The Blue Coyote (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries Book 2) (10 page)

He sat up straight and looked
at her. “Thanks for the support and reassurance.”

“I didn’t mean...”

“Never mind, you’re right.”
But his tone didn’t agree with his words. “I’m going to bed,” he said
pointedly, meaning she was in his way. She got up, went back to her side,
changed into warm pajamas and crawled under the covers. Larry lay with his back
to her, shoulders stiff. She stared at the ceiling.

******************

Happy Camper Tip #9

Camping with kids can be
loads of fun but challenging as well.
Safety first, of
course.
Give them clear instructions on what to do if they get lost,
starting with staying where they are. Some websites suggest having young
children wear whistles around their necks so they can call for help when lost.
The standard distress signal is three blows to
indicate
“I’m lost” or “I need help.”

To keep some semblance of order,
it is helpful if they each have a drawer or shelf for their things. They don’t
usually realize how clutter creates much more of a problem in a small living
space than in a home.

In this day and age, it’s
often a struggle to get them away from the electronics and outside interacting
with others. We have more success with putting a time limit on the video games
than outlawing them altogether.

Kids love flashlights. They
are handy when making trips to the restroom, for making shadow puppets on tent
walls, and for reading before bed. And of course, there’s Flashlight Tag and
Flashlight Statue.

Early Sunday Morning

Frannie awoke to gray light
through the blinds and a soft whisper of rain on the trailer roof. She relished
the sound, the coziness of the flannel sheets and comforter, and the warmth of
Larry’s body sharing the bed. It was peaceful and the bed was so comfortable,
she almost felt a kind of weightlessness. But as she drifted between sleep and
consciousness, the elephant in the room began to emerge from the gray mist and
take solid shape. The disappearance of Taylor Trats, the accusations, the visit
from Social Services, the fear for Sabet and Joe, the argument with Larry. Was
it only yesterday morning that they had all shared the pleasant bike ride and
the fun of the flea market?
Hard to believe.

She checked her watch.
Six-thirty. She heard a rustle through the doorway curtain. Cuba negotiated the
narrow space between bed and wall and nuzzled her face.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I’m
getting up.” Groping for her glasses, she swung her legs out, slipped her feet
in fleece-lined moccasins and eased up to a standing position. She coaxed Cuba
back out the bedroom door and in the half-light, found her hooded windbreaker
on the hook by the bathroom door.

The children were buried in
heaps of sleeping bags and extra blankets. The dog preceded her out the door
and stood patiently while she hooked up the leash that had been hanging on the
awning strut. The rain wasn’t much more than a heavy mist yet.

Frannie noticed more campers
than usual had left outside lights on overnight, indicating the level of
nervousness in the campground. She walked Cuba over to an open area behind the
campsites across the road. Chores done and cleaned up, they returned to the
trailer and she tethered the dog under the awning. Back inside, she yawned as
she retrieved the coffee pot from the cupboard and filled it from a jug of
drinking water. She tried to work quietly to avoid waking the kids and turned
to check on them.

Sabet lay curled in her
sleeping bag, snarled blonde hair spraying out across the pillow. Joe was
completely hidden, a habit of his since he was a baby. She went to pull back
the edge of the sleeping bag to give him a little fresh air and found nothing.
No scrubby blonde head, to-die-for eyelashes, or rosy cheeks.

She pulled the bag back
farther, her insides churning. The fear she felt earlier in the summer trying
to escape from a murderer didn’t hold a candle to this. Joe was not in his bed.

Frannie straightened up,
trying to think. The door was unlocked when she took the dog out. It hadn’t
registered at the time because normally they never locked the door when they
were in the camper. But she had watched Larry lock it the night before. It was
not like a house door that unlocked just by turning the knob from the inside;
you had to push the latch up to unlock it.

She rushed back to the
bedroom and clutched Larry’s arm. “Larry! Wake up! Joe’s gone!” The words
choked her, and as he bolted up, she realized how cold her hand was on his
skin.

“Wha—?” He looked at
her as if he couldn’t place her.

“Joe!” she said, tears
starting. “He’s not here.” She backed up so that he could get out of bed.

“Did you look outside?” He
was now fully awake, and jerked open the half-closet above his nightstand,
grabbing sweats and pulling them on.

“Not yet! I just came in from
taking Cuba out. I didn’t notice before I went out that he wasn’t here.”

