Bear Bait (9781101611548)

by Beason, Pamela

  In other words, he was no help. To make matters worse, after that he cruised by her desk every fifteen minutes. “Need any more help?” he asked. He tried to read her laptop screen over her shoulder. By one o’clock, she was desperate to escape from the building.

  After eating her lunch of cheese and crackers at the picnic table in back of the building, she returned to her laptop and checked her online resources for Jack Winner’s address. If Chase and Joe weren’t going to be forthcoming about what Winner was up to around Marmot Lake, then she was going to find out for herself.

  According to the map on her computer screen, Rushing Springs was a tiny dot just off Highway 101, about fifteen miles south of Forks. She should be able to easily make a round trip and still pick up Lili at the library at three thirty.

  THE dot on the map represented a gas station/quick market hunkered on a gravel pullout next to the highway. The rest of Rushing Springs was a collection of tumble-down cabins and manufactured homes scattered through the woods.

  Jack Winner didn’t answer the door of his cheap-looking but tidy double-wide manufactured home. Its windows were too far off the ground for her to do any snooping there. She had to content herself with peering through the dusty windows of the remodeled barn out back, cupping her hands to the sides of her face to block the glare. Only a few items of furniture seemed to be in progress: a handful of dark-stained lecterns and various pieces that might eventually be a desk of some sort. Winner Woodworking didn’t look like a prosperous business, at least not from this angle.

  “You lookin’ for something?”

  Startled, she turned to find a man at her side in faded jeans and flannel shirt, with longish graying hair. He was older than she’d expected—around sixty or so. His tennis shoes had holes over his little toes. He didn’t look like the type to drive the monster black pickup. “Jack Winner?” she asked.

  “He’s not home, I guess, or you wouldn’t be back here.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  “Ernest Craig.” He held out a trembling hand.

  She shook it, pretending not to notice how hard it was shaking, then told him her name. “You’re a neighbor of Jack’s?”

  “I live back there through the woods.” He pointed down a gravel track, but she couldn’t see anything but trees. “I was taking a walk. Not much place to go around here, but walking keeps me from…well…it keeps me out of trouble.”

  Craig’s watery gray eyes remained glued to her face with a fierce intensity. He didn’t appear to be in very good shape, but he had at least eight inches and sixty pounds on her. Maybe she should have told someone she was coming down here.

  His expression suddenly brightened. “I know you,” he said.

  “I don’t believe we’ve ever met, Mr. Craig.”

  “From TV, I mean. I seen you on TV. It was over at the bar, oh, a week or so ago.”

  That had to have been the KSTL program Peter Hoyle had mentioned. The one about the conference and speech.

  “I remember because this one guy there wasn’t too happy to see you.”

  She knew it was Garrett Ford even before Craig described the man. Nobody else except Mack and Joe knew her around here, but Ford had known her on sight. She decided to cruise past his place as soon as possible. See if there was a big dent in his pickup or a bear skin drying on the clothesline.

  Focus, she reminded herself. Winner’s truck was in the lot at the time of the shooting incident at Marmot Lake. That had started off as a paintball game. “Do you know if Jack and his friends like to play paintball?”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen ’em heading out with boxes of those paint pellets and coming back all colored up.”

  “Can you tell me the names of some of his friends?” Maybe she could get some information from this guy that Chase and Joe didn’t have.

  Craig stared up at the trees and thought for a minute. “There’s a Phil somebody, I don’t know his last name. He works here sometimes. I should know, really I should…” He looked embarrassed, and ran his fingers through his shaggy hair.

  “That’s okay. I can’t say that I know my neighbors very well, either.” Blake was the chatty one; she was the hermit writer.

  Craig was still thinking. “I know Jack’s got family up in Forks. His mom lives up there.”

  He made it sound like Forks was in another state instead of fifteen miles up the road. A sorrowful expression crept onto his face. “You work for the park?” he asked.

  She was wearing an NPS uniform shirt and name tag, so she could hardly deny it. “Yes.”

  “That girl who got hurt in the fire, she died, right?” Tears glittered in the fellow’s eyes.

