Murder Grins and Bears It

by Deb Baker

  I tromped back to my stake-out and studied the tree stand. Jackie had pounded little steps into the tree so I started climbing, my weapons purse slung over my shoulder weighing me down. The platform, once I reached it and figured out how to turn around and scoot my behind onto it, wasn’t nearly as big as I thought it would be. It was about the size of the chopping board I use when I make pasties.

  As long as I didn’t move around much, I wouldn’t fall off.

  I raised my binoculars and scoped out the falcon trap out in the field. I had a perfect view from the treetop. Perfect enough to see that something was trapped in the netting. Something larger than a mouse.

  I was busy watching the snared bird trying to get out of the trap, while I also kept watch across the field for signs of the trapper. I couldn’t see Cora Mae from my position.

  I dug through my purse and found the two-way radio to check in with Cora Mae, but it slipped out of my fingers and landed at the base of the tree. I looked down and decided to leave it there.

  That’s when I saw the black bear.

  He lazy-shuffled into the clearing and pounced on the bear bait pile right under my dangling feet. He must have weighed five hundred pounds, all rolling six feet of him.

  I went over my bear statistics while he sniffed around and grabbed a carp from the hors d’oeuvre tray.

  Bears are nearsighted.

  That’s a good thing.

  They can outrun a horse.

  Who cares? I didn’t plan on a footrace.

  They are very good climbers.

  Gulp.

  I looked around for a baby bear, which would have meant the end for me. No baby. Good. I hadn’t expected to see one anyway, because this was no over-protective mean mama. No female could be this enormous.

  The bear sat up and snorted the air. I tried hard to hold my breath so I wouldn’t emit any human odor.

  The pile of bones grew while I took tiny breaths of air.

  After a while he lazed over to the bushes and finished off his dinner with a mittful of gooseberries. Then he looked up and saw me.

  We faced off. Sort of. He craned his neck in my direction for a better look, then he got up on his hind legs and stretched out, tall and muscular and scary.

  I’ve heard that when a bear is on the defensive, it pops its jaw in a series of rapid snaps as a prelude to a charge.

  The bear stared at me and popped his jaw and lips.

  At that moment, when I thought I was chopped liver, the radio lying at the base of the tree started crackling and squawking.

  The bear didn’t hesitate. He took off into the back woods at a dead gallop.

  “He’s coming your way,” Cora Mae’s voice shrieked over the airwaves. “Get ready.”

  She wasn’t talking about the bear.

  chapter 10

  I watched him come across the open field and head directly for the trap. I fiddled with the adjustments on the binoculars until they sighted in clear and true.

  I would have recognized that bulldog waddle even without the advantage of magnification. Along with the limp he’d earned from his encounter with the car tire, our local game warden stood out like a woodchuck lumbering across a lawn.

  Rolly Akkala stopped at the trap. He dug into his bag, pulled out a pair of thick gloves, and put them on.

  I’d like to say I sailed smoothly down the tree. It was more of a backward dangle from the tree stand while feeling desperately for the first step with my toes, panic building when it didn’t present itself. After some terrifying moments I found my foothold and hugged my way down.

  Rolly was in the battle of his life by the time I arrived at the trap.

  Cooper’s hawks are only medium-sized, but they don’t stand down to anything, including a measly game warden. They like to squeeze their prey to death between some of the strongest and most razor-sharp claws ever grown, and those claws had Rolly by the right wrist, just above his useless protective glove.

  “Cak,” the bird said.

  “Ahhh…” Rolly said, when he spotted me out of the corner of his eye. He had one of the hawk’s legs trapped in his left gloved hand along with part of the netting, and he wasn’t letting go. “Help.”

  “Cora Mae,” I said into the radio. “Where are you?”

  I jumped when she said, “Right here,” from behind me She moved alongside me, one broken shoe in her hand. “What should we do?”

  The Cooper’s hawk continued to dig in while giving me a stare from its orange eyeball. Blood trickled down Rolly’s arm.

