Midnight in Christmas River Read online

  “How much do I owe you for your trouble?”

  Daniel and I looked at each other at the same time, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing.

  “We’re not looking for any payment, Mr. Black,” Daniel said, speaking for us both. “That’s not why we’re out here tonight.”

  “Nonsense. Everyone’s looking for a payment. Name your price, sir.”

  “There’s no fee,” I said. “We just wanted to help, Ashcroft.”

  He looked at me like I’d started speaking Greek.

  “Fine. Then I’ll come up with a number myself,” he mumbled, the fountain pen scribbling across the checkbook.

  “You know this won’t be the end of it, don’t you?” Daniel said, standing up. “Someone out there is looking to hurt you. And maybe this Lorna acting bit won’t hold up anymore, but you know they’ll try something else next time. And they might not stop until…”

  Daniel trailed off, looking hard at the author.

  “We still need to find out who’s responsible for this.”

  Ashcroft ripped the check from the book and stuck it out toward Daniel. When he refused to take it, Ashcroft sighed and folded it before putting the check in the pocket of his robe.

  “Well, if you won’t take payment, then I can’t offer you anything else. I feel comfortable ending things here. Thank you for your help, Ms. Peters, Sheriff Brightman. I’ll see you to the door.”

  I let out a scoff.

  “You can’t be serious, Ashcroft. Didn’t you just hear what Daniel said? This person’s out to get you—”

  Ashcroft made an abrupt motion with his hand, signaling us toward the front of the cabin.

  “Please,” he said in a curt tone.

  I looked over at Daniel.

  He was putting on his cowboy hat, shaking his head.

  I supposed he was right — there didn’t seem to be any talking Ashcroft out of it.

  I stood up. Then I grabbed my coat and followed Daniel toward the door.

  We were about to close it behind us when I heard Ashcroft’s voice.

  “And Ms. Peters?”

  I turned around.

  “Thank you for the soup yesterday. I’ll recommend your shop to my friends should they ever pass through Christmas River.”

  I sighed, nodded, and then shut the door behind me.

  Wondering why, despite being more afraid than he was before, Ashcroft Black was turning us away.

  Chapter 23

  “Well, you know what they say,” Kara said right before cramming in a massive bite of Honey Apple Pie dolloped with ginger ice cream. “Famous people are crazy.”

  The last part came out muffled and practically unintelligible behind all that pastry, but somehow, I managed to understand what she was saying.

  I stood over the stove, stirring a pot filled with cranberries, sugar, apple cider, vinegar, and apple slices. I turned up the heat a little, watching as the juicy liquid turned to a sunset shade of pink.

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said, looking up and staring out the window at the rain dripping down from the angry skies overhead. “Still, I can’t stop thinking about it all. I guess it’s really none of my business anymore. But I can’t help it. I’m worried about him. I’m worried that one of these days, Daniel’s going to get a call from paramedics saying that Ashcroft...”

  I trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished.

  Kara paused, chewing and thinking.

  “Well maybe it’s not as serious as you guys are making it out to be, Cin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She cleared her throat of phlegm in a fashion that might have been un-lady like, but which I appreciated.

  I always enjoyed that about Kara — that she ate the way her hunger dictated and didn’t give a hoot whether people were watching.

  “I mean, what if it is just a prank? Maybe there are kids behind it. Everyone in town knows Ashcroft’s renting the cabin for the fall. Maybe some kids read his books and are just pranking him, the way kids do. It’s kind of a Scooby Doo thing to do anyway, right? Dress up as a ghost to scare somebody?”

  “Yeah, but this goes way beyond TP-ing a house, Kara. I mean think about it — to dress up as a character from one of Ashcroft’s books and try to scare him? Knowing he has a heart condition?”

  Kara shrugged.

  “Maybe they don’t know he’s got a heart condition. I didn’t know until I heard Don Wharton say it at the cabin that night. Most of the town still thinks he was hospitalized last week with a bad stomach virus.”

  People in town thought that because it was the official story from Ashcroft’s publisher concerning the incident. The news media had then spread the misinformation.

  For some reason, Ashcroft and his publisher wanted to keep his heart condition a secret.

  “Maybe whoever’s behind this is thinking it’s all in good fun and doesn’t realize that Ashcroft’s an ill man,” Kara added.

  The tea kettle whistled. I went over and turned off the burner, then poured the piping hot water into two cups containing chai tea bags.

  “No,” I said after a while. “I saw that woman pretending to be Lorna. And it didn’t look like an innocent prank to me, Kara. There’s maliciousness there.”

  I looked out the window again, sighing.

  “I just wish I could figure out who’s behind it. It’s really bugging me.”

  I supposed that was something that had changed in me since getting married to Daniel. These days I found it hard to leave a mystery unresolved.

  “Well, if you want to know my opinion, I say let it go, Cin,” Kara said, standing up and wrapping her cozy knit scarf around her neck. “Forget Ashcroft Black and that slime ball publisher of his and move on. I know I have. No way would I ever publish any of my books with that guy. I don’t care how successful he claims to be.”

  Something suddenly struck me when she said that.

