Winter Festival Murder

by Linnea West

  Shortly after we discovered Gerald, several police cars came screaming up with lights flashing. I thought it was a bit much since it wasn't like the killer was hiding somewhere nearby. It was way too cold for that and Gerald had obviously been dead for a while. As Max told all of the officers about what we had found, I took that time to call the radio station and put out an all points bulletin that the sledding was canceled due to an undisclosed emergency.

  Unlike the previous murders I had unfortunately stumbled upon, the nice thing about this one was that I had come across the body with a police officer so instead of being under suspicion, I was just asked about all of the details I remember.

  After Max and I had each given our stories, we told them together to try to make sure our stories were the same. Of course it was pretty hard to get the "Tessa sledding into the dead body" story wrong. We retold our story several times, when suddenly I remembered something.

  "Max, you didn't actually confirm this, but was the Below Zero medallion hidden in this park?" I asked. "I assume that's why Gerald would be here. Do you think someone shot him for the medallion?"

  Max's face drained of color. I got the distinct idea that he had not even considered the medallion until I said something. But it made perfect sense to me. Gerald seemed to be pretty universally hated for always finding the medallion. He'd been found here, so he had probably found it and someone followed him to it. I'm not sure why someone would kill over a medallion, even if it was worth $500, but I wasn't the one who did it so of course I don't understand.

  "Okay fine, I did hide the medallion here," Max said after a long pause. He looked pained to have to admit that. "It is just so hard because I spend a long time finding a good hiding place and making sure it isn't super obvious. I'll check the hiding spot, but if it is still there the medallion hunt will be ruined."

  "I'm pretty sure the dead body next to the medallion's hiding place has already put a damper on the event," I said before I could stop myself. Max shot me a look that told me to shut my big mouth, but one of the other police officers, a young guy named Philip, hid a snicker from him.

  Max sighed a big sigh. With how many parks Shady Lake has, I was pretty sure it wasn't actually that difficult to hide the medallion, but Max was acting like it was his life's work. I tried not to roll my eyes at the dramatics of it.

  He walked over to the park bench and with a furtive look around, he bent down and looked underneath. Max brushed off a little spot right next to the leg of the park bench. After a moment, he quickly swept all of the snow out from underneath the bench.

  "It isn't here," he called. "I thought maybe it was just hidden under the snow, but it is totally gone."

  So whoever killed Gerald probably had the medallion, unless Gerald had the medallion on him right now. Of course, I wasn't going to go search his dead body, but I hoped I could get Max to at least tell me that much information later.

  Max walked back over to me and grabbed my hand. He didn't usually like to show affection around his fellow police officers, but he wasn't on duty and the shock of finding Gerald must have allowed him to let his guard down a little.

  We watched them load Gerald's body into a black body bag and carry it back up the hill. We each grabbed the sled we had come down the hill riding, although the joy of the sled ride seemed so far away now. When we got to the top of the hill, I was pleased to see that the other officers had loaded up the trailer with all of the tables, chairs, and sleds that we had brought with us.

  "Come on Tessa, I'll give you a ride home," Max said.

  He walked me to the passenger side door and opened it for me. I slid down into the seat and smiled while I waited for Max to shut the door and walk around the car. No matter what, Max always insisted on opening my car door for me. I typically didn't care for the "chivalry, macho" kind of attitude, but coming from Max it just seemed more natural.

  "Let's take a drive first," he said. "I need a few moments to clear my head."

  By now, it was late afternoon and it was starting to get late. As the sun was going down, outdoor light displays around town were starting to light up. It seemed to help cut through the dreary middle of a Minnesota winter.

  I reached over and put my hand on Max's arm as he drove. When I looked at his face, it was set in a stony expression that I was having trouble reading. I'd known Max for so long that I could usually tell what he was thinking. But this mix of emotions was new.

