “You don’t understand the first thing about what’s going on,” he said

  I could tell that he was worried.

  “I know that it’s you,” I said. “I’m good at seeing through all your lies now. I’ve had plenty of practice over the years.”

  He dug his hands into his pockets, and started backing away from me.

  “I should have known better,” he said. “I should have known you were a cold, unforgiving bitch.”

  “Where’s Marie?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He just smirked.

  “Come to think of it, you don’t know the first thing about your cousin either,” he said.

  My heart raced.

  “Tell me why you’ve done all of this,” I said.

  “You sure this is the way you want to play it?” he said. “You could have shared it all with me. Now you’ll just always be a sad pie baker in a sad, small town.”

  “It’s better than anything you could offer,” I said.

  “Bad play, Cin,” he said. “Bad play. Well, have a nice downsized life, hon. I’ll be living my days out like a king down in Mexico. Maybe if I’m feeling generous, I’ll send you a postcard from time to time.”

  He gave me one last smug look that said it all, and turned around, walking quickly down the bridge.

  I shook my head in disgust and leaned forward looking down at the sheet of ice below.

  I didn’t have to watch him leave to know that he wasn’t going to get very far.

  The bridge quivered as he jumped back.

  The way was suddenly blocked. And he wasn’t going to be making it to Mexico anytime soon.

  A moment later, I saw Owen taking Evan by the scruff of his jacket, and pulling him toward his patrol car.

  “Hey, I’ve got my rights!” Evan shouted as he was pushed into the backseat.

  He closed the door on my past.

  I caught Owen’s eye, and he nodded at me.

  I smiled back gratefully.

  Chapter 54

  I felt an overwhelming sense of relief as I walked away from the bridge back to the pie shop.

  The sun had just slipped beneath the horizon, its dying rays causing the sky to turn a soft shade of grapefruit pink.

  It looked like hope to me.

  It seemed that over the last week, all hell had broken loose. Marie had gone missing, I had been victimized, and Huckleberry had been hurt.

  But it finally felt like things were beginning to look up.

  Daniel would have never gone for me meeting with Evan like that. But I knew that Owen would.

  The plan to lure Evan had worked.

  I didn’t understand any of it yet. But I knew that right now, the boys at the sheriff’s office were doing their best to figure it out.

  And that there was no way Evan was going to get out of it this time.

  I crossed Main Street, avoiding the patches of ice. I made it to the sidewalk, and finally got to my pie shop just as the sky began to fall into grays.

  I noticed the sign was turned over, and realized that Chrissy must have closed up early, thinking I’d gone home for the night.

  I fished the keys out of my coat pocket and unlocked the door. I walked through the empty dining room, turning on the lights, and then back into the kitchen. I took my jacket off and hung it up on the coat rack, grabbing the apron and immediately headed for the refrigerator. All the aluminum foil-wrapped ingredients of Santa’s Florida Vacation were there in the fridge, just waiting for me to assemble them into a perfect combination of tart, sweet and tangy creaminess.

  And now that I’d dealt with Evan, I could give all my attention to the pie.

  I opened the fridge, pulled out the bowls of cranberries, lime curd and white chocolate cream, and balanced them as I walked toward the kitchen island.

  “Hi, Cin.”

  I jumped.

  A moment later, the contents of all three bowls were scattered across the floor.

  Chapter 55

  “What the hell is going on?”

  I stepped back from the mess on the floor, and stared back at her a long while, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing a mirage.

  Here I was, thinking something horrible had happened to her, something so dreadful, I hadn’t even been able to face it.

  That’s what you do when someone disappears into thin air without so much as a word.

  But now here she was, having appeared as suddenly as she had disappeared, wearing her plush fur jacket and looking perfectly healthy.

  Save for the puffiness around her eyes and tear-stained cheeks.

  “Oh, Cin,” she said, after a long moment, a high-pitched tone of desperation in her voice.

  She hoisted her worn leather black purse up onto the counter and rummaged around in it, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

  I stood motionless, watching her.

  She brought the cigarette up to her mouth and lit it. Her hands were trembling.

  “Warren and me have been worried sick about you,” I said. “Where have you been, Marie? Didn’t you get all of my messages?”

  A long stream of smoke escaped from her mouth.

  “I never meant…” she started, shaking her head and lowering her eyes. “I never meant to make you worry. But you don’t understand what’s going on.”

  She rubbed her face, and closed her eyes.

