Spooning Daisy (27 page)

Low in the sky, the sun had not yet dropped to the horizon, which meant she had time for a short walk before dusk. She grabbed a jacket, stepped off her porch, then made a one-eighty back inside to find her bear bells and king-sized pepper spray.

His knee throbbing, Max chastised himself for walking to Fitz’s cabin instead of taking his truck. At the very least, he should’ve brought his crutches, although following a dirt path through the woods using crutches was no easy task either. It was just damn hard getting used to the idea of limitations, even temporary ones, but if he didn’t start heeding his doctor’s advice—which up ’til now he’d followed sparingly—he feared this splint might become a permanent fixture. Acknowledging that, Max found a stump in an island of crusted spring snow and he sat, stretching his injured leg and feeling relief as the throbbing subsided.

After a few more minutes of rest, and with dusk descending, Max decided it best to head home. The distance back was shorter than the distance forward, and sacrificing his knee for Fitz was just plain dumb. Wishing he’d come to that conclusion
before
he’d left his house, he hefted himself off the stump, took two steps forward and stopped in his tracks. He waited, unmoving, training his eyes a hundred yards down the trail. Soon enough, his suspicions were confirmed as the black blotch ambled a dozen steps toward him.

Far from being alarmed, Max merely looked around for an intimidating tree branch should he need a defense. But the scenario wasn’t likely. Yogi was easygoing and, like most bears—even the dreaded grizzlies—avoided confrontations. With poor eyesight but a keen sense of smell, Yogi most likely hadn’t realized Max’s presence. Which explained why the bear continued in his direction.

“Yogi! Yogi!” Max shouted, waving his arms in an arc. “Go away, buddy!”

The bear stopped. He thrust his nose in the air and raised himself on his hind legs.

“It’s me, Yogi! Off y’ go!”

But the bear stayed in the air.

“Yogi!” Max shouted sternly. “Go!”

The bear’s front feet landed on the ground, but, typical of a bear who’d grown accustomed to people, he showed no intention of surrendering the path.

Max could continue his current course, relying on the assumption that Yogi would give way. But bears, however predictable, could be very
un
predictable, especially in the spring when they were hungry after a long winter. Wild Man Lodge had been sharing these woods with Yogi for years and had never had a serious encounter, but that had been due as much to Max’s diligence in educating his staff and guests as it was to Yogi’s good nature.

Besides, thought Max as Yogi shredded a rotting log in search of grubs, even those with the kindest of dispositions had bad days, and that went for bears as well. Why risk being on the receiving end of those claws?

However, that meant going forward to the staff cabins. Rita could drive him home, bitching all the while that she was off the clock. And for the next week she’d peck and hover like a mother hen for not taking care of his knee. He’d rather tangle with Yogi, thank you very much.

That left him one option. The woods.

Still early in the season, the alders and willows had months before they matured and created an unfriendly thicket between the trunks of hundred-year-old spruce. The thorny devil’s club was still low to the ground and tame, while patches of snow kept winter alive. Tonight, with a little effort and a few snags, he could still get through and cross over to the greenhouses and the adjacent driveway. From there he could get home. It was longer than the direct route through Yogi, but better than putting up with insufferable Rita, his only other choice. But just for the hell of it, he gave Yogi another go . . .

A shout stopped Daisy as she walked past the greenhouses. She looked back from where she’d come, then forward to where she was going, seeing nothing and no one. She started walking. With each step of her right leg, the bells that wrapped around her ankle happily sang.

The shout came again. And another. She stopped to quiet the interference of her bells. She frowned at the woods on either side of the road, first to her left and then to her right. She waited. For several minutes, it seemed, then she gingerly took a step.
Tinkle . . .

She stopped. Had someone called
yogi
? She looked to the woods behind the greenhouses from where she was almost positive the shouts had come.

She quickly crossed between the greenhouses to the edge of the woods.

Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle.
And stopped. She jerked back at what she heard.
Yogigo
? What did
yogigo
mean? A call for help, perhaps? Or a warning? In Japanese, maybe?

Had guests arrived today? Were they lost trying to find the hot tub? Or maybe it was a new employee like herself who didn’t know the lay of the land—

There it was again! Only one voice. One
stern
voice. Maybe even a little angry.
Yogigo
!

Daisy knew some Japanese—mostly of the food variety—but also a few words of conversation that might be an advantage in this situation. But how many
bears
spoke Japanese?

Should she get help? Or first go to the source of the shouts? Was there time? What if this voice was attached to an injured body? What if, by the time Daisy had summoned Rita, the voice was still? She stared into the woods.

Somewhere in Daisy’s past, she’d read something about not staring too deeply into the woods for fear of what you might see. She suspected that was a metaphor, but with dusk descending and the trees taking on that Sleepy Hollow spookiness, Daisy saw a lot of merit in the literal interpretation.

