The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery)

by Boneham, Sheila Webster

  “Peg, give me your camera.”

  She reached into her pocket and slipped the camera to me. I flicked it on and held it against my body, hoping my aim was decent, and clicked off a few shots. On the last one, the flash went off and two seconds later a door opened down the hall. I lowered my hand and, as I turned toward the sound, I held the camera behind me where Peg could get it.

  The man bearing down on us was backlit, so it was impossible to see his face, but I have a memory for movement. Dog, horse, human, I’m quick to notice carriage and style of motion, and I recognize the set of this man’s shoulders and the way his arms hung.

  “Aw, shit,” I murmured.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Peg.

  “It’s just a photo. Big deal,” said Goldie.

  But the epithet rattled and echoed around my brain, and it took everything I had not to turn and run as fast as I could for the exit door. The man’s face was clearly visible now, and the look on it was not friendly. It was too late to run to safety, so I followed the rules. When faced with a threatening animal, do not run. Stand your ground. Make yourself as big as possible. Don’t stare into his eyes, he’ll take that as a challenge.

  I made my spine as straight as possible. Maybe they felt my energy. Okay, my fear. Whatever it was, I felt Goldie stand a little taller on my right. Peg did the same on my left. My elbows touched theirs. We were one unit, and I felt empowered by the time the man reached us and I found myself standing eighteen inches from the glowering mug of bird guy and possible killer Rich Campbell.

  forty-two

  “What an unpleasant man!” said Goldie once we were in the car and out the gates of Treasures on Earth.

  “That’s an understatement,” I said, but I didn’t share my suspicions about just how unpleasant Rich Campbell may have been to his former girlfriend, Liesl Burkhardt, and to my friend and student Anderson Billings. I focused instead on the failures of our mission. “We didn’t accomplish much with that little adventure,” I said. “Plus, Peg, I owe you a camera. But rats, I was hoping to take some photos of those birds back for George to identify.”

  Peg started to laugh. “You still can, my dear.”

  “What?”

  She started rummaging around in her voluminous skirt and brought her hand out of the fabric with the camera in her grip. “Here you go.”

  Goldie let out a hoot in the backseat and tapped Peg on the shoulder. “Brilliant! Janet, you have brilliant friends!”

  I flicked the camera on and brought up the most recent photos. When the little green and blue parrot popped onto the screen, I joined the laugh party. “So what was that you gave him?” Campbell had demanded the camera, growling that there was a sign outside the gallery that clearly stated the confiscation policy and no photos rule. “You can pick it up after we have a chance to remove all photos taken on Treasures property,” he had said.

  “That was my son’s old camera. The one he dropped in the pool at the Y.” The grin on Peg’s face rivaled the one she wore when she drove me to the emergency room after Tiffany dear bit my behind. “Cheap little thing, wasn’t worth trying to fix after its full immersion. Dead as a doorknob.”

  “You rock, girlfriend,” I said, and thought how appropriate, leaving Rich Campbell with a drowned camera.

  When the initial pleasure cooled a bit, Goldie said, “Janet, you’d better stay with Tom or me until this is all settled. That guy, what’s his name again?”

  “Rich Campbell.”

  “Right. He doesn’t know us, but he knows who you are. And he’s not a nice man.”

  “Ah, the mistress of understatement,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She was right, I thought. He knew who I was and probably more than that. I wondered whether Goldie and Tom, and even Peg, might be in any danger. If Campbell had been to my house, he could easily have seen Goldie in her yard. She was out in the garden all the time.

  “So?”

  “She’s right, you know,” said Peg, sobering up. “He’s not going to be happy when he finds out about the camera. He doesn’t know me from boo, but …”

  “But the women do,” I said, “Mrs. Willard and Persephone Swann.”

  Peg gasped, but recovered and said, “All they know is that I work at the clinic. I mean, they don’t know where I live or anything. I mean, why would they care?”

