Mayhem in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery (Christmas River Cozy, Book 2) (12 page)

After a few seconds, the door opened. He stood there in a worn Christmas River High baseball shirt.

He had a beer in his hand, and judging from the faraway look in his eyes, it wasn’t his first.

Huckleberry clawed lightly at his legs, and Daniel rubbed him on the head before the dog went inside, making a beeline for the kitchen, and probably his food bowl.  

“Well, if it isn’t Anne Hathaway,” Daniel said, leaning against the door jamb. “How’s the theater these days, Anne?”

I crossed my arms.

“I didn’t come to talk to you about the play.”

“No, I figured as much,” he said, opening the door wider. “Well come on in then. It’s not every day that I’m graced with a visit from a movie star.”

I gave him a sharp look.

“Don’t be like that.”

He looked at me and shrugged and then closed the door behind me as we walked into the living room.

“You want a beer?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Suit yourself.”

He sat down in his recliner and fixed his eyes on the TV screen.

There was black and white footage that was paused. A parking lot and street poles, and a back door.

I realized it was tape of the alleyway behind Kara’s shop. 

“I came over to see how you were doing,” I said.

“Well, I think beer number five speaks for itself,” he said, shaking the remains of his bottle.

I sat down on the arm rest of his chair. 

“Hard day?” I asked, looking down at him.

I rubbed my hands softly through his dark hair.

“Hard week,” he said, his eyes still glued to the TV.

“Because of me?”

He looked up, meeting my eyes.

“Partly,” he said. “Partly because I’m not getting very far with this Santa arson case. It makes me feel like I’ve lost my touch.”

“So he struck again?” I said.

“He did,” he said. “And I’m gonna tell you again, Cin, you really shouldn’t be part of that play. I know how much Cinnamon’s Pies means to you. Do you really want to see it go up in flames if this nut decides to go after you next?”

It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about that already.

“No,” I said, softly.

I didn’t feel like arguing about it anymore. I knew how he felt, and he knew how I felt.

We were at an impasse.

Daniel leaned back, looked up at me, and let out a long sigh.

“We’re just not seeing eye to eye these days, are we?”

“I didn’t come over here to talk about this,” I said.

“Then what did you come over here for?”

“Stephanie stopped by the shop,” I said.

“She said she might,” he said.

I cleared my throat.

“I invited her to dinner tonight, but rescheduled for tomorrow instead,” I said. “Think you can make it?”

He nodded.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

He pressed play on the remote, and went back to looking at the screen. A few cars passed down the alleyway, and then there was a long while where everything was still. Then, suddenly, something flashed on the screen and the back door of the shop was busted open. A few minutes later, someone came back out of the door.

Santa glanced around, and then looked up at the camera

It was hard to see his face. His white beard covered most of it, and he had exaggerated white eyebrows that couldn’t possibly have been real.

And from the poor quality of the footage, you couldn’t really tell much more.

Then, he stretched his arms out, leaned forward, and took a sweeping bow.

Then, he was gone.

I shook with visible chills.

“Same thing at the florist’s shop,” Daniel said. “He’s bold doing that in the middle of the day.”

“What a sick son of a bitch,” I said.

He rubbed his face.

“Dangerous, too.”

Daniel put an arm around my waist.

“Do you have any suspects?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a little while.

“I may have a lead,” he finally said. “But I don’t like where it’s headed.”

I waited for more, but that was all he was going to say.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me?” I asked.

“I’m not certain about it yet,” he said.  “It’s just a theory. And you knowing wouldn’t help anything.”

“Is it part of the play?” I asked.

“Not sure yet.”

He skipped back to the beginning, and we watched the same scene unfold again.

I looked around the room at the empty beer bottles. There seemed to be more of them than usual.

This place was definitely lacking a woman’s touch.

“Is anything else bothering you?” I asked.

