Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen (4 page)

I shined the flashlight on the bag.

Something reflected back at me.

This was no garbage bag. It was person. A man.

I ran forward and dropped to my knees in the snow. Ignoring the pain in my wrist, I reached for the man. I touched his shoulder, intending to give him a good shake.
Perhaps he'd had too much to drink and had foolishly lain down in the snow for a short nap, or had tripped and been knocked unconscious.

He was so very cold. I touched his neck, and nothing moved beneath my shaking fingers.

I realized that I knew him.

Nigel Pearce. The
World Journey
magazine reporter.

M
attie buried his head into my side with a slow, plaintive whine. I rubbed my hands through his soft fur and closed my eyes, taking deep breaths and sparing a thought for poor Nigel.

My eyes flew open. Nigel was cold, icy cold, but I'd read somewhere that people who appeared to be frozen to death had been brought back to life when warmed up. I struggled to my feet and shrugged off my winter coat. I pushed the emergency call button on my iPhone with one hand while with the other I draped my coat over the man lying at my feet.

“I'm in the Rudolph town park,” I said when the efficient voice of the emergency operator answered. “A man . . . I found a man . . . I think he's dead. Almost dead. He's very cold.”

“What is your name, please?”

“Merry Wilkinson. He's lying in the snow. Not breathing. Send help.”

“Ambulance and police are on their way,” she said. “Stay on the line, Merry.”

“Okay. Is this Alison?”

“Yeah.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Are you okay, Merry?”

“I'm okay. It's dark here, but I have my flashlight on so they'll be able to find me.”

“Stay there, then. Do you detect any vital signs?”

I swallowed and said, “No.”

“How was the parade? I was sorry to miss it, but you know how busy we get parade weekend, so I pulled an extra shift.” Alison Grimes was a graduate of my mom's vocal school. I knew she was just making polite conversation to keep me calm until help arrived, and I chatted back, grateful for her relaxed voice and easy manner.

As we talked, Mattie uncoiled himself from me and went to take another look at Nigel. I grabbed his collar and pulled him away. “I'd better secure my dog,” I said to Alison. “Hold on.”

“I'll wait.”

I grabbed Mattie's leash and led him to a tree about twenty feet away to tie him up. I figured that the EMTs and the cops wouldn't want to play with a giant puppy, delighted as he would be at the opportunity to make new friends.

The snow around Nigel had been churned up, first by Mattie's big paws and then by me. The cops probably wouldn't be happy about that but there was nothing I could do about it
now. I tried to remember if I'd seen any tracks as I approached, but I couldn't. I had not been looking for clues.

I shined my flashlight across the ground around Nigel. The long lens of his Nikon was partially under his body. I wondered if I should lift it out of the snow. Surely, a valuable piece of equipment like that shouldn't be getting wet. I left it where it lay. Expensive or not, the cops would not be happy if I disturbed the scene any more than I already had.

The light picked up something I hadn't seen before: a circle of melting snow about two feet away from Nigel. A mass of brown lumpy liquid was sinking into the snow, warm enough to melt it. I caught a whiff of the scent, and my stomach lurched. Nigel had been violently ill.

At first, I thought he must have been awfully drunk to throw up like that and then simply lie down in the snow and take a nap. But alcohol hadn't been served at the party, and if Nigel had been dipping into a private stash, he hadn't appeared to be at all inebriated. Had he started to drink when he left the party? I'd last seen him less than an hour ago. Surely no one could get that drunk that fast?

Mattie's sharp ears caught the sound before I did and he began to bark. Sirens, coming toward us, red, blue, and white lights breaking the blackness of the winter night. A voice shouted, and I waved my flashlight in the air, calling, “We're over here!” Mattie strained at the leash, his front paws clawing at nothing but cold air.

I only had a moment to think that perhaps I should have tied him to a bigger tree before a powerful light shone in my face.

“It's you,” said the high-pitched voice of Officer Candy Campbell. “I should have known.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I lifted my hand, trying to shield my face. I peeked out from between my fingers. Two paramedics had followed Candy. They crouched on either side of Nigel, blocking my view, and spoke in low, efficient voices as they examined the still figure.

“Don't move him,” Candy said. The light shifted and I could see again. The medics were preparing to load Nigel onto a backboard they'd brought with them. No stretcher would be able to get through the deep snow.

“He's gotta get to the hospital, stat,” one of the medics said. He shouted a stream of initials and numbers into his radio.

“He's dead. VSA,” Candy said. “The detectives will want to examine him in situ.” VSA, I knew, meant “vital signs absent.”

“They ain't dead until they're warm and dead,” the medic replied. “Don't they teach you that in police college?”

“I don't think . . .” Candy began.

“I don't much care what you think.” The medic was an older guy, well into his fifties. I suspected he'd seen and done it all. He probably chewed up small-town cops and spat them out before breakfast. “Let's go. If we get him to the hospital fast enough, the docs might be able to bring him back. Hey! You over there.” He shouted and waved toward a group of firefighters trudging through the snow to see if they could help. “We need a lift here.”

Quickly and efficiently, the two medics rolled Nigel, still draped in my coat, onto the board, and the firefighters lifted it.

While Candy spluttered, Mattie barked, and I watched, they took the reporter from
World Journey
magazine away.

“What do you know about this?” Candy turned to me.

“Me? Absolutely nothing. I was out for a walk with the dog before turning in. We found him.” I pointed toward the body-sized indentation in the snow. “There. Like that.”

“Why's he wearing your coat, Merry?”

“Because I hoped to warm him up.”

She placed her hands on her laden equipment belt and eyed me suspiciously. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Of course I expect you to believe that. Because it's the truth.”

She swung her flashlight onto the patch of snow melting in the warmth of poor Nigel Pearce's last meal. “Is that yours?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Did you kill him, Merry, and then, shocked at what you did, were you sick?”

