California Schemin' - Kate George [2]
A bear ambled onto the rocks near the river. Wild animal, not murderer, but what if it mauled the body? Jumping down didn’t seem like a wise idea, and I didn’t have anything to throw at the creature. I pulled my phone from my pocket. Miraculously, Meg was still there.
“What is going on? You scared the bejesus out of me. All that running and crashing around.”
“A bear,” I panted. “A dang bear came out of the woods. I’m afraid it’ll maul the body. What should I do if it goes for the body?”
“Where are you now?” The stress levels in Meg’s voice were ramping up.
“Up a tree. I climbed it when the crashing around started. That’s what you heard.”
“Let me get this straight. You are up a tree, talking to me on the phone?”
“Well, if you’re going to put it like that, yes. I’m sitting in a tree talking to you on the phone while a bear rambles around deciding if it wants to maul a dead body. But hey, what else could happen?” Oh, man, as soon as the words were out I knew I was jinxing myself. “Don’t answer that. I’m going to yell at the bear and see if I can get it to go away. I’ll call you back.”
Meg called my name, but I’d already snapped the phone shut by the time it registered in my brain. The bear was sniffing the ground, not doing much of anything. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy bear or a girl bear. I was hoping boy, because if it was a momma bear, I could be in real trouble. The jinx kicked in, and before I could start making a lot of noise to startle it, a man came crashing into the clearing.
He was clearly not a country boy. His shoes were black and shiny. He wore a suit. The only signs that he was aware of the lack of cement were the tie hanging out of his pocket and the top two buttons on his dress shirt, which were undone. He seemed unaware of the bear, his attention riveted by the blond lying in the water. I opened my mouth to warn him but he pulled a gun out of a shoulder harness. Of course I’d missed that in my initial assessment, and my mouth snapped shut. As much as I didn’t want to watch anyone get mauled by a bear, I didn’t want to end up dead even more. If this was the guy who killed the blond, then there wasn’t much keeping him from killing me.
I was having a holy-crap-what-am-I-going-to-do moment when the cops showed. City boy ducked into the woods and took off running, which startled the bear. He saw the cops and ran splashing up the river. A fifty-ish Placer County Sheriff with a military style brush cut that was thinning on top appeared in time to watch the bear take his leave. The cop was on the heavy side, breathing hard from the hike. Behind him came two crime scene guys, significantly younger and more attractive. They headed straight for the body and started unpacking their bags of paraphernalia.
I dropped out of the tree, the phone rang, and the older guy made straight for me. I was uncertain what to do. If I went for the phone, he might misunderstand my intentions and shoot me. So I raised my hands in front of me so he could see they were empty.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” he asked me.
“Oh, sure.” I yanked the phone from my pocket and flipped it open. “Meg, I’ve got to call you back. The sheriff is here. Give me a break, I’m fine. It’ll wait.”
I turned back to the Sheriff, knowing I was going to sound like a nut job. “Before you got here there was a man. A guy in a suit. He came out of the woods and went straight for the body. He heard you coming up the trail before you could see him, and he took off through there.” I raised a hand to indicate where the guy had gone.
With a flick of the wrist he sent one of his crime scene guys after the suit. I heard him crashing around in the undergrowth for a while, but before long he was back. He shrugged at his boss and joined the other crime scene tech at the edge of the river.
“I take it you are the young lady who found the body? What in God’s name were you doing up a tree?” He squatted in front of me and pulled his