Murder Grins and Bears It

by Deb Baker

  I was treated less than subhuman, and if I ever run into that woman in a dark alley, watch out.

  “You can’t just have a license,” she snorted with disdain. “You need a vision test, a written test, and then you get your temporary license. If you pass. After that, you take a road test.”

  “I’m ready for the first step,” I said. “Kitty, stay close by, I might need help.”

  “If you cheat, you have to wait six months before you can try again,” said Miss Foul Personality.

  Kitty moved off into the waiting area.

  I passed the vision test with flying shapes and colors. The written test was the problem.

  After looking over the questions I asked the woman “How am I supposed to know all this stuff?”

  “Didn’t you read the booklet?”

  “The booklet? Oh, never mind. I back-seat drove for Barney for forty-some years, I can pass this test.” I filled it out and handed it in as if I was still in grade school.

  “You failed the test,” she said, throwing a booklet in my general direction.

  “When we were back in the truck, Cora Mae hooted, “I can’t believe you failed the test for your temps. That’s the easiest part.” Hee, hee, haw, haw.

  “It was the signs,” I said, putting on my directional to turn toward Stonely. “Those shapes are very confusing. I don’t know how Lead-Foot Kitty managed to pass.”

  “I’m a good driver,” Kitty said. “I can teach you because when you finally manage to get your temps, you can’t drive alone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have to have someone with a permanent license in the car with you.”

  The rules the government manages to come up with! “I wouldn’t have to do this in the first place if Blaze would pay attention to his job and leave me alone. His priorities are mixed up.”

  I dropped my partners at their homes and pulled into my driveway.

  Detective No-Neck Sheedlo was still planted in a car on the side of the house, but I didn’t see the savage tracking dog.

  Star had offered to entertain Heather, Big Donny, and Grandma Johnson at her house for the afternoon, so I had my place to myself for a few hours.

  I pulled out a police catalog I’d snitched from Blaze’s house last time I visited. Using my credit card, I called in an order and requested overnight delivery.

  “A detective badge,” I said into the phone, noticing they weren’t cheap. “And a voice-activated micro-recorder.”

  For the first time in days I took a nap on the couch. When I woke up, I rubbed my neck and realized I was still sitting up. That’s one thing I seem to be doing more and more. Sleeping upright is becoming easier.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon in the woods looking for Little Donny, walking down deer trails leading away from Carl’s bait pile, stopping once in a while and calling out his name. I followed trail after trail, calling and calling until my voice became hoarse and my legs grew heavy and weak.

  Little Donny had been missing since Monday. Lost without food or water or shelter for three days. How long could he last? Was he still alive?

  ****

  “How can you sit here stuffing your face with scrambled eggs when Little Donny might be…” I hesitated and glanced at Heather and Big Donny, who were staring back at me with wide, terrified eyes. “Hungry too,” I added.

  “Now, Ma,” Blaze answered. “We’re doing everything we can to find him. Didn’t you see the planes going over? We’re searching on the ground and from the sky. What else can we do?”

  “I suppose you’re using that useless excuse for a tracking dog?”

  “Deputy Snell is retiring him. After he confused you twice with Little Donny, he decided to put him out to pasture.”

  “Where’s he going?” I wanted to know.

  Blaze shrugged.

  I felt bad. Fred had been fired for incompetence, and a certain portion of it was my fault. He’d done the right thing chasing me around, but no one else knew it, and I wasn’t about to inform them.

  Grandma Johnson shuffled out of her room, her black hair net pulled down over her brow and her new teeth clacking. She proceeded to make a fresh pot of coffee, forgetting to add the ground coffee beans to the filter. But we’ve all done that.

  Heather slumped on the couch with large dark circles under her eyes, adding a damp crumpled tissue to the pile scattered on the end table.

  “Little Donny didn’t do it,” she said, a chant we’d heard several times in the last few minutes.

  “Of course not,” I said. Again.

