by J. R. Ripley
Apparently she and JJ Fuller had their differences.
“I wonder what those two are arguing about.”
Irving sat on the edge of the table. “My guess is that JJ isn’t happy to see Ilsa here.”
“Oh? Isn’t she one of the guests?”
“No. Generally speaking, organizers know not to schedule the two of them for the same event the same year. Ms. Skoglund must have decided on her own initiative to attend.”
“She’s either very brave or enjoys getting Fuller’s goat.” I watched as Fuller, the shorter of the two, poked his finger repeatedly in Ms. Skoglund’s face.
“The remarkable young lady has traveled the world on birding and wildlife adventures. She’s as tough as nails.” Irving Shipman slipped a thick pair of reading glasses from his coat pocket and hung them on his nose after giving them a wipe with a lens cloth.
“If I were her,” I said, “I might be using my fingernails right about now.” Fuller was practically puffing like a dragon in the woman’s chest.
“There’s more than a little blood lost between them.” He ran his eyes over a list of email contacts on a clipboard lying flat on the table. Shipman’s Ornitho Optics booth was about the size of ours. The space contained a plethora of spotting scopes and binoculars of many sizes, tripods and other optic equipment of interest to birding enthusiasts.
“I’m not surprised.”
“Is that the voice of experience?” Irving popped a lime green candy-coated piece of gum in his mouth and offered the pack to me.
I declined. “No. I ran into Mr. Fuller earlier and he was a bit cranky, you might say.”
Remembering Phoebe’s words about his pending divorce, I knew that JJ Fuller might be having a bad day. We all have our troubles. I vowed not to let my less than stellar first encounter with him color my impression too harshly.
“I won’t be surprised if those two kill each other.” Irving chewed slowly, and his breath came out peppermint scented.
“Do they hate one another that much?”
“And then some. Folks need to learn to let go. You live longer that way.” Shipman was an ordinary looking fellow about Karl and Floyd’s age, with slightly sunken cheeks, a pale complexion and dark brown hair, graying at the temples. His eyes were medium brown. His suit matched his eyes.
He picked up his box of gum and tipped another onto his tongue. “Have you ever seen two male robins fighting?”
I shook my head in the negative.
“Robins can be quite ferocious. They will do anything, stop at nothing, to defend their territory.”
A man in a security uniform stepped into the fray, separating JJ Fuller and Ilsa Skoglund. JJ threw up his hands and stomped off.
Ilsa stayed behind, chatting with the anxious-looking security man. “Poor guy. The security man, I mean. I’m sure he didn’t expect to have to worry about anything more than ruffled feathers and double-parked cars when he signed on to work a birding festival.”
“I’ve seen that pair arguing at more of these birding festivals than you can imagine, young lady. It will never end.”
“Unless they really do kill each other,” I joked.
“Birders don’t kill one another.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“They do far worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“They set out to destroy their nemesis’s reputation.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“I’ve said enough.”
“I understand.”
Fuller was now chatting, a bit more civilly, or so it seemed, with another woman, a short black-haired woman in denim jeans and a red scoop-neck sweater. The two had settled at a small round table near an empty booth. “You seem to know all the players. Who is that woman that is with Fuller now?”
“JJ’s wife, Lorna.”
Lorna reached across the table and slapped her husband on the cheek.
“That was no love tap.” I turned around to hear Irving Shipman’s thoughts on the matter but he had moved a few steps away and was talking to Maury.
I nodded goodbye and resumed my hunt for my missing, self-proclaimed assistant manager.
I swung through the main entrance doors. The sun had broken through the morning clouds. A small flock of chimney swifts were enjoying the pleasant weather. There was no sign of Esther. I had been gone nearly an hour. Hopefully, Floyd had found Esther and I would find both of them waiting for me back at our booth along with the rest of my motley crew.
I decided to stop by Phoebe’s office to ask if she’d seen Esther. As I started down the hall, a nondescript man in a dark suit turned the far corner.
The door to Phoebe’s office was open so I went right in. The woman Irving had identified as JJ’s wife was leaning over Phoebe’s desk with her hand in a drawer on the right side. She straightened and slid the drawer shut with her knee.
“Can I help you?” she demanded.
“No.” The small office contained two desks. The other sat laterally to Phoebe’s. I hadn’t seen anyone using it but it was piled with papers and folders. A jug water cooler stood in the corner near a door in the back.
“Then you’ll excuse me.” She hurried out in a cloud of perfume. I heard a cough and whipped my head around in time to see the back of Esther’s head as she scurried up the hallway.
“Esther.” I ran out the door. Esther was several yards away. “Esther!”
Esther turned in surprise. “Amy?” She squinted my way. “Here you are.”
“Here I am?” I placed my hand firmly on Esther’s upper arm to keep her from disappearing once again. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where have you been?”
Esther’s lips twisted into a deep frown. “Follow me.” She turned and headed the way she had come.
I hurried after her. “Really, Esther. Everybody is waiting for us. It’s time to leave.”
