A Festival of Murder (15 page)

“What’s
KPAH?”

“It’s
a radio station outta Pahrump, Nevada. Got the inside scoop on accounta them
bein’ so close to Area 51. Sometimes they’re on to somethin’ but a lotta times
it’s a bunch a baloney.”

Nicholas
waved his hand. “Why is any of this relevant?”

“That
night, the night of ol’ Rocky’s death, I called in to the station to argue
their stupid theory about Bigfoot being an agent of the aliens.”

Nicholas
had nothing coherent to say to that.

“Argued
with those dang fools for three hours. They was tryin’ to convince everyone
that Bigfoot is nothin’ but bait that aliens use to lure humans into the
forests so they can be abducted. Idiots! But I told them a thing or two that
night, I sure did. Blasted their fool theory right outta the water.” Captain
Sam looked smug. “It’s all recorded, far as I know. That detective probably put
a call into the station to confirm it. So I’m clear, Trilby, if that’s been
buggin’ you. Ain’t never had no reason to kill Johnson. Not like some people ’round
here.”

Disappointment
weakened Nicholas’s knees. Captain Sam had been his number one suspect. It all
would have tied together neatly. The police would get their killer and Hightop
would be rid of its most obnoxious resident. Not to mention Nicholas could
finally sleep in peace without the nagging feeling he was being secretly
recorded. But that was all gone. Captain Sam had a solid alibi.

“But
you know something,” Nicholas said, thinking furiously. “You’ve been hinting at
it since the pie contest. You knew where to find Rocky’s watch. How? Just tell
me already. The only person I’ll pass the information along to is Detective Canberry.”
And that was only assuming that what Captain Sam had to say wouldn’t make
Nicholas look like a fool in the retelling or worse, incriminate him.

Another
shot rang out, its source impossible to trace because of the echoes in the
mountains. It could have been a mile away or fifty. It was apparently close
enough for Captain Sam.

“Get
lost!” he growled down at Nicholas.

“But—”

“I
ain’t telling’ you nothin’ right now!”

Enough
was enough. Nicholas stomped to his car. He’d barely placed his hand on the handle
of his car door when Captain Sam called out, “Wait.”

Exasperated,
Nicholas glanced back.

“You
should look to that woman of yours, Trilby.”

Nicholas
froze. “Captain Sam, I’m warning you to watch your tongue when you speak of
Phoebe.”

“She’s
been up to somethin’. Seen her sneakin’ around some nights with a shovel. Seems
like you and me ain’t the only ones with secrets.”

Wordless,
Nicholas climbed into his car and drove away. It was a grim drive, for he no
longer had a main suspect and he couldn’t keep Captain Sam’s warning from
drifting through his thoughts like an elusive flying saucer.

He closed up shop
promptly at five o’clock. Kevin gave him an extra lock that he’d had lying
around which Nicholas used to replace the cheaper, and clearly useless, lock
that he’d initially installed on the back door. He doubted Captain Sam would be
able to break in now. Not without a bulldozer, which unfortunately wasn’t
outside of the realm of possibility where the man was concerned. Nicholas still
didn’t have a good read on the man but he did know one thing: he needed to find
a new suspect for the murder of Rocky Johnson.

After changing
into tan corduroy pants and a blue and black flannel shirt that he hoped was
flattering, Nicholas set about tidying up his cabin. There wasn’t much to do.
He kept a neat home, but it helped dissolve the ball of anxiety that sat at the
base of his throat to wipe down surfaces and straighten pillows. He even dusted
a couple of lamps and the television screen, mostly because he thought he found
a partial fingerprint on the screen. The prospect of it belonging to his
intruder gave him the willies, and he was glad when it was gone.

Though there was
much on his mind, quite suddenly nothing seemed as important as what to prepare
for dinner. He’d invited Kevin, the twins, and most importantly, Phoebe, for
dinner under the guise of discussing their investigation results. He wasn’t
kidding himself, or maybe anyone. This was a date, and it needed to be perfect.

