A Festival of Murder (24 page)

“No.”
Nicholas admired her downcast face. “It sounds like something a friend would
say.”

Her
smile was soft with gratitude and Nicholas realized that he needed this, this
connection, not the conventions of an arranged date. He simply wanted to be
with her.

“It
was such a shock,” she went on, “to learn that business was doing so badly that
he needs to resort to something like this.”

“I
saw the pantry,” Nicholas admitted. “The shelves are bare. I assumed it was because
supplies hadn’t come in yet.” A shadow of dismay fell over him. “Horace
received a very large shipment of goods on Thursday. Charles told me nothing
had been able to make it up since Tuesday.”

Phoebe
stilled. “What are you saying—that Charles deliberately lied to you?”

Nicholas
folded his hands carefully in his lap, taking his time in responding. “I think
Charles was not entirely forthcoming with me. Just as he wasn’t with you until
you caught him.”

“But
this is Charles . . .”

“Who
admitted to you that his business is hanging on by the fingernails. Stress
makes men capable of acts they wouldn’t have considered committing under better
circumstances.” Nicholas took a deep breath. “To illustrate my point, I spent
the morning with Captain Sam. In his trailer.”

Phoebe’s
eyes, already impossibly large and beautiful, widened further. “Whatever for?”

“Before
I get into that . . . there’s something I hate having to
ask. But I must. Captain Sam told me he’s seen you out at night, carrying a
shovel.” He watched her almost apologetically. “The night of the murder,
Detective Canberry claimed he saw me at my shop with a shovel, however I don’t
recall being anywhere near the place at the time. I need . . . I
need to clear up the matter for my own peace of mind.”

“Peace
of mind,” she echoed in a murmur.

“You’re
aware of my memory lapses.” Merely mentioning them embarrassed him. He couldn’t
meet her eyes. “I’m concerned that I may have forgotten my actions. If so, it
is incriminating. What else could I have forgotten?”

“If
you’re saying you might have forgotten killing Rocky Johnson, that’s just
preposterous!”

“Without
knowing everything, I have to consider every possibility.”

Phoebe
stared at the floor, her expression pensive.

“There’s
a joke,” she began, her voice distant, “about a pilot who flies his plane into
Area 51. Security takes him in, questions him, and decides he flew off course
and landed there by accident. They let him go after making him sign an
agreement that he won’t tell anyone that he breached the Air Force’s secret
base. The next day, the plane lands again, but this time the pilot is
accompanied by a woman. The pilot jumps out and yells, ‘Do anything you want to
me but please tell my wife where I was last night!’”

Nicholas
smiled.

“I
get it now that keeping secrets, even when they’re kept for the right reasons,
doesn’t always help.” She raised her head. “The person they both saw with the
shovel was me.” She surged forward abruptly, clutching Nicholas’s hands in
hers. He was too shocked to appreciate the softness of her fingers or the
passion in her grip. “But I swear it had nothing to do with Rocky Johnson’s
murder. The same with clearing out your walkway.”

He
gave an unmanly gasp. “You did that, too?”

She
squeezed his hands tighter. “I promise you I’ll explain it all later. After we’ve
found Rocky’s murderer. I don’t want you distracted by this. You’ve got enough
on your plate as it is. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“I
can handle—”

“You
trust me, don’t you? You know I’d never hurt you.”

He
sat back, momentarily tongue-tied. It was a declaration that sent tingles of
joy through him, though it was strange to experience it while he was a suspect
in a murder investigation.

“Of
course, I trust you,” he said, because it was true and besides, he could say nothing
else. If Phoebe turned on him, then he really didn’t care much about what
happened to him anymore. His life was too pitiful to spend alone.

“Then
trust that I’ll tell you afterward.” Her eyes held a plea, warding off his
disappointment. “For now, forget about my involvement in this. Instead, tell me
why you were visiting Captain Sam.”

“He
was there the night of Rocky Johnson’s murder, Phoebe.” He couldn’t keep the
excitement from his voice. “He saw the act in progress. He knows who the killer
is!”

Phoebe
dropped her feet to the ground and leaned forward. “But he didn’t tell you who.”

“No,
but he said Rocky interfered with the killer’s plans for the festival and that
was why he was targeted. Like we thought, it wasn’t a random attack.”

“That
could mean anyone did it!”

“I
agree. But he also mentioned that Rocky’s killer carried the body to the lake.
That limits our pool of suspects considerably.” Nicholas shifted his eyes from
her. “He also told me the murder occurred in the trees behind the Gingerbear.”

After
studying his expression for a moment, Phoebe shook her head emphatically, hoop
earrings swinging. “If you’re suggesting what I think you are . . . impossible.
I don’t believe a word that man says, and I can’t believe that you do.”

“Captain
Sam may be . . . odd, but I can’t see what he’d gain by
lying and falsely pointing fingers. He can’t stand the police presence here,
but he’s sticking his neck out to tell someone—me—that he saw something. He saw
the killer.”

“I’m
supposed to believe that it’s
Charles
?”

“On
the surface I agree that it seems inconceivable—”

“That’s
putting it lightly.”

“—however,
there are signs that point in his direction.”

“Charles
isn’t the sort of man to hurt someone.”

Phoebe’s
voice was mulish, her expression firm showing Nicholas he would need to do a
lot to convince her to consider Charles as a suspect.

“He
has significant motive, Phoebe. The Gingerbear stood to lose the most if Rocky
printed a negative article about Hightop. Plus, Rocky was killed and his body
found mere yards from the Gingerbear, which meant someone using the backdoor
could have easily slipped in and out without anyone noticing him missing from
the party. Charles is big enough and strong enough to carry someone of Rocky’s
size.”

“That
could apply to so many . . .” She trailed off but they both
understood the truth: Nicholas fit the profile as well as, if not better than
Charles did.

