Murder Grins and Bears It (10 page)

“
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
between 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.”

“
I thought you might cancel
for the poker game tonight. I’m glad you came.”

“
What poker game?” George
wanted to know.

“
The one Carl’s
at.”

“
Hum, no one mentioned a
poker game to me.”

“
Well, maybe you don’t know
everything that goes on.”

George shrugged and plopped into my rocking
chair. George is a rocker, spending hours at it if he has time.
Today there was just enough time for me to fill him in on my trip
to Marquette before the rest of the family began to arrive.

Heather and Big Donny slumped out of the
guest bedroom, blinking like moles creeping out of the ground to
discover sunlight for the first time.

“
Finally get some sleep?” I
asked.

“
Those sleeping pills Blaze
got for us from the doctor really work,” Heather said,
yawning.

Blaze puffed in, still wearing his sheriff’s
uniform and eyed up the oven.

“
Mary isn’t feeling too
good,” he said. “She decided to stay home rather than risk giving
Grandma Johnson the flu. Star has a big date and isn’t coming
either.

“
Time for someone to knock
on Grandma Johnson’s bedroom door and tell her naptime is over,” I
said, taking the cookie sheets filled with pasties out of the
oven.

No one moved.

“
Big Donny,” I said, “go
get Grandma.”

He groaned and went down the hall.

“
Donny’s going home in the
morning,” Heather said, as everyone sat down at the table except
Grandma. I walked around the table dishing out steaming pasties.
“He has to get back to the office, and this sitting around waiting
is slowly killing him. But I’m staying as long as it
takes.”

“
Once we find Little Donny,
it’s only a five-hour drive to get back,” I said, relieved because
Big Donny makes me nervous.

Heather burst out crying. “I keep thinking
this is a bad dream, and I’ll wake up. But I don’t. Once they find
him, he won’t be able to come home, will he?”

“
No.” Blaze shook his head.
“He won’t.”

“
What are these things?”
Big Donny said, eyeing up his dinner. “Some sort of Yooper pot
pie?”

“
They have these in the
supermarkets back home,” Heather said, none too politely, and I
knew the stress was really getting to her. “Just eat
it.”

I squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’m
on the case and I’ll find the real killer.”

Blaze glared at me. “Deputy Snell and Deputy
Sheedlo are doing a fine job under my direction. You can butt out,
ma.”

“
You already have Little
Donny tried and convicted. You’re his uncle and you’re not doing a
thing to clear him.”

Grandma Johnson shuffled to the table and
made a big deal of pulling out her chair.

“
You done it again,” she
crabbed. “All bellied up to the table before you come and git
me.”

There was a perfectly good reason for that,
and it was because Grandma Johnson dishes dirt. Ninety-two years
old and a regular spitfire.

“
I called you to the
table,” Big Donny said. “Don’t you remember?”

“
Something’s funny-tasting
about these pasties,” she said, ignoring Big Donny and digging in
like she hadn’t eaten for a week.

By the silence around the table, I knew she
was alone in her assessment. Everyone scooped chunks of potatoes
and meat into their mouths, contentment spreading across their
faces. Even Big Donny looked satisfied once he got past his initial
forkful.

George squirted ketchup on his pasty. “What
does Rolly Akkala say about the dead warden?”