The Blue Coyote (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries Book 2) (6 page)

“No, I only talked to her
once, about the training wheels.”

“And what happened the last
time she rode by? She was headed to the main campground road, correct?”

“Yes, although she always
turned around before she got to the main road. I went out in the road to
intercept her on the way back and ask her to give it a break, but when she saw
me, she got off her bike and talked to a woman passing by. I assumed she was
complaining about me so I came back here.”

“Did you know the woman?”

Larry shook his head, but
Frannie jumped in. “I think she’s camped over in the tent area. We just saw her
again when we left on our hike.”

“What about your little boy?
What happened to him?”

Frannie sighed. Sam would
never let Joe go camping with them again. “He’s our grandson. We were hiking
along the river and he ran out on a sand bar, stepped on a slippery rock, and
fell in. He bruised his cheek and scraped his hands when he fell. His sister
got there first and grabbed him.”

Ranger Sommers seemed to
accept the explanation but didn’t comment either way. “I’m going to go talk to
Mrs. Trats a little more and then I would like you to go with me to show me the
woman Taylor Trats was talking to.”

“Glad to,” Frannie answered.
“We can help search, too.”

The ranger gave her a steady
look. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She turned and walked away.

Larry rubbed his hand over
his crewcut and put his other arm around Frannie.

“What are we going to do?”
she asked.

He shrugged. “Nothing we
can
do right now except help out when
they let us.”

“Do you think someone really
took her?”

Before he could answer, Sabet
and Joe burst out of the camper. Joe had dry jeans and a sweatshirt on. Frannie
was pretty sure the wet ones were in the middle of the living room floor.

“Gran! What were all those
people doing here?” Sabet demanded.

Frannie drew in a deep
breath. How much to tell them? “They can’t find that little girl who has been
riding by here. She might be lost.”

“Did they want Grandpa to
help—cuz he was a cop?”

“Sort of. Joe, where are your
wet clothes?”

“Oh—I forgot!”
Surprise. He climbed back into the trailer and soon reemerged carrying a sodden
pile. Frannie helped him hang the clothes on the portable clothesline off the
back of the trailer.

Meanwhile, the Ferraros and
Terells had gathered around Larry. Even Mickey was subdued as they kept an eye
on the road to the Trats’ campsite and speculated on how the child could have
gotten lost so quickly in broad daylight. Larry squelched most of the talk in
Sabet’s hearing and moved to add wood to the fire.

Frannie looked around at her
friends and tried to ignore the hole in her stomach. The accusations and
suspicions brought back a hammer of memories of the previous Fourth of July
weekend when the campground hostess was murdered at Bat Cave State Park. Surely
the Trats girl would be found soon having just wandered off. But...she thought
about her uneasiness around the single men in the road crew and the
conversation she overheard while waiting in the truck. They had seemed awfully
interested in the kids at the campground and the flea market, but then lots of
people liked kids. It was the times that made everyone suspicious.

Mickey had picked up his
guitar and was strumming it softly. Jane Ann was on her phone—probably to
one of her daughters. Nancy was getting an explanation from Joe about his
marshmallow gun.
A peaceful scene but a disturbing current
underneath.

Ranger Sommers returned from
the Trats’ campsite, looking grim. Frannie could imagine the demands being made
of her.

“Mrs. Shoemaker, would you
ride over to the tent loop with me and point out the woman you saw talking to
the Trats girl?”

Frannie nodded, noticing that
Sommers was deliberately excluding Larry. She climbed into the passenger seat
of the DNR pickup while the ranger took the wheel and expertly backed the truck
into an empty campsite across the road, completing a neat three point turn, and
slowly headed to the tent loop. Frannie pointed out the small tent and the
woman sitting, still reading, by the fire.

The ranger got out of the
truck, and since she hadn’t been instructed not to, Frannie followed. The
ranger introduced herself.

“Ma’am, a little while ago, a
young girl on a bike talked to you in the road?”

The woman, middle-aged with
too-black helmet hair, closed her book and stood up, tugging her pink
embroidered sweatshirt over ample hips clad in matching pink sweat pants.

“Why, yes. She was afraid of
a man in one of the campsites. She wanted me to go with her to report it.”

“Who were you going to report
to?” Sommers tilted her head slightly and crossed her arms.

“Well, we were going to find
you, but when we passed the host site, the woman was outside so we talked to
her. She said she would take care of it.”

“Where did the little girl go
then, do you know?”

