The Boreal Owl Murder

by Jan Dunlap

  “So, how come these people are swimming in ladyslippers?” I asked her. “You just said quantities of them weren’t exactly easy to dig up.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “Ha ha,” she said.

  “What?” I said. “What did I say?”

  “‘Dig up,’” she replied. “Not easy to ‘dig up.’ Cheap landscaping humor, Bobby.”

  She stopped the bouncing thing and started chewing on her lip. “I know. Usually growers have very limited supplies. The availability of so many plants—expensive plants—bothers me a little. A lot, actually.”

  She leaned against the statuary.

  “I tried calling Very Nice Trees a couple more times yesterday, but never got anything but the answering machine. When I did business with them at Christmas, I didn’t have any problems. The trees were beautiful, fresh and priced great. It was a small lot like any small supplier might provide. Nothing odd, there. The trees were perfect. I even called the Better Business Bureau just to be sure there haven’t been any complaints about them.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Nothing. No complaints.”

  She turned in her chair, looked out her window and sighed.

  “But then when Stan noted my profit from the trees, it got me thinking about it, again. I keep imagining those pickup trucks you see every spring cruising new neighborhoods with a load full of trees for sale at low, low prices. I always think they’re stolen merchandise because reputable growers don’t sell out of the back of a truck like that.” She chewed her lip again. “One hundred ladyslippers? Nobody has that many.”

  Lily turned her grey eyes up to mine. “I’d love that big chunk of change, Bobby, you know that. But I’m an honest businesswoman, and I’m not naïve. And I’m …” she winced, hesitant to say it, “… feeling … not quite right about Very Nice Trees.”

  “Feeling?” I placed my hand over my heart in shock. “You? Feeling? You, the Mistress of Humiliation?”

  I held up my hand to stop her as she started to open her mouth. “I’ll see what I can find out, shrimp. If something’s not nice at Very Nice Trees, you’ll be the first to know.” I paid her for my suet and headed for the sewage ponds.

  Another blast of winter was rolling in when I parked the SUV. The water chopped on the ponds. I pulled my parka hood up over my head, hunching my shoulders against a growing wind chill. The goose and Canvasback were gone, as I expected. I hoped they were hitting nicer weather than I was getting.

  When I got home, I put the new blocks of suet in the feeders on the deck. Almost as soon as I shut the sliding glass doors, a male Pileated Woodpecker flew in and perched on the suet, chipping away bits for his dinner. I watched for a minute as he hammered and stopped, hammered and stopped.

  Was that what it had been like for Rahr? Someone hammering his head against a tree until he lost consciousness?

  This was really getting to be lousy, I thought. I couldn’t even watch birds at my feeder without thinking of a murder. I turned around and headed for the kitchen.

  Something hot and filling sounded good for dinner, so I browned a pound of hamburger, tossed in a can of corn and a can of tomato soup. Mulligan stew, my mom always called it. True, it couldn’t hold a candle to what Luce could do in the kitchen, but without Luce in the kitchen, it was a reasonable alternative. I wasn’t completely without cooking skills, after all.

  I was, however, without Luce.

  For a couple minutes, I thought about how nice it would be to have her here tonight. A cold wind outside, a fire in the fireplace, snuggled up together planning a weekend of birding.

  Which reminded me—I needed to check the weather to make sure I’d be driving to Duluth tomorrow. If a blizzard was on the radar, I wouldn’t be going anywhere. I turned on the television and stretched out on the sofa.

  Imagine my surprise when John Knott appeared on the screen, talking with reporters.

  “We have no suspects at this time,” Knott was saying as the snowflakes fell between him and the microphone held in front of his face. “But we are actively pursuing leads.”

  The blonde woman holding the mike moved closer to him. “Is it true you suspect involvement on the part of the activist group Save Our Boreals?”

  “No comment at this time.”

  Knott’s face was immediately replaced with the face of the station anchorman.

