Murder Grins and Bears It (15 page)

Blaze stood back from my truck and peered at
the lettering meandering along the side. He scowled at me through
the window.

“
Carl,” I said, “you’re
going to have to help me out here. Tell Blaze you have been driving
me around.”

“
You want me to lie to a
law enforcement official?”

“
It’s only
Blaze.”

“
But Gertie, he’ll know
it’s a lie. My station wagon is out there.”

By now, Blaze had ripped open the restaurant
door and was stalking my way. He nodded at the two men and leaned
over me, throwing his sheriff’s hat down on the table like a
gauntlet.

I’m used to his intimidating ways. It takes
more than this overgrown kid to rattle my cage.

I grinned. “Sit down,” I said. “I’ll buy you
lunch.”

“
Outside. Right
now.”

Rather than create a scene in Ruthie’s
restaurant, I waited for him to pick up his hat and I followed him
out. Behind Otis’ train a stand of jack pines reached for the sky.
I saw a hawk riding the air currents, scouting for a meal.

Blaze puffed himself up and his face grew
flushed, like he was short of breath. Before he could say anything,
Carl rushed out of the restaurant with a carry-out bag in his
arms.

“
Wait, Blaze,” he called
out. “I can explain.”

While Carl bamboozled Blaze, I crept over to
the back of the truck, rubbed Fred’s ears, and reviewed the
case.

The feather hadn’t amounted to much. I
wasn’t any closer to learning the source of the one found on the
bottom of the dead warden’s shoe than the day I discovered it.

It had been a long shot anyway.

“
I’m having a hard time
believing what you’re telling me, Carl,” Blaze said from the other
side of the truck. “Your car is right here. How do you explain
that?”

“
I left it for Otis. He
wants to go see his…ah…his…ah mother.”

“
Otis can’t leave his train
on the tracks while he goes visiting. It’s one thing to stop for a
bite to eat, but that isn’t exactly a parking space.”

“
Well, I’ll go tell him
that then.”

I heard the restaurant door bang shut as
Carl hurried back in. Blaze stomped over.

“
This is getting
embarrassing,” he said. “I could handle the money buried in a box
and you spray-painting my truck with yellow paint.” He stopped to
glare at his old truck, now mine. “And I didn’t say a word when you
took up with Cora Mae, but….”

I stared him in the eye.

“
But this truck,” he
continued. “And the lettering and you running around without a
driver’s license, thinking you’re Lieutenant Columbo. You’ve gone
too far.”

“
You should be out looking
for Little Donny,” I said, louder than I intended. Part of my
tactic with Blaze was to never show anger. “You’re more concerned
about catching me driving than you are about finding your
nephew.”

I poked him in the chest. “Maybe I shouldn’t
have to do your job.”

Blaze hitched up his pants.

I turned to the road with my arms
crossed.

Carl came back out and Blaze walked over to
talk to him again.

I watched a white van moving steadily toward
me along M35 and wandered over to the side of the restaurant to get
away from all the noisy chatter.

The van pulled to a stop at the only
four-way flashing traffic light in town. I saw the name on the side
of the vehicle. Mitch Movers.

Right then, I decided to abandon the feather
theory and the search for falconers and the bear with the missing
red tooth. I vowed to resume my search for Little Donny. Dead or
alive, I’d find my grandson.

The truck edged forward and started to
gather speed as it passed me.

Then it happened.

A bird feather exactly like the one on the
bottom of Warden Hendricks’ shoe fluttered in the wind created by
the moving van and landed at my feet. I stared at the back of the
van. Another feather spit into the air.

I broke into a run.

“
Carl,” I shouted. “It’s
time to go. Hurry.”

But by the time I got Carl untangled from
Blaze’s law-and-order speech and into the driver’s seat of my
truck, it was way too late to catch up with the van.

****

“
This sure smells good,” I
said, opening Carl’s leftover bag and peeking inside. He had enough
food inside to feed a black bear for a week.

