“No, I mean it’s a name a human has given her. She probably has some other sort of identification in the avian world.”
“We’re quite species-centric when it comes to these things, Rudley,” said Norman. “For all we know, our avian friends have symbols to identify one another as individuals that our small unimaginative brains can’t comprehend.”
“Speak for yourself, Norman.” Rudley turned to Lloyd. “I want you to go into town and get a birdcage big enough for that parrot. We need to capture her and hand her over to the authorities.”
“She won’t like a cage.”
“Then get whatever you need to build something fancy, something she might like.”
Cerise rolled her eyes.
“I saw that,” said Rudley. “Take her with you,” he told Lloyd.
Cerise made a show of holding her nose.
“Go,” Rudley hissed. “If you want your allowance.”
Cerise reluctantly followed Lloyd.
“She’s a rather spirited young woman,” said Norman.
Geraldine sniffed. “I find her rude and not particularly kind. I don’t see what Detective Creighton sees in her.”
“Who knows what anyone sees in anyone,” Norman observed. “These things are very idiosyncratic, Geraldine.”
True, thought Rudley, because I don’t know what either of you see in each other. Apart from this infernal birdwatching.
“Yourself excepted,” Norman continued, turning to Geraldine.
She gave him a pat on the cheek, “Why, Norman, that’s very sweet.”
He grinned.
“Well, we’re off to lunch,” said Geraldine.
As Geraldine turned away, Rudley said. “Good recovery, Norman.”
“You might try a bit of that sort of tact and charm with Mrs. Rudley. That way she wouldn’t be so annoyed with you at times.” He hurried after Geraldine, leaving Rudley spluttering.
If I tried such nonsense on Margaret, she’d be appalled, he thought. Margaret appreciates the fact that I’m straightforward, not given to empty words or gestures. She knows I think she’s the most beautiful, talented woman in the world. I don’t have to come up with platitudes every few minutes. She knows what I’m thinking.
Frankes got the items on Tibor’s list. The list did not include several chocolate bars, but so what? He was bored and when he was bored he found a few Cadbury bars just what the doctor ordered.
He was leaving the store when his eyes spotted something so unbelievable he had to squint. He hefted the grocery bag up to cover the lower part of his face and bent his head as if checking the bag’s contents.
He saw Cerise emerge from the hardware store across the street with a lanky young man and get into the passenger’s side of a half-ton truck. She didn’t look Frankes’s way. The young man placed what seemed to be wire and a paper bag into the bed of the truck. Then he climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Frankes peered at the writing on the side of the truck. The something Inn. He strained to see the rest of the inscription but a car passed between himself and the truck. He waited until the truck had disappeared, then hurried down to the dock. He got into the motorboat and set off to the island. He grinned. He couldn’t wait to tell Tibor the news.
Rudley was hopping mad, his anger unmitigated by the exertion of poling his way down the lawn to the deep pit Chief Longbow was busy digging.
“Now see here,” he demanded. “What do you think you’re doing to my lawn?”
“I thought we had agreed it was my lawn, Mr. Rudley.” The chief smiled.
“We agreed to disagree,” Rudley bellowed. “We’ve let you stay out of the kindness of my wife’s heart. We never imagined you would sully this land by digging a pit in the middle of it.”
“It’s hardly a pit, Mr. Rudley. I simply wanted a deeper arrangement for my bonfire.”
“What bonfire?”
“The one I plan to have tonight. I want to make sure there’s little risk of it spreading.”
“I suppose this has to do with some sort of ritual.”
“No, it has to do with me feeling a little chilly at night. I’m not a spring chicken.”
“Do you realize how much work we do to keep this lawn in order?”
“Quite a bit, I imagine.”
“Chief Whatever,” Rudley said through clenched teeth, “I will be coming down here tomorrow morning. When I arrive here, I want to find that gulley filled in and suitably prepared for sodding. Then I’m going to call the police and you have no idea how it pains me to do that. But I have had it. You have taken advantage of my good nature for the last time. You will be out of here tomorrow or else.”
“Or else?”
“You don’t want to think about it.”
“Now, that’s rather harsh, Rudley,” said a voice behind him. Rudley turned to find James Bole.
“I’m a patient man,” Rudley protested as Mr. Bole urged him away. “But look at what he’s done to my lawn.”
“Lloyd will have it looking like new the minute he can get at it.”
“That man is incorrigible.”
“I find him rather charming, actually. Perhaps he’s trying to make a point.” Mr. Bole paused. “Or he may simply enjoy giving you a hard time — since you’ve been so unfailingly cordial.”
“Why doesn’t anyone ever take my side?”
Mr. Bole patted him on the back. “You have broad shoulders, Rudley. Providence never sends more than one can bear.”
“Damn Providence! Why don’t I just give each of the guests a spade? They can dig the whole place up.”
“That might prove to be an interesting recreation. Perhaps I could top up the event by doing a puppet show. Perhaps All Quiet on the Western Front. The muddy, desolate terrain, the great craters.”
“I get it.”
