A Festival of Murder (19 page)

For starters, he
was now convinced that the boat that had been found floating in the middle of
the lake had been pushed from the dock while the vessel was empty. The path the
boat had taken through the ice was a narrow one, as if the boat had only barely
managed to break through to the water beneath. If a man of Rocky’s weight had
been inside it, Nicholas would have expected a wider ribbon of broken ice because
the boat would have sat lower in the water.

And there was the
matter of him not recalling any ribbon of broken ice leading from the middle of
the lake to the shore where Kevin had first found the body. Shivering ever more
violently, Nicholas stamped his feet and squinted through the snow flurries at
the six o’clock path from the shore to the middle of the lake. He was positive—that
ribbon of broken ice had been created by the police when they’d hauled the boat
in after lassoing it; he’d watched it happen and been impressed by the officer’s
throw. Before then, the only other break in the ice had been the nine o’clock
ribbon stretching from the dock to the middle of the lake. If the theory of
Rocky’s drowning were to be believed, he had fallen out of the boat and his
body had drifted beneath the ice crust without disturbing it and reached the
shallower water near the shore where it had resurfaced on the soil. Not
impossible . . . but tricky.

The cold receded
to a dull throb in the back of Nicholas’s head as an idea blazed. Rocky had
been killed near the docks and his body dumped in the shallow waters at the
edge of the lake. It had floated only a short ways to where it had eventually
lodged on the shore. The boat had probably been pushed in afterward as a diversion.
Canberry and the police no doubt would have come to the same conclusion, so
Nicholas tried to imagine what they’d done next.

Sniffling
ineffectually against a runny nose, he made his way around the lake to the
dock. It was a short thing, meant only to assist guests with climbing into the
small rowboats and pushing them into the lake. The wooden boards were slick
with ice, so Nicholas didn’t risk stepping out onto them. Two boats were tied
up to a post, frozen in place. They probably should have been covered to extend
their life, but Charles didn’t know much about taking care of boats. He was too
large to fit, and thus had never set foot in one. Nicholas had overheard
tourists complain that the boats were full of spiders during the summer.

The icy dock made
it unlikely, in his opinion, that Rocky Johnson or his killer had stepped foot
on it, so he checked the shore and around the visible pylon supports. A splash
of scarlet on the snow would have been nice but he knew he wouldn’t get so
lucky. Canberry and his team had searched around this area, too, and presumably
hadn’t found anything that had sealed the case for them. Which meant the clues,
if there were any to be found, could be easily overlooked.

He spent ten
minutes kicking around the snow where he had previously found the watch. It had
no more bounty to yield, unfortunately. He went over Canberry’s search area,
which also yielded nothing. Nicholas’s frustration began to mount. He began
drifting farther and farther from the shore, moving toward the lights of the
Gingerbear and the shadows created by them.

Stacked against
the side of the building facing the dock was a firewood holder. Nicholas wasted
body heat checking inside the box and between the logs only to find nothing
except a stray limb of charred wood about the length of a man’s arm that had
fallen behind the stack.

Around the corner
sat two large, dented trash cans, their lids tied down with bungee cords to
keep out scavengers. Nicholas looked between them and found nothing on the
snow. As he tilted the left can forward to peer into the shadows behind it, the
bungee slipped, allowing the lid to slide to the side. Nicholas pulled the lid
completely off to peek into the trash can. It held the expected contents of a
bed and breakfast: an empty box of tea sachets, soap wrappers, food refuse, a
bath towel that had been shredded, and two pairs of galoshes of the same size,
each rendered useless because of holes in the toes.

He needed to think
outside the box. Almost immediately his eyes slid to the red lights blinking
across the lake. Lights from Captain Sam’s place. He wandered several yards
from the Gingerbear until he once again left its sphere of comforting
influence. Shivering amid the trees, he turned and looked back the way he’d
come, at the inn. The view was as close as he could come to mimicking Captain
Sam’s bird’s eye view of the area. Though the strange man had been too busy
arguing about Bigfoot on the radio to do the killing, Nicholas was convinced
that Captain Sam had seen something important that night. He had known where
Rocky Johnson’s watch had fallen. That suggested he might have witnessed
Johnson’s final moments with his murderer.