  “Earlier today, we spoke exclusively with Margaret Montgomery, Director of Save Our Boreals, the environmental activist organization headquartered in Duluth,” the anchorman reported.

  The face on the screen changed again. I almost shot off the sofa.

  It was my mom.

  I looked again.

  No, it wasn’t.

  It was, however, someone who could have passed for her twin. There was the same wavy chestnut-colored hair cut in the same style as my mom. There were my mom’s big blue eyes and high cheekbones. The woman on the screen even had my mom’s red reading glasses in her hand.

  But this was not my mom.

  This was Margaret Montgomery, director of S.O.B.

  “We were shocked to learn of the sudden death of Dr. Rahr,” Montgomery told the reporter. “He was a dedicated researcher and good friend of our organization. Our prayers and sympathy go to his wife and family.”

  “Are you aware that Save Our Boreals has been mentioned as possibly suspect in Dr. Rahr’s death?” the reporter asked.

  “Yes, I am aware of that,” Montgomery said, cool and relaxed in front of the cameras. She obviously had had plenty of experience with the media. She looked directly at the interviewer, and her body language shouted confident, concerned and respectful. I know all about body language. Another skill courtesy of graduate school.

  “Unfortunately, environmental activist organizations are often scrutinized more intensely than other groups in a situation like this for two reasons.” Montgomery held up two slender fingers to count off. “One: people are suspicious of us because of the negative publicity environmentalists have often unjustly—or not—received in the past, and two: finding a scapegoat is always a temptation. I can tell you without reservation that the membership of Save Our Boreals is made up of very fine individuals who care deeply about our natural world and those who work so hard to preserve it. I can’t imagine any hard feelings between anyone in our organization and Dr. Rahr.”

  Pretty speech. Although she obviously hadn’t read the letter that Rahr’s wife had passed along to Knott—threatening someone wasn’t what I’d call characteristic of a warm, fuzzy relationship. Of course, if she had a leash on some loonies up in the woods, I don’t expect she’d be sharing that with a television reporter and the rest of the viewing audience, either.

  “When you say ‘negative publicity,’” the reporter pressed, “are you referring to the confrontation last spring between S.O.B. and the DNR over the Boreal Owls’ breeding grounds?”

  Montgomery smiled. Damn! It was even my mom’s smile. Did my mom have an identical twin from whom she was separated at birth, and we never knew about it?

  What else was my mom hiding from us?

  I bet it was about Lily. Finally. Confirmation.

  Lily wasn’t really my sister.

  Okay, so maybe we looked like twins for a while there, and we both have the same cleft in our chins like our dad, and the same hair, and the same eyes, and the same irrational fear of falling up—rather than down—stairs, but other than that, we don’t resemble each other at all.

  Besides, she was always mean to me when we were growing up.

  Heck, she was still mean to me. Today I had had to pay for my own suet, even after I apologized for what I had said about Stan.

  Montgomery was still talking, and I caught the last thing she said.

  “… As my years of experience as both a lobbyist and organizer in this arena have taught me, it’s that the best solutions—and resolutions—only come about when all the parties involved make honest disclosures and seek consensus for the good of the human and natur
al communities alike.”

  Well, duh. That was a real eye-opener. Montgomery sure had the publicity-release fluff stuff down pat. But that was her job. She was an experienced lobbyist. It certainly explained her professional presence on-camera. I wondered what other environmental groups she had worked with.

  The weather was next. No blizzards on the way. A warm front moving in. Nice weekend for northern Minnesota.

  I picked up the phone to call Mike. I hadn’t talked with him since I dropped him off on Sunday morning.

  “Do you want to try for the Boreal again this weekend?” I asked. “I know it’s short notice, but I’m going up tomorrow, and you could meet me in Two Harbors on Saturday.”

  “I can’t. I’d like to, but if I’m gone another weekend this month, Maryann is going to kill me. It’s Colleen’s eleventh birthday, and we’ve got ten giggling girls coming over Friday night for a sleepover party.”

