The Money Bird (An Animals in Focus Mystery)

by Boneham, Sheila Webster

  “Well, Janet,” and he broke into Music Man mode, singing, “‘Ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City.’”

  “You saw the bird?”

  He nodded.

  “And?”

  “Quite a bird.”

  “Is it what you thought? The rare one?”

  “It is. And we need to get it out of there.”

  “Did you tell her?” Meaning Giselle, of course. “Tell me you didn’t. She’d freak out.”

  “She wasn’t alone, remember.”

  “Right! So who was it?”

  “Her cousin. Penelope?”

  “Persephone?”

  “Right. Persephone.”

  I thought back to Giselle’s comments about her cousin. “That’s very odd. Did they seem, you know, friendly?”

  “To each other, you mean?” asked George, glancing at me. “Don’t forget I don’t know where I’m going, by the way.”

  “Right. We’re fine. Turn right at the light.” I gestured ahead of us. “So, yes, to each other. I don’t think Giselle likes Persephone much. I’m surprised she was there.”

  “I’d go with that,” said George, slowing for the light, then turning onto State.

  Then it hit me. “George! You didn’t let Persephone in on why you were there, did you?”

  “You mean to measure for the new carpet your friend won in the contest at our store?”

  “What? Turn right at the next corner.”

  He grinned. “Had to come up with something quickly and it was all I could think of. Have you ever seen the bright green carpet in her living room?”

  I had. He was right, it was all you could think about when you first walked in.

  “How did you manage to see the bird?”

  “The cage is right there in the living room. I told her it was the prettiest parakeet I’d ever seen. That’s the house, right?”

  As he parked in Tom’s driveway, George told me that Giselle seemed very nervous around her cousin, but knowing Giselle, I wasn’t entirely sure that meant anything. George shut the ignition off and looked at me, a mix of anger and something like wonder lighting his eyes. “It was all I could do to walk out of that house without that parrot.” He opened his door, then stopped and said, “We have to nail these people, and we have to get the birds into safe keeping.” Then he smiled. “And we’ll have to let Giselle know she didn’t actually win a new carpet. I think she’ll be disappointed.”

  Tom was at the kitchen table with a red pen in hand and two piles of student papers. Jay and Drake were wriggling and wagging at the sliding door, so I let them in. “Want me to clean the dog snot off the glass?” I asked Tom.

  “Nah, I’ll get it later when I water the pots. It’ll keep.” The master of understatement. In my experience, the slobbery snottery mess that dogs make of window glass will keep forever if you don’t scrub it off.

  We told him about our adventure. When we had finished, Tom waved toward the family room and said, “George, there’s a package for you in there.”

  George reached into his pocket but came out empty handed. “You have a pocket knife? Couldn’t bring mine on the plane.”

  Tom handed over his jackknife. George cut the box open and removed a hefty birdcage, a long coil of lightweight rope and another of even lighter nylon cord, and a small canvas pouch.

  “What’s all that?” I asked.

  “Let’s go catch ourselves a Carmine Parrot,” said George. He set the cage on the floor near the door to the garage and laid the rope and bag on the table. “I need some bits of fruit and some nuts and bird seed, if you have any?”

  Tom cross-stacked his papers and set the red pen on top, then went to the refrigerator and pulled out a couple of apples, some grapes, and a pear. “Will these work?”

  “Perfect.”

  I got a plastic container from a cupboard and offered to get some birdseed from the garage, and Tom pulled a jar of mixed nuts from the cupboard.

  “Got a colander?” asked George.

  Salt, I thought as I pulled the door open, and heard George say, “Gotta rinse the salt off.”

  When I got back with the birdseed, Tom was lacing his hiking boots. “Coming with us?” he asked, looking at me.

  “I need to make a call first.” I wanted to check that Giselle was okay, and that Leo wasn’t being any trouble to Goldie. It felt as if I’d been gone for days, not hours.

  George stuffed the canvas bag, rope, fruit, nuts, and birdseed into the cage and moved to the door. “Maybe we should take two cars, actually. It could be a long wait.”