  “Deputy Snell wants all the family members to go down and get fingerprinted,” Blaze said. “Unless your prints are already on file. I think it’s a good idea.”

  “I’m a stockbroker,” Big Donny puffed. “Mine are already on file.”

  “Heather, you and Ma have to go down.”

  “Why would Deputy Dickey think we have to do that?” I demanded.

  “Seems there were unidentifiable prints in Little Donny’s car. He just wants to clear up a few details, and if he has your prints, it’ll help. And he doesn’t like to be called Deputy Dickey. We’ve been over that before. His name is Deputy Snell.”

  I thought about my prints all over Little Donny’s car, which wasn’t a big deal, but this was clearly an infringement of my privacy. I thought about superglue. If I dried it on my fingers, would it alter my prints?

  I decided I wouldn’t cooperate. Let Deputy Dickey arrest me.

  “Why don’t you bring me that dog,” I said to Blaze. “I’ve been thinking about getting one for awhile. He’d do fine.”

  The entire family stared at me, including Grandma Johnson, who almost dropped her uppers into the coffee pot.

  ****

  “There isn’t room for him in the truck,” Cora Mae complained when she saw Fred sitting next to me. He had already slobbered up the passenger side window and was working on the front window. Long, wet, sliding nose and tongue drool oozed and began drying in streaks. I’d have to start carrying paper towels in the truck.

  His tail pounded against the seat as he checked out Cora Mae, nudging her with his nose. She shrunk away, intimidated by his black bulk and red devil eyes. After spending a few hours with him she would figure out, just as I had, that he’s a harmless baby underneath his fierce exterior.

  “He looks like a killer. Vicious, mean, and look at those teeth.”

  “He and I didn’t have a very good start,” I said. “But, in this case, first appearances don’t count. He isn’t working right now, so he’s a lamb. Once he’s on the job, he takes it very seriously.”

  “What’s this?” Cora Mae held up a canning jar filled with water.

  “That’s Fred’s travel mug.”

  “How’s Kitty going to fit?” she said, scrunching up against the door.

  “She’s not coming along today,” I said, dodging Fred’s tail. Kitty barely fit in the truck with just Cora Mae and me. With Fred, no way. “But she gave me directions.”

  We rattled down a gravel road with craters the size of basketballs scattered across it. I weaved through, trying to miss the holes.

  Ernie Pelto was out back of his house in an open field, watching the sky. As Cora Mae and I walked out to join him, I could hear Fred crying. It been a struggle just to get out of the truck without him, and now he was making such a racket he could be heard in the next town.

  “I was expecting you,” Ernie said. “Kitty called.”

  He wore a thick glove on his right hand. “Stand back,” he warned us.

  A large hawk flew toward us and landed gracefully on his raised arm. He smiled and rubbed the bird’s back.

  We followed Ernie and the bird to the house, where the hawk hopped to a perch. Ernie, a big, round Finn with an easy grin, removed the glove.

  I held out the feather I had found on the dead warden’s shoe, my one and only clue.

  Ernie studied it. “A brancher,” he said. “Probably a red-tailed hawk. It hasn�
��t molted into its adult plumage yet.”

  “A brancher?” I asked, aware that I was revealing my lack of worldly experience to my business partner, Cora Mae.

  “A brancher is a young hawk,” Ernie explained. “We like to get them young and raise them ourselves. This is a young one.”

  “Where would the warden have picked up this feather?” I wanted to know. “It was on the bottom of his shoe, in the creases.”

  “Wasn’t likely he ran across it in the woods, although it’s possible. Walking through a field maybe, since he was a warden and they go all over.” Ernie looked doubtful.

  “But…?” I prompted.

  “When was the last time you had a feather stuck to your shoe after coming out of the woods?”

  I thought about that. “Never.”

  “When was the last time you had a feather stuck on your shoe from walking through a field?”

