“I NEVER SHOULD’VE told Emma about the barn and the pond,” Seth said to Earl. He finished his chef salad and corn bread. Velma took his drink glass to put in a to-go cup so he could take it with him on his afternoon rounds. He hadn’t asked. She always did it and fixed it up properly with lemon and sweetener. “Emma wants to hotfoot it down there and see if the barn can be saved.”
Earl snorted. “Hope you got your snakebite kit up-to-date.”
“What I told her. Come on, we got a poacher to track.”
Thirty minutes later, Seth turned left onto the gravel road into a dense fir tree plantation. Some optimistic farmer twenty years earlier had planted the trees in serried rows in hopes of cutting them down to sell as Christmas trees. Unfortunately, Southern forests weren’t good places to grow the fancy Norway spruces that people seemed to prefer these days. Those were brought down by the truckload from Minnesota and Wisconsin the week before Thanksgiving. Trees that weren’t sold by December 15 were given away. Any scruffy leftovers were turned into mulch after New Year’s Day, and that was given away in the spring.
Seth had no idea who currently owned this tree farm, but whoever held the title ignored it except for large “No Trespassing, No Hunting, Private Property” signs posted at irregular intervals.
The deer didn’t ignore the property, however. Therefore, neither did the hunters. Or the motorcycle and ATV riders. Every ATV ride off the dirt roads, even on deer paths, set up ruts that eroded with every rain until the roads themselves were impassible. At least Southern wardens didn’t have to worry about snowmobiles. Except for one good snowstorm a year, more or less, snowmobiles weren’t usable.
The laws of Tennessee said that a property owner could cull the deer on his own property if they were destroying his crops. He didn’t have to hold to restrictions as to permits, seasons for rifles or for bows and black powder antique weapons, or even does versus bucks.
Seth hated that law. Most farmers were protective of their wildlife and didn’t abuse the law. Some big corporations, however, saw their large tree farms and soybean fields as an excuse to bring in rich clients to hunt in or out of season.
Seth considered that pure poaching. So did all the other game wardens, although there wasn’t much they could do about it. Farmers did suffer predation from deer, especially after particularly cold winters—and more to the point, horribly hot summers. Human predation, however, meant orphaned fawns, and orphan fawns largely wound up being cared for by Barbara and her animal rescue group. They spent time and money, often their own, rescuing. They held fundraisers, but according to Barbara, they always worked on a narrow margin at the edge of penury.
He could remember seeing The Yearling as a kid. When the father shot the deer, Seth walked out of the theater. He’d never willingly gone to another movie about animals. He’d never seen Turner and Hooch, or Benji, and definitely not Bambi. He took a lot of teasing from his buddies at Auburn and even now. Earl understood, but plenty of others thought he was a wimp and told him so. He really didn’t care.
At this point, he was checking the trails through the Christmas tree farm in search of an ATV that had been reported as hoorahing full blast day and night, possibly jacklighting deer and firing what sounded like howitzers much too close to houses.
There was always shooting in the country. Most everybody ignored it. Everybody owned at least one gun and probably several. In dove season, however, he’d been forced to comb bird shot out of his hair on more than one occasion, when some fool hunter had gotten off his beer-stocked cooler and let fly. Hunting drunk was right up there with—or above—driving drunk. He and Earl came down on excessive blood alcohol levels like a ton of bricks. He’d badgered the powers that be unmercifully until they’d purchased a Breathalyzer. Half the time, however, it was in the other car.
But this wasn’t dove season. Or deer season either. Because there’d been no rain for several days—not since the night Emma moved in—any ATV tread marks had practically disappeared. Enough remained so the two men knew they were following a big ATV with balloon tires.
“You gonna be ready for me to come over Saturday morning?” Earl asked. “Finish up that cage for you? Sounds like it’s gonna be big enough to use as a flight cage. Barbara’s is pretty puny when you’re trying to exercise a broken wing on a big hoot owl.”
“Not that big, unless it’s a very small bird,” Seth said. “Damn!” he shouted as the SUV bottomed out in a hole as wide as his wheelbase.
“What’s with you and Miss City Slicker?”
“I’m being neighborly. Period.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If she hadn’t moved into Miss Martha’s place, I never would’ve met her,” Seth said. “Our orbits do not mesh. My guess is she’ll get a new job in the city and be out of here in a couple of weeks. Back with her fiancé and setting the date. You know that dating site where they try to match country boys with country girls?”
Earl nodded.
“Well, I am and she isn’t. Barbara told me she was a debutante.”
“And that means?”
“Where all the rich daughters get displayed for all the rich eligible bachelors to get ’em married off to go live in somebody else’s McMansion instead of Daddy’s.”
“You sound a tad bitter.”
“After Clare, you can see why I’m not real high on city girls.”