He
startled as he remembered something. Something he’d kept filed in the back of
his mind.

He
stood up. “There’s something you need to see.”

~~~~~

Two
Estes Park P.D. snowmobiles were parked in front of his shop. It was what
Nicholas had dreaded from the moment they’d identified Rocky Johnson as the
victim, but it felt like the noose had tightened too quickly. Nicholas had an
alibi as flimsy as Bigfoot footage and a motive as solid as the security
perimeter of Area 51. Facing Detective Canberry now would do him no favors, so
he pulled the wheel of the Subaru to the right and took the four-wheel drive
off Main Street. He drove him and Phoebe along a partly cleared path that ran
behind Alien Artifacts, past the co-op art gallery on its left and past the
summer-only palmist on the right.

“Do
you think the police know as much as we do?” Phoebe asked him as the car
bounced over the snowy drifts before rejoining Main Street.

“I
sincerely doubt Captain Sam told them anything,” he replied as he checked the
rearview mirror.

“And
you trust what he told you?”

Though
it felt strange to be championing Captain Sam’s honesty, Nicholas nodded. “This
investigation has brought more bodies and attention to Hightop than he can
stand. He wants the killer caught and taken away so things will quiet down
again.”

“What
if he’s blaming Charles just to blame somebody?”

“He
didn’t name anyone.”

“Not
directly, but he inferred pretty strongly.”

“We
were heading this way eventually, Phoebe. Let’s see how it plays out.”

Three
children bundled up in colorful, puffy jackets and holding aloft sparklers,
darted through the snow beside them, chased by their chastising parents. The
white light of the sparklers stood out like stars amid the gloom. They were
just the first signs of the madness soon to come. It was the final day of the
Alien Fest and events would culminate as it had in previous years in a communal
effort to send the aliens a welcome message. This was typically the day that
Nicholas left the twins to run the shop while he holed up in his cabin with the
curtains drawn and additional “No Trespassing” signs firmly entrenched around
his property.

He
ignored the enthusiastic waves he received from the tourists they passed on
their way to the Gingerbear, and glanced frequently in the rearview mirror to
make sure none of them tried to follow.

The
parking lot of the Gingerbear remained filled with the cars that couldn’t leave
because of the weather, and Nicholas experienced a twinge of doubt. But he
reminded himself that this boom in business was only temporary, on account of
the festival. The inn’s pantry was bare and Charles had resorted to recycling
food to save on costs. The Gingerbear was on the edge, and Charles loved it
enough that it was extremely possible that he would do—had done—anything to
protect it. A couple of busy afternoon lunches wouldn’t have shielded the
Gingerbear against a scathing article by Rocky Johnson, and Charles would have
been cognizant of that.

“So
what are you showing me?” Phoebe asked as they parked and exited the car.

Nicholas
led her around back, to the wood storage bins. Under her watchful and clearly
skeptical eye, he dug out the charred piece of wood he’d found earlier. She
understood immediately.

“The
black mark on Rocky’s head. You think it was caused by this.”

Nicholas
swung the wood experimentally. “It could. Not saying it
is
the murder
weapon, but it wouldn’t take excessive strength to hurt someone with this.” He
imagined bludgeoning Johnson with it, and had to drop the stick as a shudder of
revulsion made his fingers spasm.

“All
right,” Phoebe said with a deep sigh. “You’ve tipped the scales for me. Let’s
do this.”

Nicholas
felt nothing resembling triumph as he led the way to a back door of the
B&B. Inside, the comforting scents of the holiday engulfed him, and it was
all he could do not to call the whole thing off. But if he did that, Canberry
would come for
him
. Nicholas forged ahead into the hallway with Phoebe
his reluctant shadow.

Framed
headshots of aliens in bowties, hats and curly wigs that Charles had purchased
from a crafts website specializing in the esoteric lined the wallpaper-covered
walls as though they were his family members. Nicholas had thought them
completely weird when he’d first seen them, but now he found the portraits
sadly quirky and indicative of Charles’s playful attitude about
extraterrestrials. How would a man like this fare in prison? It caused a shiver
of apprehension to run down Nicholas’s spine.

He
and Phoebe had just passed the pantry with its woefully bare shelves, when they
encountered Candy in the hallway, her arms full of dirty dishes that she was
carrying to the kitchen. She blinked twice when she saw them and Nicholas
wondered if he looked as guilty as he felt.

“Phoebe.
Mr. Trilby. What are you two doing doing back here? Feebs, I thought you were
sick?”

Nicholas
spoke up quickly before Phoebe could stammer out an excuse. “Candy, we stopped
by to speak to Charles. Is he available?”

“He’s
talking to a couple of customers.” Candy chewed her gum once and cracked a pink
bubble. “You might want to come back later. He’s been in a cranky mood all day,
but don’t tell him I said so.” She glanced back over her shoulder as an
afterthought. “I think a big bill came in a few days ago.”

It
occurred to Nicholas that here was a way to avoid embarrassing Charles
needlessly. “Candy, could you give us a moment of your time? We have a few
questions that we don’t want to trouble Charles with.”

“Um,
okay. I just cleared out entrees and put the desserts in the oven so I’ve got a
few minutes. Let me drop these off.”

“Meet
us in Charles’s study when you’re ready.”

Charles’s
study was where Canberry had opened up the genuine prospect of a murderer in
Hightop, so perhaps it was apropos that Nicholas brought matters to a close
here as well.

Candy
clacked her gum as she looked from Phoebe to him. She ran her palms over her
work apron twice, looking awkward and self-conscious to be standing before the
adults who, he didn’t doubt, looked as serious as process servers.

“So,
um, what’s this about?”

She
shifted from foot to foot and Nicholas began to realize she was more than apprehensive,
she was guilty.