Death of a Dapper Snowman (2 page)

I opened the pouch of newly-purchased cat treats before I approached her. The treats had a strong salmon aroma that made me gag, but probably smelled delicious to felines. I blew over the pouch as I shook it, sending the smell to her sensitive cat nose.

The gray cat swished her long tail and took tentative steps toward me, but stopped at the snowy front walk.

“What’s the matter? Cold tootsies? I know, I know. That snow is cold. That’s why I’m wearing warm boots. But you have cold little bare footsies.”

I quickly glanced around, feeling embarrassed about talking to a cat. I couldn’t see another person on the sidewalk or shoveling their walkway, but I felt like I was being watched. I opened the door of the pet carrier, sprinkled a few snacks inside it, and got closer to the cat.

The cat’s dark gray ears twitched and turned one way and then the other.

“It’s just the two of us,” I assured the cat, who kept looking around nervously.

I glanced over to the neighbor’s yard, where I saw a creepy face, pale and round, staring back at me. I was so shocked, I let out a curse and dropped the pet carrier.

Within seconds, my cheeks got warm from embarrassment. It wasn’t a pale-faced person watching me from next door, but a snowman. He wore a formal top hat and a red scarf, just like the classic snowman you’d see on a greeting card. He should have been a pleasant sight, but something about the expression on his face gave me the chills.

My reaction must have startled the cat, because she whipped past me in a streak of gray, darkly visible against the freshly-fallen snow.

I grabbed the carrier and gave chase, stumbling through the overgrown hedge between my father’s yard and the neighbor’s. The cat led me straight to the dapper snowman, and then scaled it like a tree. When the cat got to the top, the snowman’s black hat toppled off, leaving the snowy head bald, except for a gray cat.

From its new vantage point, about six feet off the ground, the cat surveyed the neighborhood, then began licking one elegant front paw.

I put the pet carrier on top of my head and walked up to the cat calmly. After a quick sniff, catching the scent of the salmon-flavored treats, the cat strolled right into my trap. I closed the cage door and let out a whoop of joy.

Take that, Misty Falls!
One point for Miss Stormy Lou-Anne Day.
Things were going to go my way after all.

I set down the pet carrier and picked up the snowman’s top hat. On a whim, I placed the hat on my own head and pulled out my phone to take a picture of myself.

This would be the perfect image to show my ex-fiancé that I was having a great time in Misty Falls, and had made the right decision in walking away from everything we’d built.

I grinned at the tiny lens on my phone, leaned in close to my snowy friend, and took a couple of photos. I scrolled through the pictures and picked the best one to upload to my internet profile. I looked rosy-cheeked and happy in my new life, even though the top hat hid my snazzy new haircut.

Up close, the snowman’s crooked grin was almost charming, but still a little creepy. It reminded me of something I didn’t like, but I couldn’t think of what. I uploaded the photo, then decided to take another, after fixing his crooked grin. I reached for the pebbles that formed his smile, but stopped. Maybe it wasn’t his grin that was off-kilter, but his whole head.

Meanwhile, the cat had finished the snacks and meowed impatiently inside the carrier.

“Hang on just one minute,” I said. “I have to be-head this snowman and give him a face-lift, so to speak.”

I grasped the base of the perfectly round ball forming the snowman’s head and pushed up. The snowy head didn’t budge.
Now what?
Soft snowflakes gently fell around me and the crooked-faced snowman. I didn’t even have gloves or mittens on, because it was a balmy day, yet here I was, playing in the snow like a kid. I tried to lift the head again, ignoring the chilly feeling of the snow, which was hard packed and covered in a coating of ice.

The cat meowed again, sounding irritated.

“I know we don’t have time for this,” I muttered to the cat, “but I want my old friends to see that my life is perfect and picturesque, like an old-fashioned postcard, and a crooked snowman head simply isn’t perfect.”

I gave the snowman a couple of firm karate chops to the neck, right above the red scarf, to loosen the head. Once I saw the ball jiggle, I grabbed hold of the head and gave it a final solid tug up.

