Book 3: Death of a Snowman

The children were gone. Almost without a trace, if it hadn’t been for the handwritten note dangling from one of the “hands” of the snowman to inform us that they had indeed been taken. At least I heard rumors of this note—a ransom note probably—that the police had removed before the crowd gathered.

The town square was a media circus. The townspeople should’ve been at home eating their dinners, but curiosity got the best of them and they gathered at the scene of the crime to see the newly infamous snowman. It had been made by the abducted children, mayor Richard Champ’s daughter Zoe, six, and son Joseph, four, for the contest.

Even though the snowman section of the town square was sectioned off by police tape, everyone stood around and snapped pictures of this sinister looking snowman. Its carrot nose had been taken from its rightful spot on the face and inserted into one of the branch “hands”. The branch had been repositioned at a higher angle, holding the carrot in such a way that it looked like a knife, ready to stab at whoever got in its way.

The other “hand” had held the note, which had disappeared into the hands of the police.

“How dreadful,” said an old lady in the crowd to her friend. “Those poor children.”

“What kind of monster would do this?” her friend exclaimed. “And to make a joke out of it?”

“A sick, twisted game.” A man in his fifties shook his head at no one in particular.

The snowman did look menacing with its squinty pebble eyes, hollow nose and cruel snarl. I zoned in on it with my camera phone and snapped a few pictures. The whole thing intrigued me. I had to help the case in any way that I could, especially now that I was friends with the mayor’s wife, Eleanor.

All around me, the townspeople of Hartfield muttered their grievances with the kidnapping and the distasteful way the kidnapper flaunted it in our faces. It was such a big ordeal that reporters and news crews came all the way from Toronto to report it.

My very pregnant sister, Mirabelle, put her arm around me and squeezed my shoulder with reassurance.

“Who knew this town could be so dangerous?” she said. “Child abductors now?”

She stroked her belly to soothe herself. There had been a couple of murders in Hartfield recently, but when children were involved in a crime, it was beyond fear and anger. There was outrage.

The crowd was shushed by a news crew producer. The camera turned on, the light flashing in the attractive brunette reporter’s freshly made up face. I pulled my coat hood up to stay incognito within the crowd in case the camera panned my way.

“Police are still on a wild goose chase to find the mayor’s two missing children in Hartfield, Ontario. They went missing in the middle of the Snowman Festival earlier this afternoon, here in the town square at Hartfield. The children were taken after they had completed their snowman for the Snowman Building Competition. Police are questioning everyone in connection with the children and the festival contest. If you have information, please contact the police. A ransom note had been left in the hands of the snowman, threatening the lives of the children, although police will not be releasing the official contents of the note as of this moment…”

* * *

Up until the kidnapping, Hartfield had been a fun place for me to be, even though the holidays were over. The locals and tourists alike looked forward to the Annual Snowman Festival that took place every January. It was something that started twenty-five years ago to cure the winter blues. The time between New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day was usually boring, if not depressing, in the cold weather and the festival was a way to get people excited again.

I had been looking forward to the festival too, since I’d missed the last five Snowman Festivals due to work. It was always something I used to enjoy as a child. There were contests, performances, plenty of food, and free stuff given out by people dressed up like snowmen.

I used to enter the snowman-building contest with Mirabelle all the time, and once we even won second prize, which was a fancy four-slice toaster that my father thoroughly appreciated.

It was nice to be back in the town where I grew up. When I was eighteen, I set off for New York to be a singer. After a few years of singing at open mics, my career finally took off. Now, I was what you would consider to be a celebrity, although I still felt a little strange about it sometimes. For the most part, I was used to the paparazzi, adoring fans, and nosy journalists. It was all part of the game. What was real to me was my family and my little Canadian hometown.

My third album was about to be released on Valentine’s Day, and I had been AWOL from the usual promotional stuff, even though my manager, Rod, the guy who had discovered me, was calling me up and bugging me like crazy now that he had finally gotten over his holiday haze of binge drinking and general gluttony.

I wanted to take a break from the industry, but taking this long of a break wasn’t my style. I was usually quite the workaholic, touring and promoting all the time, but getting by unnoticed in Hartfield had been a nice change.

However, over a week ago, the mayor found out who I was and that I was in town. I had been in Hartfield since December, but I supposed he didn’t know who I was and wouldn’t have cared if it wasn’t for the fact that his wife, Eleanor, was a big fan of my music. She suggested the idea of making January 18th Emma Wild Day in Hartfield. This was certainly wild. Sure, winning Grammys and topping the album charts were accomplishments, but getting my own day? This was something else.

The funny thing was that most people in town didn’t have a clue who I was—mainly because half the population was over the age of fifty—but Eleanor explained that Emma Wild Day would attract more tourists, which would boost the town’s economy. I loved this town and I wanted to help in any way that I could, so how could I have said no?

