I didn’t think for a minute it was going to be instant or out, but I was happy to let Ida Belle take the lead. God knows, I couldn’t come up with anything better and the truth was definitely not the way to go.
Ida Belle managed to get the van turned around and we headed back for the site of the bear-versus-truck showdown. Carter was out of the truck and frowning at it, probably trying to figure out how he was going to get it out of the ditch when he had two flat tires. This was not going to go well.
“What the heck were you thinking?” he asked as we pulled to a stop.
He strode up to the driver’s door and glared at Ida Belle.
“We were thinking if we slowed down that bear was going to climb into the van and have us all for lunch,” Ida Belle said. “She ripped the door clean off. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for fun.”
He stuck his head in the window and looked back at the missing door and then Gertie and me. We waved and smiled. He didn’t smile back.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “And why are you in Molly’s van? Why is that bear chasing you?”
“We went out in the boat to look for Molly,” Ida Belle said. “I’ve known the statistics on such things since before you were born so don’t start preaching them to me. I wasn’t ready to call it quits so we didn’t. While we were out, I wanted to stop by Molly’s place and take a look around her driveway to see if that’s where my trailer hitch came loose. It’s missing and I’ve already checked everywhere else that we drove yesterday.”
“You expect me to believe that something wasn’t secured properly on your SUV?” Carter asked. “Your SUV? That thing you value more than life itself?”
“I let Scooter borrow the hitch last week and didn’t check it when he put it back,” Ida Belle said. “I know that’s not like me, but the next two weeks are going against a lifetime of digging my heels in, so cut me some slack here.”
Clearly Carter had no idea how to respond to the ‘I’m planning a wedding’ excuse. Not when it was coming from Ida Belle. If I hadn’t been worried about the destroyed van, the trespassing, the bear returning, Molly being missing, and probably a couple things I’d forgotten, I would have laughed at his expression and given her a high five for her ingenuity.
“Fine,” he said, apparently not wanting to take on a bride, especially this bride. “So how did you end up stealing and destroying a van while being pursued by a bear?”
“Trash was scattered all over Molly’s yard,” Ida Belle said. “We looked around, figuring it was raccoons and maybe we could scare them off and try to pick some of it up before it blew all over, but the trash cans were nowhere to be seen. We walked toward the tree line, since the wind was out of the south and we thought they might have blown that way, when a pack of nutria came bolting out at us.”
“A pack of nutria?” he asked.
I nodded. “I was not amused. You know how I hate rats, and there was a hundred of them—”
“Not a hundred of them,” Ida Belle interrupted.
“Okay, two hundred,” I said, even though there had probably been twenty at the most. “They were all running straight for us, so we got the heck out of there. We just made a bit of a miscalculation thinking the nutria were running at us when in fact—”
“They were running from the bear,” Carter finished.
“She has cubs,” Gertie said. “You know how territorial they can get. She probably pulled those trash cans into the woods and when the nutria tried to pick up an easy snack, she got after them.”
“There was no way we could have made it back to the boat, gotten untied, and gotten away, because the bear was angled so she could have cut us off. So we ran for the driveway and climbed on top of Molly’s van,” I said.
“It was a good plan until she smelled us,” Ida Belle said. “She rocked the van so hard Gertie fell off. That’s when Fortune jumped off to distract her and yelled at Gertie and me to run for the boat. But no way were we leaving a man in the field.”
“Of course not,” Carter said, not looking even remotely surprised at anything we’d said.
“I shot out the windshield,” Ida Belle said. “Then hot-wired the van and we hauled butt down the road where Fortune had taken off with the bear chasing her. We got her into the van, but the bear was so close, she ripped the door right off the back.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t rip right into you three,” Carter said. “Mother bears are nothing to play around with.”
“We weren’t playing,” Gertie said. “That much, I can assure you. We were running like it was the Second Coming and spots on the elevator up were limited.”
“Yeah, this was definitely not on my list of things to do in this lifetime,” I said.
“Well, for someone who doesn’t want to be chased by man-eaters,” Carter said, “you’ve managed to do it somewhat regularly. And I might also point out that if you weren’t sticking your nose into law enforcement business, you wouldn’t have ever been chased.”
“I told you—” Ida Belle said.
He held up his hand to stop her. “I know. Your missing trailer hitch. If you think the DNA in my family lends to gullible and stupid, why are you marrying into it?”
“One, I’m not planning on procreating, so unless God himself gets other ideas, I don’t have to worry about your family’s faulty DNA,” Ida Belle said. “Two, Walter is gullible but not stupid. That must come from the other side of your family.”
I watched Carter closely, wondering how he was going to handle this one. In less than two weeks the woman standing there lying to him was going to be his aunt. I was already his girlfriend and Gertie…was Gertie. Convoluted didn’t begin to describe his life at the moment.
“Hey, at least we didn’t have the rocket launcher,” Gertie said.
He grimaced and shook his head. “I suppose I can let the grand theft auto go, and I’m not even going to try to convince a jury of trespass. They’ll all see sweet little old ladies. They’ll have no idea of the truth.”
“Who are you calling old?” Gertie asked.
“I was thinking ‘sweet’ was the bigger stretch,” I said.
“I’ll pay to repair the van,” Ida Belle said. “Or make up whatever difference insurance won’t cover. Whatever the person who inherits wants to do. But I’m not sorry I took it and you shouldn’t be either. Fortune is an impressive specimen but she’s no match for a bear. Not with only a nine-millimeter on her.”
I could tell he was unhappy—because he couldn’t argue or because I’d almost been mauled, I wasn’t sure—but finally, he pulled out his phone.
“I need to call for a tow,” he said. “I have one spare. Not two.”
“What do you want us to do with the van?” Ida Belle asked.
“I’ll ask for two tow trucks,” he said. “It can’t sit in the driveway with no windshield and no door on the back. It’s supposed to rain and her garage is full of junk. It will never fit in there.”
“We need to get to the boat,” Ida Belle said. “I don’t want to leave it there.”