Winter Festival Murder

by Linnea West

  "Well I think we should do something where we mound the snow, because it is supposed to get colder and I don't think the sticky snow will stay," I said.

  Clark mmm-hmmed on the other end of the phone a few times. I could hear him writing something, but I didn't know if that was some ideas for the competition or if he was grading some papers since it was his prep time.

  "Good point," he said. "I think the snow mound is our best bet then. Why don't we each come up with three ideas and we will talk tomorrow."

  "That sounds good," I said. "We will talk tomorrow."

  I got out of the car and shuffled up to the front door. Here's hoping I could actually think of some ideas because right now, the only thing I pictured was a good ole classic three ball snowman. I took my coat off and hung it on a hook in the entry before running into my mother in the living room.

  "Tessa, I'm so glad you are here," my mother said. "I need to run to the store real quick. Can you take over desk duty for a little bit?"

  "Oh sure," I said. It would give me some time to actually think about this snowman competition so that I wouldn't let Clark down, even if desk duty was utterly boring.

  After my mother grabbed her jacket and purse and headed out the door, I made my way to the desk. The desk was an actual desk with a big, old desktop computer on top that ran slower than a turtle. It also had stacks of papers that seemed to perpetually be cluttering the top despite filing and putting them away frequently.

  I shook the mouse to wake up the computer and while it thought about it, I got myself a cup of coffee. I wouldn't be able to do much planning without a little liquid inspiration. By the time I got back, it was ready to go. I typed "snow building ideas" into the search engine and hit go.

  After wading through some snowman ideas that I thought were too blah for a competition, I found a few cool ideas. I felt a little guilty that I wasn't thinking up the ideas on my own, but I've never been a totally creative person. Give me something to go on, sure. But just thinking of something out of the blue? It just doesn't work for me. I got a piece of paper and wrote down the ideas I had found.

  Snowman Ideas

  1. Upside Down Snowman

  2. Snowdog (or other animal)

  3. Thermometer showing below zero

  There, I had done my duty and come up with three ideas. And actually, none of them were a cop out. I thought they were all pretty legitimately good ideas. Hopefully Clark and I would be able to agree on one to build. I sat back in my chair and took a breather just as the front door slammed shut.

  Lennie walked inside clutching a few papers in his hands, blown with a flurry of blowing snow and I caught my breath. I wonder if he had been questioned by the police yet. He definitely should have been, after the threats he lobbed at Gerald during the kickoff festival.

  "Hello Mr. Mickelson," I said, squinting at the papers in his hand. The only one I could see was too far away to be read, but I recognized the logo for Shady Lake Bank and Trust. "How are you today? It's such a shame that the medallion hunt was thrown so far off track."

  Lennie scowled at me as he took his purple and yellow scarf and his leather jacket off and hung them both up. He was a frequent guest and also a frequent grump. Even his excitement about the medallion hunt had been overshadowed by his grumpiness about Gerald being the winner every year.

  "It is a shame," he said. "I actually thought I was going to win this year. I knew exactly where the medallion was. Leave it to Gerald to ruin the medallion hunt, even in death."

  "You're right, he should have been murdered somewhere unrelated to the hunt," I said before I could stop myself.

  Lennie threw a glare my direction and I put on my fake customer service smile to disarm him. After a silent stare down, he moved towards the staircase. I wanted to ask him more questions, but I wasn't exactly sure what to ask or even how to ask. So instead, I let him go.

  I checked the bed and breakfast register and saw that he was scheduled to stay until the end of week, so maybe I could find another time to ask him a few questions. I had to figure out a better way to approach him about it.

  As I sat on desk duty and waited for my mother to come back, I pulled up a card game on the ancient computer. I changed the picture on the back of the digital cards to be a picture of a desert island. It made the snowy day a bit more bearable.

  My phone buzzed with a ding and I pulled it out to see Mandy had sent me a message. Honestly, I was also a little proud I had managed to keep my phone from going on silent.

  Come pick me up whenever you are ready. Dress warm so we can thoroughly inspect the crime scene area.

  I laughed because usually I was the one to demand we sneakily investigate a crime scene. Mandy usually just came with because she loved me and didn't want me to do it by myself. How the tables have turned since Trevor became a suspect.

  Chapter Twelve

  It had only been a few days since the murder, but the police must have felt that they had thoroughly investigated the crime scene because there nothing there to stop us from tromping into the park and looking around. There was no officer guarding the park and besides a bit of police tape that had fallen down into the snow, there was nothing that told us not to be there. Mandy and I walked carefully down the hill, which was still slippery from all of the snow. I showed here where we the body had been. A small patch of the snow in front of the bench was still pink.

  "How awful," she said quietly as she sniffed a few times. "But I need to prove that Trevor did not do this."

  Mandy did not have a stomach for true crime like I did. I'd tried in the past to recommend some podcasts to her that I really enjoy, but once it got to anything even semi-graphic, she did not want to listen anymore. It was a bit of a bummer that we didn't share that interest, but that was okay.

