Murder Grins and Bears It (21 page)

“
What business? Falconry
lessons? Target shooting? What?”

“
Welding or something,” he
said. “They’re at it in the back shed all night long. They don’t
even start till most of us are getting ready for bed. Sound carries
out here and it drives me and the missus nuts.”

“
Welding?” I said. “Like
soldering metal? Are you sure?”

“
Clanging and…” He turned
his attention back to the game. “Lions are going to lose this one.
Oh. Oh. Look at that. Run. RUN,” he screamed at the television set
with more energy than I expected. Then he slumped back. “They
deserve to lose playing like that.”

My game was almost over, too. I’d lost Joe
the Man to an alcoholic daze. “I have all I need. Thank you for
your time.”

“
Don’t go yet. We’re just
getting started.” He raised a limp arm in an attempt to grab me as
I passed, but his timing was off and he fell sideways on the
sofa.

“
I have work to do,” I
said. “Start without me.”

****

Warden Hendricks had died with a bird
feather in the tread of his shoe and a red bear tooth lying nearby.
None of my favorite private investigators on television would have
ignored those clues. Maybe birds and bears tied in with Walter and
the Detroit boys, and maybe they didn’t, but I had to follow them
to their natural conclusion. Only after eliminating them as
possibilities would I be able to move on.

Which led me to Ted Latvala.

I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of dodging
buckshot spray, but I had one more thing to do before going
home.

I was wearing my running shoes and dark
clothes, and they’d blend into the tree line. I left my orange cap
and jacket in Little Donny’s car and reluctantly decided that my
weapons purse would slow me down. I tucked the pepper pen in my
pocket, threw the purse on the floor, and left the Escort parked in
Joe the Man’s driveway.

I had at least an hour before his wife would
return. More than enough time for a quick surveillance run without
the missus discovering a strange car in the drive. I figured the
Lion’s game would provide enough entertainment at Latvala’s to keep
him busy so I could slip in and out undetected.

I walked down the road without encountering
any passing cars, slid into the pines along his driveway, cut into
the woods, and tromped through the bramble until I came to the back
of his house. Four outbuildings loomed ahead, close together, three
of them sheds and one larger building behind those. They were my
targets.

The noise of cheering televised football
floated on the air.

I noted several pickup trucks in the
driveway, along with the same pile of scrap vehicles I’d seen the
first day of our fiery acquaintance. I stopped behind the first
shed with my heart thumping in my chest and beads of nervous
perspiration on my forehead. I concentrated on regular heartbeats,
and when I got my nervous system under control, I peeked through a
small window.

I spotted a tractor, a lawnmower, and a
snowmobile. Nothing useful.

I’d have to check the next building, and
that meant a pass right through the backyard in full view of the
house. I held my breath, stilled my beating heart, and ran across
the yard, stopping behind the shed-like building.

Nothing from the house. No movement anywhere
and no sound other than the game. I pressed my ear against the
building and listened.

I heard male voices close by and flattened
tightly against the outer wall.

The Packers must have scored because I heard
hooting and clapping. The game was playing right inside the
building next to my head - not in the house.

Just great.

Couldn’t they watch the game in the house
like everybody else? Who hangs out in a shed during a football
game?

I rifled through my options. Although the
best choice seemed to be running away as fast as I could, my
curiosity wouldn’t let me. I scooted along the small building,
crouched under a window on the far side of the commotion, and
forced myself to look through the dirty pane.

I fastened my eyes on the back side of three
scruffy characters, all riveted to the game’s action on the other
side of the room. A commercial break began, and instead of using
the time to pop open another beer like most men would, they went to
work.

Joe the Man had been right about the
welding. One of them clamped a welding hood on his head and flames
shot from a torch in his hand. While the others watched, he
attacked a piece of pipe on a workbench and sparks flew.

I saw piles of steel and iron rods and metal
gizmos everywhere. I have to confess that I know nothing about
welding gadgets and equipment, but whatever these guys were making,
it seemed like I’d stumbled onto a hobby group sharing a common
metal-making interest.

This surveillance run hardly seemed worth
risking buckshot in my backend.

I pulled a piece of tissue out of my pocket
and dabbed it on a corner of the window, hoping to clear away a
little dirt for a better view.

A piercing wail sliced the clear September
air. The window must have been set up with an intrusion detector.
Dang.

The members of the innocent hobby club
jerked to attention and looked at each other. The one with the
welding hood pulled it off, and I could see Ted Latvala reaching
for a rifle propped against the wall. He handed it to the welder
and grabbed another rifle for himself.

The rifles triggered a response from me.

I can handle tangling with a shotgun. You
stand a chance of surviving buckshot, even a direct hit. But if
Latvala’s aim was as accurate as most Yoopers and he got a bead on
me through his rifle’s scope, I’d never make it to the pines
alive.

I’d been on the receiving end of weapons
before. Whenever Walter drew on me, I didn’t flinch, knowing he did
that to all his visitors until they identified themselves. But
something told me these men might be dead serious about silencing
trespassers, and I didn’t want to stick around and test the
strength of my instincts.

I ran to the third building, yanked open the
door, and rushed inside. Wings beat me in my face and something
alive headed out the same door I’d decided to hide behind.

I closed it as quietly as I could and turned
to squint into the dark. The only light came from two small
windows. My eyes adjusted quickly to the gloom, and I didn’t like
what I saw.

I faced a shed full of birds. Not cute
little yellow canaries or colorful chirping parakeets like my kids
had when they were young. These were enormous, hooked-beaked,
razor-clawed carnivores with staring, beady eyes. I hoped they’d
been fed recently.

They were everywhere.

“
Shhh…,” I said to them,
moving stealthily to test the back window, not finding any way to
open it. I plastered myself against the wall, pepper pen clutched
in my fist, trapped.

