A Festival of Murder (25 page)

Phoebe
cleared up the mystery. “We’re not here about the food,” she said gently.

Candy’s
cheeks bulged before she blew out a long breath. “I swear I only found out
about it recently, Mr. Trilby.”

“That
practice is going to end today, but we’re not here to ask you about that,
Candy. We wanted to ask you about the opening night of the festival.”

“When
that reporter was killed.” Candy’s jaws worked faster, the gum periodically
peeking between her teeth as if she were chewing on a neon pink worm that
refused to surrender.

“We
traded shifts that night,” Phoebe reminded her, “because you asked me for next
weekend off.”

“My
boyfriend’s coming up. We’re celebrating Christmas with him then.” She stopped
chewing. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”

“Not
at all, Candy.” Phoebe smiled encouragingly at her.

“Did
you help Charles with preparations for the party?” Nicholas asked her, trying
to follow a trail he thought Detective Canberry would have taken with the girl.

“Yeah.
He asked me to put up the decorations while he cooked and baked all the food.”
A quick, co-conspiratorial glance at Phoebe. “He had some ideas about using
some of the leftover brunch sausages and potatoes for the buffet table, but the
cookies and desserts needed to be baked from scratch.”

Had
he eaten any of the pastry-wrapped sausages? Nicholas had the awful feeling he’d
eaten at least a half a dozen while watching his neighbors emerge one by one
from their questioning by Detective Canberry. Karma at work, apparently.

Clearing
his throat, he asked, “Would you say you were in the living room for the
majority of the time before the party began?”

“Yeah.
I mean, I went to the storage closet upstairs a few times to grab the boxes of
ornaments and garlands, but most of the time I was downstairs like you said.”

Phoebe’s
shoulder brushed against Nicholas’s, as if to scrape some support from him. “Candy,
do you remember seeing Charles during the two hours you were doing the
decorations?”

The
girl’s mouth pursed into a moue as she considered. “No. I guess not. I was busy
doing my thing and Charles was doing his. I didn’t see him until about ten ’til
seven. That’s when I went to the kitchen to get the cookie trays. The guests
were coming down right then, and they were starving. I thought they were going
to start eating the gingerbread ornaments, you know? So I went in and asked him
for the trays.”

“Charles
was in the kitchen,” Nicholas stated, wanting there to be no doubt. “And that
was the first time you’d seen him since you began decorating. At ten minutes to
seven.”

“Yep.”

Nicholas
shared a grim look with Phoebe. There was no impulse to high-five each other
upon learning that Charles had had ample time to slip out the back of the
Gingerbear and kill Rocky Johnson. Mostly, Nicholas was weary of what was to
come. He’d always viewed Charles with, he admitted to himself, a degree of
condescension because of his passion for aliens and because he could behave a
bit comically. It would greatly disturb him to see Charles arrested and put on
trial for this murder. Up until now, the man had always seemed to be a big,
harmless teddy bear.

“There’s
no point in more, is there?” he said in a low aside to Phoebe. He would rather
skip the direct accusation and give the information they’d gathered to Canberry
and let the detective be the bad guy.

“I
don’t think so,” Phoebe agreed, sounding glum.

“Is
this about alibis?” Candy asked, working her gum again. “‘Cuz Charles has one,
if that’s what you’re trying to find out.”

Snow
down the back of his sweater couldn’t have startled Nicholas more. “I thought
you said you didn’t see him until right before the party began.”

“I
didn’t, but my mom did.” Candy shrugged. “Charles needed more oven space so he
asked my mom ahead of time if he could use our ovens at home. We have two. He
and my mom were together for pretty much all of the two hours that night,
baking cookies and stuff. I know ’cuz I asked her. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t
working for a murderer, you know? Everybody’s worried about that.”

“Of
course, they are,” Nicholas mumbled, reeling from relief that Charles had a
solid alibi and yet beginning to panic because the options for clearing his own
name were dwindling.

“I’ve
been pretty worried about him,” Candy went on, oblivious of Nicholas’s
impending emotional meltdown. “For a while there, I thought maybe he was going
to shut down the Gingerbear which would have been a bummer because I’m saving
up for a car. But the people that he’s talking to now apparently are some
investors or something from Sedona. I heard them talking about business stuff
so maybe they’re going to give him some money or buy the place. I hope I get to
keep my job if that’s the case.”

“If
that’s Charles’s intention, I’m sure he’ll put in a good word for you,” Phoebe
assured the girl but Nicholas could tell she was also distracted by the
shattering of their assumptions of Charles as the killer.

“So
who do you think did it?” Candy asked them in the same tone of voice she would
use to ask Nicholas if he wanted ice cream with his blueberry pie.

“We
haven’t the slightest,” Nicholas said, well aware that his lack of a verifiable
alibi and his well-known predilection for amnesia would be irresistible lures
to an investigator like Canberry who was convinced he could mold a case around
his theories.

