Die, Die Birdie

by J. R. Ripley

  Divide and conquer. Like a pair of American white pelicans herding an unsuspecting school of bluefish into the shallows for easy hunting.

  Maybe we could use the same strategy to catch a killer.

  Speaking of fish, I had a bigger fish to fry at the moment. And her name was Esther Pilaster. I wanted to know why she’d practically thrown me to the wolves, first denying that she’d seen me drive home the night of the murder, but then insisting on practically shouting to anybody who would listen that she’d seen me murder the guy.

  * * *

  At home, I climbed the stairs, tired and angry, sustaining myself with the knowledge that Esther’s lease would one day come to an end. As I pounded up each step, I couldn’t help thinking how happy I’d be when that day arrived.

  The last owner of the house had lived on the top floor like me and had operated a pet shop downstairs. The pet store had failed, or so I’d been told. Maybe the shop’s owner had simply grown weary of having Esther the Pester as a neighbor.

  Esther had signed her lease with Gertie Hammer and there was no breaking it—at least not without spending a bundle on lawyers. A bundle I didn’t have. So what I had was an impossible tenant. I smiled. She’d be out on her keister the day her lease expired. I’d even help her pack.

  I knocked on Esther the Pester’s door harder than necessary. Okay, I banged. Hard. I’d pay for it later with bruised knuckles, but right now it felt good.

  “What do you want?” Esther glared up at me, a butter-yellow housecoat cinched tightly around her waist, fuzzy peach slippers on her feet. Her hair was up in big black curlers. Why hadn’t I noticed earlier how much like Edna Turnblad from Hairspray the woman looked? Albeit a shorter, older, lumpier version of a dragged-up Harvey Fierstein from the original Broadway production, but still, even that distinctive voice of his was similar to Esther’s.

  Maybe if I asked her, she’d break out into a chorus of “You Can’t Stop the Beat.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the police that you saw me arrive home the night Matt was killed?” I planted my hands on my hips and returned her glare. Two could play that game. “You could have helped my alibi.”

  “Because I didn’t.” She pulled her collar tight.

  I pulled a face. “Of course you did.”

  “Did not.”

  “I saw you.”

  “Impossible. I was watching the Hallmark Channel. Only came out of my room when I thought I heard someone prowling around.” She smiled an evil smile. “And that someone was you.” How could that smile suddenly look even more evil? “Holding the murder weapon in your hands, if I remember correctly.” She tilted her head back. Taking me in or sizing me up? “And I do.”

  I took a deep breath. “Ms. Pilaster, it is certainly not impossible. In fact”—I dug my fists deeper into my hip bones to keep from even considering punching the old woman in the nose—“it is entirely possible. Because. I. Saw. You.” I had to remove a hand from my hip to point my finger at her nose, but it was worth it.

  “Did not.” The door started closing in my face.

  I stuck my foot out and slipped inside.

  “Hey, you can’t come in here!”

  I sniffed tentatively, then, catching a whiff of what I was certain was nicotine, sniffed once more, taking a deep, long breath through my nostrils—a tactic designed to ferret out the truth. I whirled on her. “Have you been smoking?”

  I narrowed my eyes and watched her face for telltale signs—of what, I didn’t know. I was sure there were dead giveaways when it came to lying, I just didn’t know what they were. If I did, I’d have known that my boyfriend of six years had been cheating on me far sooner than I had. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice . . . well, I’ll have an excuse to break your lease.

  I wiped the sweat that had formed across my brow. The Pester kept the room warm as a Swedish sauna. Oh well, not my problem. She was responsible for her own electric bill.

  I marched to the kitchen in search of an open ashtray. Nothing. A few dirty dishes in the sink and even on the tile floor, for heaven’s sake. An ancient dish towel was hanging from the oven handle. An open can of Dinty Moore beef stew sat on the small kitchen table next to a bag of baby carrots. I must have interrupted the woman’s dinner.

