A Festival of Murder (12 page)

“How did you get
out?” he asked the alpaca as he followed it. “Did you jump the fence or did
Toby forget to latch it again?”

Winchester finally
acknowledged him with a lazy glance back before breaking into a trot.
Intrigued, Nicholas picked up his pace to keep up.

They made a half circle
and then the silhouette of the Gingerbear coalesced in the white air.

“You’re motivated
by food, then. Typical.”

But Winchester
stopped a good forty feet from the inn and ducked his head. He used his dopey
nose to push the snow around the way Nicholas had seen him do with his hay when
he was trying to find a dropped carrot. Something metallic glinted in the snow
beneath his nostrils.

Nicholas shuffled
forward and pushed Winchester’s head away, receiving a soft huff in return. In
the snow lay a silver band. When he turned it over he discovered it was a
Movado watch. Nicholas would bet his shorts that it was the same one that had
belonged to Rocky Johnson. He recalled the appearance of the reporter’s body
that night at the lake. The left sleeve of Rocky’s coat had been pushed up,
baring his naked arm and frozen arm hair.

Was this what
Captain Sam had been looking for earlier? Nicholas rather liked that idea since
it implied the man knew more than he was letting on. Maybe he’d seen Rocky drop
the watch. Or better yet, he’d seen someone burying the watch or he’d buried it
himself and wanted to recover it before someone else did.

Heartened,
Nicholas pocketed the thing. Clues were good, especially one the police hadn’t
found yet.

“You’re useful for
once,” he informed Winchester.

The alpaca snorted
at him before bobbing his head and trudging back the other way, presumably
toward their shared home.

~~~~~

The detective’s
snowmobile was parked beside the empty pie tent on Main Street, but Canberry
was nowhere in sight. Nicholas contemplated sitting on the vehicle until the
man showed up, but the milling tourists in the area made him leery. He settled
with tucking himself behind one of the legs of the tent where the flap was
tied, keeping him safely out of view from the street.

A young volunteer
wearing an “Abduction Crew” T-shirt who was folding chairs within the tent
said, “He should be back any minute.”

“Where did he go?”

“I overheard
someone telling him they wanted to show him some scorch marks on a tree.” He
glanced over at Nicholas. “Said it’s from a UFO.”

Nicholas could
imagine how well that must have gone over with Canberry.

He stood there
awkwardly as the volunteer continued working. Nicholas felt out of place even
though he was the one who lived here.

“I saw one, too,”
the young man said, his back turned to Nicholas as he folded up the chairs. “A
UFO, I mean.”

“That makes one of
us,” Nicholas said beneath his breath.

“I wish I hadn’t.”

That was a new
one.

The other man
glanced at him from over his shoulder. “I saw it through my kitchen window,
right before a storm brewed up a tornado. I think that’s how it traveled,
inside storms like that. Six round lights glowed along its edge. It looked like
a Frisbee. And then it went away. Just blinked out of sight. The entire moment
couldn’t have lasted more than three seconds, but at the time, it felt like an
eternity.” He snapped a chair shut. Clang!

Nicholas said
nothing, not wanting to encourage the conversation. It went on without him
anyway.

“I couldn’t help
thinking that something was supposed to have happened. My life was supposed to
change. I’d just seen a UFO. Aliens
are
real.” Clang! “But nothing
happened. Nothing changed.” Clang
!
“I feel ripped off.”

Half-buried in the
snow near Nicholas’s feet lay the empty wrapper for an alien candy bar. A pair
of inhuman eyes stared back at him, unreadable and soulless, providing more
questions than answers. He wondered if this man was going to demand a refund
from him.

“This is my second
festival,” the man said, folding and stacking chairs with machinelike
efficiency and enthusiasm. “I watch the skies every night, thinking maybe if I
saw the craft again, I’d finally feel differently. But I never see anything.”

It was a litany
Nicholas heard often. When it came down to it, it was an accusation, and he
never had a good response for it.

“Something was
supposed to change, wasn’t it? Now that we know?” With his head down, the
volunteer asked quietly, “Are things different for you?”

A flippant
response rose and fell on Nicholas’s tongue. Had things changed? Of course they
had. But probably not in the way this man meant, in which different meant
better, maybe even magical. Nicholas didn’t know that feeling. Not during or
since his experience had there been a reason for celebration. Still, for this
troubled young man he searched himself for a meaningful answer. Whether it was
deserved or not, Nicholas felt responsible for his presence here, and his hope.

“It’s easy to trip
when you’re constantly looking up,” he said. “Sometimes it’s better to focus on
what’s down here.”

The volunteer
raised his head, stared at Nicholas. “Is that supposed to be some kind of
Buddhist crap?”

Startled, Nicholas
fumbled, “No, I-I just—”

“I want real
answers. Where are the damn aliens?”

Face burning,
Nicholas turned on his heel and stalked out of the tent. He kept walking,
telling himself that he would take a vacation during next year’s festival. A
tropical island sounded good. No one ever claimed to see aliens in the
Caribbean.

As he was
considering the logistics of leaving Alien Artifacts to the care of the twins,
Detective Canberry stumbled down a snowdrift just ahead, at the side of the
road.

“Detective!”
Nicholas called out as the man jumped clear of the pile and shook out his boots
with sharp movements.

Canberry’s
expression reflected exactly what Nicholas expected of a non-believer dragged
off to study evidence of aliens. “What do you want, Mr. Trilby?”

“Nothing to do
with UFOs, I promise.” He thrust out the watch. “I found this. In the snow
outside the Gingerbear. I’ve been wearing gloves so I haven’t left any
fingerprints on it. It’s Rocky Johnson’s watch. His corpse was missing it when
we found it.”

Canberry accepted
the watch into the palm of his gloved hand. “You found this outside. Lying in
the snow.”

“It was buried,
but not too deeply.”

“How did you find
it?”

Nicholas didn’t
hesitate. “A bit of the strap was peeking out of the snow. It caught the
reflection of the sun.” No way was he going to tell him Winchester had led him
to it.

A glance above
confirmed what they both already knew, that the sun hadn’t shone through all
weekend. “You must have eagle eyes, Mr. Trilby.”

Nicholas’s teeth
snapped together.

“I appreciate your
helpfulness,” Canberry went on, sounding anything but appreciative, “however
this is a police matter. Your interference may cause more harm than good.”

“But it’s evidence
proving where Johnson was attacked.”

“So you say. You
claim you found it and maybe you did. Maybe, as you say, it’s proof of a
struggle between Johnson and his killer. Or maybe you decided to get rid of
this after taking it from Johnson’s body. You realized it isn’t wise to keep
incriminating evidence around, but thought it might make you appear useful if
you gave it to the police.”

Canberry smiled,
just a tiny uptick of the corners of his mouth. Nicholas realized the man would
take nothing good from this encounter.

“Your helpfulness
has been noted,” Canberry said, his voice as dry as bark, “but please leave the
investigation to the Estes Park P.D. Otherwise, someone may get the idea you’re
trying to lead the investigation in a certain direction. And we wouldn’t want
that, Mr. Trilby. Would we?”

Nicholas jerked
his head in a close approximation of a nod. He waved vaguely in the direction
of the forest, anxious to change the subject, even if it meant discussion of
UFOs. “I take it you were dragged on a wild goose chase?”

“Maybe.” Eyes
flicked up and down Nicholas’s person. “Maybe not.”