“Now, come up to the inn. Mrs. Rudley will make you a cup of tea. Tim will serve it at your desk with a scone. I hear Gregoire has made some with blueberries that are very nice.”
Rudley took a step forward, lurching as one crutch came down on the end of his elastic bandage, which had come loose and was trailing on the ground.
Mr. Bole put out an arm to keep him from falling. “Hold on a minute, Rudley. We have to do up your bandage.” He knelt and rewrapped the bandage. “You seem to have lost your bandage clips.”
“Those damn things are always falling out,” Rudley muttered.
“I’ll just tie it around until we get back inside,” Mr. Bole said patiently. He gave Rudley an encouraging smile. “There, everything is, as they say, hunky-dory.”
“Nothing will be hunky-dory until that man is gone!”
Tibor listened to Frankes’s story, the muscles in his jaw working. “Are you sure it was her?”
Frankes hesitated. “It looked like her. She got into the other side of the truck. I had to keep my head down.”
“Which way did they go?”
“Straight out of town. Headed west.”
“Get that map of the lake.”
“What for?”
“It should have the inns marked on it. If it doesn’t, then get the phone book. Bring both of them.”
Frankes returned a few moments later with the items. Tibor grabbed the map and scanned it, his eyes darting over the page. “There,” he said finally. “There’s three inns on that side of town.”
“Doesn’t look too far.”
“You said she was with a guy and they were getting stuff from the hardware store.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s probably not a guest then. Maybe she latched onto that guy you saw her with. That would be her style.”
“She never tried to latch onto me.”
“That’s because you don’t have anything she wants.”
Frankes laughed. “So I guess she wouldn�
�t have anything to do with you, either.”
“She’s a con artist. They could have coined the word for her.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Tibor folded the map and threw it at Frankes. “We’ll take the boat out around those inns, see if we can spot her.”
Chapter Sixteen
Brisbois and Creighton left Cerise and Mary to talk and walked along the shore at his cottage, wandered out onto the dock. Brisbois glanced back at the cottage, then lit up a cigarette.
“I guess Mary’s not too crazy about that.” Creighton indicated the cigarette.
“No.”
“Think maybe it’s time to stop?”
“It’s always time to stop.” Brisbois took a deep drag. “She’s a little more sensitive to it because I’m on vacation so I’m around more. Usually I do most of my smoking at work.”
“I’m glad I never started,” said Creighton. “I can thank my mother for that.”
“Among other things.”
“Yeah, I would have turned out to be a bum if it weren’t for that woman.”
Brisbois smiled. “You really admire your mother, don’t you?”
“Sure, don’t you admire yours?”
Brisbois blew a series of smoke rings before replying. “Of course. But I think that’s one of your problems, Creighton. Your mother spoiled you for any other woman.”
Creighton shrugged. “I guess she set the standard.”
“So why don’t you date someone like your mother?”
“Please, I don’t want to be nagged to death the rest of my life.”
“All of these women you’ve gone out with and I think Sherry’s the only one I’ve seen more than once.”
“Is this going to be one of those ‘marriage would be so good for you’ conversations?” He poked Brisbois in the arm. “You’re as bad as my mother.”
“It’s not that.” He gave Creighton an assessing gaze. “I just wondered what was going on with this girl.”
“Not much. Mostly dinner and shopping.”
“Is she making any progress in getting together her identification papers?”
Creighton cast his eyes over the lake. “She’s done all she can for now. It’ll probably be another couple of weeks before much happens. She doesn’t have any family who can help.”
“Are the Rudleys paying her?”
“They’re giving her room and board and a little spending money.”
“What does she do out there?”
“She can’t work in the kitchen or dining room because of public health requirements. She helps out Lloyd mostly. Tiffany a bit. Although” — he added — “Tiffany doesn’t seem to like her that much.”
“I’m not surprised. Tiffany’s been head of her piece of the kingdom for a long time. She probably finds it hard to work with someone, especially someone as” — he paused — “as forceful as Sherry.”
“Forceful? You think she’s forceful?”
“A T. Rex would think she was forceful.”
Creighton laughed.
“She doesn’t mind telling you where to go either, I’ve noted.”
“I guess that’s part of her charm.”
“What does she do for a living?”
“She’s kind of a flower child,” Creighton replied. “It seems she mostly likes to travel. Works her way around as a caregiver or housekeeper.” He watched as Brisbois snuffed out his cigarette. “I think she had kind of a bad childhood. She hints she spent time in an orphanage. I think that’s why she’s so antsy and kind of scatterbrained at times.”
Brisbois sighed. “I can see that.” He thought of some of the kids he’d met when he was assigned to the youth division. Maybe she’d been on the street and learned to live by her wits. He’d met those sorts of girls before. He glanced at Creighton. Some of those girls could tug at your heartstrings and string you along at the same time. He hoped this wasn’t the case with Creighton because, as blasé as he tried to be, he appeared to be getting seriously attached to this girl.
Gregoire came to the front desk accompanied by Tim, who was trying hard to keep a straight face. “You must do something about Betty,” he told Rudley.
