Free Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron

bicycle,” the puppet protested. Its long blonde ponytail flounced impatiently.
    The girl looked only at the puppet, the puppet looked only at me. The girl was so still (except for her lips), the puppet so animated that for an instant, I almost started to argue with the small plastic face—the illusion was that good. Claire Montgomery might not be a ventriloquist, but she was a damn fine puppeteer.
    “Nevertheless, a man is on trial here,” I said sternly. “The doll don’t bother me none,” said Mickey Mantle Davis from the defense table.
    I beckoned to the ADA, who approached with studied nonchalance. When his head was close enough to mine, I whispered, “Am I the only one who sees something strange about a puppet giving testimony? What the hell’s going on?”
    The ADA, Hollis Whitbread, was a nephew of “Big Ed” Whitbread back up in Widdington, and he didn’t seem to have much more smarts than his uncle. He gave a palms-up shrug and muttered. “That’s her sister and brother-in-law on the front row.”
    I glanced over. Mr. and Mrs. Docksider were accompanied by a man in jeans and blue blazer who sported a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
    “She says the girl had some sort of trauma in childhood and ever since, she’ll only talk to strangers through the puppet. If you take the puppet away, she’ll just shut down entirely, and since she’s the only one that saw Davis take the bicycle...”
    I sighed. “The puppet talks or he walks?”
    “You got it, Judge.”
    The puppet was a perfect witness, respectful, charming, articulate, with an eye for details. I’ve been in court when molested children used dolls to help describe what had been done to them; this was the first time I’d heard a doll testify on its own. It was, to borrow Barbara Jean Winberry’s term, just precious; and the entire courtroom, Mickey Mantle included, hung on every word as the puppet described resting in Claire Montgomery’s bunk on the
Rainmaker
while her young nephew napped on the bunk below. They were alone on the boat. Her sister, Catherine Llewellyn, and the rest of their party had gone ashore.
    The bike, a two-hundred-dollar all-terrain workhorse, was racked in its own locker on the starboard deck directly beneath Miss Montgomery’s gauze-curtained window and she had a perfect view when a man crept on board, jimmied the lock with his pocket knife, and stole the bike.
    “Do you see the man who stole the bike in this courtroom?” asked the ADA dramatically.
    Without hesitation, the puppet pointed to Mickey Mantle Davis.
    “No further questions,” said Hollis Whitbread.
    “Mr. Davis, you are not obliged to—”
    Mickey Mantle was grinning ear to ear. “Oh, I want to, Judge.”
    I bet he did.
    Hugely enjoying himself, the sorry scoundrel tried to browbeat the puppet into admitting it’d seen someone else, not him.
    The puppet tossed its ponytail and refused to back down.
    After the second “Did, too,” “Did not!”, I’d heard enough.
    Modern statutes have expanded the common law definition of burglary to include boats as a dwelling. By proving Davis had trespassed onto the Rainmaker, then broken into and “entered” the bike locker, Whitbread hoped to stretch a misdemeanor theft to a felony burglary and finally get Mickey Mantle put away for some real time.
    “Sorry, Mr. Whitbread,” I had to say. “But I find no probable cause for remanding this case to superior court. Even with a credible witness, you’re on shaky ground with only a bike locker as your B and E, and I cannot in good conscience accept this witness. Without corroboration, it’s Davis’s word against the officer’s that he was heading for the paper and not a pawnshop. Case dismissed.”
    “Hey,” said Mickey Mantle. “Do I get a reward for finding their bicycle?”
    Claire Montgomery gave me a disgusted glare, the first direct meeting of our eyes; then she and her party left the courtroom.
    Already, my attention was turning to the