I glanced over to Carl, trying to determine if he’d heard the animals calling out. But he was so lost in his own sorrow that he didn’t even notice me look his way.
And so I took a chance, keeping the rifle gripped tightly in my hands, and crept deeper into the woods. I’d switched off my phone’s light, which meant I had to rely on my other senses to guide me.
“Pringle? Gloria?” I whispered as I treaded over dry leaves and loose twigs.
“Over here,” the raccoon called from somewhere nearby.
“I can’t see anything,” I whispered back. “Can you come to me?”
“I’m here,” Pringle said from much closer now. “But the bear went back to be with her babies.”
“What’s going on? You said you figured out the murder?”
He let out a huff.“Well, I thought I had, but something tells me I got it all wrong.”
“What was your theory?” I begged.
“So when we first met Gloria, she mentioned how her mate had tried to kill their cubs and that she was on the lam. Then I figured any guy who would kill his own kids could easily off a human,” he said. I couldn’t see him, but I imagined him making big sweeping gestures to emphasize his assumed brilliance.
Unfortunately, I had to burst his bubble.“But that makes no sense,” I said in exasperation.
“Of course it makes sense.” Hurt echoed in his voice. I loved that he was trying to help, but one of us could have been shot back there. This was serious business, and I needed him to take it as such.
“The murder weapon was a poison pie,” I reminded him with a sigh. “Do you know any bears who can bake?”
“Hey, I could bake if I wanted to.”
“Well, you never have, and also you’re not a bear. Is that why you brought me out here?”
“I wanted to tell you and Gloria at the same time. That way I could get my second salmon and make partner in the P.I. firm in one nice combo move.” He sounded completely chastised now, which meant it would be the wrong time to point out that he wouldn’t be joining Octo-Cat’s and my businessany time in the near future.
“So you told Gloria to meet us here?” I prompted.
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I just had to go and get you first.”
Now that the shock of meeting Carl had worn off, something important clicked together in my mind.“I overheard the two of you talking about exploding lightning. Gloria wasn’t talking about fireworks like I thought before. She was talking about guns. There are illegal hunters in the area. If Junetta figured that out, she could have put a stop to it. Someone didn’t want that to happen, though.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Pringle agreed.
Yes, yes, we were on to something here. We could still solve this thing.
“Pringle, I need your expert snooping skills,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t later come to regret it. “Do you think you can help me close this case?”
He pumped his arm and made a terrible honking noise, then shouted,“Okay! Let’s hit the road, sweetheart!”
Of course, he happily agreed.
Chapter Eighteen
By the time I got back to the picnic area, Carl had already gotten up and left.
Shoot. I still had some questions I wanted to ask him, but I’d have to worry about that later.
Pringle went to find Gloria so that he could explain our plan and to promise we’d do something about the illegal hunting as soon as we found some answers. Much to his chagrin, I also made him tell the grizzly that a second payment would not be needed, that we were happy to help simply out of the kindness of our hearts.
While he took care of that, I sat at one of the picnic tables with the rifle laid out on its surface and called Charles to tell him what had happened and what Pringle and I were planning next.
Luckily, Pringle liked guns—although his primary experience was in handling the Nerf variety. Still, he was excited to implement the plan exactly as I’d laid it out. And if there was one thing I’d learned about working with animals in all my time as a pet whisperer, it was that the best results came when you got them to act on their natural behavior. Pringle loved collecting secrets via his snooping endeavors, and I’d already caught him slipping into RVs undetected earlier that day. In fact, that’s how this whole adventure started in the first place.
So now when I asked him to keep doing it, he readily agreed. The plan involved him sneaking into the campers parked at the grounds and searching for rifles or any other hunting paraphernalia. Once we found out who all might be engaged in illegal hunting, we could narrow down our suspect list.
First, though, I needed him to pay a quick visit to Junetta’s camper and find the logbook Charles had mentioned to the police. She’d recorded our arrival, which meant she had likely recorded everyone else’s, too.
Pringle made quick work of this first task and delivered the logbook to me and Charles, even taking care to set it down nicely and turn to the page we needed so that neither of us would get our fingerprints on it.
“Charles,” I said after studying the logbook for a few minutes. “Do you remember the name of the woman who accused me of killing Junetta?”
He thought for a moment.“We never got her first name, but the police officers referred to her as Ms. Stevens.”
I nodded. That’s what I had thought, too. “She’s not in here,” I said, chewing on my lip.
Charles read through each line, then swore under his breath.“You’re right. What do you think it means?”
“Octo-Cat,” I called. “Come here. We need your help for a second.”
He groaned but got up and hopped onto the table.“What do you need, your majesty?”
“Can you turn the page for us?” I asked, letting his insult slide. “Go back to the older entries.”
“Smart,” Charles said bumping his shoulder into mine. “No prints.”
Octo-Cat struggled with the task but eventually got the page turned.
I read through that page but still found no mention of Ms. Stevens’s checkin.
“Again, please,” I asked my cat.
It took three more turns of the page before we finally found an entry for a Miss Sara Stevens. The entry was made so long ago that it was in a different handwriting. She’d been here even longer than Junetta had.Hmmm.
Charles pulled out his phone and opened the Notes app.“I’m making a list,” he said as he typed furiously on the tiny keyboard. “Every lot number and the date of the most recent checkin.”
While he did that, I jotted down any names that occurred multiple times—identifying the grounds’ frequent visitors, people like Sharon.
Octo-Cat helped us turn the pages as needed, but not without the promise of many, many lobster rolls, shrimp kebabs, and cans of tuna in his future.
When Pringle returned, he looked absolutely exhausted. I poured him a dish of water and waited for him to catch his breath before asking for a recap.
“Well?” I prompted when he still hadn’t shared his findings with the group.
“Twenty-two RVs,” he said, sucking in a deep, dramatic breath, even though he’d had more than enough time to recover. “I was able to break into seventeen of them. Of those, four had rifles and two had handguns.”
“Do you remember which ones?” I prompted, after relaying this info to Charles.
“Do I remember?” he spat. “Of course, I remember.”
“Then show me.”
Pringle scampered around telling me what he’d found in each RV as well as identifying which ones he couldn’t open. I jotted it all down in a series of text messages to Charles so he could check the occupancy periods for each of our gun owners on the premises.
As Pringle approached the end of the line, I pointed to Sara Stevens’s aqua-accented Airstream. “What about this one? Did it have a gun?”
“No gun, but lots and lots of ammo. I found trail maps, too, with paths marked in red,” he said, unwittingly revealing our smoking gun.