Murder Grins and Bears It Read Online Free PDF Page A

horse pies on a hot summer day, all
of them focused on Little Donny’s Ford Escort. I’ve never seen so
many uniforms.
    Blaze stood off from the car talking to a
large muscular man with a buzz cut who was wearing a brown uniform
and a sidearm. His face was as square as a wood block. I walked up
behind Blaze and tapped him on the shoulder. Mr. Always-Be-Prepared
almost jumped out of his shorts.
    “ What’s going on?” I
asked.
    “ Geez, Ma, where’d you come
from?” Blaze frowned and bent over to pick up the pen he had
dropped when I startled him. I could see his butt crack. His wife
Mary better put him on a diet, pronto.
    “ I missed my ride home.
What’s going on?” I repeated, pointing at Little Donny’s
car.
    “ I was just explaining the
circumstances to Warden Burnett.”
    “ Nice to meet you,” I said,
extending a hand which buzz cut proceeded to crush. “I’m the
sheriff’s mother.”
    “ I’m the Marquette D-DNR
district supervisor,” he said to me, then turned his attention back
to Blaze. “I c-couldn’t get here s-sooner. I was out in the
field.”
    Either I had an acute hearing problem or the
warden had a bit of a stutter.
    “ As I was explaining to
Warden Burnett, this car seems to have appeared out of nowhere.”
Blaze scratched his head, a motion designed to facilitate thinking,
but it wasn’t helping him. “We ran the plates and the damn thing
belongs to Little Donny. How the hell did it get here?”
    “ Beats me,” I said. “Maybe
Little Donny drove it over, seeing how it’s his car.”
    Another deputy, one of Blaze’s favorites,
spotted us from his position by the car, hitched his pants up a
notch or two exactly the same way my son did, and strutted over
like a rooster.
    I groaned.
    Deputy Dick Snell, aka Deputy Dickey, was
skinny like a stick and had a face like a coyote, narrow and wily.
Animal hair was stuck all over a green blazer that partially
covered his wrinkled uniform shirt. At least I guessed it was
animal hair, since he didn’t have any to spare on his head. The
little he did have was greasy and wouldn’t have stuck to anything
unless he duct taped it there.
    He came to a halt next to me and I
immediately started sneezing. Cat hair! I’m deathly allergic to cat
dander. I backed up a step.
    “ Don’t you worry, ma’am,”
Deputy Dickey said. “We’re in the process of ascertaining who the
perpetrator is. Before long he’ll be incarcerated and you can sleep
easy again.”
    I hate it when the local boys go away to
college. They get big britches and a vocabulary to match.
    “ Who are you ascertaining
as the killer right this minute?” I looked at Deputy Dickey and his
glance fell to the ground.
    I sneezed and backed up more.
    Blaze butted in. “Ma, let’s talk about it
later. Go on home.”
    I watched deputies work over Little Donny’s
car and I felt a twinge of guilt over not ’fessing up, but for all
I knew Blaze might be gathering new evidence about my competence
for another go-around in court. I couldn’t give him ammunition.
Imagine him trying to have me declared incompetent. My own son!
    I glanced at Blaze’s new sheriff’s truck.
Someone sat in the front passenger seat.
    “ I need a ride home,” I
said to Blaze. “You go finish up. I’ll wait for you.”
    Distracted, Blaze nodded and went into a
huddle with Deputy Dickey and Warden Burnett.
    I sneezed again. When Blaze didn’t notice, I
wandered off.
    Carl Anderson crouched in the front seat of
Blaze’s truck. When I opened the door, I could smell the rank
chicken grease.
    “ Spill it, Carl,” I said,
standing back from the door to escape the fumes.
    “ Man, oh, man, Gertie. It
was awful.”
    Carl needed a stiff snort of whiskey to calm
his tremors.
    “ I never seen so much
blood. And that dead fella laying there missing most of his
head.”
    “ Start at the beginning and
tell me everything.”
    “ We was sitting out at the
bait pile. Little Donny was chowin’ down on doughnuts and