The Blue Coyote (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries Book 2) (5 page)

“Look, Grannie Fran!” Joe
called back, pointing at a pasture they were passing.
Three
horses, all brown, grazed contentedly, glancing up only briefly and with little
interest at the odd creatures on wheels passing by.
They soon reached
another tree-lined stretch, rode over a small bridge spanning a creek, and
could see a clearing ahead with a bench.

“Break?” Mickey called back
and several yeses chorused in return. They parked their bikes along the trail,
pulled off helmets and opened water bottles. Frannie got a bag of animal
crackers out and offered them to the kids.

“What a perfect day!” Nancy
said and received vigorous agreement. A young family biked by, nodding and
waving, followed by a lone rider, thin wispy hair flying from under his helmet.

“Gran!” Sabet whispered, even
though the rider was already on down the path, “It’s the story-telling guy!”
She was right; Frannie had noticed he even had his ukelele strapped to the back
of his seat.

“Ready to ride?” Mickey
asked, wheezing a little. He thought of himself as wagon-master, but he was
looking a little pale. A long-time smoker who was trying to quit with only
intermittent success, he suffered from the beginning stages of COPD.

“Are
you
ready is the question,” Jane Ann said, looking at him with
concern. “You and I can go back, Mickey, if you’re not up to it.”

“If you decide to go back,
you could take my truck back to the campground,” Larry said. “I can call Jane
Ann for a ride when we get back.”

“No, no, no!” Mickey insisted.
“I’m fine. Somebody else lead and I’ll just ride a little slower.”

“I’ll ride with you,” Jane
Ann said and her tone was clear that she would brook no argument.

“It’s only about two or two
and a half miles to Limestone City,” Nancy said perusing the map.

Out of Mickey’s hearing,
Larry asked Ben to lead and slow the pace down a little, even though they had
been going a very moderate speed. They mounted their bikes and with only a
little confusion and wobbling, they got going again. Most of the rest of the trail
to Limestone City was shaded, which Frannie was glad of for Mickey’s sake, even
though heat was not the issue. As they came to the edge of town, some
hand-lettered cardboard signs, precariously mounted on one-by-twos, directed
them to the “flee” market at the county fairgrounds. Mickey took some ribbing
on that, being a retired English teacher, as if he was personally responsible
for the spelling skills hundreds of miles from where he had taught.

A few gaily striped canopies
and long tables piled with everything under the sun gave a feeling of a cross
between a medieval tournament and a giant yard sale. Frannie loved flea
markets—it boggled the mind the stuff people could put together to sell.
How did one accumulate hundreds of bottle openers?
Or dozens
of pairs of well-used tennis shoes?
Was there really a market for bows
and arrows or old magazines? There always was at least one table of original,
well-done crafts or beautiful woodworking and at least one table of Elvis
paintings on black velvet or gaudy macrame. She never bought much—the fun
was in the looking.

This time, her attention was
split a little between keeping an eye on the kids and checking out the wares.
Fortunately, they were as intent on examining every item as she was. Joe
spotted a table of wooden toys including a Rube Goldberg-type contraption
operated by rolling marbles. Nancy motioned them over to an area where the
ground seemed to sprout solar garden lamps made out of old dishes. Sabet was
taken with a collection of small, knitted purses with flaps that looked like
animal faces. They ambled along, nudging one another at spectacular or
ridiculous finds. Jane Ann bought a jar of homemade peach butter and Frannie
snatched up a beaded bracelet in shades of coral and yellow.

At the end of one row of
tables, a three-sided tent appeared to be under attack by a horde of kids. As
they neared, they caught the sound of a familiar voice. Bernie Reid, the
storyteller, held his audience spellbound with the help of a
hand-puppet
resembling an English bobby, who frequently bonked Reid on the head with a
small rubber nightstick and elicited howls of laughter from the kids. Circling
the kids
were
a number of adults, a few of whom
Frannie recognized from the campground. Sabet and Joe ducked through the crowd
to kneel in the front row for a better vantage point.

