Bats and Bones (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries) (16 page)

Frannie
watched him through the bulkhead mesh as he threw the van in reverse. She hung
on as they started to move. Marner glanced in his side mirror and hit the
brake. Frannie peered over his shoulder at the mirror.

Framed in
the open garage door in the deepening twilight was a sight that lifted her
pounding heart. Sheriff Ingrham, Deputy Smith and another officer all stood
with guns trained on the van. Marner reached for his gun and swung it around to
aim at the bulkhead. At the same time, he hit the window control and as it slid
down yelled, “I have one of the women. Put those guns down and back away or
she’s dead!”

Frannie
started to shift her position from the passenger side to directly behind
Marner. He saw her in the mirror and ordered her to stay where she was, waving
the gun for emphasis. Her hopes sunk as she peeked through the mesh at the
mirror and saw the law officers lay their guns on the driveway and step back.
Marner started to shift the van into reverse, still pointing the gun with his
right hand back at the bulkhead and watching the officers in the mirror.

Suddenly,
the passenger door was flung open and Larry, in a crouch, jack-in-the-boxed up
to grab Marner’s wrist and give it a twist. The gun went off and then flew out
of his hand and the van. Joel’s mouth dropped open as he swung his head around
to see what had happened. Larry kept a grip on the wrist with his right hand while
clutching his own shoulder with his left, his face twisted in pain. Frannie’s
stomach took another flop as she noticed blood oozing out between his fingers.

While Larry
distracted and disarmed Marner, the officers retrieved their weapons and rushed
the driver’s side, wrenching open the door. Sanchez deftly reached under the
steering wheel and turned off the key.

The sheriff
and Sanchez pulled Marner from the vehicle onto the garage floor while Deputy
Smith took the keys from Sanchez. Larry, still clutching his shoulder, called
weakly, “Frannie?”

“I’m here,”
she pressed her face to the mesh. “I’m fine.” She felt giddy—well, except
for the bruises on her arm from Marner’s grip, a thorn in her palm, scrapes on
her knees, a twisted knee, bug bites, and other minor ailments. Just fine.

Deputy
Smith unlocked the cargo doors and Frannie crouch-walked to the back where the
deputy helped her out. Things were a blur for a while. She saw Donna on the
driveway with Rob, but hobbled around the van to see to Larry. The deputy
hustled them both into a squad car and drove them, complete with lights and
sirens, to the small local hospital. On the way, Larry handed Frannie his phone
with instructions to call Jane Ann and Mickey.

When
Frannie hung up, she reported to Larry that Mickey was preparing a couple of
his famous pizzas to cook on the grill for them when they got back to the park.

“Will I
have to make a statement to the police yet tonight?” she then asked the deputy.

Linda Smith
shook her head and smiled at them in the rear view mirror. “No, they’ll get
that from you tomorrow. You’ve had a big enough day. You know, you two look
like a couple of teenagers.”

Frannie
looked at Larry and grinned. She sat tucked under his good arm, safe and
content for the first time in a couple of days. “I guarantee you, the last
thing I feel like tonight is a teenager. Every muscle and joint aches!”

Larry said,
“The worst part is that they will all hurt twice as bad tomorrow.”

Linda let
them out at the hospital emergency entrance. They waved to her and turned to
enter the hospital when a loud explosion sounded behind them. As they both
whipped around to see, Frannie felt fear clutch her heart again. What she saw
made her bubble over with laughter. In the dark sky, red, white and blue stars and
glitter blossomed out from a center and drifted to the ground, replaced by a
fountain of gold shimmer, and then a series of purple and green starbursts. She
had forgotten it was July Fourth. Larry squeezed her shoulder—but in a
different way than Joel Marner had—and they headed into the emergency
room.

Larry’s
shoulder was only grazed, so the wound was cleaned and dressed in less than an
hour. Frannie also had them look at her palm where she had grabbed a thorny
branch. A little cleaning, antibiotic cream, and dressing took care of that.
They came out to the waiting area to find Linda Smith browsing an old magazine.
She looked up, set the magazine aside and stood.

“Ready to
head home?”

They looked
at each other. “You bet!” Larry said. Then he said to Frannie, “Wow. Your
hair’s a mess!”

“Yeah,
well, you have a bullet hole in your favorite police marathon t-shirt.”

