All I’m saying about that night is that Fred slept on the floor.
The rest is between me and George.
Chapter 31
WHEN I WOKE UP, GEORGE was gone. It was ten o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t ever slept that long before. It must have something to do with the straw bed I had to sleep on Tuesday night, and…well…George and I hadn’t slept much through the night either.
I stayed in bed for awhile, replaying the night in my head, over and over like my mini recorder tape. What a man!
A fresh pot of coffee greeted me along with Fred. I let him out and he disappeared around the corner of the house at a trot, heading for an outbuilding. George is our local dog catcher, along with everything else he does. He rounds up strays and keeps them in roomy kennels in the outbuilding until he can find their old homes or new ones for them. Fred must have a new girlfriend out back to get him fired up like that.
More coffee, a shower, and I was set to go. George and I were meeting at noon with or without Laura in tow. The tape would be in the mail. After checking on Fred and finding him nose to nose with a cute Irish setter, I snuck off without him. He didn’t mind at all. Last I checked, the two of them were wagging their tails like crazy. Fred’s ears were at an awkward angle, slicked back with romance.
Love does crazy things! Don’t I know it!
Close to my home, I left the road and drove through a field into the pines. When I was sure no one could see the truck, I parked and walked in to the deer blind Barney built years ago on our back forty.
We have so much land in the U.P. we referred to it in forty-acre parcels instead of single-acre lots. I have two forties left after giving a forty each to Blaze and Star. Heather, my Milwaukee-dwelling other daughter, didn’t want anything to do with living in the woods, or I would have given her one, too. Maybe someday her son, Little Donny, will want one of my two.
My hunting blind hadn’t been used since November when deer hunting season ended. I used it as a retreat when my family got to be too much for me. I’d lay back in the La-Z-Boy with my feet up, listening to the crackle from the propane heater while watching deer come along to eat apples and corn I’d throw out for them.
It was a haven for me and for the deer. Shooting wild animals is a part of life here, a necessity for survival, since jobs are scarce and money is tight. But I let others take care of that. I couldn’t look an animal in the eyes and then end its life.
Today, the going wasn’t easy. In early spring, the ravines are marshy. I slopped through water up to my shins in some places before climbing to higher ground. The door to the blind squeaked when I opened it. I surveyed the inside of my mini home-away-from-home. Other than a few nuts stuffed into the corner of my chair and a couple flies buzzing at the window, nothing had changed in the last five months. I started the heater, hoping to dry out my pant legs.
George and Laura came walking in from the opposite end, right when I expected them. They’d missed the fun of tromping through the wetlands. I wished I’d thought of that.
I don’t know how George got Laura to agree to meet, but she didn’t have a weapon pointed at her back. She hadn’t been physically coerced. I watched them approach and smiled. George looked great. Maybe that’s why Laura came willingly. George used his sex appeal to bewitch her in the same way he’d lured me in. For a sixty-year-old, he was dynamite.
I gave George my favorite chair and opened two folding chairs for Laura and me. We sat down, my pant legs as near to the heater as possible without starting them on fire.
“George said it was important that we talk,” Laura said. “I brought my recorder. Is this about another story?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “You’ve had all the stories you’re going to get.”
“I’m really sorry the last one didn’t run.” Laura looked like a spring tulip, all rosy and fresh. “I’m still working on my boss.”
“George,” I said, hauling my stun gun out of my purse. “Will you watch for intruders while Laura and I have a little conversation?”
“Sure,” he said, right on cue like we’d discussed last night. “But screams might be heard by somebody. Sound carries quite a distance in the woods.” He looked at Laura. “No screaming.”
“What are you talking about?” Laura said, eyeing George, then my weapon. From the look on her face I could tell she wasn’t sure what it was.
I turned it on for effect.
“You said you lost my cattle prod,” George said to me. It was the truth. I’d borrowed the prod from him and liked it so much, I kept it.
“I found it again,” I lied, making my eyes into what I thought were dangerous slits. “Laura, I want to know why you were having an affair with Tony Lento. I want all the facts, every last one.”
“What are you talking about?” Laura said with wide, innocent eyes. I could almost believe she was innocent. She was that good. “I never met the man.”
“But you know who I’m talking about?”
“Of course I do. I’m a reporter. His death was all over the news wires.”
“My trigger finger is starting to tremble. This thing might get away from me.” I moved toward her. She jumped up.
“You’re crazy! I don’t know what you’re talking about. Touch me with that and I’ll start screaming.”
“No screaming,” George warned from the door like he was telling a dog to stop barking.
“Look,” Laura said. She had her cool attitude back. “Let’s work this out. Okay. Tell me why you think I was involved with Tony Lento.”
So I did. She listened without interrupting me. Then she said, “I didn’t have a conversation with you on the phone yesterday. I was in Munising on assignment. If you don’t believe me, we can call the paper and verify it. I didn’t know Tony Lento personally and I didn’t give away your hiding spot. I didn’t even know where you were.”
“There’s only one way to get the truth out of you,” I said.
Laura was ready to fight me and my weapon. She still stood, tense and alert. “Sit down,” I said, turning the stun gun off and returning it to my purse before George could lay claim to it. “I have a truth serum. If you’re innocent, you don’t have a thing to worry about.”
“I’m not drinking anything,” Laura said, holding her ground.
“Nothing like that.”
I made her repeat what she’d told me into the tape recorder, but I already knew the answer. Her voice, once I listened carefully to her, wasn’t the same one I’d heard on the phone.
The tape confirmed it.
Once Laura realized the tables were turned, she let her indignation show, sputtering and complaining about false pretenses and physical threats. Maybe reporters in the U.P. don’t get much of that, but they should be prepared for anything.
“I’m going to give you an exclusive,” I said to appease her. “Once this case is solved, you get my story.”
That quieted her down while she thought about the possibilities.
“I had to have been talking to Shirley on the phone,” I said. “She lied to me, and I’m going to find out why.”
“In the meantime,” George said to Laura. “You need to be extremely careful.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m a big girl.”
“Big men have been killed over this. Guns take down big girls, too,” he argued. “And your roommate is right in the middle of something nasty.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Shirley’s up to something.”
“If you think she was having an affair with a married man, you’re wrong,” Laura said. “She’s not like that.”
“Shirley had all of us fooled,” I said. “She must be part of the gang. Is she still at your house?”
Laura nodded. “She’s leaving for lower Michigan in the morning.”
Before we left the hunting blind, George and I convinced Laura to keep quiet about our discussion, at least until we had time to talk to Shirley. But she refused to take any personal precautions, arguing that she had been safe until now. There was no reason to believe anyone would harm her. “Especially,” she said, “not my friend Shirley.”