  “Never.” I glanced at Cora Mae. “How about you, Cora Mae?”

  “Can’t remember ever having a feather stuck to my shoe, or walking through a field—except now.”

  The three of us eyed her black spike heels.

  “But go into a chicken coop,” Ernie said. “And you’ll have them on there for sure. Same with this feather. He might have been visiting a falconer with a lot of birds. There are a few of us around.”

  I knew a little about hawking. You have to apply for a license to own a raptor, and a license isn’t easy to get. It required a long apprenticeship under a licensed sponsor. I also knew, to protect the birds, there were strict rules about capturing them.

  Cora Mae studied Ernie and I could tell she was sizing him up for future consideration in the Cora Mae broken-heart club.

  He reached up and scratched his face and a wedding ring attached to his finger caught the gleam of the sun.

  “I’ll meet you back at the car,” said Cora Mae, my relentless investigator, after seeing the flash. She sashayed away.

  “Any wardens been around here lately?” I asked.

  “No, it’s been awhile.”

  “I’m trying to find out about that warden who was murdered over by Stonely.” I held up the feather again. “This is my only clue.”

  “Not much of a clue.”

  “It’s all I have.”

  “The DNR has a list of all the local falconers. You could start there.”

  chapter 7

  Cora Mae and Kitty offered to comb the woods for Little Donny to give me a break. I chuckled to Fred, sitting in the passenger seat of my new yellow truck. I pictured Cora Mae on her spiky heels and hefty Kitty crashing through the woods. At least I’d dressed them up in hunter’s orange so no one would mistake them for bears.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have two more people to search for when I got back.

  “We might as well drive into Marquette for the list of falconers and kill two birds with one stone,” I said to my canine friend, Fred. “We’ll get the list of falconers and maybe find out why the warden was this far south.”

  I was going to like Fred, despite his slobber on my window. He was the only one in the bunch that didn’t argue with me every time I opened my mouth.

  I’d pawned Heather and Big Donny off on Blaze and Grandma Johnson, leaving me free to investigate. I grimaced when I remembered the family meal coming up tonight at my house, hoping I’d have good news to share.

  Little Donny couldn’t possibly be lost in the woods anymore, and that really worried me. By now, he would have stumbled onto a road, eventually leading him safely to food and shelter. Even though the forests are vast in the U.P., it’s not like being lost in northern Canada.

  No, either Little Donny was in hiding, or something was preventing him from coming out.

  I backed out of my driveway into the narrow road that runs past my place. Carl in his station wagon had been about to cruise by, but slowed and stopped behind me, waiting for me to drive off. Instead, I hopped down and walked back to his car.

  Carl rolled down his window about half an inch. His eyes bobbed up and down and settled on his windshield.

  “Anything new on Little Donny?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Seems the whole county’s looking for him. Sheriff’s vehicles everywhere, helicopters and small planes flying over. You’d think someone would know something. Want to come over for a family get-together tonight? George will be there.”

  Carl glanced at a covered dish on the seat next to him. “Thanks for the offer, but me and some of the boys are playing poker. We’re all bringin’ a dish to pass.”

  Traffic began backing up behind us. Hardly anyone uses the side road where I live, but just stop to chat and everybody around has to come along and bother you.

  A small white van with “Mitch Movers” stenciled on its side idled behind Carl. The driver revved the engine and drove around without so much as a glance our way. I waved to Betty Berg, next in the line-up, and headed back to my truck.

  Fred greeted me from the passenger seat like I’d been gone a week.

  ****

  Marquette is straight north from Stonely about an hour’s drive. I followed Highway M35 past Sawyer Air Force Base, where in August you can pick blueberries the size of Concord grapes.

  The city of Marquette is ringed by tall pines and granite bluffs overlooking Lake Superior. Unlike Escanaba, which lies on the shore of Lake Michigan and has sandy beaches, Marquette was settled on solid rock and rises above the largest of the Great Lakes. The city is large enough for a state prison and Northern Michigan University; it’s one of the U.P.’s major metropolises.