“Not now,” Esther said sternly. She kept marching.
“Come on, Esther.” How could she walk so fast? I was half her age and struggling to match her stride. “Can’t this wait?”
“Nope. Trust me. It can’t.”
“You’re acting very strange,” I huffed, holding my purse against my side to keep it from flopping against my ribs. “Even for you.”
Esther jammed on the brakes and I slammed into her backside.
“Ouch.” I rubbed my chin. “Be careful.”
Esther eyeballed me. “You want strange?”
I couldn’t come up with any better response, so I furrowed my brow.
What I wanted was a comfortable seat in a romantic restaurant overlooking the river. What I wanted was good food and a stiff drink.
“I’ll give you strange.” She spun around and resumed her walking.
“Where are we going?” I whispered as we passed an open office door through which I saw several figures seated at computer desks.
“Hold your horseflies. We’re almost there.”
I hoped so because I had no idea where we were. The Expo Center was humungous. I was hungry and I hadn’t gotten much sleep. Esther’s snoring and insisting on setting the thermostat to eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit had seen to that.
We came to a stop at a three-way intersection. Esther looked left then right. Maury jogged down the corridor to the right, keys jangling as they slapped against his hip.
How had he gotten there so quickly?
“I thought this was supposed to be a birding expo not a speed walkers convention.”
“What are you talking about? Come on. This way.” Esther motioned for me to follow her and took the hall to the left.
Several yards further, Esther mercifully came to a stop down a short empty hallway. There were several unremarkable doors, two on the right, one on the left. The corridor dead ended at a blank white wall just beyond
the left-hand door. An overhead fluorescent light flickered on and off.
Esther held up her finger to indicate I shouldn’t make a sound.
There had been no need. I was at a loss for words. Esther had always been puzzling to say the least. Now I wondered if she had completely lost her mind.
Esther placed her hand on the doorknob of a door marked Private, and turned it slowly. She stuck her nose in for a second then beckoned me to follow her as she slipped inside.
Stunned but more than a little curious, I did what every good horror film victim learns too late, if it seems like a scary bad idea…don’t do it.
Unfortunately, instead of listening to those hushed, frightened voices in the audience urging me not to do it but rather to turn and run, I listened to Esther’s impatient voice as she whispered harshly, “Get in here, Amy. Be quick. And shut the door behind you.”
“This better be good.”
“It’s not,” was Esther’s ominous reply.
I tiptoed in and shut the door. Would they kick us out if they caught us sneaking around unauthorized? Would I get my money back for the booth?
The small room contained a small green sofa with sagging cushions, a mini fridge, a microwave and a wooden table holding several bottles of hard liquor and wine. There was a window covered with a metal blind behind the sofa. Light slanted through the blind over the sofa and onto the industrial carpet. An empty glass and a bottle of Grey Goose lay on the floor.
“You brought me here to see this hovel?” The claustrophobic room reeked of alcohol and sweat. I turned to leave.
“Not so fast.” Esther moved to a small door and pushed it open. “I brought you here to see this.”
I was presented with a partial view of a white porcelain bathroom sink. “A bathroom? Really, Esther. This is a complete waste of both our time.”
Esther beckoned me closer with her finger.
I decided to take a look, if only to humor her before having her committed to an institution. This was Philadelphia. There had to be at least one mental hospital in the area with a vacancy.
JJ Fuller sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his knee against the toilet bowl.
“Please tell me he’s passed out drunk.”
Esther waited a beat before replying. “He’s passed out dead is what he is.”
Peeking further, eyes adjusting to the dark, my heart froze in my chest. “Are—are you sure?” Fuller’s slack face fell to his chest. His clothing was rumpled. His eyes were hidden by the visor of his ball cap.
“He’s got no pulse.”
“Heart attack?” Please let it be a heart attack.
Esther shook her head side to side.
“Stroke?” Please please please let it be a stroke.
“My guess is that, first off, somebody clobbered him.”
“Clobbered?” As in bludgeoned? As in murdered?
Esther flipped on the bathroom light. “It seems to me he got his head caved in by that pair of binoculars.”
I peeked over Esther’s shoulder. A pair of binoculars lay at JJ Fuller’s side. The strap was broken at one end.
“Maybe he slipped and hit his head.”
Esther turned off the light with the side of her finger. I didn’t object. I’d seen too much already.
“And maybe I’m the tooth fairy.”
I shuttered my eyes. I knew what tooth fairies looked like, at least in my imagination, and the woman before me was not it. I knew what a dead body looked like too, including ones who had met violent ends. The body in the bathroom was a perfect match.
“Besides,” Esther’s words seem to be coming at me from deep inside a tunnel with no end, “I don’t think that’s what killed him. Either the killer clobbered him first to incapacitate him and then slashed his neck or vice versa.”
Esther turned her cold, hard eyes on me. “But what would be the point of clobbering a guy you’ve already killed?”
“Slashed his neck? Are—are you sure?”
“You want me to turn the light on again?”