Despite the way we’d met, Daniel didn’t get drunk like this that often. And while it’d been a stressful and difficult week for him, I could tell there was something more to it.

He wasn’t telling me something.

I slid my hand into his.

“It’s just that it’s my brother’s birthday today,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about him all day. It would’ve been his 40
^th
.”

I bit my lip.

It’d been over 15 years since Daniel’s older brother had been murdered in a convenience store robbery in California. But looking at Daniel’s face, the pain of his death was still very real for him.

I slumped into the chair and held him tightly.

“I’m so sorry, babe,” I said. 

“I still miss him so much.”

That old saying that time heals all wounds was a lie.

Time can lessen or dull the pain, but it can’t always heal it.

He held me back and we stayed like that for a long, long time.

Chapter 28

I stood off to the right of the stage, my insides trembling like a jar of jam on the back of a three-wheel delivery truck.

Santa was out on stage, delivering his lines like a real professional. I was sure that Sarah had Ronald practicing every minute of every hour. Several elves were also up on stage, along with a couple of actors playing reindeers and extended family of the Clauses.

In a couple of moments, I was about to make my grand entrance, which amounted to me completely raining on Santa’s parade of summer fun.

Before rehearsal, Sarah Reinhart had gathered us around and told us the news that everybody already knew—that Valley Corson’s shop had been burned down, and that she no longer could play the role of Santa’s sister. She said there was a donation fund set up for both Valley and Kara that we could contribute to.

There was no talk of postponing or stopping the play. But judging by some of the actor’s faces, the thought of quitting had occurred to them.

“She’s out of her mind,” Kat Wilson, one of the elves, muttered after Sarah’s speech. “Are we going to get donation funds when the arsonist burns our businesses down too?”

A few of the others nodded their heads in agreement. But they were too scared of Sarah to drop out of the play. Everybody stuck around for the rehearsal.

Sarah ended with a sentence about not giving into threats and terror, otherwise, the instigators of such heinous acts win.

I wanted to roll my eyes.

It was becoming obvious to everyone that the fires were connected to this play somehow.

Daniel had managed to keep the part about the arsonist dressed up as Santa from the local news sources, but there were a lot of rumors flying around that both women had been actresses in the play.

When I had talked with Daniel the night before, he said that he had already spoken with the majority of the cast members, clearing just about all of them from being responsible for the fires.

But something was going on here. That much was clear.

There had to be something we were missing.

“Hey, go get them out there,” a voice said, snapping me back to reality.

I glanced back behind me. I recognized the face, but was having trouble connecting it with a name.

Even in a small town where everybody knew everybody, a few still could get by you.

He had blue eyes and dark red hair, and had one of those ageless faces that made it hard to guess his age.

And he hadn’t been at the other rehearsal. I would have remembered.  

“Uh, thanks,” I said.

“And don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get the best lighting up there come performance day,” he said. “Not that you need it.”

I still couldn’t match the stranger to a name. But I gathered that he was in charge of the lights.

I suddenly realized that Sarah was giving me a dirty look and had started pointing wildly at the stage. I figured that was my cue to go on.

I took a deep breath, wiped my sweaty hands on my ugly velvet skirt, and stepped on.

“What in tarnation is going on down here, Papa? What sort of devilish debauchery are the elves getting you into?”

I couldn’t quite believe I was actually repeating these words—but there I was, saying the stupid lines. I could feel a pool of sweat gathering on the indentation of my upper lip.

“Stop harassing me, Mama,” Ronald, who was decked out in his big red suit, said to me. “It’s my vacation. Me and the elves can do whatever we darn well please. You just go on home now.”

I grappled for the next line, missing a few beats as I searched my memory for what was supposed to come next.

“There’s… there’s no such thing as vacation in the North Pole,” I mumbled. “There’s always more work to be—”

“Project, Ms. Peters!” Sarah yelled from the side of the stage, her obnoxiously high-pitched voice grating on me like I was a hunk of cheddar cheese. “I can hardly hear you over here!”

