The Blue Coyote (The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  BLUE COYOTE

  A Frannie and Larry Campground Mystery

  by Karen Musser Nortman

  Cover Artwork by Gretchen Musser

  Cover Design by Libby Shannon

  Copyright © 2013 by Karen Musser Nortman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Except for Cuba, who has now gone to the Land of Three-Legged Rabbits.

  Dedicated to the wonderful staff of all state parks.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thank You…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Mid Friday Afternoon

  The hills rolled out in front of them, alternating dead brown stubble in the harvested fields and emerging vibrant color in the tree rows, muted by the fine dust in the air. The sky above was the hard crystal blue that makes for popular calendar pictures. The atmosphere inside the cab of the pickup, however, was not a thing of beauty, and quickly becoming less so.

  “This can’t be part of the detour,” Larry Shoemaker grumbled. “We’re not even going in the right direction.” He glanced at the compass direction highlighted in the rear-view mirror and then hunched over the steering wheel, a small frown on his face.

  His wife, Frannie, sat with the road map spread out over her knees. She looked up and shrugged. “I can’t tell. This map doesn’t show any gravel roads. I can see a water tower in the distance over there,” she pointed out the passenger window, “but I don’t know if that’s Crockett or maybe Orien.”

  “Grandpa, are we lost?” came a small voice from the back seat. Frannie turned and looked at seven-year-old Joe and his narrow worried face.

  “Well, we’re not really lost—,” Frannie began, but Larry interrupted.

  “I’m never lost, Joe. Just sometimes I don’t know exactly where I am.”

  “I think that’s lost,” Joe’s sister Sabet, two years older, said, "You should get a GPS, Grandpa".

  "Thanks for the advice, Sabet," Larry grimaced.

  The Shoemakers’ old yellow lab, Cuba, sat between the kids and seemed to sense the uncertainty, hanging her head between the front seats and panting like a steam engine.

  “We just need to find a place where I can turn this rig around. There’ll be a farm driveway or something soon,” Larry said. "I hope." The rig he referred to was the thirty-foot Fleetwood Terry travel trailer in tow behind the pickup. But what appeared first instead of a driveway, as they headed down a hill into a wooded area, was a yellow sign with stern black lettering announcing: “Level B Service. Enter at your own risk.” And the road surface turned from gravel to dirt.

  “Oh-oh,” Frannie said. “‘Level B maintenance’ is DOT-speak for ‘no maintenance.’”

  Larry didn’t answer, his mouth set in a grim line. The truck and trailer jolted along hitting potholes and ruts too numerous to miss. At the bottom of the hill, the road took a wide curve to the right. The trees lining the road ended on the left in a large field. The field was open but not empty, and Joe said “Wow! Look at that—a junkyard!” Rows of old cars, trucks, farm equipment, and quite a few campers stretched back from the road.

  “It’s not a junkyard, it’s a camper day-care,” Sabet said with a grin. It was a sobriquet she had come up with several years before, and used it for every RV dealer and storage area she saw.

  Larry slowed the truck to a crawl. “There has to be a way in, where maybe I can turn around.”

  They scanned the fence as they passed. Larry spotted a dirt drive crossing the ditch. “There!” he said, bringing the truck to a halt.

  “But there’s a gate,” Frannie said.

  “I know. I’ll see if it’s locked.” He unhooked his seat belt, got out of the truck and walked over to the wide, metal gate. They were in luck—the gate had a simple latch, and the padlock intended to provide security was locked only to the fence. Larry unhooked the gate and walked the end of it into the yard, swinging it wide. He surveyed the entrance area. Not big enough to pull the trailer in and turn it around, but he should be able to back in and reverse his direction. He returned to the truck, and as he got in, said to Frannie, “I’m going to need you to spot me.”

  She nodded, unhooked her seat belt and climbed out of the truck. Larry leaned over and instructed her through the open window.

  “I’m going to pull forward and back in. I think if you stand on the road left of the gate, I should be able to see you in my right hand mirror.”

  “Can I help, Grandpa?” Sabet said.

  He turned in his seat and looked at her. “You know, I bet you can. Frannie, have her stand inside the gate on my side—she can watch that the wheels aren’t going in the ditch.” Frannie opened the crew door for Sabet to clamber out. The two walked around the front of the truck and through the gate. While Larry pulled slowly forward, Frannie showed Sabet a safe place to stand and told her what to watch for. When the back of the trailer had passed the driveway entrance, Frannie signaled Larry to stop. He got out again and walked back to the driveway. Frannie thought that launching the shuttle was probably a piece of cake compared to the delicate maneuver they were about to undertake. But, there was no traffic and they often had backed into tight campsites. Their own driveway had presented a few challenges to their marital bliss.

  “Sabet, when the trailer wheels are past this spot,” he marked a line in the dirt with his heel, “I want you to give me this signal.” He raised his arm and made wide circles in the air. “Can you do that?”

  She nodded gravely and mimicked his action.

  “That’s it. I’ll have Joe move to the front seat and he can watch the right mirror, too.” He returned to the cab, signaled Joe to move up front, gave him instructions, and slowly began to back up the unwieldy trailer.

