A Festival of Murder (5 page)

He
belatedly noticed a red ribbon tied into a bow around the animal’s neck that he
certainly hadn’t put there.

“You’ve
chosen him over me, haven’t you?”

The
alpaca stared back. Nicholas thought he saw something shift, deep within
Winchester’s eyes. A rising alien intelligence? Awareness of an impending bowel
movement?

“You’re
welcome for the vegetables, by the way.” Nicholas turned away from the window. “Maybe
next time I’ll throw them out, seeing as how you’re two-timing me with someone
else.”

He
wandered over to the breakfast nook. He took a seat at the small table there
and contemplated the teeth-shaped scabs that had formed over his knuckles. They
were remnants of a bad day that threatened to extend into a very bad week.

He
had climbed into bed that morning at 1:00 a.m. He had been the worst sort of
gawker last night, hanging around the Gingerbear to see how his neighbors and
the tourists handled being questioned about a potential murder. Their reactions
had helped distract him from his own muddied headspace until Charles, and later
Phoebe, let slip that many of the questions they’d been belted with had
concerned him.

Nicholas
didn’t appreciate being a person of interest in Canberry’s investigation, but
he understood why he was. That punch had been damning. The only way he could
have further incriminated himself was if he had walked into the party last
night soaking wet.

Suspicions
were one thing. They would eventually prove unfounded. However, Nicholas
possessed a past that could cast a shadow of guilt upon him that might be too dark
to dispel. Nicholas didn’t believe for a second that most suspects were viewed
as innocent until proven guilty. If Detective Canberry didn’t find the killer
soon, Nicholas might end up in considerable trouble simply for being shady.

His
front door shivered beneath a knock. He abruptly remembered that he’d offered
up Captain Sam as a prime suspect to Canberry. Probably not the smartest of
moves in retrospect, but it had been a long time since Nicholas had been
questioned by the police. He was rusty.

He
crept to the door, his heart thudding louder than his footsteps, and pressed
his ear to the wood. Not hearing heavy breathing or swearing from the other
side, he tentatively cracked open the door a couple of inches.

The
young man on his doorstep looked like the sort Nicholas expected to see
trekking across Europe while wearing an oversize backpack. This particular
backpacker was minus the backpack, but possessed the distant gaze of a wanderer
forever looking for the next adventure.

“What
do you want?”

The
unwritten rule in Hightop was that visits to his home were unwelcome and would
eventually be met with buckshot if they occurred with any sort of frequency.

The
young man waved. “Hey, how’s it going, man? It’s me. Dennis.”

Nicholas
repeated blankly, “Dennis.”

Dennis
raised a small basket that Nicholas hadn’t noticed he was carrying. “I brought
over some of Kevin’s scones.” When Nicholas continued to stare at him, he
laughed uneasily. “You know, like I said I would.”

Dennis’s
unease was nothing compared to Nicholas’s. “We’ve met before?”

A
bemused expression came over Dennis’s face. He scratched at the scraggly goatee
clinging to his sharp chin. “Um, yeah. Last night at the alien party. Kevin
introduced us.”

“At
the party.”

“Yeah,
er, you were enjoying life if you know what I mean, so, um, you probably
forgot.”

Nicholas’s
hand convulsed around the door handle. “No, no, I remember. Things are just a
little hazy. Too early in the morning, that’s all.”

Dennis
grinned. “Hey, man, it’s cool. I black out all the time when I drink too hard.
Man, I’ve forgotten so much . . . probably for the best,
right?”

A
jolt of anxiety shot through Nicholas. “Black out? I don’t know anything about
that. Did someone say I black out? That’s completely untrue. In fact it’s
libelous and I want the names of everyone involved.”

Dennis
looked like he’d been hit in the ear with a snowball. “Uh, no, I just meant
drinking and stuff. I don’t think you need to sue anyone . . .”
When Nicholas continued to stare at him without speaking, Dennis fumbled on. “So,
uh, you wanna check out what I brought? Can I, like, come in?”

“Come
in?” Nicholas, confused and defensive, stepped back. “I invited you last night,
didn’t I? Of course, I want you to come in. I just made tea. For two!”

