Winter Festival Murder Page 15

  Finally, I was at the big pine tree that stood at the end of the line of trees. It was over sized, the kind of pine tree that grew wild without anyone ever trying to trim the branches or make it bend to their will. The branches stretched out, all tangled together and trying to take up as much space as possible.

  I made it around the tree and the giant bubble of hope that had been in my stomach burst. There were actually two long lines of trees that formed a sort of private avenue and there was no one in sight. Well, I could faintly see two or three bright jackets that were just rounding the corner at the end of the long line of trees and the snow showed a lot of snowshoe tracks from when the group had tramped through, but everyone was gone.

  "Let's go," Lennie said, clapping his hand onto my shoulder as he passed me for the first time during the hike.

  I briefly thought about turning to run back to the safety of the park building, but I wasn't able to run with snowshoes on my feet and even if I could get them off, I'd just be leading a man with a gun back towards Donna and Bobby. I would just have to face him here.

  I followed Lennie into the avenue of trees, trying to look through the other side to see where the group had gone. Of course, the second row of trees were just as overgrown as the first so I couldn't see anything through them. Maybe they were just swinging around the second row of trees and heading back to the park building. It was hard to see anything through the branches, but there were no signs of life through there. No colorful jackets or sounds of happiness. I was on my own with the killer.

  "Come on over here," Lennie said. I could tell he is teasing me.

  He was standing in the middle of the avenue of trees and I knew I didn't have much of a choice, so I walked a little ways towards him before I stopped. I had to ask him some more questions just so I could understand what exactly was going on.

  "I know you're going to try and shoot me, but before you do, you have to answer a few questions," I said.

  "I don't have to do anything," Lennie said.

  He took his mittens off and pulled the gun out of his pocket. I couldn't help but think about how cold his fingers were going to get because the temperature was dropping even more. I pulled myself back a bit before actually feeling bad for his cold fingers and I snapped back into the reality that he was currently pointing a gun at me.

  "First of all, you knew the hike would be gone when we got here, didn't you?" I asked.

  "I came down to scope out the hike area yesterday," Lennie's face curled up into an evil grin. "Once I knew you figured out that it was me, I came up with this plan. I knew that if I could stall us just enough, the hike would leave and we would be able to have this nice spot all to ourselves."

  I had to give him some credit. He had really thought through this plan. I wondered if he had put as much care and effort into murdering Gerald. I may as well just ask. I didn't want to die curious.

  "I have to say that I'm impressed with your planning," I said. "I bet you put a lot of thought into killing Gerald as well."

  Lennie's face fell. The evil grin that had been planted there slid down into an expression that I couldn't read and that I was definitely not expecting. If he hadn't been brandishing a gun, I would have felt bad for him once again.

  "I hadn't planned on killing Gerald," Lennie said. I could barely hear him over the whipping wind and while I didn't want to get any closer to him, I did grudgingly take a few more steps towards him so that I could hear him better.

  "Sure you did," I said. "I've seen the crime scene. I know that whoever killed Gerald waited in that bank of trees behind the park bench until he came to find the medallion. Apparently it wasn't good enough to just find the medallion, you had to get Gerald too."

  Lennie was violently shaking his head back and forth and I could see a few tears on his cheeks. I had to imagine it was hard to be confronted with the details of a crime you had committed.

  "So you waited until Gerald came to get the medallion and you jumped out and killed him," I said. "He did not deserve to die."

  I was really on a roll now and I couldn't stop myself. I don't care how much of a jerk Gerald was or that he cheated at a stupid medallion hunt. No one deserved to be murdered in such cold blood.

  "Sure, he cheated, but that doesn't mean he should be killed for it," I said. "Shame on you."

  The gun wobbled around wildly as Lennie's hand started to shake. Tears were rolling down his face. I had a hard time believing that this man who couldn't hold it together had already murdered one other person.

  "Well come on," I said. I was starting to get angry now. Why couldn't he keep it together? "Tell me all about how Gerald deserved to die and how you were just ridding the world of a cheater. That's what you're going to say, right?"

  Lennie let out a big sob and when I looked at him, he had on one of the ugliest crying faces I've ever seen. It almost made me angry. Isn't this just all old hat for him now? I should have keep my mouth shut, but I just couldn't help myself.

  "What's wrong?" I yelled. The wind was whipping now and I had to yell for him to hear me even though we were only a few steps away from each other. "Pull it together. You're going to kill me soon, right? You planned it all out just like you planned out the fact that you were going to kill Gerald too."

  "But I didn't!" Lennie yelled. He dropped the gun to to his side. "I didn't plan it. Killing Gerald was an accident."

  I stepped back like he had struck me. What did he mean it was an accident? How was a murder an accident? But looking at his face, he didn't look like he was lying or trying to lead me astray. He truly believed it was an accident.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  There we stood in the middle of the avenue of trees. The wind whipped snowflakes all around us. The tiny snowflakes felt like little ice balls when they hit me in the face. I stared at Lennie and he was staring right back at me. It felt like I had lost all track of time. How long had we been in these trees?