  Before he started the turn, Frannie checked and saw that Sabet was watching the wheels intently and at the right time, raising her arm, drawing wild circles in the air. As Larry started to turn, Frannie moved to the right side of the road where she could see both the left side of the gate and Larry’s right hand mirror.

  The rear of the trailer started to edge down the drive to the gate. So far so good. The gate was wide but there wasn’t much room for error. As Frannie held her hand up, motioning Larry back, she felt it must be a little like coaxing an elephant backward into an elevator.

  As the trailer neared the gate, it looked to Frannie like the rear corner was not going to clear it. She slammed her hand in the air, palm forward, at the same time yelling, “Stop!” The trailer rocked to a halt. She jogged over to get a closer look at the situation. Sure enough, on the present course, the right rear corner would nick the gate.
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br />   She ran with a noticeable lack of grace along the side of the trailer to the passenger side window of the truck. Both Larry and Joe looked at her with questioning faces.

  “You’re going to,” she paused to catch her breath, “hit the gate. You need to crank it a little more.”

  “Okay,” Larry said, shifting into drive. “I’ll have to pull up some and try it again.”

  By the time she was back at her post, Larry had the rig in position for another try. He brought it around in a little sharper turn. As the rear end neared the gate opening, she motioned for him to stop and yelled at Sabet, “Does it look okay over there?”

  Sabet gave a very tentative, “Yeah?”

  “I mean, is there room? It isn’t going to hit the gate?”

  Understanding, Sabet gave a thumbs up. “Lots of room!” Frannie hoped so and gave Larry the signal to proceed. Gradually the whole trailer was inside the gate without injury, as well as part of the truck. Larry shifted into drive and edged back onto the road, facing the direction from which they had just come. During the whole process, the trailer, the hitch and the sway bars had creaked, groaned, and snapped, but it was all sound and fury.

  Frannie moved into the junkyard to help Sabet with the gate. As she approached her granddaughter, she glanced around at the collection—some looked usable, other pieces just hulks that could have even been shipwrecks if they weren’t a little too far from the ocean. Creepy place, even in broad daylight.

  Together, she and Sabet pulled the gate closed behind them and latched it. When they reached the cab of the pickup, Joe climbed out and returned to the back seat. Once everyone was buckled back in, they bounced their way back to the gravel section of the road, which now almost seemed smooth in comparison to the dirt section.

  Frannie had the map back out and said, “Let’s take a left when we get back to the start of the gravel. At least there’s a town that way and we can ask directions if nothing looks familiar.”

  Larry agreed and soon they were back at the intersection in question. As they sat there waiting for a couple of cars, Larry studied the detour sign.

  “I think it’s been moved. Turned. We should have continued on the blacktop.”

  “Why would somebody turn it?” Joe asked.

  “Their idea of a joke,” Larry answered.

  “Well, it isn’t very funny.” Joe was indignant. Then he crooked his head sideways. “Course, it was kind of a neat road. And camper day-care.”

  “Look at it this way. Maybe we’re getting all the bad stuff for the weekend over with at the beginning,” Larry said as they got up to speed.

  “That would be great,” she agreed. “I’m so glad that Ben and Nancy are coming. They haven’t gone with us in ages.”

  “Which would explain why we’ve been so disorganized.” They both laughed. Nancy Terell and her husband Ben were good friends who joined them on many of their camping outings. The group often teased Nancy about her bent for organizing and scheduling, skills she put to good use as a professional community development leader. Her small wiry frame and pixieish face disguised her ability to whip any group into shape.

  Twenty-five minutes later they spotted the brown DNR sign signaling the south entrance to Bluffs State Park. Frannie always loved the release of a weekend of camping, but was especially excited to have the kids along. Sabet and Joe were at the perfect age to enjoy camping. They would be staying until Sunday when Frannie and Larry’s son, Sam, would pick them up because they had school on Monday. Frannie and Larry planned to stay on a couple more days taking in the fall color and other local attractions.

  After filling the fresh water tank, Larry nursed truck and trailer through the campground to the loop where they had reserved a site. It was a perfect early fall afternoon; golden yellows starting to explode among the dark greens, with a few red sumac. The sun warmed the air just enough and the scent of woodsmoke was starting to drift through the campground.

  When they reached the site, before Larry performed his backing maneuver for the second time in an hour, Frannie, kids, and dog piled out and greeted two of their weekend companions. Larry’s sister, Jane Ann and her husband Mickey Ferraro were already set up in the neighboring spot.

  “You made it!” Jane Ann said.

  “But not without getting lost. I’ll explain later. Sabet and Joe, go over by Uncle Mickey and Aunt Jane Ann while I help Grandpa back in,” Frannie said.

  She moved into position on the far side of the gravel pad where Larry could see her. This time it only took one try—but then, she thought, he wasn’t trying to aim the thing through a gate. A half hour later they had unhooked the truck, leveled the trailer, and made it ready for habitation. Mickey handed Larry a cold beer and Frannie gratefully accepted iced tea from Jane Ann. The weekend had started.

