Murder Grins and Bears It (22 page)

“
Dickey never had any
brains,” I said.

“
Dickey Snell?” Grandma
piped up, hunched over her bowl of soup, the spoon halfway to her
mouth. “Is that the same Dickey Snell who shot Blaze in the back
with a pellet gun when they were young?”

“
The same one,” I
agreed.

“
Never liked that kid,” she
said.

“
Blaze says his deputies
are coming around first thing in the morning to take our
fingerprints,” Heather said.

“
Why would they do
that?”

“
Blaze and Deputy Snell
think Little Donny has an accomplice and they’re trying to
eliminate friendly prints. Blaze also said Little Donny’s car is
missing.”

****

“
Little Donny would still
be safe at Grandma’s if I didn’t have such a big mouth,” I said to
Cora Mae over the phone. “I never should have told his mother. What
was I thinking?”

“
It isn’t your fault,” Cora
Mae said. “You did your best.”

I related my afternoon adventure playing war
games at the Latvala camp and she gasped and clucked
sympathetically during all the appropriate pauses.

“
I keep thinking I’m
missing something,” I said. “I can’t understand why anybody would
need to commit murder over a bunch of birds or over a little night
poaching. There’s more at stake here than we think. Call Kitty.
Both of you need to pick me up first thing tomorrow. Latvala’s
sending the next shipment, whatever that means. Let’s intercept
it.”

“
What about Walter? I
thought you said he did it?”

“
The problem is, we have
too many suspects and we have to start eliminating them. It still
certainly could be Walter. What did you find out at the
game?”

“
Not much. The Lions won
but it was close. In the last thirty seconds…”

“
Not
the
game
, Cora Mae.
You were supposed to interrogate the Smith brothers and keep an eye
on Walter.”

“
BB repeated the story
about the warden catching them shining, but he didn’t say anything
new.”

“
I was hoping for a more
detailed description.”

“
Other than the warden’s
foreign accent, he…”

“
What foreign accent?” I
interrupted.

“
BB thought he might be
from down south, Arkansas or Georgia. Maybe from Denmark or New
Jersey.”

“
Cora Mae,” I said,
disgusted. “Which is it? None of those accents are remotely
similar.”

I didn’t know what a Dane sounded like, but
I was pretty sure I wouldn’t confuse the accent with a Georgian’s
or a New Joiseyen’s.

“
That’s what he said. I’m
just repeating it.”

“
Was he
drinking?”

“
Not a drop. Well, maybe
one. Has George been around?”

“
He went on vacation,” I
lied. “You better concentrate your efforts on BB.”

“
When will George be
back?”

“
Just get over here first
thing tomorrow before Dickey shows up with his fingerprinting
kit.”

****

The capture of the local sheriff’s alleged
serial-killer nephew sent every resident in three counties charging
over for a look. It also revved up both the Escanaba and the
Marquette news media, and they raced from opposite ends of the U.P.
for exclusive live coverage. The news vans hovered around Ray’s
General Store like one giant collective buzzard hunting for scraps
of Little Donny’s flesh. Meanwhile, Blaze’s deputies held off
potential trouble with a visible array of police batons and a lot
of verbal threats.

It was ten at night before I arrived at the
jail, but the glow of the media’s lighting systems illuminated the
moonless sky for miles in every direction, reminding me of how the
sky looks in a big city.

I parked Little Donny’s newly painted Ford
Escort down near the four-way stop and walked up the road with Fred
on a leash. Blaze came out of his office as I arrived. When all the
camera lights swung in his direction, I assumed this was the first
action the media had seen.

“
This isn’t going to turn
into a free-for-all,” I heard Blaze shout, although I couldn’t see
him. The mass of bodies with cameras and notebooks drew together
tighter. I surveyed the crowd and noticed that Blaze had deputized
more of the local residents than usual, and they were taking their
new positions seriously.

Someone was bound to get shot before the end
of the night.

“
Now,” his voice continued.
“Deputy Snell is here to take questions and then I want you all to
go home. This is my town and I won’t have it overrun like this.
Deputy Snell?”

Dickey leaped up in the bed of a pickup
truck so everyone could see him. He held both arms high over his
head like he was the president of the United States greeting his
constituents from the steps of Air Force One. “As you know, we
apprehended the alleged suspect at seventeen hundred hours at an
undisclosed location. It quickly became a dangerous hostage
situation.”

I shook my head. From my understanding, the
only thing dangerous about the apprehension was Deputy Dickey.

“
I’m going to give you some
information,” he said, “but I won’t be answering questions, so
listen up. And you reporters, write fast because I’m not repeating
myself.” He cleared his throat importantly. “I and Deputy Sheedlo
cornered the suspect in his hideout. A fight ensued, we managed to
subdue the alleged party in question, and he’s incarcerated here
temporarily. The hostage was unharmed. The prisoner will be moved
to a more secure facility tomorrow so you can all rest easy later.
But for tonight, keep your firearms handy.”

Thanks to Fred’s ability to scare people, I
had worked my way closer.

Blaze, looking like he’d swallowed tacks,
rushed over and displaced Dickey. “That’s enough. Thank you for the
colorful rendition, Deputy Snell, but everyone can forget the need
for weapons. The suspect turned himself in willingly and no force
was even close to necessary. There was no hostage taken. We’ll have
guards stationed but we aren’t expecting any trouble.”

The reporters, who had been scribbling madly
while Dickey told his story, didn’t take a single note of Blaze’s
attempt at rectifying the tall tale.

I could see tomorrow’s
headlines already.
Relative of Local
Sheriff Runs Amok and Is Taken Down Like Rabid Dog.

Anybody who wasn’t here tonight would think
the story was about me.