  I flashed on what Ashcroft had said earlier — about how publishers loved you until your book sales started falling. Then they became bullies.

  And about how Ashcroft said that was already beginning to happen with his latest book release — that sales weren’t as good as they had once been.

  I rubbed my chin, thinking.

  Don Wharton had heaped praise on Ashcroft that night of the workshop like it was going out of style. But had it all been for show?

  Could this Lorna Larimer business be some kind of bullying tactic?

  I couldn’t see the motive or all the details yet, but one thing I did know.

  I didn’t get a good feeling from Don Wharton.

  And I wouldn’t trust him if my life depended on it.

  “Cin?”

  I glanced up. Kara was peering at me with a funny little smile on her face as if she’d been trying to get my attention for a while.

  “I was saying that—”

  Just then, there were footsteps on the back porch. The door opened, and a man who looked no better than a drowned rat threw himself inside.

  “Daniel, what in the—”

  “Woo-eee, it’s raining pumpkins and black cats out there!”

  He took off his hat and shook out his jacket, dripping water all over the floor. I grabbed a towel, soaking it up.

  “Ah, shoot. Sorry about that, Cin.”

  “Here, let me take your jacket—”

  “No, I’m not staying long.”

  Kara nodded to Daniel, then looked out the windows at the gray skies dumping water like there was a shortage of it around here.

  “Well, I’m going to make a break for it back to the shop,” she said, bringing her scarf up over her head and sliding on her sunglasses — which gave her the look of a celebrity trying to avoid being spotted. “Thanks for the pie as always, Cin.”

  “And thanks for the talk, as always, Kara.”

  She grinned at me, then nodded again at Daniel before quickly heading out the swinging dividing door and into the dining room.

  I retur
ned my attention back to Daniel.

  “So what’s so important you had to dodge gourds and bad luck for?”

  “Well, I was just coming by to see if you had six or so hours to spare this afternoon.”

  “Six hours?” I said, raising my eyebrows, trying to think of what would take so long.

  “Yeah. Six hours for a scenic drive, a Burgerville pumpkin pie milkshake, and a chance to solve a mystery or two. What do you say?”

  I felt the edges of my mouth turn up a little.

  Even though I didn’t know all the particulars of Daniel’s proposition, I knew the closest Burgerville location was about a hundred miles or so in a northwesterly direction. Additionally, I had a feeling the mystery he was talking about might have something to do with Ashcroft Black.

  I went over to the window and gazed up at all that rain.

  “But in this weather? It’s not going to be too pretty going over the pass.”

  “I’m already ahead of you, Cin. The weather radar shows that the rain will let up as soon as we make it past Redmond. Which is luck, if you ask me. Usually it’s Portland that’s getting drenched while we’ve got clear skies. And I already called Warren to see if he could let the dogs out at 5 and feed them dinner. Now the only question is whether you’ve got the time to spare. What do you say? Think Tiana and Toby can take over the rest of the day?”

  I didn’t have to think about it too long.

  We were almost out of pie, anyway, and as it so happened, I’d been considering closing the shop early today.

  “I think I can swing it,” I said, turning off the burner before going over to the coat rack and grabbing my rain slicker.

  Daniel smiled.

  I supposed he had trouble letting go of an unresolved mystery just as much as I did.

  Chapter 24

  Just as the weather station had predicted, once we passed Redmond and got out toward Madras, the rainy clouds parted and made way for brilliant rich cobalt skies. The three-hour drive flew by in piles of fire-colored leaves, pie, laughter, and bad country music.

  There wasn’t anything quite like driving Oregon highways in the autumn — the fresh smell of the forest air, the changing leaves carpeting the road, and if you were lucky, a few drops of sunshine here and there.

  Before I knew it, we were heading into the city and trying to find parking.

  Daniel had told me back when we were driving through Redmond about the plan. He’d said he’d gotten Ashcroft’s wife’s name by reading a few news articles. She was a producer for a successful independent movie studio in New York, and just like Ashcroft had said, she was working in Portland this month on a horror movie shoot. Daniel tracked down the boutique hotel where the higher-up executives for the movie were staying — a place in Portland’s Pearl District.

  There might have been a lot of people who could be after Ashcroft. But considering the argument that Kara and I had overheard between the horror author and his wife and the thing she wanted him to sign at all costs, she was obviously our first suspect.

  Maybe this was all a lot to do for a man who more or less asked us to stay out of his business. But I knew Daniel, and I knew his approach to crime was to try to stop it before it happened. I could see that this situation with Ashcroft worried him a lot — Daniel didn’t want to see Ashcroft end up getting injured in another bizarre ploy. And additionally, I imagined that Daniel was already thinking several steps ahead. God forbid if something should happen to Ashcroft in Christmas River, our little town would become an all-out freak scene of reporters and horror fans and who knew what else. And with Ashcroft’s level of fame, the reverberations of such a thing may have lasted for decades in Christmas River.

  It was what made Daniel such a good Sheriff — he wanted to protect the town and the county not only today, but into the future as well.

  After driving around for a while, we finally found a spot a couple of blocks away from the hotel. Daniel parallel parked the truck, and I stepped out onto the sidewalk. It was crowded with all types of people — professional hipsters, nine-to-fivers dressed in business suits, restaurant industry folks, and shoppers in designer clothes.