  “Let go, Rolly,” I advised. “It’s a stand-off at the moment, but the bird’s going to win because you’re losing blood. Next time, wear longer gloves.”

  “Help,” he continued to squawk.

  The hawk said nothing, but now it had its beak wrapped around Rolly’s right arm and was trying to get a good hold.

  “I’m not getting close,” Cora Mae announced when I looked at her. “Gertie, hit it with something.”

  I wasn’t sure if the “it” she referred to was the Cooper’s hawk or Rolly, but I wasn’t getting involved in the government’s problems if I could help it. I certainly wasn’t going to lose any of my own blood for him.

  “Let go,” I said to Rolly again. “He’s going to sever an artery. I’ve got a hold on him. He won’t get away.”

  Another lie. But Rolly had his eyes squeezed shut and wouldn’t know that. Besides, by now I’d accepted the fact that a private investigator has to commit to a life of deception. In other words, the end justifies the means. Or is it the means justifies the end?

  Just when I thought I’d have to kick Rolly in the shins, he let go of the hawk’s leg.

  Before I could blink, the bird was in the air, wings fluttering and soaring straight for the woodline.

  The mice, sensing a unique opportunity to survive, beat it through the torn netting and scrambled for cover in the field. However, they found their path to freedom blocked by my good friend, the shoeless Cora Mae. She screamed her head off and jumped around like she was walking across hot coals.

  “Another reason to wear sturdy shoes,” I said, watching a frightened mouse race over her bare toes.

  She continued to alert every critter in the U.P. until she ran out of air. That woman really has a set of lungs.

  “I’m hurt bad,” Rolly moaned through the noise. “You’ll have to apply a tourniquet. I’ll be lucky to make it to the hospital before I bleed out.”

  I studied his wounds. “You’re over-reacting. All you need is a couple of butterfly band-aids. I have some in here someplace.”

  “What you doing out in the woods with a suitcase?” Rolly wanted to know while I dug through my weapons purse.

  The remark didn’t deserve a reply.

  After bandaging him up, I said to Cora Mae, who forgot about her own problems once the mice disappeared and she noticed the blood, “Get your handcuffs out. I’m making a citizen’s arrest.”

  I’ve always wanted to say that.

  “Hold on there,” Rolly said.

  With fluid cunning, I reached into my purse and turned on my micro-recorder in case he was going to confess.

  “I saw you from up in the tree stand,” I said. “You’re poaching birds. You should be ashamed of yourself, using your position to steal protected raptors.”

  “I’m not stealing anything.” Rolly pressed on the bandages and winced. “I’m checking flight patterns and health and gathering data. Didn’t you see the band around its leg?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, but I’d seen the band.

  “That’s how we identify them, by the bands. Then we know where they came from. I was going to record information in this book here and inspect it for infectious diseases.” Rolly held up a notebook. “And then I was going to let it go.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Cora Mae said, watching the ground for lingering mice. “You dragged me all the way out here for nothing.”

  It was possible t
hat our inept game warden was telling the truth.

  I dug the red tooth out of my pocket and held it out in my palm for Rolly to see. “What do you make of this?” I said.

  “Bear tooth,” he grunted. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Over there,” I waved vaguely at the woods. “Why’s it red?”

  “Here’s what we do.” Rolly puffed out his chest as if he was delivering a keynote speech at the Warden of the Year Dinner. “We put out piles of sardines with different dyes, depending on the area, and it works into their teeth. Bears can travel a long way, but usually they stay in the same ten or fifteen miles. Though I seen ‘em swimming across Lake Superior. Those coming from Canada or from across the lake don’t have any dye at all.”

  “What’s the point of the dye?” I asked.

  “If you shoot a bear you have to bring it to a DNR office. Besides using it for research and stuff, we can trace the dye to make sure it wasn’t killed out of the area where the hunter applied for a license. Tricky, hey?”

  “Well, where do you use the red dye?”

