Magic in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy Book 7) (8 page)

Chapter 16

I sat hunched over one of the library’s old tables – the same one I had often sat at during the years I was a student – poring over the old yearbook like it was the most absorbing, scandalous read since
Fifty Shades of Grey
.

In 1958, the students at Christmas River High School weren’t that much different than the kids who attended the school today. Coming from a small town, students were slightly behind the times, and had a certain Oregon mill town look to them. But in other ways, the students in the class of 1958 were brazenly different than the ones today. They were more reserved. They smiled, but most of them did so self-consciously. They dressed nicely, and even though they were only photos, you could tell that the teens in them lived during a time when etiquette and politeness mattered. 

They were an entire people oblivious to the concept of a selfie.

But the pros and cons of different generations’ social graces wasn’t what I was there in the library during my lunch break to learn about.

I placed the ring out on the desk in front of me, eyeing the initials on the band. Then I flipped to the page of class photos where the senior “B” last names began.

Within a few moments, my finger stopped midway through a page.

Ralph Henry Baker.

R-H-B.

My eyes went from the name to the correlating photo. My breath caught in my throat as my eyes fell upon his picture.

He had the kind of face that seemed to belong to the era. It was wide, but not chubby. Deep-set eyes gave way to a large nose and thick lips that spread into a broad smile. His dark hair was slicked back in a style that had gone out of fashion in the late sixties. In his eyes, there was just a hint of mischief. The kind that I imagined got him into trouble every now and then.

Though I couldn’t tell from the head shot, the teen seemed like he could have had a football player’s build. His features were large and his energy and zest for life practically leapt off the page.

Ralph Henry Baker was about as all-American as you could get.

And as I looked through the rest of the yearbook, it became apparent that that assumption extended beyond his looks.

Ralph was on the football team. He was on the baseball team. He threw the javelin for the track and field team. The yearbook was littered with various photos of the youth. In all of them, he looked like he was having the time of his life.

Popular, good-looking, and seemingly never short on friends, Ralph Henry Baker was—

A shadow crossed the yearbook page in front of me. Followed by an old, crackling voice.

“I’m afraid it’s time to leave.”

Startled, I looked up to see an old woman staring back at me.

For a split second, I felt my eyes widen with fear. But when I realized it wasn’t Hattie Blaylock, and that she hadn’t somehow followed me to the school library, I let out an enormous sigh of relief.

“I’m sorry… I don’t understand, Mrs. Longmont,” I said, peering up at the elderly librarian.

I didn’t know exactly what time it was, but I knew that it couldn’t be the end of the school day just yet.

“There’s an assembly,” Mrs. Longmont, who wore her hair in the same long braid that she did when I went to the high school, said. “We close the library during important assemblies. We don’t want students missing the vital things that Vice Principal Davidson has to say to them about their conduct as young men and women.”

Mrs. Longmont was about as humorless as they came.

“I see,” I said.

I closed the old yearbook and handed it back to her.

“Thanks for your help,” I said.

I quickly pocketed the class ring, then stood up.

Mrs. Longmont eyed me suspiciously.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I think so,” I said, sliding on my jacket.

I wrapped my wool scarf several times around my neck and grabbed my purse. When I looked up, I was surprised to see the old librarian still watching me.

“You know, some things should just stay in the past, Ms. Peters,” she said, her mahogany-colored eyes boring into me from behind her thick glasses.

I felt my face scrunch up in surprise.

“What?”

“You’re not doing anybody any good by stirring the pot,” she said. “And plenty of folks in this town would agree with me. Plenty don’t want to see old things dredged up – you understand?”

She raised an eyebrow at me, and I suddenly felt like I was 16 again, getting scolded for talking too loudly in the library.  

“No, I don’t understand,” I said, a sharpness seeping into my tone. “What is it you’re trying to say, Mrs. Longmont?”

