Murder Grins and Bears It (17 page)

While he rolled around on the ground trying
to figure out what hit him, Kitty and I ran to the back of the van
and pulled the doors open.

“
We need a flashlight,” I
said, running back to the car and digging through my weapons purse
until I found it.

Kitty had already crawled into the back of
the van when she reached out for the flashlight. I handed it to her
and crawled in next to her.

We watched the light move from one end of
the van to the other. I grabbed it from her and repeated the
process.

We looked at each other, speechless.

The inside of the van was as clean as one of
Grandma Johnson’s plucked chickens. Not a single bird or egg or
feather of any kind.

The driver moaned and I noticed that he had
staggered to his feet. Fred, joining in the fray, lunged through my
open door and forced the man back against the truck.

“
Good boy, Fred,” I said,
proud of my team in spite of my disappointment over the missing
evidence.

Then I heard the siren in the distance. “I
thought you called your partners in crime,” I said urgently to the
driver. “Who did you really call?”

“
Nith oneth oneth,” he
said, spittle running down his chin.

“
Cops,” Kitty called to me,
jumping from the van. “He called the cops.”

Since we weren’t sure which side of the law
we were on at the moment, and considering that some people thought
a stun gun was an illegal weapon, Kitty and I took one last peek in
the front of the van, shooed Fred into the car, and hit the
road.

The Lincoln fish-tailed onto the old
highway, did a U-turn, and a few seconds later we passed a vehicle
speeding toward the moving van, running lights and siren.

“
Dang,” I said. “That was
Blaze.”

“
Good thing I turned the
headlights off,” Kitty said. “I don’t think he saw us.”

Earlier, I had wanted stars and the glow of
the moon, but at least a few things were going my way tonight, so
we slunk home under cover of darkness.

Before going to bed, I put my stun gun on
the charger.

chapter 13

“
I know
that was you and Kitty out there last night!” Blaze shouted in my
face. He sat at my kitchen table drinking
my
coffee and sucking down
my
sugar doughnuts, and I
couldn’t believe the way he was treating me once his mouth was
empty. “Little bitty red-haired old lady, the driver said. And a
Loch Ness monster. You and that fat friend of yours fit the
description perfectly.”

Blaze then pointed at Fred, lying by the
door. “And he fits the guy’s description of a vicious, wild wolf
that came close to shredding him into pieces.”

“
Shush,” I said, slightly
offended by the ‘old lady’ description. “Or you’ll wake up Grandma
and Heather. They need their rest.” I took a long sip of coffee
before replying. “My truck was here at the house all night. You can
ask anyone in the family once they get up. And that ‘vicious wolf’
is the result of your police training.”

Blaze didn’t hear me, which isn’t
unusual.

He held up his cigar-fat fingers and ticked
off his complaints. “Impersonating an officer by identifying
yourself as a law enforcement official,” he said. “Using a dog as a
deadly weapon, attempting to hijack a vehicle.” He looked up. “I
don’t know what you did to the driver but he was a mess, so let’s
include aggravated assault of some kind in the charges.”

When Blaze put it like
that, it
did
sound
pretty bad.

“
I wouldn’t be surprised to
find out you had a gun in your purse.”

“
Go ahead,” I said,
throwing my almost-empty weapons purse across the table. “Search
your own mother’s personal belongings like she’s some kind of
common criminal. Instead of locating your nephew, you’re busy
harassing your mother.”

I had anticipated this moment and had
stashed the questionable items away in my underwear drawer. “If you
want to arrest all your family members, you should know that
Grandma Johnson had a pistol when she moved in here. I took it away
from her and hid it the first time she waved it in my face and
threatened to shoot me. Maybe you can handcuff her and rough her up
a little.”

Blaze ignored me.

After sorting through the purse and finding
nothing, he glared at me and said, “You’re lucky the driver you
assaulted isn’t pressing charges.”

I snorted. Of course he wouldn’t press
charges. He was engaged in criminal activity and didn’t want to
call too much attention to himself. I was surprised he called
nine-one-one in the first place.

