by Jan Dunlap
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
The jerk.
“Mr. Lenzen, I’m not a suspect in a murder case,” I reminded him. “You yourself confirmed to the detective that I was here at school.”
“Yes, I did.” He neatly recrossed his legs. “But I feel your presence here at this point will only fuel speculation and distraction for both our students and our staff until the case is closed.”
Until the case was closed. That left things pretty wide open, I’d say. What if the case was never solved? My leave of absence might turn terminal—or more accurately, it might turn into a termination. I’d lose my job.
Gee, thanks, but even despite lunchroom duty, I’d rather not.
On the other hand, maybe there was another way to think about this, I realized, and I shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth. Even though, at the moment, that horse was appearing more like an ass.
“I’m prepared to make some financial concessions,” Mr. Lenzen said, which was his way of saying I’d get some kind of pay during the absence, but not full salary. Knowing how he operated, I had no doubt he’d already checked the legalities and was maneuvering to get what he wanted—without leaving himself open to an even bigger public relations nightmare of employee litigation.
“I need to think this over,” I hedged. “Give me a moment here.”
I tipped my chair back and gazed at the water stain on my ceiling.
Did I mention my luxury office accommodations?
I mulled over the possibilities. If I took the leave, I’d have extra time to hunt the Boreal and an extended partly paid vacation. Not bad.
Of course, if I took the leave, I would be leaving my students adrift. What would Kim and Lindsay DO?
Finally, if I took the leave, I would, in effect, be giving Mr. Lenzen the last word.
Not if I could help it.
“Here’s what I’ll do,” I told him. “I’ll tie up some things tomorrow, then take a personal day on Thursday and Friday. No leave of absence. At least, not yet.”
What I didn’t add was that I’d head for Duluth and ask Knott to put the pressure on Mr. Lenzen to take me back by Monday in exchange for whatever assistance I could give him in his investigation. If I drove up on Thursday, I could pick up an extra night of owl hunting, too. Since I needed to use up the personal days anyway, using them to search for the Boreal sounded like a good idea.
And—big plus, here—Scary Stan wouldn’t even know I’d left town, because if he asked Lily, she’d tell him I’d said that I was leaving for Duluth on Friday after school. Which meant that on Thursday night, I’d have the forest all to myself.
Except for a Boreal Owl or two.
I hope.
Chapter Seven
I put my visit with Mr. Lenzen behind me—literally—as I headed for my board meeting in Minneapolis by way of the Bloomington Ferry Bridge, which spans the Minnesota River.
After being informed of my possible suspension, it was a much-needed shot in the arm to be out in the brilliant March afternoon—the kind of afternoon that promises spring will eventually return, even to frozen Minnesota. The sky was clear, and there were some stretches of open water in the river, just the kind of liquid streaks that attracted fishing birds.
I glanced up through the windshield. High above, soaring on thermals, two Bald Eagles gracefully scribed broad circles. One was mature, his head and tail blazing white against the bright blue sky. The other was immature, still showing brown feathers, but gliding just as majestically as its elder. Together, the birds spiraled in the sky above the river, their wings barely moving as they rode the currents bringing warmer air back to the valley.
As always, whenever I see Bald Eagles, I was transported back to the first time I saw one at Lake Pepin, on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Remembering how awe-struck I had been, I could feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.
I’d been about five years old, as I recall. It was a sub-zero day in January, and my mom had a bad case of cabin fever. She told my dad if we didn’t get out of the house for a while, she was going to lock herself in the closet and eat a hundred bags of Oreo cookies. I thought that sounded like fun, but I guess in her mind, it was a threat. She’d read some newspaper article about how Bald Eagles congregated around Lake Pepin in January because there was open water for them to fish and feed, and she thought it would be something interesting to see, as well as a preferable activity to gorging herself on Oreos.
Back then, Bald Eagles were still considered an endangered species. To further convince my dad to make the four-hour round-trip drive, she said she wanted us to see them in the wild before it was too late—something about her patriotic duty and American heritage and a legacy for her children. (At the time, I thought she said a leg for her children, and I couldn’t figure out what eagles had to do with my legs.) I think she said something about Dodo birds and Passenger Pigeons, too, but I couldn’t make any sense of that part either.
So she and my dad bundled up Lily and me in our little snowsuits (some things never change), and we drove for almost two hours to Lake Pepin. The sky was bright blue, and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. The snow was piled so high on the shoulders of the highway that it looked like we were driving through tunnels of ice, and the reflected glare of the sun off the snow made it hard to look out for very long. Lily and I played car bingo in the back seat, calling out trucks, horses, stop signs and trailers until we got into a fight about who saw a red barn first.
Looking back, I can’t imagine how a long car drive with two little kids fighting in the back seat was better than cabin fever for my mom, but I guess anything was a welcome change at that point.
Anyway, as we got closer to the lake and the road started rising up into the bluffs, my mom told everyone to start looking for eagles. Having only seen a picture of an eagle in my mom’s little bird guide, I wasn’t expecting much—just some long-winged birds circling over the water. Then, just before we got to the turn-off above the lake that my mom said was the best place for watching the eagles, my dad started seeing them.