“Not every city girl is like Clare,” Earl said. “Anyway, seems like all the classifieds I read are about selling a hobby farm to city execs who want to move out of the rat race that they largely created.”
“Farming, as we both know from experience, is not a hobby. That was Clare’s problem. She thought she could swan in to Memphis every whipstitch to get her nails done and have lunch at chic little restaurants with her rich girlfriends. And I’m not.”
“A girlfriend? You got that right.”
“No, idiot. Rich. Hello. See that little bit of red over there in the brush?” Seth pulled to the side of the road. Both men got out and slid through the trees.
The rear end of a large ATV stuck out from under a dark green tarp obviously meant to conceal it. The way it was parked, it posed a threat to any vehicle that came up on it.
Earl checked the plate. “A year out of date. That would seem to constitute a violation.” He got out his phone and dialed in a series of numbers. “The last license comes back to a Tyrell McKee.” He waited. “My, my, Mr. McKee is not one of our more saintly citizens.”
Seth pulled the tarp forward to uncover the hood. The engine was cold.
“The gentleman who’s the registered owner of this sweet little baby girl already has three tickets for joyriding and a bench warrant for a DUI and poaching an out-of-season doe,” Earl said.
“You got an address?”
“And an arrest warrant all ready to be made out and signed. Would you like to take us on a little joyride, too?” Earl asked. “House is only a mile down the road.”
“He hears us coming, he’ll book it sure as this world,” Seth said.
“We can park the cruiser across the road where he can’t get past. Can’t fit an SUV between the pines.”
“But he can T-bone us, shove us out of the way and total the cruiser. How about we park his ATV crossways up ahead of us, take the keys and remove the plugs. Either he stops or he hits his own vehicle.”
Ten minutes later, the two men walked down the track along the edge of the trees where their green uniforms blended in so perfectly that only their movement gave them away. Whoever was in the house would have to be looking hard to see them.
The low farmhouse desperately needed painting. The porch stairs sagged on one end, and the window in the storm door was covered with a square of cardboard. But at the doorway sat a shining, silver crew-cab diesel pickup that was in showroom condition. The two men could see a gun rack through the rear window holding what looked like a shotgun and two rifles.
Both men loosened their sidearms and stepped behind the truck to keep it between them and the front door of the house. With luck, the only guns available to the owner were safely on that gun rack, or if not, McKee wouldn’t want to put bullet holes through the cab of his truck on the off chance of hitting a game warden or two.
“Mr. McKee?” Earl called. “Tyrell McKee? Game wardens here. Would you come out and talk to us a minute?”
Nothing. Seth made the same request. His baritone was deeper and louder than Earl’s tenor, but both men sounded calm and reasonable. Neither wanted a gunfight. Lord only knew who might be in that cabin. The two of them wouldn’t fire the first shot—or any shot if they could help it.
“He’s not here,” came a female voice from inside. “He’s at work.”
“Ma’am, his truck’s here,” Earl said.
“You think he drives his good truck to work? Let it get repoed?”
“Where would we find him?” Seth asked. “Ma’am, could you open the door so we can talk to you?”
Nothing happened for more than a minute, then the front door opened. At least the family isn’t starving, Seth thought when the lady barely fit through the door sideways. Inside Seth glimpsed a restaurant-size freezer and saw a propane tank around the corner of the house. He didn’t have a search warrant to allow him to check the freezer, since it was inside the house, but he had no doubt it was filled with venison, squirrel, possum, raccoon and probably bass and crappie, as well.
“Where’s Tyrell working?” Earl asked.
“He’s working construction downtown. Don’t know where exactly.”
“When will he be home?”
“This evening sometime. He generally stops off for a couple beers after work.”
Or more, Seth thought. He’d be unlikely to go nuts joyriding with his ATV and shotgun in the middle of the night if he had only a couple of beers under his belt. More likely a six-pack and a few shooters.
“Ma’am, we do need to talk to him. We’ve had reports his ATV’s been driving through people’s fields and front yards full throttle at all hours of the night, and he’s been shooting off guns and scaring people to death.”
“It ain’t Tyrell.”
“It’s his registration, ma’am.”
“Quite a bit out of date,” Earl added. “Need to see a current registration and proof of insurance. He has to move his ATV up here, park it in his yard and not hide it in the brush at the side of the road where somebody could run into it. And he needs to come into our office and take care of his fines. Bring his paperwork up-to-date and clear this matter up before he drives it anymore. It’s only because we didn’t actually see him driving it that he’s not getting fined right now.” Best not to mention the DUI. The chances that he’d come in on his own were slim anyway, but if he had an inkling that he could be arrested for the bench warrant, he’d be halfway to New Orleans before they saw him.
“Huh. Yeah, I’ll tell him. He’s mighty busy, though.”