“Hey!” I said.

I might have gone on to say something I would have regretted, but we were interrupted by the arrival of another uniformed officer, followed by a woman casually dressed in jeans and a brown leather jacket.

On the street, a line of official vehicles was forming as colorful lights shone on the snow. Loud voices broke the silence, and more people were trudging across the park toward us.

“Are you the person who phoned this in?” the leather-jacketed woman asked me.

“Yes. I'm Merry Wilkinson.”

She was in her forties, attractive with wide green eyes and curly red hair, long legs, and the hint of a trim figure under her winter clothes. “I'm Detective Simmonds. Tell me what happened.”

“I suspect . . .” Candy began.

“Thank you, Officer,” Simmonds said. “I'll be taking your statement shortly. In the meantime, some crowd control might be in order.”

“But I'd rather . . .”

“Such as that gentleman approaching,” the detective said.

Russ Durham was picking his way through the snow. He lifted his camera and began snapping. I made a movement to pull my hood over my face and remembered I wasn't wearing a coat. The last thing I needed was my picture in the local paper, as a person of interest in a police investigation. Good thing I wasn't in my Mrs. Claus costume. That would do the reputation of Rudolph no favors.

Candy threw me a poisonous glance, but went to do as she'd been ordered. She turned the full force of her official indignation onto Russ. I figured he could handle it.

“Where's your coat?” the detective asked.

“I put it over . . . over Nigel. It went with him in the ambulance.”

“You're freezing.” Only when she said the word did I realize that I was. I'd discarded one of my gloves fumbling for my phone. I wrapped my arms around myself to try to control the shivering.

“We'll talk in my car,” she said. “I'll turn the heat up.”

“I have to bring Mattie.”

“Is that your dog?”

“Yes.”

“Rather on the . . . uh . . . large size, isn't he?”

We both looked at the Saint Bernard. He was pulling on the leash with enough force that the poor tree was in danger of breaking in half. Drool flew in all directions as
he displayed his enormous pink tongue and sharp young teeth to the detective.

“He's just a puppy,” I said, “But he's very well behaved.” Here I was, lying to the cops already.

“He can come,” she said. “But if he makes a mess of my car, you're the one who'll clean it up.”

I ran to free Mattie from the tree. His gratitude apparently knew no bounds and he tried to knock me over in a display of affection. “Stay,” I said firmly. Then, less firmly, “Heel.”

In response he leapt toward Detective Simmonds, pulling the leash out of my half-frozen hand. To my considerable relief, the cop didn't pull out her gun and shoot him. Instead she pointed with one finger and, in a deep, rolling voice, said, “Down, Mattie!”

He dropped to his haunches without a sound.

“Wow!” I said, hurrying over to grab the leash. “How'd you do that?”

“My parents train animals for movies and TV. He looks like a good boy, but with a dog of that size, you're going to have to ensure he gets proper training.”

“I know.” She was right, and I figured there was no point in making the usual excuses.

“Give me a sec, and I'll be right with you,” she said.

As we'd talked, more men and women in uniform and plainclothes had begun to arrive. “This witness has to get warm,” Simmonds said. “I'm going to talk to her now. In the meantime, try to keep that area secure, although it looks like a lot of damage has been done already.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Couldn't be avoided,” she said. “You wanted to help. We could have done without the dog though. Come on.”

She led the way to the rows of cars lining the park. We passed Candy ordering Russ to get back to the road. He wasn't arguing with her, just walking so slowly, while his camera clicked all the while, that it might be time for the July parade before he got there.

Simmonds stopped so abruptly that Mattie ran into her. “Are you physically disabled, sir?”

“No,” Russ said, snapping a picture of her.

“Good. Because if you aren't behind that tape in ten seconds I'll be taking you in. Got it?”

Clearly he got it, because he sprinted across the snowy field without taking another picture. I wondered if Detective Simmonds's parents trained human actors as well as animals. “Secure the perimeter,” Simmonds said to Candy. “And do a better job of it than you did with one reporter.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Candy said, throwing me a look that said she firmly believed her humiliation was all my fault. I refrained from giving her a smirk. Something about Candy Campbell brought out the seventeen-year-old in me.

*   *   *

Detective Simmonds drove a silver BMW. I wasn't able to admire the car just then because by the time we got to it I was shivering so hard my whole body felt as if it were going to implode under the force. She switched on the engine and cranked the heat up to high. Finally my teeth stopped chattering sufficiently so that I could talk. I told her everything I knew, both about finding poor Nigel in the snow and the times I'd seen him earlier in the day. Her face had remained totally impassive the entire time (except when she was praising a doting Mattie) but when I
mentioned that he'd been, as far as I could tell, stone-cold sober an hour before being sick in the park, her right eyebrow twitched.

“You didn't notice any other footprints around him?” She asked me that question more than once.

I always answered the same way. “No. It was dark, and I wasn't paying much attention, but I'm pretty sure there was only the one set. Except for Mattie's and mine.” I flexed my wrist. Simmonds saw me wince. “Are you hurt?”

“Nah. I fell hard but nothing's broken. It'll be okay.”

“This party you say he was at interests me,” she said. “I assume food and drink were served? Tell me about that.”

“There weren't a lot of refreshments. It wasn't intended to be a substitute for dinner. Just trays of Christmas cookies, hot chocolate, and jugs of cider. Nonalcoholic. That's all.”

“Everyone ate off the same serving dishes?”

“Yes.” I thought of the final platter. The specially decorated cookies. One individual cookie prepared for Nigel Pearce. Charles Dickens and
A Christmas Carol
. A cookie decorated by Vicky Casey herself and set aside for a special guest. I swallowed.

“What?” the overly observant cop said.