Frosty the Dead Man (A Snow Globe Shop Mystery)

by Christine Husom

  I prayed she hadn’t had a heart attack and died. Assistant Chief Clint Lonsbury would have trouble restraining himself if I’d brought death to his police station. “Margaret, Margaret, please wake up, tell me you’re all right. Help, is anybody back there? Clint, Mark, Jake?” Clint and Mark, especially, were the two I knew best. I’d met Jake a couple of months before.

  Clint appeared around the corner then his hand fell on the gun strapped at his side. “What in tarnation is going on out here?” He saw Margaret slumped across her desk and me holding out my arm with my bloody hand, which was getting increasingly heavier and was starting to drop. I grabbed it with the other hand and tried to keep it from falling to my side, but I was getting weaker and weaker by the second. I’d never passed out in my life, and I hoped against hope this wouldn’t be the first time. I needed to concentrate on something besides the drying blood on my hand.

  “I think I scared Margaret. I hope she’s okay. But the mayor’s not—he’s on the floor in his office. He’s dead. I found him there like that and came to get help.” The words spilled out of me.

  Clint shot me the most incredulous look—his face squeezed together like he was struggling to believe or even understand what I was saying. “Stay right where you are,” he said then rushed over to Margaret, who was beginning to stir. She wasn’t dead, thank God. She turned her head to the side and opened her eyes.

  Clint put his hands on her shoulders. “Margaret? Can you hear me?”

  She blinked a few times. “Assistant Chief Clint?” She pushed herself up, sending the papers on her desk flying in fourteen or so different directions.

  “Easy now,” Clint said as he helped her back into her chair. “I’ll call for an ambulance.”

  Margaret looked around, like she was getting her bearings back. “No ambulance.” And then she spotted me and pointed. “It was that woman. She scared the living daylights out of me.”

  Clint threw another look in my direction. Maybe he heard my teeth chattering as my jaw bounced up and down uncontrollably. And he must have noticed I’d started trembling because he said in his most authoritative voice, “Camryn, you need to sit down before you fall down. We don’t need another casualty around here.” He had a way with words that often made my dander go up. But the positive effect they had that time enabled me to back up to the row of chairs and sink down onto one of them. I rested my arm on my leg, palm up, and avoided looking at the hand that was covered with evidence of a possible crime.

  Clint made two quick phone calls. “Mark, get down to the PD. Now.” Then, “Audrey, your mom needs a ride home.” That’s all I heard before he said, “Margaret and Camryn, I need both of you to stay put, right where you are without moving, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He pulled out a set of keys and took off at a fast clip out the police station door and then keyed into the city office door.

  Margaret stared at me and I kept my eyes on the door, hoping Mark would hurry up and come rescue me from this nightmare, and from Margaret’s unforgiving look. Every second felt like an hour. Mark finally rushed in, and all I wanted was a big hug from him, but that wasn’t going to happen. His eyes moved from my face, down my body, then locked on my open palm.

  “Cami, what’s going on? Where’s Clint?”

  I used my right hand to point at the door the same moment Clint came through it.

  “Frosty’s dead all right,” he said.

  Mark’s head jerked back and Margaret let out a high-pitched cry that made my skin crawl.

  Clint pulled out his phone. “Buffalo County? We need your major crimes unit at city hall. Mayor Lewis Frost died in his office. It’s definitely not natural, and it doesn’t appear to be accidental. Thanks.”

  Mark stepped in closer to Clint. “Mayor Frost, murdered?”

  Clint lifted his shoulders. “That’s the way it looks.”

  Margaret squealed again, and Clint looked at his watch. “Your daughter will be here any time now, and we’ll be locking up shop a little early today. Make sure Audrey stays with you tonight, so you’re not alone. Agreed, Margaret?”

  She nodded.

  “And we need to keep the mayor’s death between us until we’ve done some investigating.” Clint looked directly at Margaret. “You’ll want to talk to your daughter about it, but no one else. She can’t tell anyone yet.”