  “I’ll catch up with you,” I said. “You guys be careful out there, okay?”

  George looked at me and started to laugh, which prompted Tom to give me a “what the heck?” look. I just shrugged, but realized that George was right. If I could tell Tom to be careful, I grudgingly admitted to myself that Tom could also tell me to be careful without getting an earful. I put my arms around Tom’s neck and kissed him, then whispered, “Just be careful” in his ear. I turned away as soon as I let him go, and heard, “Love you, Janet,” just before the door closed.

  Jay and Drake stood staring at me, Jay’s butt wriggling like mad and Drake’s thick tail banging wham wham wham against a table leg. I chucked the black dog under the chin and said, “You’re gonna break that table with that tail of yours, mister,” and then asked, “Out?” They had just come in, but their body language was all about ball game so I decided to take a few minutes to let them have a run. Drake raced into the yard and came back with two tennis balls in his mouth, and Jay grabbed a floppy disk from a chair on the deck.

  For the next five minutes I threw whatever the silly dogs brought me. Since the only mental effort necessary was to make sure I didn’t set them on a collision course, I let my thoughts run to other matters. Of course, the lost parrot was on my mind. It couldn’t survive out there for long. Food would be an immediate problem, and predators were a constant threat. That big red-tailed hawk I’d seen circling the lake, for one, and even the screech owl might be a problem, although the parrot might be big enough to discourage it. And then there were the human predators. Rich Campbell, Regis Moneypenny.

  Campbell was mixed up in whatever was going on with the endangered birds. I felt sure of that, based on the man’s history. And Moneypenny had to be up to his toupee in this. He owned the place and, from all reports, ran it. Who else? How many people would it take to shuttle birds illegally into the area, sell them to the highest bidders, and deliver them alive?

  Giselle popped into my head and a felt an inexplicable fear run down my spine. “Come on guys, that’s it.” I told the dogs to leave the balls and floppy disks outside, and we went in.

  Giselle’s phone rang four times, and then her voice mail answered. I wasn’t sure whether it was a machine that someone else might hear, so as I listened to the recording, I came up with a quick message. “Giselle, hi, it’s Janet MacPhail. Hey, I just wanted to remind you that I’d like to borrow that new book you got on tracking. Maybe you could bring it to agility practice this week? If not, it’s okay, no rush. Maybe you could let me know, though? Okay, that’s all. Thanks. Oh, I don’t think you have my number, so here it is.” I knew even as I left it that I might be overdoing the “we don’t know each other that well” bit, but I couldn’t stop in the middle.

  I felt a pressure on my foot and looked down. Jay was leaning against my leg with his head tilted back to gaze up at me, his paw firmly pressed into the top of my shoe. Who in their right mind could resist that? I set my phone on the table and got down on the floor so I could bury my face in Jay’s silky fur. The next thing I knew, a big black muzzle had shoved itself in under my arm, so I wrapped that one around Drake, pulled them both close, and surrendered to the magic that is a dog’s loving touch.

  forty-eight

  My mind was spinning faster than my radials as I drove north on Coldwater Road. After our group snuggle, I loaded Jay and Drake into the
van and drove them to Bill and Norm’s house for another visit to “the uncles.” There was no way I would leave them alone at either of our houses with a crazy person out there. Norm was thrilled and greeted the dogs with a promise to “all bake dog cookies together while your mom is away.” Bill had gone to the Clothing Bank drop box with another load of stuff. The clearing-out-to-move business was getting serious.

  I missed Leo enough to call Goldie once more before I left their driveway, but I got her voice mail. Tom and George would already be at Heron Acres and I really wanted to watch the capture process, so I cruised about eight miles per hour over the limit once I cleared the stretch near Pine Valley that was a notorious speed trap.

  Who was that mysterious figure in Kroger’s? The height seemed about right for Rich Campbell, and the blue shirt he always seemed to wear. Then again, if you counted the people wearing blue shirts in any given place, how many would there be? What about that feeling I’d had that I was being watched? Was I just plain paranoid, or had that been real? I hadn’t gotten a clear look, and I had to admit that the baseball cap bothered me. Campbell had been bare-headed every other time I had seen him, hadn’t he? I was sure he’d been capless when he scared me on the island, but I wasn’t so certain about Anderson’s photos, and I was annoyed with my own lack of attention to the details.