Rudley crossed his eyes. He was waiting for Lloyd to finish the humane trap, though Lloyd seemed to be dragging his feet. Meanwhile, the Phipps-Walkers were urging him to do something before the poor bird was eaten by a raptor, though Rudley was finding this a less disturbing idea. Betty, or whatever her avian name was, kept calling him names whenever he put his nose out the door. His suspicions were growing that some of the guests and staff — he gave Tim a suspicious look — were teaching her new ones.
“She has tried to poke a hole in the screens so she can get into the kitchen,” said Gregoire. “And then she almost flew in this morning when Lloyd opened the door. I cannot have her come into the kitchen. We would have to clean it with chlorine and throw all the food out.”
“That drastic?” Rudley muttered.
“Birds carry viruses.”
“She called him fat,” said Tim with a smirk. “She said as clear as a bell ‘Gregoire is fat.’”
“And I have been generous with her,” said Gregoire.
“He saves her the worst parts of the fruit. Things that normally go into the composter,” said Tim. “That’s why she’s insulting him.”
“Ingrate,” Gregoire muttered.
Rudley held up his hands in surrender. “Enough.” He lurched over the desk and bellowed, “Lloyd!”
Lloyd appeared from the drawing room. “You was calling?”
“I was calling.” Rudley tottered back on his crutches. “Now, Lloyd, I want that parrot trap finished and sitting on this desk in one hour.”
“Mrs. Rudley wants me to hang the pictures in the drawing room.”
“I don’t give a damn what Mrs. Rudley wants.” Rudley took a quick look around to make sure Mrs. Rudley had not heard him. “On this desk in one hour,” he repeated. “Or we’ll have to fumigate the kitchen. And that,” he added on a note of triumph, “means no pie.”
Lloyd grinned. “You can have it in an hour.”
After trolling around the lake for four days, armed with binoculars, Tibor and Frankes finally caught sight of Cerise as she crossed the lawn at the Pleasant Inn early one morning.
“So,” said Tibor with satisfaction, “we know where she’s staying.” He flipped open one of the brochures Frankes had picked up in Middleton. He traced a finger along the map of the grounds. “That’s the bunkhouse.”
“So she probably isn’t the only one who lives there.”
“We’ll go there early in the morning, hide out, and the minute we see her, we’ll grab her.” He nodded toward the boathouse. “That looks like the perfect place to get in without being seen and get out fast.”
“But what if somebody sees us?”
“We’ll just have to make sure there’s nobody else around.” Tibor lowered his binoculars. “If it doesn’t look good the first time, we’ll abort the mission and try again.”
Frankes laughed. “Now we’re going into space.”
Tibor shot him an angry look. “Just shut up and pull in the anchor. We’ve got to get back before the old man freaks on us and starts trying to use the phone.”
“Yeah, it was a good idea to take that out,” said Frankes.
“He’s getting a little too edgy.”
Tibor scanned the shoreline and raised a hand. He and Frankes were fifty yards offshore, directly in line with the entrance to the Pleasant Inn’s boathouse. “Cut the motor,” he growled at Frankes. “We’ll paddle in from here.”
Frankes did as told, squinting into the darkness. “How do you know we’re in the right place?”
Tibor counted to ten before he spoke. Frankes had developed cold feet once he announced that tonight was the night for O
peration Cerise. He was tired of Frankes’s what ifs — what if this or that happens, what if we get caught — and any number of tedious questions that showed Frankes was losing his nerve now that the mission to nab Cerise had turned from theory to reality. “Do you see that light?” he asked, pointing to a blinking red light to the right.
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s the light at the end of the dock. The boathouse is approximately thirty yards to the left of the dock.”
“Oh,” Frankes said uncertainly. He pushed a hand into his wetsuit and gave his chest a vigorous scratch. “This thing is itchy.”
“I don’t know why you’re wearing that,” Tibor groused. He was wearing a black pullover and jeans himself.
“The water here’s cold and slimy.”
“You won’t be going in the water.”
“Yeah,” Frankes mumbled, “but if anybody has to, it’s going to be me.”
Tibor picked up a paddle. “Let’s do this.”
They paddled toward the boathouse. The night was dark, the moon a pale shadow behind shifting clouds.
They eased the boat into the boathouse. Tibor threw out a rope, the loop finding a mooring post. Tibor hoisted himself out onto the broad apron. Frankes followed. Tibor shone the flashlight around, noting two doors, one on each side, and a small window over a storage chest. “We’ll take that door,” he decided, indicating the one to his left.
“Why?”
“Because it’s further away from the main house,” Tibor hissed.
“What time is it?” Frankes asked.
Tibor shone the flashlight on his watch. “Twenty to three.” He pushed open the door and looked around, noting with satisfaction the faint glow of the decorative solar lamps along the pathway to the bunkhouse. He tucked his flashlight into his pocket and beckoned to Frankes. “Come on.”
They approached the bunkhouse and crept around the side toward the front door. Tibor stopped and held up a hand. Frankes, following closely, stumbled into him.
“Careful,” Tibor whispered. He eased up to the end of the wall, poked his head around, then withdrew quickly. “Damn.”
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