He ushered her out of the
bedroom ahead of him. “But I locked the door last night.”

“I know, but it wasn’t locked
this morning when I went out with the dog.”

Larry stopped and looked at
her. “Well, he must have unlocked it—maybe he went to the restroom.”

“Maybe, but he knows we
always use this one at night.” Maybe, just maybe, Larry was right. The icy grip
on her heart let up a nano bit.

Sabet was stirring so Larry
motioned Frannie outside.

When they were outside and
the door closed, he said, “I’ll go check the shower house. You look around
here.”

“But I can’t leave Sabet
alone. Not now. I’ll get Jane Ann to come over—maybe he even went to
their camper,” she said hopefully, heading to the Ferraros.

Larry trotted down the short
cut path to the shower house, calling Joe’s name. Frannie pounded on Ferraros
door and without waiting for a response, tried the latch. It opened, and she
stuck her head in.

“Jane Ann! Mickey!”

Their bed was a fold down
sofa near the door and Jane Ann raised her head immediately while Mickey
grumbled and rolled over.

“What is it?” Jane asked,
alarmed at Frannie’s face.

“Joe’s gone! Can you come
stay with Sabet while we look?”

“Of course!” Jane Ann slipped
out of bed and grabbed a hooded sweatshirt, pulling it on over her flannel
pajamas. Mickey stirred a little more and Jane Ann gave him a terse replay of
the situation as she followed Frannie out the door.

“I’ll be right there,” he
mumbled.

“What happened?” Jane Ann
asked. The rain had decided to get a little more serious and water dripped from
the hood of Frannie’s windbreaker, while Jane Ann’s uncovered hair
uncharacteristically created a wild halo.

“I just got up a little bit
ago and took Cuba out. There was a heap of blankets on his bed and you know how
he often sleeps completely covered. When I came back in, I went to uncover his
face a little and—he wasn’t there,” Frannie’s voice choked again. “Larry
went to check the restrooms—“

“Morning, ladies,” Ben came
around the end of the camper, and then noticed their faces. “Something wrong?”

Frannie told a briefer
version of the story.

“I’ll get Nancy and we’ll
check out the other loops,” he said. In the next few minutes, Larry returned to
report no sign of Joe, Mickey stumbled out of his RV and joined the group, and
everyone talked at once about how to organize the search. Ben returned with
Nancy, and Larry held up a hand.

“I need to get the ranger and
Agent Sanchez—I don’t have phone numbers for them. Nancy, divide everyone
else up to cover the campground, okay? Jane Ann, you’re going to stay with
Sabet? Then everyone can report back to you where they’ve looked.”

He ducked into the trailer to
grab the truck keys off the hook above the door. Nancy gathered Mickey, Ben,
and Frannie around, assigning each a loop of the campground. They spread out in
different directions, Frannie headed down the road to the tent loop. Larry
opened the driver’s door of the truck. He hesitated; then
shouted
“Wait!” to the rest of the group. He reached in and pulled a small body out.
“Here he is!”

Frannie ran back to the
truck, tears running down her face. Joe clung to his grandfather’s neck while
giving Frannie a tentative Grinch smile.

“Hi,” he said.

“Oh, Joe, you gave us such a
scare! Let’s get him inside—the rain is picking up,” Frannie said. She
and the others trooped behind Larry into the trailer. Jane Ann and Sabet were
just folding the couch. Larry sat in the rocker-recliner with Joe on his lap
and Frannie grabbed a fleece blanket and wrapped it around the shivering boy.

“Joe, dear, what were you
doing in the truck?” she said, kneeling by the chair and peering into his face.

He shrugged. “I dunno.”

“You don’t remember going out
there?” He shook his head.

“Didn’t he used to sleep walk
a lot?” Jane Ann asked.

Frannie stood up. “He
did—and they would find him all over the house, and once even outside, I
think. I thought he hadn’t done it for a long time though.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sabet said, “
he
still does it. One time he was asleep on the stairs and I
almost
stepped
on him!” She rolled
her eyes at the trials and tribulations of being a big sister.

Frannie suddenly started to
shake and felt her knees give way. “I think I’ll sit down,” she said and
collapsed on the couch. Nancy had folded the blankets on the dinette bed and
Ben was helping her to raise the table back up and replace the dinette
cushions. Mickey finished making the pot of coffee and plugged it in. Jane Ann,
a retired nurse, grabbed Frannie’s wrist and checked her pulse.