~~~~~

After showing
Detective Canberry the exact location where he’d found the watch, Nicholas
trudged back to Alien Artifacts. He didn’t feel like he’d helped his situation
at all, and only made the detective more suspicious of him.

He contemplated
his shop and the alien paraphernalia waiting for him inside and sighed deeply.
He didn’t relish the prospect of staring at plastic images of his former
captors, even if the representations defused their threat by making them appear
silly. Instead of going inside, he studied the area in front of and at either
end of the small stand-alone building.

Canberry had
claimed he’d seen Nicholas shoveling snow the night Rocky Johnson’s body had
been found. That was unusual for more than the obvious reason. The only time he
bothered to clear a path to the shop’s door was when he couldn’t easily reach
it when he arrived in the mornings to open.

That left only two
explanations: either he'd done the shoveling in his sleep or Canberry had seen
someone else outside his shop that night and assumed it was Nicholas. But that
possibility didn’t inspire any epiphanies. Who would do such a thing and why?
Was someone trying to frame him? Did this have anything to do with the snow
that had been recently cleared from his walkway at home?

With Captain Sam’s
strange behavior at the Gingerbear fresh on his mind, Nicholas kicked through
the snowdrifts around Alien Artifacts, studiously ignoring nosey tourists as he
searched for a concealed clue. Occasionally, he glanced over his shoulder to
make sure the detective wasn’t coming; he didn’t need another lecture. But
Nicholas had too much on the line to sit around on the sidelines, waiting for
the investigator to get it right.

Although he kicked
up new piles of snow, he didn’t find anything unusual around his shop. Whatever
had been done here—and by whom—would have to remain a mystery for now.

Frozen and
frustrated, he gave up and entered Alien Artifacts, resigned to an afternoon of
retail and fretting. Just as he sat down behind the register, Kevin came
through the front door.

“Nicholas, I have
bad news.”

Nicholas held up
both hands to ward him off. “I’m not officiating any more contests.”

“Wish it was that
simple.” Kevin was distracted, a line creasing his forehead. “Something’s
happened.”

It was as worked
up as Kevin ever got. Only one thing, Nicholas believed, could set off his
neighbor like this. He grimaced. “Don’t tell me: there’s been a catastrophic
earthquake in Las Vegas and all the casinos have been destroyed.”

Kevin couldn’t
oblige him. “Someone broke into your cabin.”

Nicholas’s
cabin was his castle, albeit a very rustic one. To hear that it had been
breached for a second time made him want to mount up and joust the person
responsible.

“Are
you absolutely sure this is a break-in?” Nicholas demanded as he bustled out to
his Subaru, Kevin following.

“How
much you want to bet?” Kevin shrugged. “I decided to go over to your place and
check on Winchester. I came around to the back and your gate was wide open. Oh,
yeah, and sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Winchester was gone.”

Nicholas
waved it off. “I ran into him over by the Gingerbear. He’s a free-roaming
alpaca.”

“Hope
he doesn’t get eaten by coyotes.”

“They
won’t eat him. They won’t be able to identify what the heck he is. You were
talking about the break-in?”

“Your
kitchen door was open. Knowing how you are about your privacy, I knew something
bad must have happened.”

Nicholas’s
fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “Did you go in? What did you see?”

Kevin
stretched out his seatbelt and let it snap back across his chest. “I didn’t. I’m
sorry. Should I have?”

“Of
course not. That would have been dangerous. I only wanted to know if you’d seen
anyone.”

“No
luck. Sorry. Think we should call the police about this?”

It
was doubtful Detective Canberry would handle this news well considering his
reaction to Nicholas handing him the watch.

“No,
we’ll deal with this ourselves. I doubt the intruder stuck around. Besides,” he
added grimly, “I have a hunch this is a repeat offense.”

Kevin
nodded as if he’d come to the same conclusion. “Captain Sam.”

“He’s
the only one who has any reason, no matter how bogus, to do such a thing.
Again. And to me in particular.”

“I
agree, but on the surface it sure seems dumb. He’d have to realize he’d be the
prime suspect.”