Frannie’s instinct was to
follow on their heels, but she thought better of it. The crowd was not that
big, and although she couldn’t actually see them, she could tell if they left
the area or if anyone else was talking to them. She forced herself to relax,
until she noticed that three men at one end of the group were the road workers,
including the one who had had been talking to Sabet. Seeing them at an event
aimed at children put her back on edge, although she told herself she had no
reason to feel that way. She blamed Sam with all his warnings for making her
uneasy.

The story ended, and after
enthusiastic applause, the children began to drift away with their parents.
Frannie craned her neck peering through the crowd and with relief saw Sabet and
Joe headed back to them. Mickey and Jane Ann came up behind.

“We’re thinking about some
lunch over at the food tent before we head back,” Mickey said.

“There’s a surprise,” Larry
answered. “You thinking about lunch, I mean.”

“Someone has to make sure we
don’t all starve to death,” Mickey replied.

Frannie knew this argument
could go on for hours. “Ben and Nancy are over watching that woodworker. Why
don’t you get them and we’ll herd the kids over to the food?”

The sign indicated that the
food tent was the effort of the local Presbyterian Church and offered a limited
but tempting menu. They seated themselves in a row on benches at a makeshift
paper-covered counter and agonized over their choices. Frannie ordered a
grilled pork chop sandwich and skipped the fries in favor of a piece of
homemade banana cream pie. All of those calories would disappear on the ride
back to the trucks, right? It didn’t matter; the rich, creamy,
made-from-scratch pie was worth every calorie. The kids opted for hot dogs and
fries while Larry ordered the “Largest Tenderloin in Iowa.”

Ben scoffed. “Every diner and
roadside joint in the state claims the same thing.”

“And it’s my mission to find
out the truth,” Larry told him.

After polishing off every
crumb and discarding their trash in nearby barrels, they decided to head back
to the bikes. Along the way, Joe begged his grandfather for and got a
marshmallow gun made out of white plastic pipe contorted in an elaborate
configuration. Sabet got one too, strictly for
self defense
,
no doubt. Since the purchases would be awkward to carry on their bikes, they
made arrangements to return with the truck to pick them up and then headed back
to the bike racks.

They discussed continuing on
the trail, but it was decided that the prudent thing to do would be to return
to the campground, allowing for afternoon naps for some. Frannie thought she
might take the kids hiking on one of the nice trails along the bluffs.

They met a few other bikers
on the path and returned to the parking lot without incident. After loading the
bikes and kids, Frannie and Larry drove back to Limestone City with the kids to
pick up the new weapons.

“Wow,” said Joe. “It’s a lot
faster in a truck than a bike!” Larry smiled at Joe’s obvious surprise at this
realization.

Larry parked near the ‘flee’
market, and Frannie elected to stay with the truck while he took the kids to
pick up their new purchases. After a filling lunch and strenuous exercise (for
her), she almost dozed off in the warmth of the cab. Sounds of an argument
drifted in through the open window, and she sat up as she realized it was the
three road crew guys from the campground, threading their way through the
parked vehicles to their own truck.

“What the hell, Don? You’re
going to get us all in trouble!” said one.

“What? I wasn’t gonna do
anything.” Don was the guy who had talked to Sabet the night before.

“Right!” replied the first
guy sarcastically. “Just like the last place. Why can’t you keep yourself under
control?”

Don mumbled a reply but they
had passed too far away for Frannie to make it out. Maybe her suspicions about
the trio weren’t so far-
fetched,
although it certainly
wasn’t clear from the conversation what ‘trouble’ Don was about to get them
into.

Larry arrived back with the
kids, each bearing a twisted contrivance with great pride. They maneuvered
their prizes into the small back seat and climbed in behind them. Frannie
cautioned, “Now if you shoot all of our marshmallows, we won’t be able to have
s’mores.”

“It doesn’t shoot
reg’lar
marshmallows, Gran. We have to
get some tiny ones,” Joe assured her.

“Mini-marshmallows? I have a
whole bag of those,” Frannie replied.

“But what if we run out?”

“Then you will have to pick
up the ones you already shot.”

“Oh.”

The rest of the way back to
the campground, they were busy plotting possible uses for the guns, and optimum
sites for ambushing their grandparents, the dogs, and other kids. They also
decided that Uncle Mickey would make a good target.