  “They might care now, so just be careful.” I added that Goldie could be in danger, too, but she waved me off so I dropped the direct approach and said, “Maybe I should stay at your house, Goldie, until this blows over. I’d feel safer.” And I’d feel better knowing you’re not alone over there, I thought.

  Peg slowed the car so we could see down Tappen Road, but Tom’s car was gone. We drove back to the Kroger lot.

  “Email me those photos as soon as you can, okay, Peg?” I asked.

  “Here, just take it.” She handed me the camera and a little black bag that she had tucked under the seat. “I think the download thingy is in there.”

  I chuckled. “I’ll bring it back to the clinic tomorrow.”

  “No rush,” Peg said. “I don’t have any more top secret assignments scheduled for a few days.”

  Goldie and I got into my van and I sat with the door open to change my shoes. No sense scuffing the back of my one nice pair of shoes by driving in them.

  “There’s something under the wiper,” said Goldie, pointing to the windshield in front of me.

  I reached out and grabbed it, knowing what it was before I opened it. “Note from Tom.”

  “Uh oh. Busted!”

  I read it and told her what it said, mostly. “They stopped here on their way back to Tom’s office, saw the van when they came out of the grocery store. He went back into the store to find me and see if I wanted to join them there.” I looked at Goldie. “I feel like I cheated on him or something.”

  “That’s what happens when we sneak around and lie. But it had to be done.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Just sayin’,” she said. “So call him. Go find out what they found out. You’ll find a way to get found out, and everything will be fine.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You’ll find a way to get caught,” Goldie said.

  I started to argue but stopped myself. She was, as she often is, right. “It’s not as if I wasn’t going to tell him eventually. Today, even.”

  “So, Janet, you know something about that nasty man, that Rich Campbell, don’t you?” I glanced sideways and saw that Goldie was peering over the top of her glasses at me, which she only does when she knows I’m holding out. So I told her, then swore her to secrecy.

  I parked in my own driveway but went straight to Goldie’s to see to my boys. Jay bounced and wriggled as if we’d been gone for a month. Leo hopped onto the back of Goldie’s big overstuffed reading chair and I bonked noses with him to say hello. We all went out to the backyard for a little R and R, and I called Tom. They were just leaving his office to go home and shower, so I said I’d meet them there. But I had to ask what they had found.

  “We saw the bird. George is pretty blown away. Going to try to catch him. Or her. That’s still in question.”

  I couldn’t imagine how he’d catch a loose parrot, especially if it was wild-caught and not used to or fond of captivity.

  “We’ll only be home long enough to clean up and grab a bite to eat,” Tom said. “We’re going to the morgue for a look at the other bird.”

  “The morgue?”

  “Yeah. If I can reach Jo for permission. That’s where the bird is.” They couldn’t exactly stick it in the department fridge,” Tom said. “If the cops are anything like people around here,” meaning the university, “someone would eat it.” Tom had installed a small refrigerator in his office because, he had told me, someone kept taking his lunches from the faculty lounge and he could never prove who it was, although he suspected one of the accounting profs.

  I loaded Jay into the van,
but Goldie wanted Leo to stay and keep her company, and since he was curled up on her reading chair I had to assume he agreed. She said she would take him home later. I was almost to the corner when I realized that I was still more “dressed” than was quite normal for me, so I backtracked, changed into jeans and a henley, and then hit the road. My thoughts ran around like a pack of terriers in a field of mice. I needed to go see Mom soon. I hadn’t been there since … when? I couldn’t remember, which meant either that it had been too long or that I was losing my mind. I needed to followup on some requests for portraits, too.

  What I really wanted to do was find a way to get back into Treasures on Earth without raising suspicion. Or getting caught by Rich Campbell. I had no desire to sleep with the fishes, and having encountered the man up close, I was even more convinced that he was dangerous.

