Winter Festival Murder

by Linnea West

  "Either way, I've been busy with the festival and I've also been trying to help out my friend by looking into Gerald's murder. A friend of mine was accused and I wanted to make sure he wasn't arrested for something he didn't do."

  "It sounds like you need to butt out," Lennie said, sounding a lot like Max. "You should just let the police do their work."

  "I would do that if the police would actually do their work," I said. "They have another person in custody and I'm not sure he was the one who did it either."

  Lennie's eyes narrowed and he searched my face. After a few moments, his eyes opened and his eyebrows knit together in confusion.

  "So you don't think Charlie did it either?"

  "No, it just doesn't make sense," I said. "I mean, I understand how the police are connecting the evidence to him, but I don't think they are right."

  Lennie bit his lip and nodded at me. For some reason, I felt like I had to justify my answer to him, so I kept blabbering on.

  "I mean, the bootprint was pretty big so as long as he had about the right sized foot, it could be his. The fibers they found on the gun were purple and yellow and Charlie definitely wasn't the only football fan. I mean, even your scarf has the right colors. And the Loony Bin keychain could obviously be connected to Charlie. But the last clue is the one that I think is pretty thin even if the police don't."

  "What was the last clue?" Lennie asked. As I blathered on like an idiot, Lennie had been slowly moving closer towards the desk until I looked up and realized he was almost pressed against the opposite side of it. I sat back, feeling a bit uncomfortable with him in my personal bubble.

  "It was apparently what looked like a form letter from Shady Lake Bank and Trust demanding a large payment from someone, but the letter had been sitting in the wet snow for so long that it was almost unreadable," I said. Why was I telling Lennie all of this? My blabbermouth was getting the best of me today, but I just felt like I had to justify myself to him. Maybe I was just justifying myself to myself.

  "Very interesting," Lennie said. He looked me directly in the eyes, studying me. There was something I couldn't read about his expression and it was making me feel uneasy. It was almost like he knew something that I didn't and it pleased him to have one up on me.

  I waited for him to make a move towards the stairs, but he continued standing way too close to the desk instead. I wasn't sure what he wanted since he wasn't usually one for conversation. I wondered if I should just turn my podcast back on, but I decided that was just a bit too rude, even for me. So I sat and stared at him while he stood and stared at me. A Minnesota show-down.

  "Did you need something else?" I finally asked.

  "Yes, actually," Lennie said. "I assume you are going to go snowshoe tomorrow at the Festival?"

  I actually had been so invested in solving this case that I had forgotten about the rest of the festivities. Tomorrow morning, Max would be leading a snowshoe hike for anybody who wanted to try out snowshoeing. Even though my parents owned snowshoes, I had never actually been snowshoeing. It would be fun to try, but Max was going to lead the hike and I wasn't sure that I wanted to add any emotional awkwardness to the physical challenge.

  "I wasn't planning on it, why?" I asked.

  "Because I want to snowshoe and I need a ride there," Lennie said with a scowl. "My car has started acting up and it's your job to make sure your guests are happy. So the way to make me happy is to drive me to go snowshoe tomorrow."

  I weighed that back and forth in my mind. Max was still really mad at me and I wasn't sure if I wanted to go on the snowshoe hike with him. But it might be a good way to get the murder off of my mind. I just couldn't figure out how to help Charlie and I needed a mental break from it. I finally settled on the fact that it might be a good idea to go hike, even if I had to steer clear of Max.

  "Sure, I can do that," I said. I was pretty sure Max would stop being mad at me at some point but no matter what, we both lived in Shady Lake and avoiding him wasn't going to work forever. "The hike is supposed to start at 9, so meet me down here at 8:40 or so. I don't want to be late."