  I grabbed Mandy's purse and opened it up, grabbing out her gum to give her a piece. She gladly took it and started chewing away. I figured it would help calm her down a little bit. I'd read that peppermint could be calming. Maybe that extended to other types of mint.

  "Now I'm thinking that there must be somewhere else besides just right here at the bench," I said. "I assume that Gerald came to search for the medallion and whoever killed him was either following him or hiding somewhere to take the medallion from him."

  "I think the obvious place would be those trees," Mandy said, pointing to the bank of trees behind the bench.

  "Yup, but we need to make sure we don't destroy any evidence that might be there," I said. "So let's tread carefully."

  Mandy nodded and we started to slowly walk towards the trees, watching the ground for any evidence that might be helpful. The one perk about investigating a crime scene during the daytime was that we didn't have to figure out how to search while holding a flashlight.

  There were bootprints heading towards the trees, but those could just be from the police searching down here. I looked at them, but since they were all very similar, I didn't think any of them were evidence of anything other than an investigation. It appeared that the police had at least searched by the trees so they weren't totally incompetent.

  Behind the bench, three pine trees grew close together. Evergreen Park was called Evergreen Park for a reason. The trees were all healthy, adult trees, but none of them were very big. The best part was that as we got closer, they smelled like pine and to someone who loves holidays as much as I do, it smells like Christmas.

  "Hey Tessa, do you think this is a clue?" Mandy said, her voice a little muffled.

  I looked up from the matching bootprints I had been looking at on the ground and Mandy was already standing in between the pine trees. I could only really see her feet as the rest of her was covered by tree branches. I ducked in between some branches until I was standing in a pocket between the trees with Mandy. It was the sort of place that would be a perfect fort for some children. It would have also been a great hiding place for a killer.

  Mandy pointed towards the ground. There was only a very thin layer of snow i
n between the trees, but Mandy was pointing at a perfect bootprint in the snow. Someone had obviously stood here and it looked like they had stood there for a while.

  "I think it is a clue," I said. "It looks like a man's print by the size. Give me your phone and I'll take a few pictures."

  Mandy dug her phone out of her purse. My flip phone had a camera, but it did not take very good pictures. If I wanted the police to take this evidence seriously, I would need a good picture to show them. I also grabbed a stick of gum and tossed it in the snow to show size. I gave myself a little imaginary pat on the back for thinking of that.

  As I snapped a few pictures, I noticed something partially buried in the snow next to the bootprint. It looked like someone had dropped it and it had been partially stepped on. I had mittens on, so I wasn't worried about contaminating evidence as I brushed some snow off of it. It was a piece of plastic that had "Loony Bin" printed on it with a picture of a loon. It was a keychain. I wondered if it had fallen off of the killer's key ring. I took a few picture of where I had found it in the snow for posterity.

  Trevor spent a lot of time at the Loony Bin. It was the newer bar in town and all of the young townies went there. What if this had fallen off of his key chain? I was about to ask Mandy about it when she spoke first.

  "Tessa, do you hear that?" Mandy said. She stood up suddenly, her eyes wide. "I think someone else is here."

  I stopped my picture-taking, but I didn't hear anything. I wasn't sure if it was because there was nothing there or because I was too involved in my picture taking. I listened for a moment before I shook my head at her. I didn't hear anything.

  "There it is again," she said. "I think someone just parked up in the parking lot."

  She was right, I could faintly hear the sounds of a car parking. I hoped it was just someone who lived in the neighborhood coming home, but I wasn't sure. Without thinking too much, I kicked a little snow over the key chain. Not enough to hide it completely, but enough that the police would find it if they actually looked a little bit.

  "I'm done taking pictures," I said. "So let's sneak out of here and maybe try to sneak around and up back to the parking lot."

  The park sat right next to a residential street. If we could sneak from the trees over to the sidewalk that ran next to the street, we could walk up to our car like we had just parked here so we could take a walk around the neighborhood. It would have been an odd walk on a very cold day, but I was more concerned about someone finding us right next to the crime scene.

  We walked out of the trees away from the park bench, careful not to disturb the bootprint or any other evidence that might be there. I would have to figure out how to tell Max about what we had found. I'm sure he would be angry that I'd been snooping around.

  As we tried to make our hasty exit, we heard a shout.

  "Stop right there," a voice said from the top of the hill.

  We froze for a moment and by the look on Mandy's face, I could tell we were thinking the same thing: the killer had come back and now he was after us. I wasn't sure whether to run or try to hide, but if the killer had already shot someone once I was sure they'd shoot us. There was no point in running.

  I searched Mandy's face to try to figure out what we should do. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Together, we started to run.

  "I said stop," the voice said. "Stay there or else you will be in trouble."

  Mandy froze again as I tried to pull her along. That was it. The killer was going to get us. I turned to face who was yelling at us.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I bravely turned to face my doom and saw that the deep voice who had been yelling at us was, in fact, not the killer, but Officer Max Marcus complete in his uniform. I had been too involved in finding clues that I had failed to recognize the voice as being his. I cringed inward at my own stupidity.

  "Stop right there Tessa and Mandy," Max yelled once more.