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

Happy Camper Tip #4

Marshmallow guns can be built
out of PVC pipe and reconfigured in dozens of ways. Instructions pepper the
Internet. Of course, there are now commercial variations, but the homemade
versions are simple and allow for more creativity. At the 2012 White House
Science Fair, President Obama delighted in firing an “Extreme Marshmallow
Cannon” in the State Dining Room. The cannon was invented by 14-year-old Joey
Hudy of Phoenix, Arizona and is operated by a bicycle pump. One caveat: we
encourage shooters to pick up and reuse the ammunition, and
not
to leave the marshmallows
(especially on a hot day) anywhere that they might stick to shoes and be
tracked into the camper.

Early Saturday Afternoon

At the campground, the
Ferraros and Terells had unloaded their bikes and Mickey and Ben were ensconced
in their reclining lounges with a radio between them. Nancy and Jane Ann sat at
the picnic table, browsing through cooking magazines and occasionally calling
attention to good recipe possibilities.

“Got the Iowa game on?” Larry
asked the other two men.

Ben nodded. “No score yet.”

Sabet and Joe placed their
new treasures on the ground and clambered up the steps of the trailer after
ammunition. How 80-pound children could manage to shake a 6,000-pound vehicle
was beyond Frannie’s scientific expertise. Probably why she had taught social
studies.

Larry picked up the guns and
placed them behind the pickup, grinning. The kids returned, Sabet clutching the
bag of marshmallows while Joe tried to grab it from his sister. They stopped
and looked around frantically for their weapons.

“Grandpa!” they both said in
unison.

Larry feigned innocence. “Why
me? Uncle Mickey’s the trickster in this group.”

“We
know
it was you,” Sabet insisted, arms folded, and Larry meekly
retrieved the guns from their hiding place.

“Let me see how they work,”
Larry said, holding his hand out for the gooey bullets. “I want to make sure
you kids don’t get hurt with these things.” Soon Larry and Ben were trying the
guns out on Mickey, who had dozed off and slept through the attack.

“I can see now we bought them
for the wrong kids,” Frannie commented to Nancy. Larry and Ben finally
surrendered the guns to the kids and Larry cautioned them against using any
targets other than trees and Uncle Mickey. The men returned to their chairs by
the radio. From the hysteria of the announcer, someone must be doing something
big in the game.

“Yes! Touchdown!” Larry
pumped his fist in the air. Apparently
the someone
was
the Iowa Hawkeyes. The outburst brought Mickey to a sitting position and Larry
leaned closer to the radio for the extra point. But the
announcer
was drowned out by the clamorous drone of training wheels
.

Larry sank back in his chair.
“This is too much.” He hoisted himself out of his chair and ambled toward the
road.

Frannie quickly followed him.
“Larry...?”

When she got to the road, he
was standing in the middle, arms folded, facing the direction the little girl
had gone. The offender had just reached the end of the road and as she turned
around, saw Larry standing there. She left her bike in the road and looking
around, spotted a woman just walking up from the tent loop. Larry could see her
talking to the woman while pointing back at him. Larry gave a little wave and
turned back to the campsite.

They looked expectantly at
him. He gave a shrug and said, “She’s ratting me out to a lady on the road. I
suppose I’m in trouble now. I think I’ll go to the can before the gendarmes
come for me.” And he headed to the path through the woods to the restrooms.

Frannie sighed and didn’t
know what to say. She shrugged at the rest and they sat uneasily, shifting and
searching for the comfort they had a few minutes before. Fifteen minutes
passed, Larry returned, but no sign of the girl or the ranger. The men went
back to the radio and the game. Joe, who had been busy using Cuba for
marshmallow practice, came to Frannie’s side.

“Grannie Fran?”

“Yes, Joe?”

“I thought we were going on a
hike.”

“Right. Get me that map on
the table and let’s pick out a trail.” She showed Joe where they were on the
map of the park and together they picked out a trail that led from the tent
loop along the bluffs to the river.

“We’d better take along water
bottles,” Sabet said seriously, “in case we get lost.”