Linda
looked at him with interest. “You run marathons, Mr. Shoemaker?”

Larry
started to concoct a story, but Frannie jumped in. “No, he bribes his friends
to bring him t-shirts.”

He grinned
and said, “Right now I’m wishing it was a sweatshirt.”

“I’ve got a
blanket in the car,” Linda said. “Let’s get you back to that pizza.”

As they
followed Linda out, Frannie realized she was starving as well as grubby. They
arrived back in the campground to a large welcoming party. Rob and Donna were
already back; Stub and his friends had brought over extra lawn chairs, and the
bikers, Rich and Elaine, Rog and Peach, had walked down to join the
celebration. A cheer actually went up and applause sounded as they got out of
the squad car.

“Hail the
conquering hero!” Mickey shouted.

“Thanks,”
Larry said.

“I meant
Frannie,” Mickey said, whacking his brother-in-law on the shoulder, eliciting a
wince. “Oops, sorry! Adding injury to insult. Not good, it’s supposed to be the
other way around. Sit over here—I have a beer with your name on it.”

Larry said,
“You’re insane, Ferraro.”

Frannie
broke away from Jane Ann’s hug and said, “I need to get Larry a jacket.” She
headed to the camper but was waylaid by Cuba hitting her in the back of the
knees. She bent to scratch her behind the ears. “Hey, old girl. You missed me?”

When she
came back out, Cuba had found Larry and curled around his feet. She helped him
into the jacket and turned to find Donna right behind her. She wrapped her arms
around Frannie and said in a hoarse voice “I’m
so
glad you’re okay! You saved my life.”

Frannie
shook her head, her eyes tearing up. “It was a team effort. I’d be history by
now if you hadn’t gotten away and called for help.”

Donna
smiled shyly. “I didn’t have time to call. I broke a window and it set off a
silent alarm. They were here soon after.”

“Well,
whatever. We made it and I wasn’t very optimistic about that most of the time.”

“We have
lots of questions for you two,” Larry said.

“First, I
need a shower, much as I hate to miss any of the party.”

“Me too,
but are you sure you want to go back to the shower house?” Donna asked.

Larry
interrupted. “I’m sending Jane Ann with you, sore knee or not. She will have
her cell phone.”

Frannie
protested. “Larry, that’s not necessary. I don’t think there’s any more bad
guys roaming the park.”

“Shut up,
woman. It’s not just that—she can call for help if one of you passes out
in the shower.”

Jane Ann nodded
and said, “I’m going. No argument. Get your stuff.”

Frannie
said to Donna, “She’s bossier than Marner.” Donna agreed.

A half hour
later, they returned to the party under Jane Ann’s close supervision. Frannie
felt better than she expected, clean and dressed in fresh jeans, a white
t-shirt, and a yellow hoodie. She pulled a chair over next to Larry and
realized that Agent Sanchez and Sheriff Ingrham had joined the group along with
Ranger Phillips.

She looked
around and relished the welcome familiarity of the fire-lit faces circling the
campfire. Mickey sported his chef’s hat, standard in his camping wardrobe, and
shoveled the first pizza off the grill on to a waiting pan held by Jane Ann.
She hobbled over, laid it on the picnic table with a flourish, and expertly cut
it in squares. Plates were handed around, first to Donna, Frannie and Larry.
Mickey started another one, and campers showered him with compliments, much to
his pleasure.

“How are
you doing, Mrs. Shoemaker?” Sanchez asked.

“Well, it
was quite a ride,” and seeing his expression she added, “I’m not being
flippant. I can’t believe everything that did happen and everything I thought
was going to happen between the time we left the shower house and when you
showed up at the funeral home. Not an experience I’d care to repeat.”

“I’m sure
not. We think we have most of this pieced together but we’ll get your take and
the full story tomorrow, okay?”

Frannie
nodded. “There’s a cave near the old cabin that actually is a tunnel leading to
a road outside the park.”

Sanchez
said, “Your husband found that with Randy’s GPS. Remember there were
coordinates for two nearby sites. We only checked out the first this morning.”

Frannie
laughed weakly. “That was only this morning?”

“What about
Stephanie?” Donna asked. “Will she be able to come back now that Marner’s been
arrested? It sounds like her husband didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“We think
it’s best that she wait until morning; then we’ll bring her out to get her
truck and camper. I don’t think Trey was involved, but we don’t know what else
he’s capable of—he did threaten her.”