  “Yes. She died last week.” Why was he so interested? “Her name was Lisa Glass. Did you know her?”

  “No,” he said. “But I have a daughter just two years older. She ran away to Los Angeles. She didn’t even say good bye. That other girl’s family is gonna miss her something terrible.”

  He seemed so mournful; she wasn’t sure what to say. “There’s going to be a memorial service for Lisa Glass on Wednesday, up on Hurricane Ridge,” she offered.

  “Will her family be there?”

  Sam shook her head. “I don’t think so, Mr. Craig. So far none of her family has been located.”

  The man looked like he might cry. “That’s a terrible thing,” he said. “My daughter loves wild places, just like that girl did.”

  Personally, she was dreading Lisa’s memorial, but perhaps this man wouldn’t. Her father always said that funerals brought closure and comfort. She put a hand on Craig’s arm. “Maybe you’d like to come to the service?”

  “I think I would. Thank you. I think I’ll do that.” He passed the back of his hand quickly over his eyes. “Want me to tell Jack you were here?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “That’s okay. I’ll catch him some other time.” She hadn’t decided what she’d tell Winner if she confronted him. She just wanted to lay eyes on him, to see if he could be the illegal hunter she’d encountered. Or the rose thrower. “Mr. Craig, do you think Jack knew Lisa Glass, the trail worker who got killed?”

  Craig seemed surprised at the thought. “I don’t know. I guess he could have. I’ll ask him.”

  “You can tell him about the memorial service, too. The public’s welcome.” Maybe Peter Hoyle would give her extra credit if she showed up with guests for Lisa’s service.

  “HOW do you decide what you want to write about?” Today, Lili wore her hair in a complicated arrangement of a bun on each side of her head, wrapped with strings of red and black beads that clicked together in the salty breeze blowing off the Pacific.

  Sam, sharing a seat on a wind-polished driftwood log, smiled at Lili’s refreshing naïveté. She shifted her gaze away from the rolling swells to look at the girl. “If you’re writing for money, usually someone else tells you what they want you to write. You get assignments, just like in school.”

  Lili frowned, disappointed. “Really? That sucks. I thought being a writer meant you were free.” She looked toward the ocean. “I’m going to be a hairdresser; at least that’s creative.”

  Sam stifled a smile. “There aren’t many jobs that allow much freedom. I’ll bet most salon customers tell hairdressers how they want their hair done; they rarely let the hairdresser do whatever she wants.”

  Lili pulled thoughtfully on a string of beads dangling from the side of her head. “Maybe.”

  “Freelance writers do have more freedom than writers with permanent jobs. You can decide that you want to write about something, and then pitch that idea to a print or online magazine or newspaper. Sometimes they go for it. But you still have to do your homework so you know when and where to pitch your article, because they usually plan to print pieces that complement what they’re selling at the time.”

  “You mean they sell the story?”

  “No, I mean that they want the story to help them sell other goods or services.” It was sad that the world wa
s so commercial, but Lili would learn this sooner or later. “For instance, a magazine might buy an article about hiking for an issue where they’ll have advertisements for boots and backpacks.”

  Lili’s big brown eyes were unblinking. Either she didn’t understand or she was already bored into blankness.

  “Like that magazine.” Sam pointed to the copy of Max Girl that protruded from Lili’s daypack. “May I?”

  Lili nodded, and Sam pulled the magazine out of its pocket. She flipped through the pages. “See, here’s an article on how to put on eye makeup. And see all these ads for eye makeup? They hope that the article plus the ads will make you buy makeup.”

  Lili’s brow wrinkled. “So they’re, like, manipulating us?”

  Sam laughed. “I’m glad you recognize that.”

  “So when you write articles, you’re manipulating people, too.”

  It was Sam’s turn to make a face. “Most of the time, it feels more like the magazine’s manipulating me.” Organizations like The Edge always seemed to hold all the cards. Now they’d manipulated her into becoming a public speaker.

