Free Tickled to Death by Joan Hess Page B

them one by one, starting with accipiter.” She flinched as Caron glared at her. “I just happened to notice it was first. It’s a hawk.”
    “Everybody knows that,” I said pretentiously, seizing the chance for a maternal power play. “Now, if you’ll unhand me, you can go find out what’s at the end of the list and I can go back to town. Make the best of it.”
    Caron’s fingers dug in more tightly. “Okay,we will make one last attempt to cooperate with that tyrant—if you agree to stay here until we get back from the hike. If you don’t, we’re going to pack our bags and walk back to the highway, where we can hitch a ride with some jerk with extravagant body hair and dirty fingernails. If he doesn’t rape and kill us, we should be home in time for lunch.”
    Inez gulped. “We should?”
    Caron released my arm in order to cross hers and stare at me. Her jaw may have trembled, but her voice did not as she said, “That’s right.”
    For a brief moment, I tried to see her as a defenseless pink infant in a bassinet rather than a cold-hearted miscreant who could be recruited with equal fervor by the Mafia and the CIA. “No, that’s blackmail. Besides, it must be five miles to the highway. You’ll never make it, considering the amount of luggage you brought. You have a verbal contract with the Dunling Foundation and the obligation to hold up your end of it.”
    “Come on, Inez. I want to write my will before we pack. I think I’ll leave everything to some organization that fights child abuse and neglect.” Her lower lip shot out far enough to catch tears, had she been able to manufacture them. It was obvious she was trying.
    I wished I had the nerve to get in my car and drive away without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror, but she sounded obstinate enough to follow through with her idiotic threat.It might take them two hours or more to arrive at the highway (if they could find it), at which time they would be so exhausted and desperate that they might accept a ride in a truck with a gun rack and a cooler of beer. Images of what could happen flashed through my mind. They were less attractive than craven capitulation, I concluded grimly.
    “All right, I’ll stay until noon,” I said. “You will display interest and enthusiasm, you will take notes, and you will search the branches for birds rather than the ground for snakes. If you are able to change your attitude and complete the training session, I’ll overlook this. Then again, if you come back and insist I take you home, you won’t need to worry about any unfriendly elements of nature until school starts in the fall because you will be grounded. Got that?”
    “What about the one hundred and seventy-eight dollars for driver’s ed?” she retorted with the polish of a practiced plea bargainer.
    “I don’t see how you can earn much money in your bedroom, but perhaps you can follow up on one of those magazine ads that promises hundreds of dollars a week for stuffing envelopes with unspecified material. Let’s hope it’s not pornography. In any case, it’s irrelevant because you won’t be able to take driver’s ed, which means you won’t be allowed to drive until after you take it next summer.”
    “Next summer? All the ninth-graders will be driving by then.”
    “I’ll be here at noon,” I said, then went to my car and drove up the driveway before the argument could escalate. As I paused at the top of the hill, I saw Dick and Luanne come out of his house and climb into the Rover like a suburban couple off to the hardware store. I had no desire to continue a conversation with Jillian, if she was still there. Nor did I have a desire to return to Dunling Lodge, where the idea of addressing envelopes was as repugnant as being mistaken for a groundhog. I took Luanne’s map from the glove compartment, located the marina, and turned left.
    After a few mistakes, I arrived at a squatty weathered building. A long dock ran alongside it,