Ripped To Shreds Page 6

  "Set it back up?" I'd muttered uneasily. I thought this was a "one-and-done" type of endeavor. Shouldn't I already have a twenty-five thousand dollar winning photo on the memory card? I had wanted to ask. In retrospect, it's just as well I kept the inquiry to myself.

  We were waiting patiently to preview all the photos the camera had taken as Cora went through the process of uploading them on our iPad. She dutifully explained each step as she performed it, as if seriously thinking either Rip or I would remember them by the time ten minutes had passed.

  A short time later, as we clicked through the photos one by one, we began to get confused. We were baffled by the first thirty or so photos that seemed to be taken of the same viewpoint sideways, upside down, and at every other possible angle. The next few photos showed what looked like skin, perhaps the palm of someone's hand.

  "It's like someone was jacking with our camera," I said.

  Cora and Rip agreed. There was no other way to explain the photos. We all gasped in unison when the inseam of a pair of jeans was spotted in a subsequent photo. I turned to Rip, and said, "I'll bet that couple we heard talking in the woods came across our camera. They might have even been stalking us, waiting for us to leave so they could mess with the critter cam."

  "That sounds a little far-fetched, Rapella. Even for you," he replied. "Keep clicking through them."

  The next two hundred photos showed different scenes, ranging from a cloud in the sky to a pile of animal scat on the ground. Rip echoed my thoughts when he remarked. "It looks like somebody was walking with the camera."

  "They took the camera off the tree?" I asked. "How odd is that?"

  "Odd's not the word for it. Returning it to the exact same spot later on is even odder." Cora shook her head in disbelief. "Why would someone take your camera, walk around with it, and then bring it back and reattach it to the same tree they'd removed it from?"

  Cora looked confounded as I shrugged my shoulders in response. Then as Rip clicked on the next file, she exclaimed, "Hey! There's someone's shoe! Someone's definitely walking with the camera and doesn't realize it's still on."

  "Maybe we'll figure out who it is in the remaining images!" I was angry that someone would mess with our camera and, like Cora, perplexed as to why they'd steal it and then return it to the exact spot they'd found it.

  "You can! Even I know who it was." Willie spoke up for the first time, all the while rolling his eyes. "Good grief, and to think I'm the kid in this foursome."

  "How?" Rip, Cora, and I asked in stereo.

  "It's not that odd, after all," Willie said with a mocking tone. "Look down, Aunt Rapella. That's your shoe in the photo! See the red stitching around the heel that's identical to the shoes you're wearing? And the earlier picture was of Uncle Rip's blue jeans, the same pair he's wearing now. See the matching purple stain on his pants leg?"

  "Duh," Rip replied, as we all glanced from my sneakers to his Levi's. He slapped Willie on the back and said, "Sorry, son. Senior moment. I think it's clear that the three days we believed it was on, it was actually off. Then when I thought I'd turned it off when we went out to retrieve it, I'd actually turned it on. All eight hundred and forty-seven photos are of us carrying the camera home this morning, starting with me turning it on when I thought I was turning it off, and removing the camera from the tree."

  "Jeez, Louise," I said. "That was a wasted three days."

  "Don't look at it that way, Aunt Rappie," Cora said to console me. "Look at it as a learning experience. Give it another try."

  "She's right," Rip said. "What do you say, Rapella? You game?"

  "Oh, heck, why not?" I consented. "As someone recently told me, ain't none of us getting out of this world alive anyway. But, I have to admit, I'd prefer dying in my sleep on my one-hundredth birthday, as opposed to being gnawed on this afternoon by a mountain lion like I was a piece of beef jerky."

  He reviewed the online owner's manual again, before reinserting the memory card into the camera and erasing all the photos on it by pushing in and holding two buttons on the control panel of the camera at the same time for three seconds, as the manual instructed. He then set the camera to take a burst of three photos in rapid succession after a five-second delay each time motion activated the shutter. "Okay, honey. Let's go. I've studied the manual and know how to operate it now. It's ready to turn on as soon as we get it reattached to the tree."