  She pulled her thoughts back to Lili. “Do you ever feel like anyone tries to manipulate you, Lili? Does anyone try to get you do something you wouldn’t usually do?” Like have sex or nail up illegal signs in the woods?

  The girl tossed her head. “Of course.”

  Sam hadn’t expected it to be so easy. “Who does that?”

  Lili gave her an odd look. “Duh. Mom and Dad? That’s their job.” Abruptly, she pointed to a pudgy shape in a blue-green wave. “A seal!” She dashed toward the surf.

  Sam followed, eager to see the harbor seal again, too. A walk on Rialto Beach felt much more satisfying than trying to pump the child for information. How she was going to miss this—the scents of salt water and cedar, the seals and bears and birds wheeling overhead. In two weeks, she’d be shut up in her tiny home office again, pounding out words on a computer and fretting about the next paycheck. Her only consolations were that she would have her cat, Simon, to share her confinement and Blake’s dinners to look forward to.

  After inspecting the orange and purple starfish clinging to the exposed rocks and marveling over the microcosms in the tide pools, Sam drove Lili home. They sat at the Chois’ kitchen table as Sam told what little she knew about novelists and screenwriters, types that were more interesting to Lili than article writers who worked on assignment.

  Laura checked the delicious-smelling chicken enchiladas in the oven, then told Lili to set the table for dinner.

  “But we haven’t finished my questions,” Lili whined. “I’m supposed to ask about money and job opportunities and all that.”

  Sam grimaced. Money and job opportunities—two things she was always short of. But kids needed to know the realities. “We can meet after school again, Lili. And you can always call me on the phone.”

  The girl’s face fell. “Believe it or not, I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “Believe it or not, regular telephones still work,” Laura said. Turning to Sam, she said, “Thanks for offering to take Lili out after school. The other two are in day camp, but with summer school…” She shrugged. “She gets awfully tired of hanging around the library with me. The truth is, I don’t have a clue where Lili is most of the time between two and six.”

  Lili frowned. “I’m with my friends, Mom, like I’ve told you a hundred times.”

  “Where? Doing what?”

  The girl stood up and slapped her books into a pile, muttered an F-word barely louder than a whisper.

  Laura fisted her hands on her hips. “What did you say?”

  Yanking her books from the table, Lili stomped out of the room.

  “Did she say what I think she said?” Laura demanded.

  “It sounded more like ‘five’ to me,” Sam said.

  “Which means?”

  Sam held up her hands to show her ignorance of teenage numberspeak. “Talking to a thirteen-year-old seems like negotiating a minefield.”

  Laura slipped a potholder onto her hand and turned toward the oven. “Welcome to my war.”

  20

  TALK over the dinner table was family chitchat, focusing on Lili’s soccer, Tamara’s upcoming role as Cinderella in her day camp play, and little Joseph’s newfound love of T-ball. After dinner, Sam asked Lili if they could talk in her room.

  “Girl talk,” Sam said when Joe raised his eyebrows. Lili gave her father a smug smile.

  When the door was closed on the bedroom Lili shared with Tamara, Sam said, “I want to ask you about your tattoo, Lili.”

  “Not you, too! I can’t take off the tattoo, I just can’t.” Her eyes filled with tears. She threw herself onto a twin bed filled with stuffed animals.

  Sam sat on the corner. “I wasn’t going to ask you to take it off.”

  “Well, thank God for that, then. Dad bugs me about it every day.”

  “But it’s just temporary, right? Why is it such a big deal?”

  “Well…” She squirmed, plucking at the flowered bedspread instead of looking at Sam. “It’s like…the tattoo shows I’m in the club.”

  Ah, that teenage desperation to be part of a group. Sam understood. She still remembered what it felt like to be an outcast. First she’d been the preacher’s daughter with a sick mother, and then the preacher’s daughter with a dead mother. Only after her grandfather had given her Comanche and she’d joined the 4-H Range Riders did she have the experience of being part of a special group. “Being in a club sounds pretty cool,” she said.

  Lili looked up. “It is.”

  “What sort of club is it?”