  Margaret nodded again. Her daughter came in wearing a worried expression. I turned my hand palm down, so she wouldn’t see the blood. “Mom?”

  “Just a little fainting spell. I’ll be fine.”

  “A little fainting spell? We should go to urgent care.”

  “No. Let’s go home, and if I need to see a doctor, we can go later.”

  They gathered Margaret’s things and were out the door in a minute.

  Clint hovered over me. “Where’d that blood on your hand come from?”

  “The mayor’s desk.”

  “And how did it get on your hand?”

  “I grabbed onto the desk to catch myself when I almost fell on Mayor Frost, and I didn’t know there was blood on the edge of the desk—I didn’t see it—until it was all over my hand.”

  Clint drew in a deep breath. “What were you doing in the mayor’s office in the first place?”

  “I was supposed to meet with him, but he didn’t answer his door. I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me knocking so I opened the door. I didn’t see him behind his desk, but I noticed the snow globe he’d just bought was lying on the floor, broken. And when I went over to check it out, there he was, on the floor behind the desk. I wondered if the snow globe had fallen off a shelf and knocked him out. I checked for a pulse, but I couldn’t find one, and when I grabbed the desk to stand up, that’s when I found out about the blood.”

  “Camryn Brooks—” Clint started.

  Mark interrupted. “Mayor Frost.”

  Clint nodded. “Right. Camryn, you’re staying with us until we get this sorted out. And the county will need to swab your hand.”

  “Hang in there, pal,” Mark said, as he linked his hand through my right arm and we followed Clint down the long hallways to Mayor Frost’s open office door. Clint stopped and turned to me. “Okay, start from the beginning and tell me exactly what happened from the time you got here to the time you arrived at the PD. And why you were meeting Mayor Frost in the first place.” He and Mark both took out memo pads and pens, ready for writing action.

  I relayed every detail that pertained to the mayor beginning with the morning visits he’d had at Brew Ha-Ha from farmer Marvin Easterly, Councilman Harley Creighton, and Councilwoman Rosalie Gorman. And that Mayor Frost had stopped by Curio Finds twice that afternoon looking for me, and that he’d found me on his second visit.

  When I got to the part about the mayor wanting me to consider a seat on the city council, both Clint and Mark gave me looks that suggested I shouldn’t take even one baby step down that path. I told them about talking to Lila on my way in to see Frosty, and that she’d told me a number of people had visited him that afternoon.

  “She’ll be the next one we talk to,” Clint said. “Go on.”

  I detailed the rest of the story, then Clint and Mark stepped into the office. “Wait out here, but don’t touch anything,” Clint told me.

  I looked inside and noticed my coat was lying on the floor where I’d apparently dropped it when I first saw Frosty. “Um, that’s my coat. And that’s the base of the snow globe.” I pointed to it. As if they couldn’t see the items in front of them but could see me gesturing behind their backs.

  The phone inside my pocket buzzed. “It’s probably Pinky wondering where I am, or maybe it’s Emmy because she needs help at the shop,” I said.

  “Go ahead and see who it is,” Clint said.

  Fortunately, the phone was in my right pocket so I pulled it out with my uncontaminated hand. “It is Pinky.”

&nbs
p; Clint nodded. “You better answer so she doesn’t keep calling you. Or worse yet, come looking for you. Tell her you’ve been detained.”

  Tell her I’ve been detained? That’ll go over big with her. I cleared my throat and pushed the talk button with my thumb. “Hi, Pinky.” My voice sounded as shaky as the rest of me felt.

  “Cami, is everything all right? I thought you’d be back by now.”

  “I’ll be a while yet. Have Emmy take over so you can go home. I’ll tell you all about it later. I’ve gotta go.”

  “Cami, tell me what’s going on. You sound really strange.”

  “I do? Sorry, gotta go, and I’ll call you as soon as I can.” I hung up before she could utter another word.