  Though I visited Portland a lot these days, being that my pie food cart was here, it wasn’t often that I got out to this part of town. It was more upscale, and the items featured in the shops were way out of most working peoples’ price ranges. The boutique stores were mostly for tourists and people who lived up in the West Hills — the very expensive part of town. And as I stood there on the sidewalk in my old rain jacket and scuffed-up boots, I suddenly became very aware that I stuck out like a sore thumb in this area of town.

  Luckily, my knight in shining armor wasn’t far behind. Daniel took my arm, not noticing at all that we were in a sea of stylishly dressed, wealthy Portlanders. He pointed to a tall building in the distance.

  “That’s The Greenbuilt,” he said. “Hopefully Ms. Black isn’t out on the movie set.”

  Daniel had tried to contact Ana Black via the production studio, but he’d been sent straight to voicemail several times.

  But he said that was okay — he liked having the element of surprise. It would jar most people if a sheriff showed up at the place they were staying, he said, and it might cause something to slip if she was indeed the one behind the Lorna Larimer prank.

  We walked down the street and headed inside the revolving door of the hotel. When we stepped inside, my eyes were assaulted with a swirl of chartreuse, lime green, and black pinstripes.

  The lobby had plenty of upscale mahogany furniture and an abundance of haughty style. It just wasn’t my style, and as if walking into a room full of bright lights, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the garish color.

  “Jeez. I guess they weren’t joking when they called it The Greenbuilt,” Daniel said, cracking a smile. “I’m just going to talk to the concierge and see if they can help us find her. Be back in a minute.”

  I nodded and watched as he went over to a nearby desk and rang a little silver bell. A man in his late twenties dressed in a green velvet suit appeared from a back room and greeted Daniel with a curt nod.

  I stayed where I was, looking around the lounge some more. A few of those upscale Pearl District types were sitting on some chez lounges by a big fire, the flames of which leapt up from crystal fire glass. The room was decorated with several museum-style gold frames which showcased oil paintings of English fox hunting scenes from the past.

  The Greenbuilt struck me as a great place to attend a Halloween bash, but not the kind of place I’d want to spend the night. It reminded me of the parlor in The Spider and the Fly. Or what it might feel like if you suddenly tripped and fell into a bottle of absinthe.

  “No, I understand your policy, sir. And I’m not trying to make you break it. All I’d like to know is if you’d be able to pass a message on to Ms. Black for us. Just to let her know we’re here,” I overheard Daniel say.

  I glanced over. The young man in the green velvet suit had a sour look on his face and didn’t seem at all impressed by Daniel’s sheriff badge. In fact, he seemed defensive and uncooperative.

  I dug my hands into the pockets of my jacket and glanced at the elevators just as a big group of people entered the lobby from the street. I wondered if there was something I could do to help find Ana while Daniel argued with the concierge. But I didn’t know which room number she was staying in, and short of going and wandering the halls, hoping for some blind luck, there really wasn’t much I could—

  I suddenly caught sight of something in the crowd of people that had just walked in.

  Boots.

  Sharp, ice pick-heeled Prada boots. I followed those up to a woman with black hair, sunglasses, and impossibly pale skin.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was running after the group. They stopped at the elevators, and I weaved my way through them, realizing now that many of them were carrying cameras and filming equipment. I reached out, tapping her gently on the shoulder.

&nbs
p; “Ana Black?”

  The woman with dark hair turned around. Several of the people in the crowd looked at me, too, when I said her name.

  “Yes?”

  Her accent came out strong and thick with just a hint of a lisp. It reminded me of the accent my freshman year Spanish instructor in college had, and she’d been from Madrid.

  I cleared my throat.

  “You don’t know me, but I’m—”

  “Wait…” she said, lifting her sunglasses, revealing a pair of striking green eyes. “I do know you. You’re that caterer, aren’t you? The one at Ashcroft’s cabin—”

  She trailed off, looking away and biting on the end of her sunglasses.

  “Has something happened to Ashcroft?” she said, her eyes taking on a panicked look. “It’s his heart, isn’t it? Has he had an incident?”

  “No, no,” I said quickly. “I mean, not since the one last week.”

  Her eyes bulged.

  “Last week? What are you talking about?”

  She fished around in her black wool coat and pulled out an iPhone.

  “I must talk to Ash,” she said, scrolling frantically through the screen.

  I knew I had to stop her before she finished the call.

  “Look,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’ll explain everything if you just come over and talk with us.”

  I nodded back to Daniel, who was still arguing at the front desk.

  “But… but who are you people? What do you—”

  “We’re trying to help your husband.”

  She hesitated, looking hard at me.

  For a moment, she looked like she was going to make a break for the elevator.

  But she must have seen something in my face. Something that she trusted.

  “All right,” she said. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

  Chapter 25

  “Hijo de…”

  Ana Black crumpled up the Kleenex in her hand with malicious intent.

  “I’m glad he survived because now I have a chance to kill him myself. How could he not tell me about this? I might not want to be his wife anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”