Dennis
followed him into the breakfast nook. Before shutting the door, Nicholas peered
outside and then blinked slowly and deliberately. Someone had shoveled the snow
to create a path from his car to the front door. Whoever it was must have been
drunk. The cleared path meandered all over the yard.

“Did
you do that?” he asked as he hurried into the kitchen.

Dennis
was giving him that look again that said he thought Nicholas might be a little
off in the head. “Do what?”

“Shovel
the walkway.”

“Uh,
no, man. It was that way when I got here.”

Though
it would have been gratifying to call Dennis a liar, Nicholas reminded himself
that this boy had some sort of connection to Kevin. He decided to hold his
accusations for now.

He
led Dennis to the kitchen, where he waved vaguely toward the nook. “Have a
seat.” He scrambled to put together a second cup of tea.

“Thanks.
Oh, hey, I almost forgot.” Dennis reached into a pocket of his parka and
withdrew a wad of red craft paper, which he unfolded. “Here ya go. Toby drew it
for you.”

It
was a marker drawing of a hovering UFO. A smiling, brown horse-dog-beast hung
suspended in the spaceship’s tractor beam. Nicholas assumed the monster was
Winchester.

“He
must have nothing better to do,” Nicholas muttered before shifting aside some
magnets on his refrigerator to pin the picture beside the four other drawings
of Winchester already hanging there. He considered the drawing with a critical
eye. “You’d think he’d get progressively better, but they’re all terrible.”

Dennis
laughed. “I’ll tell him you said that. Holy cow, you got a llama in your
backyard!” He jumped up and hurried to the sink window. “No, wait, that’s an
alpaca. Love these things!”

Nicholas
joined Dennis at the window, a flicker of hope lighting up in his chest. “You
love them, do you? Would you like to have this one?”

Dennis
cooed at the beast.

“He’s
the best alpaca I’ve ever known,” Nicholas went on. “Completely charming. You
should definitely take him. I’ll throw in his bowls and a year’s worth of feed.
I can have him shipped. UPS does animals, don’t they? Or if you want to pick
him up and drive him, I can—”

“Shipping
him UPS. Ha ha, that’s a good one, Mr. Trilby.” Dennis pointed at Winchester,
who had backed away from the window and was swiveling his head back and forth
in what Nicholas suspected was the animal’s silent laughter. “I thought Toby
was drawing a big dog or something. Never guessed it was an alpaca. Right on.
Way cool.”

“How
about two years’ worth of feed? And I’ll throw in gift certificates for the
Olive Garden.”

“Wish
I wasn’t such a commitment-phobe,” Dennis said, a little wistfully.

Nicholas
leaned closer to him and murmured, “We could look into counseling.”

Dennis
resumed his seat at the nook. “Where’d you get him?”

With
a sigh, Nicholas handed him the prepared tea. “His previous owners abandoned
him. Winchester was apparently too lazy to walk any farther than my property. I’ve
been stuck with him ever since.”

“He’s
got a goofy face. It’s cute.”

Nicholas
took a seat opposite the other man. Resigned to small talk with a stranger, one
of his least favorite activities, he said, “This is your first time in Hightop?
The weather is terrible right now. You’d think it’d keep any sane person off
the mountain.” He thought about what he’d just implied but shrugged it off. “The
festival organizers seem determined to see it through, though.”

“Oh,
yeah, it’s great.” Dennis wrapped his hands around his mug. Silver rings
adorned four of his ten fingers. One of the rings sported a large, dull, black
stone. Obsidian? Onyx? “It’s cool just being up here, you know? You never know
what can happen.”

Rocky
Johnson’s dead body flashed before Nicholas’s eyes.
Yes, the charm of the
unexpected.

“I
mean, aliens could show up any moment, right?” Dennis’s expression turned
dreamy. Nicholas imagined the look did double-duty for when Dennis was stoned. “I’ve
done a lot of alien chasing but I’ve never felt as close to them as I do up
here.” He suddenly slapped the table with his hand. “You did it, man!”

