Read January Thaw (The Murder-By-Month Mysteries) for Free Online

appeared in the window, staring directly at me.
    My heart jumped. Surely I was imagining that she could see me in this crowd, but the girl in the window seemed to be gazing right into my soul. She had the round cheeks of a child, and something about her stare left me icy inside.
    “Beep beep!”
    My attention broken, I glanced around. The voice making the honking noise sounded familiar. Mrs. Berns?
    Before I could locate her in the crowd, my attention was drawn to the roar of a giant engine firing to life. I twisted around toward the ice castle and swallowed my own tongue.

Six
    Mrs. Berns was rolling toward the skating rink on a Zamboni that lumbered as steadfastly as a dinosaur. It must have been parked behind the ice castle. She had one hand on the steering wheel and was pumping the air with the other, a grin of pure joy on her lovely lined face. She was wearing an old-fashioned aviator’s cap and goggles, and a white scarf unfurled in the wind behind her.
    “Mrs. Berns!” I yelled, scrambling to stand and waving my arms at her. “Put on the brakes!”
    Her eyes landed on me, and her smile grew even wider. She stood, pumping both hands in the air. The words “I’m the Zamboni queen!” drifted above the grumbling roar of the giant machine. Because she was directly on top of the beast, I could hear her, but she couldn’t hear me.
    Families were gathering up their children as a mass exodus began toward the relative safety of land. A few people screamed as the Zamboni began to methodically eat up the 200 yards of ice between the castle and the rink. I skated away from the crowd, trying to lead Mrs. Berns to an unpopulated spot.
    “Turn it off!” I yelled over my shoulder.
    She cupped a palm to her ear in the universal gesture of, “I can’t hear you,” but at least she steered the Zamboni toward me.
    “I’m just going to clear a wider rink!” she yelled back. “Get everyone off of the ice!”
    I glanced toward the shore. The sensible people of Battle Lake were taking care of that just fine by themselves. When I turned back toward Mrs. Berns, the Zamboni had grown uncomfortably close.
    “Turn it off!” I screamed.
    She nodded and reached below the steering wheel. Then her head shot back up. Was that a look of panic in her eyes? I kept skating away, and the Zamboni kept drawing nearer. The ice was rough out here, covered in crusty snow, and I went from skating to high-stepping, trying desperately to put distance between me and her. This lasted all of four steps until the toe of my skate caught on an ice shear and I pitched to the ground like a four-legged creature who’d been putting on airs. I levered myself back to a standing position and took mad, mincing steps away from Mrs. Berns. Whichever direction I went, though, the relentless, hulking Zamboni seemed to follow. In the periphery, I spotted two men in winter overalls running across the ice toward Mrs. Berns. Would they make it here in time?
    I fell again, and the Zamboni continued to rumble toward me.
    “Move!” Mrs. Berns hollered. “I can’t figure out how to turn it of f !”
    “Can you figure out how to steer it?” I hollered, crawling forward as fast as my cold knees could take me. The caution ropes surrounding Darwin’s Dunk were straight ahead. I scuttled under the rope and found myself gliding down the indent toward the center of the Dunk, where the Dunk crew must have begun the time-consuming work of cutting the hole the night before. My heart hammering, I swiveled, still on my knees, and tried to return to the safer ice, but gravity was pulling me toward the thin center.
    My soft mittens and wet knees gave me less traction than a long-nailed dog. I kept my eyes on the Zamboni, hoping against hope that it would stop and that last night’s fresh ice would hold.
    I slid to dead center of the Dunk and held my breath, thinking light, light thoughts.
    The Zamboni growled closer.
    The ice under me made a gentle cracking sound, and I spread