“Uh-oh,” Merle said, just before Yonah caught up to them. “Here comes Yonah the fire-spitter.”
“You mean Firekiller,” Jack corrected him.
“Wait ’til you know him better,” Merle said.
“What’s taking you so long?” Yonah demanded. “My dad’s been waiting in the parking lot.”
“Tell your dad he doesn’t have to wait for me. I got another ride to Gatlinburg. So back off, man,” Merle told Yonah. To Jack, he said, “It was good meeting you.
Real good. Your work is cooler than frost. I’d like to see more of it.”
With that, he was gone, and Jack had to follow Yonah. “Waste of time…coming after Merle,” Yonah was muttering, hotly.
Jack remembered that Yonah’s mother and Arlene Chapman were supposed to be good friends. Yet Yonah hadn’t even stopped in the room to ask Arlene how she was feeling. What a jerk! Why did Ashley think Yonah was so great? Jack was glad they didn’t have to ride home with him.
On the way back to their hotel in Gatlinburg, Jack talked excitedly to his parents about Arlene and Merle and Merle’s great singing until Ashley cried, “All right! We get it! He can sing. But Yonah doesn’t like him.”
“How’d you know that?” Jack asked her.
“I saw Yonah’s face when he told his dad that Merle wouldn’t be coming home with them. His dad told him to cool it, that it didn’t matter.”
“Yeah, well if I had to hold an election between Merle and Yonah, I know who’d win.”
“Enough!” Olivia called back. “Please be quiet for a while. I have a lot of thinking to do.” After a few minutes she said, “We need to watch the evening news to find out what that Greta will say about the bear attacks and the park. I don’t want to miss any of it, so I think we should have dinner in our rooms instead of going out to a restaurant.”
The Landons were staying in two connecting rooms at the Gatlinburg Lodge, which meant Jack had to share with his sister. Ashley didn’t like that at all, and Jack liked it even less because Ashley was always locking herself in the bathroom so she could mess with her hair. If Jack pounded on the door to make her come out, his mother or father would yell at him to stop.
That evening, while Olivia was pushing buttons on the remote to make sure she could find Greta’s TV channel, Steven brought all of them Philly cheese steaks and milk shakes he’d ordered from a fast-food place across the street.
“Here it comes,” Olivia announced just as Jack was licking his fingers after his meal. “The local news is on.”
And there they were. All four Landons on the television screen, right there in room 112 of the Gatlinburg Lodge.
“Look at me!” Ashley cried happily. “I’ve never been on TV before.” But it lasted only a few seconds before Greta’s face and voice dominated the program.
“Good evening, Channel 12 viewers. This afternoon our news team got right on top of a breaking story in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sixteen-year-old Heather McDonald from Morganton, North Carolina, was mauled by a bear on the grounds of the old Methodist church in Cades Cove.”
On the screen was a photo of Heather, not all bandaged the way they’d seen her in the hospital, but smiling and pretty, probably from her high school yearbook.
“Heather McDonald suffered a severe trauma to her thigh,” Greta continued, “where a large portion of her flesh was ripped away from the bone by a black bear. The bear has not yet been identified or caught. This marks the third bear attack in three weeks, two inside the park, and one at the Gatlinburg garbage dump.”
“Oh, boy,” Steven breathed.
“Oh, yuck!” Ashley cried, as the screen filled with images of other attack victims whose stories Greta told in full detail. The camera zoomed in on a woman’s bloodied arm, and then shifted to a man holding up his ripped shirt as he pointed to four deep scratch marks that sliced his chest from the collar bone to his belt.
Jack yelled, “Look! There’s Mom!”
“Olivia Landon,” Greta’s voice-over told the viewers, “is a wildlife veterinarian from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, who came to the park to confer with other wildlife experts. But Dr. Landon refused to make any statements about a possible reason for this sudden rash of bear attacks in our area.”
Next came the scene just as Jack remembered it—Greta following Olivia and asking, “Dr. Landon, do you think it’s in the public’s best interest to shut down Great Smoky Mountains National Park?” And Olivia, trying to escape that dangling microphone as she edged toward the car, answering, “Ranger Firekiller has already told you that you’ll need to discuss that with the park superintendent.” The picture zoomed to the Landons’ car driving out of the parking lot, with Jack’s and Ashley’s heads barely visible in the back seat.
Then came the bombshell. “Channel 12 has learned,” Greta said now, “that Dr. Olivia Landon is an expert on elks. Not bears, but elks. This reporter wonders why, when visitors may be in real danger from bears at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Dr. Landon is the person who’s investigating the bear attacks. After all, so far we haven’t been attacked by any elks.”
“What! What did she just say?” Olivia jumped up from her chair, her dark eyes blazing with anger.
“Take it easy,” Steven tried to calm her. “Don’t worry about it, honey. She’s just some news person who hasn’t heard about all the animal mysteries you’ve solved at other parks.”
Olivia wasn’t about to calm down. It wasn’t often that she lost her temper, but when she did, color rose to her cheeks and her five-foot-four height seemed to suddenly stretch by inches.
“I got called to this park to confer with Kip about elk rehabilitation,” she stormed. “We didn’t know there was going to be a bear attack….” Pointing to Greta on the TV, Olivia vowed, “You just wait! I’ll solve this mystery so fast and so completely that Channel 12 will have to apologize—on the air!”
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