  “I’m in deep water, Cin,” she said. “There ain’t two ways about it. I shouldn’t be here right now. But I came back because, well, I heard about what he was doing to you, sweetie. And I… I couldn’t stay away anymore. It’s all my fault.”

  Mascara-laced tears spilled down her cheeks. The kitchen now smelled like sugar and smoke.

  “What do you mean? What’s your fault?” I said.

  “All of it.”

  She let out another puff of smoke.

  “Did you know Anthony Matthews, Marie?” I asked.

  She gave me a stunned look, like she’d just been blindsided.

  “How…?” she started, but then stopped.

  For the first time since I’d known her, Marie was speechless.

  “Someone’s been leaving his photos a
round,” I said.

  She sucked in a sharp, audible breath of air.

  “I never wanted it to come to this,” she said. “There’s no way you’re going to understand. Nobody could understand.”

  I sighed, thinking about Evan. How I’d spent so long living and loving someone like that.

  About the stupid things I had done in my own past.

  “Try me,” I said.

  Chapter 56

  “I hadn’t ever seen anything like him,” she said, dabbing at her runny mascara with a Kleenex. “Not before or since. Anthony was a real original. He was special.”

  She brought the tissue down and wrung it between her fingers nervously.

  I sat patiently, listening to her story, knowing that I was finally getting close to understanding just what in the hell had been going on in Christmas River.

  To understanding what happened to Anthony Matthews.

  “He was my first love, Cin, you know?” she continued. “At the time, I thought we were going to be together forever. I guess I was just young and stupid. I didn’t know the first thing about life.”

  She sighed.

  “How I’ve cried over him,” she said, shaking her head. “For a while, I didn’t want to admit it. But now I’m old, and I see it for what it is. What happened to him ruined me. It just ruined me.”

  Water gathered in her eyes and she paused a moment to collect herself.

  “Everyone thought he was a good-for-nothing loser. He didn’t even finish high school. When he went missing, most people in the town thought it was good riddance.

  “That’s how things were back then. Once you got a reputation around here, that was it. I never even told my parents that we were dating. I knew that they would have had a fit if they found out. Probably would have locked me up in my room for the rest of high school if they knew.”

  She bit her lip.

  “You know what? I wish that they had. Maybe then Anthony wouldn’t have…”

  She trailed off, staring into nothing.

  “What happened?” I said.

  As I looked at Marie’s face, I knew that the answer was going to be hard.

  I felt a pit in my stomach. She hesitated for a few more moments.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  She couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Oh, Cin,” she said. “He didn’t mean it. It was an accident. All just a horrible, horrible accident.”

  She closed her eyes and placed a hand over her face.

  Chapter 57

  “The summer of my junior year, I met Victor. And everything changed for me. He was vacationing here with his parents for the summer, and I guess you could say I was a little dazzled by his money and good looks and big city stories.

  “You have to understand, all I ever wanted to do was to get out of this Godforsaken town. Victor was my ticket, and I knew it. He promised to take me away from here, to give me a real life. You don’t understand the way it was back then, Cin. We were so poor, and I knew that my life was always going to be that way unless I did something about it. That’s why… That’s why I had to break it off with Anthony.”

  You could cut the heaviness in the kitchen with a knife.

  I knew what was coming next.

  The second part of the story.

  The bad part.

  “I thought staying with Anthony was as good as shooting myself in the foot,” she said, shaking her head. “I was so, so stupid.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “Then one night, a group of us were down at the lake. We were all drinking and smoking. Things got really out of hand. At the end of the night, it was just Victor and me there, doing things that a couple might do when they’re alone. Even then, I knew Victor was in one of his moods. He had too much to drink, and I remember feeling a little scared of him. But…”

  She took a deep breath.

  “But I’m ashamed to admit that I kind of liked it when he got that way. I felt like anything could happen. And for a naïve, country girl like me, that was the be-all end-all.

  “Sometime around midnight, I heard car wheels coming up the dirt road. And then there were some headlights. A truck pulled up.

  “I knew right away it was Anthony.”

  She grabbed another Kleenex from the box I had set on the kitchen island in front of her.

  “I was so terrible, Cin,” she said, sniveling. “I told him to get lost, that I never wanted to see him again. That I never loved him. That he was never going to be anything better than a dumb country boy. That everything everyone thought about him in this town was true.

  “That he wouldn’t ever be able to give me the things I wanted.”

