Death of a Dapper Snowman (11 page)

She reached for the back door, then paused.

“That was very helpful for you to call this in, Stormy. You don’t live here with your father, do you? I thought you bought a place in the middle of town. It’s awfully late for you to be over here checking on the house, isn’t it?”

I detected more than a little hint of suspicion in her questions. Irritation crept into my voice as I answered, “I’m here with Jeffrey.”

“Is that your boyfriend?”

“Yes,” I answered without thinking. “My father’s girlfriend, who lives here, went over to her sister’s for the night. She was afraid a serial killer would be coming for her next, so I’m cozied up in the guest room with Jeffrey. He has the most beautiful green eyes.”

“Good for you,” she said. “I didn’t know you had someone in your life already.” She leaned from side to side, like she was expecting to see a man emerge from the house behind me and introduce himself.

“He’s in the bedroom,” I explained. “He’s recovering.”

“Good for you,” Peggy repeated.

Tony cleared his throat to call attention to himself, on the walkway. I hadn’t noticed him walking up. He was alone.

“Suspect locked up tight?” Peggy asked him, her tone back to business.

Tony replied, “He can sit and cool down in the back seat for a bit while we check the house.”

I wondered how much Tony had overheard of me pretending Jeffrey was my big, strong boyfriend.

Tony turned to me and said, “Your father didn’t mention you were seeing someone.”

I was grateful for the dark, to hide my blushing.

“It’s been a whirlwind affair,” I said, which wasn’t untrue. I’d barely met the cat before today, and now we’d be spending the night together.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Tony said. “Background check, etcetera.”

“Oh, I think he’s had all his shots, and that’s all that matters.”

Tony and Peggy gave each other a look, but didn’t say anything.

The silence was broken by my teeth chattering.

“Thanks again,” I said as I backed up toward the door. “I’d better get in before someone calls 9-1-1 to report me missing from the warm bed in there.”

“Lock your doors,” Tony said.

I assured him I would, and then let myself back into the house.

Back inside the brightly-lit kitchen, I found Jeffrey sitting by his empty food dish.

“I hope you don’t mind, but we’re official now,” I told him. “I know you wanted to keep it quiet and not break the hearts of all the neighborhood ladies, but you can’t keep a secret for long in a small town like Misty Falls.”

I went to the kitchen window, which gave me a clear view in through the kitchen window of the victim’s house. There were some dirty dishes in the sink, so I got to work washing them as an excuse to stand there and watch the two officers doing their walk-through inspection. The crime scene investigators would have already given the house a thorough search earlier today, after the discovery of the body, and they would likely be back again the next day, but the officers had to look around for the burglary report.

I finished washing the mugs and set them on the draining rack with a sigh. My heart felt heavy, because despite being relieved the police had caught the killer, I didn’t want it to be Mr. Jenkins. He’d seemed like such a nice man, and killing someone over shoplifting was crazy. Still, I’d learned enough from my father’s case work that people did terrible things every day, and rarely was there ever a good enough reason to justify something as bad as murder.

I poured some water into the kettle to make some chamomile tea.

One dead body and one robbery. What a day. At least I would be able to curl up in bed soon, while the officers had to work a double shift or maybe a triple shift, questioning Mr. Jenkins.

A rattling sound behind me caused me to startle and splash half the water back out of the kettle. I wheeled around, my mind racing.
Mr. Jenkins had escaped from the back of the car, and was there to silence me as a witness!
Or he had an accomplice.

I didn’t see anyone in the kitchen with me, but the sound might have come from a nearby room. I reached over to the utensil drawer, pulled it open, and fumbled around for a big knife.

“The cops are right next door,” I said to my would-be assailant, hiding in the shadows.

Nothing but my own voice echoed back. I edged toward the back door, keeping my eye on the other entry points for the kitchen.

My foot nudged into something warm and furry.

I looked down to find a confused-looking Jeffrey wondering why I was kicking him. How could I treat my new boyfriend with such disrespect?

I whispered to him, “Did you hear that rattle?”

Jeffrey lifted one sleek gray paw and smacked the edge of his plate so it rattled on the floor. Exactly like the previous rattle.

I took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.

“Serves me right,” I said. “I lied to the police about having a man over here, so I deserved getting scared like that.”

I got out another can of cat food while I explained to Jeffrey that I wouldn’t normally lie about having a boyfriend, but it was so humiliating that the whole town thought they knew my business.

I knew how my situation looked.
A thirty-three-year-old woman returning to her hometown empty-handed.
I might as well start stocking up on stray cats, tinned shortbread, and festive holiday sweaters with bells. I might as well start embracing my spinsterhood.

My life wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, I wore business suits and heels instead of cardigans coated with cat fur.

As I thought about what I’d left behind in the city, my heart ached, but soon my mind moved on to happier thoughts.

If it hadn’t been for me, Mr. Michaels would still be stuck inside his icy tomb, and his killer would be on the loose. Thanks to me, Mr. Michaels was defrosting for a proper burial, the suspect was in custody, and I could sleep easy tonight.

Chapter 14
 

After checking all
the locks on the doors and windows, I did manage to get some sleep. It wasn’t unbroken sleep, because I kept waking up at every tiny sound, real or imagined.

The room was bright with winter sunshine when
somebody
started licking my eyebrows with his raspy tongue. I checked the clock. It was well past the time I usually got up, but I didn’t want to crawl out of bed.

Jeffrey’s raspy tongue became more like gritty sandpaper with each loving lick.

“Five more minutes,” I groaned.

Jeffrey gave me a full twenty seconds as a snooze break, then started licking my eyebrows again.

