January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

though I was discovering that was a wide net. I had romance readers who reread the same book a dozen times and could remember every character’s name in a ten-book series, fans of nonfiction who regularly checked out books thick enough to press flowers and who would tell me everything I didn’t want to know about history if I stood still for too long, and literary fiction readers who always wore a secret smile. My favorite of all were the kids. I read to a regular group of them every Monday, and without fail, they were a squirming, burping, giggling pile of warm puppy love.
    The library was my life raft. The only upside of our slashed hours was that it gave me more time for my second job, which I’d landed shortly after being hired by the library. I was a very part-time reporter for the Battle Lake Recall , an essentially one-man show known for its coverage of local church happenings, updates on city council meetings, high school sports scores, and my food column, “Battle Lake Bites.” When I’d started the column, I was feeling a tad passive-
aggressive about living my nowhere life in another small town—I’d graduated from a very similar one twelve years earlier—and I’d vowed to take editor/layout supervisor/sales director/owner Ron Sims’s suggestion that I find dishes representative of central Minnesota. Hence deer pie, Twinkie sushi, and phony abalone, among others.
    In addition to that column, Ron occasionally tossed me articles, including the latest: he wanted me to follow up on a report that Gilbert Hullson’s miniature poodle had accidentally slipped into an ice-fishing hole last week while Gilbert was looking the other way. According to the rumor, Gilbert had leapt forward to save his dog, but his reflexes weren’t what they used to be, and she disappeared. Distraught, he stumbled out of his fish house just in time to see Jiffy pop up out of an uncovered hole thirty feet away like a mop head shot out a geyser. She was reportedly a little shaken but happy to be topside.
    Being as it was a rare heavy news week, Ron also had me covering this weekend’s Winter Wonderland festivities, Battle Lake’s premier cold-time celebration. Day one of the two-day festival included the grand opening of the Prospect House’s Civil War Museum, Darwin’s Dunk on West Battle Lake, and ribbon cutting at the ice castle situated near the Dunk. I still couldn’t get my head around the idea of jumping into a frozen lake in nothing more than your swimsuit and a smile, but that’s Battle Lake for you.
    The library was on the south end of town and the Prospect House and the section of West Battle Lake where today’s Winter Wonderland was held were on the north end. Since a mile separated the two (and since yesterday’s walk hadn’t panned out so well), I’d decided to drive from work to the event I was covering for the paper, even though it was another postcard-perfect winter day. The temperature hovered around ten degrees with a crisp lemon sun shining heatless rays off a world of snow crystals, lighting up the landscape like a pirate’s treasure. The air smelled like cold metal with the tiniest hint of green in it, and I wondered if there really was something to that talk of a January thaw.
    I’d only driven half a mile before the traffic started backing up. Parking would be a bear. It seemed like this area held some sort of major festival every other month, but they were always well- attended. I guessed it was a holdover from the agricultural days when we really were all in this together, and we had to make our own fun.
    Just ahead at the corner, a white four-door pulled out and I thanked the Universe and glided the Toyota into the spot. The Prospect House was still two blocks up, but I was lucky to have parked this close. I stuffed the newspaper’s digital camera into the pocket of my puffy jacket, pulled my hat down tight over my ears, and hopped into the stream of festival-goers.
    In my preliminary research,