“Wow.”
Frannie was still overwhelmed. “You wouldn’t believe how quiet our weekends
usually are compared to this.” She gazed down the road. “What about the people
in the Airstream? Did you ever contact them?”

Sheriff
Ingrham laughed. He had just polished off his pizza and threw his plate in the
fire. “We heard from them this afternoon. His father had a heart attack up in
Wisconsin and the whole family headed up there first thing Saturday morning.
When he heard about the murders on the news, he called the local police
department today. They’ll be back tomorrow to get their equipment.”

“I wonder
if they have any idea what people suspected them of this weekend,” Donna said.

“Probably
not.”

Mickey and
Rob were passing out seconds on the pizza and gave Frannie two more pieces. She
was halfway through the second when she almost nodded off. Her plate started
sliding off her lap. Larry noticed and touched her arm lightly. Her head jerked
back and she jumped and looked around, confused.

“Whoa,
there!” Larry said. “You don’t need whiplash on top of everything else. What
say you and me turn into pumpkins?”

She nodded
gratefully and after everyone warned them about bedbugs, etc., they headed
inside.

********************

Happy
Camper Tip #15

One of
Iowa's most beautiful and best known state parks, Maquoketa Caves, is the basis
for the fictitious Bat Cave State Park. There are amazing caves and trails and
the campground is delightful. There is no old cabin or tunnel that I know of,
and the campground hosts aren’t crabby.

Early Monday morning

In spite of
her exhausting day, Frannie woke up the next morning about 5:30. The previous
two days’ events replayed in her head. Cocooned safely in the comfy bed almost
negated the fear and uncertainty. After a while she rolled out, found her
slippers and hooded sweatshirt, and fixed the first pot of coffee. She and Cuba
went outside to a glorious morning. She felt sore and battered, but the peeking
sun promised a better day and lifted her spirits. Her flannel pajamas and
sweatshirt felt perfect in the morning chill as they took a short turn around
the campground.

By the time
they got back, the coffee was ready and she apologized to Cuba that dogs
couldn’t have the fragrant brew. Cuba cocked her head and looked at Frannie
with her standard ‘Why don’t humans make sense?’ look. Frannie stirred up the
coals in the fire ring and put a couple more logs on. She explained that dogs
weren’t in charge because they couldn’t make fire. Cuba wasn’t buying it.
Frannie sat in her camp chair, one hand wrapped around her steaming mug, one on
the dog’s head and watched the morning unfold.

The new
logs caught and the small flames mesmerized her. A door opened and she looked
across the road to see Donna come out with Bugger. They walked over to the
fire.

“How are
you doing this morning?” Frannie asked her.

“It seems
like a dream today or a movie we watched or something, doesn’t it?”

“I know…I’m
feeling the same thing. Help yourself to some coffee if you want.”

“I will.
I’d better take the puppy around or she’ll report abuse.”

When they
returned, Donna got her coffee and pulled up a chair by the fire. For ten
minutes or so, they just sat there, staring into the fire.

Finally
Donna said, “Frannie, I need to confess. I wasn’t honest with you the other
night.”

Frannie
looked at her puzzled. “What?…I can’t remember past yesterday.”

“I know.
But I told you that my parents passed away twenty years ago. It’s a story I’ve
even told Rob. But the truth is I have no parents. I was abandoned as an infant
and grew up in foster homes. I had so many behavior problems, no one would keep
me. The longest was a year. I don’t know what you went through losing your
mother because I’ve never had any family to lose.” Her voice broke and tears
ran down her face.

This time
Frannie did take her hand. “Donna, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you have
gone through either.”

“Yesterday
was just more of the same. If I hadn’t insisted on walking to the cabin, none
of that would have happened.”

“And Joel
Marner would probably still be loose and all of these people would still be
under suspicion and Mickey wouldn’t have made pizza.”

Donna face
broke a little into a smile.

“Donna,
what happened to us was Joel Marner’s fault, not ours. We weren’t trying to
meddle or play Nancy Drew or anything. We were just taking a little hike and
not alone so we should have been fine. We’ve taken other walks this weekend and
nothing has happened.”

“Except for
finding a dead body.”

“Yeah,
there’s that.”

“I don’t
know why he came after us.”