She shook her head, and then began backing away toward the library’s small, windowless office. She clutched the yearbook to her chest tightly like it was some sort of treasure.

“Just some friendly advice, Ms. Peters,” she said, a darkness crossing her face. “I won’t say anything more.”

She flipped a switch on the wall, turning out the library’s lights. Then the old woman disappeared into the office. She shut the door behind her with more force than she needed to.

I rubbed the class ring in my pocket between my forefinger and thumb, looking around the dark walls of the library.

I felt a chill pass through me like the gust of a dark wind.

I pulled my jacket tighter around my body, and booked it out of there like it was the last day of senior year.

Chapter 17

“Hello?... Hello?... Are you there, Grandpa?”

I held the phone out far from my ear as a crackling “Ping!” broke out across the speaker.

The noise, which sounded like a cash register on steroids, might have baffled most callers. But knowing Warren and Aileen as I did, I figured out right away what had made the noise.

So when a distinct, Scottish accented-whooping followed it, I was not surprised in the least.

“Way to go, honey!” I heard the old man say somewhere far in the background.

I set the timer for a batch of Chocolate Hazelnut pies that I had just whipped up for the next day’s tourist onslaught, and waited for the celebration on the other side of the line to lessen. 

“Why, Aileen’s a natural at the slots, Cin,” Warren said after a few moments, slightly out of breath. “She just won fifty dollars. That’s practically unheard of here in this casino. Practically unheard of anywhere – slots are a losing game, I always say.”

I felt a bright grin possess my face.

“Sounds like you two are having a rip-roaring time in old Lincoln City,” I said,

“I can’t argue with you there, Cinny Bee,” he shouted over another loud ding.

I felt my grin grow brighter.

“But should you really be talking to me right now? I thought that you weren’t allowed to use a cell phone in a casino.”

I hadn’t been gambling in ages, but I did know that casino security didn’t look too kindly on folks using their phones while laying bets.

“Oh, pish-posh,” Warren said. “Nobody’s going to stand between me and having a conversation with my Cinny. Now what’s got you worried, hon?”

I felt my eyebrows arch in surprise.

“Who said anything about me being worried?” I said. “I just left you a message earlier to see how you youngin’s are doing over there.”

“Remind me again: how long have I known you?” he asked.  

I puckered my lips together.

“Um, I don’t know,” I said, adding a heavy layer of sarcasm to my voice. “Like, my whole life.”

“That’s right,” he said. “And in those thirty-something years, have you ever been able to pull the wool over old Warren’s eyes when somethin’ was upsetting you?”

I thought about it for a moment, making my way over to the window, looking out as the sunset cast an eerie, fiery red light across the forest floor.

“Well, I guess the answer is: Never.”

“Mmhmm,” he said, rather pleased with himself. “Now, I heard that message you left. And while I know you were trying to put up a brave front, I could hear it in your voice. Something’s got you worried or preoccupied or something. Why don’t you tell old Warren about it?”

“All right, you got me,” I said, after a momentary pause. “But I’m not so much worried as I am wanting to ask you about something.”

I still wasn’t being completely honest with him, but I didn’t want to burden the old man. Especially when he was on his honeymoon, and maybe more importantly, on a winning streak at the slots.

“Go on and shoot,” he said.

“Well, a funny thing happened yesterday,” I said. “I was here in the pie shop, alone. And, well, you know all the renovation work going on here?”

“Sure,” Warren said. “You think it’ll be done this side of the New Year?”

I grinned.

“Fingers crossed,” I said.

The upgrades had begun in September, and were supposed to have been finished by the end of that month. But, as I found out, the contractor that Alex Rosell, a business developer who was investing in my pie shop, had hired wasn’t exactly the fastest man on the planet. His work was beautiful, and the dining room and kitchen were looking better than I thought possible. But he’d been dragging his heels these last few weeks, and it seemed like the renovations might not ever end.

“But anyway, I was here alone,” I continued. “And I heard this noise out of the blue that scared the hell out of me.”

