The Kiskadee of Death

by Jan Dunlap

  Kidnapped.

  Crap.

  He’d kidnapped the Citrus Festival queen, who also happened to be the niece of the chief.

  A really protective chief.

  I got a really bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

  A car shoot-out?

  A hostage situation?

  The Porsche suddenly pulled over and braked to a stop. Pacheco slid his squad car in front at an angle, blocking any forward progress the getaway car might make.

  “Stay down!” the chief shouted at me as he jumped out and ran in a crouch around the front of the squad car, his service revolver in his hand.

  I flattened myself on the back seat.

  I heard car doors opening and slamming and Pearl shouting “Uncle Juan! Uncle Juan! Don’t shoot!”

  I braced myself for the inevitable sound of gunshots, but none came.

  I counted to fifteen, then slowly lifted my upper body to peek out the back window.

  Chief Pacheco stood on the sidewalk beside the Porsche with his left arm wrapped around his niece’s shoulders, his gun trained across the top of the car on the giant kiskadee that stood next to the driver’s open door. I peeled myself off the back seat and stepped out of the car to join Pacheco on the street. The chief pushed Pearl behind him and told me to get her into the squad car.

  “Take off your head,” I heard him order the kiskadee.

  I glanced back in panic—had the chief said he was going to take off the kiskadee’s head?

  No, no, I heard it wrong, I realized as I watched the kiskadee reach his hands up to remove the head section of his costume.

  Thank God.

  No mob-style execution on the streets today, after all. This was Texas in the twenty-first century, not a black-and-white gangster movie set in 1930s Chicago.

  And Pacheco had Birdy’s killer: Buzz Davis, multi-millionaire, ex-astronaut, and Birdy’s best friend.

  The bird’s head came off, but it wasn’t Buzz Davis inside that kiskadee costume.

  It was Mark Myers.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  But you couldn’t have killed Birdy,” I blurted out, my hand resting on the doorframe after I’d stashed Pearl in the chief’s car. “I saw you on Crazy Eddie’s tape. You came to Estero Llano and then left right after Buzz and Birdy had gone into the park.”

  “I didn’t kill Birdy,” Mark said, his eyes locked on Pacheco’s gun barrel. “He was my friend. He was about the only person around here who had any faith in me. But if it weren’t for me,” Mark seemed to choke up with emotion, “he might still be alive.”

  “He didn’t kill Birdy,” Pearl’s voice sobbed from inside the car. “But we know who did. That’s why we ran.”

  “I’m going to cuff you, Mark,” Pacheco said, his voice hard. “If nothing else, you broke the law with your driving, and until I hear this whole story, I want you restrained.”

  Mark held up his feathered hands. “Cuff me. Please. There’s nowhere I’d rather be right now than in the back seat of a squad car. Maybe then, Pearl and I can be sure we’re going to make it through the day alive.”

  The chief holstered his gun and rounded the car to put handcuffs on Mark.

  “Are you all right, Pearl?” I asked the queen, her tiara slightly askew, as she took several deep breaths and sniffed loudly to regain her composure after her sobbing had subsided. “What happened in the garage, anyway?”

  Pearl adjusted her tiara, and smoothed her satiny dress over her waist. “Mark and I,” she began, “we were, ah… well…”

  She folded her hands in her lap and wouldn’t look at me. “We were kissing a little behind the empty crates in the garage, and then we heard Gunnar start to say ‘hello’ to someone, but then there was an awful thud, and we heard a man saying ‘Keep your mouth shut, permanently, you bozo,’ and then,” she broke off to look up at me, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Mark put his hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t make any noise, and no one would know we were there, because we were afraid of the man who said ‘bozo’, but Mark accidentally knocked a crate with his kiskadee tail, and it made a noise, and then we heard the man say ‘who’s back there?’ in a very rough voice, and Mark grabbed my hand and we practically exploded out from behind the crates, and Mark almost knocked the man over, but he didn’t, and then—”

  I put up my hands in a “slow down” gesture to stop her frantic narration. By then, Pacheco had stuffed Mark in all his feathered glory into the seat beside Pearl and told me to get into the front passenger seat.

