Her smile returned. “Well. After a statement like that, what else can I say? I guess I’ll see what I can do.” She thought for a moment. “Maybe Maggie can help me.”
He winked at her. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else about Solomon or the body.”
He tucked his head back around the corner, and Candy floated to her office.
Twenty
She was so engrossed in her research that she barely noticed Ben as he entered her office and plopped down in the old folding chair beside the door. “Want to hear the latest?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts, an edge of excitement evident in his voice.
She blinked several times and swiveled around toward him. Quickly she refocused. “Yes.” She dropped her hands between her knees and gave him her full attention, her earlier thoughts of bafflement driven to the back of her mind for the moment.
“I just got a call from the police department. There are a few interesting things about the body they found this morning.”
“Have they identified it?”
“Not yet, but they’re running the fingerprints. Here’s the interesting thing, though. The body had been stripped of its identification. The police found nothing to tell them who it was—no wallet, cell phone, car keys, wristwatch, comb, papers in the shirt pockets, glasses—anything that might help ID the body. The police are calling this a suspicious death.” He paused. “I think they have a good idea who it is, but they’re waiting for confirmation before they announce it.”
“Any idea who they might be thinking of?”
He shook his head. “Could be anyone, but probably someone we don’t know. That’s my guess.” He tilted his head, studying her, then flicked his eyes to the computer screen to see what she’d been reading. “You have any ideas?” he asked her.
She gave him a knowing smile. “I might.” She swiveled back to the computer screen. “Look at this, tell me what you think about it.”
She pointed to the story in the right window of the computer screen. “This is a press release from this organization called I.C.I.C.L.E. Ever hear of it?”
He shook his head. “Sounds vaguely familiar, but I don’t know much about it.”
“Until Thursday morning neither did I. But it’s an acronym. It stands for the International Committee of Ice Carvers and Lighting Experts.”
“You’re joking, right?”
Candy smiled shrewdly and shook her head. “I said exactly the same thing when I first heard of it. But apparently it’s true… at least part of it.” She pointed again at the screen as Ben pulled his folding chair closer so he could get a better look. “I found this on a popular blog for fans of ice sculpting. It’s an anonymous post and includes details about this sponsorship program I.C.I.C.L.E. is putting together. Apparently some company that makes chain saws wants to hire one of the ice carvers to be its spokesperson. I’ve heard it could be a pretty hefty offer, though something about it doesn’t feel quite right to me. This is fairly general stuff, but look at all the comments.” She clicked to another screen. “Lots of posts about the sponsorship—some saying the value of the total package, with gear and all, could be worth a hundred grand or more. And look here.”
She scrolled down through the comments.
“Look whose name keeps popping up, over and over.”
“Victor Templeton’s,” Ben said, after focusing on the screen for a few moments.
“That’s right. There are several key posters who are keeping this stream going, all with anonymous names, things like PowerSculptor and SnowQueen. Most of the posts are pro-Victor, promoting his name for the spokesperson. A few here and there mention other names, primarily Liam’s. There’s quite a conversation going on here about something most people have never heard about. I haven’t been able to identify any of the posters yet, except one. Preston Smith.”
He made a face at her.
“You’ve heard the name, right?”
Ben shrugged. “Should I have?”
“Yes, probably, and that’s what bothers me. He’s been hanging around town for the past few days, mostly down in Town Park with the ice sculptors. I’ve e-mailed his assistant to see if I can find out more about him and his organization, but so far I haven’t heard anything back. He’s supposedly making some sort of announcement about the spokesperson at noon today—at least that’s what it says in a press release on his website. But no one I’ve talked to knows anything about it. I even called Oliver over at the inn, and he says there’s no announcement on the schedule. They’re going to hand out a few awards at noon, mostly for a kid’s ice-carving contest they’re running this morning. Oliver’s apparently officiating. But nothing about a sponsorship program or spokesperson for a chain saw company.”
Ben shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Candy agreed.
“So do you think something fishy’s going on?”
Candy thought about that before she spoke. “I’m not sure yet,” she said finally, “but I’m going to find out.”
Twenty-One
After Ben headed back to his own office, she spent another forty-five minutes digging around online, searching I.C.I.C.L.E.’s website for any additional clues and trolling through a number of other blogs and websites, especially those for chain-saw companies and tool manufacturers. But she found nothing else about the sponsorship program or spokesperson gig, nor did she find out much more about I.C.I.C.L.E. itself. There were a few obscure postings, more comments on blogs, remnants from press releases, that sort of thing. But curiously, nothing went back more than a few months.
She finally checked her watch. It was a quarter to eleven. Doc was scheduled to give his presentation in fifteen minutes at the inn, and she wanted to be there to show her support. After that, she planned on heading over to Town Park to watch the brief awards presentation and maybe grill Preston Smith about his organization, if she could get a few words with him.
Shutting down the computer, she grabbed her tote bag, switched off the light in her office, and walked back down the hall to talk to Ben. But he was gone, though his computer was still on. It looked like he’d just stepped away briefly.
As she turned away, her gaze swept across his desk, seeing everything in a glance but nothing in particular. Several steps down the hall, however, she stopped, turned around curiously, and on an impulse returned to Ben’s office.
It was an old volume that had caught her eye. Heavily bookmarked, it sat to one side of his desk, the gold lettering rubbed off of its battered, dark purple cover, its ragged-edged pages thick and brown with age. She’d never seen it before, which is probably why it jumped out at her.
She hesitated at the door only briefly before she took a few steps into his office and lifted the small, thick volume.
She tried to read the title printed on the spine, but it too was partially rubbed away, so she opened the cover and turned to the title page, taking extra care with the fragile, spotted pages.
The volume was titled