  This time as he descended the hill, he looked a little more dignified than when he had been charging down the hill on a sled, coming to my rescue. He did still have to shuffle sideways down the hill so that he didn't slip and fall down the icy snow so it wasn't totally dignified, but it was better.

  I tugged on Mandy's arm and pointed towards Max so she could see that it was just him and not someone trying to kill us. She rolled her eyes and waited with me until Max shuffled to the bottom of the hill and then jogged towards us.

  "Tessa, I don't even have to ask what you are doing here," Max said, giving me a disapproving look. "But Mandy, I'm a little disappointed to find you here with her."

  Mandy was forever having people think that I drag her into our shenanigans and while that is true sometimes, other times they are definitely her idea. Take today, for instance. She was just too innocent looking to make anyone suspect her. It was just a curse I had to bear, just like as the oldest sibling I was constantly blamed for making my brothers and sisters upset when we were younger.

  "Well maybe if you guys would do your job fully we wouldn't have to come out and look on our own," I snapped. It was true. Every time I went to investigate a crime scene, I'd end up finding something they missed. The Shady Lake police seemed to get a little too excited every time they had a big case to solve and they ended up making mistakes.

  Max furrowed his eyebrows at me. He couldn't really dispute it because it was true. But I realized that I couldn't make him too mad. He was my link into the information the police have and even though he tried not to tell me anything, I could usually get some information out of him.

  "Sorry," I said, in a rather unconvincing way. "But we did find something over there in the trees. Did your guys search in there?"

  "I'm sure they glanced in there," Max said. I could tell he was bluffing. If they looked in there, it must have indeed been a glance to not notice the bootprint. And if they found the bootprint, they would have found the keychain too.

  "Well we just found a bootprint in there that you should know about," I said. I was trying to suppress more sassy comebacks because I needed him to tell me about any other clues they found. "And underneath the bootprint was a keychain from the Loony Bin. I did take some pictures, but why don't you just come see it in person."

  Mandy and I led the way to the grouping of trees and together we parted the branches so that he could see inside. I was able to analyze the scene a bit more now and it looked like whoever had been in there had come from the tree filled area behind the trees, not immediately from the park.

  "See that big bootprint right in the middle?" I said. "That must have been where the killer stood and waited. And they must have dropped that keychain that is buried in there."

  Max nodded a few times. He appeared to be deep in thought. He usually tried to keep me out of trouble, so he was probably wondering how to get his guys back down here to look at the new evidence without telling them that I had been the one to lead him there.

  "Before I call for another investigator to help me, why don't you guys come up and sit in my warm car and we can chat," Max said.

  "I'd rather sit in the station wagon," I said. The squad car only had two seats up front and I didn't feel like it would be fair to ask Mandy to sit in the back like a criminal. The station wagon wouldn't be as warm, but at least we'd all be able to talk without a cage between us.

  We all walked to the sidewalk and then up the hill to the parking lot so that we didn't have to attempt to climb the slippery hill. I started the station wagon and turned the heater up without putting it on full blast because otherwise we wouldn't be able to hear each other talk over the fan.

  I turned down the radio even though Party Line was on right now and someone had just called in to complain about the snowplow drivers. From the portion of the call I caught, the plow driver always plowed the snow into the caller's driveway and this time the caller thought they had gone too far. This time the driver had knocked over the home owner's garbage can and broken it and the city refused to pay for it. Darn, it sounded like I was m
issing a good one.

  "So I'm assuming you are searching because we had Trevor in to be questioned," Max said as he settled into the backseat of the station wagon. The police might not be able to investigate a murder thoroughly, but he was sure able to put the pieces together.

  "You bet," Mandy jumped in to say. "Trevor is innocent and we are going to prove that to you."

  Max sighed a big sigh from the back seat. I knew what he was thinking, but I waited for him to say it.

  "You can't just come barging in to try to investigate," he said. "You are not police officers or even private detectives. Stay out of it."

  "No," Mandy said. It was forceful enough that I turned and looked at her in surprise. Mandy was usually the quiet one who never contradicted anyone. Max was surprised as well, as evidenced by his eyebrows which were now high enough on his forehead that they were almost part of his hairline.

  "Trevor is innocent and I am going to help prove that," Mandy continued. "I am not going to wait for you all to bumble your way through this thing like usual. No offense Max, but I'd rather not put Trevor's life in the hands of your incompetent department."

  We all sat for a minute, taking in what Mandy had said. Mandy was so fired up that there was almost fire shooting out of her eyes towards Max. I knew she loved Trevor, but this level of mama bear was admirable.

  "Okay," Max finally said. "That's a fair point."

  "Yes it is," Mandy said. "And now, since we showed you the bootprint and the keychain, you are going to tell us about any other evidence you found."

  My jaw dropped open. Mandy's level of daring was amazing right now. I usually had to trick Max into telling me things. I sat and waited to see if this would actually work. It was entertaining enough that I almost wanted some popcorn to go along with this show.

  Max appeared to be thinking about her request. I debated whether I should say anything. Max would be more likely to say something to Mandy, but I already knew a few things about the case since I was the one that found the body.