  “So when you bumped into the guy, he tried to hit you with the sap, but instead, you grabbed it out of his hands and kept running,” Pacheco said, apparently reciting back what Mark had just conveyed to him.

  “Yes,” both Mark and Pearl answered.

  I noticed that Mark covered Pearl’s hand with his own feathered one. She threw him a grateful glance and a small smile.

  Oh, no, I thought. The boyfriend isn’t going to like this. I remembered my introduction to Guardsman Pacheco at Fat Daddy’s and the way he’d defended his Pearlita. The guardsman might find himself with some stiff competition from a white knight—or a Great Kiskadee, as the case happened to be—for Pearl’s affections. Mark had, after all, whisked the queen away to safety.

  Considering how fast he had been driving that Porsche, however, I’d say there was definitely more whisking than safety going on in that fair damsel’s rescue.

  “So who was it?” Chief Pacheco demanded of the two young people, twisting in his seat to interrogate them. “Who clobbered Gunnar? Who did you grab the sap from?”

  The two youngsters looked at each other blankly, then at the chief.

  “We don’t know,” Mark said. “I think I’ve seen him during the float building, but I don’t know if I could pick him out of a crowd. Schooner’s the only other birder I’ve hung out with, the only one I really recognize. When this guy tried to hit me with the sap, I wasn’t going to ask for his name and address.”

  “He was one of the MOB,” Pearl insisted. “I’m sure he’s the one who wears flowered shirts a lot.”

  I put my head in my hands and groaned.

  “They all do,” I said. I turned to look at Pacheco as he pulled his radio from the dash and called in a report. When he was finished, I asked, “Your people will get fingerprints from the… what did you call it, again?”

  “Sap.”

  “Right, sap,” I said, immediately realizing the problem with that answer. “And they’ll be my fingerprints, won’t they?”

  The chief nodded, pulling away from the curb. “Mark’s fingers are covered with the costume, and I’m sure our killer is careful, and apparently experienced enough, to know to wear gloves when he uses a sap.” He looked at me for a moment and actually smiled a little. “Unlike you, Bob White.”

  “What is a sap?” Pearl asked from the backseat.

  “It’s a little weighted ball inside a cloth sack,” her uncle explained. “It’s a weapon, and in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, it can kill someone by crushing the exactly right part of their skull. Our medical examiner determined that was what killed Birdy, but I didn’t want anyone to know in hopes our killer would slip up and give himself away by mentioning a sap.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “In the old gangster movies, didn’t those guys carry saps?”

  Pacheco shrugged, threading the squad car through quiet residential neighborhoods.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t watch gangster movies when I was a kid. My mother thought they were too violent for children. We watched cartoons.”

  “So did I,” Mark offered from the back seat. “Watching cartoons is what got me interested in fast cars and car chases.”

  I saw Pacheco give Mark a dirty look in the
rear-view mirror.

  “It’s important,” I muttered, more to myself than to the chief. An idea was tugging at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite get it into focus. “I know it’s important. Gangsters—mobsters—carrying saps. Didn’t they threaten to use them on somebody who owed them money and didn’t pay up? What was that called?”

  “Collections?” Mark guessed, then changed the subject. “Is Gunnar dead?”

  The boy’s voice softened. “I don’t think I can handle being responsible for two deaths.”

  The chief turned onto a gravel drive that led up to a one-story cream-colored adobe house. “Why do you say that, Mark? You didn’t kill Birdy, so how is it your fault?”

  I heard a masculine sniffle from the back seat.

