Free Murder in the Winter by Steve Demaree Page A

loud.”
    “So, what do you think it means? Is an airplane gonna
try to dust us off for good in the middle of a corn field?”
    “I don’t know. I just hope no one locks the two of us
in an upper berth on a train.”
    “Those berths aren’t big enough.”
    I turned and found several pairs of eyes looking at
us. It was time to abate our rhetoric. At least for the time being. Besides,
none of my mental pictures from North By Northwest were anything I
wanted to keep with me, and it was time to venture outdoors.

 
    8
     
     
    All of us walked out the front door. Half went to the
left. Half to the right. Each of us stayed next to the inn and walked around
the building until we met the other group. I led one group, George the other.
Only my breath preceded me. We trudged along through the deep snow, seeing
neither a body nor an escaping human. Our side of the building turned up
nothing. Just as I turned to check out the back side, I stopped. A portly
sergeant brushed against me. He stepped aside and saw what I saw. I had
momentarily forgotten about the footprints heading up the hill to the edge of
the cliff. They seemed to come from the wall of the building. Suddenly we had a
murderer, or fearful lodger, who could walk through buildings. We stood, waiting
on the others. They arrived to see what we’d discovered. They encountered no
evidence of anyone on the elevated island until they met up with us. After a
moment’s discussion, we followed our lone clue. We walked side-by-side, so that
no policeman would be pushed over the cliff by the one behind him. We stopped
two feet from the edge of the cliff, and I surmised the situation. A tree grew
upward not more than six inches from the cliff. I stood there, stunned, as
Officer Davis stepped to the edge of the cliff, leaned forward, and grasped the
tree with both hands. It wasn’t something a sane man would’ve done, but then a
sane man would never have applied for a position with the police department.
    As I looked around for someone to notify Officer Davis’s
next  of  kin,  the  young  man  stepped  back  and  said, “Look, Lieutenant.”
Now I wasn’t the only lieutenant there. George was there, too, but Officer
Davis didn’t look at George when he said, “Look, Lieutenant.”
    I had no choice but to do what Officer Davis suggested.
To refuse to do so would earn me the nickname Chicken Little for the rest of my
days. Another insane man, this time a chubby one, called out to God for help,
then stepped forward and braced himself against the tree. I looked down and
said, “Well, I’ll be.” While I knew I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t expecting Lou to
tap me on the shoulder and say, “What is it, Cy?” Only the gloves I wore kept
me from scraping my hands on the tree as I fell. A couple of seconds later, my
feet landed with a thud on a ledge, three feet below the edge of a cliff. My
knees buckled, but thankfully my hands still strangled the tree in front of me.
I had survived, and I would live long enough to kill a sergeant. If my head
hadn’t been visible above the edge of the cliff, I would’ve made the sound so
often heard when someone has been pushed from a window of a high rise, a sound
that lasts from the time the victim discovers free flight until he or she goes
splat on the sidewalk below. I wanted my former friend to worry. Instead, I
turned and said the words that scared him almost as much. “Lou, get down here.”
    A humble sergeant pointed to himself, as if he was not
the only Lou in our enclave. I smiled and nodded, feeling like Oliver Hardy as
I did so. I could see my partner visualizing who might receive his badge and
gun to remember him by. Lou reached out, wrapped his hands around the tree I
had pushed away from, and wondered what to do next. It would take him longer to
reach the ledge than it did me. No one tapped him on the shoulder. The first
robin of spring arrived before Lou joined me on the ledge. It gave me time to
realize what scene