A clean moving van didn’t mean a clean life.
I’d get him yet. Blaze might think the driver smelled like a rose,
but I know skunk when it drives by.

“
What was he doing out so
late?” I asked. “Did you ask him that?”

“
It’s not any of my
business or your business. There’s no law says he can’t drive his
truck anytime and anywhere he wants to.”

I snorted again.

“
The only thing I haven’t
figured out,” Blaze said, “is how you and Kitty got away. I didn’t
pass a single vehicle heading for Stonely, and the state trooper
meeting me from Maple County said he didn’t pass anyone either.” He
waved a finger in my face, which I hate. “I’m warning you…” he
said, and let the sentence die away.

****

One of the best things the Finns and Swedes
who settled in the U.P. brought over from the old country was the
sauna. We build them as separate little houses in our backyards,
where we meet for social gatherings to share town gossip while
throwing water on hot stones and sweating profusely.

Naked is the preferred mode of dress and in
winter, after we’re done perspiring, we roll around in the snow to
finish off the process. That’s why the sauna’s location is so
important. It needs to be well hidden from the road and the
driveway.

We used to have a sauna behind the house
until Blaze burned it down when he was about fourteen years
old.

Never give a teenager a box of matches and
instruct him to burn a pile of yard rubbish. Somehow the dry grass
leading to the sauna caught fire and that was the end of our
meeting place. By the time the local volunteers heard the fire
siren going off in town and turned up, the damage was done. No one
would’ve been able to guess that a sauna had ever existed on that
patch of land.

George’s had made an offer to build a new
one for me, and I found him working on it after Blaze blustered
away.

It was a gorgeous September day. We’d had a
frost overnight, and earlier this morning the lawn had been covered
with a sparkly dusting of ice crystals. When the sun rose, it
thawed things out.

“
You’re early this
morning,” I said, handing him a hot cup of coffee and sliding a
napkin topped with a sugar doughnut onto the fence post. He picked
it up and took a bite.

“
You make the best
doughnuts in Tamarack County, Gertie. Better include the recipe in
your cookbook.”

“
Good idea,” I said
absently, more important things than doughnuts on my mind. “There’s
been no word from Little Donny, yet. It’s been too
long.”

George gave me a gaze and I noticed that
he’d cut himself shaving this morning. To me, that made him even
more handsome and manly. “He’ll turn up,” he said. “Don’t
worry.”

“
I’m worried sick,” I
admitted, because George is my best male friend and I can count on
him to understand. I watched while he took another bite of the
doughnut. “If he’s alive, where is he? He didn’t have two nickels
to rub together when he went into the woods. How would he feed
himself? What would he eat? He doesn’t know anything about survival
in the wilderness.”

George polished off the doughnut and took a
long sip of coffee. “I wish I could reassure you. I know waiting is
hard but that’s all we can do right now.”

Something was tugging at my memory - had
been for awhile. Watching George eat that little piece of bakery
started the gears in motion again.

“
I’ll see you later,” I
said, quickly heading for the house to gather my weapons, throw
them in my purse, and grab my car keys. “I have an
idea.”

I rushed to the truck, turned it around so
the front end was facing the road, and leapt into the driver’s seat
to watch the road for action.

If what I thought was true, I’d find Little
Donny this fine, crisp autumn morning.

“
Where is Gertie?” I heard
Grandma Johnson yell at George a little later. “She left the
kitchen a big mess, flour and sugar from ceiling to floor. What
kinda house am I having to live in?”

“
Haven’t seen her for
awhile,” George yelled back.

“
Well if she shows up, send
her fanny right in here to clean this mess up. I’m having to do all
the work around here.”

Out of the rearview mirror, I watched Fred’s
big head come into view behind Grandma. She shrieked, opened the
door wider, and whacked Fred’s backside with a flyswatter to force
him out of the house.

