Murder Grins and Bears It (3 page)

I searched my memory. “I don’t know any
Robert Hendricks. Where’s he from?”

“
He worked with the
Department of Natural Resources out of Marquette. That’s why you
don’t know him. A DNR agent.”

The DNR and its agents aren’t viewed as
assets to our local communities. Slinking around in the underbrush
like Brown Recluse spiders and spying on the very people who pay
their wages doesn’t make them popular.

“
Murder?” I
said.

“
No doubt about it. It must
have happened this morning.”

I remembered the sound I’d heard earlier.
I’d assumed it was Little Donny’s car, but it could have been a
rifle shot.

“
I heard the shot,” I
informed Blaze.

“
What makes you think
that?”

“
I was out in the yard
about eight and I heard something.”

Blaze scribbled in his notebook and flipped
it closed. “I’ll look into it.”

His beer belly poured over the top of his
belt, which was riding dangerously low on his hips, and a button
had popped off his uniform shirt from the force of the swell.

I stood up. “I think I’ll stick around and
talk to Carl. Where do you think Little Donny went?”

“
Ma, don’t worry. I’m sure
Little Donny’s fine. Go on home.” He had me by the elbow,
dismissing me in his usual manner with a personal escort out of the
circle of action. “Where’s your partner in crime?”

“
Here I am,” Cora Mae
called from the spectator side of the rope. “Over this
way.”

Just then the ambulance started up and edged
toward the road.

“
I want to get a look at
the body before they drive away,” I said, pulling on my arm. “Get
your hands off me and stop that vehicle. I have to see with my own
eyes that it isn’t Donny.”

“
Nothing doing. I told you
it isn’t him.”

The ambulance moved past and the volunteers
forced the crowd to the side of the road. Blaze held on to me with
an iron grip.

“
Where’s that ambulance
going? Escanaba or Marquette?” I demanded.

Blaze let go when he was sure the ambulance
was clear. “The Escanaba morgue,” he said.

I knew I could follow the ambulance the
forty minutes it would take to drive to the Escanaba morgue, but
that sour lemon who ran the morgue wouldn’t let me look at the body
anyway.

I sighed as the ambulance streaked down the
road kicking gravel and dust into a cloud behind it.

The volunteer deputies encouraged everyone
to disperse, and most, seeing the ambulance pull away with the
corpse, moved toward their vehicles.

I thought I should move my
new truck before Blaze saw it because this wasn’t the time or the
place to explain my new purchase. But Blaze was scrawling in his
notebook, which he perched on his swollen belly.
H
e wasn’t paying attention
to the crowd or the parked vehicles. Someone from the mass of
law-enforcement officials called his name and he walked
away.

I stood watching Blaze’s back as he lumbered
off. I glanced at the woods where the man in the crowd had pointed
to show me the direction they had carried the body from. Towering
grasses lined the road against a backdrop of tall pine trees, and a
deer trail meandered into the canopy and curved out of sight.

Glancing back, I caught a glimpse of Carl in
the group of deputies. I’d give my uppers to hear what they were
saying.

I put on my thinking cap. “They hauled that
body out of Carl’s bait pile,” I said to Cora Mae. “If Carl wasn’t
involved somehow, he’d still be hiding in a tree overlooking his
pile of bakery, waiting for a black bear to wander through. He
wouldn’t even know about the shooting.”

This stretch of woods is called Bear Pass by
the locals because bears like to follow an established circuit,
looping around and covering the same territory over again. The idea
is to plant your stand right where they come through. Because
Carl’s bait pile was in a prime spot on Bear Pass, he should have
been staked out.

Instead, Carl stood smack-dab in the middle
of the action.

Cora Mae wasn’t paying much attention to me,
focusing instead on one of the volunteers. I saw her give him a
tiny wave, a flutter of fingers at waist level, which produced a
weak grin from him.

“
Let’s move ’em out,” a
volunteer deputy yelled to the stragglers like a cowboy rounding up
a herd of cattle. “You too, ladies.” He motioned to us.