“Well, you’re not dead yet,”
she told Frannie, who looked back at her with glazed eyes. Gradually she
focused in on Jane Ann’s face and started to giggle. The laughter built until tears
were streaming down her face.

“
Now
what?” Jane Ann said.

“I have never seen your hair
look that bad in all the time I’ve known you,” she managed to gasp. Everyone
looked at Jane Ann.

“She’s right,” Nancy said.
“Is this maybe the End of Days?”

Mickey turned back from
rummaging for coffee mugs in the overhead cabinets and gave his wife a quick
scan. “Aw, she looks like that a lot of times.”

“True,” said Larry, grinning
at his sister. “I remember one time—”

“Enough,” said Jane Ann.

Frannie looked around at the
group crammed in the small space. The shared relief at finding Joe combined
with the patter of the rain on the trailer roof seemed to settle on and enfold
them like a warm blanket on a chilly day.

“Thank you all,” she said.

“I’m making pancakes for breakfast,”
Mickey said. “I’ll have them ready in about half an hour, okay? Our place.”

“Cool,” Sabet said. “I love
Uncle Mickey’s pancakes.”

“Half-hour’s good,” said
Frannie. “Joe needs to change into warm clothes. What can we bring?”

“Nothing,” Jane Ann said as
she followed her husband out the door.

“We’ll get out of your way,
too,” Nancy said. “And Joe, don’t get lost again, okay?”

Joe was finally fully awake.
“I knew where I was.” Nancy just shook her head and grinned.

Like the old children’s tale,
cramming the trailer full of people made it
seem
positively spacious when there were only four left. Frannie poured herself some
coffee while Larry found Joe some dry clothes in his backpack. Sabet took her
clothes into the bedroom to dress.

Larry kneaded the back of
Frannie’s neck as she stood by the sink sipping coffee. “Not exactly what we
needed this
morning,
was it?”

“Oh, migosh,” Frannie said.
“At least we didn’t get the sheriff and a search party involved before we found
him. We’d lose our Golden Age passes.”

“Those are for the federal
parks.”

“They’d probably take ‘em
away anyhow. Just on principle. And Social Services would have been back,” she
said. She sent the kids in, one at a time, to brush their teeth, while she
gathered up their
back packs
and duffel bags in one
place. Larry turned the TV on to get the weather.

“Looks like the rain’s about
out of here.” He watched the colored blobs zip across the radar. The screen
switched from the weatherman to the news anchor.

“We have an update on the
Amber Alert that we reported on at the top of this broadcast,” said the
stunning blonde with perfect teeth in a little girl voice. A school picture of
Taylor Trats filled the screen. “Authorities state that they are looking for
George Trats, Taylor’s father, in connection with Taylor’s disappearance.
Taylor’s mother has full custody of the young girl and sources say her father
has tried before to reverse that order. In other news...” Larry switched the TV
off.

“Well,” Frannie said, “that
would be a best case scenario, wouldn’t it? At least she wouldn’t be in
danger.”

“One would hope not,” Larry
answered, not fully convinced.

The kids had completed
dressing. “Can we go to Uncle Mickey’s now for pancakes?” Joe asked.

“Yup,” Frannie said, “but
it’s still raining, so put your jackets on.” They struggled into their
windbreakers, racing to be first.

“What about Cuba?” Sabet
said.

“She’ll stay here. Not enough
room in Mickey’s camper with all of us,” Larry said. “Besides, pancakes aren’t
good for her.”

Sabet knelt down to hug the
dog. “Poor Cuba. I bet you would like pancakes, wouldn’t you?” She put her
hands on either side of Cuba’s face and gently moved the dog’s head up and
down. “See?”

“Sorry,” Frannie said,
smiling at Sabet. “But she won’t know what she’s missing.” They ushered the
kids out and pulled their hoods up as they dodged across through a few puddles
to the 'Red Rocket'.

Ben and Nancy were already
there and helped the kids out of their jackets. They piled all of the wet
outerwear in the shower and stood sniffing the welcoming aroma of pancakes,
sausage and syrup.

“Find a
seat—somewhere,” Jane Ann said. She had harnessed her hair into a
pony tail
and pulled on some black sweats.

“You didn’t have to dress up
for us, Sis,” Larry said.

“Shut up,” she answered.

“Good comeback.”

“You’re not supposed to say
shut up, Aunt Jane Ann,” Joe informed her, in case she didn’t know.