A Festival of Murder (18 page)

“Afghanistan?”

“Nearly
got shot five times over there. Nothing more dangerous than poppy fields. Well,
maybe alien ships are a close second.” He pointed at the helmet again. “Suck it
up and wear that. It keeps us safe and leaves the aliens scratching their heads
about the best way to invade us. Seems worth the temporary discomfort, if you
ask me.”

Recognizing
the challenge, Nicholas nodded. “Horace, I think I’d be downright unpatriotic
to feel otherwise.”

The
alien-brain-wave-blocking helmet posed a problem. Every unintentional glance at
it showed Nicholas a warped reflection that may or may not have been human. So
under the bewildered gazes of the twins, Nicholas stowed the helmet beneath the
counter and did his best to forget about it. Maybe that way, in a fit of
paranoid delusion, he wouldn’t actually wear the thing.

So far his
investigation was proving to be a bust. While Captain Sam was as strange as
they came, he wasn’t a killer. Not an intentional one at least, which still
left him as a suspect but Nicholas’s gut wasn’t buying it. Captain Sam wasn’t
the sort for confrontations. And Horace, while worrisomely intense in his
hatred of reporters and his fear of aliens, seemed more obsessed with
preparations for invasion than in dealing with anything that was happening
locally. Horace was big enough to do the job, but considering his father’s
fate, Nicholas figured Horace had more incentive than most to avoid doing
anything that could send him to jail. With two major suspects off the list, who
was left?

“If I were
Canberry I’d arrest me, too,” Nicholas muttered to himself as he rang up a sale
for a DVD containing footage of alleged alien autopsies. He was proud of
himself for not sighing loudly when the woman who purchased it asked him to
sign it for her.

“My name’s Debbie.”

“Uh huh,” he
grunted as he rummaged through the desk beneath the counter for a Sharpie
marker.

“Debbie,” he
wrote, “Don’t look up.” Beneath it he scribbled something that he told people
was his signature. Sometimes he signed Napoleon Bonaparte, while other times he
went with the simpler Ronald McDonald. It all depended on his mood. Today, he
was feeling a bit murderous so he’d gone with Napoleon.

He handed the
signed DVD over and of course Debbie looked up at the ceiling and then giggled
at him as if she’d just passed the initiation of his secret cult. If he did
lead a secret cult, it would be so secret no one would know to join it.

“What did you
write to her?” Emma demanded once Debbie had trudged out into the wilds of
Hightop once again, her DVD clutched tight to her North Face padded bosom.

“Why are you using
that tone with me?” he countered.

“Did you write
something nasty again?”

“Probably
something amusing,” Bea said encouragingly.

Nicholas held up
his right palm, confirmation style. “I swear I did not write anything which
could be construed as sarcasm or mockery.” He lowered his hand. “There’s always
next time.”

“You are a bad
celebrity,” Emma said, jabbing her finger at him. She turned her back on him
and dusted the alien ray gun collection, Bea echoing her movements. “I warned
you that you need to start winning people over. If that detective arrests you,
you need character witnesses. Positive ones. At this rate, everyone’s gonna
fight to be first in line to condemn you.”

“You make it sound
as though the majority already believe I’m guilty.” Nicholas idly drew a space
ship on the back of a receipt. “Do they?”

Emma didn’t buy
his casual tone for a second. “Some of ’em have been talking, wondering if
going up into that ship didn’t change you.”

“Turn me into a
murderer, you mean.”

“You being all
antisocial doesn’t help much. You should start showing up at these festival
events, Nicholas. I’m telling you.”

He groaned at the
idea.

“Yeah, yeah.
Smiling and acting normal is such a hardship.” Emma waved him off. “Thanks for
dinner, by the way. We were shocked at how good everything tasted. It was like
we were eating in a fancy-schmancy restaurant.”

“Hardly fancy. It
was pasta.”

“Fancy enough for
me and Bea. And we couldn’t help noticing Phoebe giving you the eye all night.”
Emma came around the shelf so she was facing him. Bea hung back as if afraid of
confronting him and making him uncomfortable. “Tell the truth: Did she drive
back to your place after we all went home?”

