The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery)

by Boneham, Sheila Webster

  Jasper wasn’t there, it turned out, but Alison, the hostess, knew the story and seated us near the railing, where Jay could lie at my feet but be technically outside the restaurant perimeter. As I eased my sore behind into a chair, Alison cooed at Jay and told him how silly the rule was considering the daily offenses of sparrows and pigeons. She had a point, I agreed, indicating a sizeable splat on the far side of the tablecloth.

  “Ewww!” She wrinkled her nose and scurried off to find the bus person.

  I looked around for abandoned reading material, but the only thing in sight was a philatelic magazine, of all things, so I settled back and gazed across Main Street. The raised beds in Freimann Park were a floral riot of flaming cannas, sunny marigolds, red—orange tithonia, shocking-pink zinnias, frothy-white alyssum and petunias, true-blue salvia, and iridescent purple-leafed Persian shield. The colors of August. At this distance it seemed that some of the flowers, orange and yellow and indefinite dark, took flight from time to time. Butterflies.

  Despite the occasional twinge when I forgot myself and shifted too far to the left, I began to settle into a delicious calm. Jay sprawled on his side at my feet, eyes squinty with pleasure and mouth open to accommodate his soft panting. I pushed my concerns about blood-soaked bags as far back in my thoughts as I could and chitchatted with the bus boy as he replaced my tablecloth. Then male voices made me look at three men being seated two tables away. The one with his back to me caught my eye. I thought later how ironic it was that I should recognize him from that angle, but at the time I just wondered how I might escape without coming face to face with Dr. Neil Young.

  fifteen

  I did not escape. One of Neil’s companions smiled at Jay and the other two turned to look, and the next thing I knew Dr. Neil Young was standing in front of me with a grin on his face. Not just a grin, but the grin, the one that made me and my friends in high school all giggly and stupid. It was still slightly lopsided, which gave his face just the touch of imperfection it needed.

  “Janet MacPhail.” He held out his hand.

  I took it. “Neil Young.”

  He laid his left hand over mine and I glanced down. No ring. I looked back at his face and smiled, and we stood that way for a second or two longer than seemed comfortable. I extracted my hand and said, “It’s been a long time.” He didn’t react, so I held out some hope that he hadn’t known whose posterior he was embroidering the day before.

  “How have you been, Janet?”

  Acutely conscious of looking frumpy, especially as I took in the sheen of his gray suit jacket and the ice-blue tie that exactly matched his eyes. He wore a lapel pin that seemed to be a cross of some sort, but it was too small to see from where I stood and I wasn’t about to lean in closer.

  Right on cue, but with no trace of sarcasm that I could detect, Neil said, “You look terrific.” He glanced at Jay, who had stopped panting and seemed to be sizing up the good doctor. “Nice looking dog.”

  “Thanks.” I noted that he made no move to pet him.

  He looked at me again. “Really, you do. It’s great to see you.” He glanced at his friends, then fished a card from his pocket and laid it in front of me. “Look, I’m sorry, but I really need to get back to them. Business. But, well, I’d love to see you when I have more time.”

  I’m embarrassed to say it, but the teeny bopper inside me felt a little giddy at the thought of Neil the Hunk wanting to talk to me. Grownup Janet whispered Really? You’re giving me your number, not asking for mine? I also felt a tad guilty. Then again, Tom Saunders didn’t have dibs on my time, or me for that matter. My brain was trying to parse the questions dancing through it when I realized Neil was still there, still talking to me, and was pointing a pen at me. “If you write your number down, I’ll call you. I mean, if that’s okay?”

  “Oh.” I took the pen. “Sure, why not?”

  He slipped the card into his shirt pocket and nodded at me. “Soon.”

  I paid my bill, picked up Jay’s leash, and skedaddled as quickly as possible. As Jay and I retraced our route to the car, I wondered how it’s possible not to lay eyes on someone for thirty-some years and then run into him twice in two days. I also wondered aloud, “What the hell am I doing?” Jay bounced up to my chin level a couple of times and wriggled his rear end, which I assume meant, “Having fun, Janet! We’re having fun!”

