The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery)

by Boneham, Sheila Webster

  As we came out the east side of the green bowl I caught motion in my peripheral vision and turned to look toward the river. A great egret rose from the near bank, almost indistinguishable from the strings of mist rising from the water to dissolve in the air. A few strides later we reached the two-mile mark and I slowed to a walk, then stopped for a drink. I took a couple of swallows from my bottle, then pulled Jay’s folding water bowl from my pocket and poured some water. Jay took three polite laps and quit. His tongue hung out the side of his mouth as he watched me, eyes sparkling with pleasure.

  “Okay, let’s go back,” I said, and we began the walk back to the car. At that slower pace, Jay got to sniff the grass and brush alongside the paved path and I got to watch the river and field for interesting wildlife. In the forty-five minutes it took us to reach the parking lot I saw a pair of mallards, two rabbits, a chipmunk, and, by dumb luck, because I almost never see snakes, a lovely common garter snake. And lots of those ubiquitous sparrows and finches and the like that my birder friends call “LBJs.” Little brown jobs. Lovely term.

  My phone rang just as I started my car. It was Peg at my vet’s office.

  “Can you pop in today? You have a delivery.”

  “A delivery?” That didn’t make any sense.

  “Yep.”

  “This isn’t a butt joke, is it?”

  “Nope.” I think she snorted. Hard to tell on a cell phone. “No, something was just delivered for you, so if you can come by …”

  I remained suspicious, but the fact was that I did need to drop off copies of the photos I’d taken the previous week. The good ones, anyway. I had them ready to go at home. I told her I’d be there in an hour or so. “But if this has anything to do with my posterior …”

  “Can’t guarantee that,” she said, and I’m sure she was laughing when she hung up.

  When I pulled onto my street, a pink delivery van was parked in front of my house and a middle-aged man was walking across my lawn toward the front door. Oh no, I muttered. No no no. But yes, he was indeed delivering flowers. To my house. I got out of my van just as he reached for the doorbell.

  “Mrs. MacFall?” he asked, stumbling over my name.

  Close enough, I thought, wondering if I could get away with claiming to have moved away. But it wasn’t his fault that I already had five big bouquets in my house. I took the flowers in through the garage and went back for Jay. Once I had refreshed his water and filled a glass for myself, I focused on what to do about the latest floral invaders. Leo was on the table checking the flowers, and Jay was flopped in the middle of the kitchen. They both seemed to be eager to learn who sent the latest fragrance blast, this one a mix of pink and white snapdragons, big white daisies, and a blue flower I didn’t recognize. I pulled the card off the little plastic holder and opened it. “That’s a surprise,” I said. Leo licked his paw, a maneuver I recognized as a ploy, and I told him so. “You are too curious.” Jay was openly interested and cocked his head in anticipation. “They’re from Jo Stevens.” Jay’s cocked head swivelled the other way and Leo set his foot down and stared at me. “It says, ‘I have news, but in the meantime, thank you for getting me back in touch with dogs. Tell you soon. Jo.’” I looked at Leo, then at Jay. “What do you suppose this is all about?” We all just looked at one another for a moment, and then I set about finding a place for the flowers. In the end, I moved Goldie’s garden bouquet to my bedroom dresser and kept Jo’s bouquet on the kitchen table. Then I headed for my vet’s office.

  The parking lot was crowded, which wasn’t unusual on a Monday morning. In fact, as I recalled all too clearly, it was on just such a crowded Monday morning that I was bitten by dear Tiffany Willard. My gluteus maximus contracted at the thought.

  Peg grinned when I walked in. I could hardly see her behind a big bouquet of candy-colored lilies on the counter.

  “Nice flowers,” I said.

  “They’re for you.”

  “No!” It came out much too loud. Two vet techs turned to look at me and a Corgi in the waiting room stood and started to bark. “Sorry,” I said, and then leaned over the counter toward Peg. “What do you mean, they’re for me? You already sent me flowers last week.” You and practically everyone else I know.

  Peg handed a file to one of the vet techs but she was looking at me. “That box goes with it. All I know is that the delivery guy said it was for you. Arrived just before I called you.”

  “Oh my gawd,” I groaned as I picked up a white box shaped like the gift boxes my dad’s Christmas ties always came in. I split the tape holding the lid shut and opened it. Inside was a lovely braided leash. “Oh my!” I picked it up and repeated myself. The leash was about four feet long and made of leather as soft and pliant as velvet, three strands of it braided into a strong and elegant piece. I opened the envelope that was inside the box. It held a beautiful if schmaltzy get-well card, and inside that an engraved card of some sort. I read the hand-written note at the bottom of the get-well card first while my other hand continued to play with the buttery leather. The note was written in a tiny, tight hand and said,

  We hope you have recovered from your accident, and are feeling as well as ever. Please accept this invitation as a token of our friendship.

  Sincerely yours, Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Willard and Tiffany

  “Oh, man, this is bizarre,” I said, staring at the writing.

  “Let’s see,” said Peg, holding out her hand.

  I gave her the get-well card and looked at the smaller insert. It was an invitation to a reception at Treasures on Earth Spiritual Renewal Center. It was for two. “Now that’s just weird.”