  Lennie gave me a wave that acknowledged that he had heard what I said, and then turned and headed upstairs to his room. Living in a B&B was interesting because I was always being asked to do different things. My previous marketing job always seemed to be mostly the same thing day in and day out. Here, no day was the same or even similar to another. I could now add "chauffeur" to my resume, I guess.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I had almost forgotten about my promise to myself to message Mandy but once I was relieved of desk duty and headed up to my bedroom, one look at the framed picture of us on my wall reminded me. Max's words played in my head about how Mandy only did so much for me because I couldn't handle it myself. The thought popped into my head that I may be doing this more because I felt guilty and not to help Mandy. I tried to shake that thought away and I typed out a message.

  Manders, Want to come over and order a pizza with me? I feel like I haven't seen you in a while.

  I know the pizza was pushing it a bit because Mandy was someone who liked to eat healthy, but I felt that part of my job as her best friend was to push her to let her hair down occasionally and spend a Friday night devouring pizza and watching bad movies.

  I'll be right over.

  I could tell that Mandy was still feeling a little hurt because she was usually a bit more long winded than that in her texts. I figured I could make up for it with some girl time.

  Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door to the private section of the B&B and Mandy popped through the door with a hot and fresh Mike's pizza in her hand.

  "Surprise," she said with a wide smile on her face. I certainly was surprised because normally she just went along with my unhealthy eating instead of being the one to encourage it.

  I made it across the room in two big strides to take the pizza box off her hands. I cracked the top and admired the delicious, gooey pizza inside. Mike's made the best pizza in town because instead of shredded cheese, they layered sliced cheese on top. They had been making pizza this way at Mike's for decades and were considered a Shady Lake staple.

  Besides the generous helping of sliced cheese on the top, the pizza also had pepperoni and sausage. Mandy knew the way to my heart. Between pizza and donuts, apparently the number one way to win me over is unhealthy food.

  Once we were settled on the couch in front of the television with our pizza on some paper plates and a glass of wine each, I dug right in. The greasy smell was so delicious that I just couldn't wait.

  "Tessa, I'm sorry for whatever I did," Mandy said. Her voice quavered.

  I looked up from my plate with a mouthful of stringy cheese and saw that Mandy hadn't even touched her slice yet. A few tears were forming in her eyes and she blinked a few times, trying not to let me see. I tried to quickly swallow the wad of cheese in my mouth, but of course the fact that I was trying to hurry meant it took twice as long to actually swallow down.

  "Why are you sorry?" I said when my mouth was finally clear. "I'm not mad at you. Where did you get that idea?"

  "I just felt like you had been avoiding me," Mandy said. It felt like her words were punching me in the gut. Maybe Max was right. Maybe I was immature. "You didn't even text me after Chelsea ran that awful picture of you on the front page. I thought maybe I had asked too much of you when I asked you to help Trevor out."

  I felt like the worst friend alive. I had let the fact that I was busy be my excuse for not talking to Mandy hardly at all this week. But Mandy was always busy. She ran the Donut Hut practically by herself and she still managed to stay up to date with me even when I was living in the Twin Cities.

  "Why didn't you text me then?" I asked. "It isn't a great excuse, but I was just plain busy."

  I could feel myself blushing a little bit because my excuse was super lame. Max's words kept ringing in the back of my mind. The pizza suddenly didn't look as appetizing as it had before I r
ealized I was actually a bad friend. I set my plate down on the table and looked at Mandy again.

  "I don't know," Mandy said. "You're right, I should have just text you. But I am glad you asked me to come over tonight because I do have some good news. Trevor is going back to college!"

  I tried my hardest to act surprised, I really did. But I have never been good at that. I could instantly feel that I was really overselling my level of surprise. The loud squeal may have pushed it over the edge just a tad.

  "You knew?" Mandy said. "How in the world did you know about that?"

  "Trevor told me," I said. "And honestly, I'm pretty impressed with that. I know I'm really hard on Trevor, but it feels like he is finally starting to mature a little bit."