The snowman’s head split in my hands, revealing a core that was definitely not snow. I shrieked and dropped the split pieces.

The snowman had a human head. A frozen human head.
Or did it?

The head had to be a prank by the neighborhood kids. Some clever brat must have re-used their Halloween costume to give someone like me a terrible scare.

But… rubber masks usually look like famous people, not like my father’s cranky neighbor, Mr. Michaels. I rubbed my cold hands together as I leaned in to get a better look.

The rubber mask was highly detailed. It even had eyelashes.
Wait. Eyelashes?

The chill in my hands spread through my entire body instantly. This wasn’t a Halloween mask that looked like Mr. Michaels.

Frozen inside the crooked-faced snowman was
the actual Mr. Michaels.

I stumbled backward, sucking in air, preparing for the biggest scream of my life.

Behind me, a man yelled, “Hey, you! Get away from there!”

Chapter 3
 

I whirled around
with my hands raised high in the air. “I didn’t do it!”

The man who’d yelled at me stood on the walkway, about ten feet from me. For a split second, I mistook his blue uniform for a police officer’s, and dropped to my knees in the snow.

“Don’t shoot!” I cried out as I held up my trembling arms.

“Shoot?” He gave me a confused look, then his gaze shifted to the frozen head of Mr. Michaels, perched on top of the snowman’s body.

He wasn’t a police officer, but a mail carrier. His jaw dropped and his eyes bugged out of his round face. The only part of him that wasn’t frozen in shock was his right hand, fumbling at his belt for his phone. He got the phone out, then dropped it in the snow.

“Good idea,” I said. I got to my feet and grabbed my phone from my pocket. “Do I just call 9-1-1? It’s not really an emergency, with sirens and ambulances, is it? We should call the local, non-emergency number.” I jabbed at my address list for a minute and discovered I didn’t have the number programmed in, since my father had retired before I got my current phone.

“That’s Mr. Michaels,” the mail carrier said.

I glanced behind me one more time, just to make sure, then looked down at my phone in my hand. Yes, it was Mr. Michaels.
But how could that be?
I just saw him, a few weeks ago, when my father threw a party. Mr. Michaels came over to complain about the noise. He’d been very much alive, and now… now he wasn’t.

I kept staring at my phone, my mind a blank. Mr. Michaels had been cranky as usual, complaining about the noise from the party. My father asked him to come in, but he declined, to nobody’s surprise.
We should have insisted he join us.
We should have made more of an effort, before it was too late.

“Well?” the mail carrier said.

My jumbled thoughts came out of my mouth. “We should have invited him to my party,” I said. “We should have done it the day before, like we meant it.”

“What are you talking about? Are you going to call 9-1-1?”

“Yes,” I said. “As soon as I can remember the number.”

“Are you joking?”

Was I joking?
I stared down at my boots in the snow. In the snow-blanketed silence, I realized I’d just claimed to not know the phone number for 9-1-1.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I must be in shock. This whole thing is just awful. Poor Mr. Michaels.”

I looked up at the mail carrier, who was still frozen in place on the sidewalk.

Why wasn’t
he
calling 9-1-1? Why were we both standing there, staring at each other?

A terrifying thought blossomed in the back of my mind, spreading heat through my body. What if the mail carrier had yelled at me to step away from the snowman because he
knew
the body was there? What if he was the killer?

The mail carrier was a big guy, maybe forty or so, with a husky figure for someone who walked all day. By comparison, I am a petite woman who can barely do a low-impact aerobics class. At approximately half this man’s body mass, I wouldn’t stand a chance against him if he decided to murder me and make Mr. Michaels a snow-woman bride.

How could I defend myself? The closest thing to a weapon nearby was the snowman’s frozen carrot nose, laying at my feet.

“You look nervous,” the mail carrier said. “How do I know you’re not the killer?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he reading my mind? And was that a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his round face?