  And I needed to know more about Regis Moneypenny. There must be information about the man somewhere. He had become a significant figure in Allen County, and I couldn’t imagine how he would do so without someone knowing something about him. I made a mental note to call Giselle Swann after I saw Tom and George. If she was attending services, or meetings, or whatever they called them, at Treasures, she must have some information about the man and the group. Knowing Giselle, she’d be testy for a bit since I had forgotten our plans to meet on Sunday, but if I groveled enough I knew she’d come around. I also knew that if she thought for a moment that the people around her were abusing or exploiting animals, she’d be the loudest canary they ever heard.

  forty-three

  Tom and George were showered and changed when I got there. Jay was delighted to see his buddy Drake, and even more delighted to see his new buddy George, who for his part got down on the floor to give my dog a belly rub.

  “Man after your own heart, eh, my dear?” asked Tom, right before he planted a big kiss on my lips.

  “He won’t find it,” I said.

  “Already taken?”

  I shrugged and opened the refrigerator.

  “Hang on,” said George, getting up and washing his hands in the sink. “I’m just about to make my gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. Hungry?”

  What I took for the ingredients were laid out near the stove. I stepped closer. A block of Gruyère, another of white cheddar. These are not cheap cheeses, I thought, looking at the per-pound labels. A couple of homegrown tomatoes, no doubt from Goldie’s garden. She’d sent several home with Tom. Whole-grain bread with sunflower seeds. Fresh spinach. My mouth started to water.

  “I want two!” I said.

  George grinned as he got to work and Tom filled me in on their morning at the lake. They had arrived before dawn and were on the island when the sun peeked over the treetops to the east. According to Tom, George did a mean parrot imitation, and it didn’t take long before “our bird” flew in and landed on the old sycamore. That was exciting enough, but when he had enough light to see the bird clearly, George had confirmed its identity.

  George stopped slicing cheese for a moment. He looked at me and said, “Honestly, I almost peed my pants. I’ve never seen one at all, anywhere, and here it is, flying around in northern Indiana.”

  He choked slightly on the last word, then continued, “The Carmine Parrot is a gorgeous bird, and so rare and endangered, and these bastards …” He shook his head and went back to making the sandwiches.

  “Carmine Parrot,” I murmured. “What a lovely name.”

  Tom changed the subject. “You sure disappeared in Kroger this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah, that.”

  Tom rested his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. “What did you do?” He sounded resigned to whatever might follow. I noticed that George was grinning as he layered cheese and tomatoes.

  George stopped smiling when I got to our encounter with Rich Campbell and said, “Seriously, Janet, that guy is mental. You need to be really careful.”

  Tom just stared at me. I appreciated his ability to keep quiet even though he was worried, which was clear in his eyes. It must have been clear in his chemistry, too, because Drake came and laid his head in Tom’s lap and gazed up at him, a perfect mirror of the look Tom had been giving me.

  “Come on, guys, lighten up. I’m not going hand-to-hand with the guy.” Time to change the subject, I thought. “Wonder why Jo hasn’t called back.”

  “Oh, she did! Sorry. I meant to tell you,” said Tom.

  “She called you?” I asked.

  “Said your line went straight to voice mail.”

  “What?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Dead. “Aww, crap. Again?”

  George flipped a sandwich in the pan and said, “I used to do that all the time.”

  “I don’t do it all the time.” I do, but I didn’t need a scolding. “Where’s your charger, Tom?”

  He handed me his phone and took mine. “I don’t know that my charger will fit your phone but here, call her.”

  On the third ring, Jo said, “Did she show up yet?”

  “Yes, she did,” I said.

  “Hey, I’m standing in your driveway. Where the heck are you?”

  “Why are you standing in my driveway?” I asked.

  “You at Tom’s place?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Stay there! I’m on my way.”

  “What’s go …”

  “Just stay there, okay? I have something to show you.” And she was gone.

  “Those smell great, George,” I said. He had two sandwiches done and on plates and was melting butter for the third. I turned to Tom and asked, “Do you know what’s up with Jo?”

  “Nope,” he said, but he had a funny twitch going on at the corners of his mouth.

  “How come you know everything about my friends before I do?”

