Murder Grins and Bears It (13 page)

“
Why didn’t he take the ATV
along, Miss Fancy Pants?” I said.

Cora Mae shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t have
time.”

“
Makes sense.” An open
stretch of road lay ahead, so I flipped on the lights and siren.
“Still working fine,” I said. “George really knows what he’s
doing.”

“
I’ll say.”

I pretended not to hear Cora Mae.

Eventually I said, “I thought you were
preoccupied with BB Smith.”

She wiggled into a more comfortable
position. “We went to Escanaba for dinner. You should have come
along. Poor Remy tagged along all by himself.”

“
I hope you didn’t forget
our new business and your mission. You interrogated them, didn’t
you?”

“
What new
business? This
Trouble Buster
thing?”

I glanced over in time to see her roll her
eyeballs.

Cora Mae continued while smacking her lips.
“What do you think we are? The Mod Squad?”

I hit a pothole dead on just to hear her
squeal.

“
Your hormones are raging
out of control,” I said. “And you are forgetting that my grandson
is wanted for a murder he didn’t commit.”

Cora Mae caved at that. “You’re right. I’m
sorry.”

“
Well, did you get any
useful information from them or not?”

“
Nothing significant, but
I’ll work on BB again tonight.”

I wasn’t surprised that Cora Mae came away
empty-handed, considering the Detroit boys’ limited gene pool. Her
hands weren’t the only things that were empty.

“
What are you doing?” Cora
Mae wanted to know when I pulled into Jackie Hoholik’s driveway and
cut the lights and siren.

Hopping out of the truck, I pointed to the
motorcycle. “Jackie’s working today but she said we could borrow
her bike,” I said.

Cora Mae got out, too, and emitted an
uncertain chuckle. “Get outta here.”

“
I told her I knew how to
drive one and she offered to let me use it.”

“
That was a total lie,”
Cora Mae said. “And Blaze will kill you if he finds out. He’ll have
you declared insane and I’ll be forced to testify on his
side.”

“
There’s no other way of
getting down the paths.” I motioned across the road where the trail
began and Cora Mae turned and studied it with her hands on her
hips. “Unless we walk.” I gazed at her shoes.

“
I’m not going,” she
said.

“
You have to go.” I fitted
a helmet over my head and fiddled with the handlebars, trying to
remember what Jackie had done to start it. I was pretty sure there
was a kick or two in there somewhere. “This is heavier than I
thought it would be,” I said, surprised when the motor finally
fired up. “Help me hold it up.”

It was a good thing Little Donny had brought
his motor scooter with him last year for me to try out or I never
would have figured out how to start the thing.

“
I’m not going,” Cora Mae
repeated while trying to steady the bike, and from the determined
look on her face, I suspected I risked losing this
round.

“
There are two traps set on
opposite sides of a wide field,” I said. “I can’t watch both of
them by myself.” I played my trump card. “Don’t you want to help
Little Donny?”

Cora Mae locked eyes with me and I could
tell she was studying her options. “How do I get on?” she finally
said, grabbing the helmet I held out.

To be honest, I didn’t know how I was going
to hold up both the bike and Cora Mae, but if Jackie could do it,
so could I

“
Keep alert,” I said. “You
have to help me hold it up with your feet.”

The ride began a little wobbly and with a
lot of fancy footwork by both of us.

Jackie’s next-door neighbor, the gorilla
man, came out his front door with his Doberman, and the two of them
watched us fly by. I rounded the corner leading down the trail,
thankful for the helmet that acted as a disguise. I managed not to
tip over even with Cora Mae screaming in my ear.

The trail narrowed as we whizzed along, and
I worked the brake to slow us down when we hit the deer path.

“
You can’t get through
here,” Cora Mae screamed.

“
We did it last night,” I
called back, but my voice was muffled by the helmet and the roar of
the engine. I doubt she heard me.

Tree branches slapped hard against the
helmet and Cora Mae’s arms tightened around my waist until I
thought my eyes would bulge right out. So when I pulled up next to
Jackie’s blind, I grinned to myself.

Made it.

Now for the stake-out.

“
You can stay in the bear
stand and watch the first trap from there,” I said, shutting off
the engine and hanging my helmet on the handlebars, like I’ve seen
real bikers do. “I’ll cross the field and watch the other
one.”

Cora Mae’s eyes climbed the tree until they
found the stand. “I think you have that mixed up,” she said. “I’m
going to the other side of the field.”

“
Suit yourself.”

Jackie had laid out a neat little pile of
rotting carp for her bears to snack on. By the stack of fish bones
next to it, her stop was a popular bear destination.

I rummaged in my weapons purse and extracted
two pairs of binoculars, handing one pair to Cora Mae. “If you see
anything, just lay low and watch. Here’s a radio.”

My new two-way radios, another business
expense, were about to be put into action for the first time.
“Don’t use it unless you have to.”

I walked her to the edge of the field, gave
her directions to the second trap, and watched her stumble through
the high grasses, attempting to use her arms like sickles.

By the time I decided she was not going to
make it on her own and I’d caught up to her, she’d managed to break
a heel and had to be helped across to the trap.

“
Right here looks good,” I
said, breaking loose from her grip on my shoulder and planting her
on a log. “Next time, you have to wear hiking boots.”

“
I don’t own anything
like…” Cora Mae stopped and listened.

I heard it, too.

A car passing nearby.

“
There’s a road right on
the other side of these trees,” Cora Mae griped. “We could have
driven the truck right up and parked alongside the road instead of
almost dying on that motorcycle.”

We heard another car pass by.

“
But then…,” I said, making
it up as I went along, hoping to recover from a potentially
embarrassing situation, “the trapper might have seen our truck and
driven right past. You stay here and pay attention.”

“
Tell me again why we care
about birds?”

“
Our only lead is a
feather. We have to find out where Warden Hendricks was before he
died because he was around birds.”

“
We need to read up on this
detective business. I never expected to be out in the middle of
God’s country with a broken heel and bugs everywhere.”

Cora Mae said “God’s country” like it was a
dirty word.

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.”