by Deb Baker
I kept my eyes on the truck. It still had the lights and siren on the roof and I was going to need that. Someone had peeled off the Sheriff’s Department lettering but I could still read what it had said since it was a different shade of yellow from the rest of the truck.
“Five hundred dollars,” I called out.
The auctioneer’s head swung in my direction. “We’re starting the bidding out at eight hundred. That’s rock bottom.”
“Then I’m bidding rock bottom,” I said.
Rock bottom went once, twice, three times. Sold to the little red-haired lady in the orange suspender pants.
That was me, although my hair is more a light copper shade than actual red.
I grinned to beat the band.
****
“How are we going to get both your new truck and Little Donny’s car home?” Cora Mae wanted to know.
“That’s why I brought you along,” I said. “The truck is an automatic. You’ll be able to drive it. I’ll drive Little Donny’s car with the stick shift and you can follow me in the truck.”
“But I never renewed my driver’s license. I don’t have one.”
“Neither do I, but in case you haven’t noticed, I drive just fine.” Which was sort of a lie. I’ve had a few scary moments and I’ve done a little damage, mostly to my own property. My first attempt at driving was in Barney’s old truck, and I only drove it for a week before I rolled it into a ditch. “There’s no other way to do it, Cora Mae. You have to.”
I paid up, filled out the required forms, and motioned Cora Mae to hop into the passenger seat of my new truck. I drove it out the side gate of the fairgrounds, around the block, and parked next to Little Donny’s car. I pulled a screwdriver from the back seat of the Escort and screwed Barney’s old truck plates onto my bright yellow truck.
After taking all this in without lifting a manicured finger to help, Cora Mae slid into the driver’s seat of my new business vehicle and waited to follow me in the Ford Escort. My grandson’s car jumped and lurched onto the road. I ground the gears, the engine roared, I popped the clutch, and the car tore off.
I was going to have whiplash before I got this piece of junk back to Little Donny.
Before leaving Escanaba I turned into the parking lot at the hardware store, with Cora Mae trailing in the yellow truck.
“I’ll be right back,” I yelled to her and hitched my heavy purse up on my shoulder.
The purse hung as heavy as a bucketful of well water, but it was a critical part of my summer wardrobe. It’s a lot easier to stash concealed weapons in the wintertime than in the summer. In the winter, I wear a fishing vest under my hunting jacket and fill all those little pockets with everything I need. I didn’t have that choice when the hot weather rolls around.
Moments later I came out of the hardware store carrying a lettering kit with sheets of black letters in different sizes.
“Let’s hit it,” I called to Cora Mae.
****
I saw the commotion as soon as I turned down Old Peterson Road. Cora Mae, following behind, almost hit me when I slowed suddenly. Sheriff and fire vehicles jammed the road, all trying to one-up each other by running every strobe light they had. An ambulance, off to the side of the road, was surrounded by deputies. One lane was sectioned off and guarded by a group of men I recognized as assistant deputy volunteers. Blaze had recruited them when he was reelected last year.
Word in the U.P. travels faster than a skunked dog races for home. About thirty spectators had gathered, not much of a crowd yet, which meant this was fresh-breaking news.
I pulled over, careful to leave room between Little Donny’s Ford Escort and the next vehicle so I could get out. Cora Mae parked behind me. I ran back to my new truck, opened the driver’s door and reached past Cora Mae to flip the lights and siren switches. Might as well join the action. If I looked official I might be able to drive right into the middle of the commotion.
Nothing happened. I flipped the switches three more times before I gave up. “Dang,” I muttered. “Nothing ever works when you need it.”
Cora Mae teetered behind me in her spiked heels as I elbowed my way to the front of the group.
“Gertie Johnson,” I said, identifying myself to the volunteer deputy facing me. “I have clearance to move through.”
“I’m sorry, but I have orders from Blaze and he says everyone stays on that side of the line.” He stretched his arms out along the rope.