Nicholas gave her
a look, which said he thought she was a busybody with the imagination of a
romance novel addict. “She did no such thing. Phoebe is not a liar.”

“Eh, some white
lies are good.”

“Lies are never
good,” Nicholas said, embarrassed by how emphatically he said it. In a calmer
voice he added, “They only lead to trouble.”

As Emma eyed him,
no doubt trying to figure out who had lied to him lately and riled him up,
Nicholas wandered to the store’s front window and peered out. It was unusually
quiet outside. The festival-goers, he now recalled, must be participating in
the sled races being held farther up the street. It made Dennis’s presence all
the more unusual.

Nicholas stared
hard at the younger man through the glass. “Why is Dennis shoveling snow around
the General Store?” he asked aloud.

“Maybe he’s being
helpful,” Bea suggested, but she sounded uncertain. Nicholas could picture her
looking to Emma for backup.

“Nothing wrong
with being helpful,” Emma said, defensive.

Their lack of
conviction compelled him to pull on his coat and hat and stride to the door.

“Don’t go making
any more enemies!” Emma yelled as he pushed outside into the snow.

Head down,
Nicholas managed to keep an eye on Dennis as he crossed the street in case the
other man intended to make a break for it. Dennis was oblivious, however, only
raising his head when Nicholas had drawn to within ten feet of him. The younger
man’s eyes rounded, and something flashed across his face too quickly for
Nicholas to decipher.

“Hey, what’s up,
Mr. Trilby?”

“What are you
doing?”

Dennis looked
around and licked his lips. He stabbed the shovel blade into the snow. “Just
earning a few bucks to fund my travels once I get out of here.”

“Horace hired you
to do this?”

“Sure did. Hired
me just a few minutes ago.”

As Nicholas
struggled to glean any useful information from the act and the timing of it,
Dennis appeared to relax. He tapped the handle of the shovel with his mittens. “Do
you need me to do the same around your place later on? I saw you had someone
else doing it earlier but I can beat whatever they charged you. I work for
free. All I ask for is a donation.”

The wind slipped
beneath the collar of Nicholas’s parka but it wasn’t nearly as cold as the icy
feeling that swept through his veins. “Who did you see shoveling around my
store?”

“Didn’t recognize
whoever it was, but I don’t know everyone here anyway. Besides, looks like they
were about finished, though they did a strange job. Only shoveled here and
there. Not even a straight line. I guess you wanted it that way, huh?”

Was this the
beginning of Nicholas’s own
Twilight Zone
episode?

“I don’t need
anyone to shovel around my store,” he said dully.

“If you change
your mind, you know where to find me.” Dennis grinned. “Not like I can go far
in this weather.”