  "Was that the first time you've found a body?" I asked quietly. Obviously as a police officer, he had dealt with murders and dead bodies before. But I imagine stumbling across one in your personal life was a bit different from when he was on duty. Unfortunately stumbling across dead bodies was becoming something that was happening way too often for me.

  "It was the first time I'd found a body like that," he said. His entire body seemed to stiffen up. "I was the one that found Anne after she passed."

  Anne was Max's first wife who had died of cancer around the same time my husband had died. Why had I asked him such a stupid question? Max and I seemed to have an unspoken agreement to not talk about each other's previous spouses. I would occasionally share a funny anecdote about Peter and Max would share a sweet story about Anne, but never had I asked him about Anne.

  "I'm so sorry Max," I said. "I wasn't thinking when I asked that question."

  "It's okay Tessa," he said. But the tone in his voice had changed. "I don't like to think about it, but I know that you didn't mean it in a bad way."

  We sat in silence for a while as we drove around Shady Lake. I tried to think of something to say to Max, but I didn't know what to say. I'd let my mouth do the thinking and it got me in trouble again. I tried to take Max's hand, but he pulled his hand out from my grasp. My spirits instantly sunk and I hoped I hadn't put a permanent kink in our relationship.

  As we wound around the lake, I watched more and more lights pop on. I tried to focus on them and how happy they looked instead of focusing on the tension in the car. It started to snow just as we got to my house, which made the B&B even more beautiful. The holiday light display that we had set up for the Christmas light contest was still up and it made me smile as I saw it illuminated because I had worked hard on it.

  The Shady Lake Bed and Breakfast was an old Victorian house that had been given new life by my parents after most of us kids had moved out. It was a white house with green shutters that they repainted each summer. The porch had evergreen plants to decorate for the winter and each window that was facing the street had a fake candle lit up on the windowsill. I thought that with the snow falling, it looked like a scene from one of the puzzles we usually put together on Christmas.

  Max pulled into the driveway and turned the engine off. For a moment, we sat in silence. I had a bad habit of sticking my foot in my mouth, but this time I had really done it. I had no idea how to make up for this one, but I thought an apology would be a good place to start.

  "I'm sorry again Max," I said. I couldn't help but apologize again. In fact, I'd probably apologize ten more times because I felt so terribly. "I really didn't mean to hurt you."

  "I know," Max said. He was looking everywhere except at me and his tone was flat. "I accept your apology, Tessa. I know you wouldn't hurt me again."

  Max got out of the car and walked around to my side to open my car door up. Together, we ran through the cold wind up to the front door where he gave me a quick peck goodbye as I went inside. I pulled my snowy boots off and threw them on the entry rug before running to the front window in the living room to wave him goodbye.

  I waved frantically and when Max looked up, he gave me one firm wave of his hand. I recognized that look on his face now. It wasn't because I had known him for so long but because I had seen that face on myself in the mirror. Grief is funny and it pops up when you least expect it. Today, I had caused it to pop up for Max. And now the look on his face said that he was trying to deal with it as much as possible instead of just stuffing it away.

  That
was why he had mentioned me not hurting him again. When I had left for college and eventually broken up with him because of the distance, he had been really hurt. Now, I had ripped the band aid off of that old wound also.

  Poor Max. I would give him a little time before I reached out. I knew from personal experience that after a time like this, you need a little time to grieve by yourself before you let someone reach out and pull you up and out of the muck.

  For now, I'd just have to deal with finding a dead body on my own.

  Chapter Eight

  I had only been home for a little while when I got a text from Mandy.

  I've been waiting for you to text me and tell me about whatever mysterious emergency requiring almost the entire Shady Lake police force made you shut down the sledding event. I'm dying over here!

  If you asked Mandy, she would say that she wasn't a gossip, but she was always willing to discuss facts. Personally, I didn't see much difference between the two but Mandy was very careful to never just pass on idle gossip she picked up. She would always try to verify with the source or at least a few other people that were in the know before she would share it with anyone else.