  “After that conversation she probably will come looking for you,” Mark said.

  “She won’t be able to get into the building since the doors are locked,” Clint said, as his phone rang. It was about a ten-second conversation. “We’ll be right out,” he said then disconnected. “Speaking of locked doors, the county crime guys are here.”

  “I’ll go let ’em in.” Mark took off past me.

  When I looked back into the office something glittery in the carpet caught my eye. It was a dazzling diamond-like gem, and I had a perfect view of it from where I stood. My phone was in my hand and I snapped a picture of it then took a step into the room, forgetting my orders. “Where do you think you’re going?” Clint said.

  “Look.” I pointed with my phone then stopped in my tracks. I’d learned the lesson of obedience from past mistakes.

  Clint came closer and bent over to examine the gem. He fished a pair of protective gloves from his pocket, pulled them on, and then picked up the small object and held it in his hand. As he lifted it toward the light hundreds of sparkles every color of the rainbow danced.

  I was drawn to its astounding beauty. “It’s huge. Where would it have come from? There isn’t a piece of jewelry with it that I can see.”

  “We’ll take care of the investigation, Camryn.” Clint liked keeping unofficial me in one place, and official him in another. I moved back to my appointed place on the other side of the door.

  Mark and two Buffalo County deputies from the major crimes unit came down the hallway with duty bags filled with the equipment they needed to process the scene. I stepped aside to give them passage and they both eyed me before heading into the mayor’s office. I’d watched county deputies work on two other occasions, and had picked up a little bit of how they operated.

  The deputies were dressed in tan polo shirts embroidered with the sheriff’s star, their department, and names, E. Holden and G. Thompson. They were wearing black cargo pants with pockets in front, back, and on the side. Clint addressed them as Emily and Greg, and I guessed they were both younger than me.

  “We found this in the carpet.” Clint opened his gloved hand to reveal the gem, and Mark, Emily, and Greg all took a second to admire it. Emily was the team’s photographer and took pictures of the diamond. Then Mark produced a small evidence bag, and Clint dropped it into it. “I wonder who lost this, and when,” Mark said.

  “No one’s reported it missing, not yet anyway. We’ll find out when the room was last vacuumed and pull together a list of the mayor’s visitors since then,” Clint said.

  Deputy Greg moved his foot around on the carpet. “It’s got enough of a shag so I can see if the diamond was laying upside down, it’d stay hidden until it was moved.”

  The deputies changed their focus to Mayor Frost.

  “Did you call the ME?” Deputy Emily asked Clint.

  “No. I’ll do that now.” He pulled out his phone and took care of it.

  “What about his family?” Deputy Greg said.

  Mark shook his head. “His wife passed away some years ago. He only has the one son that I know of. Jason. He’s a teacher out east. Vermont, I think.” He pointed at a group photo of a man, woman, and three kids that appeared to be in their teen years. “Jason’s married with a family of his own.”

  “We’ll get the info from Mayor Frost’s personnel file,” Clint said.

  Deputy Emily snapped pictures of everything in the room—including the coat I’d unwittingly dropped—while I repeated my story to Deputy Greg who stood on the other side of the door frame from me. Then he swabbed the blood on my hand. When he finished, Greg told me I could go wash the rest of it off, and then I was free to go. “Unless you need her for anything else, Assistant Chief Lonsbury?”

  Clint shook his head. “Not for now. And like I told you before, Camryn, we need to keep a lid on this until we can notify the mayor’s family and prepare a statement for the public. At least a preliminary one. Understand?”

  I nodded. “But Pinky—”

  Clint interrupted, “Will need to wait for another hour or two.”

  “Umm, is it okay if I take my coat?” I asked of whoever might care.

  The deputies and police officers looked at each other, then Clint nodded. “Sure, go ahead. Mark, pick it up for her, and see that she gets out the door okay after she cleans up.”