  If they were smuggling birds and selling them for big bucks, I thought, they had to be bringing them in and shipping them out somehow. Peg had mentioned trucks coming in and out of Treasures on Earth in the wee hours. Could that be when they transported birds? The more I thought about it, the less sense that made. They weren’t smuggling horses, after all. Even the biggest parrot easily fit into a smallish crate. Why draw attention with noisy trucks at odd hours when they could move the birds in automobiles? Or was the report of trucks exaggerated?

  A bigger question was how many members of Treasures on Earth were involved in this. Conspiracy theories aside, I couldn’t imagine most people going along with a federal crime. Certainly not people like Giselle. Mrs. Willard didn’t seem a likely criminal, unless her cluelessness was all an act. Giselle’s cousin Persephone wasn’t very appealing, but that didn’t make her a criminal. Then again, according to Giselle, Persephone was involved with Rich Campbell. Which reminded me, I’d have to try calling Giselle again later. I wanted to be sure she was okay, and find out why the long-lost cousin was at her house if they didn’t get along.

  One thought led to another, as they will, and I suddenly remembered Sylvia Eckhorn’s odd comments at Dog Dayz. What had she said? “Be really careful”? That was it. She was talking about Rich Campbell. She had seen him behind Tom in the television footage of the training sessions, and she had brought it up, then dropped it. I would have to call her and find out what that was all about. Sylvia had a very level head, and I was sure she wouldn’t throw out frivolous warnings. I added Sylvia to my growing list of phone calls to make.

  The parking lot at Treasures on Earth was packed with the usual high-end vehicles when I drove by. Don’t any of these people have jobs? I wondered, and then chuckled at myself. After all, if I was free to run all over creation whenever I wanted to, why shouldn’t they? Maybe they also stayed up working in the wee hours as I did. Or used to, more often, before I met Tom. Not that I was getting more sleep now, but I had to admit that staying up late was more fun with him than without. I pulled myself back from a particularly fun memory and took my foot off the accelerator to make it easier to scan the lot and the front of the Treasury, as I’d come to think of Moneypenny’s place.

  What’s the big attraction with this place? I wondered. That was something else I needed to ask Giselle, although knowing a little about her history of short-term affiliations with a variety of belief systems, she might not be the most lucid source of thoughtful analysis. But what would attract Neil Young to what appeared to be something of a cult? Or someone like Mrs. Willard, or any of the other people who parked their high-end cars in the lot several days a week?

  By the time I passed the gate to the property I was barely rolling, but even so, there wasn’t much to see, especially with the iron fence breaking up the view. I turned my attention back to the road and started to accelerate, figuring that a crowd at Moneypenny’s place was probably a good thing when Tom and George were out on the island. Unless the whole bunch of them were in on whatever Moneypenny and Campbell were up to, it wasn’t likely anyone could go skulking around right now, much less attack anyone close by. Besides, it was mid-afternoon.

  My thoughts had just turned to Anderson Billings when something hit the back of my minivan KAWHUMP! Reflex took over and my foot moved toward the brake as I looked in the mirror. A second THWACK hit the back hatch just as I caught sight of the batter in my side mirror. Tall, blue shirt, baseball cap with the brim pulled down, face in shadow. “What th …,” I shouted through a surge of nausea. An hour later I wished I had had the intestinal fortitude to shift into reverse and back over bat and batter alike, but in the moment raw terror ruled and I hit the gas. My assailant turned away, arm raised as a shield against the stones my tires were spitting into the air, but I knew who it was. My heart felt like it might jump right out of my chest. I looked once more in the mirror. At that angle I could see only from the attacker’s knees to shoulders. A baseball bat hung from one hand. The other hand came up, and although I couldn’t see clearly, I knew the gesture. A fist pistol. Aimed at me.

  forty-nine

  Tom had taken the kayak with him and left it on the bank for me, which was a good thing because I didn’t think I could have lifted it, shaking as I was. I had jumped out of my van and run toward the lake when I parked at Heron Acres, but by the time I reached the water, my knees had liquified and I let myself sink to the ground. My head throbbed, but the initial nausea had passed, and as I sat there I felt fear spin around me like a silken thread around a caterpillar. I closed my eyes, focused on breathing, forced my muscles to relax. When I opened my eyes and re-emerged, my fear was gone. All I felt was rage. Cold, dark rage.