“Ma’am,” Earl said and handed the woman a folded piece of paper. “This isn’t a subpoena—yet—just a friendly reminder. If we have to come back here again, though, ma’am, things might get real unpleasant. I don’t expect either one of you would like sitting in jail waiting to be arraigned. Sometimes that takes weeks.”
It didn’t, but it could, so they weren’t actually lying.
“Jail? Now, you lookee here! I got kids in school.”
“Child protective services would take care of them, unless you got kin to look after them.”
“Kin?” she screeched. “My good-for-nothing brother-in-law is why Tyrell’s in this mess. Fool likes to drink and joyride, and sometimes Tyrell goes along with him.” She snatched the letter from Earl’s hand. “I’ll go move the ATV right now, and I’ll get Tyrell to come by your office tomorrow morning. I ain’t never been to jail, and I don’t plan to go now. And no child protective anybody is going to look after my kids. Plus every bit of the meat in that freezer is legal with stamps and everything. Whatever y’all may think, Tyrell and me’s not trash. Tyrell’s got him a bad back, can’t work all the time. Sometimes if Tyrell don’t hunt, we don’t eat. Y’all said your piece. Now git.”
“Would you like us to accompany you to the ATV?” Seth asked.
“Oh, for… Just git.”
They got.
They replaced the plugs and keys before Mrs. McKee reached them. She climbed aboard, backed around and gunned the ATV up the road toward her house. Even the engine sounded irate.
“Think he’ll come in?” Earl asked. “She’s bound and determined to protect him.”
“If she has her way, he will,” Seth said. “She doesn’t want him in jail. If that freezer is full of legal meat like she says, why did he poach a doe? I suspect he’s processing illegal meat and selling it. But we can’t check without a search warrant.”
“No judge will give us one unless we have more evidence.”
“Pity. If we could prove that, then he would be going to jail. We’ll need to keep an eye on him. Lord, Earl, life would be so much simpler if people just did right and obeyed the rules.”
“It’s natural to protect the people you love,” Earl said. “Even from themselves.”
Seth’s mind gave him a swift kick. The way I have with Emma and her skunks. But that wasn’t love. He hardly knew the woman. He felt protective of her because she was so obviously out of her depth here in the country with no family, no friends, no job, no fiancé and, for all he knew, no money. Maybe Barbara could find that out. Seth didn’t have any idea how to go about it.
“How you coming with your kennel?” Earl asked. The two men had a tacit agreement that was what Emma’s enclosure would be called. For a dog, say. Anything but a skunk.
“I think we’ll be ready to tack the wire on and hang the door Saturday,” Seth replied. “You and Janeen bringing the kids over? We’ll come up with something for lunch. Hot dogs, probably.”
“The kids’ favorite. They’d live on hot dogs if Janeen would let them.”
“I’ll keep the skunks out of sight in the pantry. The kids don’t even need to know they’re around. If they catch a glimpse, they’ll go ape. Those little devils are seriously cute and completely tame at this point. Their idea of heaven is curling up in Emma’s lap.”
“How about yours?”
“My lap?”
“Your idea of heaven, ol’ buddy. From what I’ve heard, curling up in her lap sounds like an appealing proposition.”
Seth felt himself blushing. His ears burned. Men didn’t blush. “We’re friends, period. She’s a thorn in my flesh right now. I want to get those babies in the woods and Emma back in the city, so I can go back to doing my job without worrying about her.”
“You’re telling me you haven’t hit on her?”
“None of your business, ol’ buddy.”
“Woo-hoo, hit a sore spot, didn’t I? Tell you what, how ’bout we fall by your house for a beer on the way back to the office. If she’s at home, I can meet her and give you my honest opinion as a serious connoisseur of ladies if she’s worth all the problems she’s causing you.”
Seth grumbled, but complied. He didn’t know if he wanted to see her SUV in the driveway or not. When he drove around the curve in the gravel road and saw the SUV outside her front door, he felt a jolt of anticipation that he didn’t like.
He told himself he didn’t give a darn if Earl approved of her or not.
But in reality he wanted Earl to be as knocked out by her as he was. Like winning a blue ribbon at the fair with your Duroc sow. Not that she looked like a sow. But she was no cuddly bunny either. More like a swan—beautiful, graceful and capable of removing your head from your shoulders if you provoked her. They climbed out of Seth’s truck, expecting her to come to the front door when she heard them.
Seth rapped on the door, checked around the side of the house, but saw no sign of her.
“She’s got to be here somewhere,” Seth said. “Maybe she went across to my house to ask me for something.”
He stood on her front steps and surveyed the big front yard. He did not have a good feeling about this.
“You hear that?” Earl whispered.
“No, what?”
“Listen. Sounds like somebody…” Earl held up his hand for silence.
“Emma!” Seth shouted. Earl had ears like a fox. He could hear things no other ranger could. If he heard a sound, it was there to be heard.
“Help, somebody!”