Snowmen In Paradise (Book 2 Tj Jensen Paradise Lake Mysteries) (5 page)

“Hope they’re right.”
Ben slid three golden pancakes onto a plate. “Bacon?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Me and Ashley entered a contest,” Gracie informed Tj.

“What kind of contest?”
Tj poured homemade maple syrup over her golden stack.

“A s
nowman contest,” Ashley supplied.

“For the
winter carnival?” Tj clarified.

“Yeah, we’
re going to make a big one.” Gracie’s long ringlets of dark hair bobbed up and down as she fidgeted with excitement.

“With clothes and everything
.” Ashley’s green eyes shone bright with excitement as she jumped out of her chair and began twirling around. “Grandpa says we’re going to have the best darn snowman this side of the Rockies.”

“Grandpa
is going to help you?”

“Yeah, he said you’d be busy.”

“Unfortunately, Grandpa is right.” Tj felt bad that she wouldn’t be available to help the girls with their snowman, but her downhill event was scheduled for the same time as the snowman competition. “I’m really sorry I’ll have to miss it.”

“It’s okay
.” Ashley shrugged as she tucked a lock of strawberry-blond hair behind one ear. “Grandpa told us he’s a snowman-building expert.”

“Besides
, he’s funny.” Gracie laughed for no apparent reason.

“
’Cause with the googly eyes.” Ashley joined her sister in what was obviously a private joke between Ben and the girls.

“Googly eyes?”

Both girls were cracking up, but neither enlightened her.

“Finish your breakfast,” Ben
said with a chuckle.

“The carnival is g
oing to be so fun.” Ashley bounced around the room. “Everyone is doing something. Me and Gracie are building a snowman and Grandpa is entering the ice fishing.”

“
And Papa is going to dance with Rosalie,” Gracie added before Ashley could finish.

“I was going to say that,” Ashley complained.

“Dance with Rosalie?” Tj asked. Rosalie was her father Mike’s “not a girlfriend” in much the way that Dylan was her “not a boyfriend.”

“At the carnival,” Ashley clarified
. “When we told him we were entering the snowman competition, he told us that he was entering the ice-dancing competition with Rosalie.”

“Are
you sure he said ice dancing?” Tj had never seen her dad partake of any type of dancing, and he certainly didn’t seem the type to enter an ice-dancing competition.

Ashley laughed
. “I thought it was funny too, but he said Miss Rosalie asked real nice and he couldn’t say no. He said he’s been practicing.”

Tj looked at her grandpa
, who had joined the group with his own plate of pancakes. “Did you know about this?”

“Mike might have mentioned it a time or two.”

“And you think he’s serious? I mean, maybe he was kidding.” Tj decided that made a lot more sense. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t imagine her rugged father skating around Miller’s Pond to the beat of classical music. “That’s it; he must have been kidding.”

“Didn’t seem like he was kidding,” Ben
said.

“But ice dancing?”

“Aunt Jenna is entering the baking contest, Kristi and Kari are doing ice skating, and Uncle Dennis is going to ride a dog.” Gracie frowned as she tried to work the image out in her mind.

“He’s not riding a dog
, he’s riding in a sled pulled by a dog,” Ashley clarified. “Are you going to do a contest?” 

“Well,” Tj hesitated, “I’m not really entering a contest directly
, but I’m coaching a team that’s entering a contest.”

“That doesn’t count,” Ashley argued
. “You need to enter something that’s just for you.”

“I’ll be pretty busy with the downhill team,” Tj explained.

“That’s during the day.” Ashley wasn’t giving up. “You can enter something at night.”

“I don’t think they have competitions at night
.”

“Papa said the ice dancing is at night
.” Ashley was like a dog with a bone when she got an idea in her head.

“Yeah, but I couldn’t compete against Papa.”

Ashley began kicking the leg of the table, causing the whole thing to wobble as she considered her options. Tj felt bad that she was the only member of the family not participating, but she really was too busy to build a snowman, dance around a pond, or pluck fish from a hole in the ice. Her downhill team was scheduled to compete in a series of events during the first two days of the four-day event. She supposed she could enter one of the contests slated for the weekend. There were snowmobile races, snowshoe competitions, and ice-climbing demonstrations, all events she’d been involved in during years past.

“I think the ice
-princess thing is at night,” Gracie suggested.

“God
, no,” Tj spat without thinking. She regretted her outburst when she noticed giant tears well up in Gracie’s eyes. “I mean, I’m very flattered that you think I’m beautiful enough to be the ice princess, but I’m pretty sure it’s for younger girls. Much, much younger,” she emphasized.

“
But . . .” Gracie began.

“Perhaps you
could enter the snowball decathlon,” Ben suggested. “It’s on the final day of the carnival, so you should be done with your team events by then.”

Tj shot Ben a look o
f gratitude. “I could do that.”

“What’s a snowball cathlon?”
Gracie asked.

“It’s a series of events utilizing snowballs,” Tj explained
. “There’s one event in which you fling a snowball at a target using a sling shot and are scored on accuracy. There’s another similar event in which the object is to propel your snowball over the longest distance. In all, there are usually five different events. Each one is scored individually, and whoever ends up with the highest overall score wins.”

“Okay
.” Gracie smiled.

“Kristi’s here
.” Ashley jumped up and ran down the hall at the sound of the doorbell. Gracie followed closely behind as Ben’s friends Doc and Bookman stomped snow from their feet. Each of the men carried a blond-haired child in his arms.

“Here yah go
, little darling.” Doc, a retired coroner and local Casanova for the senior population, set Kari on the floor. “Delivered safe and sound, just like I promised your mama.”

