“Look at this one!” Mags cried, already a few sculptures down the path and admiring the carving of a swan splashing into water with wings spread wide. “Isn’t it lovely?”
“How about this one?” I said pointing to a giant, elaborate snowflake. “It must have taken so much time to get all the details exactly right.”
“It’s sad that this gorgeous art is all going to melt away.” Mags stood in front of the statue of a woman wearing a gorgeous flowing gown now. “And it’s going to be very hard to pick just three to win.”
“Let’s start by just looking. Then when we reach the center, instead of taking the shortcut out, we can walk through again and try to make a short list of our favorites.”
Mags nodded. “So far, everything is my favorite.”
“It may take a few back and forths,” I agreed. “So let’s get started.”
We walked through the spiral, admiring sculptures of animals, people, nature, and even abstract creations. Hardly any time had passed at all before we wound up in the center, and a swatch of bright red caught the corner of my eye. I turned toward it, expecting to see the promised ribbon that would guide festivalgoers out of the garden and prevent traffic jams.
Instead I saw deep pools of crimson marring the otherwise pristine snow. Blood.
Chapter Four
My eyes darted to Mags, who stood trembling like a leaf in the wind.
“Is that b-b-blood?” she stammered, allowing Paisley to leap from her arms to the ground below. I hated it when the small dog took these bold leaps, but somehow she never seemed to get hurt when she collided with the ground.
Octo-Cat yanked on his leash. “Of course it’s blood, genius. What else would it be?”
I glowered at him, sorely wishing I could reprimand him for being so insensitive in this delicate situation. “Yes,” I whispered carefully to Mags. “And where there’s blood, there may be a body. At least that’s been my experience. Wait here while I take a look around.”
Mags trembled even more violently and refused to meet my eyes. She kept her gaze fixed on the deep red as it crept through the snow, feeling more dangerous with each new inch it gained. Her hands shook harder and harder, sloshing the remaining cocoa from her mug.
Wow. Maybe Mags and I weren’t quite as similar as I had once thought. While I didn’t exactly enjoy finding myself in these situations, I’d learned to mostly control my emotions so that I could focus on the mystery rather than the horror. Mags, on the other hand, had already become a terrified, blubbering wreck—as most normal people would, I supposed.
I ran forward and took the cup from her, then set it on the ground with mine. Both of us had most definitely lost our appetite for the sweet stuff, anyway.
Paisley nuzzled my leg with her snout. “Mommy, is there a bad guy nearby? Is he going to hurt us?”
Without thinking, I scooped the little dog up, placing her under one arm, and grabbed Octo-Cat with my other.
“Angela, unhand me. I am not your cuddle toy. That’s what this one’s for,” he said, jerking his head toward Paisley.
I remained quiet as we crept between the ice sculptures, searching for the source of the blood. It didn’t take long for me to spot a large hand lying palm up beside a sculpture of a Christmas tree. I swallowed hard and stepped in for a closer look. There I found not one but two fresh corpses—one facing the sky with unseeing eyes and the other face down in the cold snow. From above, a light sprinkling of snowflakes danced through the air and landed on the bodies, giving them an impromptu beginning to their burials.
“Are these the missing judges?” I whispered.
“That would be the obvious conclusion,” my tabby said, squirming beneath my arm.
My own blood ran cold as I wondered why someone would resort to murder and whether Mags and I were now at risk, having been the ones to take their places.
That’s when I saw a thick glistening spear of ice rising from the smaller corpse’s back. She’d been impaled by an icicle, and it was already beginning to melt. Fat water droplets ran down the spear and drenched her already blood-soaked jacket.
I turned back toward the man expecting to find a similar weapon emerging from his chest, but there was no murder weapon to be found. I briefly searched for any signs of strangulation, stabbing, gunshot wounds, or any other method of murder I’d come across in my year and a half as an investigator.
Nothing.
Paisley, dressed in her elaborate reindeer costume, leapt from my arms and crept over to the victims and licked at their cheeks. “Mommy, Mommy, are they going to be okay? Will they wake up soon?” This made me realize that Paisley hadn’t seen nearly as many dead bodies as Octo-Cat and I had in our day. Poor thing was probably every bit as terrified as Mags.
Octo-Cat curled his upper lip, content now to remain in my arms. “Surely even you can’t be that dense, dog.” He loved his Chihuahua sister and only took to calling her dog when he was feeling particularly superior, which, I guess, was still quite a lot of the time.
“Quiet,” I muttered almost absent-mindedly. “Let me think.”
“A-A-A-Angie,” Mags stuttered, her voice rising above the tall sculptures and crashing back down on me. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?” From the tone of her voice, she clearly already knew the answer. Still, I’d need to tell her what I’d found, then we’d have to tell the authorities together.
With one last lingering glance toward the poor people who had come to enjoy the Holiday Spectacular but had ended up as dead as grandma after she got ran over by the reindeer, I took a deep centering breath and returned to my cousin. “We need to find Officer Bouchard and let him know there’s been a murder.”
Mags cried out as if in physical pain. “Really? A murder? Here? But, but… everyone seems so nice.”
I frowned as I tried to remember a time when I had been so innocently optimistic. Never, I thought. I’d always been too bookish not to be at least somewhat suspicious of the world around me. I used to consider myself paranoid, but that was before bodies started piling up whenever I was near.
Mags stared at me with wide eyes as she waited for an answer that wouldn’t come. She wanted me to take it back, to make everything okay again, but I simply couldn’t.
Instead, I nodded. “Yes, unfortunately. Actually, there’s been two. And we have to get the police. Now.”
I dropped Octo-Cat into the snow and grabbed Mags by the hand, yanking her along as I wound my way back through the spiral garden.
Octo-Cat followed behind on his leash, yelling the most profane kitty curses that had ever spilled off his sandpaper tongue. He could be angry for all I cared. Some things were more important than following the many elaborate and contradictory rules he’d established to govern our lives.
Besides, unlike Paisley, he always landed on his feet.
I wasn’t quite so sure Mags and I would be as lucky, especially when a dark figure swept across the quiet garden moving quickly and coming straight for us.
Chapter Five
The dark figure drew closer, but still not close enough for me to make out his features or intent.
Mags yanked out of my hold and stopped cold, seemingly unsure of whether to run, hide, or do some strange combination of both. Instead of doing either, she stood a couple paces before me, frozen like a shocked deer on a lonely country road.
I braced myself for the worst and turned around to get a good look at the new arrival. His silver badge flashed brilliantly in the sunlight, set against a dark blue uniform shirt. He continued to close the distance between us quickly, concern pinching at his features. Not a threat. Not a threat at all.
“Officer Bouchard,” I cried, elated that he had found us and realizing that maybe I was still a bit paranoid, after all.