  Tom and George were out of sight on the island, but I could hear their wordless voices across the water, so I got up and headed their way. As I paddled, I took stock of myself. I felt better except that my cheeks seemed to be on fire, so I dipped my hand into the cool of the lake and wiped my face. It felt good, and the vague mucky fragrance of the water was comforting somehow. A small voice whispered to me as I started to paddle again. Don’t tell them. I repeated the words out loud.

  I had no idea how George would react, but I had a pretty good notion that Tom would be inclined to do something about the assault, and I had to think that would not be wise. What kind of person stands on a public road in broad daylight and hits a car with a baseball bat? Aside from the violence of the act, it was plain wacko.

  What about the back of my van, I wondered. I hadn’t even looked at it. All I wanted to do when I pulled into Heron Acres was get away. How much damage had he done? I should call Jo, I thought. I let the kayak drift toward the island and fished my cell phone from my pocket. The island itself got inconsistent reception for some reason, but maybe out here on the water … Four bars. I hit Jo’s speed dial button and waited. Voice mail, as usual, so I left a short message. “Jo, call me. Today. Important. I’m at the island now, so probably bad reception, but leave a message or try in an hour, okay? This is an official call.” That was lame, but I wanted her to know I wasn’t just calling to ask about the puppy. “Rich Campbell just attacked me, well, not me, but my van with me in it, with a baseball bat, in front of Treasures on Earth.” My phone beeped at me and I spoke faster. “I’m okay, scared and furious, but okay. I’m on my way to the island.” More beeps. Battery must be going again. “Tom and George are there, trying to catch the …” Long beep. I looked at the phone. Dead. “Great. Just great.”

  I pulled the kayak well out of the water and went looking for Tom and George. I found them at the base of the old sycamore. “See the bird?” I asked as I walked up.
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br />   “Yeah, he’s …,” Tom started, turning to look at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean?” The smile I tried to plaster onto my face felt lopsided, and I wondered vaguely whether adrenaline rushes interfere with muscle control. George was looking at me now, too.

  “Janet?”

  “So, the bird?” I asked, looking away from them and up into the branches. “Oh, there he is.”

  Tom kept staring at me, but George went back to work on the cage. He tied the end of the light nylon cord to the cage door and threaded it through the back wires, careful to leave the door ajar. “Okay,” he said, standing up and lifting the cage. “Let’s do it.”

  We moved to within a few feet of the base of the tree’s trunk. George set the cage on the ground and pulled the coil of nylon rope from the canvas bag he was carrying. He secured one end to a hanger on top of the cage, then pulled out a small pouch with a strap to which he fastened the other end of the rope. The pouch seemed to be heavy, so I asked, “What’s in that?”

  “Rocks.”

  “Rocks?” But as he looked up and started to swing the pouch like a lariat I got it.

  “Won’t that scare him?” Tom asked, eyeing the bird high up in the tree.

  “Probably not, if I get it on the first toss. So cross your fingers.” George glanced at us. “And you might want to stand back a little in case my aim is off.”

  I backed away and Tom moved to my side and took my hand while George swung the pouch in one, two full circles. As it whirled into the third swing, he heaved it upward and it sailed past a hefty branch about twenty feet up, came neatly down the other side, and plummeted to the ground, dragging the rope with it.

  “You’ve done that before,” said Tom. He squeezed my hand, and although I thought it was mostly a reflex in the presence of George’s rope-pitching prowess, my eyes suddenly felt hot and wet. I sniffed for control, not just to keep from crying but to stop myself throwing my arms around him, all the time wondering why my emotions are sometimes so out of wack.