First one and then two heads appeared in my peripheral vision, off to my right. I swung the light in that direction. It was the coyote brothers. “Yah, yah, yah.” I’d never been on a cattle drive, but I’d seen a movie or two.
Lenny strained against my arms, growling, yapping, and threatening his distant cousins.
“You can forget it. You’re not going to wrangle with any coyote. Haven’t you heard it’s better to pick on somebody your own size so no one gets hurt?” Without giving myself time to reconsider, I spread one arm wide and ran at the remaining coyote. “Git, git, git! Yah!”
They took off at a trot and disappeared into the brush. I waited. I counted to thirty as the night grew darker all around us. The crickets and locusts grew louder, and in the grass I heard the slither and crackle of small creatures below my line of sight.
“Come on,” I said to Lenny, “Let’s get out of here.”
The van was still dark. I flashed my light in the front window. A curtain had been pulled across the breadth of the cargo area behind the front seats, neatly separating the contents from view. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that Frank slept out here. Despite the hour, I decided to knock just in case he’d taken a nap—unlikely—or got caught up in an extremely long and involved phone call—highly unlikely. I was desperate. Though Uncle Eddie wasn’t in charge of the fireworks per se, a magnificent show of lights would put a nice cap on the Cinco de Mayo festivities. And any positive review of the weekend would include a mention of the winners and a favorable nod to his first chili cook-off.
“Frank?” I tapped on the driver’s door with a knuckle. “Yo, you in there?” I asked playfully. Best to keep things light and breezy.
I glanced across the wide expanse between the van and the waiting crowd, the darkness deepening to a deeper shade of midnight. Walking softly, I led Lenny to the other side of the cargo van, a better vantage point when it came to seeing if someone, namely Frank, was on his way to or from the launch platform. “Where do you think he made off to?”
A sudden thought had me turning toward the crowd again. Perhaps he was at the porta-potty. When a guy’s gotta go, he’s gotta go—chemical outhouse or no.
“Yip,” Lenny urged quietly.
“You’re right. He’s probably at that platform with all the fireworks on it.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a movement. An orange tabby slithered out from behind the curtain into the beam of my flashlight, gifted me with a surly look, and climbed onto the dash and front window of the van. She kept her eyes focused on mine as she bathed first one paw and then the other.
“Yip, yip.” Lenny wasn’t impressed.
I hoisted him up so he could get a better look at the proud feline.
“Yip.”
“Yes, I know, she won’t look at you. Don’t worry, she’s just playing hard to get.” Lenny placed his front paws on the window and whined.
“So where’s your owner, Tabitha?” She turned her back on us and continued washing. After a few more licks of her tongue, she raised herself languidly from the dash, disappeared behind the curtain, immediately returned to stand on the center console, and then disappeared again.
“What if she’s like Lassie? Trying to get our attention? What if Frank’s hurt in the back of the van and she wants us to rescue him?” Hadn’t I read somewhere that cats could do that kind of thing? “Come on, Lenster.” We walked around to the back of the van, where I promptly tripped on a long, round object that turned when I stepped on it, almost causing me to do the splits as my front foot began to roll away from my back one. “Son of a nutcracker!”
“Yip.”
“I’m okay,” I groaned. “Old Frank needs to be more careful.” At first glance, the van’s rear doors appeared to be tightly closed, but when I looked again I could make out a slight gap.
I picked up the cylindrical object and started to toss it inside. When I opened the van’s rear door, the interior light came on. The object in my hand was a fireworks missile of some type, a familiar cone at one end and three wings at the other. The van itself was far from empty. A bedroll was propped against the cargo door behind the driver’s seat. Beside it was an iron skillet filled with a knife, fork, spoon, salt and pepper shakers, and a can opener. Crates of fireworks—rockets, fuses, several boxes with bright labels indicating mine cakes, and a dozen or so extension cords were crammed into every available inch. I gently placed the red missile in a box in the corner, close to the rear door. That’s when I noticed the crate beneath it. A yellow hazard tape was attached. WARNING: VOLTAGE MAY CAUSE ACCIDENTAL DEATH.
My curiosity got the better of me. I lifted the first box out of the way and discovered three stun guns in the smaller crate beneath. The air in my lungs evaporated.
“Yip, yip,” Lenny said.
“You’re right. This whole thing’s made me jumpier than a frog in a toaster.” I forced my lungs to draw breath.
“What do you think, Lenster? You think he stole these?”
“Yip.”
“Me neither . . . but it’s mighty suspicious.”
If I truly thought that a stun gun had killed Lucky Straw, I’d have danced a jig at the discovery of not one, but three of the weapons in Frank’s possession. Tonight’s encounter with Dani O’Neal had changed my conclusion.
I no longer had to worry that Uncle Eddie could be blamed for Lucky Straw’s death. No faulty wiring, or even a mishap with an extension cord, could’ve caused his death. And why had the murderer tossed the stun gun into Lucky’s chili? Easy. He, or she, wanted the sheriff’s department to