  “Take them owling,” I suggested.

  Mike started laughing.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “They get to be out at night, in the dark, sneaking around. Little girls would love it.”

  “Bob,” Mike said, “Little girls love giggling. They make way too much noise for owls. Believe me, owls aren’t going to hang around a bunch of giggling girls.”

  Just for a moment, I felt something catch, then slip away in my mind.

  Something about noise and owls.

  I shook my head, but couldn’t get it back.

  “Bob? You there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Just spacing out. Sorry.” I remembered the other reason I had called Mike. “I need a favor.”

  I explained to him how I wanted to check out Very Nice Trees for Lily when I went up to Two Harbors. “But all I’ve got is a box number. Could you call someone at the post office up there and get me a street address?”

  “Bob, Bob, Bob,” Mike said. “People have box numbers for a reason. One reason is privacy. You’re asking me to call another post office to get information for you that isn’t public?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t you think that’s presuming on our friendship?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I don’t either. I’ll get back to you as soon as I get it. But it might take a couple days.”

  “Whatever you can do, Mike. I’ll be at the same hotel where we always stay in Duluth. Just leave a message if I’m not in. You’re the best, buddy.”

  He laughed. “Tell Maryann that. I’m making points being here this weekend, but I want to run up the score big-time, so I can do that long birding weekend with the MOU out in Blue Mounds in May.”

  That was one of my favorite trips, too. The prairie in the southwestern part of the state would be blooming then and the Dicksissels and Blue Grosbeaks easy to find. Mike wished me luck on hunting the Boreal, and I hung up the phone.

  I got off the sofa and walked over to the sliding doors to my deck and looked out. A very bright full moon illuminated the woods and pond that stretched beyond my yard. Even through the glass, I could hear the clear hoots of the Great Horned Owl that lived behind me.

  Whoo-whoo-whoo. Whoo-whoo.

  In my head, I listened again to the rising flute-like notes of the Boreal Owl’s call: who, who, who who-who-who-who.

  Would I find him this weekend?

  I sure hoped so, since the mating season was half over, and my window of opportunity for this year was shrinking by the day. Make that by the night. If I didn’t get him this weekend, I only had two more weekends—four nights—left. And next year, there wouldn’t be a new report from Rahr to help me scout locations.

  Unless Ellis stepped in.

  Was it just bad timing that Ellis showed up in Duluth shortly before Rahr’s murder?

  Or was it perfect timing?

  I closed the drapes across the glass doors.

  Whack!

  Something had hit my sliding door. Hard. I pulled the drapes open again and looked out at the deck.

  A bloody Great Horn Owl was laying about a foot from the door.

  My phone rang. I picked it up.

  “Stay home,” a voice hissed into my ear.

  Chapter Ten

  Snow was lightly falling as I left the cities behind me and headed north on I-35 to Duluth. I’d set the alarm for five o’clock, thinking I’d beat the morning traffic rush that could gridlock commuters for hours. As a result, I made great time and cleared the northernmost suburbs within an hour of leaving my house. Granted, I’d checked my rear-view mirrors more frequently than I usually do, but since I hadn’t once spotted a car or truck that was marked with a “We’re tailing you” billboard, I was feeling pretty confident that my escape from Savage was unobserved. As long as the snow continued to melt as soon as it hit the pavement, my plan to make it to the university by mid-morning would hold. If the temperatures fell, however, and the highway iced, I could be in for a long, and very slow, drive to the North Shore.

  As it was, the snow stopped south of Pine City, and the traffic was surprisingly light. Usually when I headed north in the winter, the road was filled with skiers and snowmobilers going up for a weekend of playing in the snow. In the summer, it was packed bumper-to-bumper with campers, boaters, tourists, and vacationers.

  This morning, though, it was too early for weekend drivers, and most of the cars I passed seemed to be business travelers making the Twin Cities-Duluth trek. Before I realized it, my lead foot had gotten heavier, and I was cruising at eighty-five miles an hour.