“
Stay out of my bag,” Carl
said, hands on the steering wheel at ten and two o’clock. “And
Blaze is still behind us.”

I sighed and turned to check. “Take me home.
That’s all we can do.”

Blaze continued on past us when we turned
into my driveway. “Stay a while,” I said to Carl. “I’ll take you
back when I’m sure he’s really gone.”

“
I’ll go in and visit with
Grandma Johnson,” he said.

“
You always were a brave
one. I’ll put your bag in the fridge.”

I found Cora Mae and Kitty leaning against
my fence watching George work. His rattlesnake cowboy hat was
tipped onto one of the pickets and he’d stripped down to his jeans
and boots. George at sixty still had the physique of a young
construction worker.

“
Thought I’d work on
building your sauna,” George said. “The ladies are
helping.”

I could see that.

Cora Mae was draped over the fence as close
to George as possible without actually impeding his movements. She
looked like a lean she-cat, with her black heels and tight black
pants and confident expression on her face. It was only a matter of
time before she mauled George and hauled him into her den.

“
I thought you two were
going to search for Little Donny,” I said to Kitty and Cora Mae.
“From what I can tell, based on my experienced investigator skills,
he isn’t out this way.”

“
Some of us,” Kitty said,
tipping her head at Cora Mae, “got a little distracted.”

The guinea hens must have been in the outer
field when we pulled in because I saw them heading our way, running
in a pack. They veered off before reaching us, and I heard a yip
from the other side of the barn along with a lot of hen
chatter.

I called Fred, and he came bounding for
cover with the hens right behind him. He ran in close to me and I
flapped my arms like wings to keep the hens at bay.

George grinned. “Those hens sure hate
Fred.”

“
They just sense that he’s
afraid of them,” I explained. “Once he stands up for himself,
they’ll back off.”

“
What’s new with you?”
George asked, coming and standing right next to me. I admired the
few boards rising from a foundation that would support my new
sauna.

“
Someone around here is
smuggling birds illegally,” I announced. “They’re using moving vans
to transport them.”

Kitty snapped her fingers. “Mitch Movers,
I’ll bet. I’ve seen that white van more than once and wondered
where it came from.”

I nodded. “Feathers blew out of the van when
it passed the Deer Horn. I was standing right by the road when it
happened but I couldn’t follow it because Blaze would have arrested
me.”

“
Why would he have arrested
you?” George wanted to know.

“
I don’t have a clue,” I
lied.

“
Gertie doesn’t have a
driver’s license,” Cora Mae squealed and George started
laughing.

“
That’s easy enough to
correct,” he said through his guffaws.

“
You haven’t driven with
her, have you?” Race Car Kitty said. “It won’t be that easy. And
she failed her written test.”

“
Well, let me know if you
want some pointers,” George offered, giving my arm a little
squeeze. A jolt of electricity shot down to my toes and my knees
threatened to buckle.

I leaned against the fence. “Let me tell you
more about the bird thieves,” I said weakly.

“
What kind of birds,”
George asked.

“
Red-tailed hawks,
peregrines, you name it.” I like to add interest to my stories. I
might not have all the licenses the government imposes on its
citizens but I do have a literary license. “Bald eagles for all I
know.”

“
But what are they doing
with them?” Cora Mae asked.

“
You can’t buy raptors in a
store,” I explained. “The only way to get one is to capture it in
the wild, find a sponsor, and go through a lot of governmental red
tape. My guess is, they’re stealing birds and eggs and selling them
for a profit.”

“
People want them for
pets?” Kitty asked.

“
No, they train them for
hunting. Rabbits, squirrels.” I looked over at my guard hens that
were pecking through the gravel in the drive. “Guineas.”

“
We stumbled right into the
middle of a crime ring,” Kitty shouted in excitement, throwing her
beefy arm up in the air in a triumphant gesture.