“She had to go to the
restroom so I took her. On our way back, she wanted to take a short cut through
the woods to her campsite. Why? Did something happen?”

“We don’t know. She has
disappeared. She may just be lost.”

The woman’s mouth dropped
open and she brought up one hand to cover it. “Oh, no! I guess I shouldn’t have
let her go by herself, but we could see their trailer through the
trees—it wasn’t that far. She was going to have her parents go get her
bike.” She paused and rubbed her forehead, then looked at them in shock. “I
don’t know who the man was that was bothering her—back there somewhere.”
She pointed toward the loop Frannie and Larry were on.

“All right, I know the path
you mean. We’ll start our search there. What is your name, and where are you
from?”

“Maddie Sloan. I live in
Omaha. I’m on my way to visit my son in Indianapolis. I can’t believe
this—I feel terrible.”

“Are you camping alone, Ms.
Sloan?”

“Yes.”

The ranger walked over to the
post and checked the site registration and dates.

“You plan to camp here until
tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Did you come right back here
after you left the little girl?”

“Oh, yes. I laid down in my
tent for a while but I’ve been here the whole time.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About an hour and fifteen
minutes, I think.”

Precise, thought Frannie.

“Okay,” said the ranger.
“Please stay here in the park in case we have more questions.”

The woman nodded. “I sure
hope you find her.” She stood with her hands clasped, watching them leave.

Frannie and the ranger got
back in the truck. As they pulled away, Frannie said, “Where’s her car?”

“What?” Sommers glanced over
at her.

Frannie rubbed the sore spot
on her shoulder. “If she’s here alone, where’s her car? How did she get here?”

The ranger thought a minute
as she pulled slowly into Frannie’s loop. “There’s an overflow parking area
near the entrance. She doesn’t have a very big site. Maybe she unloaded and
parked over there.”

“Probably.” Frannie wasn’t
convinced even though it was a logical explanation. “We’ve used that path from
the restroom—that shortcut—and you can see someone from our
campsite the whole time they are on it. It’s not very long—I can’t
imagine getting lost on it.”

Sommers was
quiet for a moment as she pulled up to
Frannie’s campsite. “Has your husband used that path today?”

Frannie froze. What had she
said? Why couldn’t she learn to keep her mouth shut? Her core honesty wouldn’t
allow her to lie.

“Mrs. Shoemaker?” the ranger
prodded.

Frannie looked down at her
hands. “Ye-s-s.”

“When?”

“Right after he saw the
little girl go talk to Ms. Sloan. He went to the restroom.”

“Was anyone else with him?”

“No, but you have to
understand.” Frannie turned to face the ranger. “You don’t know my husband.
He’s the most ethical person I’ve ever known. He’s a retired cop, he was a Boy
Scout leader,
he’s
been an exemplary father and
grandfather. Anyone in our home town will tell you that.”

“Hmmm. He almost sounds like
a priest.” Ranger Sommers did not mean those words to be comforting. “You are
pretty upset, Mrs. Shoemaker. Pretty defensive, too. Are you sure you don’t
have your own doubts?”

“No!” Frannie clenched her
fists and almost shouted. “I’m upset because my husband is being falsely
accused. Our grandchildren are with us—I don’t want them to hear
this—this tripe!
Larry has been annoyed by noisy
training wheels
for years. Ask anyone we camp with. It’s a standing
joke. How can it turn from that into a charge of abduction?” She felt her face
getting red and tears welling in her eyes, which made her even madder.

“Calm down,” Sommers said.
“I’m just pointing out how it looks to others. The county sheriff is conducting
a search of the park now and will probably be by to talk to you later.”

Frannie opened the truck
door. She was not mollified. “I think you’d better use your time to look for
that little girl. Whether she was taken or is lost, she’s got to be scared. You
are wasting your time here. After four hundred years, apparently witch hunts
haven’t gone out of style!” She got out and slammed the door. As she barreled
around the truck, she willed herself to a level of calm. She didn’t want to
upset the kids.

Larry looked up, concerned
when he saw her face, and walked over to her. “What is it?”

She shook her head and looked
up at him. “They still think it’s you.”

He put his hand on her
shoulder. “They can’t totally ignore the parents’ charges. And they don’t know
me from Adam. It will be okay.” His equanimity almost made her angrier. The
others were watching them.

“What’s happened?” Jane Ann
asked quietly. “Did you find the woman Taylor Trats talked to?”