  Mandy was beaming. Her pride for Trevor and his incredibly slow growth to maturity was shining off of her face and into every corner of the living room. For once, I was happy for her and Trevor instead of trying to a negative side of it.

  "So now that I told you my good news, why don't you tell me about your investigation," Mandy said. Her eyes were still sparkling with pride for Trevor and I decided to tell her the good news first.

  "I think I can pretty much rule out Trevor," I said. "It just doesn't make sense for him to be the killer. But on the other hand, I'm not sure Charlie is the killer. That leaves Lennie and Donna and neither of them make sense either."

  "Hold on, back up and explain a little bit more please," Mandy said. "Remember, you haven't told me anything about it all week.

  As I thought about where to begin, I grabbed another slice of pizza and put one on Mandy's plate too. She gave a little sigh, but started to grudgingly eat it.

  "I guess my biggest thing is that no one has a real motive," I said. "Well, they do but none of the motives make that much sense. I just can't believe that someone killed Gerald so that he wouldn't find the medallion and win 500 dollars."

  "That does seem like a pretty thin motive, even though Charlie and Lennie both made very public threats against Gerald," Mandy pointed out. She kept taking tiny nibbles of her pizza, just enough to get a taste.

  "They did, but I have a feeling there is something else there that I either don't see or that I don't know," I said. "I feel like I may be stumped on this one."

  We both finished our slices in silence. Call me a weirdo, but the crust is actually my favorite part of a slice of pizza. Pizza is great, but that carb-filled part at the end when you leave just enough cheese and sauce to flavor it a bit? Heaven in my mouth. I savored the crust until Mandy broke the silence.

  "So what are you going to do now?" Mandy asked.

  "I'm not sure," I said with a shrug. "I may just have to admit that maybe the police know what they are doing. I think for now I will just leave it be and watch some cheesy movies with you. Tomorrow I am going on the snowshoe hike and I'm also hoping to make Max be a little bit happier with me."

  "Why is Max mad at you?"

  I hadn't told Mandy about that either. As I ate a third slice and Mandy picked the sausage off of a third piece, I filled her in on the fight we had about the investigation ending with him saying I was immature. When I finished my story, Mandy put her plate on the table.

  "It sounds like this investigation has really thrown you for a loop," she said as she shut the lid of the pizza box. This was her friendly way of telling me there is no way I need more than three slices of pizza and I was glad because at least if the box was closed, it was harder to see and smell that delicious pizza.

  "Usually I'm pretty good at connecting clues and figuring out mysteries," I said with a sigh. "But this time is different. And the most annoying part is that I'll probably never know. The police have arrested Charlie and they have clues that they think fit, so that's the end of it."

  It really was most disappointing and I was sure Charlie felt the same way. I tried not to think too much about it because it made me too sad when I did.

  Mandy took the box of pizza downstairs when she left to put it in the fridge where most likely Tank would eat the rest cold the next time he went looking for a snack. That was better for me because when the pizza is out of sight, it is definitely also out of mind.

  Now if I could do the same for this mystery, I would be extra grateful because I needed some way to put it out of my mind.

  Chapter Thirty

  The nice thing about the fact that Mandy is a baker by trade is that our movie nights together ended really early. The donuts would not bake themselves early the next morning, so we were always done watching movies by 10 pm. Mandy always left with gentle encouragement that I should also go to bed. This time, I actually took her up on it.

  I had an alarm set for 8 the next morning so that I would be up and ready for the snowshoe hike in time, but I actually woke up naturally and was happy to see that it was 7 in the morning. I stayed in bed for a few minutes before I decided to get up and help with breakfast downstairs. My parents would be up and serving breakfast in the dining room and I know they could always use another set of hands.

  As soon as I was dressed and opened the door to the B&B, the delicious smells of breakfast hit me. It smelled like bacon and french toast this morning. One of the things I loved about the breakfast part of our bed and breakfast was that our breakfast wasn't uppity or difficult. It was always just a delicious, down home breakfast.