  The sky was fully gray now and the storm had definitely blown in. Snow was falling hard and the wind was blowing it everywhere so that it was starting to be whiteout conditions out here. The storm was here and instead of being warm and cozy in the B&B, I was outside attempting to snowshoe away from a killer. All hopes I had of being rescued were gone now. The only person who could save me now was me.

  "What do you mean it was an accident?" I shouted over the roar of the wind. "How do you accidentally kill someone?"

  "Maybe not accidentally, but it was self-defense," Lennie said.

  I decided to take a chance and take a few more steps closer so that I could actually hear what he was saying.

  "What do you mean Lennie."

  I was so close to him now that the clouds of breath that came out of his mouth flowed directly into my face. Any other time, this would have been too close for comfort. But I knew that I couldn't miss what he was about to tell me. This entire time with Lennie had been leading up to this moment.

  "I mean that I didn't take the medallion from Gerald," Lennie said, pulling the coin out of his pocket and holding it up. "I found the medallion. I won this year, but no one will ever know that."

  Lennie started to ugly cry again. Tears started to run down his face and his nose was running. It was cold enough out that I was sure my nose was probably boogery too, but crying had turned his nose on like a faucet.

  "I've worked all of these years to finally win," he said, dragging the mitten clad hand holding the medallion beneath his nose to wipe away the snot. "I thought this year was finally my year because Hilda's poetic clues would be gone and no one would be able to replace them. And I was right. Props to Max for making the clues rhyme, but they were pretty obvious."

  I had to agree with them. Max had made a valiant effort, but compared to Hilda's treasure hunt, these clues had seemed much more obvious. It was understandable that even if Gerald hadn't been cheating, someone would have thought they had a better chance this year.

  "I figured out that the medallion must be at Evergr
een Park, so I drove over and parked in the parking lot to scout it out a little bit," Lennie said. "I didn't want to give away that I was looking for the medallion, so I just looked around from the car. Really, those trees and that bench were the only places the medallion would be hidden in that park. So I made a plan to come back right when it was getting dark so that I could look without giving it away."

  "And do you think Gerald saw you?" I asked. I still couldn't believe that people would go so crazy over a medallion hunt, even one with a minimal cash prize.

  "He must have seen me, because when I came back later that night, he was waiting for me," Lennie said.

  His face was hurt, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. Lennie was looking towards me, but he wasn't seeing me. He was reliving the night of Gerald's murder. The wind was blowing even more than before, but he didn't seem to notice.

  "I parked and grabbed a flashlight so that I could see what I was doing," Lennie continued on with his story. "I actually fell a few times as I was trying to get down that slippery hill. Stupid, why didn't I just use the sidewalk on the side? But I finally got down there and I started looking at the bench."

  As he spoke, emotions flashed across his face. The tears that had slowed down at one point started to fall more rapidly again. As the story ramped up, so did his emotions. For a moment, I forgot about the gun and I just felt sorry for him.

  "I had just spotted the glint of gold when all of a sudden, Gerald burst out of the trees," Lennie shouted. "He came charging at me, yelling and screaming at me that I couldn't be the one to find the medallion. But he was too late, I already had it in my hands."

  Lennie looked down at the medallion in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, seeming to forget about the gun he was still holding in his other hand. At least, I was hoping he had forgot about it.

  "I told Gerald that his cheating days were over and I'd found it fair and square," Lennie said. "That's when he pulled out the gun. He pointed it at me and told me to give him the medallion or he would shoot me."

  The hand holding the gun lifted back up to point at me. I couldn't tell if Lennie was just acting out the story, or meaning to point it at me. I took a deep breath to try and calm myself, which was not easy to do with a gun pointed directly at me.

  "I refused," Lennie continued. "I didn't think he would actually shoot me over the medallion. And he didn't want to because instead of just shooting me, he lunged at me and tried to wrestle me down into the snow. I wasn't going to let him get the upper hand and I certainly wasn't going to let him shoot me. So as he came towards me, I grabbed for the gun."

  Lennie's hand started to shake and the gun was waving all over the place, but always pointed in my general direction. I tried to keep my eye both on it and on Lennie's face. I was trying to take in all of the details I could just in case I was able to get out of this alive.

  "Gerald was so focused on the medallion, he just kept trying to grab it from me," Lennie said. His voice dropped down even quieter and I leaned in a little closer, trying to be able to hear him without getting too close to him. "I was able to grab the gun and before Gerald could do anything, I turned it on him and I shot him."

  Somehow the roar of the wind seemed to be drowned out by Lennie's silence. This story had flipped everything I thought I had known about the murder. It felt like forever that we stood and stared at each other while I ran over the story Lennie had told me in my head.

  "Lennie, why didn't you call the police?" I finally said. "If it was self-defense like you say it was, why didn't you just call and tell them that."

  Lennie snorted and let out a guffaw. I hoped I hadn't made him angry because I really didn't want to die out here in this snow storm. As he laughed to himself, I took a quick glance around, but all I could see was the blinding white of blowing snow and the tree branches swaying around me.