  A recruitment poster on the door of the DNR office said, “Become a Conservation Officer – Protect our great outdoors.”

  A young man with a starched and pressed uniform and polished shoes greeted me.

  “I’m investigating the murder of Robert Hendricks,” I said, thinking about flashing my new detective badge, which had arrived on my porch right on schedule. I rejected the idea as premature but had my new voice-activated micro-recorder turned on in my purse.

  I noticed Warden Burnett standing at a file cabinet He looked up. “What authority do you have to b-b-be asking questions about Warden Hendricks?”

  “I’m investigating at the family’s request,” I lied, suspecting he’d follow up if I tried the detective routine. “Don’t you remember me? We met the other day at the scene.”

  “We’ve already t-told the sheriff everything we know.” He walked toward me, his expression softening only slightly.

  “I wanted to know what he was doing so far south,” I said. “Rolly Akkala is our local warden and I thought he handled everything in the Stonely area.”

  “Stonely’s within the district Hendricks was assigned to,” Burnett said, frowning and speaking very slowly. I noticed that the stutter vanished when he concentrated on pronunciation. “What are you implying?”

  “Just seems strange to me. The only warden I know is Rolly. I heard your warden’s car was back here in Marquette. How did he get to that bait pile where he was killed?”

  “We use all k-kinds of t-transportation, as I already explained to the sheriff. He might have been d-driving an ATV.”

  “All the way from Marquette?”

  “That part’s not clear yet,” he admitted, slapping a file folder against the palm of his hand.

  “Any of your vehicles missing?”

  “As a m-matter of fact, one of our ATVs is missing.”

  “Really,” I said, surprised. “No one’s mentioned that to me.”

  “We just realized it was gone. And you aren’t on my l-list of people to contact.”

  “Better notify the sheriff’s office. Maybe they can trace it.” I dug a freshly printed business card out of my purse and handed it to him. “If you remember anything else, please call me. I’m helping the family.”

  He tucked it in his shirt pocket without looking at it.

  “Oh,” I said, remembering the second item on my agenda. “I’d like to know what falconers live be
tween here and Stonely.”

  “Falconers?”

  “You know, those guys that fly hawks and falcons from their arms.”

  “I know what a falconer is. Any p-particular reason?”

  “No, just thought I could find a sponsor. I’m thinking about going into it.”

  Warden Burnett stared at me from under hooded eyes. “I’ll g-get someone to help you,” he said, walking off. I hung around in the front office until a woman from the clerical staff presented me with a printout.

  When I left the building I turned off my new micro-recorder.

  ****

  A lot of arguing goes on about the origin of pasties. For those unfamiliar with pasties, they have nothing to do with costumes worn by women in sleazy stripper bars. They are meat pies.

  The Finns and Swedes like to think they created pasties, and they have an ongoing dispute with another ethnic group that makes the same claim. The Cornish say their miners brought them to the U.P. in the 1800s when the copper mines opened up. I don’t really know who’s right.

  During deer hunting season in November, the Senior Citizens group makes the best I’ve ever had, but mine are close.

  I finished rolling out the dough in plate-sized rounds, added ground meat, potatoes, onions, salt, pepper and, of course, my special secret ingredient. I’ve been experimenting in case I ever get to write that U.P. cookbook I’ve been thinking about for so long.

  I popped the pasties into the oven as George walked in the door. His snake hat coiled from its position under his arm and I could see he’d slicked down his hair for this special visit.

  “Haven’t seen much of you lately,” he said, eyeing Fred, who sat at attention playing sentinel at the door. Only the brave would pass without permission. George scratched Fred’s ear and Fred rubbed his large head against George’s leg.

  “My new tracking dog,” I said with pride. Fred was turning out to be very well trained and he hadn’t chewed anything up yet.

  “Scary-looking.”