Nicholas
dropped his scone. “I’m innocent!”

“You
were abducted and came back! Do you know how many people can claim that? Like,
I bet it’s less than half a dozen.”

“Oh,
that.” It was Nicholas’s turn for his eyes to glaze over as he retrieved his scone
from where it had rolled across the table. “Yes, it’s a very interesting story.
Or at least it was the first eighty or so times that I told it.”

Dennis
wasn’t to be thwarted. “So how did it all go down? Were you just, like, hanging
out when aliens came knocking on your door? Ha! Like me, right? Tell me, man. I’m
hanging on every word.”

Nicholas
fidgeted. Lately, he’d begun entertaining the idea that talking about aliens,
maybe even simply thinking about them, summoned their presence much like a Ouija
board supposedly called down spirits.

“It’s
boring and anticlimactic.”

“I
swear to you,” Dennis said, laughing, “I’m not going anywhere until you tell
me. No way could I leave without knowing. You’re my hero!”

If
he hadn’t already been wearing a target on his back, courtesy of the police,
Nicholas might have thrown the contents of his cup in Dennis’s face and tossed
the disoriented man out into the snow for saying such a thing. As it was, he
ground his molars for a few seconds before gritting out, “I was in bed reading.
A bright light formed in the ceiling. I was hoping for a brain aneurysm, but
instead I was levitated from my bed and pulled through the roof of this cabin.”

“They
displaced matter for you.” Dennis’s jaw dropped. “That’s some serious physics!”

So
Nicholas had been told by every nerd in Colorado. “I don’t remember anything
after that.”

Dennis’s
expression shifted from that of an awestruck fan to that of a fan who’d been
told he wasn’t allowed to take photographs or ask for an autograph. “You don’t
remember anything? Not what they look like? No experiments? Not even—” He
wagged a hand at his lower body. “You know?”

“No,”
Nicholas said firmly, clenching his buttocks. “Nothing.”

Dennis
cocked his head. “Then how do you know you were abducted in the first place?”

As
blandly as he could, Nicholas said, “Because of the scars.”

“Whoa.”
Dennis appeared incapable of further speech. Nicholas took advantage of the
moment to bite into a second scone.

“That’s
just amazing.” Dennis shook his head, then paused and nibbled on his lower lip.
His eyes roamed over Nicholas’s chest. “I don’t suppose I could—”

“No.”

The
younger man blushed. “Heh, okay, yeah, that’s kinda personal. I had to ask,
though, you know?”

Nicholas
wished he were still in bed, dreaming. Even a nightmare might be preferable to
this conversation.

Dennis
absently brought a scone to his mouth and took a bite. “Man, these are good.
Kevin makes a mean lasagna—did you know that? Kinda funny for a dude to be such
a good cook, but I guess without a wife you do what you gotta do. I tell ya, I
love that family. Kevin’s really cool and lil’ Toby’s awesome. I’m glad I’m
staying with them. Beats being at the Gingerbread place, though I missed out on
seeing Rocky before he went belly up.” Dennis shrugged and took another bite. “Just
as well, I guess. We never got on all that well, anyway. He’s not like you,
man.”

A
tendril of interest wrapped itself around Nicholas. “You knew him?”

“Yep.
Ran into him a couple of times. I’ve been following the lights, you know?”

Assuming
Dennis meant UFO sightings, Nicholas said, “So you knew him in Roswell.”

“Yeah.
He’s—oops,
was
—the president of a UFO club there. They hyped up the
Roswell crash, you know, so it’s always in the news. He kept saying they’d
managed to get new information about the crash from a former Air Force
lieutenant colonel, but so far no one’s seen the paperwork, if it even exists.”
Dennis shrugged. “I don’t think anyone actually liked Rocky. A lot of people
thought he was stringing them along with all his so-called witnesses that never
materialized.” Dennis grinned conspiratorially. “They’re probably gonna throw a
party when they hear what you did to him.”

“Rocky
Johnson drowned,” Nicholas said clearly. “And if he didn’t, then it’s a mystery
to me who murdered him because I definitely didn’t. I was at the party the
entire night.”