A Bobwhite Killing

by Jan Dunlap

  A Bobwhite Killing

  Jan Dunlap

  Check out the other books in the Birder Murder series by Jan Dunlap!

  The Boreal Owl Murder:

  Amazon

  North Star Press

  Barnes & Noble

  Murder on Warbler Weekend

  Amazon

  North Star Press

  Barnes & Noble

  A Bobwhite Killing

  Amazon

  North Star Press

  Barnes & Noble

  Falcon Finale

  Amazon

  North Star Press

  Barnes & Noble

  A Murder of Crows

  Amazon

  North Star Press

  Barnes & Noble

  Copyright © 2010 Jan Dunlap

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-87839-454-8

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition, June 1, 2010

  Electronic Edition, June 1 2013

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, Minnesota 56302

  For More Information:

  North Star Press Website

  North Star Press Facebook

  North Star Press Twitter

  Chapter One

  What do I love about birding weekend trips? The camaraderie. A bunch of birders together with the same objective for a short thirty-odd hours: see as many birds as possible in a specific area. Sometimes I know a few of the other people; sometimes I get to meet all new folks. Kind of like a group blind date: I never know who I’m going to end up with. Maybe I’ll get Cameron Diaz. Maybe I’ll get stuck with the class clown. But, unlike a blind date, when I go on a birding weekend, I can always count on one thing: everyone there will want to talk about birds. Birds they’ve seen. Birds they hope to see. Birds they thought they saw, but couldn’t confirm.

  Okay, so maybe it’s not the most diverse range of topics in the world.

  For a birder, though, it’s a slice of heaven.

  So I go on these weekends, follow the trip leader around, do a lot of driving, walking, and talking, and see birds. Usually, the leader has already scouted the area, which gives everyone a head start on finding the birds the group is targeting. Even on the weekends that don’t produce all the birds I hope for, though, I still get to trade leads for hot new birding spots or try out other birders’ new scopes or cameras. As far as I’m concerned, birding weekends are always win-win situations.

  Except, maybe, for those rare weekends when the leader turns out to be a dud.

  Or dead.

  Yeah, that definitely puts a damper on a birding weekend.

  Going on the birding weekend trip to Fillmore County was one of those last-minute decisions I occasionally make when I’m desperate to get away. And believe me, I was desperate. If I had to listen one more time to my sister, Lily, gush about how wonderful her fiancé (a.k.a. the man formerly known as my best friend), Alan, was, I was either going to stuff a sock in her mouth or recount for her the lurid details about the droves of girls Alan used to “entertain” in our college dorm room.

  Not that he actually did any of that, but Lily wouldn’t know.

  However, since I also figured that would probably get me a vicious shin-kicking from my tiny, but older, and very mean (sometimes), sister, I decided the smartest alternative was just to get out of town—and out of Lily’s kicking range—for a few days.

  Fillmore County, here I come.

  Fortunately for me, there was room for one more person on the trip. With Luce, my girlfriend, booked to cook for an executive conference over the weekend, I was going to be flying solo anyway. I called up the BW—that’s Birding Weekend—leader, took the slot, threw a change of clothes into my duffel bag, grabbed my binoculars and tripod, and put the rubber on the road.

  By eight in the evening, I was in Fillmore County, signing my name at the front desk of the Inn & Suites in Spring Valley, where the weekend group was staying. According to the hotel clerk, I was the last one to check in. The BW leader had left a packet of information for me at the desk, and I scanned the materials while the clerk ran my credit card through the hotel register. Ten people were signed up for the weekend, and I was happy to see that one of them was my longtime birding buddy Tom Hightower. So at least it wasn’t going to be a total blind date weekend. Worst case, if there was a class clown on the trip, I could always escape by grabbing Tom and taking off for birding on our own.

  The clerk handed me a room key and I turned around, almost knocking over the woman who had come up behind me. I caught her shoulders to steady her and glanced down at her face.

  And froze.

  Only one person in the world had that particular shade of emerald in her eyes.

  “Hello, Bob,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

  I waited for my ability to speak to kick back in. “Shana Lewis,” I finally managed to get out. “What are you doing here?”

  She took a step towards me and stood on tiptoe to brush a kiss on my cheek. I caught a whiff of White Shoulders, the same scent she’d worn eighteen years ago, when I’d been crazy about her. I was sixteen and she was a junior in college; we bumped into each other looking for gulls at Black Dog Lake one Christmas. The following summer, we birded together regularly around the Twin Cities, and I fantasized about her falling in love with me.

  Which she never did.

  Instead, she graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota and took off immediately for California, where she earned a doctorate in the reconstruction of ecological communities. Last I’d heard, she was somewhere in South America working for the Nature Conservancy, which didn’t surprise me in the least. When Shana Lewis set her mind to something, nothing could shut her down.

  I remembered that well from the birding we did together. Just like I never forgot those emerald eyes of hers, either.

  “It’s Shana O’Keefe, Bob. Jack and I got married five years ago.”