  Rolly rubbed his chin, thinking hard. “Not around here. Tamarack County is blue. Maple County, that’s it. Wait a minute.” His eyes narrowed. “Let’s take a little walk and check out this tree stand you say you were sitting in. And just for fun, let’s take a look at your bear license. And I’m confiscating that tooth.”

  I turned off the recorder.

  “You need to get to the hospital right away,” I said. “Those band-aids won’t hold for long and I don’t have anymore.”

  “I’m feeling pretty good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  We walked into the woods, and I tried to dissuade him, but his mind was made up. He was determined to arrest the woman who had just saved his life.

  “I don’t have a weapon,” I said. “How could I be shooting illegally without one?”

  “It’s around here someplace,” he insisted. “Let’s start by searching this here motorsickle.”

  He walked around the bike looking for stash places, then thoroughly searched the area around the tree stand. He even crawled up into the tree and inspected the platform before reluctantly giving up and releasing us.

  The only thing he forgot to check for was a “motorsickle” license.

  ****

  Kitty was waiting for us by the side of the Trouble Buster when we roared up to Jackie’s house and parked the bike.

  Her mouth fell open. “I wish I had a camera,” she said.

  I peeled off the helmet and glanced at Kitty’s rusty old Lincoln. “What’s Fred doing here,” I said, watching him try to eat his way through the window to get to me.

  “Look how he’s bonded to you, Gertie,” Cora Mae said. “Isn’t that cute? Someone better let him out before he destroys the inside of Kitty’s car.”

  Kitty opened the door and he bounded out, nearly bowling me over.

  “I went to your place to see what you were up to and Grandma Johnson made me take him. He’s been lugubrious without you.”

  “And you’re quite loquacious today,” I replied.

  “You two are going to drive me to drink,” Cora Mae complained.

  “I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go, Honey,” Kitty said. “But it’s a little early in the day for hitting the bottle.”

  “We have work to do,” I reminded them. “Did Grandma say whether or not she’s heard any word on Little Donny?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  After digging my maps out of the glove compartment, I flipped down the truck’s tailgate, sorted through them, and spread out a map of Maple County. Fred, now that he’d found me, leaped up into the truck bed to make himself comfy. A stack of maps flew to the ground as he plunked down right in the center of the action, his red devil eyes locked onto me.

  I rearranged everything, then unfolded the falconer’s list from the Marquette DNR office. “Kitty, help me find a falconer in Maple County. I’m tracking a red tooth and a bird feather. I don’t know how they connect, but I’m going to follow them to the end.”

  She studied the list. “Um…um,” said our fancy word specialist. “Um… Try this one on Crevice Road.”

  We bent over the map looking for Crevice Road. “Here it is. Are there any more on the list that might be in Maple County?”

  “Um…um…um…” Kitty shook her head. “Nope. That’s it.”

  I read the name of the falconer out loud, “Ted Latvala.”

  Cora Mae slipped her rump up on the open tailgate as I folded the map. “Why are we chasing birds and bears, Gertie? Shouldn’t we be searching for Little Donny?”

  I shook my head. “We tried that and came up with nothing. If we can’t figure out the future, we have to go back to the past. The dead warden didn’t show up at Carl’s bait pile alone. We have to find out where he was and who he was with.”

  “And that’ll lead us to Little Donny?” Cora Mae said.

  I had a charley horse in my chest and I couldn’t look her in the eye when I answered, “That’s right.”

  Maybe I couldn’t bring Little Donny back, but I was determined to find out the truth, no matter what.

  Truth is a slippery concept. It changes shape according to who’s speaking it and it never looks the same to any two people. That’s why it’s so elusive. Or illusive, as I always say.

  “Everybody ready?” I asked after gathering up the maps.

  “Cora Mae and I should take one last shot at the woods,” Kitty said. “We’ll start at Carl’s bait pile and head toward Walter’s place. Maybe we missed something.”