“How come you carried Kristi and Kari to
the house?” Gracie asked as Bookman set Kristi down next to Kari and Tj helped the girls remove their boots and hang up their coats.

“
The snow is so deep, I was afraid I’d lose these little munchkins between the car and the house.”

“I thought I was going to pick up the girls.” Tj hung the backpacks the girls had been carrying on hooks near the door.

“We stopped by
the Antiquery for some breakfast,” Bookman explained. “Helen mentioned that the girls were going to spend the day at the resort. We were coming out anyway, so we offered to deliver the girls. Jenna said she texted you.”

Tj hadn’t thought to check her messages
. “Yeah, she probably did.”

“Let’s go upstairs
.” Ashley grabbed Kristi’s arm and led her to her bedroom, with Gracie and Kari trailing behind.

“I appreciate you
r bringing the girls.” Tj hugged the men, who were more like honorary uncles than mere friends. “I have to go into town later, but now I can take my time getting ready.”

“That new plow driver the county hired seems to think the snow goes in the middle of the road,” Bookman informed
her. “Best take the truck if you’re headin’ out.”

“Yeah
, I will. How about some coffee?”

“You read my mind.”
Doc gave her a hug as they headed back toward the kitchen. “Something smells good.”

“Grandpa’s making soup
. Navy bean with ham.”

“
There’s nothing better than the smell of soup simmering on the stove on a stormy day.” Doc opened the lid to take a peek, while Tj poured the men cups of coffee. “I guess you heard that the carnival committee decided not to let anyone with a retail eatery enter the chowder contest this year.”

“Jenna mentioned it,
” Tj confirmed.

“With Jenna
out of the running, I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring,” Doc announced. “I’ve been working on a recipe.”

“I definitely think you
should enter. Ashley pointed out that everyone in the family is entering an event. I wasn’t going to bother entering anything at first, but she guilted me into agreeing to enter the snowball decathlon. How about it, Bookman? Anything you might be interested in?”

“I a
lready entered the toboggan race with Helen.”

“Helen entered the toboggan race?”
Every year, teams of one man and one woman flew down Daredevil Hill on two-man toboggans designed and built by the competing team. Most of the participants were high-school students as part of a science project. As far as Tj knew, Helen and Bookman would be the only team with a combined age exceeding the century mark ever to brave the hill.

“Yeah,” Bookman confirmed
. “I was surprised when she asked me to partner with her, but she seems excited about the whole thing. We’ve been spending every night in my garage working on the sled for weeks now.”

Ah
, Tj thought. Two weeks of working alone with Bookman at his beautiful lakeside estate. Tj suddenly realized the reason Helen might suddenly have developed an interest in downhill propulsion. “What about Bonnie? It looks like she’s the only one not competing,” Tj pointed out.

“Actually
, she’s entered the fishing contest with me,” Ben informed her. “They have a special category for teams, so we figured we’d give it a whirl. She’s covering at the Antiquery that day so that Jenna and Helen can have the day off, but they close at three, and the competition is in the afternoon. I told her she could join me when she was able.”

“So how’s the new book coming along?” Tj asked Bookman
as he sat down at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee.

“Haven’t actually started it yet,”
he informed her. “I’m still working out the details of the plot and characters.”

“I thought you
’d have a plot already in mind before you’d agree to do another book.” Tj sat down next to him.

“I did
, but then I had a conversation with your young man and he gave me a better idea.”

“My young man? You mean Dylan?”

“That’d be the one. He worked on some interesting cases when he was on the force in Chicago. There was one in particular that took hold of my curiosity. It’s early yet, but if things work out, I might use the basic concept and modify things a bit.”

“So fill me in.” Tj anxiously sat forward. Bookman was a gifted storyteller and she looked forward to updates on whatever novel he was working on.

Bookman’s eyes lit up as he began to speak. Once you got the man started on a story, his inner child took over and created something magical. “The story involves a man who tried to create the perfect alibi by faking his own death. He was actually pretty clever. I mean, who would suspect a dead man of being guilty of murder?”

Tj listened as Bookman revealed the details of the case Dylan
had worked on, and his ideas for changing things up a bit to create a twist that she was certain no one would see coming. She asked a few questions, as did Ben and Doc, who had joined them, and before she knew it, more than two hours had passed and her leisurely morning turned into a mad dash to make it into town, do her errands, and still be on time for her meeting with the boy wonder.

Bookman’s comment about the new plow driver was an understatement, Tj decided
. Not only were more than half of the roads still unplowed by the time she made it into Serenity, but the roads that were plowed had a huge berm in the middle, making it impossible to make a left-hand turn. After driving at least two miles out of her way, she found a place where she could turn around and head back toward the town she had just driven through. She supposed she could have parked on the lakeside of the road and climbed over the berm to get to the shops on the other side, but with her luck, some idiot would speed by just as she reached the apex of the slush pile and douse her with muddy sludge from the road.

Thankfully, most of the town
’s patrons had taken care of removing the snow from the parking areas near their business establishments. As long as she did her errands in a linear fashion, there shouldn’t be a need to cross back over the highway. The snow was still falling by the time she reached her first destination, although the intensity had diminished greatly. If the local weather report was correct, the storm should pass by the next day, bringing sun to the region for the foreseeable future.

“Morning
, Hazel,” Tj greeted Hazel Whipple, the seventy-two-year-old postmistress who everyone thought should have retired a generation earlier. Hazel was tall and regal in spite of her age. Roller-curled white hair topped a perfectly groomed frame, right down to the polished leather shoes that peeked daintily from the perfectly pressed housedress that hung to a point just above her ankles.