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“It’s all been a blur,” I admitted “I can’t believe I forgot to come to you, but I know you’ve been busy over here.”

He sighed and rolled a kink from his neck. “Busy is an understatement.”

“Learn anything new?” Charles asked, shaking the officer’s hand hello. “Anything that might help us find Mags while you hunt the killer?”

“Hunt’s not exactly an appropriate word. Sounds like somebody’s been reading too many Stephen King novels,” the officer quipped. “But yes, we were able to confirm that the female victim was our second judge. A Miss Zelda Benedict. She taught art at the university in Portland and drove up special to serve as our judge.”

I sucked air in through my teeth. This just kept getting worse and worse.“What a way for us to make a good impression on outsiders.Come to Glendale’s Holiday Spectacular where you just might get murdered.”

“It is unfortunate,” Officer Bouchard agreed. “She was very well respected in her field. Her colleagues will no doubt ride us hard until we find out who the culprit is.”

“Did she have any connection to Fred Hapley?”

“As far as I know, the two of them never met a day in their life. At least not until they wound up dead side-by-side in the snow here. By the way, the murder weapon for old Fred was a gun. It must’ve had a silencer since no one reported hearing anything. But Zelda? She was stabbed straight through with an icicle.”

“Why not kill them both the same way?” Charles asked, wrapping an arm protectively around my waist and eyeing the nearby ice sculptures warily.

“That’s what we wondered, too,” Officer Bouchard said with a nod. “Seems to me that somebody had come prepared to commit one murder but then had to commit a second when Fred here walked in on the scene.”

“So we’re looking for someone who knew the festival well enough to plan a private moment with Zelda Benedict in the ice sculpture garden before most of the tourists arrived and the scene got busy. But also someone who didn’t know the agenda well enough to anticipate Fred Hapley’s arrival,” Charles summarized.

“That’s what we’re thinking.” Officer Bouchard bobbed his head and reached over to give Paisley a quick pat. “But now you tell me someone took your cousin, too. She didn’t arrive on the scene until after both judges were slain and the murderer had disappeared. So why would someone take her?”

“The murderer disappeared from view, but maybe he stayed close to keep an eye on things,” I ventured, hugging Octo-Cat tight to my chest for strength. “Maybe he watched us the entire time as we discovered the bodies, talked with you, and then got ready to guard. But then why wouldn’t he take me too?”

“Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of questions and very few answers so far.” Officer Bouchard hung his head and sighed. “I’ll call Mags’s kidnapping in to the station. Even though our men are occupied with the homicide scene here, the neighboring police forces are all on standby given thesize of our event, and the folks in Dewdrop Springs have dealt with their fair share of kidnappings over the years. They really are the experts on that kind of thing while murders are becoming far too common in our little town.”

“Thank you for your help,” I mumbled, hating everything about how this day was turning out.

“I wish there was more I could do. But if I know you, you’re already halfway to finding her yourself.”

We said goodbye, then Charles, the animals, and I headed toward the spot where I’d last seen Mags before she was hauled away and this whole nightmare had gone from bad to worse.

Hopefully we would find a definitive clue soon. I still didn’t know where to go in the search for my lost cousin, and as time ticked steadily on, my heart sunk lower and lower.

“Please, God,” I mumbled in a nearly silent prayer, looking toward the sky as fat snowflakes fell to the earth. “Please let her be okay.”

Chapter Thirteen

Even though the snowfall had remained light that morning, it had also been consistent. That meant the footprints I’d left when I chased after the van that took Mags had already mostly filled in with fresh fall. Nearly a dozen other pairs of prints wove through the street and around the block, too, adding a new layer of difficulty to retracing my steps.

More and more people had begun to arrive for the festival, only to be turned right back around and sent on their way. Could this be the end of their town’s most favorite tradition?

No, that doesn’t matter now.

“This is where they took her,” I told Charles, motioning toward an alley that cut between the shops. “He pulled through there, and then I lost track of him.”

“I chased them, too!” Paisley interjected proudly. “But my little legs were no match for that big, bad van.”

Sometimes I wondered whether my Chihuahua thought other humans could understand her, too. Either that or she just felt it was polite to talk to everyone, whether or not they had any idea what she was saying.