Murder Grins and Bears It (4 page)

I certainly didn’t want to be found snooping
around.

After one last sweep with the binoculars and
noticing nothing new, I walked in a wide loop around the back of
the yellow tape and noticed something I’d missed before. And it
wasn’t inside the taped area.

Behind the bait pile on the opposite side of
the trail the brush was flattened like a herd of deer had bedded
down in it. That’s what I thought at first, but then I noticed a
faint indentation like a tire mark, a patterned tire crease at the
front of the brush and more at the back. Someone had driven a
vehicle right through the brush.

Puzzling over the significance of my find, I
kicked through the brush and a flash of red caught my eye. Picking
the object up, I rolled it in my palm. It was a very large tooth, a
very large, red tooth, larger than a wisdom tooth, and redder
than…well, redder than any tooth I ever saw before. Not sure what
to do with it, I put it in my pocket.

I scanned the scene one last time, still
very concerned for my grandson. Little Donny was probably at my
house right this minute, eating his way through the refrigerator
and wondering where his car was. Wishful thinking, I know, but
there wasn’t anything more to do here. Time to go home.

****

Earlier, when Cora Mae and I first pulled
over to check out the commotion, I thought every sheriff and deputy
in the Upper Peninsula must be standing around watching the action.
I was wrong. There were even more cops now than before.

There were more law enforcement officials
swarming around than flies on horse pies on a hot summer day, all
of them focused on Little Donny’s Ford Escort. I’ve never seen so
many uniforms.

Blaze stood off from the car talking to a
large muscular man with a buzz cut who was wearing a brown uniform
and a sidearm. His face was as square as a wood block. I walked up
behind Blaze and tapped him on the shoulder. Mr. Always-Be-Prepared
almost jumped out of his shorts.

“
What’s going on?” I
asked.

“
Geez, Ma, where’d you come
from?” Blaze frowned and bent over to pick up the pen he had
dropped when I startled him. I could see his butt crack. His wife
Mary better put him on a diet, pronto.

“
I missed my ride home.
What’s going on?” I repeated, pointing at Little Donny’s
car.

“
I was just explaining the
circumstances to Warden Burnett.”

“
Nice to meet you,” I said,
extending a hand which buzz cut proceeded to crush. “I’m the
sheriff’s mother.”

“
I’m the Marquette D-DNR
district supervisor,” he said to me, then turned his attention back
to Blaze. “I c-couldn’t get here s-sooner. I was out in the
field.”

Either I had an acute hearing problem or the
warden had a bit of a stutter.

“
As I was explaining to
Warden Burnett, this car seems to have appeared out of nowhere.”
Blaze scratched his head, a motion designed to facilitate thinking,
but it wasn’t helping him. “We ran the plates and the damn thing
belongs to Little Donny. How the hell did it get here?”

“
Beats me,” I said. “Maybe
Little Donny drove it over, seeing how it’s his car.”

Another deputy, one of Blaze’s favorites,
spotted us from his position by the car, hitched his pants up a
notch or two exactly the same way my son did, and strutted over
like a rooster.

I groaned.

Deputy Dick Snell, aka Deputy Dickey, was
skinny like a stick and had a face like a coyote, narrow and wily.
Animal hair was stuck all over a green blazer that partially
covered his wrinkled uniform shirt. At least I guessed it was
animal hair, since he didn’t have any to spare on his head. The
little he did have was greasy and wouldn’t have stuck to anything
unless he duct taped it there.

He came to a halt next to me and I
immediately started sneezing. Cat hair! I’m deathly allergic to cat
dander. I backed up a step.

“
Don’t you worry, ma’am,”
Deputy Dickey said. “We’re in the process of ascertaining who the
perpetrator is. Before long he’ll be incarcerated and you can sleep
easy again.”

I hate it when the local boys go away to
college. They get big britches and a vocabulary to match.

“
Who are you ascertaining
as the killer right this minute?” I looked at Deputy Dickey and his
glance fell to the ground.

I sneezed and backed up more.

Blaze butted in. “Ma, let’s talk about it
later. Go on home.”

