One Corpse Open Slay

by Dakota Cassidy

  I pulled my laptop toward me and typed in Yule’s name and found an entire fan page dedicated to him on Facebook, but as hard as I tried to focus, the words and my thoughts swam around.

  “But where to start, is the question,” Hobbs said, looking at his phone. “There are a ton of articles on him. Everything from the gossip mags to the more reputable ones. He’s obviously not afraid of a camera.”

  “Yeah, but is there anyone in one of those articles who says they want to slice Yule Wolfram’s jugular open?”

  Hobbs wiped his mouth with his napkin. “He was sort of a jerk to just about everyone. Even his peers, people who were as respected in the ice carving world as he is…er, was. There have to be plenty of suspects, Hal. And by the way…are we going to talk about your vision and how it relates to what’s happened today?”

  “You mean as in Barbra, right?”

  His eyes were warm as he gazed across the sunny table at me. “I do. Does she look like the kitten in the sled?”

  I swallowed hard, tucking my hair behind my ear. “She does. Right down to the bits of orange on top of her sweet, fluffy head.”

  “Did anything else happen in that vision that you might have missed, Hal?”

  I loved that Hobbs talked about my visions as though they were no great shakes. “Just those flowers popping up in the snow. Remember I told you about those?”

  He nodded his head and winked. “I do. So what we have so far is kitten, spring flowers, and a red sled the size of a car.”

  I laughed when I heard the list out loud. “One of these things is not like the other, huh?”

  “Not even a little. However, they’ve all shown up in one way or the other with the exception of the spring flowers. So you were mostly spot on, Hal.”

  I blushed. I don’t know why. My visions weren’t something I could practice; they just happened. But his approval, his acceptance, was something I was still overjoyed about.

  Shrugging, I toyed with the rim of my soup bowl, running my finger over the edge. “I’m at a loss for where to start…but maybe with the judges of the ice carving contest? Because Blanche Ritter sure liked him well enough, but was that all an act to throw the police off her scent?”

  Hobbs typed a note into his phone. “She’s on my list. I thought of her the moment she cried like he meant more to her than just a fellow judge.”

  Nodding, I scrolled Yule’s Facebook page. I have to give it up to old-school detectives like Columbo and Jessica Fletcher; I don’t know what anyone who was looking into a crime did before Facebook and Twitter. It gave you a feel for a person—at least in a very shallow sense.

  “So we should talk to her and see why she was so upset.”

  “Have you heard if the ice carving contest is going to carry on as usual, minus one expert judge?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “I haven’t, but you know what I think, Cagney with the good hair?”

  Hobbs looked up from his phone with a twinkle in his eye. “What’s that, Lacey with the mediocre coif?”

  “I think we should get out there and start asking questions instead of fiddling around online. You know, maximize our time before we burn the daylight hours. I’ll set my Google Alerts for any news on Wolfram, but we can check out Facebook and Twitter at night. Maybe over dinner?”

  He grinned. “Are you cooking?”

  I winked and hitched a thumb over my shoulder, toward the counter near my farmer’s sink. “I might have a little something in the Crock-Pot. Like maybe some stew.”

  Hobbs, who’d just finished his lunch, rubbed his belly. “Then let’s do it. I’ll go warm up the Jeep. Can you part with Babs for a little while? You think she’ll be okay?”

  “I’ll put her in her carrier so she doesn’t wreak havoc. You wanna leave Stephen King here?”

  Hobbs looked down at Stephen, sound asleep on the braided rug under the dining room table. “It’d be a shame to wake him up. He had a pretty rough morning. Dead bodies and all.”

  With a smile, I reached down and ran a hand over my love muffin’s broad head. He responded with a snuff and a groan. As Hobbs grabbed his coat and headed out to warm the Jeep, Atti flew to the table and sat on the edge of my soup bowl, his bright green wings and red chest brilliant in the sunlight.

  “You’re leaving me alone with this she-beast and Phil?”

  “I’m leaving her in the carrier I bought. All I ask is that you peek in on her and keep an eye on my stew. Stew I made with my own two hands, I might add.”