  “Because if I hadn’t been late that morning, the morning that Birdy was killed, he wouldn’t have been alone,” Mark answered. “I’d promised to help him finish a surprise for Rosalie, and I was late, and I was embarrassed, because I’d been drinking the night before, and I didn’t want him to know, because he’s been…” Mark paused and sniffed again. “I didn’t want to disappoint him after all the times he’s stood up for me when I’ve screwed up with Uncle Buzz.”

  Pacheco stopped the car and told the two young people to get out and go in the house until he came back for them.

  “Where are we?” Mark asked.

  “It’s my house. My grandma’s home,” Pearl told him. I heard her dress rustle and then her face was pressed up near the screen behind our front seats, her fingers splayed out on the metal mesh.

  “I can’t stay here, Uncle Juan,” she pleaded with the chief. “I’m the Citrus Festival queen—I have to be in the parade!”

  “You’re also a witness to an assault and can possibly identify a murderer,” he firmly told her. “You’re staying here until I come and get you. Mark,” he said, turning to the costumed boy, “I’m depending on you to keep her here. Do you understand me?”

  Mark nodded. “She won’t go anywhere.”

  Pearl burst into tears. “But I’m the queen! What will everyone say?”

  “I can tell everyone you’re under arrest for abetting a criminal,” her uncle suggested.

  Pearl gasped in disbelief. “You wouldn’t!” she cried.

  Pacheco nodded. “I would, if it meant keeping you safe.”

  “You can’t!” the queen persisted.

  I studied the faces of the uncle and niece, both equally set and stubborn.

  Great. Another inter-generational family fight. What was it about these Texans, anyway? First Buzz and Mark, and now Pacheco and Pearl.

  Family counselors had a goldmine in Texas, I decided.

  “Look, you two,” I said. “The parade doesn’t start for another three hours, right?” I asked, checking my watch. “Maybe we can have the killer in custody in time for you to ride in the parade, Pearl. He’s got to be flustered now, knowing we have the murder weapon, and that we have witnesses.”

  “But I don’t know who he was!” Pearl insisted. “He’s a birder, and that’s all I know.”

  “But he doesn’t know that,” I reminded her. “He might think you’ve already named him, and that your uncle is closing in on him this very minute.”

  Pacheco tilted his head in acknowledgement of my conclusion. “Could be, Bob. All the more reason that I want Pearl here, and no one knowing about it. You’re riding back to Buzz’s garage with me, and by the time we get there, we’re going to have this figured out.”

  He turned to Mark and Pearl. “Stay here until you hear from me. And no fooling around,” he added, giving Mark a dark look.

  Out of the blue, I thought about Luce being pregnant. The knowledge had totally escaped my mind in the heat of the chase, but now as I watched the two young people walk into the little house, all I could think of was: if I have a daughter, she’s never going to be left alone in a house with a boy.

  Even if he is dressed as a state specialty bird.

  Especially if he’s dressed as a state specialty bird.

  “Okay, Bob,” Pacheco said as he pointed the car back down to the main road of Mission, “it’s time for you to prove to me that your exceptional memory for details is good for something other than identifying birds. You got a threatening note the night after working on the float, and Gunnar got sapped for not keeping his mouth shut, according to Mark and Pearl. What did Bandana Man say to you when you were building the float that could possibly lead us to a murderer?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ten minutes later, we were back at Buzz’s garage, where the ambulance was just leaving. Two more squad cars were parked in the driveway in front of the MOB float. Pacheco had radioed ahead and told the deputies to stick around until he returned, in hopes they would be arresting Birdy’s killer.

  Unfortunately, the identity of that killer was still unknown, no matter how hard I tried to recall what Gunnar had said to me three nights ago. Only three topics of conversation stood out in my memory: Pacheco’s protectiveness towards Rosalie and Pearl, Rosalie’s disgust with immigration laws that had split up her family, and Paddy Mac’s overactive imagination when it came to guessing about how Birdy might have died.

  If I took Pacheco and Rosalie out of that list, that only left Paddy Mac and his streak of blarney. But if he’d killed Birdy, why would he say even a word to anyone about how it might have happened, let alone suggest a string of possible scenarios?