  The girl hesitated. She pulled a stuffed seal from the pile and played with its flippers, making it clap.

  “Honors club?”

  Lili rolled her eyes. “Like I need to be associated with that.”

  Sam tried again. “Secret girls’ club?”

  A sly smile crossed Lili’s face. “It’s secret, but it’s not just girls. But only girls can wear the tattoo. It’s a life sign. We can have babies, so life continues through us.”

  Damn! Was this about sex? Sam searched to find a way to ask the question. “That tattoo is pretty,” she said, staring at the design on Lili’s ankle. “Do you have to do anything special to earn one? Could I get one?”

  Lili chuckled. “I don’t think so. You’re a fed.”

  “A fed?”

  “Feds can’t be in the club.” Clutching the seal to her chest, Lili leaned back against the pile of stuffed animals. “I’m lucky they let me in, what with Dad being a fed.”

  So a fed was a government employee. “I’m just a temporary fed,” Sam told her. “I won’t even be one in two weeks.”

  “Yeah, but it still counts against you.” Lili squirmed, pulled a purple unicorn from behind her back, and tossed it to the floor, then leaned back again, seemingly satisfied with the adjustment.

  “But I know a fed who had the same tattoo you do,” Sam said. “You know, that trail worker who got killed. She had that tattoo on her shoulder.”

  She pulled the scanned page from her pocket and unfolded it to compare with the design on Lili’s ankle. Except for color, they were identical.

  “Omigod.” Lili pointed to the photo. “Is this a picture after she’s dead?”

  Sam had momentarily forgotten about the corpse under the tattoo. “Um, yes. See, she had the same tattoo.”

  A frown knitted Lili’s dark brows. “That doesn’t make any sense. I’ll have to ask Rocky—” Her eyes widened and her hands flew to her mouth. “Forget I said that.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. Lili had also mentioned Rocky during their conversation in the firewatch tower. “Can anybody who’s not a fed join the club? Do you have to do something special?” Now that Lili had brought up the boy who she thought was fine, it seemed more likely than ever that this club had something to do with sex.

  “Well,” Lili said hesitantly, “it’s not what you have to do; it’s what yo
u know.”

  That sounded better. “So this is like a brainiac club?”

  “You mean nerds?” the girl scoffed. “It’s not for nerds. You have to know something valuable. Something that Roc—the leader thinks is valuable.”

  This game of twenty questions was getting old. Sam still had to find her way back to the bunkhouse and clear off her bunk and get a shower before lights out. “What do you all have to know?”

  “It’s all different. Like, Deborah knows about planes because her dad has one; and Emily knows about locks and stuff because her dad’s a locksmith. And George, his dad has a fishing boat.”

  “So it’s a club where people talk about their fathers? You talk about your dad?”

  “Yeah, that’s my special knowledge. I can teach about what rangers do.” She traded the seal for a black beanbag puppy, flopping it across her thigh.

  Sam grabbed an orange kitten toy and stroked its soft fur. None of this made any sense. What did plane owners and bank managers and rangers have to do with each other? And why would teenagers think any of this was interesting? Maybe it was like Explorer Scouts? “You talk about this stuff to figure out what you’d like to do when you grow up?”

  “No.” Lili shot her an irritated look, and Sam realized that she probably considered herself grown up already. “We learn things, and go for walks in the woods. And we make stuff.”

  Sam couldn’t resist. “Do you ever make signs, Lili?”

  The girl’s face darkened. “I told you I don’t know anything about those signs.”

  “What kind of things do you learn?”

  Lili frowned. “That’s secret. Just forget I said anything about it, okay? We just talk and do the tattoos and stuff. It’s just for fun.”

  Sam stared at the stuffed kitten’s blue plastic eyes for a minute. She couldn’t think of a way to broach the subject, so she cut to the chase. “Is this club about sex?”

  “Sex!” The girl burst into laughter. “Why do grown-ups think everything’s about sex?”

  Sam laughed then, too. “I don’t know. But if I can tell your dad that the tattoo has nothing to do with sex, I think he’ll let you keep it.”