“Oh, my gosh!” he yelled, startling everyone in the car, because my dad never raised his voice. “Look at all those eagles!”
He started pointing through the windshield, and I pushed my face against the car window, trying to see what all the excitement was about. What I got was a really cold cheek, thanks to the freezing glass.
But then my dad parked at the observation lookout, and we got out of the car, and there they were—scores of huge Bald Eagles soaring on thermals, diving to the water and plucking out fish. More were sitting in treetops along the lake. Their snow-white heads and tails caught the sun in a stunning contrast to their dark-brown bodies, and their massive wings beat slowly, powerfully, as they passed just yards above us. I held my breath in what I thought was awe (though it was probably because the air was so bitter cold it literally hurt to breathe, but I didn’t know that then), and I stood absolutely transfixed. I had never before seen anything like these eagles in my life—big, beautiful, flying wonders.
To a young boy, they were pure magic. I took one look at these wild, fantastic creatures, and it was all over for me.
Love at first flight, I guess you could say. Now, after all these years, and all the miles I’ve logged looking for every species in the state, birding was as natural to me as breathing.
And that reminded me of Luce bringing me scones, her breath on my cheek when she kissed me in the media center.
I loved Luce, too.
And not just because of her scones.
I drove over the bridge, and the eagles were gone, but I picked out a Red-tailed Hawk sitting on a utility cable near the highway. Below it, long yellow grasses lay matted with melting snow. The hawk dove down in predator mode, picked up a mouse for its dinner and flew off.
Talk about fast food.
Luckily, I had brought two of Luce’s scones to snack on while I drove downtown, so I wasn’t tempted to detour through an
y drive-through for an early dinner. I wanted to make good time and beat the worst of the traffic into town to give myself a chance to review the agenda before tonight’s meeting. As the newest member of the MOU board, I wasn’t sure yet what to expect of the evening, but I wanted to at least refresh my memory of the items that were on the table.
I was also hoping I could do a little research about Rahr, so I’d have something to offer Knott when I saw him again. If Rahr had had any enemies, I figured there was a good chance one of the longtime MOU board members would know about it, since Rahr had a long association with the group and had even received funding for his research from us for several years. Just because the state birding community was tight didn’t mean it didn’t have its share of squabbles.
As luck would have it, Jim Petersen was the first to arrive—after me, I mean—for the meeting. He pulled up a chair next to mine in the little downstairs conference room at the Bell Museum of Natural History on the University of Minnesota campus where the MOU is headquartered.
“Bob,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Good to see you. Beautiful day, isn’t it? Did you see anything on the way in to the city? I understand the Minnesota River’s got some open water.”
I told him about the eagles and the hawk and the Canvasback and the White-fronted Goose I’d seen yesterday. As a lifelong birder and one of the founding fathers of the Minnesota birding organization, Jim was rarely unaware of what birds were in town or passing through; at somewhere around seventy-eight years old, he’d seen species in the state that I’d give almost anything to get on my Minnesota list. We talked a little more about the weather and what migrants the southerly winds might bring. Then I asked him what he knew about Dr. Rahr.
“A tragedy,” he said, shaking his head. “What is this world coming to when a man can’t even be safe birding?”
Caught by the room’s overhead lights, the rim of white hair that ringed his balding head gleamed white; it suddenly struck me that Jim resembled the eagle I’d seen on my way to the meeting—not only did he have the white head, but he had golden eyes, a sharp nose and imposing height. If he fully extended his long thin arms, they’d make a wide, though perhaps spindly, wingspan.
I wondered if he ate a lot of fish.
“I met Andrew maybe ten years ago,” Jim explained. “I was working on putting together a birding guide for the Arrowhead region of Minnesota, and he was just starting to study the Boreal Owls. It was a passion for him, you know. He was teaching at the university and spending time in the woods on his own nickel, mapping out the owls’ range and breeding habits. Back then, MOU wasn’t funding any research, so this was really his labor of love.”
“Did he ever have any assistants with him that you know of?” I asked.
That was probably expecting a lot, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. Jim had a good memory. He could tell you about birders he knew fifty years ago. Whether or not he could remember the names of researchers—whether or not he even knew the names of any researchers—I had no idea.
“Or did Rahr ever complain about someone doing similar research with the owls or talk about colleagues trying to horn in on his work?”
Jim shut his eyes and rubbed his hand over his forehead, almost as if he were trying to massage a thought into the front of his consciousness. Would it work? If it did, I was going to patent the process and sell it to the parents of sophomore sloths everywhere. I’d make a million bucks. At least.
After a moment, his eyes popped open and focused sharply on me.
“I do remember something like that, Bob. It was probably after the first year we funded Andrew. Maybe four years ago, now. He had a grad student from the university working with him, and I remember he didn’t like the boy. I asked if he wanted us to include a stipend for the boy to work with him the next year, and he said no, he didn’t trust him to do the work. I got the impression the boy had a big head, like he thought he knew better than Andrew how to conduct the study. Kind of a prima donna, I guess.”
“Rahr was a prima donna?”
“Not Rahr, Bob. The boy.”