I watched deputies work over Little Donny’s
car and I felt a twinge of guilt over not ’fessing up, but for all
I knew Blaze might be gathering new evidence about my competence
for another go-around in court. I couldn’t give him ammunition.
Imagine him trying to have me declared incompetent. My own son!

I glanced at Blaze’s new sheriff’s truck.
Someone sat in the front passenger seat.

“
I need a ride home,” I
said to Blaze. “You go finish up. I’ll wait for you.”

Distracted, Blaze nodded and went into a
huddle with Deputy Dickey and Warden Burnett.

I sneezed again. When Blaze didn’t notice, I
wandered off.

Carl Anderson crouched in the front seat of
Blaze’s truck. When I opened the door, I could smell the rank
chicken grease.

“
Spill it, Carl,” I said,
standing back from the door to escape the fumes.

“
Man, oh, man, Gertie. It
was awful.”

Carl needed a stiff snort of whiskey to calm
his tremors.

“
I never seen so much
blood. And that dead fella laying there missing most of his
head.”

“
Start at the beginning and
tell me everything.”

“
We was sitting out at the
bait pile. Little Donny was chowin’ down on doughnuts and pretty
soon so was I. My stomach started up and before you know it, I had
a bellyache you wouldn’t believe. So I took the car and went back
to the house for my Tums. I usually carry them, what with my bad
stomach, but I forgot this morning. Wouldn’t ya know, just when I
need ’em. And you know how I git. Starts with gas rumbling through
my intestines and…”

“
Okay, okay,” I
interrupted. The last thing I needed was a graphic description of
Carl’s bodily functions. “Then what?”

“
Then I drove back and
found that guy. What was left of him. It was awful.”

I thought about giving Carl a pat on the
hand or an arm squeeze to let him know everything was going to be
okay. But in the warmth of the afternoon the chicken grease fumes
radiating from his body were about to knock me flat out.

“
What was Little Donny
doing through all this?”

“
When I left, he was
leaning against a tree, cradling his rifle in his arm and stuffing
a doughnut in his mouth.”

That’s my grandson.

“
And when I come back,”
Carl continued, “his rifle was throwed down next to that dead guy,
and Little Donny was gone. I called around for him, but he didn’t
answer. Then I went and got Blaze. But I waited here. I couldn’t
bring myself to go back in them woods.” Carl looked out at the rows
of cop cars. “Looks like the whole state of Michigan’s police force
is here.”

I followed Carl’s gaze. Deputy Sheedlo,
another of Blaze’s key deputies, a lardy man with no apparent neck,
opened the back of a truck bed and hauled an animal out of a crate.
The two of them trotted by, heading for Little Donny’s Ford
Escort.

The animal swung its head in my direction
and our eyes met. It was an enormous, black German shepherd with
red devil eyes and fangs the size of meat hooks. My blood quit
pumping through my overworked veins.

I wasn’t going to find Little Donny waiting
for me at my house, griping at me because I took his wheels. I
wouldn’t find him at the refrigerator eating me into the poor
house.

“
Omigod,” I whispered to
myself, staring at the beast. “They’re searching for Little
Donny.”

chapter 3

Deputies and volunteers scattered when they
saw Devil Fang approaching with Deputy Sheedlo in tow--all except
greasy-headed Dickey, who stood waiting with his skinny legs spread
wide and his fists clutching the lapels of his green hairy
jacket.

Deputy Sheedlo had his hands full, working a
few muscles that he didn’t normally use just trying to keep the
enormous canine from ripping the leash right out of his hands. You
could see blue veins bulging on the man’s forehead and sweat beads
gleaming along his receding hairline.

Deputy Dickey opened the driver’s door of
Little Donny’s Ford Escort and Devil Fang bounded into the car. He
did the old sniff-snort around the seat and steering wheel, then
No-Neck Sheedlo led him to the edge of the woods and looked back at
Dickey.

Devil Fang was sniff-snorting the ground
when Dickey nodded the go-ahead. Sheedlo released the animal from
the leash. I was still leaning against the side of Blaze’s
sheriff’s truck watching the action when the light bulb went on in
my brain. Since I was the last one driving Little Donny’s car, my
scent was undoubtedly all over it.

