Death of a Dapper Snowman (27 page)

The idea of sharing a meal with her made me gag.

I kept driving and checking behind me.

Jeffrey was also on edge, and for this emergency car ride we didn’t have his pet carrier, so he was free to act out his anxieties.

He’d started off hiding underneath the passenger-side seat, out of sight but howling. After a few blocks of that, he emerged and scaled the back of my leather seat, all the better to meow loudly, right in my ear.

Cold air whistled through the car, thanks to the broken rear passenger window Pam shot a bullet through. It was hard to believe she’d tried to shoot me, but I had the broken window to prove it, and probably a bullet lodged inside the vehicle.

Jeffrey howled in my ear again. Either he was picking up on my panic, or he thought we were going to the veterinarian clinic to remove more of his little furry body parts. He was not happy, in any case.

“We should have grabbed that snowman mug,” I told him.

He responded by singing me the song of his cat people.

“Jeffrey! What if the bullet and the recording on my phone aren’t enough evidence? Why didn’t I grab the mug when I was throwing things out the window?”

He let out a chilling howl, then jumped onto the dash interior and wedged himself against the windshield, meowing about the evening’s horrible ordeals.

Beyond his body, I noticed a red light up ahead.

Either there were a lot more traffic lights in Misty Falls than I remembered, or I was driving in circles. I stomped on the brake pedal with a bare foot that felt prickly.

Jeffrey looked out the driver’s side window with wide eyes and switched from yowling to hissing.

The car lurched to a stop, just a few feet into the crosswalk. Another vehicle pulled up next to me and stopped. I turned my head slowly to the left, following Jeffrey’s fearful gaze. I fully expected to see Pam with the gun, or a chainsaw, or perhaps both.

Much to my relief and sanity, instead of seeing Pam dressed up like a road warrior, I found the handsomely bearded face of Logan, my new tenant.

Logan lowered the passenger-side window of his SUV, and he must have put the vehicle in Park, because he slid over to the passenger seat and leaned out to yell at me, “Hey, cat lady!”

“Who, me?”

He smirked at my response. “Do you see any other cat ladies around?”

I looked at the miserable-looking cat wedged in above my steering wheel, then I looked down at my current outfit, which was a colorful terry-cloth robe.

The light ahead turned green, but there was no urgency for us to drive, since we were the only two vehicles at or near the intersection.

Logan yelled, loud enough for me to hear him clearly through my closed window, “You look like you could use a drink, cat lady!”

I lowered my window enough to talk to him, but not enough for Jeffrey to leap out and escape.

“Hello.” I gave Logan a wave with one hand. “I can’t get that drink right now, because I’m on an important errand.”

He leaned further out of his window, getting a better look at me in my bath robe.

“Do you need chocolate?” he asked. “I had a massive craving for junk food myself, but the grocery stores in this town close early. It took some driving around, but I’ve located all the town’s gas station and convenience stores. I am currently in possession of five kinds of chocolate, plus potato chips, pretzels, and something the gas station clerk recommended personally.” He held up a bag of gummy worms.

“I’m sorry, Logan, but I have to go to the police station right now and turn in my father’s girlfriend for murder.”

“For real?”

I looked around nervously, but we were still the only vehicles in sight.

“In case something happens to me and I don’t make it, tell the police to get the recording from my phone, plus the snowman mug from the bathroom, and compare the face to the snowman from the crime scene.”

His eyebrows raised higher and higher. “You figured out who killed the snowman?”

“I did. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I should get to the police station to give a statement.”

“That could take all night.”

I shrugged. “We’ll have to get that drink some other time.”

“Do you think you’ll need a lawyer? I do criminal defense, among other things.”

“Me? I didn’t kill anyone, but I can pass your card along to Pam, if you’d like.”

He rubbed his scruffy brown beard thoughtfully. “I have a better idea. Why don’t I come along with you to the police station right now? As the town’s newest lawyer, I should get better acquainted with the local law enforcement, and what better way than by coming with you while you give your statement?”

“I don’t need a lawyer, really.”

He held up the plastic bag of gummy worms. “But it could take hours, and you definitely need junk food.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble.”

He held up his hand. “Not another word. I absolutely insist. You can’t leave me with all this junk food. You’ll be doing me two favors if you let me come with you.”

I let out a sound that passed for a chuckle. “Fine. But I need to come clean and confess something, Logan. You know that crazy landlady of yours? The one you said needs… to loosen up?”

He winced. “That’s you, isn’t it?” He kept wincing. “I knew as soon as I pulled up to the red light and finally put two and two together. I saw your car parked behind your gift shop. There aren’t many people in town who drive a car that nice.”

“You’re right.” I took a moment to look over my car and appreciate it. “This is a nice car, and I especially like the keyless entry and ignition feature. It might have saved my life tonight.”

He nodded. “I must admit I’m quite curious to hear the rest of this story.”

“You’ll hear all about it at the police station.”

He smiled and pointed to the traffic light above us. “Light’s green,” he said. “I’ll follow you to the police station.”

I gave him the thumbs-up gesture and hit the gas.

Chapter 35
 

When I walked
into the police station in a colorful bathrobe, holding an irritated cat, the night receptionist didn’t even say hello to me before she picked up the phone and paged an officer.

Within a minute, Officer Peggy Wiggles came to the front to greet me.

“Gotta another wild theory for us?” she asked, her tone joking. “Did the cat do it? We can run his prints, but I can’t make any promises.”

Logan cut in with a deep, commanding voice I wasn’t yet familiar with, “Excuse me, but I’m Ms. Day’s attorney. I ask that you treat my client with all the respect due to a civilian who’s just cracked the city’s recent shocking murder case… even if she is wearing a bath robe covered in cat hair… plus an actual cat.”

