Murder Grins and Bears It (14 page)

I studied his wounds. “You’re over-reacting.
All you need is a couple of butterfly band-aids. I have some in
here someplace.”

“
What you doing out in the
woods with a suitcase?” Rolly wanted to know while I dug through my
weapons purse.

The remark didn’t deserve a reply.

After bandaging him up, I said to Cora Mae,
who forgot about her own problems once the mice disappeared and she
noticed the blood, “Get your handcuffs out. I’m making a citizen’s
arrest.”

I’ve always wanted to say that.

“
Hold on there,” Rolly
said.

With fluid cunning, I reached into my purse
and turned on my micro-recorder in case he was going to
confess.

“
I saw you from up in the
tree stand,” I said. “You’re poaching birds. You should be ashamed
of yourself, using your position to steal protected
raptors.”

“
I’m not stealing
anything.” Rolly pressed on the bandages and winced. “I’m checking
flight patterns and health and gathering data. Didn’t you see the
band around its leg?”

“
I don’t know what you’re
talking about,” I said, but I’d seen the band.

“
That’s how we identify
them, by the bands. Then we know where they came from. I was going
to record information in this book here and inspect it for
infectious diseases.” Rolly held up a notebook. “And then I was
going to let it go.”

“
Sounds reasonable to me,”
Cora Mae said, watching the ground for lingering mice. “You dragged
me all the way out here for nothing.”

It was possible that our inept game warden
was telling the truth.

I dug the red tooth out of my pocket and
held it out in my palm for Rolly to see. “What do you make of
this?” I said.

“
Bear tooth,” he grunted.
“Where’d you get that?”

“
Over there,” I waved
vaguely at the woods. “Why’s it red?”

“
Here’s what we do.” Rolly
puffed out his chest as if he was delivering a keynote speech at
the Warden of the Year Dinner. “We put out piles of sardines with
different dyes, depending on the area, and it works into their
teeth. Bears can travel a long way, but usually they stay in the
same ten or fifteen miles. Though I seen ‘em swimming across Lake
Superior. Those coming from Canada or from across the lake don’t
have any dye at all.”

“
What’s the point of the
dye?” I asked.

“
If you shoot a bear you
have to bring it to a DNR office. Besides using it for research and
stuff, we can trace the dye to make sure it wasn’t killed out of
the area where the hunter applied for a license. Tricky,
hey?”

“
Well, where do you use the
red dye?”

Rolly rubbed his chin, thinking hard. “Not
around here. Tamarack County is blue. Maple County, that’s it. Wait
a minute.” His eyes narrowed. “Let’s take a little walk and check
out this tree stand you say you were sitting in. And just for fun,
let’s take a look at your bear license. And I’m confiscating that
tooth.”

I turned off the recorder.

“
You need to get to the
hospital right away,” I said. “Those band-aids won’t hold for long
and I don’t have anymore.”

“
I’m feeling pretty good,”
he said. “Let’s go.”

We walked into the woods, and I tried to
dissuade him, but his mind was made up. He was determined to arrest
the woman who had just saved his life.

“
I don’t have a weapon,” I
said. “How could I be shooting illegally without one?”

“
It’s around here
someplace,” he insisted. “Let’s start by searching this here
motorsickle.”

He walked around the bike looking for stash
places, then thoroughly searched the area around the tree stand. He
even crawled up into the tree and inspected the platform before
reluctantly giving up and releasing us.

The only thing he forgot to check for was a
“motorsickle” license.

****

Kitty was waiting for us by the side of the
Trouble Buster when we roared up to Jackie’s house and parked the
bike.

Her mouth fell open. “I wish I had a
camera,” she said.

I peeled off the helmet and glanced at
Kitty’s rusty old Lincoln. “What’s Fred doing here,” I said,
watching him try to eat his way through the window to get to
me.

“
Look how he’s bonded to
you, Gertie,” Cora Mae said. “Isn’t that cute? Someone better let
him out before he destroys the inside of Kitty’s car.”