“I’m the sheriff’s mother, do you know that?” He didn’t flinch when I tried to intimidate him with my most threatening expression.
“Yes, ma’am, I know, but Blaze said nobody can pass. He didn’t leave special instructions for you.”
Time to switch tactics. “What happened here?” I asked him sweetly. I scanned the crowd of officials, looking for Blaze. The volunteer, busy holding his line, didn’t respond, so I turned back to the crowd. “Does anybody know what’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” a man next to me said. He pointed off in the direction of the woods. “They carried someone out on a stretcher a little while ago. I’m guessing it was a dead body considerin’ the way it was covered up head to toe with a blanket, eh.”
“Dead hunter, for sure,” someone said.
“Car accident,” a woman offered.
“No crashed car around here,” someone else said. “It’s a dead hunter.”
Something inside of me wanted to scream. I grabbed Cora Mae by the arm and squeezed. “Little Donny and Carl were hunting back in there,” I croaked, not bothering to hide the panic in my voice. “Where’s my grandson?”
“Don’t even think it, Gertie. They’re okay.”
“Little Donny was hunting back there,” I repeated, feeling flushed and dizzy.
chapter 2
Recovering slightly, I ducked under the rope and broke into a lope in my brand-new running shoes. I wasn’t thinking too clearly. Fear wound a knot in my stomach and I felt a surge of adrenaline. I planned to run as long as it took to find my grandson.
A firm grip on the back of my suspenders snapped me back.
“Where you going, Ma?” a familiar voice said.
“Let go of me,” I cried before I realized it was my son, Blaze.
He released his hold, and I grabbed his arm and clenched it. “Where is he?” I demanded.
“Where’s who?” Blaze’s face was pale.
“I heard someone’s dead,” I said, squeezing his arm tighter. “Little Donny was in the woods with Carl. Where’s Little Donny? Where’s Carl?”
Time seemed to crawl. Blaze opened his mouth and very slowly the words traveled through the air. I was about to smack him I was so desperate to hear reassuring words.
“Carl’s over by my truck,” Blaze said, pointing in the direction of the ambulance, “and Little Donny seems to be missing at the moment.”
“Little Donny’s not in the ambulance, is he? Please tell me he isn’t in the ambulance.”
“No, Ma. He’s not.”
I released my grip on Blaze’s arm and clutched at my pounding heart. “That’s a relief. For a minute there, I had a very bad feeling. I need to sit down.”
Blaze motioned and a folding camp chair appeared out of nowhere. I dropped into it and steadied my nerves.
“Who’s in the ambulance?”
“A guy named Robert Hendricks.”
I searched my memory. “I don’t know any Robert Hendricks. Where’s he from?”
“He worked with the Department of Natural Resources out of Marquette. That’s why you don’t know him. A DNR agent.”
The DNR and its agents aren’t viewed as assets to our local communities. Slinking around in the underbrush like Brown Recluse spiders and spying on the very people who pay their wages doesn’t make them popular.
“Murder?” I said.
“No doubt about it. It must have happened this morning.”
I remembered the sound I’d heard earlier. I’d assumed it was Little Donny’
s car, but it could have been a rifle shot.
“I heard the shot,” I informed Blaze.
“What makes you think that?”
“I was out in the yard about eight and I heard something.”
Blaze scribbled in his notebook and flipped it closed. “I’ll look into it.”
His beer belly poured over the top of his belt, which was riding dangerously low on his hips, and a button had popped off his uniform shirt from the force of the swell.
I stood up. “I think I’ll stick around and talk to Carl. Where do you think Little Donny went?”
“Ma, don’t worry. I’m sure Little Donny’s fine. Go on home.” He had me by the elbow, dismissing me in his usual manner with a personal escort out of the circle of action. “Where’s your partner in crime?”
“Here I am,” Cora Mae called from the spectator side of the rope. “Over this way.”
Just then the ambulance started up and edged toward the road.