“No way am I going in there,” she mumbled. She turned—
tinkle-tinkle
—intending to fetch Rita. The voice came again, sounding faint, tired, and hopeless.

“Hello? Anybody there?” she asked softly, not really wanting to know. She stepped into the woods. “
Konnichiwa?
” Another step and another as her bells softly tinkled.

Max found a branch to use as a staff, taking the weight off his knee. Mumbling a curse at Yogi, he slowly set off through the trees toward the greenhouses, wending his way around the more imposing thickets of brush.

Gathering courage, Daisy called out, “Hellooooo?
Konnichi-waaaaa
? Is anybody there?” Her eyes strained to see through the murky dusk that veiled all but a few feet in front of her. Her next step landed in a slush of snow, leaving a fuzzy impression of her sole. She took a few more steps, stumbled on exposed roots, but regained her balance with the help of a tree. That got her adrenaline surging. She took a calming breath.

“
Anata no namae wa nandesuka? Eigo o hanasemasu ka?
” Asking someone their name and if they spoke English probably wasn’t the best of search and rescue questions, but it was that or rattling off menu items, which really seemed dumb.

The trees closed in around her. Young devil’s club snatched her sweat pants. Her heart pounded as she tugged her leg free.
“Kon-nichiwaaaaaa!”

Max stopped. Was that Japanese? Spoken by a
woman
? None of his Japanese regulars were due to arrive for weeks. They certainly wouldn’t be bringing wives or mistresses. So who in the world would be out in these woods speaking Japanese?

Max was just about to answer when—

“Hello? Anybody there?
Eigo o hanasemasu ka?
Helloooo?”
Screw this
, thought Daisy, after her repeated entreaties were met with silence. If there was a body in the woods, there was no way she could find him. Better she should get Rita and let
her
organize the search. She turned—the alders rustled—and she froze. Peeking over her shoulder, Daisy vigorously shook her right leg.
Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle!

It was all Max could do not to laugh aloud. Bear bells! Of course, Daisy would have bear bells. As if a little tinkling was going to scare anything, let alone a bear. He was about to call her name, when a devilish thought stopped him.

Daisy listened to the silence, then gingerly took a step forward. Her bells barely registered, their sweet sound muted by the woods. She stepped with her left foot, paused, then her right, paused, then her left, as if she could sneak away from whatever was behind her. She was just starting to feel safe when she heard something coming through the brush, snapping branches.

Max no longer had his makeshift staff, but he would retrieve it as soon as Daisy fled the woods—any second now. He felt guilty for the fear she must be experiencing, but a little terror might be the push needed to send her packing. Besides, a
cheechako
shouldn’t be roaming these woods at night. What if she’d run into Yogi?

Bottom line, he was actually doing Daisy a favor. Next time she might think twice before waltzing around the woods unprepared. If, of course, there was a next time.

Daisy listened intently to her surroundings. Something didn’t make sense. First, there was something behind her, then something crashed in front. She reined in her instinct to flee, fearing she might run smack dab into that from which she was fleeing.

She’d read about bears in her
Alaska Almanac
and nowhere did it describe this kind of stalking behavior. On the other hand—Daisy’s heart quickened—Ted Bundy once used a fake leg cast to get a woman to help him to his car, where he then strangled her!

Were the calls for help a maniac’s ploy to lure her into the woods where he’d then—

“Daisy, get a grip.” She eyed the trees and took a tentative step forward. This was Otter Bite. What were the odds that a serial killer was in these woods? Then again, she’d heard how the isolation in these little villages could make a person go berserk. But cabin fever struck during the long, cold, dark, relentless winter, not during the spring. But maybe too much light could make a person go nutty just as easily. She thought about that pilot friend of Rita’s who had leered at her the day of her arrival. Men in Otter Bite outnumbered women fifteen to one. Good odds if a woman wanted to find a mate. But what had Rita said? The odds are good,
but the goods are odd
. Was one of those
odd goods
stalking her now?

But whoever, or whatever, was out there, she was not alone in these woods and Daisy knew that for damn sure.

Ignoring the throbbing in his knee, Max crept closer to Daisy. Crouched behind a spruce, he reached for an alder to rustle the leaves, but his hand found a thorny stem of devil’s club instead. “Dammit.”

Daisy didn’t need to be hit over the head with a fake leg cast! Hearing the curse, she bolted, but a few strides into her sprint a rotted log snared her foot and sent her sprawling into a young thicket of willows. Deaf to everything but the blood pumping in her ears, she scrambled to her feet just in time to confront a shadowy figure reaching for her. But Daisy would not be a victim. Not this time. Not ever again. Her hand shot toward her assailant and blasted cayenne-pepper bear repellant into his muzzy face!