  He raised his hands in surrender and said, “I don’t know anything.”

  “Let’s eat!” said George.

  Tom told the dogs to lie down by the wall. Jay slowly sank into a sphinx position but kept his eyes fixed at the correct angle to watch my sandwich, as if he had x-ray vision. Drake circled once and then dropped to the vinyl with a muscular thunk and let out a big sigh.

  Without looking at the poor things, George grinned and said, “You never feed them, do you?”

  We had just cleared the table and released the dogs when I heard a car door.

  “Must be Jo,” I said.

  “Come on guys, let’s go out back,” said Tom, hustling the dogs out the sliding door into the back yard, a maneuver I found a bit odd. Jo loves dogs, and even if her partner, Hutch, was with her, he was coming around. Jay had taken Hutchinson on as his personal project, no doubt aware long before I was that the man was just afraid of dogs, and what we fear, we dislike. Jay was working on that.

  Tom caught up with me at the front door, pulled it open, and let me go through first.

  “Oh my God!” I blurted.

  Jo Stevens stood in the yard with a gorgeous puppy of indeterminate breed.

  “You got a puppy!” I had to fight the impulse to rush the pup and scoop him or her into my arms, knowing that from where the little guy stood, that would be terrifying. Instead I walked slowly toward Jo and the pup, sat on the grass a couple feet away, and let the pup come to me. Tom and George did the same, sinking to the ground next to me. The puppy, who appeared to be about twelve weeks old, launched himself into my lap and licked and nibbled my chin. Then he bounced from my lap to Tom’s and tried to pull Tom’s collar off.

  “Okay, big guy, leave the shirt,” said Tom, gently fending off the assault. “Nothing shy about this guy!”

  The puppy had medium-long fur the color of corn stalks in autumn, but unlike a Golden Retriever, he had white stockings, a white chest, and a white stripe down his face. I held him out from me so I could look at him. His eyes still had a hint of deep puppy blue but were heading toward brown, and on closer inspection I saw that his coat was not a solid wheaty yellow as I thought at first, but mottled.

  “Aussie-Golden cross?” I asked Jo.
>
  “Wow, you’re good. Yes, he is.” She was grinning all over herself. “Daddy is an Aussie, mama a Golden. Accidental breeding—the Aussie boy actually opened the back door of the people’s house to come visit.”

  “Interesting mix,” said Tom. “He won’t know whether to round the birds up or carry them.”

  “The door thing sounds familiar,” I said. Jay had a habit of opening my back door and letting himself in.

  Jo laughed. “Both parents, oddly enough, are champions. They live a few doors apart, train together. Neither of the owners was happy about this, but, you know, here they are. At least both parents had all their health clearances, so chances are these guys will be healthy, or have a fighting chance. And there were only two puppies.”

  I was trying to think who I knew with a champion Aussie in town and the only ones I could think of were bitches. “Who are the dogs’ owners? I might know them.”

  “Maybe, but they’re in Evansville.”

  So probably not. Evansville is the very far end of the state from Fort Wayne, and fits the old “you can’t get there from here” joke because there is no major highway between the two cities, at least not until they finish the interstate extension. “We don’t really see many people from Evansville at most shows up this way.”

  “Yeah, it’s a long haul,” said Jo. “We just drove it, didn’t we?” She stroked the puppy’s head.

  “Yes, the missing detective.” I got the pup down on his back in the grass and calmed him with a belly rub. “What’s his name?”

  “Not sure. I want to live with him for a few days and let him tell me.”

  Tom winked at me and gestured with his head toward Jo. “Smart woman.”

  George came out and we made the introductions, then moved to the backyard and let the pup meet Jay and Drake. He licked their chins, then jumped on Jay’s head. Jay was not amused, and gently but firmly pushed the little guy down and held him there for a moment. When he let go, the puppy gave Drake a try and although the black dog didn’t look happy, he didn’t object to the puppy rough stuff. “Better get used to it, old man,” said Tom.