I cleared my throat, pushed away the urge to go over there and kick her in the shin, and started again.

“There’s no such thing as vacation in the North Pole,” I said again, louder than I needed to. “There’s always more work to be done. You know that above everyone, Papa.”

I looked over at Ronald. It was his turn to speak, but he was distracted by something out in the seats.

He looked out into the dark auditorium, squinting for a moment, and then he looked back at me.

And suddenly I noticed that his face had gone as white as the mountains after the first snowfall of the year.

And there was something else.

Pure terror in his eyes. The way you look after seeing a car wreck happen right in front of you.

“Ronald, are you ok—” I started saying.

But before I finished, he dropped to the floor like a twenty-pound bag of flour chucked from off the top of a building. 

Chapter 29

He waved his arms at the crowd of people surrounding him.

“I’m perfectly fine. It was just this darn suit. I’ll be okay. Please, just continue the rehearsal without me.”

Ronald was seated on a metal fold-out chair that I had grabbed from somewhere behind the stage. The cast was huddled around, peering at him with worried expressions.

Everyone was concerned.

Everyone but Sarah.

She was standing off stage, acting distant. She had this strange look in her eyes. Something that looked like frustration. Like she was angry that Ronald’s fainting spell had gotten in the way of her play.

I knew that she was a hard-ass when it came to her production, but I never realized how far her insanity actually went.

Her husband looked as though he’d had a heart attack, and she was upset that it had ruined the rehearsal.

“I still think we should get you over to the doctor’s,” I said. “You don’t want to chance these kinds of things.” 

“I just got a little overheated,” he said, shooing me away. “There’s no need for all of this fuss. I’m just going to get a little water in me and I’ll be as good as new.”

“Maybe we should pick back up tomorrow,” I said. “We can’t really do much rehearsing without Santa anyway.”

I looked around and the cast seemed to be onboard with the idea.

“I could use a break from these elf shoes anyway,” Tom Porter, a retired teacher who was playing Santa’s right hand elf in the play, said.

Sarah suddenly came strutting across the stage toward the group.

“We only have a few short days left, and you all hardly know your lines. There’s no time to get sidetracked. We must all find the strength within us to carry on.”

What was wrong with her?

All the actors looked at each other sheepishly. Everyone had the look of a beaten dog about them—they were all scared of her.

But I wasn’t.

“We’ll pick back up tomorrow,” I said, patting Ronald’s back. “We’ll all be better if we’re rested anyway. There’s no need to put anyone in danger—right, Sarah?”

I thought I could see steam coming out of her ears. She was looking at me like a bull about to charge. I half expected her to start digging at the ground with her hooves.

But I stood my ground and didn’t break eye contact. The actors watched our staring war. Finally, Tom Porter spoke up.

“Cinnamon’s right,” he said. “This is just a play, after all.”

Sarah broke my glance and hurled a glare in his direction, but he had already started walking away by then.

Olé
, I thought.

“Well, if you all want to make fools of yourselves up here Saturday, be my guest,” she said, dropping her clipboard. “And after all the work I’ve put into you…”

She turned around and stomped away through the back exit.

The only one who was making a fool of themselves was her. 

I turned back. The cast members looked relieved. They started peeling off their hot costumes and walked away toward the dressing rooms.

Ronald was left sitting in the chair all by himself.

He wiped away his sweaty forehead with the back of his Santa hat.

“Her bark’s worse than her bite,” Ronald said, sighing and looking up at me.

I wondered how many times he’d said that line about his wife over the years.  

“I’m beginning to think that they’re about equal.”

“This play just means a lot to her. I don’t know why, but it does. I guess it’s her big moment to shine. The rest of the year, it’s all about the students she tutors. But when summer rolls around, she gets to finally do something, something for
her
. That’s why she gets so carried away. I know she must seem terrible. But she’s not.”