Nobody inside the bird house moved. Other
than the escapee, no one’s feathers seemed ruffled that I had
crashed their hen party. One bird bobbed its head in my
direction.

“
What happened?” I heard
someone say outside.

“
Turn off the alarm before
the entire neighborhood hears it. That’s all we need. A bunch of
nosy neighbors.”

The alarm went silent.

“
Anybody see
anything?”

“
I’ll check around the
house. You go that way.”

Silence.

The birds didn’t blink. All eyes were on
me.

“
For crying out loud. One
of the birds is loose,” I heard Latvala say. “How many times do I
have to tell you to be careful when you open the coop
door?”

“
I didn’t do
it.”

“
Me, neither.”

“
That’s the same one that
makes a run for it every single time it gets a chance.”

“
What a pain.”

“
How are we going to get it
out of the tree?”

“
Forget the bird,” Latvala
said. “It’ll show up tonight when we feed the rest. Check the
perimeter. The alarm went off for a reason.”

“
I think the bird hit the
window and triggered the sensors.”

“
I didn’t hear a
thud.”

“
The game was pretty loud.
So was the welding.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath.
The last voice that spoke was directly outside. My head must be
three inches from his. I had my trusty pepper pen, but it wasn’t
going to buy me much time against three scoped weapons.

If I had to use the spray, I would take out
Ted Latvala first and hope for the best with the other two.

Even through the terror I felt at the
moment, I had enough presence of mind - like the detective I am -
to wonder why they had intrusion detectors installed on the windows
if they were members of a friendly little welding club.

If they were up to no good and really were
selling illegal hunting birds, shouldn’t the building that housed
the birds be the one with intrusion protection? No alarm went off
when I opened the coop door or when I touched its back window, so I
had to assume it was alarm free.

What were they making in the other
outbuilding that warranted a security system?

A shadow fell across the inside of the coop
and I knew someone was peering through the window. I stretched as
thin as I could against the wall, and promised not to eat another
sugar doughnut for the rest of my life if I made it out of
here.

The shadow moved past.

“
Maybe you’re right,”
Latvala said. “Fool bird. Let’s get back to work. I promised the
next shipment would go out late tomorrow morning.”

They moved away.

I didn’t budge for a full fifteen minutes. I
hadn’t checked the largest outbuilding but my courage was failing
me. The birds continued to stare me down. The floor was covered in
bird do-do. I lifted a running shoe and glanced at the bottom.

My eyes were adjusting to the darkness.
Birdie do-do and little feathers stuck to the bottom of my
shoe.

I had found Warden Hendricks’ last stop
before he was murdered at Carl’s bear bait pile.

But I didn’t know what to do with that
information or whether or not it was relevant.

I slunk out the same way I came in, with a
pounding heart and a hopeful attitude.

By then Blaze had arrested Little Donny for
murder one.

chapter 17

“
I told you to stay away
from Little Donny,” I said, while slamming bowls onto the table.
“What part of ‘stay away from Grandma’s house’ didn’t you
understand?”

Heather boohooed like she always does when
life turns up-side-down and she can’t handle it. “I didn’t think it
would hurt,” she sobbed.

“
Blaze and his cronies were
yakking about you on the police scanner and I didn’t figure it out.
It went right over my head. Dickey Snell and No-Neck Sheedlo were
following you.” I slammed another bowl. “You led them right to
him.”

Boohoo, snort, blow.

“
Using my house as a
hideout!” Grandma exclaimed, leaning on the back of a chair for
support. “Is that what you’re saying? Right under my nose, too. We
need to go over and see if those roughnecks busted it
up.”

“
The house is fine,” I
said. “Don’t you care at all about what’s happening to Little
Donny?”

“
What about Little Donny?”
Grandma asked, her teeth snapping and her scrawny turkey neck
craned in my direction. “Is he finally coming to visit? It’s about
time. I haven’t seen him for over a year.”

“
Never mind,” Heather said
to her, patting Grandma’s wrinkled, liver-spotted hand. “Everything
is going to be fine.”

“
What are we having to
eat?” Grandma asked, sitting herself down at the table and picking
up her spoon.

“
Canned soup,” I said.
“Soup and crackers.”

“
As long as it isn’t
chicken.”

I ladled chicken noodle soup into her bowl
and threw a package of saltine crackers into the center of the
table.

How was I supposed to solve the warden’s
murder and plan meals, too? I was running surveillance, almost
getting myself killed on top of it, and I was supposed to put food
on the table for two helpless, basket-case women. Heather had to
pull herself together and help out or Grandma would show up at the
stove again, expecting to cook, and end up poisoning us all.

“
What happened over there?”
I asked Heather.

Grandma slurped her soup. “What kind of soup
is this?”

“
Tuna,” I answered. “And
let Heather talk.”

“
That vicious dog of yours
is back,” Grandma said. “Heather tied it up behind the house until
the dogcatcher can come and haul it away.”

Heather shook her head at my questioning
look. “George dropped Fred off right before you came home. He’s out
back. I thought it was safest.”

“
Will you please tell me
what happened,” I repeated.

“
The skinny deputy tried to
kick in grandma’s door, but it didn’t work. Then the other one, the
big wrestler-like one, smashed out a window and pushed his gun
through and yelled that we were under arrest.”

“
What was wrong with
knocking on the door?”

“
Blaze asked the same
thing. It wasn’t locked and Little Donny wasn’t armed but they
didn’t even check to see if it was open. They could have walked
right in. But the skinny one got excited when his partner broke the
window and he shot through the door, almost hitting me. Blaze is
mad. He made them put plastic over the window and they have to pay
to have everything repaired.”