  Right. “Okay, calm down. He probably won’t call anyway. He never did in high school.”

  Half an hour later we pulled into my driveway. There was something swinging from the front doorknob, so I put the car in the garage, refreshed Jay’s water, and opened the front door to a big summery bouquet. I snatched the delivery tag from the door, carried it and the flowers inside, and cleared a space on the kitchen table. The greeting card that was taped to the vase showed a Golden Retriever wearing glasses and a stethoscope, and inside it said, “Heel!” The vets and staff at the clinic had all signed it, and someone had written in a tidy hand, “All kidding aside, heal quickly—no ifs, ands, or butts.” Ho, boy.

  I took a quick shower. As I dried my hair and mentally checked my schedule for a time to take care of my roots, another part of my mind went to a vision of Neil’s hair. Still that lovely dark blonde. No gray. Interesting. Come to think of it, his skin was still tight and smooth. Dye job? Facelift? Or maybe just young genes. Which made me giggle, because of course he had Young genes.

  As if to reinforce the giggle in my head, a muted tinny rendition of “Walking on Sunshine” wafted around the bathroom, and I fished my cell out of my pants pocket, which happened to be in the hamper.

  It was Neil. He told me he’d been thrilled and delighted to see me. Thrilled and delighted? He also wanted to know if he could buy me dinner.

  “Maybe another time? I need to go see my mom.”

  “Does she still live in your old house? I could pick you up there.”

  I hesitated, then told him she was at Shadetree Retirement Home. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to tell him that Mom had Alzheimer’s. “But I have some work to do first. I probably won’t get to the nursing home until late afternoon.”

  “How about after that? Around seven?”

  I hesitated. What’s the rush? Making up for lost time?

  “Seven-thirty? I’ll pick you up.”

  “Seven is fine. I’ll meet you.”

  I finished dressing and went to the kitchen, where I grabbed an apple from the bowl on the table and began to sort my mail. Doing anything on a horizontal surface seems to send an irresistible summons to Leo, and the next thing I knew he was mincing around on my electric bill, purring and rubbing his spine along my jaw line. Then he sat down, wrapped his tail around his feet, and stared at me. Jay assumed the same posture, without the tail, and gazed at my face. It was ridiculous, but I felt as if I had to explain myself.

  “I can have dinner with an old friend.”

  Leo blinked. Jay put a paw on my knee.

  “Okay, an old acquaintance, sort of. Really more of a classmate. But still.”

  I lifted the cat onto the floor and told Jay to go chew a bone so that I could sort, open, pitch, and stack the mail without feeling they were accusing me of something. I was just muttering something about being a free and independent woman when the phone sang out again.

  This time it was Tom. He said he was going back out to the lake to train for a bit and he thought Jay and I might like to go. I was tempted to call Neil and cancel so I could check out the island, but I had to go see Mom and wouldn’t have time to get my brother Bill’s kayak in time to have much light left. When I declined the invitation, Tom said, “Okay, I’ll grab something when I’m finished and see you then.” I should have savored the moment since I couldn’t recall the last time two men had asked me out for dinner in the same year, let alone the same evening, but instead I was annoyed that he assumed I’d be available.

  “Can’t. I have dinner plans.”

  “Oh. Okay. Dessert?”

  “I have som
e work I really should do when I get back.” I felt the sharpness of my tone as much as heard it, but I let the comment lie.

  Tom said nothing for a moment, then, “Everything okay?”

  A tap at my back door made me turn just as Goldie came in with a huge bunch of fuchsia and yellow gladioli cradled across her chest. Jay greeted her with a wriggly butt and rubbed his body along her leg and she reached down and stroked his cheek.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. My voice, and my pique, had softened. “I just have some things to do. Gotta see Mom this afternoon after I get some photos ready to send out. And Goldie just walked in, so I’d better go. Have fun.”

  “Will do. You be good.”

  I flipped my phone shut and set it down a bit harder than is probably good for it. “Why did he say that?”