Quickly I scooted around the outside of
Blaze’s new truck, heading for the driver’s door, when I heard the
blood-curdling howl. The hairs on my arms stood up.

I almost made it.

I ripped the door open and reached for the
steering wheel with one hand. I even had one foot firmly planted
inside before the dog had me by the back of my suspenders. He
clamped on and shook his head back and forth, snarling.

Deputy Dickey found us that way. I hung on
to the steering wheel for dear life while Devil Fang tried to rip
me out by my orange suspenders.

“
Get this big, stupid,
sorry excuse for a domestic animal off of me,” I hollered. “He
ripped my new suspender pants.”

At a command from Dickey, the animal
abruptly let go. I flew face first into the seat of Blaze’s truck,
catching a blast of Carl’s pungent chicken-clothes.

I thought about digging my stun gun out of
my purse and zapping Devil Fang till he was knocked silly, then
starting in on Dickey Snell, but I didn’t want them to take my stun
gun away. It was my chief line of defense until I could get a Glock
pistol like a real detective.

I straightened up and adjusted my pants,
noting the tear in the suspender. At least I wasn’t missing chunks
of cloth. Or skin. “Who’s in charge of this vicious animal?” I
demanded.

No-Neck Sheedlo dragged him away but it was
clear that Devil Fang wasn’t giving up easily. He fought the leash
and ground his fangs, all the time glaring at me with those beady
red eyes. He struggled against the leash until Deputy Dickey
stepped in and helped haul him off.

“
What is going on here?” I
asked Blaze who rushed up and had me by the elbow.

“
You okay, Ma?”

“
No, I’m not okay. Do I
look okay? A rabid police dog has just attacked me for no apparent
reason.”

“
Sit down in the seat and
take it easy for a minute.”

He helped me up into the truck seat next to
Carl. I leaned my head back against the headrest.

“
Boy, Gertie,” Carl said.
“That was something to see.” Waves of putrid grease slapped against
the air.

“
I’m waiting to hear it,” I
said to Blaze. “Why is every deputy in the U.P. here and what’s
with the dog? Since when does the sheriff’s department use dogs to
hunt people?”

Blaze sighed. “The main suspect right now is
Little Donny. I know he must have a reasonable explanation for
everything, but he left the scene of a crime, his rifle was the
murder weapon – at least it looks that way, and his footprints are
running every which way through the pools of blood.”

“
How do you know they’re
his footprints?” I wanted to know.

“
Size
fourteens.”

“
Oh.” Not many men have
size fourteen feet.

But the smoking gun left at the scene of the
crime sounded fishy.

“
A set-up,” I offered.
“Little Donny couldn’t kill a horsefly even if he set out to do it,
and you know it. Somebody’s setting him up.”

“
Then Little Donny needs to
come in and tell us what happened. I’m his uncle. Why wouldn’t he
come to me if he needed help?”

“
What if Little Donny’s
dead?” Carl said.

Blaze glared at him. “Well, Carl, that’s
quite an idea you have there. But wouldn’t his body be right out in
the open for us to find?”

“
He’s probably at my house
watching television right this minute,” I suggested.

“
He’s missing,
Ma.”

“
He’s nineteen years old, a
teenager.” It wasn’t too long ago I was changing his diaper and
wiping burp-up off my blouse. ”What if he’s hurt in the
woods?”

“
We tracked him quite a
ways into the woods before we lost trace of him. He wasn’t
bleeding, or at least he wasn’t bleeding hard enough to leave a
trail.”

I didn’t say anything. We had to find Little
Donny. It was the first thing Blaze and I had agreed on in a long
time.

“
Until he shows up, he’s
the most wanted man in the Upper Peninsula,” Blaze
finished.

The image of Little Donny’s chubby, grinning
mug plastered on the walls of every post office in the country
flashed through my mind. My eyes filled with tears and I looked
away before Blaze noticed.

Little Donny’s mother, Heather, was going to
have a heart attack if we didn’t clear this up right away. The boy
needed me. His future, maybe his life depended on locating him
fast.