A Festival of Murder Read Online Free

chattering,
Nicholas squatted beside the body. He didn’t want to be out here. Only stares
of accusation and curiosity had driven him out of the inn, forcing him to
accompany the others to investigate. With his shoulders hunched against the
blackness he could feel pressing down around him, he forced his eyes to skitter
over the corpse again.
    “Kevin, hold the
light on the left side of his head.”
    The glow settled
on a black smudge along the reporter’s left temple. Frozen blood was crusted
above and below the stain. Nicholas wanted to inspect the black mark, see if it
could be removed, but he wasn’t about to touch any part of a corpse, not even
with his gloved finger.
    “That’s probably
where he hit his head on the edge of the boat,” Charles said. He shivered
violently. “We can only hope he didn’t regain consciousness before he drowned.”
    Nicholas tilted
his head back to look up at him. “How do you know Johnson was in a boat?”
    Charles pointed at
the dark lake. “Because it’s still there.” He suddenly paled. “Oh, my. Oh, my
goodness. That’s one of my boats. Does this make me a target for a
lawsuit?”
    Sure enough, the
dark outline of one of the Gingerbear’s rowboats was barely visible through the
snowfall, out in the middle of the iced lake. It was caught in a small patch of
broken ice and spun around and around beneath the force of the wind like a
child’s bath toy caught above the drain. Behind the lake stood the thick
barrier of the dark forest. Nicholas thought he glimpsed steady red lights.
    “What in the world
was he doing out here in this weather?” he asked as he rose to his feet. “Was
he going to do some ice fishing?”
    Phoebe seized his
arm, nearly giving him a heart attack. “You don’t think . . . someone
did this to him, do you?”
    It might have been
funny the way the four of them immediately looked suspiciously at one another
before quickly glancing away. But it wasn’t funny because Nicholas had a
feeling that mistrust was something he was going to be experiencing quite
frequently in the near future.
    “Foul play seems
unlikely,” Charles said, though his quivering voice was about authoritative as
a child’s.
    “What if, you
know, they did this?” Nicholas asked, glancing around. He wondered why
no one else had brought up the possibility. He jerked his head urgently upward.
“The you-know-who-in-the-sky. They could have been following him, waiting for
their chance to get him alone. Stalking him and—”
    Phoebe elbowed him
hard in the ribs.
    “We need an
autopsy if you want to know anything for certain. Although my money’s with
Charles. This guy hit his head and drowned.” Kevin jabbed his flashlight at the
body again. His breath puffed in front of his face in stretched out clouds,
obscuring his expression. “We probably have to do something about this in the
meantime.”
    Cold air swept in
to lick the backs of Nicholas’s knees. “You mean like call in the Air Force,
or—”
    “Can Tom make it
up here with the roads being what they are?” Phoebe asked the others, cutting
him off.
    Tom Little was the
Estes Park officer assigned to the zone of the valley which included Hightop.
The officer rarely checked up on them which suited Nicholas just fine. Cops and
aliens went together about as well as vampires and shrimp scampi.
    “We don’t have a
choice, do we?” Charles wrung his hands. “Who should do it?”
    Conscious of
Phoebe’s mounting disapproval, Nicholas forced himself to say, “Since I’m not
guilty, I’ll call.”
    Charles jolted as
if stung by a Taser. “But-but, I’m not guilty either. I should call.”
    “And hang the rest
of us out to dry?” Kevin asked. “Who says Phoebe or I did it?”
    “Well, somebody
did it.”
    “It wasn’t me!”
    “Someone—”
    “We’ll make a
conference call,” Nicholas cut in, “and everyone will yell into the phone at
the same time. That way the police will know that although we’re