Midnight in Christmas River Read online

  I shot a sideways glace at Daniel as Ana spoke, trying to figure out what he was thinking, and whether he believed she was being honest.

  We were sitting in a cluster of green leather furniture by the fire in the hotel lobby. I couldn’t help but notice the concierge that Daniel had been dealing with a few moments earlier keeping an eye on us, like we might just run off with one of the gold-framed paintings at any moment.

  “Ms. Black, I don’t mean to pry, but—”

  “Please don’t call me that. I never took Ashcroft’s name. Call me Ms. Bayon if you have to, but I prefer Ana.”

  Daniel nodded.

  So far, I was thinking that this trip might result in a dead end. It was still possible that Ashcroft’s wife might have been lying, pretending she knew nothing about the incident at the writer’s workshop. But I didn’t think so. When I told her he’d been in the hospital, she’d been genuinely distraught and panicked about the well-being of her husband.

  I didn’t think that reaction could be easily faked. And if it was real, it almost certainly ruled her out as the person trying to scare Ashcroft.

  Of course, we still had to ask our questions. And there was still a chance she knew more about all of this than she was saying.

  “So you haven’t talked to or seen Ashcroft since the night of the writer’s workshop?” Daniel asked.

  She shook her head. Then she glanced at me.

  “No. As I’m sure you overheard that evening, Ashcroft and I are not on the best of terms these days. We haven’t been for a long time, honestly. He’s always loved his work more than he loves me. I knew that going into the marriage. I wasn’t a fool. Or so I thought at the time…”

  She let out a sigh and gazed into the fire.

  “I shouldn’t be speaking to you about this. It’s personal and—”

  She looked from Daniel to me then, as if trying to figure out whether we were trustworthy people.

  Then she drew in a deep breath.

  “Don’t repeat this to anybody else,” she said, lowering her voice. “It’s a private matter, and frankly, if word of this gets out, it would be catastrophic for Ashcroft. And while I would do almost anything to get him to sign the divorce papers, I wouldn’t go as low as this. Not ever.”

  I felt my eyebrows draw together. Daniel looked over at me and then back at Ana.

  “You have our word,” I said. “You can trust us.”

  She bit her lip and leaned in closer to us.

  “As I said, I knew going into the marriage that I would always come second to Ashcroft’s work. I came to terms with that. But then I discovered something a few months ago.”

  She shook her head.

  “You see, all these years, it wasn’t his work I was taking a back seat to.”

  I gazed into Ana’s distraught face, not understanding.

  “What do you mean?” Daniel finally asked.

  She closed her eyes.

  “My husband is a fraud, Sheriff. A lying fraud.”

  Chapter 26

  “Ash had been in a miserable way for months. But the thing that pushed me over the edge — that finally gave me the courage to leave — happened back in July. I came home one night from work and found Ash drunk, blubbering about some old writing professor of his that passed away. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then he kept talking and…”

  Ana stopped speaking for a moment as a large group of people came from the elevators, dressed in crisp, fashionable clothes, clearly headed for a long night on the town. When they left through the front doors, Ana looked back at us and lowered her voice.

  “He kept talking. And he told me how much this professor meant to him. Ash said he showed him what it took to be a writer. A real writer, he kept saying. Ash said that he attributed all of his success to this man, but that in the last few years of his life, this mentor stopped talking to him. And Ash couldn’t get over it. It ate him up inside. He blamed the worsening of his heart condition on the deterioration of this relationship.”

  Ana bit her lip.

  “Then I asked him something I wish I hadn’t…”

  She drew in a deep breath, meeting my questioning eyes.

  “I asked him what happened — why this mentor of his stopped speaking to him. And you know what Ash told me?”

  She scoffed with disgust.

  “‘Because I stole his book.’ That’s what he said. The idea for the Lane Graves series wasn’t my husband’s — it belonged to this man. Ashcroft told me the professor had been working on the first book in the series for the majority of his life. And that one day, Ash broke into the professor’s computer to read it. Ash stole it, reworked it, and sold it to a publisher under his own name.”

  I stifled back a gasp.

  Ana stared into the flames, her eyes turning to glassy mirrors.

  “I don’t even know if Ashcroft remembers telling me any of this. We didn’t speak of it afterwards. But I knew it was more than the ramblings of a drunk man. I knew he was telling the truth — perhaps for the first time.”

  She glanced up at us, her eyes lingering on me and my shell-shocked expression for a long moment.

  “That was the straw that broke the back for me,” she said, missing the ‘camel’ part of the idiom. “I could take a backseat to his work, to his passion. I understood that. But when I discovered it wasn’t his work at all, I couldn’t have it anymore. It’s not just me he betrayed, either. It’s all of his readers as well. I had to leave him on principle.”

  She stopped speaking, and a silence settled over the conversation.

  I almost couldn’t believe it — that Ashcroft had done such a despicable thing. But when I looked into Ana’s devastated face, I knew she was telling the truth.

  “I’m sorry we dragged all this up for you tonight, ma’am,” Daniel said, breaking the silence.

  She rubbed her face.