  If Atti could roll his eyes, I knew he would. Instead, he turned up his long beak at me. “Fine, I shall babysit—and Poppet?”

  “Yes, Atticus Finch?”

  His voice warmed when he said, “I hope you find who did this to that insufferable snob so they don’t take this furry inconvenience from you. I’d hate not to have one more thing on my plate to deal with.”

  My heart chugged in my chest again. If I had to use my magic to change her color in order to hide her, I’d do it. I would.

  For now, I had to set those fears aside. I’d worry about it if and when the time came.

  I leaned over and planted a kiss on his tiny, sleek head. “I love you, Atti. I really do.”

  The crime scene had been cleared from the bottom of the sledding hill, the people long dispersed, but the chatter among folks at the ice festival was fast and furious.

  The ice carving tent was abuzz as the contestants geared up for the first round of judging later this afternoon on their Christmas-themed sculptures, giving us a perfect opportunity to talk to everyone while they were all in one place.

  I wasn’t sure where to begin, but I figured the contestants I’d seen receiving a higher degree of guff from Yule Wolfram were the best ones to start with.

  He scorned everyone in his elitist fashion, of course, but he’d been particularly hard on the husband and wife team of Lilah and Rory Green—mid-level sculptors.

  They did everything together. Skied, took cooking classes, pottery…you name it, they were trying it on for size. They were experiencing an empty nest in the midst of the autumn of their lives, and they’d really thrown themselves into getting back their coupledom when their daughter Keely had gone off to college.

  Personally? I thought their gingerbread house was astoundingly good, but I’d listened to Yule, in his Patrician voice, slam them for everything from the composition of the design to the crooked chimney.

  In fact, after he’d flayed the couple alive in front of everyone, Lilah had cried as she hid in one of the spaces between the food trucks for a good ten minutes and no one had been able to soothe her—not even Rory.

  As Hobbs and I approached, I noted the shaved ice all over the surface of the table and the ground.

  I waved at them and smiled. “Hey, guys—this looks awesome! The detail is amazing. You even did little gumdrops around the door. Really great,” I praised.

  Lilah, who’d been buried deep in the fence around the gingerbread house, blew a piece of red hair from her face and wiped her brow. “Thanks, Hal,” she said as she set down her chisel and rubbed my arm. “Hey, how are you? I know it’s been a rough time, with what happened with those missing girls and all. But I hope you know, we all think you’re a real hero.”

  Hobbs beamed a smile at her. “She sure is.”

  “Baloney,” I retorted, embarrassed by the praise. “It was just luck. But forget about that. Can I ask you a question about Yule Wolfram?”

  Instantly, Lilah Green’s spine straightened and her pale pink lip-glossed lips thinned. She adjusted the furry headband she was using to hold her chin-length hair back and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “What about him?” she asked, her tone defensive.

  Rory, a really nice guy who worked as an accountant in town, of average height and build and always neatly dressed, put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, his horn-rimmed glasses catching the light of the late-afternoon sun.

  “C’mon, honey. It’s not Hal’s fault Yule was such
a jerk.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead for good measure and gave her shoulders a squeeze.

  She gave me a look of apologetic guilt. “I know that. I’m sorry, Hal. He was so rude to me the last time we spoke that I’m still holdin’ a grudge the size of a two by four. I hate to say it, but I wasn’t sorry he got what was coming to him.”

  Wincing, I nodded. “I hear a lot of people feel that way, and not just the contestants in the ice carving contest.”

  “He called our design basic!” she squealed, obvious anguish in her tone. “How can all the work we’ve put into this be considered basic?”

  I looked at the amazing structure with its rounded door, gumdrop roof and intricate picket fence, and had to wonder what had been up Yule’s butt when he’d deemed something so pretty just “basic.”

  “From what I understand, he calls everyone’s designs a variation on that theme,” Hobbs said with a reassuring tone.

  “He sure does,” said someone from behind us.

  I turned to find Elliott Melzinski, one of our fellow beginner classmates, approaching with another of my favorite Marshmallow Hollow residents, Ruth Carlisle.