  To me, that was still gossiping. But Mandy insisted that it wasn't. I sent her back a quick message.

  Are you home? Maybe I'll pick up some pizza and we can have dinner together.

  Mandy agreed and after I told my mother my plan, I steered my station wagon through the pitch black to Mike's Pizza. Normally, I would order ahead, but I knew that they always had a few plain old cheese and pepperoni pizzas waiting for people like me who wanted to grab it on the way somewhere.

  I got back in the car with the hot pizza, glad that Mandy's apartment over the Donut Hut was only a few blocks away because the pizza smelled delicious. Mike's was a town favorite and it had been for decades. The secret to their success was that they used slices of cheese instead of shredded cheese on top. Between that and the super catchy jingle they played on the local radio station, chain pizza stores could hardly compete.

  Mandy shared her apartment with Trevor who I think should thank his lucky stars every single day for Mandy because while at least he has a job, he is not much of a housekeeper. Trevor moved in with Mandy straight from his mother's house shortly after high school and he had never quite learned how to care for himself. But between the fact that Mandy is just naturally tidy and that neither of them own much, their apartment is always spotless.

  When Mandy's parents moved to Florida and left her in charge of the Donut Hut, Mandy decided to live in the apartment on top of the shop. Her parents had always rented it out for some extra income, but Mandy decided she liked the free place to live more than the extra income that would just go towards the mortgage anyways.

  The apartment was small, but cozy and cute. From the door in the back of the Donut Hut, you walked up a set of stairs that Mandy had painted a lilac color. The walls were covered with anything Mandy could find with donuts, whether it was artwork with donuts or a small carved donut. I thought it was a bit much, but Mandy pointed out that she spent so much of her life dealing with donuts that this way she could leave it all behind her when she got to her apartment door.

  I walked up and straight into her apartment. The entryway was narrow, but it had enough room for a vintage, wooden coat rack that inexplicably stood up no matter how much outerwear was thrown on it. There was a skinny table with a bowl on top of it that held Mandy's car keys and a spare pack of gum. Above the table was a mirror that I used and appreciated in the winter when I had been wearing a hat and needed to make sure I looked halfway presentable. I smoothed down my crazy hair and carried the pizza into the next room.

  "Hey Tessa," Mandy called. "I've already got plates and stuff out so just bring the pizza into the kitchen."

  I walked through Mandy's minimalist living room to get to her kitchen. The kitchen was simple also. Mandy always said that if she needed anything else, she could run downstairs and cook so what was the sense in cluttering up her living space? Her kitchen had open shelving that held all of her dishes and her pots and pans hung on a rack above a very small butcher block island in the center of the galley kitchen.

  I plopped the pizza down on top of the island and opened it up. The smell that wafted out made my mouth water and I gave myself an imaginary pat on the back for deciding to pick up a pizza on the way.

  "Trevor should be home any minute, but we can start eating," Mandy said, popping her gum a few more times before spitting it out into the garbage. I tried not to roll my eyes at the thought of Trevor coming. There is no way I had been planning on waiting for him before I dug into this pizza.

  Mandy put a slice of pizza on each of the plates she had out and handed one to me along with a fork. I had grown up eating everything with a fork because my mother hated to get her hands dirty and I hadn't realized how weird that was until I was older and it was fully ingrained in me and much too late to stop.

  We moved out into the living room which was my favorite part of Mandy's apartment. The large windows looked out over one of the streets of Shady Lake's quaint downtown. All of the buildings had been at least partially restored and when it was winter, they were all outlined in strands of white Christmas lights. All of the lampposts had large, shimmery snowflakes on them with banners advertising the Below Zero Festival. Downtown felt historic and vivacious all in one glance.

  The decade I had spent out of town had been the start of a large local push to revitalize downtown. What used to be a bunch of old buildings with struggling businesses was now a beautiful area of local shopping that drew in people from all over Southern Minnesota. Shady Lake had started a program that gave out loans to small businesses to help them revitalize their old, crumbling buildings. They had also formed a small business mastermind group that helped some of the struggling businesses come up with a business plan and new ways to draw in customers.