  I found my father frying up bacon in the kitchen while my mother was making the french toast. I grabbed a coffee pot and went out to give refills. We usually went through quite a few pots of coffee because our main crowd were senior citizens who were originally from Shady Lake, but now lived somewhere warm. They would come back to visit their grandchildren and our B&B was just a step above the motel in town that we also owned.

  It seemed like the amount of coffee consumed by every adult in Minnesota went up with each passing year. I'm pretty sure once my parents hit middle age, the coffee pot in our house was only off when we were sleeping. Otherwise once it was empty, they just started it up again. I already seemed to drink coffee almost constantly, so I shuddered to think about drinking even more.

  The table had six older couples having breakfast. Lennie was not present and one of the couples had gone out to meet their granddaughter for breakfast at the Breakfast Spot, so there were a few empty chairs. As I circled the table topping off everyone's coffee, I was congratulated on the snow sculpture competition three times. Living in a small town, I've learned that when something big happens, you just expect to have people comment on it constantly for at least a few weeks. That goes double or even triple if it is something that ends up on the front page of the Shady Lake Tribune like the terrible picture of me did.

  "Is breakfast almost ready to go out?" I asked as I brought the carafe of coffee back in to fill up. I poured some in my own coffee mug first and then filled up the carafe.

  "Just let me fry up this last bit of bacon," my dad said. I grabbed a piece of bacon from the plate on the counter next to him and gobbled it up.

  "You can take the french toast out while I get the toppings ready," my mother said.

  I grabbed the two plates that were piled high with french toast slices and when I came back to the kitchen, I found my mother had bowls of fruit, pitchers of syrup, a dish of butter, and a little bowl of powdered sugar ready and waiting. Together we carried them all out to the table in a couple of trips and spread them up and down the middle.

  The folks at breakfast were chattering away while they happily piled their plates high with breakfast. I was thanked profusely no less than four times, which was always pleasant. I couldn't imagine working in a bed and breakfast in another state because while we definitely got some grumpy characters, most of our guests were Minnesota Nice.

  "You go get ready for that snowshoe hike," my mother said when we got back to the kitchen. "Don't be out too long. There is a nasty winter storm on the way."

  My father topped up my coffee mug once more and I brought that with as I scurried off to the entryway. In Minnesota we belie
ve that there isn't bad weather, just bad clothing. I grabbed my outerwear and drug it back into the living room because the entryway was just too drafty to get dressed in.

  I glanced at the clock and saw that I had just enough time to layer up before Lennie was supposed to meet me. When they named the festival the Below Zero Festival, someone listened and made sure to match the weather to the name. I had already put on a pair of long underwear underneath my jeans and I threw on the sweater and sweatshirt on top of the long sleeve top I had put on.

  A pair of snow pants was up next along with a fleece jacket, scarf, and warm winter jacket. I also had a stocking cap, my winter boots, and some mittens along with a pack of hand warmers to stuff inside, but I waited to put those on because I didn't want to overheat while waiting for Lennie to come down. A glance at the clock told me that if he was on time, he would be down in about two minutes to meet me. Perfect timing on my part.

  I sat down in one of the armchairs by the front door and looked outside. Obviously it was cold, but at least it didn't look windy. Growing up in Minnesota had shown me that it wasn't the cold that made things miserable but the wind certainly did. Freezing cold wind could cut through outerwear like it was nothing, even if you layered up. But this morning looked still with the trees standing straight up.

  One phenomenon Minnesotans use to see how cold it is without looking at a thermometer is by looking at the sun for sun dogs. When it is very cold, there will be two bright spots, one on either side of the sun, with what appears to be an arc going between them. Technically, I've learned that it doesn't have to be super cold for them to appear, but they are much more common on freezing cold days like today. Today, there were two very prominent spots of light out there. I took that as a pretty good sign that it was a cold one out there.