“No!” I gasped.
JJ Fuller had been murdered.
As ironic as it sounded, it seemed I had another dead body to add to my life list.
4
I yanked the bathroom door shut and leaned against it.
To keep a vengeful spirit from getting out? Maybe.
Think, Amy. Think.
Okay, JJ Fuller was dead. Murdered.
My heart was slamming against my chest. Esther was stooped over, moving around the room like a northern bobwhite sniffing out a beetle.
I was stuck in a room with a dead man and a crazy woman. I should be home in Ruby Lake, selling birdseed to little old ladies who wore dainty white lace-trimmed gloves when they refilled their bird feeders after church on Sundays.
Finally, Esther straightened her spine, then her apron. “I don’t see anything else.”
I had no idea what she meant. What was she looking for? A second dead body? And would finding it have been a good or a bad thing?
I was chilled to the bone. I’d plunged into an ice-covered lake. Murder Lake. I vigorously rubbed my hands up and down my arms. “I feel like my body temperature has dropped twenty degrees since I stepped in here, Esther. More precisely, since you showed me JJ Fuller. Or what’s left of him.”
“We know why and we know where.” Esther picked up the drinking glass from the floor with the sides of her fingers pressed to the inside of the rim. She sniffed.
“I understand that we know where. But we can’t possibly know why.”
“Sure we can,” snapped Esther, carefully returning the glass to the ground where she’d found it. “The man was an arrogant pain in the patooty.”
I frowned. “I’m not sure being a pain in the patooty qualifies as a reason to murder a man.”
Esther seemed to consider my words. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Trust me,” I said. “It’s not. I think we—”
“Hold on.” Esther dropped slowly to her knees. “What’s this?” She dropped down in front of the sofa.
I watched as Esther bent her nose to the carpet. “What is it?”
“Have you got a pair of tweezers?”
“A pair of tweezers?”
“Yeah. A pair of tweezers. In that capacious purse of yours.”
“I—I don’t think so.” I began rummaging through my purse although I didn’t know why I was humoring her. “This is crazy.”
I dug all the way to the bottom of my bag and came up empty. “Sorry. No tweezers.” Good thing. If I’d had a pair, I might have plucked my eyeballs out in an effort to expunge the ghastly sight I had seen.
Esther’s eyes darted around the room. “Never mind. Hand me one of those flyers over there.”
I turned to see where she was pointing.
“And be careful not to touch anything you don’t have to.”
I took two steps left to a stack of flyers lying atop an open cardboard box. The glossy full-color flyers advertised an upcoming coin show to be held at the Expo Center. I peeled off the top flyer and handed it to her. “Have you been drinking?”
Ignoring me, Esther slid the sheet under the sofa and moved it around.
“What on earth are you doing, Esther? Need I remind you? There’s a dead man in the bathroom. We need to call the police, not be foraging around under a sofa.” I lifted my cellphone.
“Not yet.” Esther cursed, jiggled the paper, cursed some more and moved her hand slowly. A moment later, something whitish popped into view atop the flyer.
It was the white tip of a quill.
Moving delicately, Esther slid the paper back from beneath the sofa. A long, delicate feather lay atop the paper.
“Is that a feather?” I stepped around the table and angled for a closer look at the blackis
h-brown barred specimen. It appeared to be a tail feather. What I could see of the underside appeared white. “That looks like an osprey feather.”
Esther let go of the flyer and fell back on her heels. “I was afraid of this. Oh, they are good. Real good.”
“Who’s good? Afraid of what? What does an osprey feather have to do with anything and how did it end up under the sofa?”
Esther lofted the feather gently, holding the quill in her pinched fingers. “This changes everything.” It revolved slowly around as she manipulated it.
I was dumbstruck. What was going on with Esther and that feather? She appeared mesmerized.
The corner of Esther’s mouth turned down. Far down. “I told you Philadelphia was a bad idea, Simms.” She shook her head. “I said I don’t do Philly. Didn’t I say I don’t do Philly?” She jammed the feather behind her left ear.
“You said you don’t do Philly,” I replied woodenly. Why, oh why hadn’t I listened? I could be home in Ruby Lake selling bird feeders and mason bee houses. Enjoying the birds and the friendly faces that visited my store. Lying in bed with the sheet pulled up to my nose.
My big ideas had gotten me into a big mess. I was far from home at the American Birding Expo in Philadelphia, a town I didn’t know at all, up to my neck in bird poop.
“I need another look.” Before I could object, Esther threw open the bathroom door and hit the light switch.
Like a moth to the flame, I followed.
For the first time, I saw the knife in the open toilet bowl.
Esther moved closer to the body, straddling her legs over it. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
“What do you mean here’s what we’re going to do? What we are going to do is call the police and security and Phoebe Gates and—”
“Get a hold of yourself, Amy.” Esther pinched my left triceps.
“Ouch.” I rubbed the underside of my arm. “That hurt.”
“Sorry.”
I didn’t believe her for a minute.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way we could move him?”