  "Do you really think they would have believed it was self-defense?" Lennie asked. "After I publicly threatened Gerald, I don't think they would have believed me for an instant."

  "So this was what you thought would work better?" I shouted. I was starting to get angry. I had been dragged into all of this because a grown man couldn't take responsibility of his actions. I tried to ignore the fact that immaturity was also my downfall. "Has this turned out the way you were hoping? Is luring me here to try to kill me really a plan that will work out for you? I'm sure they'll figure out it was you because multiple people saw you and I together and knew I was taking you here to snowshoe. And once they figure out that you killed me, they are going to connect you to Gerald's murder too. You aren't going to get away with any of this."

  By the end, I was practically screaming in Lennie's face, both because I was so angry and because the wind was loud and I wanted him to hear every word I was saying. He needed to know exactly what was going to happen.

  Lennie shoved my shoulder, making me stumble back a few steps and sit down hard on my bottom. As I tried to stand up with the snowshoes on my feet, Lennie pointed the gun straight for me again. And now the fire inside of him had exploded into anger that was radiating out of his eyes.

  I just couldn't keep my mouth shut and now I was really in trouble.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I started to formulate a plan in my head, but I had no idea if it was going to work. In fact, it seemed like an entirely idiotic idea but it was the only thing I could think of. I decided it was now or never. Either way, I might get shot, but I'd rather get shot trying to get away.

  Lennie was glaring at me, his teeth clenched into a grimace. With one hand, he was pointing the gun directly at me while the other was still holding his precious medallion. The only thing stopping me from running right now was the fact that I was wearing snowshoes. I needed to get them off of my feet as fast as possible.

  Suddenly, I snapped my head to look just past Lennie, over one of his shoulders. I was hoping I could fool him into distraction. In my peripheral vision, I could see him pull his eyebrows together in confusion.

  "What are you looking at?" he demanded while waving his gun around.

  "Nothing," I said, looking back at the spot over his shoulder. I shifted so that one snowshoe was standing on top of the other one. I wiggled my one foot to loosen up the ties on my snow boots, glad I had not followed my dad's advice to tightly lace them up while snowshoeing.

  "Tell me what's over there," he said.

  "There is nothing over there," I said. I shifted my weight so that I was trying to loosen my other boot.

  Lennie wouldn't take my word for it, so he slowly turned to look over his shoulder. As soon as he turned his head, I lunged forward and grabbed the medallion out of his hand before dancing back a few steps. I managed to get one foot out of the boot and as I stepped down into the snow with it, I was glad that at least I was wearing wool socks today.

  "Give that back," he shouted. He started to plead with me. "Please give it to me. I won the medallion fair and square this year."

  As he begged for me to give him his prize back, I stepped out of my other boot and into the snow. Lennie was so focused on the medallion that he hadn't noticed that I had abandoned the snowshoes. So far, so good. Now to continue on to the next part of the plan.

  "You want it that bad?" I asked. I held the medallion up over my head. Lennie's eyes followed it like a dog looking at a tennis ball. I waved it back and forth a few times before I pulled my arm back. "Then go find it."

  I launched the medallion as far as I could over Lennie's head and into the swirling snow. He turned and watched helplessly as it disappeared. I waited for a moment to see what he would do, hoping his devotion to finding the medallion would make him go after that instead of me.

  Lennie stood sideways, looking back and forth a few times between me and where I had tossed the medallion. My stocking feet were rapidly getting cold and I just hoped they wouldn't freeze too fast.

  "I won that medallion fair and square," he shouted.

  For a moment, I thought he was going to lunge a
t me and attack me. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to. But instead he ran the other way, looking around frantically for the medallion. He glanced back at me once, but after that I knew I needed to take my chance.

  I turned and started to run back the way we came, but I knew that if it somehow stopped blowing snow around, I would be as good as dead. It was almost like I was running down a hallway made of trees. He had a clear shot towards me and I needed to change that. I made a sharp right turn and ran straight through the line of trees.

  The tree branches hit me in the face and I could feel the pine needles scratching my cheeks. The rest of me was covered in my winter clothes, but I could feel the branches catching and ripping my jacket and snow pants. I pushed on until I popped out the other side of the branches. As I ran, I realized my stocking hat had come off of my head, so I grabbed my hood and pulled it up over my head, cinching the drawstrings to keep my ears under cover and warm.

  I couldn't see the park building through the blowing snow, but I knew that if I just kept running, I should run straight into it. While it made me a little nervous to be running blind, it did give me comfort that the blowing snow also offered me some cover.

  My feet were starting to get so cold that I couldn't feel my toes anymore. If I had the strength to worry about that, I would have. But I needed to focus all I could on getting out of the snow and getting help. My father had suggested I layer my socks and thankfully, I had listened to him about that. But the cold and wet were seeping in and the only thing that was going to stop it was changing my socks.

  From behind me, I heard a faint pop sound. Lennie must be shooting at me. I might be hearing things, but I chose to believe it was a gunshot. He must have just realized I had ran away.