“If we stay on the trail, we
won’t get lost,” Frannie assured her. “But water is a good idea anyway.”

They went into the camper,
found water bottles, and filled them. Frannie picked up her camera and her cell
phone. Phone reception wasn’t good in many areas of the park, but it wouldn’t
hurt to have it along.

“Anyone else joining us?” she
asked the group.

“Ummm...” “Nap, maybe...”
“Sore ankle...”

“Okay, okay—quit your
muttering. What a bunch of wet blankets! Sabet and Joe, ready?”

They
chorused
“Yes!” Frannie laid down the law about not taking the marshmallow guns, and
they set off.

With just a hint of crispness
in the air, the warm sun felt good as they ambled down the campground road.
Frannie especially appreciated it caressing a little sore spot in her
shoulder—one of those unexplained ailments that come with age. She
watched the kids scampering ahead of her and tried to remember feeling that
limber and pain-free, but to no avail. At the end of their loop, they turned
left into the tent loop.

The variety of abodes in this
area ran the gamut from small one-person domes to large tents with attached
screened rooms. And where white and tan predominated the RV area, here the riot
of color added an air of whimsy.
Campsites were peopled by a
few apparent loners, couples, and several families
. Frannie noticed a
woman whom she believed was the one the training wheel girl had approached for
help only a short time before. The woman sat reading in an aluminum lawn chair
in front of an old green and tan canvas tent and looked up from her book,
nodding pleasantly, as they passed. Frannie itched to ask her what the girl had
said and how it was resolved, but resisted the temptation. Let sleeping dogs
lie, right? She and the kids continued to the middle of the loop where a sign
between two bright colored nylon tents announced the trailhead.

Sabet and Joe raced down the
trail ahead of her so that she frequently had to yell to have them slow down or
wait for her to catch up. The trail here was wide and grassy—maybe also
used as a maintenance road. It was easy walking; a fact much appreciated by
Frannie. Tall ash and walnuts curved over the track, forming a canopy—and
occasionally depositing just enough black walnuts in their green seamless skins
on the trail to prevent her from becoming overconfident.

Ahead, the kids reached a
fork and hesitated. They had both picked up long branches to use as walking
sticks. A sign with a silhouette of a hiker indicated a narrower trail leading
down and to the left, while the wider track curved to the right. Joe tapped the
top of the sign with his stick, earnestly arguing some point with Sabet. They
looked back at Frannie; Sabet called “Gran?”

“Wait up! We’re going to go
down that trail,” she called back, pointing at the sign. They entertained
themselves by poking each other while waiting for her. When she caught up, she
put her finger on the junction on the map and showed them how the trail headed
down toward the river.

“Hold on, just a minute. Let
me take your picture by the sign.” They hammed it up, brandishing their sticks
while she snapped a couple of shots.

“Now, don’t get so far
ahead,” she cautioned. “You guys aren’t even looking at anything. There’s no
hurry and there’s some neat little caves in the ledges.”

“Wow. Indian caves?” asked
Joe.

“No, not big enough for
people. Maybe the animals use them.”

“Mountain lions, I bet,” Joe
said and Sabet gave her grandmother a
“Kids!”
look.

The path led downhill until
it reached the edge of the Bluffs River, where it split and went both
directions along the bank. The three held a short conference and decided to
follow the river
downstream
. A few golden leaves
danced along in the current as they wandered along, examining fallen logs and
odd-shaped rocks. The kids used their sticks to whack the trees and shrubs as
they passed and, thankfully, not each other. Sabet led the way up a steep
incline, using her stick for its original purpose, to the mouth of a small cave
high above the path. Frannie waited below and caught her breath once as Joe
lost his footing. But he regained it quickly and after they had peered inside,
they slid and skidded back down the hill, which Frannie captured with her
camera.

“No mountain lions,” Joe
reported, and they continued down the path.

Joe, in the lead, found a
sand bar protruding into the river. At the point, the river rushed around the
bar, and narrowed
into a small rapids
. Frannie’s heart
gave a little lurch as she saw him drop his stick, race to the point and
balance with one foot on a slippery rock in the water.

“Joe! Get back!”

He turned to look at her with
his Grinch grin.