  “No kidding? I hadn’t heard.” I figured I should let go of her shoulders, but my hands and brain had spontaneously disconnected the moment I recognized her. I still couldn’t believe I was talking to Shana Lewis again after all these years. The idea that she was married to Jack O’Keefe—our BW trip leader—blew me away even more.

  Not that Jack wasn’t a great guy. He was. I’d known him for about ten years, in fact, but our birding trails hadn’t crossed in a long time. Seeing Jack listed as the weekend’s leader was one of the other reasons I’d decided to sign up at the last minute besides escaping Lily’s gush fest. Jack was an extraordinary birder, and if he put a bird—even an uncommon one—on the list for a weekend, I could just about be guaranteed I’d see it. In fact, it was the uncommon one he’d listed that had tipped the scales for me in favor of joining the group, rather than taking off on my own bird chase.

  Jack listed a Northern Bobwhite.

  Which I’ve never seen in Fillmore County.

  Let alone in the state of Minnesota. Especially since wild Northern Bobwhites were declared “extirpated”—locally extinct—back in 2004.

  But if Jack O’Keefe said he’d find a Bobwhite, I believed him. And when he did locate the bird, I was going to be right there with him.

  Along with his wife, the former Shana Lewis, my one-time summer love.

  Talk about a surprise blind date.

  “I’d ask you what you’ve been up to, but I read your posts on the MOU list serve all the time,�
� Shana laughed. “It’s nice to know your enthusiasm for birding hasn’t dimmed at all since you were sixteen.” She took a step back and looked me over from head to toe, and my hands finally responded to my brain’s signals and slid gently off her shoulders. “Though I think you’ve gotten taller, Bob.”

  “Older, too,” I smiled. A sudden wave of memory took me back eighteen years. I’d tried to kiss the twenty-year-old Shana and she’d fended me off, saying I was too young for her.

  Looking down into those bright green eyes now, I couldn’t help but think, Not anymore.

  And then I gave myself a mental head slap. What was I thinking? I wasn’t some lovesick teenager. I didn’t want Shana Lewis. Or Shana O’Keefe. I was in love with Luce Nilsson. Hell, I’d even been on the verge of asking her to marry me before the Lily and Alan tsunami hit town. I was still going to propose, but now I wanted to wait till my sister was off center stage. Heaven forbid that Luce and I try to horn in on Lily’s wedding of the century extravaganza. I wouldn’t live to my wedding.

  Suddenly seeing Shana again, though, was like I’d slipped into a time warp. Just hearing her voice was enough to send me back to that summer we spent together. I could still see her ponytail, her halter top over tight faded jeans filled out so perfectly behind. And regardless of my feelings for Luce, Shana’s signature White Shoulders and green eyes were still potent stuff eighteen years later.

  “So, what’s it like to be married to Jack O’Keefe?” I asked her, deliberately focusing myself on the present. “I hear he’s the man to watch in this state. Between the family fortune and his political connections, he seems to be calling the shots right now when it comes to shaping new environmental legislation.” I stuck my room key in my pocket. “Not that I mind. I’m in Jack’s camp all the way when it comes to preserving outdoor spaces.”

  “Hey, Bob!”

  I looked past Shana to see Jack O’Keefe, tanned and fit, heading into the lobby. In three strides, he was across the room, extending his hand for me to shake.

  “It’s been a while, Jack,” I said, taking his hand. His grip was firm, and he looked at least a decade younger than his fifty-eight years.

  “And a lot of time out of the field, unfortunately. Taking care of business hasn’t been leaving me much time for birding,” Jack explained. “Even with Chuck minding the family store, I’m still spreading myself thin with developing these new eco-communities down here.”

  Chuck was Jack’s son from his first marriage. I used to run into the pair of them on birding trips shortly after the first Mrs. O’Keefe passed away.

  “Eco-communities?” I asked.

  Jack planted a kiss on Shana’s cheek and draped his arm over her shoulders. “Tomorrow, Bob, I’ll tell you all about it while we’re birding. Drive with us, and we can catch up in between stops. For now, I’m bushed. I’ve been out scouting all day, and I promised Shana we’d make it an early night. See you in the morning.”

  And that’s the last I ever heard from Jack O’Keefe.

  I did, however, see him again.

  It was early the next morning when our birding group arrived at the Green Hills youth camp to try to locate a Yellow-billed Cuckoo on the property. Jack wasn’t with us, leaving word with Shana that he’d headed out before dawn to draw a bead on the bird and would meet up with us at the camp. Spotting a small grove of trees that looked like it might be a good habitat for the Cuckoo, I walked down the slope from the gravel parking area and discovered an old covered wagon partially tucked into the grove.

  Skirting around the rear end of the wagon, I found Jack sitting with his back to the buckboard. I noticed that he didn’t have his binoculars with him. He did have something else, though.

  Judging from the blood soaking the front of his jacket, he had at least a couple of bullets in him.

  Chapter Two

  Do you see anything?” my buddy Tom Hightower asked as he rounded the corner of the old wagon, then stopped in his tracks. “Oh, my God.”