  “I broke my shoe. I can’t possibly go,” Cora Mae said. “And I’m sick of the woods.”

  “I have a pair of books in my trunk,” Kitty said. “You can wear them.”

  “Watch your backs,” I said while I tried to coax Fred out of the back of the truck.

  “What do you mean by that?” Cora Mae wanted to know.

  “Those arrows in Billy’s back were meant for Little Donny.”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t put that together,” Kitty said. “I already thought of it.”

  “Billy found Little Donny’s ball cap. That’s why he’s dead right now instead of my grandson.”

  If Little Donny was still alive, he was in big trouble.

  chapter 11

  Crevice Road lay about a mile in from the main road. They named it that for a good reason. Michigan’s transportation department is in no hurry to repair our roads, so I weaved along, avoiding the worst of the potholes.

  Gravel and dust kicked up behind me and I kept glancing in the back of the truck to make sure Fred was okay. He’d absolutely refused to abandon the back even after I pulled and pushed on him for a while.

  Now he sat there, fat and sassy, like he rode in the back of trucks all the time, and maybe he did. He and I were in the early stages of getting to know each other, and so far he’d been full of surprises.

  I pulled into Ted Latvala’s driveway and parked behind enough rattletrap, rusted-out vehicles to fill a junk yard. I counted three outbuildings and guessed there might be more behind the tree line, where I saw the beginning of a wide, worn trail leading into the woods.

  Grabbing a clipboard, I gruffly reminded Fred to stay put, walked to the front door of the house, and rapped loudly.

  Smoke drifted lazily from a chimney and I could smell the aroma from a woodburning stove. One of my favorite smells is burning wood. I sucked in a big breathful of it as the door jerked open.

  The man glaring at me had more hair than any man I’d ever seen. A dark curly mop sprung from his head, whiskers cascaded down his chin, and more of it sprouted from the front of his red plaid shirt and crept up his neck to meet the beard. Even the back of his hands were hairy.

  “What?” he growled.

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, well, I’m with the census bureau and I-”

  “You have ten seconds to get off my property.” He brandished a shotgun hanging loose from one of his hairy hands.

&
nbsp; “And then?”

  “And then I start shooting. I’ll blow your head off.”

  In the space that read “Number of people living in dwelling,” I marked “one.” With all that hair and the nasty disposition, there couldn’t be anyone else in the house.

  “Just a minute,” I said, because I could see he was getting antsy. “Have a little patience.” I shoved the clipboard between my knees and dug through the weapons purse on my shoulder. Triumphantly I held up my new sheriff’s badge.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” I said.

  He scowled at the badge. Then his eyes took in my Trouble Buster truck, where Fred was beading in on us with rapt attention.

  “That’s a fake badge,” he said, sneering at me.

  I turned the badge around and studied it. “How could you tell,” I said.

  “No cop would be caught dead driving in that truck. Trouble Buster? You crazy or what?”

  I hadn’t used my stun gun yet today and was considering zapping him when I heard him cock the shotgun. There’s no sound like it in the world, and if you’re on the receiving end, nothing is scarier.

  Fred and I hightailed it down the gravel road.

  ****

  The Deer Horn Restaurant was hopping as I drove through Stonely, and it reminded me of how hungry I was. The train stopped on the tracks across the street from the restaurant meant that Otis Knudson was inside.

  I could drive on home and make a sandwich for lunch, but then I’d have to face Grandma Johnson’s snaky tongue and Heather’s hound-dog eyes.

  The two of them were going to give me an ulcer sooner or later. Besides, I enjoyed talking to Otis, so I swung in.

  “What you got in the back of your truck?” Carl called from a table he shared with Otis. “A bear?”

  “If that’s a bear,” Otis said. “It’s still alive. I just saw it move.”

  “Hey Ruthie, you got any roadkill on the menu?” Carl called out, tipping back on his chair.

  “What kind of vegetable goes with roadkill?” Otis asked.

  “Squash,” Carl replied.