Kitty opened the door and he bounded out,
nearly bowling me over.

“
I went to your place to
see what you were up to and Grandma Johnson made me take him. He’s
been lugubrious without you.”

“
And you’re quite
loquacious today,” I replied.

“
You two are going to drive
me to drink,” Cora Mae complained.

“
I’ll drive you anywhere
you want to go, Honey,” Kitty said. “But it’s a little early in the
day for hitting the bottle.”

“
We have work to do,” I
reminded them. “Did Grandma say whether or not she’s heard any word
on Little Donny?”

“
Nothing yet.”

After digging my maps out of the glove
compartment, I flipped down the truck’s tailgate, sorted through
them, and spread out a map of Maple County. Fred, now that he’d
found me, leaped up into the truck bed to make himself comfy. A
stack of maps flew to the ground as he plunked down right in the
center of the action, his red devil eyes locked onto me.

I rearranged everything, then unfolded the
falconer’s list from the Marquette DNR office. “Kitty, help me find
a falconer in Maple County. I’m tracking a red tooth and a bird
feather. I don’t know how they connect, but I’m going to follow
them to the end.”

She studied the list. “Um…um,” said our
fancy word specialist. “Um… Try this one on Crevice Road.”

We bent over the map looking for Crevice
Road. “Here it is. Are there any more on the list that might be in
Maple County?”

“
Um…um…um…” Kitty shook her
head. “Nope. That’s it.”

I read the name of the falconer out loud,
“Ted Latvala.”

Cora Mae slipped her rump up on the open
tailgate as I folded the map. “Why are we chasing birds and bears,
Gertie? Shouldn’t we be searching for Little Donny?”

I shook my head. “We tried that and came up
with nothing. If we can’t figure out the future, we have to go back
to the past. The dead warden didn’t show up at Carl’s bait pile
alone. We have to find out where he was and who he was with.”

“
And that’ll lead us to
Little Donny?” Cora Mae said.

I had a charley horse in my chest and I
couldn’t look her in the eye when I answered, “That’s right.”

Maybe I couldn’t bring Little Donny back,
but I was determined to find out the truth, no matter what.

Truth is a slippery concept. It changes
shape according to who’s speaking it and it never looks the same to
any two people. That’s why it’s so elusive. Or illusive, as I
always say.

“
Everybody ready?” I asked
after gathering up the maps.

“
Cora Mae and I should take
one last shot at the woods,” Kitty said. “We’ll start at Carl’s
bait pile and head toward Walter’s place. Maybe we missed
something.”

“
I broke my shoe. I can’t
possibly go,” Cora Mae said. “And I’m sick of the
woods.”

“
I have a pair of books in
my trunk,” Kitty said. “You can wear them.”

“
Watch your backs,” I said
while I tried to coax Fred out of the back of the truck.

“
What do you mean by that?”
Cora Mae wanted to know.

“
Those arrows in Billy’s
back were meant for Little Donny.”

“
I was hoping you wouldn’t
put that together,” Kitty said. “I already thought of
it.”

“
Billy found Little Donny’s
ball cap. That’s why he’s dead right now instead of my
grandson.”

If Little Donny was still alive, he was in
big trouble.

chapter 11

Crevice Road lay about a mile in from the
main road. They named it that for a good reason. Michigan’s
transportation department is in no hurry to repair our roads, so I
weaved along, avoiding the worst of the potholes.

Gravel and dust kicked up behind me and I
kept glancing in the back of the truck to make sure Fred was okay.
He’d absolutely refused to abandon the back even after I pulled and
pushed on him for a while.

Now he sat there, fat and sassy, like he
rode in the back of trucks all the time, and maybe he did. He and I
were in the early stages of getting to know each other, and so far
he’d been full of surprises.

I pulled into Ted Latvala’s driveway and
parked behind enough rattletrap, rusted-out vehicles to fill a junk
yard. I counted three outbuildings and guessed there might be more
behind the tree line, where I saw the beginning of a wide, worn
trail leading into the woods.