A casserole? No,
too pedestrian. It was the fare of recently graduated college students playing
house.

A roast? Right.
Emma would laugh him out of the house if he brought out a roast.

He settled with
bowtie pasta and peas in a light lemon sauce. From his wine cellar he selected
a decent, but not too showy sauvignon blanc, and set the table for five.

The five settings
made him pause. He had four friends. Two were his pseudo-employees, the other a
neighbor, and the third was his love interest. Was he the definition of an
antisocial hermit when he could count the number of people he bothered to say
hello to on a handful of fingers? He was forty-four years old and it unnerved
him that he didn’t see his lot in life improving much in the future, only
growing stranger, and him with it.

Unless, of course,
he ended up arrested and convicted for Rocky Johnson’s murder. That would liven
things up a bit. Would Phoebe find him more interesting? Perhaps being the bad
boy was the way to go.

There was a knock
on his door and Nicholas, bad boy that he was, wiped his sweating palms on the
thighs of his soft corduroy pants.

~~~~~

“It was excellent,
Nicholas.” Phoebe gazed at him from over the rim of her wine glass. “I’m
impressed.”

Nicholas managed
what he hoped was a modest nod. “It was nothing, I—”

“I agree on the
kudos,” Kevin cut in as he folded his napkin atop his empty plate. “It was the
right amount of butter in the sauce. I’m lactose intolerant and if I have too
much dairy there can never be a restroom close enough.”

“Yes,” Nicholas
sighed, “it was nothing at all.”

Emma burped into
her fist. “I may have to steal the recipe.”

Phoebe’s eyes held
laughter. “Who knew you could cook? I thought with how often you eat at the
Gingerbear that you were a mac and cheese kind of guy. I think your stock just went
up a few points.”

“Oh, he’s well
worth the investment,” Emma said with all the subtlety of a Zamboni blasting
through a brick wall. “Once you get past the personality, he ain’t bad-looking.
That shirt really makes his eyes pop, don’t it? Just like Paul Newman’s if Paul
had brown eyes. I don’t know how any woman can resist him. Why, if I were
twenty years younger and still prone to sleeping around—”

The table jolted.

Missed
, Emma mouthed at
him as Nicholas winced at his stubbed toe.

He stood and began
clearing the table. “Would anyone like tea? I have a great single estate Golden
Monkey.”

“Golden what?”
Emma barked. “Phoebe’s here. Bring out the good stuff. Bring out the Celestial
Seasonings Sugar Cookie.”

“Tea for everyone,”
Nicholas said loudly to drown out further comments.

“I’ll help.”
Phoebe cleared the rest of the dishes and brought them to the sink. They
exchanged a look of co-conspirators and Nicholas’s heart jumped.

As he rinsed off
the dishes, he tried not to stare as Phoebe moved around his kitchen. She’d
visited only once before. Yet she seemed perfectly at ease in his space. It
made him sigh a little wistfully, sort of like a mournful old hound dog. The
two of them moved quietly, conscious of Toby sleeping in Nicholas’s bedroom.

“I meant what I
said at the table,” Phoebe murmured as Emma cackled over something Kevin had
said. Nicholas didn’t even want to begin imagining what could be so amusing to
the older woman. He knew her sense of humor. “I enjoyed dinner.”

“It was a pleasure
making it for you.” Nicholas filled his mother’s old porcelain pot with hot
water from the sink to warm it and placed cups and saucers on a tray. As he
added small pitchers of milk and sugar, he said as casually as he was able, “I’m
glad you came. I worried my message wouldn’t reach you when I missed you at the
inn. I barely trust Candy with my food, much less important messages.”

Phoebe ducked her
head, her dark ringlets falling around her face and concealing her expression. “Sorry.
We must have been ships passing in the night.”

Where did you go?
Nicholas wanted to ask, but that sounded too much like something a prying or
jealous boyfriend would say.

He watched her look
out the kitchen window into the yard where Winchester was a dark shadow against
the snow. Her eyes slid to the back door and to its shiny new lock.

“Has it occurred
to you that whoever killed Rocky might want to hurt you as well?”

He was surprised
by the question. “It hasn’t. What reason would anyone have? I’m adorable.”

She frowned at his
flippancy. His ears burned.

“You’re trying to
solve this murder. You’re not just an observer, you’re an investigator now.”

“Some people up
here seem to believe the murderer killed Rocky as a favor for me,” he pointed
out.

“That was when you
weren’t a threat. By taking an active role in this investigation you’re letting
the killer know they have two people to worry about: you and Detective
Canberry.” She pointed at the broken door. “What if that was a warning? What if
it was a prelude to violence against you, not just against your home?”

A ripple of unease
crawled up his spine. He hadn’t physically defended himself since he was a
child, and even then he’d gotten his butt kicked.

“But no one knows
I’m investigating,” he said in a low voice. It required all his willpower not
to glance out the kitchen window in search of man-shaped shadows. He had to
keep up some pretense of bravery.

“They’re going to
figure it out sooner or later. Everyone sees you talking to Detective Canberry
and let’s face it, Nicholas, you’ve been more sociable in the last two days
than you have been in all the years you’ve lived here. Or so I’ve heard.”

“I don’t have a
choice, Phoebe.” He shrugged with forced nonchalance. “Besides, I’m tougher than
I look. I survived an alien abduction and got the T-shirt to prove it,
remember?”

“But this guy’s MO
isn’t to abduct people. Is it?”

Nicholas startled
as the kettle burst into its high-pitched whistle. He gave a sheepish laugh and
fumbled to put the tea tray together. “You’re going to give me nightmares at
this rate.”

From the corner of
his eye, he watched her hug herself. “I already have them.”