Blaze stormed into his office, and the
deputies tried to restore order. I crept around the back of the
crowd with Fred leashed at my side. Surprisingly, my companion was
walking like he’d been trained to heel instead of ripping out my
arm socket as he usually did.

It was a good thing George and Carl moved my
truck from behind the junk heap before the commotion started or I’d
have a lot of extra explaining to do. Speaking of…

“
Carl,” I called to a
familiar figure ahead of me. He turned around and I saw the shining
badge. “What’s up?”

“
Blaze deputized me,” he
said, proudly.

“
Does he know you helped
Little Donny hide?”

“
Holy smokes, Gertie, keep
your voice down.”

“
Sorry.” I swung my gaze
around to see if anyone had overheard. “Thanks for moving my
truck,” I said, softer.

“
You’re going to get me in
all kinds of trouble before this is over. I shouldn’t have helped
George with your truck.”

Carl sounded like Grandma Johnson.

“
You’re doing a fine job of
finding trouble without my input,” I reminded him.

“
I tell ya, I don’t know if
I’ll ever hunt again.” Carl’s eyes shifted to study the crowd. “For
sure I’m not going back to my bait pile. I keep seein’ all that
blood in my mind.”

“
You’ll be just
fine.”

“
Are you going to snitch on
me for helping Little Donny?”

“
I tell you what. You get
me through this mob and into the jail, and your secret goes to the
grave with me.”

“
Deal,” Carl said, shifting
his eyes up and down and sideways. “But Blaze won’t like
it.”

****

“
I want to be deputized,” I
said to Blaze, who sat at his desk with his feet crossed over a
stack of jumbled papers.

Fred, standing level with the desk, slid his
big, black head next to Blaze’s shoes and sniffed.

“
I don’t know how you got
in here,” he said, eyeing the entrance. Carl had taken off like a
jackrabbit heading for his hole with a coyote after him. “But you
need to go back home.”

“
Hi Little Donny,” I called
out to a massive body lying on a cot inside the cell.

“
He’s sleeping,” Blaze
said, swinging his feet down. “How he can sleep with all the
excitement outside is beyond me.” He flipped his sheriff’s hat onto
the desk and rubbed his face roughly with both hands as though he
was erasing a bad dream.

“
He’s innocent, you know,”
I said. “All he’s guilty of is eating day-old bakery and sleeping
in the woods.”

“
I’d like to believe that,
but he won’t talk to me. He zipped up his lip and the only thing
he’s asked for is food.”

Good for Heather and her city-smart fancy
husband, Big Donny. She must have told him to clam up until they
could get a lawyer in to see him.

“
You’re keeping him here, I
hope,” I said. “Near his family until this is cleared
up.”

Blaze shook his head. “He’s headed for
Escanaba tomorrow where they have a real jail and more
security.”

“
He isn’t a flight
risk.”

Blaze glanced at me. “He’s been running all
along.”

Good point. Hard to argue against firm
facts.

“
But,” Blaze said, “I’m
doing it for his own protection. Billy Lundberg might have been the
town drunk, but his family goes way back and people are riled
up.”

A deputy came in and saluted. “Most
everybody has gone home,” he reported. “Even the news trucks are
packing up for the night. What should we do now?”

“
Tell the deputies we need
two guards around the clock,” Blaze said. “The rest are on call in
case I need them.”

“
Aye, aye, sir.”

“
They all think they’re
United States Marines,” Blaze complained when the deputy marched
out. “Saluting and aye, aying.”

“
Well?” I said.

“
Well, what?”

“
Am I a deputy?”

“
No, Ma, you’re
not.”

I pointed in the general direction of the
street and I felt my face getting hot. “Onni Maki’s out there
flashing a badge through all those gold chains around his neck. If
he can do a deputy’s job, anybody can.”

“
Onni really is an
ex-Marine.”

“
If Billy Lundberg wasn’t
dead you’d deputize him. You’d rather have a drunk than your own
mother.”

“
That isn’t
true.”

“
I didn’t see one woman
deputy. How do you explain that? This is sexual
discrimination.”

Blaze stared at me. “You’re exaggerating, as
usual. I’m not deputizing you because you’d think that was your
signal to run totally wild. You don’t have much restraint as it
is.”

“
What’s that supposed to
mean,” I demanded, hands on hips.

Fred sat down with a plunk as our tones
shifted, and his ears flattened against his head. Obviously he
didn’t like conflict any more than I did.

“
Go home, Ma.”

“
A warden riding an ATV
caught Walter’s hunting guests shining bear.”

“
So? Out-of-towners get
caught breaking the law all the time.”

“
It happened the same
morning Hendricks was killed, and Walter has stinging nettle welts
on his arms just like Little Donny. He could have killed the warden
for threatening to arrest the Detroit boys. Or one of those boys
could have eliminated Hendricks.”

“
Assuming your theory is
right, which it isn’t, how do you explain the arrows in Billy’s
back?”

“
Mistaken identity. Billy
Lundberg was killed because he was wearing Little Donny’s cap. My
grandson saw the murderer.”

“
Well, he’s safe in here,”
Blaze said, dismissing me with a wave. “Maybe tomorrow Little Donny
will open up and tell me his side of the story.”

“
I’m warning you,” I said,
with a menacing glare. “Nothing better happen to Little Donny. I’m
holding you solely responsible for his safety.”

“
Nothing’s going to happen
to him.”

“
Someone in Maple County is
dealing in illegal birds. Don’t you want to know about
that?”

Blaze stood up slowly and towered over me
while he attempted to hitch his pants over his protruding stomach.
He puffed his chest out and a button zinged past.

Blaze’s intimidation tactics never worked on
me. I poked him hard in his extended midsection. He let out a puff
of air and his brashness deflated significantly.

“
Little Donny didn’t do
it,” I said.

“
Prove it,” Blaze said,
sounding like a child.