Frannie nodded. “Oh, yeah, no
problem. But they are still so focused on Larry that they can’t see how odd it
all is. The woman, Maddie Sloan, claims she reported Larry to the
hostess—not the ranger—and then walked to the restroom with Taylor and
then
let her take the shortcut back
through the woods to her camper by herself. Who does that?”

“Well, I went through there
twice about that time and I didn’t see...” he trailed off as he realized the
implications and saw Frannie’s face. “The ranger asked about that, didn’t she?”

Frannie nodded miserably. “I
told her about the shortcut and that we could see it plainly from here and then
she asked about you using it. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t worry about it. She
would have asked anyway as soon as she saw how close that trail is to us.”

“I still think those road
workers have been acting kind of spooky,” Frannie said. “I’ll be back. I’m
going to put tonight’s dessert together.”

In the camper, she broke up
raisin bagels into the slow cooker, added raisins, dried cranberries, cinnamon,
milk, and eggs. While she worked, she considered the situation. Why would
someone choose a campground in broad daylight to make
an
abduction
? It didn’t seem like it could be planned, so a crime of
opportunity? And if that was the case, maybe it had happened before.

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

Happy Camper Tip #5

Bread pudding in the slow
cooker is the perfect fall dessert. Spray a 3-quart
slow-cooker
with cooking spray. Tear four cinnamon-raisin bagels into pieces and place in
cooker. Add a chopped tart apple and 1/2 cup each of dried cranberries and
golden raisins. Whisk together 2 cups of skim milk, 1 cup of egg substitute, 1
/2 cup
sugar, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, and 1 teaspoon
each of cinnamon and vanilla. Pour over bagels and mix gently. Cook on low for
3-4 hours until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Excellent with a little ice cream on top.
Or
non-dairy topping
.
Or whole cream.
Or...

Late Saturday Afternoon

Frannie got out her laptop,
set it on the dinette and booted it up. A search for child abductions in Iowa
brought up numerous articles but all referring to one of two incidents in the
last three years, both unsolved. One article pointed out that stranger
abductions are actually quite rare; most kidnappings involved a non-custodial
parent. One of the two unsolved cases had occurred the previous March in the
town of Sharm Crossing in western Iowa. An eleven-year-old girl, Courtney
Jamison, was riding her bike to her grandparents’ house six blocks away from her
home and disappeared. Her bike was found in a ditch at the beginning of a
detour around a road construction site. Bingo! She then checked for old
articles and maps documenting the planned road construction sites for the past
summer. Sure enough, a section was marked near Sharm Crossing.

Frannie sat back in the
dinette booth. This had to be too great a coincidence, didn’t it? Surely the
sheriff could crosscheck records of who had worked on that site with the names
of the men in the campground. She felt a little better because she was doing
something to help direct the investigation toward productive action. Maybe they
would quit spinning their wheels looking at Larry. She wrote down the URLs for
the articles since she didn’t have a printer in the camper, and lugged the full
slow cooker outside to the utility table and plugged it in.

She told Larry and the others
what she had found. Larry usually scoffed at her amateur investigating, but now
he looked impressed.
Probably because she had done it in
cyberspace rather than real space.

“We’ll give this information
to the sheriff—
you
don’t need
to do anything more with it,” he said.

“I don’t intend to,” she
said, hoping that was true. “I was going to suggest giving it to the police.”

Sabet came up to her. “Gran,
Joe and I are going to go over to the playground that’s by the shower house.”

“Not alone!” Frannie said
sharply, and seeing her granddaughter’s face, added, “I’ll go with you, okay?”

Sabet nodded. She didn’t know
what had changed but it wasn’t often that her grandmother used
that
tone with her. “Should we take the
short cut, Gran?” she asked.

Frannie had just noticed
people, with a couple of leashed dogs, moving through the woods starting the
search. “I think we’ll just stay on the road. There are people out there
searching for the missing little girl and we shouldn’t get in their way.”

When they arrived at the
playground, the kids raced for the equipment and Frannie took a seat on a park
bench anchored at the side of the sandy area. Her brain was lurching from
question to accusation
;
from anger to agitation to
anxiety. How to handle the ranger’s suspicions? How to keep the kids safe? How
to help find the Trats girl? The answer to the last question would solve the
others as well, she realized.

She turned from watching
Sabet and Joe as she realized someone else had taken a seat on the bench. It
was the young mother Frannie and Sabet had passed on the road the night
before—the one with the toddler girl who stopped to examine every speck
in the road. This time she had an older boy with her.