  Goldie had pulled a pitcher from my cupboard and set it on the table. “Hunh,” she said, reaching for the card on the bouquet from the vet clinic. “Nice.” Leo hopped up for his share of the attention, so Goldie had to stroke him and then lift him off the table before she could arrange the glads. “I didn’t get you a card. Say what?”

  “What say what?”

  “What does who always say?”

  “‘Be good.’”

  She looked over her glasses at me. “Let me guess. The doctor called. The anthropology doctor.”

  “He shouldn’t assume that I’m always available.”

  Goldie stuck the last stem into the pitcher, filled it with water, and smiled at the flowers. “There you are, children. You look beeyooteeful.” She took her glasses off and set them on the table. “Why shouldn’t he assume you’ll be available? You’ve been available since you met him. You’ve been available for years.”

  “Goldie! You know what I mean.”

  “I do. But life’s too short for that silliness. Games. Just say what you mean and do what your heart tells you and the heck with the rules and shenanigans. And don’t pout.”

  “Not pouting,” I said, uncrossing my arms.

  sixteen

  The chaos of the morning gave way to a quiet afternoon, and I spent a couple of productive hours on the computer deleting bad photos and organizing good ones. When I had them filed away in folders, I pulled out about twenty shots to send as a sample packet to the editor at Splash, a new magazine about water dogs of all sorts. Then I started looking through the photos I had taken at Twisted Lake. Dogs, dogs, dogs. I deleted some and saved the rest into my “To Review” folder. Then I started on the non-dog shots.

  I hadn’t realized that I’d taken so many photos of the island. Must have been on autopilot. The light had been bad and most of them weren’t usable, but I wondered if I might see something new if I manipulated them a bit. I fiddled around with contrast and other elements, fading out shadows and looking for shapes that didn’t belong, but I didn’t find anything. What did you expect, I asked myself at one point, Colonel Mustard in the bittersweet with poison ivy?

  By mid-afternoon I was not only giddy but my attention had begun to waver and my butt had begun to ache, so I took Jay and Leo out back for a game of tennis ball fetch or, as I imagine Leo thinks of it, “whack the dog’s fanny as he races by after the stupid ball and then hide in the bushes.” There’s probably a word for that in Feline. By whatever name, we all had fun, but after twenty minutes or so I admitted to myself that I could put off my filial obligation no longer.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’d like to spend time with my mom. In fact, that’s the problem. When I saw her two days earlier, she had no idea who I was and was too busy thumbing through her newly arrived Fine Gardening to bother talking to me. The time before that she knew me too well and tried everything from tears to threats to get me to take her home, meaning not my house but her own home of sixty years. It hurts like hell when she doesn’t know or care who I am, but when she does, she’s unhappy enough to give me palpitations. As I pulled on a clean top and thought about my mother’s distress, my whole body wanted to topple onto the bed and curl into a fetal lump. As an alternative, I took a bit more care than usual with my makeup and stuck a couple of combs in my hair to subdue its curly rebelliousness.

  Mom was in the garden when I got to Shadetree. The semi-resident therapy Poodle, Percy, was lying beside her chair, but he ran to meet me as I walked toward the courtyard. When Percy’s previous owner was killed last spring, Jade Templeton, Shadetree’s assistant manager, adopted him. Now he came to work with her every day and, judging by the sparkle in his dark eyes, I knew he’d found his calling. The residents loved him.

  Jade waved at me from her office, so I veered away from the door to the garden, landed in a chair, sucked up a complaint from my wounded cheek, and pushed the large envelope I was carrying across the desk. “Here you go! And may I say that you look gorgeous. Love your hair. It’s really grown out.” I was trying desperately to remember when I last saw her. She had been on vacation, but that was only for a couple of weeks, wasn’t it? Jade had worn her hair cropped close to her skull in a not-too-flattering style for as long as I’d known her, and now it was done in teensy little braids with teensy little beads at the ends. “Must grow fast! Or have I just not seen you in that long?”

  When Jade Templeton laughs, her whole large self laughs, and I defy you to keep a straight face when that happens. “Right, it grows real fast.”