  * * *

  Three days later we found ourselves sitting at the kitchen table again, reviewing the twenty-seven photos on the memory card from our second attempt. Cora had stopped by to upload them for us. We were disappointed again when each photo showed a blurry streak across the sky from when a bird had flown within the camera's motion detection range. The only things in focus in the whole lot were a few tail feathers of an owl that were picked up by the infrared light at night, and the red head of a cardinal flying in bright sunlight.

  "Well, at least we had it set up perfectly," Rip said.

  "Yeah, right," I replied dryly. "Perfect if we were hoping to get an amazing shot of a giraffe's head while it strolled past our camera in the forest. I say we give up and—"

  "This time we need to lower the camera's angle to catch sharp images of land animals, not blurry ones of birds in flight." As usual, Rip had totally ignored me.

  * * *

  Three days later, after clicking through the two hundred and twelve photos on the memory card, I found myself growing even wearier of the endeavor.

  The first few images were encouraging: a yellow-bellied marmot sniffing the lens of the critter cam. They were fuzzy and hardly of award-winning quality, but I was excited to see an actual varmint in a few of the photos. I thought of them as a preview of coming attractions as I anxiously clicked on the fourth .jpg file, which was an image of the south end of the marmot as it ambled away. The fifth image was of nothing more than a single strand of tall grass.

  Naturally, I was disheartened when the next two hundred and nine photos were of the same blade of grass that had apparently been buffeting around in the wind. It'd been captured in a photo each time it moved vigorously enough to set off the motion detector.

  I was ready to pitch the camera in the same meandering stream that days earlier I'd worried Rip might boot it into, but Rip was still not ready to throw in the towel. With undue optimism, he said, "We're getting closer. But you were absolutely right about adjusting the camera's angle."

  I pulled our cell phone out of my back pocket and asked, "Do you mind repeating that part about me being right so I can get it on tape?"

  Rip grinned broadly, and replied, "Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, you know. And, by the way, video tape became obsolete before the turn of the century. Try a little harder to stay up to date, sweetheart. You need to be on top of things like I am."

  "And this is coming from a man who asked me last night where our answering machine had gotten off to?"

  "Yes. And I'm still waiting patiently for your answer."

  "Fine. I'd hate to make you wait any longer. Our answering machine is in technology heaven. I think it 'rusts in peace' right next to the push-button phone it used to be connected to."

  Our playful banter lifted my spirits. But they plummeted again when Rip said, "This time we need to try to aim the camera higher, but not as high as we had it before. It should be over the top of the foliage in the near vicinity and at the correct height and angle to capture a taller land animal, such as a mountain lion or bear. If we keep trying, we're bound to get a decent wildlife photo eventually."

  My husband's stubborn trait had always managed to push my buttons, and I found myself getting increasingly annoyed with his bullheadedness.

  "Whatever," I said in a huff as I shook my head.

  * * *

  Three days later, on a cool Thursday morning in the mountains, we cheered at a washed-out, silhouetted image of an unidentifiable four-legged critter's rear end. Because, after all, our bar for success had been set very low after severa
l unsuccessful attempts. Studying the expression on Rip's face, I could tell he was already thinking about our next shot at it. I feared his mulish streak was just getting warmed up.

  "Stick a fork in me, dear. I'm done! We've already given it four tries, and in my opinion, that was four tries too many." Even as I spoke, I knew my words were falling on deaf ears, both figuratively and literally.

  "Just one more time," Rip pleaded. I was more than ready to immerse myself in a new activity, but my obstinate husband wanted to give it five days on a fifth attempt, convinced the four-legged critter was a mountain lion and would one day soon return to pose charmingly for the camera. Charmingly enough, in fact, to take the grand prize purse in the wildlife photo competition. The contest deadline was only two weeks away, Rip reminded me. I wanted to slap the optimistic smile off his face.

  Chapter 6

  "Hello again. Fancy seeing you here," Jan greeted me nonchalantly early Saturday afternoon when I ran into her in the laundry room again. She was clad in a silk workout suit, and glistened with perspiration, as if she'd just finished jogging. Even then she looked quite chic; fresh and fit as a fiddle. I, on the other hand, looked like I'd been robbing homeless bums again.