“There’s like stepping stones
here,” he yelled pointing.

“But we’re not going to use
them. C’mon back to the path,” Frannie said.

Joe’s face fell.
“But—,” then he checked Frannie’s expression. “Okay.” But when he tried
to turn back to the path, his foot slipped, his arms pinwheeled, and down he
went. Sabet reached him first and hauled him up. The water wasn’t deep or fast
enough to pull him into the current but he got a good soaking.

Frannie reached them as Sabet
was saying, “You should have kept your stick, Joe—then you wouldn’t have
lost your balance.” Frannie resisted the urge to scold when she saw him
starting to shake in the cool fall air.

“Get his sweatshirt off,” she
told Sabet and pulled off her own hooded sweatshirt. As she pulled it over
Joe’s head, she saw a bruise beginning on his cheek and scrapes on both hands.
She rolled up the sleeves, hugged him, and headed him firmly back to the trail.
As they retraced their steps back to the campground, Frannie thought she could
hear Joe’s teeth chattering. In just a t-shirt, she was a little chilly
herself. Hurrying through the tent loop, she caught a few stares. She smiled
weakly and nodded in response. When they made the turn onto their own road, a
dark green pickup sat in the road by their campsite, surrounded by several
people. Frannie spotted the top of the ranger’s hat but didn’t recognize anyone
else.

When she got to the group,
she guided Joe around the outside of the people toward the trailer but was
puzzled by some angry looks on several of the strangers’ faces. Now she
recognized the parents of the training wheels girl in the middle of the group,
the mother looking rather frightened. Ranger Sommers was talking quietly with
Larry, who was gesturing cautiously, backed up by the rest of their friends.

“Sabet, take Joe in the
camper and help him find some dry clothes, okay?” Frannie said, and turned to
her husband and the ranger. “Larry, what’s going on?”

“The little girl who was
riding her bike past here—they can’t find her,” Larry said quietly.

“Oh, no,” Frannie said. “We
saw her talking to that woman down by the tent loop. Did anyone see her after
that?”

Mickey jumped in. “Her
parents think Larry has something to do with it!”

Ranger Sommers shook her
head. “No one’s accusing anyone—we’re just trying to track where she...”

“I am!” the mother
interrupted. “He’s a Blue Coyote! Taylor told me so last night!”

The ranger turned slowly. “A
Blue Coyote?” Even the eyebrows went up a little bit.

“Stranger Danger—it’s
our code word, and she told me he’s a Blue Coyote,” the mother insisted. “He
wouldn’t leave my daughter alone!”

“I just commented on the
training wheels—that she needed to get rid of them. The noise was very
annoying,” Larry said helplessly.

“You better check on that little
boy with them, too,” one of the mother’s companions almost yelled in the
ranger’s ear. “Did you see the bruise on his face?”

Frannie stood by, stunned.
What were these people accusing them of? Larry, a life dedicated to law
enforcement, a loving father and grandfather...of course, they didn’t know
that, but still the charges burned. She started to protest to the ranger but
Sommers waved her away.

“Whoa—let’s calm down
here,” Ranger Sommers turned to face the parents and their friends. “Mrs.
Trats, the important thing is to find your daughter and wild accusations aren’t
going to help. I’m going to ask you to return to your campsite while I talk to
these people a little longer. The county sheriff will be arriving soon and will
want to talk to you. We need to get search parties organized—it’s very
likely your daughter wandered off and got disoriented.”

“But, you can’t just
let—“

“I
need
your cooperation, Mrs. Trats. We are accomplishing nothing
standing here arguing. Please go back to your campsite and I will be there in a
few minutes.”

“Fine!” Mrs. Trats spat out
the word and turned on her heel. The others reluctantly followed.

Ranger Sommers moved closer
to Larry and Frannie’s trailer and motioned Larry to follow.

“I remember you now from Bat
Cave State Park last summer. You are the retired cop, right? Sorry, I’ve
forgotten your name,” the ranger said.

“Larry Shoemaker,” he held
out his hand.

She ignored, or didn’t
notice, his hand. “So you’ve had no contact with this child other than talking
to her when she rode past here?”