  That didn’t make any sense. Killers didn’t want to be caught, and so far, Birdy’s killer was doing a great job of it.

  Except for almost giving himself away to Mark and Pearl in the garage.

  I bet that shook him up plenty when he realized someone was within earshot of his attack on Gunnar. I wondered who was more spooked at that moment: the kids or the killer? That made me wonder something else: if the kids hadn’t made any noise, would the killer have lingered another moment to hide Gunnar’s body, as he’d tried to hide Birdy’s body under the canoe?

  Was this guy a clean-up freak?

  Maybe that was why Luce and me had received the “go home” note—he might have considered us loose ends that might unravel his murder plot. Sending us scampering home would have gotten us neatly out of the way of his plans. At this point, I was fairly certain the killer had dismissed us as threats, since three days had passed since we’d been warned, and no identification of a killer had been forthcoming from us or anyone else. Clearly, Luce and I were as clueless to whatever mystery-solving information Gunnar may have unknowingly passed along as the chief was to why Birdy had been killed in the first place and Eddie had been shot at.

  He—at least we knew that part now, that it was a he—must have been convinced Gunnar, or what Gunnar knew, warranted taking the chance to kill him in Buzz’s garage. That must have taken nerve—there were plenty of people milling around, any of whom might have caught him in the act of attacking Gunnar… except that the sap was a silent weapon, and the damage it inflicted could be mistaken for an accidental impact blow. Paddy, who’d spent years working in insurance, had told us that accidents weren’t uncommon around float construction areas.

  Good job, Paddy, I thought ruefully, you gave our at-large killer a perfect scenario for knocking off Gunnar. Our killer had obviously taken that to heart, planning his attack on Gunnar for the final, somewhat chaotic, phase of float preparation.

  Killing Gunnar was, then, a kind of insurance: without Gunnar, the last lead to the identity of Birdy’s killer was gone, and he’d get away with murder.

  Now that I thought about it some more, Paddy Mac had been creating scenarios for all kinds of mayhem in the last few days, according to Gunnar.

  Was Paddy Mac a killer?

  Or was the killer someone close to him who was secretly picking his brains to lay successful murder plans?

 
Yikes. I’ve heard of toxic friendships, but that one might just be over the top.

  “Hey, Paddy, I’m thinking of committing murder. You got any good ideas for me to make it work?”

  But if my theory about the drones being the real reason behind Birdy’s death and Eddie’s attack was correct, I was really going to have to come up with some fast creative thinking to connect Paddy Mac, or any of the birders, to it.

  Fast creative thinking #1. Someone in the MOB was psychotically paranoid and thought the drone was spying on him, resulting in his uncontrollable compulsion to destroy the drone and the men working on it.

  Huh. That wasn’t too bad a theory for thinking on the fly. Maybe I could work with it.

  I decided to try another.

  Fast creative thinking #2. Someone in the MOB was dealing drugs and knew the drone was being primed to catch drug runners, resulting in the need to protect the business by killing off the drone and its operators.

  But wouldn’t another drone project just pop up in its place? Wrecking a program didn’t sound like a permanent solution, but it could work as a temporary fix for the dealer, I supposed.

  Okay, #2 wasn’t totally bad, either, as long as the MOB dealer ­wasn’t planning on being in the business long enough for the next drone project to get started. Given the advanced age of some of the MOBsters, maybe that wouldn’t be a concern anyway. Carpe diem, and all that, you know.

  The “go for the gusto” thing again.

  Fast creative thinking #3.

  Nothing. Nada.

  I was out of fast creative thinking.

  “Didn’t you tell me you did background checks on all the MOB members?” I asked the chief as he put the squad car in park and turned off the engine.

  “I did,” he said. “And I found no criminal records.”

  “How about mental health records?”

  The chief turned to face me. “What are you thinking? That we’ve got a nutcase taking out birders for the heck of it?”