It’s time for the annual Nightshade Winter Festival, and Abigail Clark is happy to volunteer her time to help out at the week-long charity fundraising event. She’s only been at the fairgrounds for a short while before she stumbles across a dead body submerged in the carnival dunk tank.
The town’s high school principal, Sid Stowe, always spent the week at the festival, helping out as needed and supporting the many school clubs and sports teams that take advantage of the festival’s opportunity to raise money. It isn’t long before Abigail begins to hear rumors and stories about the man, though.
It appears that Sid wasn’t quite as wonderful as most people in Nightshade seemed to think. Not only was the man cheating on his wife, but it looks as if he was stealing money from the school district as well. Those two details seem to provide half of Nightshade with possible motives for Sid’s murder. Abigail is committed to spending several days helping out at the festival. Her challenge is to find a way to do that without getting dragged into the murder investigation.