“Me either.
Maybe just because we ran. But if we had continued on the path, we would have
met him and how could he explain being out here? He had just told us a short
time before that he had to get back to work.”

“Oh look! A
beautiful morning and a couple of beautiful chicks by the fire.” A voice behind
them.

Frannie
turned and smiled at her husband. “You mean us or Cuba and Bugger?”

“Hmmm. I
meant four beautiful chicks by the fire.”

“Thanks.”

“Bugger
will be offended. He’s not a chick,” Donna said.

“We’ve
always had female dogs; therefore all dogs are female. Did either of you get
any sleep?”

They both
nodded vigorously. He pulled another log from the bin and used his fire poker
to arrange the fire into a little teepee. It soon burned with a bigger blaze.

“Men and
fires,” Donna said to Frannie. “What is it, anyway?”

“It’s
because they can’t have babies.”

“It seems
to me,” Larry said, pouring a cup of coffee, “that even though no one would
know it by looking at us, we’ve missed a couple of serious meals through all
this nonsense. Weren’t we going to have smashed potatoes one morning?”

“We planned
it for yesterday but decided to hold it for this morning,” Frannie said.

“What are
smashed potatoes?” Donna asked.

“You bake
potatoes either in the oven or the micro, smash them down with a spatula,
drizzle them with a little olive oil and salt and pepper and put them in oven
until they get a little crispy. Then, you top them with sausage gravy. It’s a
health food.”

“Wow!
Sounds like it. And you’re right, Larry. I had marinated pork chops for last
night and a little extra surprise—early sweet corn. Except the surprise
was on us.”

“How about
this? The sheriff and Sanchez will be back this morning to grill you girls so
I’m thinking we’ll pack up and leave early afternoon—after we get home
and unload, we can gather in our back yard tonight and polish that stuff off. I
can just set the grill up there.”

“Excellent
idea,” Frannie said. “Are you and Rob busy? I mean, since you’d have to bring
the food?”

Larry
looked hurt. “We would be providing the grill, the cooking expertise, and
scintillating company. Don’t we have some peanut butter and crackers we could
contribute?” A little eye rolling from Frannie.

“We’d love
to,” Donna said. “What would we do with all that food, anyway?”

“Settled,
then. One thing decided for today.”

“I think we
have lots of salads left too,” Frannie said.

“What’s
settled?” Mickey said, bouncing down the steps of his motor home brandishing an
empty coffee cup.

“We’re
having last night’s supper on our deck at home tonight.”

“Excellent.
And what’s for breakfast and lunch?”

“Get some
coffee, sit down and shut up, Mick. We’ll tell you when you need to know. And
it wouldn’t hurt if you made your own pot of coffee this morning instead of
mooching ours.”

“I’m hurt.
We made a pot yesterday.”

“Right. And
this is our third morning here.”

“Yeah,
but—“

“Why don’t
you two go sit in our camper and argue? You could wake Rob up so you’d actually
be accomplishing something,” Donna said. Frannie high-fived her.

Jane Ann
emerged at that point, gingerly descending the steps.

“Good
morning all.”

“It was
until Larry got up all grouchy,” Mickey said.

“I wasn’t
grouchy until I saw Mickey’s face, was I, girls?”

“Ohmigosh,
I’m going to call the sheriff and have him send Marner out here and lock you
two up,” Frannie declared.

“Are they
being bad boys?” Jane Ann asked.

“No worse
than usual,” Frannie said.

“Okay, no
sausage gravy and potatoes,” Jane Ann said.

“I’m going
to go make another pot of coffee,” Mickey said, now contrite. “Larry, old
buddy, can I get you anything? Wash your feet? Brush your teeth?”

“Done, but
thanks for asking. Change of subject. Time for questions. What
were
you chicks doing yesterday?”

Donna said,
“My fault. When we came out of the bathroom, I asked Frannie where that path
went and she said to the old cabin. So I suggested we just walk out there and
back. Dumb idea, as it turned out.”

“Where did
you run into Marner, at the cabin?”

“No,”
Frannie said. “We had just started back and saw him cutting through the trees.
We would have run into him if we kept going so we ducked off the path the other
way but he must have heard us.”

“Did you
know it was him?”

“No, it was
just a guy all in black and he had his hood up and just seemed like he was
sneaking around.”

