The Blue Coyote (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the cluster of admirers around Bernie Reid. Frannie was not surprised;
Sabet was a bookworm and always had been. She loved to make up stories herself,
and better yet, act them out. Frannie moved over to the group just in time to
hear Sabet ask the storyteller if he ever made up stories.
    He gave her a wink. “Oh,
little one, they’re all true—somewhere, sometime!” And he threw back his
head and broke into an infectious laugh that wrapped around the crowd and
brought them along. Sabet looked puzzled a minute ; then a slow grin spread across her face. She caught Frannie snapping her
picture and wiggled back out of the crowd to join her grandmother.
    “I think he means that every
possible story has already happened,” she confided.
    Once again, Sabet’s
understanding took Frannie aback. She nodded, but was not ready to let go of
the small child in her granddaughter and accept the adult beginning to emerge.
    “I wonder how you get to be a
storyteller,” Sabet went on. “That would be a cool job.”
    Frannie nodded again. “Maybe
you can ask him later.”
    “He had sort of a goth tattoo
on his arm, too. Awesome.”
    Frannie smiled, thinking that
probably a job as a storyteller and a goth tattoo were
not in Sam and Beth’s career plans for their daughter. They joined the crowd
that gradually spilled out the door into the star-filled night. Decorative
lights of various colors twinkled here and there throughout the campground.
There was a chill in the air that, along with the smell of woodsmoke and
scuffle of leaves underfoot, made Frannie think of high school football games
in her long-ago youth.
    As they caught up with the
rest of their group, the cell phone in Frannie’s pocket erupted like a frog.
She jumped and at first couldn’t identify what it was. Sabet and Joe started to
giggle.
    “It’s your phone, Grannie
Fran!” Joe shouted, pointing to her pocket.
    She fumbled in her pocket.
“My phone doesn’t sound like that.” But when she pulled it out, sure enough,
the lit screen indicated she had a text message from Sam.
    Before she opened it, she
looked at the kids. “My sister changed your ring,” Joe told her proudly, while
Sabet gave her a sideways look trying to determine how much trouble she was in.
Frannie tried to look stern but the corners of her mouth betrayed her. It
didn’t help that the rest of the group could hardly contain themselves. She
opened the message.
    “It’s from your dad.” She tried
to make it sound like he already knew what the kids had been up to. Obviously,
from their faces, she wasn’t fooling anyone.
    “What does he say?” Sabet
asked innocently.
    “Just wonders how you’re
getting along.”
    “Can we call him?” Joe said.
    “We will when we get back to
the campsite.”
    As they passed the site where
the man had been talking to Sabet earlier, Frannie quietly told Larry about it.
    “Quite a few of those crews
camp while they’re on the job. Remember when we were at that county park in
Minnesota and there were several guys there who were working on I-90? They said
they would move about every two weeks to a different campground,” he said.
    They continued back to their
campsite, dropping Tessa at hers. Frannie called Sam’s number and briefly
summed up what they had been doing so far. She did not mention Sabet’s
manipulation of her phone. Each of the kids talked to their dad in turn, giving
enthusiastic reports on the campground and the storyteller. Then, of course,
they each had to talk to their mother.
    Ben and Larry stoked the fire
while the rest moved chairs in closer and Mickey went in his camper to get his
guitar. The mood changed from the hilarity of the storyteller the hour before
to almost melancholy as they sang the old songs softly—dusty camp songs
like “Honey” and classics like “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”
    Finally Sabet said, “Don’t
you guys know any fun songs?” So they
sang the Chicago fire song and “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round