The inauguration of Emma Wild Day took place a few days before the Snowman Festival. It wasn’t a huge celebration. I just went on the stage to receive a plaque, shook hands with the mayor and posed for photo ops. He made a lovely speech about my career and how much I had contributed to the music industry. I was sure that Eleanor wrote most of the speech for him, but it was still rather touching.

Only local reporters knew about the surprise event and who broke the news before the major outlets did, so the paparazzi didn’t have time to descend. I told the reporters the lie that I would be traveling to promote my third album soon so that media types wouldn’t come and harass me in town after the fact.

So it had been a quiet but lovely affair. My family members were in the audience, as well as a group of about a hundred fans I didn’t know I had in town. I signed autographs and there were plenty of coffee and snacks for everyone, catered by my sister’s Chocoholic Cafe. My fans here weren’t as zealous or crazy as the fans in New York or the ones I met backstage at my concerts. Hartfield was a quiet Canadian town, and Canadians were too cool to care much about most things.

I was relieved because I was used to being photographed whenever I stepped out of my apartment in Manhattan, but here, I got to chat with fans about the most random things. I probably spent about half an hour talking to one lady about scrapbooking. It was just that kind of town.

The only glitch in the day was when I spotted Sterling Matthews lurking somewhere in the crowd. Usually I would’ve been happy to see him, but he was with someone else—a pretty brunette with a ponytail and wearing a burnt orange jacket. It wasn’t his ex-wife because I’d seen photos of her and she was blonde.

Was Sterling on a date? He only passed through the crowd with her, avoiding my direction and any kind of acknowledgement.

But that was supposed to be the deal. Sterling had agreed that he wouldn’t contact me for the month until I made up my mind between him and my ex Nick Doyle.

Nick was in Morocco reshooting scenes for an action movie and I hadn’t heard from him either. I did see a picture of him in the papers recently. He was laughing with his cute female co-star. Rumors were spreading like wildfire about the heat and chemistry between the two of them, but I tried not to give them a second thought. Rumors were rumors. He’d been linked to every woman he’d starred in a movie with, and I’d been linked to every bachelor—and a couple of married men—I was photographed standing next to, so I knew that it was all a bunch of baloney.

I hoped.

Still, between Nick’s rumored new love and Sterling’s apparent date, there was the chance that I didn’t have to decide anymore. Maybe they’d both moved on.

As hurt as I was, I couldn’t blame them entirely. It probably didn’t feel too great when the one you loved couldn’t decide between you and another man. Maybe I had expected too much for them to be understanding.

The thing was, I had come to a decision about who I wanted to be with only a week after Nick left for Morocco. It took a while for me to get used to the idea and accept the decision. Now I wondered if it was too late.

On the bright side, taking the time to be alone in the past month gave me the chance to assess my career—and my life. I wrote a bunch of new songs. They were much happier, optimistic songs. Some of them weren’t even about heartbreak or romantic love, which was a huge departure for me, since I was that singer who always crooned about being unlucky in love.

I was done with singing depressing songs. They were still nice songs and people really liked them, but I didn’t want the songs to translate into my real life anymore. I wrote new songs about the love of family, of friends, of life in general. I took it as a sign that I was heading into a better phase in my life as I headed into my thirties. No longer would I depend on a man for my happiness and self-esteem. I had the strength to create my own happiness as long as I was surrounded by loving, supportive people. A relationship was only the icing on top of a rich, delicious cake.

After celebrating Emma Wild Day, I felt utterly ready to take on the world again. No more hiding out from the press or even people in town. I vowed to do more charity work this year and give back rather than fret over my love life. I wanted to meet new people, take on new projects and develop deeper relationships with my fans.

Things had been going well until the kidnapping happened. The children had probably been taken when I was on stage singing at the Snowman Festival. It had been a surprise performance with only three songs in my set.

The festival was a popular event. I had kept an eye on the snowman building contest because that was my favorite activity. All the built snowmen were behind my little audience, so it was just close enough that I could make out the outlines of the people who were busy building, but too far to see who they were exactly.

I had already met little Zoe and Joseph on Emma Wild Day. They were absolutely adorable children, so when I saw them building their snowman, I glanced back at them a few times. By the end of my set however, I thought I saw them talking to someone: a man, too thin to be the mayor. Then the man left and they continued on building the snowman.

After my set was over, I changed into my normal clothes and walked around the festival. I checked out all the snowmen that the contestants had built—the children were nowhere to be seen. I had thought this was because they had finished their snowman early and Eleanor had taken them to get ice cream or something before the judging began. At the time, their snowman hadn’t had its nose repositioned nor had a ransom note tied to one “hand.”

That would happen later, after Eleanor became frantic because the children were nowhere to be found when the festival was over.

I wondered who this man was, the man who had been talking to the children. It was as if he knew them. And was I the only one who had seen him?