“Jim, how’ve you been?”
Dr. Phil Hovde walked into the room and reached out to shake Jim’s hand and then mine. “Bob, good to see you. Beautiful day, isn’t it? Saw on the list-serve that you got a White-fronted Goose and Canvasback yesterday.”
“Yup, I did,” I said. “Welcome back, Dr. Phil. You’re back a little early this spring, aren’t you?”
Dr. Phil, a retired orthopedic surgeon, and his wife, Myrna, are snowbirds. That means they migrate south every January and February to a condo in Florida, where they can soak up sunshine instead of taking turns shoveling snow. Tanned and fit, they both look younger than their seventy-odd years, and if it weren’t for the time I saw his silver toupee fly off on a windy afternoon we shared birding, I’d think that mop of hair on his head was his own. He was, however, a dedicated birder and enthusiastic board member, so I forgave him his annual winter abandonment, along with the hairpiece. He was also rolling in dough thanks to his former medical practice and a slew of lucrative private investments. When MOU finances had run especially low at the end of last year, he’d picked up the slack out of his own generous pockets.
“Just by a week or two,” he assured me. “Myrna was missing the grandkids pretty badly, and I needed to check on some business, so here we are.”
“We were talking about Andrew Rahr,” Jim told Dr. Phil. “Do you remember when he had that grad student working with him?”
“Sure do,” Dr. Phil said. “I offered to help fund another year for that assistant, but Andrew said no way. He thought the kid was undisciplined. Had a problem with authority. Like he didn’t want to put in the hard tedious work of the actual research, but just wanted to get to the finished product instead. No guts, all glory. I think Andrew was afraid the kid would jeopardize the study.”
Dr. Phil’s face suddenly blanched under his tan. “Oh, my gosh,” he said. “You don’t think that kid was involved in Andrew’s death, do you?”
I wondered why Dr. Phil made the same connection I’d considered. “Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because,” Dr. Phil said, “when Andrew turned down my offer for funding the kid to come back, I remember what he said because he was so vehement about it.”
“What did he say?”
Dr. Phil looked at me, then at Jim and back again at me.
“He said, ‘Over my dead body.’”
None of us said anything for a moment or two.
“That was four years ago,” Jim reminded us.
He was right. Four years was a long time.
Then again, I’d been chasing the Boreal for almost twenty.
Maybe four years wasn’t so long, after all.
“Do you remember the grad student’s name?” I asked.
Dr. Phil shook his head. I looked at Jim. He shook his head, too.
“Jim! Phil! Bob!”
Bill Washburn walked into the room accompanied by Anna Grieg. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Everyone shook hands. After a minute or two of weather talk, we all took seats at one end of the long conference table. Bill works for a utilities company, and Anna is a police officer out in one of the suburbs on the east side of St. Paul. Like me, they were relatively new to the MOU board. I guessed Bill was in his late fifties and Anna about ten years younger.
When I first started birding as a kid, most of the birders I met were between fifty and seventy years old. I was the odd duck who wasn’t even in his teens. Back then, birdwatching had the reputation of being a hobby mostly for senior citizens.
In the last few decades, however, that image has really been changing as more and more people have become interested in outdoor activities, environmental issues, and observing wildlife.
These days, birders come in all ages, shapes, and sizes. The increase in birdwatchers has, in turn, fueled all kinds of related businesses, including the bird stores springing up all over the place
now, special interest magazines, birding equipment catalog sales, novelty underwear, you name it. (All right, I confess—the only bird-themed underwear I’ve seen was on the sale rack at a local discounter. They were boxers, and the birds were flamingos. Glow-in-the-dark flamingos. I wonder if that would qualify for that one birder’s list of birds that woman saw while having … never mind. Where was I? Oh, yeah … the growth of a fabulous hobby.) As a result, birdwatching has gone mainstream—it isn’t just retirees hitting the birdseed anymore. In fact, it’s been the fastest growing outdoor activity in America for the last ten years.
And, until I found Dr. Rahr’s body last weekend, I thought it was probably the safest outdoor activity.
Now, I wasn’t so sure.
Dr. Phil got the meeting underway. We ran through the minutes from the last meeting, approved them and moved on to tonight’s agenda. Anna presented suggestions for alternate ways to collect members’ dues, since our current method seemed to lack urgency, as well as effectiveness.
“The problem isn’t that people don’t have the money,” she pointed out, “it’s just that no one realizes that the date stamped on their address label is their dues date. I think if we just sent emails out as reminders, that would work better.”
“But does everyone look at email?” Bill asked.
“Everyone in MOU does,” Jim said. “Whenever I post a bird sighting, I get calls and responses for the next two days. If I miss a day of MOU email, I feel out of the loop.”
I knew just how he felt. I checked it first thing in the morning before leaving for work and again when I got home at night. In the summer, I checked it several times a day. Of course, there were always some birders who refused to share information on the Web. Rahr had been one of them. In all the years he’d worked with the owls, he had never posted any Boreal sightings. His refusal to do so was one of the reasons I finally tried speaking with him on the phone. But like I already said, that got me nowhere. At least the email system was successful in keeping other, more cooperative birders connected.