“I want to get a look at the body before they drive away,” I said, pulling on my arm. “Get your hands off me and stop that vehicle. I have to see with my own eyes that it isn’t Donny.”
“Nothing doing. I told you it isn’t him.”
The ambulance moved past and the volunteers forced the crowd to the side of the road. Blaze held on to me with an iron grip.
“Where’s that ambulance going? Escanaba or Marquette?” I demanded.
Blaze let go when he was sure the ambulance was clear. “The Escanaba morgue,” he said.
I knew I could follow the ambulance the forty minutes it would take to drive to the Escanaba morgue, but that sour lemon who ran the morgue wouldn’t let me look at the body anyway.
I sighed as the ambulance streaked down the road kicking gravel and dust into a cloud behind it.
The volunteer deputies encouraged everyone to disperse, and most, seeing the ambulance pull away with the corpse, moved toward their vehicles.
I thought I should move my new truck before Blaze saw it because this wasn’t the time or the place to explain my new purchase. But Blaze was scrawling in his notebook, which he perched on his swollen belly. He wasn’t paying attention to the crowd or the parked vehicles. Someone from the mass of law-enforcement officials called his name and he walked away.
I stood watching Blaze’s back as he lumbered off. I glanced at the woods where the man in the crowd had pointed to show me the direction they had carried the body from. Towering grasses lined the road against a backdrop of tall pine trees, and a deer trail meandered into the canopy and curved out of sight.
Glancing back, I caught a glimpse of Carl in the group of deputies. I’d give my uppers to hear what they were saying.
I put on my thinking cap. “They hauled that body out of Carl’s bait pile,” I said to Cora Mae. “If Carl wasn’t involved somehow, he’d still be hiding in a tree overlooking his pile of bakery, waiting for a black bear to wander through. He wouldn’t even know about the shooting.”
This stretch of woods is called Bear Pass by the locals because bears like to follow an established circuit, looping around and covering the same territory over again. The idea is to plant your stand right where they come through. Because Carl’s bait pile was in a prime spot on Bear Pass, he should have been staked out.
Instead, Carl stood smack-dab in the middle of the action.
Cora Mae wasn’t paying much attention to me, focusing instead on one of the volunteers. I saw her give him a tiny wave, a flutter of fingers at waist level, which produced a weak grin from him.
“Let’s move ’em out,” a volunteer deputy yelled to the stragglers like a cowboy rounding up a herd of cattle. “You too, ladies.” He motioned to us.
We walked down the road toward our vehicles. When we got to Little Donny’s car, I opened the driver’s door and bent in to retrieve my oversized purse. Then I straightened up, closed the door, and surveyed the situation.
“Follow my lead,” I whispered to Cora Mae. “Get ready.”
I watched the inevitable traffic jam form on the road as spectators tried to pull their trucks out and swing around all at the same time. I waited for the perfect moment, then ran across the road and popped into the woods. I couldn’t help noticing that Cora Mae wasn’t behind me.
I peered out of the tree line and saw her standing in the middle of the road looking like she’d lost her way.
“Psst,” I hissed. “Pssst.” Louder.
Finally she noticed me and dodged around a red pickup with a swarm of kids riding in the open bed of the truck.
“Once in a while,” Cora Mae crabbed when she caught up, “you ought to tell me what’s going on ahead of time.”
“I’m improvising as I go,” I explained. “You just have to pay better attention.”
****
I’ve lived in the Michigan woods for forty-some years and I like to think I know my way around them the same way I know every liver spot on the back of my hand. Yoopers, as those of us living in the Upper Peninsula are called by the rest of the country, have a reputation for an innate sense of direction.
We don’t need compasses.
I glanced up at the sky showing through the treetops, noted the position of the sun so we wouldn’t get lost, and set out at a fair clip, considering Cora Mae was wearing high heels and I wasn’t a young goose anymore.
