The Blue Coyote (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries Book 2) (3 page)

Joe nodded his head
vigorously while Sabet said, “Ewww!” Whereupon her grandfather grabbed her
lightly on the back of the neck and she jumped and screeched.

“Larry!” Frannie admonished
him.

“What time is that?” Jane Ann
asked.

“Seven.”

“Plenty of time,” Frannie
said, checking the stew in the cast iron
dutch
oven on
the fire. “This is about ready.”

The assortment of tableware
was arranged on the long picnic table, covered with a yellow plaid vinyl
tablecloth. Nancy placed a basket with steaming biscuits wrapped in a homespun
cloth in the center and Jane Ann contributed a bowl of coleslaw. Everyone found
seats and Frannie began to ladle out the stew with Cuba standing at her side
fixated on the spoon. A familiar grating sound started building to a crescendo.

“Oh, no,” said Mickey. “Here
she comes again.”

“You would think...” Larry
began but was drowned out by the noise. Finally the bike progressed far enough
that conversation could continue.

“I love this stew,” Nancy
said. “Why did you cook it over the fire this time? What happened to
Stew
in the Sink?”

Frannie laughed. “Well, that
was what I thought was a great idea that I found online. You put a meal in a slow
cooker, secure the lid with a bunge cord, set the pot in the sink of your
camper and plug it in before you travel. In theory, it cooks while you are on
the road and is ready for supper when you arrive.”

“I remember,” Nancy said.
“And you did it several times. It was great!”

“We thought so
too—especially with this recipe,” Frannie answered. “But then this summer
someone told me that the outlets in a camper don’t work on the road because
they don’t run off the batteries.” She paused as the grinding noise built again
and waited for it to pass. “What I was actually doing was starting the stew at
home and putting it in the camper when the power was still plugged in. It would
cook until we pulled out. We would usually take off in the afternoon, drive a
couple of hours, and by the time we got to our destination, plugged the camper
back in, and got everything set up, it was hot and ready to eat.” She laughed
again. “Actually, we discovered it wasn’t cooking at all while we were
traveling. Lucky we didn’t get food poisoning—I guess because the trips
weren’t very long.”

“Really!” Nancy said. “It
must have stayed hot enough to keep cooking a little, though.”

“I guess. But now I’m afraid
to chance it. So I cooked it at home and Mickey reheated it. Since you reminded
him,” she finished with a grin.

“Oh, the challenges we brave
in the wilderness!” Ben said, scooping a generous helping of the stew onto his
plate.

Rasp, rattle, grind. The
purple bike labored by again.

“Everyone bring bikes?
There’s a good trail here,” Larry said, making a concerted effort to ignore the
obvious. Everyone had.

“There’s a great little golf
course near here, too,” Mickey offered. “You guys bring clubs?”

“I put them in once but
Frannie threw them out,” Larry said.

“Right. You just never
thought of it,” Frannie answered.

“You threw out Grandpa’s golf
clubs?” Joe asked Frannie, just now picking up on the conversation.

“No, I did not. Joe, you have
to understand that when these guys get together, you can’t believe anything
they say.” Sabet giggled at her grandmother’s comment.

Larry grabbed another biscuit
and said, “These are great, Nancy. How’s work going, Ben?”

Ben groaned. “Football
season, you know. Lots of high school injuries.”

“You just hired another
therapist, though, didn’t you?” Mickey asked.

“Yeah, and I think he’s going
to be great. He’s Connie Calhoun’s
nephew,
grew up in
Des Moines.”

“Really? That’s nice for
him—that he knows someone, I mean,” Frannie said.

“Actually, he’s staying with
the Calhouns until he finds an apartment.”

Jane Ann brought out a
rhubarb pie and offered it around.

“Where did you get rhubarb at
this time of year?” Nancy asked.

“I didn’t. I had the pie in
the freezer.”

“Wow, even better!” Frannie
said. Fortunately,
they were distracted by the pie
when the purple bike made two more passes. As they finished eating, Sabet
leaned over and whispered loudly to Frannie, “Gran, I need to go to the
bathroom.”

Larry turned to Joe. “I think
you and I are the dishwashing committee for tonight—okay?”