  Ruth—or Ruthie, as many called her—was a bright light in Marshmallow Hollow’s twenty-something crowd. She’d opened a yoga studio, one I still hadn’t been able to bring myself to go to because of my mother and her commitment to yoga.

  Mom’s death was still a sharp knife in my chest, but Ruth really had done a tremendous job of getting the community involved, running programs for children and a special one for seniors at the nursing home.

  Hal!” she beamed with her warm, generous smile, wrapping me in a strawberry-scented hug “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever. How are you? How’s that loveable escape artist Karen?”

  I gave her a squeeze back and grinned. “I’m pretty good. How’s yoga class?”

  “Still waiting for the day when you feel healed enough to join us,” she said in her warm, compassionate voice.

  Elliott’s hands were in the pockets of his gray sweats as he stood next to Ruth, cute as a button in her ice-blue snow pants and matching jacket. He nodded a hello to us, his short, husky body tucked into a thick flannel jacket.

  I held out my hand and offered it to him with a smile. “Hey, Elliot, how’ve you been?”

  Elliott’s cousin Corrine worked at the factory in customer service, and she was sweet and quiet, much like Elliott himself.

  He gave me a crooked smile that lit up his moon-shaped face. “Oh, you know, all in all, life’s good. Hey, was sure sorry to hear you and Stiles had to withdraw from the contest.”

  I fought a sarcastic laugh. No. He wasn’t. He was being incredibly polite. “Thanks, Elliott, but I think it was the right thing to do. No way we could’ve made up for the time it would take to get us back up to speed. I’m at peace with our decision.”

  “There’s always next year, right?” he offered in his kind way.

  Um, no. There’d be no next year for this girl. My BFF was on his own if he planned on taking any more ice carving classes. If torture was the name of the game, I like mine for free, thank you very much. The ice carving class, plus supplies, had cost us a fortune.

  I rocked back on my heels and smiled. “You bet there is.”

  Hobbs introduced himself, too, before asking, “So I’m guessing you were a victim of Yule Wolfram, too?”

  Elliott made a face, his cheerful eyes eaten up by the lift of his rounded cheeks. “He called my carving ‘angry.’ How, in all of Christmas, do you call a sled with a bunch of presents in it angry? Hah!” he scoffed.

  I cocked my head. “So he didn’t like your sculpture either, Elliott?” Whose did he like?

  “He doesn’t like anyone’s sculpture. I’m not so sure why we were supposed to bow down to that guy when he was anything but encouraging. He was a real D-bag, if you ask me.”

  For Elliott to call someone a harsh name, you know it had to be the truth. Never was there a sweeter, more considerate guy than Elliott.

  Ruthie gave us all a sympathetic look, her bright hazel eyes sad. “I’d been hearing about how mean Yule was, but he was always nice to me when I popped in to see how the contest was going. I guess it wasn’t an exaggeration.”

  Lilah snorted. “He probably wasn’t mean to you because he wanted to hop in the sack with your youthful glow,” she said, her tone dripping derision.

  Ruthie’s face fell, but Lilah was quick to reassure her. “I don’t mean that’s on you at all, honey. I’m sorry. I think I’m still a little bitter at how outright rude he was to everyone. I just meant he was a cad and he chased after all the girls, young and old.”

  Ruthie rubbed her arms. “But enough of a cad to murder him? Shoot, I can’t believe I was out jogging right around the time it happened, too. It gives me the willies just thinking about it.”

  My spine tingled. “How do you know when it happened?”

  She rolled her shoulders. “I heard one of the officers talking about how it probably happened really early in the morning, judging from the state of the body—or something like that.”

  Interesting. “You were jogging that early?”

  She gave me a sheepish grin. “It’s just easier with the weather being the way it is. Fewer cars, you know? Plus, it was a little warmer this morning, if you can call thirty degrees warm.”

  “So you jogged past here?” Hobbs asked. “Did you see anything?”

  Ruthie pointed in the direction of the baseball field behind the storage shed. “Right around the baseball field. But I didn’t see anything. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry he was so mean to you all.”