“
We sure did.” I edged
closer to George. “Dealing in illegal birds is a dangerous and
profitable business, and that’s why they’re hunting Little Donny.
He knows who they are. It could even be the Russian
mafia.”

“
Do you think the dead
warden was part of it?” Kitty asked. “That would certainly
obfuscate the issue.”

“
Kitty,” I said, realizing
I needed to expand my word list pronto if I expected to keep up.
“Did you go to college?”

“
Sure did.”

“
Did you
graduate?”

“
Yup.”

“
You need to go to law
school and put those fancy words to real use.”

Law classes would keep her busy while I
boned up on my vocabulary.

Kitty’s grin spread like butter on hot
toast. “I’ll look into it. Maybe I can register for one of those
on-line classes. But that will be after this case. I’m your
bodyguard, remember, and I take my job seriously.”

George picked his cowboy hat from the picket
fence and adjusted it on his head. “I better get back to work.”

“
We better get back to
work, too,” I said.

“
I’ll stay here and be the
look-out for Little Donny,” Cora Mae said, attaching to the fence
again.

“
I have a special project
for you,” I told her. “You have to come along.”

No way was I leaving her with George.

chapter 12

My daughter Star’s twin boys, Ed and Red,
own Herb’s Bar, which is the only watering hole in Stonely. Since
there isn’t much to do in this town other than eat and drink,
business starts early in the day at Herb’s.

No one knows exactly why the bar is called
Herb’s, because the chain of ownership doesn’t include anyone named
Herb. That’s been the biggest mystery in Stonely until recently
when Little Donny went missing and a dead warden was pulled off
Carl’s bait pile. Then the Herb puzzle took a back seat.

As soon as Kitty pulled open the door of the
bar, conversation inside died and everyone who had bellied up to
the bar swung around to watch us enter.

It’s a harrowing experience for a newcomer,
but I was used to the ways of the clannish Swedes and Finns.

A few people mumbled greetings when they
recognized us. Then the customers went back to whatever business
had been interrupted by our entrance. If they hadn’t known us,
though, the place would have stayed dead quiet for a lot
longer.

“
I can’t stand all the
smoke,” Cora Mae crabbed as soon as she had the chance, still
miffed that I had hauled her from the construction site. “And it’s
four o’clock in the afternoon.” She scrunched her nose. “Look at
the clientele.”

Cora Mae was starting to sound like Grandma
Johnson, but she did have a point about the afternoon crowd. Most
of them looked like their wells went dry at the beginning of August
and they hadn’t bathed since.

“
A private investigator has
to be flexible,” I said. Kitty slid her solid frame onto a bar
stool. She had removed her pin curls for the evening, but, as
usual, she hadn’t combed out her hair, causing a spring-loaded
reaction with her curls. Her enormous thighs spilled over the seat
and her legs were dangerously far apart.

Someone across the bar winked at her and she
fluttered a wave. I did a double take, thinking I might be
hallucinating.

The twins were working the back of the bar
as if they were connected at the hip, sidling around each other in
fluid motion while they served customers.

“
Hi Granny,” Ed called out,
sliding a beer down to me. “What would your friends
like?”

The three of us sat in a line at the bar
with tall beers in front of us and a hunk of on-the-house beef
jerky in our hands.

“
Holy cripes,” Cora Mae
said, still in complaint mode. “This jerky is going to rip my teeth
out.”

“
I’ll take yours,” Kitty
said, reaching over.

Cora Mae gave her a mean look and cradled
her jerky next to her body. This raging hormonal thing always
happens when she doesn’t have a steady boyfriend.

“
What happened to BB and
the other Detroit boys,” I asked, hoping to steer her thoughts away
from George.

“
They’ll be around later
tonight,” she said, perking up a little. “Want to go with
us?”

“
I’m behind on my work,” I
lied, wondering how long I’d be employed if I didn’t wrap this case
up quickly. “Did you find anything in the woods today?”