I almost gave up my hiding place to defend
Fred, but he didn’t even notice the weak little tap coming from
Grandma’s scrawny arm. He strolled out the door and sniffed the air
to catch a scent. She tried to give him another whack, but he
turned his head to stare at her. She must have decided not to push
her luck because she lowered the flyswatter, shrieked again, and
slammed the door.

Fred headed for the truck and began to
circle it at a trot.

Once I was sure that Grandma was safely back
in the house, I opened the passenger door, Fred leapt into the cab,
and we watched the world go by in slow motion.

A little later, Cora Mae and Kitty pulled
up, but I ducked down in my seat, feeling the need for my own
private space. Fred, sleeping by my side, was also out of view.
From my side mirror I saw George come around from the back. Cora
Mae fluffed her hair, bumped out her Wonderbra’d breasts and went
for him like a guided missile.

Kitty stomped over, too, and the three of
them wandered toward the backyard.

I risked another peek out at the road. I
worried that if I looked away from the road for even a second, that
might be the exact time my target would drive by and I’d end up
sitting here for nothing.

Sure enough, there he came, driving by
without as much as a glance at my house, like a man on a
mission.

I started the truck, intent on making a
stealthy getaway. But Fred must have jiggled a few buttons when he
jumped in, because the truck’s siren started blaring. Kitty
lumbered toward the driveway to see what the commotion was about,
but I quickly turned off the siren and blew out of the yard.

So much for stealth.

But I had my man in my sights, and he didn’t
seem to react to the noise coming from my house.

****

Carl Anderson, the shifty-eyed sneak, sure
seemed to be chow down a lot of food lately. In fact, every time I
saw him, he had extra food tucked in a bag under his arm. And that
casserole.

What kind of Yooper male makes a casserole
for his card-playing buddies? He’d be laughed right out of the
game. Card-playing men brought jerky and beer and maybe a bag of
chips to the table. That was it. And George knew nothing about any
poker game that night.

And when was the last time Carl had asked
about Little Donny?

Never. That’s when. He’d never asked if
Little Donny had been found.

Why?

Because he knew exactly where Little Donny
was holed up. And Carl was feeding him.

Carl’s station wagon turned right at the
four-way stop in downtown Stonely, then made another right onto
Porcupine Trail. I stayed back as far as I dared. The Trouble
Buster stood out like a canary among sparrows, with its yellow
paint job and fancy lettering, and I worried that he’d spot me.

It dawned on me when we ended up on
Porcupine Trail, and I thumped myself on the head with my hand for
my denseness.

It should have been obvious all along.

Sure enough, I saw Carl pull into Grandma
Johnson’s driveway and hide his car from the road by driving around
behind a row of cedars.

What a perfect hideout. Since Grandma was
now living with me, her house was vacant and secluded, the ideal
place to hide if people are searching for you.

I continued driving down Porcupine Trail
until Carl had enough time to get inside the house. Then I swung
around, ran the truck through a shallow ditch, and parked at the
far end of my mother-in-law’s property.

Fred and I trudged through the brush and
approached the house from the rear. Peeking through a window, I saw
Little Donny talking to Carl. I almost fell to my knees with
relief. Instead, I wiped a stray tear away and sunk down under the
window with my knees up by my chest while Fred mauled me and licked
my face.

All I wanted to do was cry long and hard now
that I knew my grandson was alive. Cry and hug him and then swat
him and Carl for worrying me so much. But I knew I had to pull
myself together.

“
Get off me, you big
slobber,” I whispered to Fred, crawling from under the window and
rising. “My grandson has some explaining to do. Let’s
go.”

I wondered if having conversations with your
dog was less crazy than babbling to yourself when no one else was
around.

I guess it depended on whether or not the
dog answered.

Fred grinned and ran for the steps.

****

“
I must have been sleeping
pretty soundly,” Little Donny said, while we huddled at Grandma’s
kitchen table and watched him pound down Carl’s bag of day-old bear
bakery. He slapped his hands together to shake off the crumbs and
didn’t look like he’d been through nearly the wear-and-tear I had
trying to find him. “Because they were already by the bait pile
when I woke up. I never heard them coming.”