  I had no idea why that tickled her so, but I was happy to play. “You must have been in the stylist’s chair for hours to get those braids done.”

  That hilarious repartee nearly knocked her on the floor, and I just about lost my own seat when she reached up and pulled her hair off to reveal the familiar close-cropped curls. Her burnt-umber eyes sparkled with mischief. She twirled the wig on her fist, making the beads clack, and said, “Dontcha love it?”

  “Oh my God, Jade! I think you’ve been here too long. You’ve flipped your lid.”

  “Girl, that’s so bad!” She slapped the top of her desk, then got up and went to a tiny decorative mirror on the wall and pulled the wig back on. “So really, what do you think? Is it me?”

  “Completely you. Makes me rethink this mess.” I grabbed a handful of my unruly brown mop that always goes berserk in the humidity of August in Indiana. “Anyway,” I sucked in a deep post-hilarity breath, “some of the photos are really nice. I think they’ll like them.”

  Jade sat back down and opened the envelope. A couple of weeks earlier I had spent a full afternoon taking photos of Shadetree residents and staff, both posed portraits and candids, and the envelope held prints of the best shots, all five by sevens.

  “I have all the digital files, of course, so if anyone wants reprints or a different size, let me know. I’ll need the number on the back of the photo.”

  “Oh, baby, these are good.” She drew out the last word. “Aww, look at Myrtle. And Jim Beard.” The staff had given the three resident Jims fictitious last names to keep them straight—Jim Beard looked a bit like Santa and would never be confused with Jim Curly or Jim Tall.

  Jade called her assistant to help sort the photos for distribution, so I excused myself and walked down the hall to the garden. I was almost there when my phone vibrated in my pocket, telling me I had a message. I pulled it out and signed into voice mail, half hoping it was Neil calling to cancel.

  “Janet, it’s Anderson. Anderson Billings. Hey, I’m out at Twisted Lake.” I wondered for a moment whether this was an old message that had been delayed for some reason since Tom had seen Anderson at the lake the previous Friday. “Great place, as you said. In fact, I was here a few days ago, too.” That answered that question. “Saw a friend of yours. So, anyway, I heard a screech owl and came back with my canoe to get to the island, you know, the little island off shore? Pretty sure that’s where the bird is. That was Friday night. Well, you know, evening.”

  I was starting to wonder whether Anderson had a point beyond bird-nerd excitement. Maybe he got a great shot of the screech owl? Maybe he just wanted to thank me for telling him about the
place? Then he said, “Janet, something funny is going on out here. On the little island, I mean. I went over there, spent maybe twenty minutes and I saw, well, something happened. So I came back now, well, you know, a little while ago, to have another look around the island. I’m leaving here now, heading over to my mother’s house, but I could swing by your place or, you know, somewhere we could meet in, say, half an hour? I’ll try you again when I get to Coliseum.” Meaning Coliseum Boulevard, one of Fort Wayne’s main drags. “I probably should have said something … Janet, there’s a bird …,” and then there was nothing but empty echo, as if whatever was at the end of the connection had been hollowed out, and finally a voice telling me how to save, hear again, or delete the message. I sat down on a bench in the hall and dialed Anderson’s number, but it went straight to voice mail. Odd. Maybe his battery ran out, or he hit a dead zone around the lake. It’s rolling country, and I’ve had calls dropped out there. I left a message and turned my phone off.

  I found my mother in the garden, as usual. “Hi Mom.” I hoped she couldn’t hear the quiver in my voice if she was having a good day. If she wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. My whole body relaxed when she turned toward me and smiled.

  “Janet! How are you, dear?” She gave me the first hug I’d had from her in weeks. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She pulled off her work gloves and motioned me toward a cluster of chairs.

  “You look great, Mom.” In fact, she looked happy, and I dared to hope that she wouldn’t ask me to take her home.

  “Must run in the family.” She winked at me. “You look lovely, dear. That rosy top becomes you.”

  A similarly rosy sense of well-being enveloped me as I looked into my mother’s eyes and, for the first time in too long, saw the woman I loved looking back at me. She reached across the table and took my hand.