  I walked quickly to the living room before she could bury the evidence of smoking that I knew I’d find. Smoking is definitely not allowed in the house. Especially by septuagenarians who might fall asleep watching Wheel with a lit Pall Mall wedged between their lips.

  Nothing. An empty saucer and matching cup, down to the matching chips on their lips, rested on the coffee table. I felt a tickle in the nose and rubbed my nostrils with the back of my fingers. “Achoo!” I looked accusingly at Esther, who was standing near the window, her hand on the ledge.

  “Looks like more rain,” she said idly.

  “Do you have—achoo!”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. What can I say? Convention forced me. “Do you have a-a—” I sneezed three times in quick succession. Loud and hard. Esther thrust a lotioned tissue at me. I wiped my nose. “Are you keeping a cat in this apartment?” I narrowed my eyes at her.

  “’Course not.” Esther pulled at the sleeves of her robe. “It’s against the rules.”

  I chewed my lip. “Yes. It is.” I tapped my foot on the worn carpet as she matched my stare. I headed for her bedroom.

  “Hey, you can’t go in there!”

  “Watch me!” I pushed open the bedroom door and stepped inside. It smelled like old lady. Probably douses herself in Chanel 1 Million BC. The bed was unmade and the mattress sagged. The grip end of a baseball bat was sticking out from under the bed. I saw it, but I didn’t want to know what it was doing there. Maybe she played third base for the Dodgers during the season.

  The dresser was shoved beneath the front window, its matching mirror leaning on the floor in the corner. “How many windows do you have in front?”

  “One.” She looked puzzled. Big deal. So was I.

  I pressed my face against the window and looked toward the street. The glass was cold against my forehead. I left the bedroom and stared at a wall in the living space where I thought there’d be another window, or maybe part of a bigger room. Rats. Esther couldn’t have seen me the other night. Her bedroom window was in the corner of the house. I’d seen her, or who I mistakenly thought was her, at the next window, toward the middle.

  But that window belonged to the empty apartment next door. I wasn’t about to admit any of this to Esther the Pester. I’d never hear the end of it.

  I sneezed once more and headed for the front door. I waved off Esther the Pester’s offer of a fresh tissue. At the threshold, I waved my finger at her. “No pets and no smoking!”

  “Next time get a warrant!” I heard Esther yell as she slammed her door shut behind me, turned the key in the lock, and pulled the chain.

  Out in the dim hallway, I stared at Esther’s door for a moment, then walked down the hall to the apartment next door. Maybe Esther had seen me. Maybe she’d been in the unoccupied unit and hadn’t wanted to admit that she’d been somewhere she didn’t belong.

  I jiggled the handle. Locked. But that didn’t mean anything. Except that it wasn’t likely that Esther could have gotten inside. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing and had only thought I’d seen someone. If I told Kim about this, she’d probably say I’d seen a ghost, a specter of some long-ago resident of the house who wandered room to room in search of peace.

  I shivered. Probably from the temperature difference my body had experienced going from Esther’s steam bath of an apartment to the relatively cool hallway. It had absolutely nothing to do with spirits.

  The apartment next to Esther’s was empty, and I’d been considering renting it out for some extra income. Maybe now the time had come. Better to have tenants than an empty, spook-inhabited space. Then again, I didn’t need another Esther. Maybe I could find a nice elderly nun or a solitary monk who’
d taken a vow of silence and enjoyed making fruitcakes in his spare time. I like fruitcake.

  The key was upstairs in my apartment in a drawer somewhere. Tomorrow I’d open the apartment up and have a look around.

  During the daylight.

  16

  Saturday went off without a hitch. Sort of.

  Lance Jennings, the reporter with the Ruby Lake Weekender, had shown up. I wasn’t surprised to see him. It was his job to cover such things around town as store openings, but I hadn’t expected him to get in my face about the murder.

  “Listen,” I said as he pigeonholed me in the corner near the coffeepot, “I’ve spent the week avoiding talking to the press about Matt Kowalski’s murder, so I’m not about to talk to you about it now.”