We walked down the road toward our vehicles.
When we got to Little Donny’s car, I opened the driver’s door and
bent in to retrieve my oversized purse. Then I straightened up,
closed the door, and surveyed the situation.

“
Follow my lead,” I
whispered to Cora Mae. “Get ready.”

I watched the inevitable traffic jam form on
the road as spectators tried to pull their trucks out and swing
around all at the same time. I waited for the perfect moment, then
ran across the road and popped into the woods. I couldn’t help
noticing that Cora Mae wasn’t behind me.

I peered out of the tree line and saw her
standing in the middle of the road looking like she’d lost her
way.

“
Psst,” I hissed. “Pssst.”
Louder.

Finally she noticed me and dodged around a
red pickup with a swarm of kids riding in the open bed of the
truck.

“
Once in a while,” Cora Mae
crabbed when she caught up, “you ought to tell me what’s going on
ahead of time.”

“
I’m improvising as I go,”
I explained. “You just have to pay better attention.”

****

I’ve lived in the Michigan woods for
forty-some years and I like to think I know my way around them the
same way I know every liver spot on the back of my hand. Yoopers,
as those of us living in the Upper Peninsula are called by the rest
of the country, have a reputation for an innate sense of
direction.

We don’t need compasses.

I glanced up at the sky showing through the
treetops, noted the position of the sun so we wouldn’t get lost,
and set out at a fair clip, considering Cora Mae was wearing high
heels and I wasn’t a young goose anymore.

September is the perfect time of year for a
woods walk. The mosquitoes are tapering off, so you still have some
blood in your body when you come out of the forest, and the ticks
are gone. The gooseberries have turned from green to purple and a
few maple leaves have just started to turn. The only sound is the
buzz of bees hurrying to finish their business, and in our case,
the sound of Pocahontas crashing through the woods behind me.

I looked back and noticed scratches on Cora
Mae’s face.

“
Did you fall down?” I
asked.

“
Why would you think
that?”

“
You have burrs stuck all
over in your hair.”

Burdock is the nastiest weed I’ve ever come
across and I’m determined to snuff it off the face of the earth.
The Indians used to boil the roots and eat them, but I tried it and
it’s not worth the effort. In late summer it puts out seed in
burrs, which stick to everything like Velcro. Nasty stuff.

Cora Mae was beginning to drag. “How much
farther?” She sounded like a ten-year-old on a road trip.

I frowned. “We should have hit Bear Pass by
now. Maybe it’s just ahead. Let’s keep going.”

“
How are we going to know
when we’re there?”

“
The trail widens out.
You’ll see. Trust me.”

We heard a rifle shot go off.

“
That seemed awfully
close,” Cora Mae said.

Another shot went off.

“
Sound
travels a long way in the woods,” I said, trying to convince
myself. The gunfire
did
sound near.

“
I have to sit down for a
minute.” She wandered over to a fallen tree and plunked
down.

“
How are you ever going to
be a Trouble Buster with shoes like that?” I lectured. Trouble
Busters was our official business name since we discovered there
are all kinds of rules before you can call yourself a private
investigator. And after careful consideration and a lot of noise
and threats from Blaze, we decided we didn’t qualify. Hence, the
cover name, Trouble Busters.

I continued to complain. “You can’t walk.
You can’t sneak up on anybody. You can’t do any of the things you
need to do to be an investigator.”

“
This wasn’t my business
idea, remember? We haven’t had a single case. We haven’t made a
single cent.”

Well, it was true the brainstorm to start
the investigator--I mean buster business--was mine, and it was also
true we hadn’t had work yet, but all that was about to change.

“
Now that we have a truck
we can start advertising.”

“
And who’s going to hire
us?”

“
Lots of
people.”

“
This isn’t TV, you know.
Besides, Blaze already told you it’s illegal to call yourself an
investigator unless you have a license, and last I checked, neither
of us comes close to qualifying.”