Translation:
Nicholas was in deep trouble.

~~~~~

“Nicholas,
you can’t self-implode just because Charles isn’t the killer.”

“May
I self-implode because the police believe that
I
am the killer?”

“You
don’t know that.”

Nicholas
pinched the bridge of his nose before he inhaled deeply of the crisp air. He
and Phoebe had moved outside the Gingerbear and now stood in the area where he
had found the watch. Inside, Charles remained unaware that his friends and
neighbors had nearly accused him of murder.

“Phoebe,
the only reason I’m not wearing an orange jumpsuit right now is because
Canberry hasn’t been able to physically lay hands on me. The moment he sees me
he’s bringing me in.”

“On
zero evidence that you had anything to do with it.”

The
trees around them were still, the snow falling almost apologetically on his
unprotected head.

“You
warned me that innocent men have been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.”
He pointed accusingly at the lake. “This is a crime for which I could very well
be convicted. Canberry won’t let lack of circumstantial evidence deter him. To
him, a strong motive is as good as a bloody knife covered with fingerprints.”

“Then
we’ll prove you didn’t do it.”

“We
need to do better than that. We need to prove who did do it.”

Phoebe
planted her hands on her hips, a picture of determination. “All right. First,
we’ll find that circumstantial evidence that you say we lack. A footprint or a
broken branch or—”

“A
wrapper.” Nicholas turned to the tree line. “I found something over there. Let’s
take another look.”

He
led Phoebe to the tree where the wrapper had snagged. The bark was cold and
bare. Above them, snow sprinkled the pines with the sound of quiet applause.

“It
might only be trash that blew here from the cans behind the inn—” he began.

“Except
Charles keeps those lidded and bungeed.” Phoebe peered intently at the tree. “I
believe you that something happened out here. First, you found Rocky’s watch,
and then the wrapper. This is the place. Our killer is an amateur, and he’s
sloppy. We’ll find something. I’m positive of it.”

“Have
you ever considered motivational speaking as a career?” he said gratefully as
he began searching the ground and trees.

“I’ve
considered many careers.”

He
turned his head and watched her as she moved slowly and methodically between
the trees, her eyes scanning everything near her. Over her dark hair, she wore
a knit cap decorated with a band of reindeer, but curled strands of hair clung
to her snow-chilled cheeks and lay along the weave of her red scarf. He’d never
done anything with Phoebe besides eat. Never taken a walk with her. Never
watched a movie with her or engaged in a telephone conversation with her. It
made their relationship suddenly feel sheer to him, as if it was held together
by only the thinnest of threads. He’d spent more social time with Winchester.

“Why
did you come here?” he asked.

“Because
you’re my friend, and I’m not letting you be arrested for a crime you didn’t
commit.”

“I
meant Hightop. Why here and not Estes Park? Or Boulder?” He couldn’t currently
see the sky because of the trees surrounding them, but he doubted Phoebe had
ever looked at it with the same fervor as their neighbors. “You don’t believe
in aliens.”

Her
back was to him as she paused and ran her gloved hand up the bark of an aspen. “Have
I ever told you I don’t believe in them?”

“It’s
been apparent that you don’t.” He tried to inject some levity in his voice,
though it was a foreign action that felt painfully false. “You’ve done a more
convincing job of discounting my abduction than I have.”

“I
wouldn’t discount anything you had to say.” She picked at a dark mark on the
trunk of the tree, her back still to Nicholas, her expression a secret. “I’ll
admit that in the beginning, when I first heard your story, I was a skeptic.
But now I know you better, Nicholas.”

“Does
that mean you believe me?”

“It
means that I’m sorry for the situation you’ve found yourself in here. You haven’t
deserved any of it.”

A
twinge of bitterness burned his throat. “That’s a non-answer if I’ve ever heard
one. You’ve the tongue of a lawyer.”

She
turned to look at him from over her shoulder. Her reddened cheeks made her look
impossibly young and pure. But her eyes were dark and they were anything but
naïve.

“I
came to Hightop to be an artist. That’s what I told you and that’s what I hoped
would be true.” Her smile came and went, like one of the many memories he had
forgotten. “The truth is that I’m terrible at painting. I’m also horrible at
sculpting and anything crafty I come up with ends up looking like junk someone
threw away because it was broken. I came up here to be someone thoughtful and
artistic, inspired by the potential of contact with another culture. But all I’ve
turned out to be is a waitress. I’m not anyone special. Or talented. Or even passionate.
Hightop brought out the mediocrity in me.” She turned back to the tree. “That’s
why I’ve been reluctant to admit my reason for coming here. Because I’m a
failure.”

He
took a step toward her. “You’re not a failure, and there is not an inch of you
that I find mediocre, Phoebe. Quite the contrary, which I hope I’ve expressed
to you on every occasion that I’ve been able to.” When she said nothing, and
simply ran her gloves over the bark again, he grew encouraged. He abandoned his
search and moved toward her. “I think you—ahh!”

He
tried to catch himself as she whirled around, but it was too late. She was
gifted with an up-close and unobstructed view of him falling face first onto
the snow, displaying all the grace of a felled redwood.

He
lay there for a few seconds, unable to believe he had just done that in front
of her. Then he slowly pushed up onto his elbows, keeping his flaming face
ducked from view. “Would you believe that was my attempt to lift your spirits?”

She
kneeled by his feet. “You’re caught up on something. You tripped on a wire, or
a string or—what is this?”

After
she’d freed his boots of the encumbrance, he rolled over and sat up to help her
identify what had been the culprit behind his ignominious fall. Phoebe was
studying a two- or three-foot length of thin, red and silver striped wire or
string, perhaps one eighth of an inch in diameter.

“It’s
Christmas decoration,” he said.

“All
the way out here?”

“Perhaps
the storm blew it here.” But he had his doubts, especially when Phoebe began
pulling up more of the string, tracing its origins. As the striped cord lifted
out of the snow, he began to grow uneasy. “Careful, Phoebe. This could be one
of Captain Sam’s alien booby traps.” When she blinked dumbly at him, he added, “I’ll
explain later. Just assume that this leads to something unpleasant.”

More
carefully, she dug the snow away from the cord rather than pulling up on it.
They followed the cord to the tree that Phoebe had been running her gloves over
not moments before.

“It’s
not a trap,” she murmured as she dug out the snow piled at the base of the
tree. The cord had been wrapped once around the tree and its end cleanly cut
and left loose. Had Nicholas tugged with his feet a little harder he would have
pulled the cord completely free of the tree.

“Captain
Sam’s trailer is full of wires. I bet this is his,” he said. Could it be part
of his alien-trapping scheme?