I paused for a second.

“Then what?” Warren said.

“I went over to see what it was.”

“And?”

“Something had fallen out of the brick wall,” I said. “A ring.”

“A
ring
?”

I nodded, though I knew he couldn’t see me.

“Not just a ring. A Christmas River High School class ring. From 1958.”

“Really?” he said.

“Yeah. And it had the initials
RHB
on it.”

I waited, but Warren didn’t respond. I continued.

“So I went to the high school library this afternoon. You know, to see who the ring belonged to? And it matched up to a name… Ralph Henry Baker. Class of 1958.”

“Cin—”

“I mean, I know you were a few years ahead of that class,” I said. “But I figured Christmas River was such a small town back then that you might have known Ralph or the Baker family. And maybe you could tell me—”

“
Sir
, there are no phones allowed on the floor. If you do not hang up now, then I’ll have to confiscate the phone and escort you out of the facility—” a deep, mean-sounding voice broke across the speaker.

“Okay, message received, big guy,” I heard Warren say nonchalantly.

“Cinny, I’m going to have to call you back in a little bit. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I said, trying not to let the disappointment sound in my voice.

A moment later, the line went deader than a doornail.

I let out a short sigh, and watched as the red faded from the sky and left the trees outside of my pie shop behind in the cold dusk.

I retrieved the class ring from my jacket pocket and looked at it again.

I wasn’t sure why, but the object seemed to have some hold on me. By all rights, I should have returned the ring to the high school and let them deal with finding its owner, or the owner’s family. It wasn’t my responsibility. And God knows, I had more important things to do these days than to go on a wild goose chase that would most likely end with Ralph Henry Baker having passed away peacefully in his—

I felt my eyes grow wide as something streaked across the window in front of me.

It stopped for a split second, turning its head toward me. Its eyes seemed to glow red, reflecting the light of the kitchen.

I stared back at it, unable to believe my eyes.

Its fur was the color of freshly-fallen snow.

I had never seen a cat so white before. If it wasn’t there, so real-looking, I would have thought it was a ghost cat.

The feline just stared at me for a long, long moment. Its wide eyes looking scared and desperate. As if it wanted to say something – as if it was
trying
to say something. Something that I couldn’t understand.

“Meooowww!!!”

The cat’s ear-drum-rupturing screech was followed by the sound of claws scrambling on new tile as Huckleberry and Chadwick jumped at the cry and ran to the window to investigate.

A moment later, their equally-loud barks echoed through the pie shop, causing the cat out the window to arch its back in alarm. It let out a skin-crawling hiss, then a second later, it vanished out of sight.

The dogs kept barking, long after Hattie Blaylock’s cat was gone.

And my heart kept hammering in my chest long after, too.

Chapter 18

“Would you hand me one of those extension cords, Cin?”

I took my hands out of my jacket pockets, and headed for the dark corner of the porch where a tangle of orange cords lay twisted together like a den of snakes.

“Does it matter which one?” I shouted up.

“Nope,” he said. “Any old one should do the trick.”

I leaned down and chose the one that looked the least dusty, pulling at it until I discovered that its tail end was tangled up in a massive knot with the other cords.

I wrestled with them until I was blue in the face.

“What’s the hold up?” Daniel finally said, looking down from his perch on the ladder.

I looked back up at him, exasperated.

“Oh, I don’t know. Just about fifty feet of tangled cord that wouldn’t have ended up like this if you’d stored them away properly in the garage.”

He chuckled, obviously entertained by my frustration.  

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh, yes it is,” he said, stepping down the ladder slowly until he landed on the wooden porch with a thud.

It was a chilly autumn night. The kind of night where your breath hangs in the air like cartoon thoughts. The kind of night that held whispers of the storms and violent winter weather to come.

I got up, putting my hands on my hips and giving Daniel a hard look.

“Well, are you gonna help me untangle this mess?”