Then he hefted the
shovel again and the unwelcome observation entered Nicholas’s mind that as
skinny as Dennis was, a whack by him with a shovel could fell any man.

~~~~~

He skipped lunch
at the Gingerbear. The only reason to go to the B&B was to see Phoebe and
to try to metabolize food that often wasn’t edible. It was good to break
habits, he told himself. It carved new grooves in his brain. But guilt over
ditching their usual rendezvous bubbled in his stomach for the rest of the day.

That night, at
home and starving, Nicholas considered reheating the leftover pasta from the
previous night’s dinner but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Eating it would
remind him of the underlying purpose to that dinner, which invariably led to
thoughts of his dinner guests. Why was Phoebe shoveling the snow around his
properties?

Why did he
distrust her?

“This is the point
when I become a weird shut-in,” he informed Winchester, who stared back
myopically through the window above the sink. “If you don’t see me for two
weeks, you should move on to greener pastures.”

Winchester shoved
his nostrils against the glass and snorted a pair of foggy rings. The rings
were reminiscent of the fog-covered water in which Rocky Johnson had drowned.
And Nicholas had a thought. What if he had missed a vital clue, something that
was right in front of everyone’s faces?

Purpose drove him
out of the house, bundled against the increasingly thick flurries. Purpose pushed
his skidding Subaru across the snowy roads up the hill to the Gingerbear, where
light burst from every window and made the building glow like a lantern.
Judging by the number of Outbacks and Forerunners parked in the lot, the
festival’s official Alien Movie Marathon was in full swing, probably just
finishing up with
Plan 9 from Outer Space
, a horribly misleading movie,
in Nicolas’s opinion, which Charles always used to kick off the viewing.

As Nicholas
parked, the Christmas lights beckoned to him like wintery glow bugs. He could
imagine the warmth of the inn and the smells of the Douglas fir Christmas tree
and the simmering mulled wine. He smacked his lips without thinking, wishing he
was sipping on Charles’s spiked eggnog, even if it was nearly four hundred
calories a serving.

If he joined the
party, he would be welcomed with cheers and enough back-slapping to clear the
lungs of a twenty-year smoker. He’d be offered hors d’oeuvres and cookies
glittering with colored sugar crystals. Locals would give him the nod. Tourists
would try to coax him to share their cushion and bowl of chocolate covered
pretzels. And in the back of everyone’s mind would be the suspicion that he had
killed Rocky Johnson.

Purpose couldn’t
push him through the inn’s door just yet. He wasn’t there for the calories or
the company. Palms icy within his gloves, he opened the car door and heaved
himself out into the freezing night air.

To his great
relief, voices and occasional laughter seeped from the inn. The cheery sounds
of life kept him company as he trudged through the knee-deep snow around the
building and into the backyard, heading in the direction of the small lake
where Rocky had met his match.

But as inevitably
as Winchester choosing to make his dung pile on Nicholas’s back porch, the
warming influence of the inn reached its limit. The Christmas lights and voices
dimmed beneath the force of the wind and snow, and soon he stood at the edge of
the winter DMZ, staring out at the dark lake and its equally dark surrounding
forest. It was like staring out at a monster which he knew lies in wait for
him. Which was more foolish? To be brave and walk into the beast’s lair? Or to
allow the beast to send him running away, his mission left incomplete?

Once upon a time,
it wouldn’t have been an issue. Nicholas wasn’t a man to beat his chest to
display his masculinity, but he didn’t believe he was a coward. No, that was a
recent development, thanks to the aliens. It was one of the few memories he’d
retained of the abduction, a parting gift, if you will: the fear of the dark.

He shivered and
held no illusions that it was because of the cold. He wanted to turn around and
run into the comforting, sweet-smelling embrace of the Gingerbear. But if he
did, questions would remain unanswered and the dark would defeat him in yet one
more way.

He tromped through
the snow, guided by a tremulous determination. Snow flurries attacked, but he
fended them off with a raised forearm and soldiered forth. To his right, he
could see the patch of ground where the snow had been trampled into submission
by police investigators. There, Rocky Johnson’s body had been found, and the
police had scoured the area thoroughly, if CSI shows were anything to go by.

Nicholas wasn’t
concerned with that well-trodden ground. He was in a different TV show, the one
where C-list actors reenacted the crime and a solemn voiceover recounted the
victims’ last horrible minutes of life. Nicholas finally reached the crisper,
icier snow that rimmed the lake. He slowed to a stop. His breath clouded ahead
of him so thickly he had to duck beneath it to gain a clearer view of the
water.

The surface was
dull, unable to catch and hold the moon’s reflection. A milky skin of ice
stretched from bank to bank as if over cooled pudding. Near the shore where the
body had been found and the boat had been pulled out, there was a ribbon of
thinner ice that had only recently re-formed over the dark water. He was struck
by the path of that dark ribbon, which was much more apparent now that it was
night. Viewing the lake as a clock face, the ribbon of broken ice stretched
like a hand from the shore where he stood at six o’clock, to the middle of the
lake. From that center spot, another hand of broken ice pointed toward the
nine, or the small dock at the back of the Gingerbear where two other cheap
fiberglass boats were tied up. He was sure there was significance here.