“Come on,”
Nicholas muttered, his teeth chattering as he scanned the snow and trees. “What
was out here? What did you see?”

The snow came in
long, wavering sheets now, shotgunning the trees and causing their limbs to
shiver nearly as violently as his own. Somewhere in the peaks of the mountains
a coyote howled. It was answered by another beast. Then another. A faint whiff
of something burned, gunpowder or coal, raced past his nose and disappeared, as
elusive as an epiphany.

He was about to
give up and stomp back to the safety of the inn when he noticed that his line
of sight to the lake was interrupted by something flapping on the trunk of a
tree. It moved with the wind, resembling a leaf, but it wasn’t.

He hurried
forward, nearly tripping over his heavy boots in his haste to grab the thing
before the wind took it away. Gasping for breath, he finally reached it and
after tugging off a glove with his teeth, he used his bare hand to carefully
pluck the object from the bark to which it had adhered itself.

Disappointment
swiftly chilled him. It was nothing more than a colorful wrapper for alien
candy or some such. White shooting stars shone against a bright red background.
The wind curled the paper around his fingers, showing its far edge where the
paper was torn. He read the letters FUS but nothing more. No help at all.

He pocketed the
wrapper for later disposal and blew out a steamy breath. He was going to freeze
to death out here. He looked to the lake again. Darkness seemed to seethe
around the disk of water. The pitiful starlight was as successful at dispelling
the sense of malice as a flashlight would be at scaring off Godzilla. Whether
the danger he sensed was real or imagined didn’t especially matter at that
point. He was scared down to his argyle socks.

He trudged back to
the inn, his pace quickened by the wind and the fear at his back. The burst of
Christmas cheer that erupted from inside the Gingerbear once he flung the heavy
door open was better than a surprise birthday greeting.

“Nicholas!”

Charles clutched a
bouquet of chocolate-dipped candy cane sticks in one hand and a mug of
something which smelled suspiciously like a hot toddy in the other. Nicholas
waited a moment for his cheeks and lips to thaw before he attempted a return
smile.

“Sorry I’m late.”
He didn’t need to fake his good cheer; his eyes practically stung with relief
at escaping the darkness and cold.

“You missed
Plan
9
!” Charles said with a pout.

“Then I’ll have to
drown my sorrows in eggnog. Please tell me you’ve spiked it.”

“Of course,”
Charles said with a wide grin underlined by many cheery chins. “I always keep
the good stuff. Along with plain eggnog for the children, mind you.”

“Excellent. I need
it.”

Following Charles
into the kitchen, Nicholas at once found himself faced with a mountain of
serving trays upon which a few random crackers and bits of broken cookie were
scattered. Half-empty glasses waited, each holding a different colored liquid.
The trash can, an industrial thing without a lid, was already overflowing with
wrapping paper, streamers, and assorted garbage.

“You’ve got a
packed house,” he commented as Charles retrieved an unmarked glass jug from the
refrigerator and poured its milky contents into a mug. “Just fill it all the
way to the top, thanks.”

“The storm has
actually helped things,” Charles said after he’d handed the full mug over to
Nicholas. “No one wants to be trapped in their rooms listening to the wind
blow. It’s a wise decision because this really is one of the highlights of the
festival. Friday’s kick-off party being the—” He broke off abruptly, his eyes
bulging.

“—low point seeing
as how it included the discovery of a dead body,” Nicholas finished for him. He
took a sip and smacked his lips. “Delicious. At least fifty calories a swallow.”

Charles set down
his melting handful of peppermint sticks and wiped his hand on a nearby
dishcloth. He glanced toward the doorway leading to the common room where most
of the noises were coming from. “Detective Canberry questioned me about you.”
He licked his lips quickly, leaving them shiny. “The questions he asked sounded
very suggestive, if you understand my meaning.”