“And then
when he got to the path, we saw he had a gun!” Donna said.

“So then
what?”

“We were
going to cut through the woods to get back here, but on the north side of that
path, there’s a bluff and we couldn’t get around it so we went back to the
cabin.”

Rob had
ambled across the road to join them. “Hold it, don’t go any farther until I get
my coffee. I want to hear this, too.” In a few minutes, they were all back
around the fire, including Mickey who had plugged another pot in.

“So you’re
back at the cabin,” Larry said. “Not much place to hide there.”

“We broke
in,” Donna said, “but you’re right, there’s no place to hide. So Frannie got
the fireplace poker down from over the fireplace. We thought maybe we could use
it as a weapon.”

“It
busted—the point thing came off,” Frannie pointed to the similar one in
Larry’s hand, “so I put that in my pocket.” She went on to describe how they
hid in the root cellar, and Marner’s discovery of them.

“I wonder
why he even bothered looking for you,” Larry said.

“Because
we’re cute chicks?” Frannie suggested.

“He must
have thought we could identify him,” Donna said. “Frannie mentioned this
morning that we had just seen him at Stub’s RV a little while before and he
said he had to get back to the funeral home for a visitation. I don’t think
most funeral directors wear black hoodies to visitations.”

“I think he
wanted to shoot us then and there but was afraid someone would hear and know
where he was. He saw the poker and made me drop it but I still had the point in
my pocket. When he took us to that cave-tunnel, we could hear you guys calling
us. I almost cried,” Frannie said.

“That was
Larry singing—that’s why you wanted to cry,” Mickey told her.

“Potatoes
and gravy,” Jane Ann said, and Mickey shut up.

Donna
continued the story about the journey through the tunnel and being confined in
the truck.

Frannie
added, “He couldn’t hold the gun on us both and tape our wrists at the same
time so that was a lucky break. He made Donna do mine and we were able to get
my watch in it and keep it a little slack or I never would have been able to
get loose later.”

“Why did he
go to the funeral home? Why not just take off?” Rob asked.

“Maybe
Sanchez will be able to tell us more, but I’m guessing he thought if he had to
cut and run, to make one last effort to add to his bone collection.”

“That’s
what I want to know,” Mickey said. “What was he doing with the bones?”

“That’s
what this was all about, I think,” said Frannie. “Several months ago, I saw a news
report about the black market in human tissue. Not only organs, as you might
expect, but everything else as well. Human bones are used in dental implants
and orthopedic transplants. Theoretically they come from people who have willed
their bodies to such purposes and have been screened for diseases. But when a
body is scheduled to be cremated, it offers an opportunity to unscrupulous body
snatchers who rob a corpse of its bones and maybe even replace them with
plumbing pipe. Seriously. But because of the cremation, the family is none the
wiser. These bones sell for thousands of dollars on the black market.”

“Do you
mean the funeral home was in on this?” Jane Ann asked, appalled.

Frannie
shook her head. “No, I’m sure it was just Marner. Randy was a courier; one of
the addresses Sanchez found in his things was for a tissue service in Nebraska.
Stub said Randy was the one who suggested this trip, who wanted to stop at this
park, and who didn’t want to turn around in spite of the obvious fact that he
wasn’t enjoying the trip. It was supposed to be a simple pick up but Maeve
Schlumm stumbled on to it.”

“But why
was Randy killed?” Mickey said.

“Wait!”
said Rob. “We can talk about that later. Why did Marner go back to the funeral
home?”

“He knew
Maeve’s body was there and going to be cremated. He probably felt she owed him
for screwing up what for him was a lucrative set up. I think he was going to
remove some of her bones to add to the ones he would now deliver. And I think
he planned to do the same with us—that’s why he took us along.”

Donna’s jaw
dropped and her eyes grew wide. “Are you kidding me?”

Frannie
shook her head. “‘Fraid not.”

“So he left
you guys in the van to get Maeve’s bones…” Rob prompted. Frannie explained how
they got out of the van and why they had to go into the funeral home. “It’s a
big place,” she said, “and fairly new. There’s a large room in the center that
can be divided into three big rooms for services or viewings. All the way
around that is a hallway, with offices, storage rooms, prep rooms, et cetera
around the outside. It’s almost a maze. So we had a big disadvantage because he
kept circling and cutting us off.”