Joe agreed enthusiastically.
Frannie had noticed through the years that children are always eager to do
chores until they are old enough to be good at them. She said, “We’ll ride our
bikes over to the shower house and you guys can catch up with us when you’re
done. Then we can do our little ride around the campground before the nature
talk.” They tended to use the campground facilities during the day to save on
their own limited water supplies.
As Larry and Joe started
clearing the dishes, Frannie and Sabet high-fived each other and got their
bikes and helmets.

“Gran, I think the boys
should
always
do the dishes,” Sabet
said as they walked their bikes over to the Barnes’ campsite.

“Absolutely. And then we can
just ride off into the sunset.”

“Actually, the sunset is the
other way,” Sabet pointed out.

“It won’t be when we get
around the corner.”

Tessa was waiting for them
with her bike and helmet. They mounted their bikes and headed down the road.

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

Happy Camper Tip #2

Turkey-Thigh Meat
Stew—One of our favorite camping meals, thanks to friend Linda. In a
large cast iron Dutch oven or slow-cooker crock, whisk together 1 can of tomato
soup, 1 cup of red wine or turkey broth, and 1
/4 cup
flour. Add 3 pounds cubed turkey thigh meat, 3 carrots, cut diagonally in
1-inch slices; 2 onions, quartered; 4 potatoes, coarsely chopped; ½ cup
coarsely chopped celery; 8 whole mushrooms; 2 beef bouillon cubes; 1 tablespoon
Italian seasoning; 1 bay leaf; and salt and black pepper to taste. Stir to
combine.

Cover and cook over the fire
for 1-2 hours, stirring frequently until turkey is tender or cook in slow
cooker on low for 8-10 hours.

Friday Evening

The evening promised to be
cool and crisp, and dusk was fast approaching as they rode along, checking out
other camping groups and units. When they got to the corner where their loop
joined the main campground road, they came to the host site, festooned as usual
with a wide variety of lawn ornaments.
A late middle-aged
couple were
sitting in lawn chairs in front of their fifth-wheel
trailer.

Frannie nodded and said,
“Nice evening.” The woman replied but Frannie didn’t hear what she said, so she
stopped and straddled her bike. “Pardon?”

“I said
,
there’s a good program at the nature center tonight that your little girls
might want to see.”

“Oh, yes, we saw the flyer.
We were already planning on that.”

“Good. We try to let everyone
know what’s going on. They have some good programs here.”

“Thanks. Have a nice
evening,” Frannie climbed back on her bike, looking ahead to see what had happened
to Sabet and Tessa. They had stopped their bikes a couple of sites down when
they realized Frannie
wasn’t
behind them. Two
middle-aged men in safety orange vests stood arguing and sipping beer near a
small, shabby trailer. A third twenty-something man was talking to Sabet and
Tessa. The dark shock of curls falling on his forehead, perfect smile and
flashing eyes brought to mind a singer in one of the boy bands of the week that
Sabet followed. As Frannie approached them, he ducked his head and moved away
from the girls. Frannie nodded to the men, and tried unsuccessfully to catch
the younger man’s eye, hoping to convey her displeasure. She said to Sabet,
“We’d better keep going.” They continued toward the shower house.

Ahead of them a young mother
herded a toddler along the road. Sabet looked at her grandmother and Tessa,
giggling at the tiny girl’s strut and wanderings criss-crossing the road. The
little girl wore patterned tights, a hot pink flouncy skirt, and a long-sleeved
purple shirt stretched taut over her little round belly. She tottered along
with her left hand behind her arched back, palm out, and her right arm swinging
at her side like an out-of-control metronome. She looked like an official
inspector and indeed frequently stopped to examine some intriguing item on the
ground.

They soon caught up with the
mother, exchanging pleasantries as they passed. The mother again waited
patiently while her daughter completed her examination of a couple of ants
crossing the road.

Several campers had fall
decorations by their campsites—a small scarecrow leaning on a stack of
pumpkins, a miniature hay bale,
orange
and yellow
lights glowing from their awnings. It never failed to amaze Frannie what
efforts people put into a weekend sojourn.

Before they reached the
shower house, they noticed a path off to the side leading through the woods to
their loop.

“Look, Gran, a shortcut!”
Sabet said. Frannie hesitated a moment, remembering a path she and another
camping friend, Donna Nowak, had followed months before that had put their
lives in danger. But they could easily see their campers and Larry and Mickey
milling around the fire through the trees, so she quickly put aside those
thoughts and said, “That will be handy.”