  *******************

  Happy Camper Tip #1

  Backing up is one of the most fun aspects of camping—NOT! When the campsite is a nice wide, level cement pad or a ‘pull-through’ site, which is what it says, the difficulty drops considerably. But the gravel and grass sites in many state and county parks that are about as level as the Rocky Mountains present more of a challenge. There are no easy answers, but a couple of caveats are always useful. First, examine the site before you try it. Are there posts, trees, or other obstacles waiting to grab your shiny coach? Is there room to open any slides or awnings that you may have? Is the site deep enough for your unit? Second, if you can’t see the site in your rear view mirrors, get someone to watch and it’s helpful to decide what signals the watcher will use before you start. If the hand signal the watcher is using for 'stop' looks more like 'bring it on,' you could have trouble.

  Chapter Two

  Friday Afternoon

  Screeeech.

  Scraaape, rattle...the sound shattered the harmonious atmosphere. Frannie felt a sinking certainty that something was going to mar their perfect weekend.

  The rasping, scraping sound moved nearer and passed. Larry emerged from pulling a plastic bin from under the cover of his pickup bed and looked toward the road. Nothing in sight as the sound receded. He looked over at his brother-in-law.

  Mickey was putting out the awning on his class C Lazy Daze motor home--the 'Red Rocket'--so he could hang his outdoor lights before nightfall. He was struggling to control a smile and only nodded.

  “Yup. Training wheels. She’s been by here about four hundred times since we got here.”

  “Oh, man,” Larry said, running his hand over his gray military-style crewcut. He looked at the sky and pleaded “Why me?”

  Sabet watched him, puzzled. “What’s the matter with training wheels, Grandpa?”

  “Only one thing—noise.”

  “Your grandpa hates training wheels,” Mickey told her.

  “More than lima beans,” Jane Ann added.

  “More than Uncle Mickey’s Iowa State flag?” Sabet asked.

  They nodded. “Ohhh,” she said, understanding and looked up. “ Does Granny Fran hate ‘em too?”

  “Not as much as your grandpa. Nobody hates them that much,” Mickey answered, as he got out a string of lights to hang on the awning.

  “Mickey, I’m so impressed that you got that fire going and the stew on as instructed,” Frannie changed the subject.

  “I can follow pretty simple directions,” he said, straight-faced. Mickey, a retired English teacher, relished his role as the self-anointed irresponsible clown of the group. Since the Ferraros planned to arrive at the campground first, Frannie had dropped a container of turkey stew off with Mickey and Jane Ann before they left their hometown of Perfection Falls with instructions to warm it over the fire so that it would be ready for the evening meal when everyone else arrived, but she was not overly confident that Mickey would remember on his own.

  Larry pulled the kids’ bikes out of the back of the truck. A young girl, about Sabet’s age, came back up the road on a gaudy purple bike, complete with handlebar streamers and a white wicker basket festoone
d with cartoon-like purple flowers. She was not wearing a helmet. The training wheels, old cracked plastic, ground out an atonal dirge loud enough to drown out any conversation. She continued up the road to a dead end loop.

  As Sabet watched the bike go past, she said, “That girl does look pretty old for training wheels.”

  “Her folks must be camped on that circle,” Mickey said, “And I’m guessing they told her not to ride there because they don’t want to listen to it either.”

  “Of course they don’t,” Larry said.

  “I see Terells have arrived,” Frannie said.

  “Yeah, they’ll be over soon. They got here about a half hour after we did,” Jane Ann said.

  “Can we ride our bikes, Grandpa?” Joe asked. And then he added, “We don’t need training wheels.” Unlike his sister’s round open face, Joe’s face had small features and he only smiled with his mouth closed, kind of a Grinch effect. But much of the time he was pretty serious, like now, and looked as if he was asking to borrow the truck or have access to his grandparents’ pensions. He sat on the bench of the picnic table, petting and nuzzling Cuba.

  Larry looked at Frannie. “How soon is supper?”

  “Oh, probably an hour.”

  “Go ahead,” he nodded to Joe. “Just stay on this road, though. After supper, Granny Fran and I will go with you and we’ll go around the whole campground.”

  “Yippee!” Joe jumped in place and pumped a fist in the air.

  “Wear your helmets,” Frannie added, and to Larry, “It doesn’t take much to make that kid happy.”

  He agreed, and as she got their lantern lights out to clip on the edge of the awning, she smiled to herself thinking of Sam’s warnings earlier that afternoon when she and Larry picked up the kids. “Don’t let them out of your sight or let them go to the bathroom by themselves or ride their bikes without their helmets.” Sam, who, in his own childhood, had been out on his bike every summer day from dawn to dusk, with no helmet of course, grudgingly stopping at home only to update his mother on his plans: to the pool, fishing, to the park, to the ball diamond. And when he was home, he was building ramps in the gravel driveway to jump his bike or scheming with the neighbor boys to build a treehouse and move into it. Sam’s wife Beth didn’t seem nearly as nervous about the children as Sam did. Perhaps Sam remembered only too well all of the possibilities.