  “Que pesadilla. Ashcroft won’t talk to my lawyers. He sends back the divorce papers ripped in half. He won’t listen to reason, and he’s pushing me further and further away. This isn’t a marriage anymore. It’s a nightmare.”

  We both gave that statement some room. Ana rubbed her arms, looking despondent and tired.

  Daniel glanced over at me.

  It was time to wrap this interview up.

  “Do you know of anyone who’d want to hurt your husband?” I asked.

  “Hurt? What do you mean?”

  As yet, we hadn’t told Ana about the ghost of Lorna Larimer. She seemed genuinely in the dark about the whole thing, which helped prove her innocence.

  “Does he have any enemies?” Daniel continued. “Other people he might have upset recently?”

  Ana stared at the green ceiling for a long moment.

  “We’ve been leading separate lives for months now,” she said. “But Ashcroft doesn’t spend enough time in the world to have enemies. He hardly associates with anybody at all. He’s at his typewriter all day and all night.”

  “Ana, do you know the name of this writing mentor Ashcroft stole the book from?” Daniel asked.

  She shook her head.

  “No. I didn’t want to know anything more about it. I never asked.”

  She furrowed her brow, leaning forward in the leather chair.

  “Is he in some kind of danger, Sheriff?”

  Daniel glanced at me.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out, ma’am.”

  Ana shook her head again, leaning back and crossing her arms, her eyes fixed on the flames.

  “He should have never left New York,” she mumbled.

  Chapter 27

  I took a big sip of my pumpkin shake, savoring the delicious creamy flavors as they danced on my tongue.

  The shake was so good that I kept sipping and sipping until my straw hit air, causing a loud slurping sound to echo throughout the car.

  Daniel laughed.

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” he said.

  I chuckled as he hooked a right and sp
ed through Gresham — a suburb of Portland that we drove through to get to the pass.

  The sun was going down, and we were in for a dark drive. But the good weather appeared to be holding, and the heater was working overtime, making the inside of the cab warm and cozy.

  We’d just stopped at Burgerville where we’d eaten a couple of bacon cheeseburgers and gotten some of the franchise’s famous milkshakes to-go. We hadn’t had a chance to talk much about the conversation with Ashcroft’s wife. But now that we were on the road headed home, I wanted to hear Daniel’s thoughts on it.

  As if reading my mind, he started talking.

  “Do you believe Ana’s story?” he asked. “That she doesn’t know anything about this Lorna Larimer business?”

  “Yes,” I said without a moment’s hesitation. “I believed her. About that, and about the rest, too.”

  Daniel kept his eyes on the road and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  “Imagine — building your whole life on someone else’s hard work. Ashcroft must have made millions off of his writing professor over the years. And the whole time, he’s taken all the credit.”

  I nodded, still feeling a little shocked by the scandalous revelation.

  I guess I had thought Ashcroft to be a lot of things.

  But I hadn’t pegged him as a liar.

  Or as a thief, either.

  “Well, I guess that means we can cross his wife off the list of suspects,” Daniel said. “So that leaves—”

  “You still want to pursue all of this?” I interrupted.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “But… but why? Ashcroft’s a liar. And he clearly doesn’t want us investigating this anymore. For all we know, this could be some sort of publicity stunt for him — for the next book. He might have paid the actress out there and faked the heart incident.”

  Daniel didn’t answer right away, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “It’s possible,” he said. “But what if it’s real, Cin? What if someone really is trying to scare him to death? I can’t in good conscience stand by and let that happen. And anyway, I don’t take my orders from him. He’s in my county, and I have the law to uphold.”

  Daniel fell silent, and after a moment, I felt the edges of my lips curl up a little.

  He glanced over, catching me smiling.

  “What?”

  I shrugged.

  “Nothing, Sheriff. Just… Ashcroft Black should count his lucky stars that he ended up in your county. Any other Sheriff might wash their hands of all of this after hearing Ana’s side of the story.”

  A faint smile drifted across Daniel’s face.

  He shrugged.

  “I don’t have any choice in the matter. Ashcroft might have done bad things in his past, but it doesn’t change the fact that somebody else is breaking the law by trying to hurt him. And they need to be held accountable.”

  I guess sometimes when you were Sheriff, you didn’t always have the luxury of protecting only the innocent.

  “So where do we go from here?” I asked.

  Daniel finished the last of his shake, then set it down in the cup holder before turning the heater up to full blast.

  “I liked your idea about the publisher,” he said. “Seems like he might have some sort of publicity angle worth investigating. Additionally, I want to look more into that old mentor, just to rule out the possibility that it might have something to do with the plagiarism issue. I think tomorrow morning, we should pay Ashcroft another visit.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Though I’m not expecting him to be too happy to see us.”

  “Tough luck for him — we’re showing up, anyway. Isn’t that right, Detective Peters?”

  I took the little joke as a compliment.

  “Damn right, Sheriff.”

  He reached over, squeezing my hand.

  After a little while, I turned the radio on and flipped it to some old country station. The radio signal weaved in and out as we climbed higher and higher toward the pass. Night fell, and the inky shadows of the towering trees lining the highway closed in around us.