Grabbing a clipboard, I gruffly reminded
Fred to stay put, walked to the front door of the house, and rapped
loudly.

Smoke drifted lazily from a chimney and I
could smell the aroma from a woodburning stove. One of my favorite
smells is burning wood. I sucked in a big breathful of it as the
door jerked open.

The man glaring at me had more hair than any
man I’d ever seen. A dark curly mop sprung from his head, whiskers
cascaded down his chin, and more of it sprouted from the front of
his red plaid shirt and crept up his neck to meet the beard. Even
the back of his hands were hairy.

“
What?” he
growled.

I cleared my throat. “Yes, well, I’m with
the census bureau and I-”

“
You have ten seconds to
get off my property.” He brandished a shotgun hanging loose from
one of his hairy hands.

“
And then?”

“
And then I start shooting.
I’ll blow your head off.”

In the space that read “Number of people
living in dwelling,” I marked “one.” With all that hair and the
nasty disposition, there couldn’t be anyone else in the house.

“
Just a minute,” I said,
because I could see he was getting antsy. “Have a little patience.”
I shoved the clipboard between my knees and dug through the weapons
purse on my shoulder. Triumphantly I held up my new sheriff’s
badge.

“
I’d like to ask you a few
questions,” I said.

He scowled at the badge. Then his eyes took
in my Trouble Buster truck, where Fred was beading in on us with
rapt attention.

“
That’s a fake badge,” he
said, sneering at me.

I turned the badge around and studied it.
“How could you tell,” I said.

“
No cop would be caught
dead driving in that truck. Trouble Buster? You crazy or
what?”

I hadn’t used my stun gun yet today and was
considering zapping him when I heard him cock the shotgun. There’s
no sound like it in the world, and if you’re on the receiving end,
nothing is scarier.

Fred and I hightailed it down the gravel
road.

****

The Deer Horn Restaurant was hopping as I
drove through Stonely, and it reminded me of how hungry I was. The
train stopped on the tracks across the street from the restaurant
meant that Otis Knudson was inside.

I could drive on home and make a sandwich
for lunch, but then I’d have to face Grandma Johnson’s snaky tongue
and Heather’s hound-dog eyes.

The two of them were going to give me an
ulcer sooner or later. Besides, I enjoyed talking to Otis, so I
swung in.

“
What you got in the back
of your truck?” Carl called from a table he shared with Otis. “A
bear?”

“
If that’s a bear,” Otis
said. “It’s still alive. I just saw it move.”

“
Hey Ruthie, you got any
roadkill on the menu?” Carl called out, tipping back on his
chair.

“
What kind of vegetable
goes with roadkill?” Otis asked.

“
Squash,” Carl
replied.

I’d gone through this routine already only
about a hundred times. It’s easy to entertain Yoopers, and a good
joke stays around for a long time.

“
You’re not going to sit
with these two old fools,” Ruthie exclaimed as she set plates in
front of Carl and Otis.

“
I need a laugh today,
Ruthie.”

“
I hear ya. What’ll it
be?”

“
Coffee and a grilled
cheese sandwich,” I said, eyeing the mounds of meat and potatoes
and carrots steaming on the men’s plates.

All the while we ate our lunch, Fred sang a
song of sorrow from the back of the truck. He’d let out a mournful
yowl, then swing his eyes over at the restaurant window. I gave him
a few waves to let him know I hadn’t forgotten him.

“
Dog looks rabid,” Carl
observed, shifting his eyes to the right, then to the left, then
over my head. “Where’d you get him?”

“
He’s a retired police dog,
search and rescue.”

More like search and destroy, but that was a
secret.

When Ruthie poured another round of coffee I
saw Blaze’s sheriff truck pull in and park right next to the
Trouble Buster.

I thought about hiding in the ladies’ room
but I couldn’t leave Fred to fend for himself, not to mention that
the restaurant was the size of a hunting shack and my son would
find me eventually. I shouldn’t have worried about Fred because
Blaze stopped and rubbed his big, black head. Fred could have
conducted an orchestra with his tail.