  Someone else, however, did realize it and wanted to share that little bit of information with me.

  Lights flashing, the highway patrol cruiser pulled me over.

  “Morning. You in a rush, sir?”

  The state trooper at my window was a woman I didn’t know. That surprised me—not that the trooper was a woman, but that I didn’t know this particular trooper. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of quite a few members of the highway patrol since I spend so much time behind the wheel chasing birds. In fact, I’m probably one of the few people in Minnesota to have been issued speeding tickets in every single county of the state.

  Another dubious honor, I know.

  “No, Officer,” I responded. “My mistake. I wasn’t paying attention to my speed.”

  I didn’t tell her the reason was because I was thinking about a dead owl on my deck and the fact that I was now sure Scary Stan was not behind the threats because if I knew nothing else about Stan, I knew for a fact he wouldn’t kill a bird. Which, of course, had led me back to the conclusion that I had not wanted to reach yesterday: that someone else was making a new hobby of threatening me. Remembering both Alan’s remarks about ecoterrorists and Montgomery’s interview on the television, I’d decided the most likely suspects were some fringe S.O.B. sympathizers. That also seemed to fit with what Knott had said about Dr. Rahr’s threatening letter. So all I had to do was add personal vigilance and an impenetrable forcefield to my strategy for finding the Boreals and I should be just fine.

  Or at the very least, alive.

  Since when did birding become a survival sport?

  “I drive this road a lot,” I told the trooper, “and I just went on automatic, I guess.”

  “Automatic speeding?”

  I smiled.

  She didn’t.

  She checked my license and insurance card, went back to her car to write the ticket, then came back and handed it to me. Before I could get back on the road, though, she showed up at my window again.

  “Are you that bird guy they told me about? I saw your plates, but it didn’t click till I got back to my car.”

  She was referring to my vanity license plates. They read BRRDMAN. When I got them, I hadn’t planned on becoming a state-wide highway celebrity. Nowadays, I secretly hoped that my plate recognition was keeping my ticket tally lower, not higher. Although that didn’t seem to be the case this morning.

  I nodded. “That would probably be me.”

&nb
sp; She held her hand out to shake mine. “Then I expect I’ll be seeing you on a regular basis, Mr. White.”

  I shook her hand and smiled. “In that case, make it Bob.”

  This time she did smile back.

  “I’m Chris. Chris Maas.” Before I could comment, she added, “What can I say? My parents thought it was a hoot. My brother’s name is Pete.”

  She walked back to her cruiser. I watched her in the mirror for a second or two and then carefully pulled out onto the freeway. I set my cruise control at a sedate sixty-five. I was bummed about the ticket. My New Year’s resolution was to not get any tickets this year, and I’d only made it to late March.

  Notice I didn’t say the resolution was to not speed.

  Just not get any tickets.

  The rest of the drive to Duluth was uneventful. No troopers, no tickets, no tails (as far as I could tell). I downed two apple fritters at a gas station in town and mentally apologized to Luce for my poor eating habits. I turned up the hill, away from the harbor, and drove to the university campus. After a minute or two of circling through the visitors’ parking lot, I found a space outside the Biological Sciences Building, or BSB, as it’s known by the locals.

  Originally located in the downtown area, UMD now sits on the hill above Lake Superior, giving students both a bird’s-eye view of the water and a biting taste of the cold winds that can whip over it in the winter. In their great wisdom, the campus planners connected all the buildings with tunnels and enclosed walkways, providing tender-skinned students with protection from the frigid elements. I’d heard some of our Savage alumni who attended the school say they felt like moles for part of the year, hidden away in underground warrens, while others took advantage of the indoor environment to wear pajamas to class.

  Located at the edge of campus, the BSB was the most recent addition to the university’s facilities, housing labs, classrooms, departmental libraries, and offices. As an adjunct professor of environmental studies, Ellis would have his office here.

  So would the repositories of all information: the department secretaries.