“I’m going on the slide,
Mom,” the boy said and headed to the equipment.

Frannie smiled at her. “You
don’t have your inspector along today.”

“My inspector? Oh, Alice. She
is pretty curious, isn’t she? She’s napping so I left her with my husband. Are
those your grandchildren?”

Frannie nodded. “They’re
diehard campers and love to come with us. They can certainly wear us out,
though. My name’s Frannie, by the way.” Camping was much like kindergarten in
that first names were sufficient for most discourses.

“Tammy. Lots to do here,
though,” the woman said. “Did they get to hear the storyteller last night?”

“Yeah, he was great. We went
on a bike ride this morning to Limestone City and he was performing at a flea
market there, too.”

“We had heard him before. He
gave a program at Trevor’s school last spring.” Tammy nodded toward the boy
going head first down the slide on his stomach. Fortunately, the tackiness of
the slide prevented him from going very fast and landing face first in the sand
at the bottom.

“Where are you from?” Frannie
asked.

“Tennyson. It’s a part of RST
Consolidated.”

“Sure—you’ve had some
pretty good girls’ softball teams, right?” Jane Ann and Mickey’s daughters had
played a lot of softball in high school.

“State champions two years
ago,” Tammy said proudly. Frannie was not surprised at Tammy’s proprietary
attitude even though her children were not of the age to play sports yet; small
towns rose and fell on the fortunes of their athletic teams. “Anyway, I think
that Mr. Reid is going to be doing another program tonight.”

“Really? That’s good to
know,” Frannie replied. The conversation turned to the good and bad points of
various campgrounds they had both visited.

Then Tammy said, “Isn’t it
awful about that little girl gone missing? She must be lost—I can’t
imagine a kidnapper here—but I’m sure her parents must be frantic!”

“Well, I hope she just turns
out to be lost and they find her soon, but meanwhile we can’t be too careful,”
Frannie said, thinking at the same time that the accusations against Larry must
not have spread through the campground yet.

Just then, Joe came running
up, his sister right behind him. “Gran! Can we have some of them ice cream
bars?”

“
Those
ice cream bars,” Sabet corrected him.

“That’s what I said!”

Frannie cut off Sabet’s
retort. “What ice cream bars?”

“The ones in the freezer,
Gran! You know which ones. We saw ‘em.”

Frannie smiled and stood.
“You guys are too crafty for me. That
does
sound good. It was nice to meet you, Tammy. Have a good weekend.”

“You, too,” Tammy replied and
Frannie certainly hoped so. As they walked down the main road toward their
loop, a sheriff’s car turned into the same road. They followed the car, and by
the time they reached the campsite, the sheriff was out of the car and talking
to Larry.

“Frannie, this is Sheriff
Bonnaman. Sheriff, this is my wife, Frannie.”

The sheriff, an
averaged-sized man with glasses and thinning red hair, nodded and did not offer
his hand. He did not look belligerent but was certainly all business.

“Have they found her?”
Frannie blurted.

“No,” the sheriff said, “but
it’s a big park.”

“Did you tell him about the
road workers?” Frannie said to her husband.

Larry shook his head. “Not
yet.”

“What’s this about?” the
sheriff asked, looking from one to the other.

Frannie told him about the
one man’s interest in Sabet and Tessa, seeing them at the flea market near all
the children and the storyteller, and overhearing their conversation about
“Don” getting them in trouble. And all the time she was talking, realized how
thin it sounded.

But the sheriff didn’t scoff.
“We’ll check it out. Meanwhile my deputy and I will be searching every unit in
this campground, starting here. Volunteers will continue searching the park. I
want you and your group to stay put in this campsite. I would like to see
inside your camper, sir. I can get a warrant if I need to.”

Larry shook his head. “Not
necessary. You are welcome to look around.” He led the way to the trailer and
opened the door for the sheriff.

Inside, the sheriff looked
around the living area, opened the bathroom door, and checked the bedroom. He
opened the doors on the short closets above the nightstands and the pantry
doors. He looked back at Larry.

“Is there storage under the
bed?”

Larry nodded and lifted up
the foot of the mattress platform. Gas struts held it aloft. The sheriff
glanced over the contents: sleeping bags, an old parka, toolbox,
portable
water tank.

He again fixed his very
direct gaze on Larry. “Do you have other storage areas?”