“Easy there, champ,” I said as I pushed him away. “You’re going to clean my eyebrows right off, and then what will Pam say? Probably that I look like a startled woodchuck.”

He yawned to let me know that whatever Pam thought about my hair was not important enough to warrant further discussion. He was right.

“How are your little man parts?” I asked as I turned him around to check the surgery site. I took a good look to make sure he hadn’t been applying the same intense eyebrow-cleaning to his stitches.

As thanks for my nursing efforts, he gave me a disgusted look and swished his tail. Everything looked as it should. The only thing unusual about his recovery was that he was so sociable. I’d expected him to hide underneath the bed for a few days, which the veterinarian’s assistant had warned might happen.

“You’re doing great,” I told him. “I, however, am going to take the whole day off work, and then—brace yourself—I’m going out on the town tonight. There’s this girl, Jessica. Don’t worry, you’ll like her. Everyone does. We were best friends in high school, once upon a time, but we grew apart, because… um, I can’t remember why. I guess we grew apart because I moved.”

Jeffrey watched me as I crawled out of bed and got myself dressed.

I hadn’t planned to spend the night at my father’s house, so I put on the same jeans, T-shirt, and cat-fur-coated cardigan sweater as the day before.

I would need a change of clothes before I went out with Jessica that night. Just because I was, according to town gossip, a crazy old spinster who’d foolishly walked away from a billion dollars didn’t mean I had to
look
like one.

My clothes were with the rest of my stuff, at the duplex, but the idea of going there made my stomach clench. My new tenant might be around, with his big mountain man beard, and all his rude ideas about what his landlady really needed.

“I’ll go shopping,” I told Jeffrey.

His tail twitched with excitement, because he assumed I meant shopping for him.

I went to the kitchen, hunted down some food for both of us, and used my phone to catch up on emails and text messages.

I finished breakfast long before I’d gotten through all my messages. My gift shop employee had sent a flurry of notes the day before, all following a pattern. She’d send a message asking me where some item was, then send another message time-stamped five minutes later proudly telling me she’d found the item. Then there’s be a third message apologizing for the first two.

There were multiple sets of these messages, each more hilarious than the last. Her most recent one was from closing time, telling me the cash register was over by exactly three dollars, yet again.

I heard the sound of boots on the front steps and nearly dropped the phone. Then I remembered it was the same time of day I’d come to the street yesterday, and that sound was likely the mailman.

I ran to the front door and yanked it open, so I could apologize to him for running the day before.

He must not have been expecting a wild-haired woman to yank open the front door like that. The poor man dropped his satchel of mail on the porch, and, by the look on his face, might have peed a little.

“Sorry for jumping out at you like that,” I said quickly. “I just thought you’d want to know the police caught the guy, last night. Oh, and I’m really sorry about ditching you at the crime scene yesterday. That wasn’t very nice of me, but look at how tiny I am compared to you.”

His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“Sorry!” I said again. “I didn’t mean to insult you like that. It’s just that you’re a big guy. Not big in a bad way. I just mean that you look strong. Do you work out? What can you bench? I bet it’s a lot.”

He stammered, “Wha-wha-what did you say?”

“You look like you could bench-press a lot more than me. I went in for a personal training session once, and you know what I benched? The bar. With no weights on it. Just the bar. And I was sore the next day.”

He gave me an exasperated look. “I meant about the police. Did they really catch the guy who killed poor Mr. Michaels?”

“I hope so. They caught someone. I shouldn’t say who the guy was, should I? Nope. I’m not going to say the name and start any more rumors.
Innocent until proven guilty
and all that, right?”

“It was a man? Someone local?”

I nodded. “He broke into the house last night. It was pretty stupid of the killer to come back, but my guess is he was worried about some sort of evidence.”

“That’s such a relief,” said the red-faced mail carrier as he picked up his bag.

“Have you been looking over your shoulder all morning, wondering if the killer was someone you deliver mail to?”

“I’ve been jumpier than a baby squirrel sitting on a barrel of pecans.” He took out a kerchief and mopped the beads of sweat from his round face.

“I’m sorry I left you on your own yesterday.”

“We all make mistakes.” He dug around in his satchel, then pulled out a good-sized carrot.

I took a step back inside the house as a reflex. Why was I afraid of a carrot? The nose. A frozen carrot just like that one had formed the dapper snowman’s nose.

The mail carrier didn’t notice my fearful expression as he crunched noisily on the carrot. I wasn’t the world’s leading expert on carrots, but it appeared to be exactly the same size and shape as the carrot I’d seen the day before, jabbed into my neighbor’s snowy tomb.

“You like carrots?” I said.

“Not really.”

He kept crunching away as he thumbed through some envelopes from his satchel, then thrust my father’s mail directly at me.

I flinched, but managed to lift my hands to accept the mail.

“There you go,” he said. “Mail’s delivered and the killer’s been caught. All’s well that end’s well. The town can sleep easy tonight.”

“Indeed.” I nodded in agreement.

The large-framed mail carrier took another bite of his carrot, turned and sauntered down the porch steps, then walked over to the house of Mr. Michaels. I was still nodding as he deposited mail there, gave me a cheery wave, and continued on to the next home, whistling a carefree tune.

I stared after the man as he made his way up the street, ignoring the chill from standing in the doorway with no coat on.

Was it possible the killer had an accomplice? Or that the police had the wrong guy? Who walks around eating giant carrots, anyway? Even if the mailman was on a diet, most people on diets snack on those bags of peeled baby carrots.

Jeffrey rubbed against my legs, drawing a figure eight with his body. The door was open, but he didn’t seem interested in running through the snow to patrol the neighborhood.