  "Good afternoon, Jan. We must be on the same laundry schedule."

  "Looks that way, doesn't it?" Jan was in a cheerful mood, as was I. Rip and I were looking forward to our afternoon cocktails ritual and a quiet night at home. Jan hung up a sleeveless top, and then asked, "Say, have you heard the news?"

  "What news?"

  "Bea Whetstone is missing." The casualness of the Illinois native's reply was the same as if she were telling me that the local Lion's Club was putting on a chili feed to raise money for a new rest stop along the Cloud Peak Skyway, a scenic byway between Buffalo and Ten Sleep. Nothing about the woman's manner indicated a reason for concern, so I felt no immediate cause for alarm either.

  "Missing?" I asked, somewhat confused by the term Jan had used. "What do you mean by 'missing'?"

  "No one can find her. Boonie was going around to each site this morning asking each camper in turn if we'd seen her. You must have not been in your RV at the time."

  We had spent the morning in town, watching Willie's baseball team beat a team from Worland, six to five. Our nephew, who was Buffalo's third-baseman, knocked in the winning run with a double off the right field wall. For a wiry kid, he had a good stroke and an even better eye. He rarely went down swinging.

  "We were at a ball game in town. What's going on? How in the world could Bea be missing?" I asked. I suddenly felt a twinge of concern, but not panic.

  "Dunno. But Boonie said she'd gone to the office to take care of some business after supper last night, and he hadn't seen her since. He mentioned that she always waited until ten o'clock to run each day's credit card batch. Then she'd record that day's sales in the park ledger before locking up the store and office. But when Boonie woke up this morning, Bea was nowhere to be found. Apparently he tosses and turns all night. He said all his restless fidgeting made it hard to tell if her side of the messy bed had been slept on."

  "You mean Boonie went to bed without making sure Bea had returned home safely? There's a fair distance between the office and their home, and we know for a fact that there are dangerous creatures that come into the campground at will. And that's just of the four-legged variety. The two-legged kind can be even more perilous at times."

  "That same thought crossed my mind too. From what Boonie told me, Bea often awoke early in the morning and would go for a hike in the forest. But she'd always returned in time to open the store at eight."

  "She hiked in the forest alone?" I asked, marveling at her courage, as well as her dedication to stay fit. "Isn't that a little foolish? Not to mention, potentially hazardous to one's health?"

  "Yeah. But, Boonie said she usually carries a small handgun for protection, And, as we witnessed a while back, she wouldn't hesitate to fire a gun at a bear, or at any animal that crossed her path, most likely. According to her husband, she'd had a close call with a mountain lion about six months ago."

  "And yet she still goes walking in the forest by herself?" Now I was marveling at the breadth of Bea's stupidity.

  "Looks that way," Jan replied before she had to go cram more quarters in the dryers.

  The Whetstones lived in a small log cabin of about twelve hundred square feet, nestled back into a cluster of aspen trees in the far northwest corner of the property. There were no outdoor lights illuminating the path from the campground office to the Whetstones' rustic little home. I had to admit it was a cozy, but secluded location.

  As I sat there waiting for my washer to stop spinning, I mused about where the missing woman could have disappeared to. Had she gone for a hike and had another unexpected encounter with a cougar that didn't end well for her? Or, conversely, had she never made it back to their house the evening before? More likely, I thought, she was at a friend or relative's house and had not told Boonie of her plans. Someone could have picked her up early that morning before her husband had awakened.

  I assumed working in the office late at night was probably a routine she and Boonie were both accustomed to. If it'd never been an issue in the past, he probably felt comfortable in assuming she'd come to bed when she'd finished up with her customary evening paperwork. Or, maybe, he didn't give a bee's behind whether his surly wife made it home, or not.