  She let out a few heartbreaking sobs.

  “It was all a lie. But I knew what would happen if Anthony stuck around too long. I knew Victor was just waiting to get at him. You know how sometimes it feels like everything that could possibly go wrong does? That’s what happened that night.”

  She stopped talking and let the tears flow for a few moments. We sat in silence, until I couldn’t take it any longer.

  “Tell me what happened, Marie,” I said.

  She looked at me, desperation in his eyes.

  “Anthony started the fight,” she said, her voice trembling. “He provoked Victor. I can say that at least. It wasn’t all Victor.”

  She stopped, and looked at me square in the face, knowing that it was time.

  Time to spill the secret she’d kept all these years.

  “Anthony pushed Victor into the water, and they started fighting in the lake. But Anthony wasn’t strong enough. He wanted to be, but he just wasn’t.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “I tried to stop it, but it was no use. And then the next thing I knew…”

  Her voice started shaking. She stopped and started again, lowering her voice.

  “The next thing I knew, Victor took a swing at Anthony. It landed on the back of his head and he just… he collapsed into the water. And that’s when I knew.”

  She wrung the tissue in her hand tightly again. She still couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “He killed him?” I whispered softly.

  She nodded her head, and started sobbing again.

  I suddenly felt like I had been stabbed in the gut.

  I couldn’t believe that Marie had carried this secret with her all these years.

  Not a soul in Christmas River knew what had happened.

  “But it was an accident, Cin,” she said, gripping my arm. “You have to believe me. Victor didn’t really mean it. I know he didn’t. He didn’t mean to kill him, I swear on everything holy.”

  I bit my lip, an empty sorrow overtaking me.

  It was a tragedy. A terrible tragedy that befell Anthony Matthews.

  And, as I looked at Marie, I realized that there was another terrible part of this story that had yet to come.

  “What happened afterwards?” I asked.

  The answer was obvious by the fact that Anthony had been condemned to a missing person’s case file all of these years.

  Her shoulders seemed to cave in a little.

  “We were afraid,” she said. “We were both high as a kite when it happened, and Victor said there was no way the cops would believe that it was an accident. He didn’t want to bring any scandal to his family. A thing like that could have really damaged a family like his. And maybe I didn’t really want to believe that it had actually happened, myself. I just…”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I was 17. I had my whole life to look forward to. And this… this was going to wreck it before it even began. That’s why I went along with covering it up. I knew there was no other way.”

  The frostiness in her words sent chills down my spine.

  No other way.

  I just couldn’t believe it.

  I knew I shouldn’t have been judging her. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to be a teenager and have had a part in somebody’s death. I couldn’t possi
bly imagine the fear that she felt looking at Anthony Matthew’s dead body, a boy that she once loved.

  But there had to have been another way other than covering it up.

  I knew some people would have called her and Victor cowards for doing what they did.

  And they wouldn’t have been far off the mark.

  I wanted to be compassionate. But I was having a hard time of it.

  She looked away from me, as if she could read what I was thinking.

  “Victor took me home and said he’d take care of it. I was hysterical, Cin.”

  She sighed.

  “He drove Anthony’s car to Portland and left it a homeless part of town with the keys still in the ignition. But to this day…”

  She took a deep breath.

  “To this day, I still don’t know what he did with the body,” she said, in-between a few uncontrollable sobs. “I never asked. I couldn’t face it.”

  I rubbed my face.

  Now that I knew what had happened, I wished that I hadn’t.

  I knew that Marie had a wild side to her. But I never knew her past was this shady, this dark.

  This cruel.

  I swallowed hard.

  “But you kept his necklace,” I said. “That St. Christopher’s medal.”

  She looked at me, surprised.

  “I saw it in an old photo of you and mom,” I said. “It was the same one Anthony was wearing.”

  She nodded, pulling at the ribbing of her turtle neck, and fishing out the long silver chain from the inside of her shirt.

  She rubbed the medal between her thumb and forefinger.

  “I tried to give it back when I broke up with him,” she said. “But he told me to keep it. He said it’d remind me that wherever I went, there was a small piece of him that was always with me.”

  She sighed.

  “I never stopped wearing it,” she said. “It’s all I have left of him.”

  I bit my lip.

  It was all so hard to process.

  We all make choices in life. She’d made her choice. She’d chosen security over the love and decency. And maybe, in some ways, her own guilt over Anthony’s death had been a punishment in itself.