  If you looked out the windows to the left, there was a great view of Shady Lake. Right now, the snowy white of the frozen lake was broken up by dark blobs that I knew to be ice houses. In the summer, we would open the windows and we could hear the sounds of warm-weather fun from people out boating. It was like a more subdued version of the hip, inner-city apartment where I had lived with Peter.

  I took in the beautiful, snowy view from my perch on Mandy's tufted, dark blue sofa. Mandy settled herself into a mustard yellow armchair that was arranged facing the windows. In front of us was a large, wooden cable spool that they used as a coffee table. The thing I loved about Mandy's decorating style is that she knew exactly how to use the cable spool to make the formal furniture more casual.

  "How is Trevor's medallion hunt going?" I asked.

  I knew he had been spending so much time out searching, but as soon as I said it, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Someone had killed Gerald over the medallion. Maybe Trevor knew who did it. Or maybe he had even been the one to do it. The piece of pizza I had in my mouth seemed to turn to glue as I tried to chew it enough to swallow down.

  "Well, he hasn't found it yet," Mandy said, oblivious to my internal torment. "But he has been out searching every night. In fact, he's been so dedicated that he was out last week scouting out possible hiding places before the medallion had even been hidden. I'm really proud of him for taking the initiative to do something like that. Usually he needs my encouragement to do things."

  I rolled my eyes as Mandy shot a scowl at me. I realized that I was actually there to tell her about Gerald, so I launched into the story. Mandy kept biting her lip, which was a pretty big sign that she already knew the story somehow. She usually tried to act innocent so that people would give her more information, but I knew that when she chewed on her lip, the innocent thing was all an act. I still told her the whole story.

  I finished with telling her about how I had inadvertently upset Max but before Mandy could respond, her phone dinged to say that there was a message. Mandy took our her phone and as her eyes darted around the screen, h
er mouth dropped open and she started to cry.

  "What's wrong Mandy?" I asked, setting my pizza down on my plate.

  Instead of answering, Mandy handed her phone to me. On the screen was a message from Trevor that simply read:

  Emergency. Police are questioning me about Gerald's murder. I didn't do it. Help please.

  Chapter Nine

  I tried not to roll my eyes again, but how did Trevor expect us to help? Did he want us to bust down the courthouse doors armed with machine guns so we could grab him and skip town? I scoffed to myself, but I stopped when I glanced over at Mandy.

  Mandy was sitting in the chair with tears silently running down her face. I handed her back her phone. I wasn't sure what to say to her. If Trevor was being questioned by the police, we couldn't just go get him. We would have to wait for him to be released. I reached over and patted her hand a couple of times, trying to assess what she needed in this moment in time.

  "What am I going to do Tessa?" Mandy asked after a few moments of silence. "Trevor didn't do this. You need to help me."

  Mandy looked at me and her face was a mask of despair. I was torn inside about what to say. I wanted to comfort her, but I really didn't know what to do to help.

  "I'm not sure how to help you, Mandy," I said. "If he is being held by police, we can't just go get him."

  Tears kept falling down Mandy's face as she worked from crying to sobbing. I stood up and ran to the bathroom to grab a box of tissues for her. Mandy grabbed a few and wiped her face as she sobbed.

  I moved to the end of the sofa and reached out to hold Mandy's hand again. Throughout our friendship, we had been through a lot of times like this. We had cried together over boys, family, speeding tickets, failed tests, and death. This was a bit different. I had always thought that if Mandy was crying over Trevor, it would be because he dumped her. Neither of us had seen this coming.

  After a few moments, I leaned over and wrapped Mandy in a big bear hug. She pulled me to sit next to her in the armchair. We stared out the window at the falling snow as Mandy's tears slowed to a drip, her head sitting on my shoulder.