  "I'd think the most logical explanation for her absence is due to a lack of communication," I said. "One day, before we retired, I was on the way back from grocery shopping and got delayed for three hours by a multi-car accident that happened directly in front of me. After the wreck, the highway looked like a war zone with emergency equipment everywhere, and it took a long time to clear the road. We didn't have a cell phone back then and I fretted the entire time that Rip was worried half to death and, as a police officer, might even have put out an all-points bulletin on me. After all, the chore took several hours longer than it would have otherwise, and I knew Rip would have expected me home a lot earlier."

  "So, what happened? Did your husband have half the police force out searching for you?" Jan asked.

  "No. As it turned out, he hadn't even realized I wasn't in the house the entire time. So much for worried half to death. But my point is, mix-ups like that happen all the time."

  "Yeah, I know. But they don't happen as often as they used to before nearly every person over six years old carried a cell phone. My guess is whatever happened to her, happened in the woods on her morning hike." Jan seemed certain Bea had suffered an animal attack. The very idea sent a chill up my spine.

  "Do you reckon a bear got her? Or a mountain lion, perhaps?" I asked.

  "Dunno," the lady said. Almost gleefully, she added, "Maybe."

  "She may have ticked off an entire community of forest inhabitants when she ruthlessly took out one of their own," I said. I was still seething at the cold-heartedness of the woman when she killed the mama bear and left her cub with no parent to protect it.

  Jan nodded silently. Her next remark seemed a bit cold to me. I flinched as she said, "Couldn't really blame them for seeking revenge."

  "Well, let's pray she's all right." My voice was trembling a bit. I'm not sure if I was more unnerved by the news of the missing campground owner, or the fact the lady telling me about it showed no concern whatsoever about the woman's well-being. It went without saying that Jan wouldn't be kneeling down beside her bed to send up a prayer on Bea's behalf anytime soon. But I would. "So, there's still no clue or idea where she might be?"

  "Dunno," was Jan's unruffled reply.

  "Has Boonie searched the woods where his wife liked to hike? You know, just in case she's been immobilized by an animal, or something else entirely, and needs to be rescued before it's too late?"

  "Dunno" seemed to be her go-to response as she repeated it once more, and then added, "Don't think so."

  "I assume there's no real, and undeniable, evidence of an animal attack. The
re isn't, is there?"

  "Dunno. Don't think so." Jan seemed to have clammed up all of a sudden.

  "Has Boonie filed a missing person's report?"

  After Jan replied with "dunno" for the fifth time in the same dispassionate tone, I said, "I'll bet she shows up somewhere unharmed. Probably nothing more than a case of miscommunication between the couple, as I said before."

  I hurriedly finished folding my laundry so I could rush back to the trailer and tell Rip about the disappearance of the campground's co-owner. If not a miscommunication, my guess was that Bea Whetstone had left of her own accord. Boonie had seemed like a decent fellow in my dealings with him, even though the one interaction I'd witnessed between the pair had been tense. But who really knew what went on behind closed doors when it came to another couple's relationship? Just keeping one's own marriage strong and on an even keel was a full-time job at times.

  * * *

  Like Jan, Rip had been unmoved by the news of the missing woman. And, like me, he'd felt confident she'd show up soon, if she hadn't already been located. "You wouldn't believe how many times in my career a missing person is reported, only to show up at a friend's house an hour or so later."

  "Reckon the Whetstones' marriage is going through a rough patch right now? Remember what I told you about her rudeness to him the other day in the store?"

  "It's really none of our business either way, Rapella. No sense getting tongues a 'wagging by gossiping about the couple's relationship."

  My husband could be a real killjoy. I certainly had no intention of gossiping about the Whetstones and told him so. "Merely discussing the events of the day with one's spouse is not the same thing as gossiping, I'll have you know."

  Rip picked up the remote control and turned the volume up a notch, clearly not interested in discussing the subject with me any longer. He was effectively drowning me out with an old rerun of The Rifleman. Chuck Connors was twirling his shotgun like it was a drum major's baton. He was ready to mount his horse and chase down a cattle rustler when I walked out the door. With any luck at all, I would happen upon someone who was interested in talking about Bea Whetstone's disappearance.