5 Mischief in Christmas River Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t come inside. Then my strange reaction when she came by my own shop. And now, me staring at her, my eye twitching and bulging.
    Maybe I would have been more bothered by my odd behavior if I wasn’t so… livid .
    I swallowed back some saliva that had pooled in the side of my mouth, and did my best to not let on just how insane I was feeling inside.
    I cleared my throat.
    “I enter every year. Well, at least just about every year,” I squeaked out.  
    “You know, I can’t say I have too much experience with building gingerbread houses, but I just figured, why not?” she said, tossing her hair back. “I’m new in town, and it sounded like a heck of a lot of fun to me. And I’ve always heard so much about the competition, so I figured I’d take a crack at it.”
    I gnawed on my lower lip, trying to figure out how to respond.
    What I really wanted to say to her was something along the lines of “Back off, fill-in-the-expletive-here .” 
    But instead, I just looked at her dumbly, and said:
    “It is a lot of fun.”
    She smiled, waiting for more, but the small talk tank was empty.
    The smile on her face faded a little bit.
    “Well, I, uh, I guess I better get back to registering,” she said. “But I’ll see you around sometime, neighbor.”
    She patted me on the arm.
    I nodded stiffly and then turned back toward my table.
    I heard the lady behind me let out a great big sigh, as if I’d just ruined her whole afternoon by not registering in a timely fashion.  
    I shot her a sharp look over my shoulder, and then finished up with Mrs. Brenneke’s rules of conduct speech.  
    A few moments later, I was back in my car, having gotten out of that crowded auditorium as fast as my feet could carry me.
    I placed my head on the wheel, letting out a long, long groan.
     
     

 
    Chapter 10
     
    I was back in the kitchen, listening to Queens of the Stone Age again.  
    This time I was making a batch of hazelnut crusts for the Hazelnut Chocolate Liqueur pies, cutting butter and vegetable shortening into the flour and salt mixture before adding some toasted, crushed hazelnuts.
    I was going through all the motions, but my mind was somewhere else completely.
    Already, it had started.
    The slowing of customers.
    It was early December: prime tourist season for Christmas River. The dining room of my little pie shop should have been packed. I should have been struggling to make enough pies to keep the glass case out in front full.
    Instead, the front of the house was nearly a ghost town. And I figured that for the first time in a long, long time, we’d have leftover pie today.
    I stopped what I was doing and dusted my hands off on my apron. I went over to the side kitchen window, craning my neck to look out across the street.
    Two employees of Pepper’s Pies were standing outside on the sidewalk. The girls couldn’t have been much older than 20, and both had long blond hair and were wearing pink aprons. They were wearing Santa hats and elf shoes, and were ringing jingle bells. They were handing out samples of pie and pastries to everybody who passed by, grinning sunnily as folks asked them questions about the products.   
    A chill ran down my spine: there was a huge crowd around the girls.
    No wonder my dining room was mostly empty today.
    I placed my forehead against the window.
    “This is just…”
    “Excuse me, Miss Cinnamon?”
    I shot straight up, Tobias’s gravelly voice jarring me from my self-pity party.
    “Didn’t mean to scare ya, miss,” he said. “Just, there’s this fella who’s out here wanting to see you.”
    I leaned back to look at him.
    “Did you get his name?”
    “Uh, no, sorry miss,” Tobias said. “But he’s sort of a short, pudgy lil’ fella in a deputy’s uniform. Seemed as harmless as a bee that lost its stinger, you ask me.”
    I smiled at Tobias’s colorful way of describing folks.
    “Less of course the bee has teeth. In which case, maybe he’s not so harmless after