While they were washing their
hands after using the restrooms, Frannie asked Sabet, “What was that man back
there talking to you about?”

“What man? Oh, the guy in the
orange vest?”

Frannie nodded.

“He was just asking us stuff,
like where we are from and where we are camped...like that.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I was from Cedar
Rapids but I didn’t tell him my name or anything. I know you’re not supposed to
do that,” she said. The word “Duh” was implied.

“Did he say why they are
here?”

“They’re repairing a highway
somewhere around here.” Sabet shrugged.

Frannie made a mental note to
make sure Sabet was always with someone else this weekend. She felt like Sam
was looking over her shoulder, wagging his finger.

When they came out of the
restrooms, Larry and Joe were just coming around the curve on their bikes.
Frannie, Sabet, and Tessa joined them and they continued around the campground,
commenting on the special fall decorations and making a mental note for the
future of particularly good campsites. Back at their own site, the Terells and
Ferraros had donned sweatshirts and jackets in preparation for the walk to the
nature center.

Larry started hunting through
Joe’s
back pack
for a sweatshirt.

“Well, if we come across a
native tribe that trades diamonds and furs for Matchbox cars, we’ll have it
made,” he told Frannie.

“And that happens a lot
around here,” she replied, smirking.

“We looked over that flier
that Nancy picked up,” Ben said. “There’s not only a ranger talk on snakes, but
also a storyteller tonight.”

“Oh, the kids will love
that,” Frannie said.

“Love what?” asked Sabet.

“A surprise, Miss Big Ears.”

“Ohhh, Gran!” she whined.

Frannie went inside and
pulled on a rusty red fleece pullover. She brushed her teeth and ran a comb
through her short, thick salt and pepper curls. When she got back outside, Cuba
and Chloe had been secured to their tethers and the whole group set off toward
the nature center just outside the campground entrance. Other campers were
headed the same direction, including Tessa and her family. Tessa joined Sabet
and the two whispered, heads together, giggling and pushing. Tessa started
strutting, hand behind her back, mimicking the toddler they had seen earlier on
the bike ride. Sabet folded over in laughter, halting the parade behind her.

Mickey, walking just behind
the girls, said loudly, “I sure hope we get to hold the snakes!”

Sabet glanced back sideways
at him. “Ewww.”

“I knew she was going to say
that,” he told Jane Ann.

The nature center was a
simple rectangular building with one wall of glass cages. Posters of insects,
turtles, and wildflowers lined the walls in between windows looking out at the
surrounding woods. Thirty or forty campers had already taken seats on the
benches that were lined up in rows facing the front. There a woman ranger
visited with another DNR official and a slender man with longish gray hair and
a flamboyant mustache. The Shoemakers’ group filed into a row in the middle and
Frannie took another look at the small group in the front. She nudged Larry.

“Isn’t that the ranger who
was called in to help at Bat Cave when the storm came through? Sommers, I think
her name was?”

Larry studied the woman. “I
think you’re right. She was only there that one night, right?”

“Yeah.”

Sabet and Tessa sat at one
end of the bench, still carrying on. Joe’s nose was a little out of joint at
being left out by the girls. “Grandpa, I can’t see,” he said. “Can I sit in
your lap?”

“Sure.” He swung the boy up
on his knee. “Good grief, Joe. You’ve been eating too much macaroni and cheese.
Pretty soon I’m going to have to sit in
your
lap.” Joe looked up at him and gave his little Grinch smile.

“You’re just kidding me.”

The DNR person called for
everyone’s attention and introduced Ranger Sommers. The ranger gave an
excellent talk on the snakes found in the park, showing live examples, each one
eliciting another “Ewww” from Sabet.

Ranger Sommers then
introduced the wild mustache as Bernie Reid, storyteller. Mr. Reid pulled up a
tall wooden stool and half sat, half leaned on it, holding
a
ukelele. He started speaking slowly about holiday dinners at his Uncle Junior’s
(a given name, he insisted) when he was a child. The story involved a
particularly raucous Thanksgiving when Uncle Junior had made such a pet of the
turkey that he couldn’t bring himself to butcher it and the bird in question
ended up running the length of the table in its live state, doing unspeakable
things to the pumpkin pie and cranberries.