  Clint didn’t trust my ability to wash up and leave on my own? Well, on second thought, maybe a little help was a good idea. Mark scooped up my coat and held onto it as he directed me to the restroom. The sink had a faucet that had to be manually turned on. And it stayed on until it was turned off, thankfully. It saved me trying to find the sensor for a two-second blast of water that I’d have to repeat over and over and over and over. I washed and scrubbed my hands until my skin was garnet-red and getting raw.

  How had I ever gotten mixed up in Mayor Lewis Frost’s death? Not to mention that it was smack dab in the middle of all the disagreements surrounding him and his city council. And Christmas was just around the corner besides. If the people in town and outlying area weren’t in enough of a tizzy already, they would be as soon as this latest dire news was announced.

  4

  Mark was shifting his weight from side to side when I stepped back into the hallway, obviously impatient. He’d likely been wondering what was taking me so long and got his answer when he took a quick look at my hands. He helped me into my coat and nodded at a door at the end of the hallway. “Did you park out back, or in the side lot? I didn’t see your car out front.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t drive here. I walked.”

  “You want a ride back?”

  “Thanks, but the walk will feel good, maybe help me burn off some of my stress.”

  “If you’re sure. It’s gotten nippy out there.” A Minnesota way of saying it was well below freezing.

  “Yep, I’m sure.” I waved my hand at the back exit. “I’ll go out this way.”

  “Let me get the door so you don’t touch the push bar.”

  He used a single gloved finger, depressed the bar, and opened the door. Police officers had to think of everything.

  “Thanks, Mark.”

  “I’ll catch you later. Cami, are you going to be all right?” He said it in a way that soothed me.

  “Yep.”

  The cold late afternoon air felt clean and refreshing. I breathed it in, but not enough so it burned my nostrils or lungs. I pulled the hood of the coat onto my head and hooked the button to keep it securely in place. Then I found my woolen mittens in the pockets and put them on.

  As the door closed shut behind me, I turned around and stared at it. If someone needed a quick escape, with little risk of being seen, that would probably be the best door to exit. I stood for a minute taking in the surroundings, wondering if the killer had in fact come out this way.

  Frosty’s death scene had embedded itself in my mind, every detail of it in full color. When I had first seen him lying on the floor, I’d been too shocked to fully process what I was looking at. I hadn’t even noticed the blood on the carpet by his head. Despite that, my brain had somehow managed to capture a sna
pshot and had plunked it into my memory bank.

  I started my journey back to Curio Finds reliving those first moments. The base of the snow globe was the first thing that had caught my attention. Was the mayor fighting with someone who had gotten so mad that he’d picked up the snow globe and knocked him over the head with it? That would have been a hard blow to break the globe from its base. And the blood on the mayor’s desk meant he must have hit his head on the way down. Or, had the killer cut himself on the broken glass and it was his blood on the desk?

  My hand twitched inside my mitten thinking about the blood I’d carried on my hand for those long minutes. Eewy eewy, eew. And the way the mayor seemed to be staring and pointing at the broken snow globe and its contents was eerie. Poor Frosty. He probably died from a snow globe blow to the head. What a way to go.

  My thoughts bounced from wondering where in the world had the diamond lying in the carpet come from to what had caused the mayor’s death. If his death had to do with the decisions he’d been making, there were a number of people who could have been responsible. Harley Creighton had accused the mayor of pushing his own agenda for a time. What had Harley meant, specifically?

  The mayor’s office would be filled with documents on all the matters that came before the city council, and from individual constituents. Not to mention all the e-mail correspondence he’d had. Some of it would be confidential, no doubt. It was possible Frosty had surprised a burgling information thief who’d grabbed the first thing he got his hands on and hit him with it, intending to knock the mayor out, not kill him.

  I was back at the shops before I was ready to face the music with Pinky. I slipped into Curio Finds, but it was empty. “Emmy?” I called out.

  Both she and Pinky came in from Brew Ha-Ha. “Cami, I can’t stand it anymore. What is going on?” Pinky said.