“
That’s exactly why we are
using Trouble Busters.”

I thought I heard Cora Mae mutter “stupid
name” under her breath, but I could have imagined it.

I used the rest stop as an opportunity to
drop my purse and rub my shoulder.

I bought the biggest purse I could find.
Besides the regular stuff you’d carry in one, I’ve got pepper
spray, a stun gun, and handcuffs, which I didn’t think I needed
until Cora Mae bought a pair and actually got a chance to use them
last year to restrain a criminal. The stun gun was borrowed from my
friend George, and I liked it so much I told him I lost it.

Cora Mae looked off ahead. She pointed. “And
you,” she said, “can’t find your way around your own backyard.”

I looked where she pointed, following her
lacquered index finger. Through a break in the trees, I could see a
road. Bending down, I could make out my new yellow truck.

We had walked in a circle. So much for the
dependability of the sun.

After studying the situation for a moment, I
said, “I think I know where we went wrong. Let’s go.”

“
The only place I’m going
is home to my easy chair,” Cora Mae informed me, pulling off a shoe
and massaging her foot. “I’ve had it.”

“
We have to check out the
crime scene before the FBI shows up and ships all the evidence to
Washington and covers up the crime.” Granted, I was a little
overdramatic, but Cora Mae loves drama, and it stood to reason that
the FBI would get involved, considering a government employee was
murdered.

She frowned.

“
I just want to study the
crime scene for future reference,” I said. “Come on. We could use
the practice, and I’m really concerned about Little
Donny.”

“
I’ve had it,” Cora Mae
repeated.

“
Fine by me. Take the truck
when you go before Blaze sees it. I’m not in the mood to explain it
to him.”

I watched her teeter out onto Old Peterson
Road and crawl into my new truck.

****

I passed a wild apple tree and picked a
small green apple. I’ve always loved to eat apples before they’re
ripe. A little salt and an unripe, sour apple is the best thing in
the world. I nibbled cautiously around a wormhole. My deceased
husband, Barney, used to say that the hole means the worm came out
of the apple, not because it went in, but I’ve always had my
doubts.

I’m not taking any chances.

It sounds crazy, but I felt Barney’s spirit
by my side. I loved that man more than anything in the world and
thought I’d die when I heard he was gone.

I couldn’t think of a reason to go on.

After enough time passed, I realized that my
kids were worth living for, but I still had to find something
fascinating enough to want to get out of bed every day.

My new investigation business had
accomplished that.

Just as I was thinking I was good and lost,
I spotted yellow crime scene tape ahead. Cinnamon rolls, doughnuts,
and bread were dumped in the middle of a clearing, and I saw my
coffee can filled with gelled chicken grease next to a large oak
tree.

I rummaged in my
everything-but-the-kitchen-sink purse and located a pair of
binoculars. Careful to stay well on my side of the tape, I scanned
the murder site. In the center of the clearing I saw a dark, wet
spot about the size of a double bed where blood must have seeped
into the ground.

By zooming in through the lenses of my
binoculars, I could make out large footprints planted smack in the
center of the wet area. Little Donny’s rifle, given to him by his
grandfather, lay on the ground, not more than three feet from the
wet spot.

I saw what I thought might be bits of brain
and bone, but I might have imagined it since I’ve never actually
seen those things.

Peered up into the trees, I spotted Carl’s
tree stand. It appeared to be the size of a postage stamp, which
left me wondering where Little Donny had staked out. Little Donny,
also known in the family circle as Beefy Boy, couldn’t have
shimmied up that tree if the mother of bears was on his behind.

Scrutinizing the perimeter of the clearing,
I noticed broken branches off to the left of the tree stand. Behind
some brush, I found Little Donny’s hideout. I could tell by the
matted ground covering and the doughnut crumbs.

The scene must have been exactly the same as
it was when the murder occurred. Except for the body. Any minute
now, crime specialists would descend, like turkey vultures, and
pick the area clean.