~~~~~

“I know you don’t
think we should continue to include Captain Sam on the suspects list,” Kevin
said after Nicholas had poured tea for everyone, “but you may be betting wrong
on him. I doubt it’s a coincidence that he found the watch and broke into your
cabin around the same time.”

“I think it’s a
stretch.” Nicholas blew at the surface of his tea. “I think if he had truly
planned to frame me with the watch he would have waited until he had the watch
in his possession before he broke into my cabin.”

“That’s true if he
thought the way a normal person does.” Emma tapped the side of her nose before
pointing at him with her forefinger. “That man is as far from normal as I am
from my first kiss.”

“I’ll give you
that. But Captain Sam has something undeniable: he has an alibi.”

That hovered above
the table like a storm cloud. Captain Sam’s alibi was better than Nicholas’s or
Phoebe’s.

“Nicholas is
right,” Phoebe said. “Captain Sam didn’t do it. Besides, I feel sorry for him
now after having learned that he belongs to a military family and he can’t
follow in their footsteps. He may be a little strange, but maybe he’s not
completely bad.” She gave Nicholas an apologetic look before adding a few drops
of milk to her tea and gently stirring it. “He’s probably felt like a failure
for most of his life.”

“Forget the crazy
old bat,” Emma said with a scowl on her face. “We need to be looking at
legitimate, hard core threats.”

“Hard core?” Kevin
raised a semi-interested eyebrow. “It’s not as though we have professional
killers up here.”

“Actually . . .”
Emma rubbed her hands together in apparent glee at what she had to share. “There’s
at least one hired gun here in Hightop.”

Nicholas gave her
a goldfish gape of surprise. “Who?”

“Our resident
Grizzly Adams look-alike. Horace Grant.”

Nicholas set down
his cup, careful to keep his expression neutral. “What do you know about him?”

“He was a private
military contractor over in Afghanistan. That’s PMC in the lingo.” Emma gave
Kevin an elbow, who rubbed his ribs with a look of annoyance. “There was some
scandal—maybe he killed too many people or wasn’t nice about it or something.
They made him quit so he came back to the States and eventually came up here to
try to hide his taxes or something. Don’t tell him I said that. He’s one man
who wouldn’t bat an eyelash at clocking you upside the head and chucking you
into the lake.” She tilted her head. “And he wasn’t at the party last night.”