  “It is,” said Peg, handing the greeting card back across the counter and pointed at another card in the box. “What’s that?”

  I picked it up. “Free pass to visit the art gallery at Treasures on Earth.” The pass turned out to be two passes. Just when I had been wondering how I might sneak into the place I suddenly had two opportunities. Three, if I didn’t give one of the gallery passes away.

  Peg gestured for me to lean close and then whispered, “My brother lives in the subdivision across the street from that place, and he says there’s a lot of activity there really late at night.”

  “They do seem to have a lot of services, or events, or whatever. The parking lot is always busy when we go swim the dogs.”

  “Late at night, Janet! Like delivery trucks in and out.”

  “So they have to get food and stuff,” I said.

  “At midnight?” She said that in a normal voice.

  I focused on what she was saying. “No, that doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Don’t go,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m going. I’ve been wanting to get in there.”

  Her eyes closed and reopened in a long blink, and she said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “You want to go with me, don’t you?”

  “I’m off tomorrow.” She scribbled on a sticky note and handed it to me with a big grin on her face. “Cell number. Call me.”

  thirty-four

  My cell phone rang just as I reached my van with the invitation and my beautiful new leash clutched in one hand, keys in the other. I had talked Peg into keeping the flowers. I had more than enough at home and didn’t really want another reminder of Tiffany dear. I remembered her well enough whenever I sat a certain way. The leash was too sweet to pass up, though.

  A fog of sadness settled around me when the caller identified herself as Anderson Billings’s mother. Sadness well-seasoned with rage. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Billings.”

  “I just don’t understand what happened,” she said. “He was a good swimmer. I just don’t …”

  His drowning didn’t make sense to me, either, although I knew nothing about his swimming ability. It was just that he must have been in his car, or getting in, when he left his message on my phone. Mrs. Billings didn’t need that tidbit added to the load she was carrying, though, so I kept it to myself and said, “What can
I do to help?”

  She was slow to speak, but I knew she was there so I waited, pressing my fingers against my chin to stop it trembling. Finally she said, “I was going through some things he left …” Her voice trailed off again but she recovered more quickly this time. “He left some things in his car. I found something in his jacket, in the little pocket at the back, you know, I think it’s for a music player or something?”

  “For an MP3 player?” Electronically challenged as I am, the only reason I knew to make that guess was that my new rain jacket has the same feature. I had to read the tag to figure out why I would want a teensy pocket at the back of my collar.

  “Right. MP3. But I don’t think that’s what this thing is.”

  “What is it?” And why did you think to call me? I was surprised that she even knew who I was.

  “Well, I thought at first it was a toy. It’s Tweety Pie. You know, from the cartoons?”

  Anderson had a Tweety toy in his MP3 pocket? “Okay.”

  “Anderson loved Tweety Pie when he was a little boy. I guess he still did.” I heard a huge sigh. “So I just sat here and held it for a while, and then I noticed that Tweety Pie has a line around his neck, so I pulled his head off …” She paused long enough for me to form a macabre image of poor Tweety having his cute little head yanked off. “… and it’s one of those, what do you call them? Thumb drives? For the computer?”

  “Thumb drive. Right.” I had seen cartoon and action figure thumb drives. I almost bought one of Marmaduke but it didn’t have enough memory for my purposes. “Mrs. Billings, why are you calling me about it? Is there something on the drive?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t tried it. But the thing is, there was a tiny slip of paper tucked into Tweety’s body, you know, the cap. It had your name and number on it. So, I don’t mean to be rude, but who are you?”

  I explained how I knew Anderson and asked if I could drop by to get the thumb drive.

  “Anderson called me from the lake that day. He … he was supposed to drop by and he called to tell me he’d be later than planned. He had to see someone first. Was that you?”

  “Maybe. Probably.” I told her about the message he had left me.

  “I have to go to the … to make arrangements. I …” She choked a little and I waited, not wanting to rush her. “My daughter is here. We’re going to the funeral home. Family …” Another pause, then she told me where she lived and said she’d leave Tweety in an envelope inside the screen door.

  I checked the time. Mrs. Billings lived across town in a lovely older part of the Aboite area, and the trip there and back would eat up most of an hour. I considered picking Jay up and going for a walk at Fox Island Park, but the thermometer at Times Corners said it was already ninety-one degrees, confirming that he was better off at home. I cranked up the AC and the radio. Springsteen was dancing in the dark. Perfect. But maybe whatever was on Anderson’s thumb drive would shed a little light on whatever was going on out at Regis Moneypenny’s place.

  I found the house with no problem, and liberated Tweety Pie from the big manilla envelope that was propped between the doors and asked him, “What do you have to tell us, little guy?” In its ever-convoluted way, my mind flitted from Tweety’s perky little face to birds of the flesh-and-blood variety, and from there to Dr. Crane, the ornithologist who was interested enough in “our” parrots to fly up from Florida. I decided to call Tom to find out if there was any further news.

  “Dr. Crane will be in tomorrow afternoon. He’s getting a car, so I gave him directions. He’ll come to my office and wants to go to the lake right away. You want to go with us?”