I replied cautiously, “You’re the one who looks nervous. You’re sweating all over the place.”

He pulled out a kerchief and mopped his brow guiltily. “No, I’m not,” he lied.

The cat, who didn’t sense the gravity of the situation, reached through the lattices of the pet carrier’s door and snagged the leg of my jeans with a very sharp claw.

The mail carrier’s eyes bulged again, this time at the plastic pet carrier.

“What are you doing with that poor cat?” he demanded.

I picked up the cat carrier and backed away slowly. I kept walking, returning to my father’s yard through the snow-covered hedge.

“We have a vet appointment,” I explained.

“Isn’t that Mr. Day’s cat?”

“Good eye. It certainly is. Mr. Finnegan Day is my father. You do know he’s a retired police officer, right?”

“Yes.” He gave me side-eye. “And what’s your name?”

“Stormy.”

The mail carrier kept giving me a suspicious look as he reached down and retrieved his phone from the snow. He jabbed the screen, then held the phone to his ear.

To me, he said, “Congratulations, lady. You just incriminated yourself in the murder of Mr. Michaels. I’ve been delivering to this block for years. Mr. Day’s daughter’s name is Sunny. You got the name wrong, little miss murderer.”

“Sunny is my sister. There are two of us.”

He twitched the phone up to his mouth. “Hello? I need to report a homicide. The suspect is a woman in a top hat. She’s also kidnapping a cat.” There was a pause. “No, I haven’t been drinking.”

I looked over at the snowman, and the sight sent powerful signals through my body. I pitched forward and tossed up that morning’s bagel and coffee.

The mail carrier kept talking on the phone, describing the scene and giving dispatch the address and his name.

Now that I was lighter by the weight of one modest breakfast, the urge to run away hit me hard. My vehicle was nearby. Without thinking, I ran to it, put the pet carrier on the passenger seat, and climbed in. I’d forgotten I was wearing the top hat, and it fell to the ground. Still not thinking clearly, I tossed the hat to the floor on the passenger side, started the engine, and drove away.

The cat meowed at me, demanding to be let out of cat prison.

I turned the car left, then right, my mind a swirl of paranoia, panic, and inappropriate thoughts. What if Mr. Michaels had been alive inside the snowman earlier in the day? Hiding in there to play a prank on someone? What if he’d just been resting, until my karate chops to the neck killed him?

No, that was crazy.

The cat meowed again.

“I know,” I said to the cat. “I still can’t believe that just happened, and I saw it with my own eyes.”

I kept driving, my eyes on the road, but my mind elsewhere.

After a few minutes, the cat meowed again.

“Did you see anything?” I asked the cat. “Any suspicious activity going on next door?”

There was no answer, but I felt better as I kept talking.

“What about you?” I asked. “Do you have an alibi? Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts?”

The cat reached one paw through the gated door and tried to reach me.

I’m innocent
, the cat meowed.
I have an alibi, I swear!

I let out a small laugh, feeling better as I imagined what the cat was saying.

Look at my sweet little face! Do I look like a criminal to you?

“While it’s true that you don’t even have opposable thumbs, that doesn’t mean you weren’t the brains behind the operation. You could have had an accomplice. Maybe it was all the neighborhood cats, working together. Mr. Michaels was always yelling at you cats, and kicking you if he caught you digging in his garden.”

The cat meowed again.

“You’re right. He wasn’t the most enjoyable person on the block. But that’s no excuse to kill someone.”

Another meow.

“No, I wouldn’t say he was a
bad
person. Just cranky and ornery, and that’s no crime. In fact, some people might say the same things about me. Pam was right about me hiding away in the gift shop office like a bear in her cave.”

The cat didn’t meow, but seemed to be listening.

“I’ll stop hiding so much when summer comes, I think. It’s just that… I thought returning to Misty Falls would change me more, but I still feel like the same Stormy. I don’t fit in. I’m like a puzzle piece from another puzzle.”