  “He took himself way too seriously,” Rory said. “He wasn’t curing cancer. It’s just ice, but you’d think he’d painted the Sistine Chapel the way he wandered around here with his nose in the air. Mr. Expert from Germany, my eye. He’s not even really from Germany. He’s just of German descent.”

  Hobbs crossed his arms over his chest. “Did he argue with any of you, or did you hear him argue with anyone else?”

  Everyone shook their heads in the negative and mumbled the answer no, leaving me wondering if Yule had already been in that sled when Ruthie jogged by. If he was killed the night before, surely his body would have been stiffer than it was when he fell out of that sled.

  I don’t know a lot about body temperatures and such, but I do know a little about rigor mortis, and he didn’t look like he was too deep into the stages of it when I saw him on the ground.

  “So do any of you have any idea how he ended up dead? Have you heard any rumors?” I asked, peering at them all.

  There were always rumors in Marshmallow Hollow. I think I’ve mentioned the phone tree a time or two, haven’t I? Nothing gets past anyone here, which made me curious to know if anyone had heard anything.

  Elliott was the first to become suspicious of our questions when he tilted his balding head to the side. “The talk’s been someone murdered him, but we haven’t heard any confirmation about that yet. It sure would be strange if a guy who had a big hole in his neck did that to himself, don’t you think? And you’re sure asking a lot of questions. So do you know something we don’t know?”

  I flapped my hands in the air, shook my head and lied right to their faces. I hated to do it, but if the police department hadn’t released any info, and Stiles told me anyway, I wasn’t going to blow his cover.

  “Heck no, I don’t. I don’t know anything. I was just curious, seeing as I watched it all play out today during the sled race. It made me wonder when it happened.”

  Rory sucked his teeth on a sharp inhale of breath. “Well, I can tell you this for sure—if this is murder, and if they should be looking at anyone, they might want to look at Blanche Ritter.”

  I blinked. “One of the judges…”

  The attractive older lady who’d fallen all over Yule when she’d seen his body. Hmmm.

  “Yepper. That’s her,” Rory nodded, narrowing his eyes. “They had a fight the other night.�
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  “So they were a couple,” Hobbs murmured.

  Lilah put her hands on her ample hips. “I don’t know if you’d call them a ‘couple’ as in an item, or even exclusive. Or at least he didn’t seem to think they were. But I guess Blanche did, because they were arguing about some other woman and how Yule was getting too old to chase after everyone wearing lip gloss and a bra.”

  Oh, ouch. I winced at Lilah’s words. “Do you know who she was referring to?”

  She threw her hands in the air and barked an ironic laugh. “Everyone? When he wasn’t wandering around here like the King of Ice Sculpting, picking everyone’s carvings apart, he was eyeballing anyone from the opposite sex, including the girl with all that pretty hair. Um…” She bit her lip as she paused in thought. “Jolie! Yes. That’s her. Her husband didn’t like that much, I can tell you that.”

  Hobbs ran a hand over his jaw. “So he hit on Jolie Sampson? Do you think that’s who Blanche was angry about—because she and Jerry look like they’re crazy in love. I highly doubt she’d take him up on an offer. If he made one, that is.”

  “Look,” Lilah whispered with a visible shiver. “I don’t make it a habit to gossip. If he was killed, and there’s a murderer among us, I sure don’t want to run into him. But Jolie was just one of the women Blanche was upset about.”

  I felt like there was something else Lilah wasn’t telling me. “And?” I asked hopefully.

  “And he was also fooling around with Gracie Good.”

  “The Gracie who owns the hot chocolate stand?” Hobbs and I asked in unison.

  Lilah bobbed her head. “That’s the one.”

  Well, well. I guess Gracie didn’t just make amazing marshmallows…

  CHAPTER 6

  “Falalalala-la-la-la-lah!”

  A s we strolled through the very quiet ice festival, and the late-afternoon sun began to turn to a purple sky preparing to snow, with the temperature dropping, I looked at Hobbs, who was lost in thought.