  I looked up at him from where I was kneeling next to Jack, checking for a non-existent pulse. “Don’t let the rest of them come back here,” I told him, pointing with my chin towards the other side of the wagon, where I could hear more birders starting to approach. “They don’t want to see this.”

  Tom nodded, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed 911 as he went back around the wagon to steer away the rest of our group.

  I sat back on my haunches and looked at the dead man in front of me. Jack’s eyes were open and his mouth grim. His neck didn’t feel stone-cold to me when I’d checked for a pulse, so I figured he hadn’t been dead all that long.

  Not that that made much of a difference in the big picture.

  Whether you’re dead for a short time or a long time, you’re still dead.

  “No! NO!”

  I looked up to see Shana stumbling towards me, her face white with shock, her green eyes huge in her face.

  And then, maybe because of my crouched position, I noticed something else that was huge.

  Her belly.

  Shana was pregnant.

  As in, really pregnant.

  I was speechless. How could I have missed that belly last night in the lobby or this morning at coffee before our group set out for the day? From what I could see now, that belly was going to beat Shana to Jack’s corpse by at least a minute or two. The woman was huge.

  Then my eyes caught the flapping of the oversized windbreaker Shana was wearing.

  Mystery solved. That windbreaker could have been hiding a whale underneath it and no one would have been the wiser.

  A whale? Make that a whole pod of them. I mean, seriously, I had never seen any woman’s pregant belly as large as this.

  Luckily for Shana, Tom was a lot faster to come to her aid than I was. Before she could trip on the uneven ground, he appeared behind her and put his arm around her shoulders, guiding her carefully closer to me and the body of her husband.

  The stark look of loss on her face reminded me of what she was seeing: her husband filled with bullet holes. “Shana, you don’t need to see this. Tom, take her back to the cars.”

  “No,” she choked out, sobbing. “I need to be with him.” She shot me a steely look that I vaguely recognized from a long time ago, and her voice sharpened. “Don’t argue with me, Bob.”

  “No problem,” I replied. I took another look at her swollen belly. If I thought Shana Lewis had been stubborn, I wasn’t about to test it out with a super-sized Shana O’Keefe. Upsetting very pregnant ladies was definitely not on my list of things I really wanted to do today.

  Tom helped her sit down on the ground next to me, and she immediately leaned into me, shaking and crying. I put my arms around her and held her close. “I’m so sorry, Shana,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. “He was dead when I found him. I couldn’t do anything for him.”

  She nodded into my shirt front and sniffed.

  “Well, I guess that explains why he didn’t meet us for coffee and rolls this morning.”

  I looked up to see silver-haired Bernie Schmieg, another familiar birder from our group, standing near the corner of the wagon. She was squinting at Jack through her glasses. “What’d you do, Jack? Spill some coffee on your jacket? Shana, honey, the drycleaners can get that out. It won’t stain.”

  “Jack’s dead, Bernie,” Tom told her. “I don’t think the coat is an issue now.”

  Bernie shot me a glance. “He’s dead?”

  I nodded.

  Bernie turned as white as her hair and promptly passed out.

  “Oh, crap,” I said, still holding a sobbing Shana and the whales against my side.

  Shana and the whales. It sounded like a band from the 1970s.

  “I’ll get her,” Tom offered.

  He knelt beside Bernie and lightly slapped her cheeks, then propped her up against the old wagon’s front wheel. Tom’s a registered nurse who worked the night shift at a nursing facility, so I knew that Bernie was in good hands. A couple moments later,
he helped her stand up and guided her back to where the other birders, I assumed, were waiting for the police to arrive.

  Shana whispered something into my shoulder, but I didn’t catch it.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I know who killed him,” she whispered again, this time louder and clearer.

  A chill raced up my spine. I looked down so I could see her face.

  “Who? Who killed Jack, Shana?”

  Her emerald eyes bored into mine through a wall of tears.

  “I did, Bob. It’s all my fault. I killed my husband.”

  Chapter Three

  No, I thought, you didn’t. I don’t think you can take the credit for this one, Shana.

  Before I could say anything aloud, though, the sound of sirens flared and came to an abrupt halt, and Shana fell sobbing against my chest again.

  “I don’t have any tissues,” I said, more to myself than to Shana. As a high school counselor, I always had tissues within reach in my office. Dealing with the drama of teenage girls daily, tissues were my stock in trade.

  But I wasn’t in my office. School was out for the summer, and I’d come to Fillmore County to find a Bobwhite, not the murdered husband of a long-ago summer crush. A summer crush who looked like she could give birth to triplets at any moment. And here I thought that going birding for the weekend was going to be a relief from the burgeoning production of my sister’s upcoming wedding. Now it looked like I’d landed in the middle of the first night of a B-rated television mini-series—one that not only featured a murder, but an impending birth. The fact was, weddings are over in a day, but murder cases can drag on for weeks.

  I didn’t even want to think about how long labor could go on.

  Wait a minute.