Officer Peggy Wiggles snapped to attention. “Of course, sir. Right this way, please.”

Logan turned and gave me a cheeky wink as we followed Peggy through the office to an interview room. I raised my eyebrows and gave him a cheeky look of my own, hoping to convey that I could have definitely handled this on my own, yet I was grateful to have a friend with me during a stressful time.

We got into the interview room, where Peggy starting setting everything up to record my statement on a laptop. I couldn’t wait, and the words started pouring out of me.

“You were right, Peggy. It was a professional snowman designer! My dad’s girlfriend—well, his ex-girlfriend—used to do movie set decoration and lately she’s been doing all the store windows in town. That’s why the snowman’s head was so perfectly round.”

“Hang on,” she said. “I’m still setting up. Are you saying Pam is the killer?”

“I have her confession recorded on my phone,” I said breathlessly. “Plus there’s a bullet lodged in my car. It’s from my dad’s service revolver, I think, but he’s still in the city, so nobody can dream of saying it was him.”

“Did you say you have a taped confession?” Peggy clapped her hands and whooped. “I do love a good confession.” She tapped away at the laptop quickly. “And that explains the gunshot noises that were phoned in a few minutes before you arrived. Excuse me a moment. I’m going to warn the officers on their way that it’s not just kids with firecrackers.”

I smacked myself on the side of the face. “I should have called 9-1-1 from the car. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just wait here.”

Officer Wiggles got up and left to share the new information.

Now it was just me and Logan in the interview room, plus Jeffrey, who sat on his own chair, having a personal grooming session. I patted his soft gray head, and he gave me a look of annoyance. He’d already cleaned that spot, and now he would have to wash it again.

As I watched him lick his paw and re-clean his pointy ears, I finally connected the name I’d given him with that of my childhood imaginary friend. The realization gave me a shiver—as if the idea of this cat had always been in my mind, and when I saw his face, I recognized the feline equivalent of a soul mate.

Jeffrey Blue was my cat now, of course. There was no doubt in my mind that my father would agree. If Dad missed him, I could bring him over for visits.

Jeffrey took a break from grooming and gazed up at me with love-eyes, unwavering and blinking in slow motion. His purr started up with an impressive rumble.

I almost started to feel like I was at home, except then I looked up and remembered I was at the police station.

Feeling self-conscious, I tried to fix the front of my bathrobe and make it look more respectable, but there was no use.

“You look cute,” Logan said to me. “That bathrobe has good colors for you. This pattern really brings out your eyes.”

I snorted. “How would you know? You’re color blind.”

He gave me a funny look. “How did you know I was color blind?”

“You are?” I feigned surprise. “Lucky guess, I suppose.”

His face took on a professional coolness, and he spoke to me like I was a difficult witness, asking, “Stormy Day, how did you know about my color blindness?”

I couldn’t tell him I’d been cowering behind the counter when he was in the gift shop earlier that day, but what could I say?

“My blue dress,” I explained. “That day I saw you at the Fox and Hound, you said I was in a green dress, unlike the song about the devil in a blue dress, but the dress actually was blue. I didn’t think much at the time, but it must have just clicked. Funny how the subconscious mind works with clues, isn’t it?”

Right then, Officer Peggy Wiggles returned to the interview room. Logan turned to her and said, “My client will need to be hooked up to the lie detector, please.”

She replied solemnly, “That’s not standard procedure, sir. We won’t be doing that, and we also won’t be drowning her to see if she’s a witch.”

Logan chuckled. “A cop with a sense of humor. I think I love this town.”

“Aren’t you that new hotshot lawyer?” she asked. “The one who had the spectacular flame-out and had to move to a small town to start over?”

Logan stopped laughing instantly, then mumbled, “I wouldn’t say I was a
hotshot
.”

I tilted my head and really scrutinized him. “You had a flame-out, too?”

He shrugged it off. “The people around Misty Falls sure like to gossip, don’t they?” He reached down for the shopping bags he’d brought in with him and started setting out an assortment of candy and chocolate on the table. “Who wants a gummy worm?”

Officer Peggy Wiggles picked up the bag of gummy worms and shook them angrily. “Is this supposed to be a joke? Making fun of someone’s name is childish.”

Logan held his hands up, palms out. “Easy now. That’s just the brand name of those gas station gummy worms.
Wrigglers.
I swear I didn’t even know I’d be coming here tonight.”

Her cheeks reddened and she took a moment to ruffle her short hair, the way I’d been ruffling my own matching pixie-cut.

“Sorry for jumping to conclusions,” she said. “I’ve been under a lot of stress. We’re so busy here, and short-handed, plus between the snowman murder and complaints about the voodoo lady, I’ve been running around like a house mouse with a backpack full of catnip.”

Logan and I both leaned in at the same time and said, “Voodoo lady?”

“Nothing to be concerned about,” she said as she tapped away on the laptop keys.

“Let’s get started,” she said.

We went through the basics, with me slowing down to explain everything from the beginning, point by point.

Logan was allowed to sit in as my legal counsel and official junk food dealer, and we left the door to the room open, so that Jeffrey could prowl around the nearly-empty police station, working on The Case of the Mouse Who Nibbled the Snack Room Crackers.

We played the recording from my phone, and Peggy made copies of Pam’s admission of guilt for their records. I kept apologizing for what I’d made up about Mr. Michaels on the recording.

“He wasn’t like that,” I said. “He was a cranky loner, but I don’t want his daughter to hear those terrible things I made up to trick Pam. Mr. Michaels wasn’t bad, deep down. He was the sort of guy who would help you run a profitable lemonade stand.”

“I understand,” she said. “If everything goes well, the public will never hear this recording.”