  “Don’t be like that, Ms. Simms,” wheedled the big man in the cheap black suit and white T-shirt. Lance is about forty years old and about forty pounds overweight. His wavy brown hair sweeps back over his round head. His hairline, like his welcome here at Birds & Bees, was receding. “People want to know this stuff.”

  I leveled a finger at his thick nose. “I paid to advertise to your readers about the store being open. If they want to hear about our products and specials, I’ll be glad to talk to you. If you want to talk”—I dropped my voice—“murder, you’ll have to do your talking someplace else.”

  Lance pouted and tapped his right foot. He reached for the camera he always seemed to have draped around his neck. “How about a picture of you?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Great.” He looked around the showroom. “How’s about we take one over near where you found Matt’s body?”

  I stomped away. There was no point trying to force the man to leave. He outweighed me by a ton. Besides, I needed to stay in the good graces of the press. I needed all the positive comments I could get. And his father owned the paper. “Do me a favor,” I said, sidling up to Kim.

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Go make nice with Lance Jennings.” Lance. I’d like to pop him like a bad boil.

  Kim pulled a face. “Oh, come on. Anything but that, Amy. Why?”

  “Because I might have been a little rough on the guy and we need all the goodwill we can get.”

  “Forget it.”

  I folded my arms. “You owe me.”

  “For what?” Kim huffed.

  “Please, let’s not even begin to go down that road.”

  Kim stuck her tongue out, then headed for Lance, who was busy taking shots of the children sitting around low tables near the front, scribbling in bird-themed coloring books. I’d picked up the slender books and a couple packs of crayons at one of those under-a-buck stores.

  A boy nudged me with his elbow. I looked down. He was holding a plastic bag. That plastic bag was filled with water. A two-inch goldfish hung suspended in the middle of the water. “Can I help you?”

  “I think he’s sick.” The boy extended his arm and the bag toward me.

  I bit my cheek. “How can you tell?”

  “He’s not moving as much as he used to.” The boy had a crewcut and wore heavy flannel-lined jeans, a Carolina Panthers sweatshirt, and a brown parka.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “I bought him here. Can’t you fix him?” His dark eyes beseeched me.

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “But this is a store for wild bird supplies, not fish.” I sighed. No reply. “I suppose you bought your fish here when this was a pet store?”

  He nodded. “Mr. Allen sold him to me.”

  “Follow me,” I said. I led him to the kiosk where I’d had a computer set up to assist customers with birding questions. I googled around for a bit. “How’s your water?”

  “Change it once a week.”

  I nodded and searched some more. “Here’s something.” I tapped the screen. “It says here that goldfish like variety in their food. What are you feeding this little guy?”

  The boy shrugged. “Flake food. Still got the big container that came with him.”

  I picked the plastic bag up off the counter and returned it to the boy. The fish seemed oblivious. “You should try another food. Maybe that will help.”

  A woman who’d been looking over my shoulder poked her finger at the fish. “The hardware store sells fish food.”

  “They do?”

  “They’ve got everything,” she gushed. “It’s practically a general store.” The boy disappeared, but she kept talking. “Frankly, I’m surprised to see that you’re open.”

  I tried not to let my displeasure at where she was leading show. She was a potential customer, after all. “You mean because of the murder.”

  “Murder?” Her eyes lit up like they were on fire. “No, I meant because of that big blue thing dangling from your roof.”

  “Big blue—”

  She nodded vigorously. “I thought maybe a tornado or something had damaged the building or that the whole shebang was going to be torn down.”

  “Excuse me.” I pressed past her and headed for the door. Outside, I looked up. Yikes!

  “What is that thing?”

  I turned. Kim had joined me. We both stared up at the roof. “Why didn’t you tell me that thing was up there?”

  “I didn’t know it was. I came in the back way, remember?” She craned her neck. “I didn’t notice it from back there.” She scrunched up her face. “Though it seems pretty hard to miss.”

  I nodded slowly. A ginormous blue tarp had been draped over the pitched roof, looking like a giant blue Morpho butterfly had veered horribly off course from Latin America, ended up in North Carolina, and landed on my roof.