Having finished
off the thick, rum-infused drink, Nicholas held his mug out for more. “If your
meaning includes the strong inference that I’m responsible for Rocky Johnson’s
death, then yes, I understand.”

Charles refilled
his mug. “Doesn’t that concern you? My word, I was concerned just fielding the
questions. I felt as though I were being questioned at a congressional hearing!”

Nicholas gulped
down half of the eggnog before he finally felt like he’d banished the exterior
darkness from his soul. Holding the mug against his belly, he relaxed back
against the counter beside a bowl containing a few pieces of popped popcorn and
some kernels. “It doesn’t matter what you say to him, Charles. I’m innocent and
I’m going to prove it. Implications won’t hurt me.”

“But are you sure?”
Charles reached for the peppermint sticks again, selected one, and stuck it in
a corner of his mouth like a cigarette. It bobbed for a few seconds as he
munched on the end of it. “You’re not a detective. How can you prove anything,
much less your innocence?” The peppermint stick came to a stop. “Do you know
who did it, then? Is that why you’re not worried?”

“I’m working on
it.”

Charles glanced
again at the doorway. “If you know something, you must tell me, Nicholas. I
could be harboring a murderer. I could be serving him or her eggnog and spinach
puffs at this very minute! This is dangerous business!”

“You have an inn
full of people,” Nicholas reminded him calmly. “With this many witnesses you’re
in no danger. Not to mention the police have a presence here. Besides, I’m
fairly positive this is a one-off thing, not the beginning of a mad killing
spree. Whoever murdered Rocky Johnson targeted him and him alone.”

Charles wrung his
sticky hands together as his jaw worked furiously to gnaw down the last of the
peppermint stick. He reminded Nicholas of a gerbil working on a carrot. “But
what if some future event sets the murderer off again? Living here will be like
being in that
Twilight Zone
episode where the little boy could mentally
will people into a cornfield, so everyone had to tiptoe around him and pretend
to like him.
We’ll
all be living in that corn field soon enough!”

“I think that’s a
little extreme.”

Charles fumbled
around the counter for a bit and came up with a used red napkin stamped with a
gold star in one corner. He dragged it across his shiny brow. “Perhaps I’m
blowing this slightly out of proportion. It’s difficult not to with Detective
Canberry going on about his list of suspects and, of course, not giving me any
hint whatsoever as to who’s on it. I could be at the top, for all I know.”

“You’re hardly
killer material, Charles.” Which begged the question, was Nicholas killer
material? Why did everyone seem to think so?

Charles dabbed at
his forehead one last time before dropping the damp napkin into the garbage
can. He picked up another peppermint stick and pushed it between his lips. His
expression brightened, and he chewed quickly on the peppermint, making the
stick whip up and down like a conductor’s wand.

“I’ve got access
to so many people through this place, you know. Most everyone comes here for
meals. They know me and trust me.” Charles faltered slightly as if it had just
occurred to him that he would be betraying that trust by revealing their
secrets, but then he gave a shrug—probably a mental one, too—and said, “I’m the
closest thing to the neighborhood barber that these people have. They tell me
everything.”

“Don’t expect a
murder confession.”

“No, but perhaps I
can pick up some important clues. Why, did you know that Margaret Max’s son was
recently expelled from the School of Mines for running a sports book on campus
that cleared him nearly two thousand dollars a week?”

“Who’s Margaret
Max?”

“Or what about
Jarvis Schmidt? He’s about to have his wages garnished by the IRS. Now
there’s
a heap of trouble worth killing someone over.”

“An IRS agent,
perhaps, not a reporter from New Mexico.”

“True. True.”
Charles thumbed his lower lip, found it sticky, and tucked his hand behind his
back. “Still, you never know what's significant, do you? We’re interested in
motivation and intention, after all.”