Reid’s voice grew louder and
his cadence faster as the drama unfolded, and he used the ukelele to punctuate
his sentences. He had the rapt attention of his audience and the children were
particularly enthralled. At the end of the story, the family headed for Colonel
Sanders’ with all of the children and the turkey in the back of a blue pickup.
Reid said that he didn’t know what the turkey ordered for supper. The audience
clapped wildly at the end and persuaded Reid to do a couple of short encores,
but finally he held up his hands, still holding the ukelele, and bowed his way
to the back of the room.

The audience milled around
afterward laughing and doing their own instant replays. Frannie looked around
for the kids. Joe was hovering by Larry but Sabet and Tessa had wiggled their
way into the cluster of admirers around Bernie Reid. Frannie was not surprised;
Sabet was a bookworm and always had been. She loved to make up stories herself,
and better yet, act them out. Frannie moved over to the group just in time to
hear Sabet ask the storyteller if he ever made up stories.

He gave her a wink. “Oh,
little one, they’re all true—somewhere, sometime!” And he threw back his
head and broke into an infectious laugh that wrapped around the crowd and
brought them along. Sabet looked puzzled a minute
;
then a slow grin spread across her face. She caught Frannie snapping her
picture and wiggled back out of the crowd to join her grandmother.

“I think he means that every
possible story has already happened,” she confided.

Once again, Sabet’s
understanding took Frannie aback. She nodded, but was not ready to let go of
the small child in her granddaughter and accept the adult beginning to emerge.

“I wonder how you get to be a
storyteller,” Sabet went on. “That would be a
cool
job.”

Frannie nodded again. “Maybe
you can ask him later.”

“He had sort of a goth tattoo
on his arm, too. Awesome.”

Frannie smiled, thinking that
probably a job as a storyteller and a
goth
tattoo were
not in Sam and Beth’s career plans for their daughter. They joined the crowd
that gradually spilled out the door into the star-filled night. Decorative
lights of various colors twinkled here and there throughout the campground.
There was a chill in the air that, along with the smell of woodsmoke and
scuffle of leaves underfoot, made Frannie think of high school football games
in her long-ago youth.

As they caught up with the
rest of their group, the cell phone in Frannie’s pocket erupted like a frog.
She jumped and at first couldn’t identify what it was. Sabet and Joe started to
giggle.

“It’s your phone, Grannie
Fran!” Joe shouted, pointing to her pocket.

She fumbled in her pocket.
“My phone doesn’t sound like that.” But when she pulled it out, sure enough,
the lit screen indicated she had a text message from Sam.

Before she opened it, she
looked at the kids. “My sister changed your ring,” Joe told her proudly, while
Sabet gave her a sideways look trying to determine how much trouble she was in.
Frannie tried to look stern but the corners of her mouth betrayed her. It
didn’t help that the rest of the group could hardly contain themselves. She
opened the message.

“It’s from your dad.” She tried
to make it sound like he already knew what the kids had been up to. Obviously,
from
their
faces, she wasn’t fooling anyone.

“What does he say?” Sabet
asked innocently.

“Just wonders how you’re
getting along.”

“Can we call him?” Joe said.

“We will when we get back to
the campsite.”

As they passed the site where
the man had been talking to Sabet earlier, Frannie quietly told Larry about it.

“Quite a few of those crews
camp while they’re on the job. Remember when we were at that county park in
Minnesota and there were several guys there who were working on I-90? They said
they would move about every two weeks to a different campground,” he said.

They continued back to their
campsite, dropping Tessa at hers. Frannie called Sam’s number and briefly
summed up what they had been doing so far. She did not mention Sabet’s
manipulation of her phone. Each of the kids talked to their dad in turn, giving
enthusiastic reports on the campground and the storyteller. Then, of course,
they each had to talk to their mother.

Ben and Larry stoked the fire
while the rest moved chairs in closer and Mickey went in his camper to get his
guitar. The mood changed from the hilarity of the storyteller the hour before
to almost melancholy as they sang the old songs softly—dusty camp songs
like “Honey” and classics like “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”

Finally Sabet said, “Don’t
you guys know any
fun
songs?” So they
sang the Chicago fire song and “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.”

Larry stood up, rubbing his
back. “I need to take Cuba on a little walk and then maybe we could have some
s’mores.” He looked pointedly at the kids, who cheered.