  Are there parrots flying around northern Indiana? “Of course I want to go.” I told him about the thumb drive and promised to call him if there was anything important on it. I started to tell him about the passes for the Treasures on Earth art gallery, then decided to wait until I saw him at Dog Dayz in the evening. He was going to ask me not to go, and I was going to go anyway. Maybe I wouldn’t tell him until after the fact. Avoid the argument.

  It took about twenty minutes once I got home to do a few things and make a pot of coffee, but I finally pulled Tweety’s head off and attached it to my laptop. A series of jpg files appeared. Photos. I opened my photo handling program and put up an array of images. The thumbnails were too small to show much so I started through them one by one. The first three didn’t seem very interesting but I had a hunch that they had been taken in fairly rapid succession and that Anderson had been slowly panning across the island as he took them. Had he been trying to follow a bird in flight? If so, he missed. Then something in the fourth photo caught my attention. A shadow where I wouldn’t expect one, knowing as I did the dearth of fat-trunked trees out there. It was at the top right of the photo frame. I was sure Anderson had been using a telephoto lens, so whatever made the shadow was fairly far away.

  I went on to the next photo. Nothing. I jumped back to the previous photo and compared the two. Anderson had definitely been panning from right to left. I kept going. The shadow reappeared, and this time I could see what made it. A leg, clad in dark pants standing between two scraggly shrubs. The next photo showed legs and torso, and based on height, I was pretty sure it was a man. The photo also had a date and time imprint. Anderson must have turned the marking feature on for some reason. I clicked through to the next shot.

  I stared at the photo on the screen in front of me. The figure stood in the brush in front of a clump of maple saplings, turned a quarter turn to my left. He—or she?—was holding something out with both hands. The position of hands on an object made me flash on an image of my mother emptying her big canvas tote bag of garden clippings. I zoomed in on the face, but the lighting was bad and I couldn’t make out the features. Maybe the same creep I had seen on the island on Saturday. I moved the photo so that I could see what was in his hands.

  It was a canvas bag. In fact, I was pretty sure it was the bag that Drake had found out on the island, the one that had started this whole strange adventure. The figure held it by the bottom corners as if shaking it. Anderson had caught the exact moment that its contents fell from the opening, and suddenly at least one question was answered.

  I zoomed back out to the full picture and clicked to the next one. The figure was kicking the thing on the ground, maybe to push it into the brush. The canvas bag hung slack in his left hand. The next picture was zoomed in farther. The shot overreached the lens’s capability and the focus was fuzzy, but it still showed that what had fallen from the bag was the body of a bird. A bright red parrot.

  There were two more photos. The first of them showed the figure walking toward the far side of the island, left arm flung up and out, the canvas bag flying toward a stand of brush. The final photo made my shoulders tighten up. The person had stopped and turned toward the camera, toward Anderson Billings, mouth open as if to yell. I’ve photographed thousands of animals in action and I know the posture of impending motion. Knees bent, upper body leaning into a sprint. But which way? Which instinct took over? Flight? Or fight?

  thirty-five

  I leaned back in my chair and tried to clear my mind, and suddenly the memory I’d been trying to tease out of the tangle popped into view. The man in the photos, the man who made the creepy gestures at me, had been at our training session the day Drake found the bag. I remembered now, I had seen him talking to Tom and asked later who he was, what he wanted. “I just wondered what all the dogs were doing here.” Wasn’t that what Tom had told me the man said? And something about the guy really liking dogs? He hadn’t stayed more than about five minutes, which didn’t exactly scream “dog lover” to me. But now it was starting to make sense. Was he the mysterious figure in Anderson’s photos?

  If he was dumping dead birds and bloody tote bags on the island, he must have been surprised to see a bunch of dogs swimming around, and Drake’s little discovery must have really shaken him up. But how did that make sense? Anderson was out there on a Friday, the Friday
before last, and the retriever training session was the following Sunday. Think, think. I grabbed my phone and found Anderson’s message. He left it last Tuesday, so I was clear about that. I listened again to the message. “I was here a few days ago, too. Saw a friend of yours … came back with my canoe to get to the island … That was Friday night. Well, you know, evening.”

  The dates on the photos. I checked them. Why hadn’t I noticed that they were dated more than a week ago, the day before Drake found the mysterious bag? Oh, Anderson, why did you wait so long to say anything? Why did you go back there alone? Then it hit me that if someone had killed him, they would have looked for the photos. Especially if the killer was the man in the photos.

  I dialed Jo Stevens’ number. As usual, I got her voice mail, so I left a message about the thumb drive and the photos. I closed with a question. “Jo, what images were on Anderson’s camera? I know it was in the car, but he had it on the island earlier. At least, I think he did.” I had almost hung up when I thought of something else. “Jo, was Anderson’s laptop there, in the car?” It must have been, I thought. He needed the intermediate step of a computer to move the photos from his camera to Tweety.

  I was about to get up when Leo waltzed into the room. Jay was sacked out by the wall, but he opened a sleepy eye when Leo sniffed his ear before coming to me. Leo sat down in front of my feet, yawned with all his might, made a couple of passes over his paw with his tongue, and stared at me through half-closed lids.