  And died.

  I was heading back up the walkway to the door when the boom went off. My shoulders jerked reflexively and I ducked. A very large and very mad-looking peregrine falcon zoomed out the open door and took to the sky. Its long, sharp, blue-black wings flashed against the billowy white clouds overhead.

  His keeper, a nice young man named Roland Ibarra, came zooming after him and he didn’t look happy.

  I found Cash, my contractor, standing in the middle of the store, looking lost and apologetic. “Sorry about the noise, folks.” His hands were hidden in his pants pockets. “Just doing a little repair work on the roof.” He grinned. It wasn’t helping.

  “That bird pulled my hair!” shouted a young woman, clutching her frizzy red scalp.

  “He scared off Roscoe!” shouted a heavyset woman in an olive shirt and slacks, who must have been Roland’s assistant. He ran the Raptor Rescue Ranch near Morganton and had offered to come in and give a demonstration today.

  That might not be happening now. “I’m sure everything will be just fine,” I assured her. While Mom ran to assist the distraught redhead who’d had her hair rearranged by the equally distraught falcon, I turned to Cash Calderon and whispered, “What the devil was that racket?”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The men were unloading some supplies for the job. I didn’t mean to cause a commotion.” He pulled off his cap and scratched his head. “I didn’t realize you had such a to-do going on today.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I patted his arm. “I’m sure everything will be fine.” I figured if I kept repeating it, it would have to become true. “Why don’t you and your men get all that stuff down to the basement or up to the roof or wherever it is that it all has to go?” I pointed to the stack of lumber, nails, sheetrock, and myriad other building materials that had piled up on my sales floor.

  Roland threw open the front door. The lovebirds cooed madly. I covered my ears. I was tired of them already. “Quick, honey!” He pointed to a knapsack. “Grab Roscoe’s food and my handling gloves!”

  “Your bird attacked me!” cried the redhead. Mom had her hands full.

  The woman in olive green ripped open the pack and withdrew a pair of thick, arm-length black leather gloves. Honey? I guess she wasn’t only Roland’s assistant. She tossed him the gloves and they both hurried out of doors. Half my cust
omers went with them.

  I couldn’t blame them. That appeared to be where the big show was.

  I grabbed the contractor as he headed downstairs carrying some supplies. “How long is that thing going to be on my roof?”

  “The tarp?” I nodded. “Two-three days, tops. Gotta have the tarp to keep the rain out while we fix the roof. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I answered with a sigh. After all, I was sorry enough for the two of us.

  * * *

  “Maybe you should beg off?” Kim suggested later as we closed up shop.

  It had been a long, long day. We were both dead on our feet. No pun intended and apologies to Matt Kowalski. Mom had come in to help for a few hours, then retired early. She was going to be spending the next few nights at Aunt Betty’s house. We both thought it best what with all the construction going on around the place. Mom thought I should stay with Aunt Betty too, but I knew there really wasn’t room at my aunt’s house for the both of us. Besides, I felt better sticking around. Keeping an eye on the store.

  Kim and I had locked up, straightened and restocked the shelves, and sunk to the floor. We were leaning shoulder to shoulder against the front counter and peering out the windows. “No,” I said in response to Kim’s suggestion that I blow off my dinner with Aaron Maddley. It was a nice thought. Head upstairs, take a long bath, have a quick light meal, then sink into a year or two of oblivion. Okay, eight hours minimum. But I couldn’t do it. Dinner with Aaron, murder suspect and birdhouse crafter extraordinaire, awaited.

  I pushed myself up from the floor. “I can quiz him about his sister.”

  * * *

  The Lake House was crowded, but we had a reservation. Red velvet draperies hugged the windows designed to take advantage of the lake view. There were tables outdoors as well, but in this weather they’d been kept closed to dinner service. Even in the winter, barring rain, like we were experiencing now, diners could enjoy eating out on the deck if they so chose. Large propane-fueled heaters kept the area cozy despite the cold.