Free Night of the Black Bear by Gloria Skurzynski

cut in, “We don’t really know what psychedelic mushrooms might do to bears. Maybe nothing at all. But we’re exploring the data—that’s what science is all about. So let’s look at these pictures once more.”
    As the adults focused again on the materials lying on the table, Jack drifted closer, wanting to get a look. Kip was pointing to a photograph as he said, “Here’s a plentiful growth of mushrooms, and it looks like it’s been disturbed. But I don’t think bears did it. Seems more like some visitor gathered a bunch of them, probably to put on her pizza—a dangerous thing to do, because you don’t know which mushrooms are poisonous. In this magnification, you can see that they were cut off at the stems with a knife.”
    â€œWhere was that photo taken?” Olivia asked.
    â€œChimneys picnic area,” Kip answered.
    Jack froze. Chimneys picnic area. Where the stranger in the “Save the Hemlocks” sweatshirt said he saw Merle. Merle…and mushrooms? Yonah hinted that Merle was doing something illegal. Selling psychedelic mushrooms would be against the law, for sure. “I think I’ll go over to the bookstore,” Jack announced. He wanted out of that conference room, away from any more talk about magic mushrooms. He had to think.
    â€œI’ll go with you,” Ashley told him, “to see if I can find a Cherokee legend. Yonah said there might be one in the bookstore.”
    As they walked along a paved path between the headquarters building and the visitor center, Ashley stopped suddenly. “Look at these butterflies,” she cried, pointing to a flock that clustered together on the ground, moving their blue-tipped gray wings only a little, crawling instead of flying. “Take a picture, Jack,” she begged.
    â€œI don’t think so,” he muttered, troubled about Merle and mushrooms.
    â€œWhy not? You have your camera—you took pictures at the Space Needle.”
    â€œWhy not? Because I don’t want to,” he growled. “Don’t be dumb, Ashley. Those butterflies are not sniffing the flowers—they’re mating!”
    â€œShut up!” she cried. “Why are you being so mean? I heard what you said about me in the car.”
    â€œWhat did I say?” He’d honestly forgotten.
    â€œYou told Merle you put my face on a fish!”
    He snorted. “Yeah, well, if you don’t stop bugging me, I’ll put your face on a wanted poster and hang it in the post office.” He walked away then, leaving Ashley to find the bookstore by herself.
    Dropping to the ground under a tall tree, Jack struggled to figure it all out. Was Merle a good guy or a bad guy? The man at the Space Needle said he’d seen Merle at Chimneys picnic area. Someone picked mushrooms at that picnic area, and they might have been the kind of mushrooms that made people high. Each evening, Merle biked to Gatlinburg with his guitar strapped to his back, claiming he worked as a busboy. Why the guitar?
    Why did all those clues twist and slither in Jack’s imagination like a bag full of snakes?
    He knew why. It was because a scene from a certain movie wouldn’t stop playing in his memory. That scene with police inspectors asking questions…of a famous singer getting busted for hiding drugs inside his guitar. Stop! he told himself.
    But his thoughts didn’t even slow down. Merle couldn’t be on drugs; he acted too normal. Could Merle be dealing drugs? Not the worst kind of drugs, maybe, but magic mushrooms? That he picked himself? If he did that, why would he put them inside his guitar instead of carrying them in a plain old backpack? That didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. But Jack kept wondering, if Merle was a busboy like he said he was, why did he take his guitar to work?
    Too many questions! No real answers.
    Later, they all gathered together around the Firekillers’ dinner