September is the perfect time of year for a woods walk. The mosquitoes are tapering off, so you still have some blood in your body when you come out of the forest, and the ticks are gone. The gooseberries have turned from green to purple and a few maple leaves have just started to turn. The only sound is the buzz of bees hurrying to finish their business, and in our case, the sound of Pocahontas crashing through the woods behind me.
I looked back and noticed scratches on Cora Mae’s face.
“Did you fall down?” I asked.
“Why would you think that?”
“You have burrs stuck all over in your hair.”
Burdock is the nastiest weed I’ve ever come across and I’m determined to snuff it off the face of the earth. The Indians used to boil the roots and eat them, but I tried it and it’s not worth the effort. In late summer it puts out seed in burrs, which stick to everything like Velcro. Nasty stuff.
Cora Mae was beginning to drag. “How much farther?” She sounded like a ten-year-old on a road trip.
I frowned. “We should have hit Bear Pass by now. Maybe it’s just ahead. Let’s keep going.”
“How are we going to know when we’re there?”
“The trail widens out. You’ll see. Trust me.”
We heard a rifle shot go off.
“That seemed awfully close,” Cora Mae said.
Another shot went off.
“Sound travels a long way in the woods,” I said, trying to convince myself. The gunfire did sound near.
“I have to sit down for a minute.” She wandered over to a fallen tree and plunked down.
“How are you ever going to be a Trouble Buster with shoes like that?” I lectured. Trouble Busters was our official business name since we discovered there are all kinds of rules before you can call yourself a private investigator. And after careful consideration and a lot of noise and threats from Blaze, we decided we didn’t qualify. Hence, the cover name, Trouble Busters.
I continued to complain. “You can’t walk. You can’t sneak up on anybody. You can’t do any of the things you need to do to be an investigator.”
“This wasn’t my business idea, remember? We haven’t had a single case. We haven’t made a single cent.”
Well, it was true the brainstorm to start the investigator--I mean buster business--was mine, and it was also true we hadn’t had work yet, but all that was about to change.
“Now that we have a truck we can start advertising.”
“And who’s going to hire us?”
“Lots of people.”
“This isn’t TV, you know. Besides, Blaze already told you it’s illegal to call yourself an inv
estigator unless you have a license, and last I checked, neither of us comes close to qualifying.”
“That’s exactly why we are using Trouble Busters.”
I thought I heard Cora Mae mutter “stupid name” under her breath, but I could have imagined it.
I used the rest stop as an opportunity to drop my purse and rub my shoulder.
I bought the biggest purse I could find. Besides the regular stuff you’d carry in one, I’ve got pepper spray, a stun gun, and handcuffs, which I didn’t think I needed until Cora Mae bought a pair and actually got a chance to use them last year to restrain a criminal. The stun gun was borrowed from my friend George, and I liked it so much I told him I lost it.
Cora Mae looked off ahead. She pointed. “And you,” she said, “can’t find your way around your own backyard.”
I looked where she pointed, following her lacquered index finger. Through a break in the trees, I could see a road. Bending down, I could make out my new yellow truck.
We had walked in a circle. So much for the dependability of the sun.
After studying the situation for a moment, I said, “I think I know where we went wrong. Let’s go.”
“The only place I’m going is home to my easy chair,” Cora Mae informed me, pulling off a shoe and massaging her foot. “I’ve had it.”
“We have to check out the crime scene before the FBI shows up and ships all the evidence to Washington and covers up the crime.” Granted, I was a little overdramatic, but Cora Mae loves drama, and it stood to reason that the FBI would get involved, considering a government employee was murdered.
She frowned.
“I just want to study the crime scene for future reference,” I said. “Come on. We could use the practice, and I’m really concerned about Little Donny.”
“I’ve had it,” Cora Mae repeated.
“Fine by me. Take the truck when you go before Blaze sees it. I’m not in the mood to explain it to him.”
I watched her teeter out onto Old Peterson Road and crawl into my new truck.