  I gazed out the window, thinking about Lorna Larimer.

  And about how even though I now knew she wasn’t real, the thought of seeing her ghost somewhere out here in this dark forest still sent hard chills down my spine.

  Chapter 28

  As it turned out, I didn’t need to go to the Juniper Hollow Cabin the next morning to see Ashcroft Black.

  He came to see me at the shop.

  And as I predicted, he wasn’t too happy.

  About an hour after I’d arrived, there was a strong, hurried knock at the front door. I left the batch of Caramel Pear Quince pies I’d been working on and went through the dining room to see who it was.

  I guess when I really thought about it, I wasn’t all that surprised to see his angry face peering at me from the other side of the glass.

  Not wanting to make a scene on Main Street and give the gossips something to talk about, I’d asked him to come around back and meet me in the kitchen. He did as I requested, storming in and pacing the tile floor with his cane like a madman.

  I wondered if I should have called Daniel.

  Ashcroft was nearly blue in the face.

  “I told you I didn’t want you two involved in this anymore! I never gave you permission to speak to my wife! I never gave you permission to tell her about my hospital visit!”

  I gathered that shortly after we left The Greenbuilt, Ana must have called Ashcroft to make sure he was okay.

  “Please, Mr. Black,” I said in a calm tone. “Take a seat and lower your voice. We were only trying to—”

  “I didn’t ask for this! I told you to leave it be!”

  “I know, but—”

  “You don’t know anything!”

  Ashcroft damn near shouted, and I could see the veins bulging out from his neck.

  But I wasn’t scared of him and I held my ground.

  I crossed my arms, watching as he paced some more.

  “If it’s the plagiarism you’re concerned about, Ashcroft, you should know that we don’t plan to tell anyone—”

  Ashcroft Black spun around and looked at me with wide, horrified eyes.

  He stood petrified like that in silence for what felt like an eternity.

  For a second, I regretted uttering the dreaded P-word.

  I imagined saying something like that to a writer was akin to throwing a dart at their chest.

  Finally, Ashcroft Black sank down into one of the barstools at the kitchen island.

  He covered his face, and all the anger that had been spewing out of him moments earlier vanished.

  “She told you,” he whispered in a defeated tone.

  “She told us,” I confirmed quietly.

  He didn’t speak for a long time after that.

  I drew in a deep breath.

  Then I went over to the coffee pot, poured a fresh cup, and brought it over to him.

  I figured he would need it for the storytelling session that lay ahead.

  Chapter 29

  “Over the years, I rewrote the history of it all,” he said, pressing his large hands around the mug of coffee for warmth. “As any writer might do, really. I convinced myself that the Sheriff Lane Graves series came completely from me. After all — I was the one who got the manuscript into shape, wasn’t I? And I’m the one who continued writing the series. All the books that followed the first once came from my pen, and my pen alone. I did the work. I deserved all the success.”

  He let out a gut-wrenching sigh.

  “That’s the lie I convinced myself of, anyway. But in July, when I heard that Grant died of liver cancer, things began to… they began to stir within me. And I started to question what I’ve been telling myself for all this time.”

  I leaned against the counter, listening intently.

  “I grew up in Central California, poorer than desert soil. Most of my classmates in high school
ended up either in the military or in prison. That would have been my fate as well. Except I had this gift. I loved reading. It was all I wanted to do, day and night. When I began writing in high school, I received an enormous amount of attention. I won a prestigious national writing award and got a full-ride scholarship to Hemmings College in upstate New York — one of the finest liberal art schools in the country.”

  I wondered if that was where he learned to speak the way he did — with an air of superiority running through every carefully selected word.

  Ashcroft stared out at the woods through the window. The sun had just come up and the trees, still damp from yesterday’s rainfall, sparkled in a golden hazy light.

  “I stuck out like the uncouth, poor boy that I was the entirety of the first semester,” he continued. “I almost quit. I would have, too — if not for my writing professor.”

  Sorrow crossed Ashcroft’s face.

  “He was kind. He always wanted us to call him by his first name — Grant. He taught creative writing, and after the class was over for the term, he agreed to mentor me. Grant was an excellent teacher — an excellent human being, too. He inspired in me such a love for the craft, I’ll always be indebted to him for it. Over the years, he read my work and encouraged me to continue even when I wasn’t making any money and kept getting rejected by publishers. He always helped me when I asked.”

  Ashcroft rubbed his face.

  “We became friends, you see. Grant was always talking about this opus he was working on. But as the years passed by, the book was still left uncompleted and he became lost. His mother died, and he was fired from his teaching job shortly after that. Grant began taking pain medication — too much pain medication, you understand? I knew the key to his salvation was that book. But he refused to let anybody go near it. He wouldn’t let me so much as read the first sentence.”

  Ashcroft looked at me, meeting my eyes.

  “One night when I was in my last year of graduate school, I received a call from the police station. Grant had gotten into a fight at a bar and needed someone to pick him up from the drunk tank. I retrieved him and drove him home. He fell asleep. And that’s when…”