“Yes—but they’re more
accessible from outside.” He led the sheriff back outside and opened each of
the storage compartments in turn. Most were so crammed with tools and equipment
that it was evident to the sheriff there were no abducted children being hidden
in there. He thanked Larry curtly and went to check the Ferraros’ RV. Mickey
went in with him while the rest stood around awkwardly. What do you chat about
with friends while your home, permanent or otherwise, is being searched?
Finally the sheriff followed Mickey out and directed him to unlock and open his
storage compartments.

Finished, the sheriff touched
the brim of his hat and, leaving his car by their sites, moved to search the
next unit.

Everyone relaxed a little and
Frannie went to the truck to get the atlas from under the seat. She brought it
to the picnic table and opened it to Iowa.

“What are you looking for?”
Nancy asked.

“The town that the other girl
disappeared from.” She knew the general area from the road construction maps
but couldn’t pinpoint it so she referenced the index, found Sharm Crossing,
repeated the coordinates out loud and turned back to the Iowa map.

“Why? What good will
that do
?” Nancy was puzzled.

“I don’t know, really. Just
want to get a better idea of the area.” She found the tiny town and checked for
bigger towns around and nearby highways and parks. If this road crew usually
camped...then she spotted something else. The nearest town was Tennyson. Her
eyes continued to circle the area. Another nearby town was Rogers—RST
Consolidated—Rogers, Sharm Crossing,
Tennyson
.
Now, why had Tammy mentioned that school district?

“The storyteller!” she said
out loud.

“What about him?” Larry
asked. He had wandered over to see what she was up to.

“A woman at the playground
told me the storyteller was at her son’s school last spring. He goes to RST
Consolidated and I bet Sharm Crossing is part of that district—I’ll check
for sure. If it happened to be when this little girl disappeared, it would
certainly be a
big
coincidence.”

“But that’s a pretty big if,
too, Frannie. ’Spring’ covers a long time.”

“I know, but at least it’s
something.”

He put his arm gently across
her shoulders. “You are grasping at straws like you think I will be spending
the rest of my life in the Big House. This
will
get straightened out.”

“I hope so, but I don’t want
to count on it. Then it won’t. Besides, maybe it will help find Taylor.”

“Well, they won’t let us
help. Let’s try and keep things normal for the kids. How about a game of
Chicken Foot?”

Frannie sighed. “Good idea.
Kids!” They were back to shooting Mickey with their new weapons, who was
reacting very dramatically. “Want to play Chicken Foot?”

A chorus of “yeahs” and
“woohoos” ensued. “I’ll get the dominos,” Joe yelled and charged into the
camper. He returned with the heavy metal box and dumped the dominos on the
picnic table. “C’mon, Grandpa! Uncle Mickey, are you going to play?”

“Sure.” Although Mickey was
comfortably nestled in his reclining lawn chair, he was a sucker for any kid’s
request. Frannie grabbed a soda from the cooler and a cushion for the hard
picnic bench. Ben and Jane Ann took seats next to Sabet.

There was comfort in the
dappled sunlight on the table and the groans and cheers generated by the game.
Frannie would lose herself in the play and banter only to be jolted to reality
at the sight of a searcher in the woods or the sheriff’s car on the road. She
needed to find out when Bernie Reid had done a program at the RST
school
. Maybe Tammy remembered but she didn’t even know
which campsite Tammy and her family were at.

Mickey won the first game,
and they flipped the dominos back over, stirring them with the flats of their
hands to accomplish a shuffle of sorts. They each drew seven more and set them
on edge; Joe’s arranging took a little longer until he was sure they were
evenly spaced and that Mickey couldn’t see what he had. No one had a double
twelve but Jane Ann had a double eleven and put it in the middle to start the
game.

The men rehashed the football
game between turns—a close Iowa victory—and Nancy described a new
project her community development agency had started.

While Frannie was waiting for
her turn, she noticed a generic beige sedan rolling slowly down the road toward
the Trats’ campsite. The glimpse she got of the head in the driver’s window
gave her a start; she wasn’t sure if it was a feeling of hope or doom. The man
was Agent Warren Sanchez of the State Department of Criminal Investigation.
Frannie and Larry had both cooperated and butted heads with him after the
murders at Bat Cave State Park. She hoped Sanchez had stronger memories of the
former.

She caught Larry’s eye, and
nodded toward the passing car. It was too late to see the driver and Larry
raised his eyebrows and shrugged.