by Jan Dunlap
The hawk put in another appearance, gliding across the road ahead of us.
“Red-shouldered,” Tom said.
“Yeah, I know. I saw it a minute ago, too.” I watched it skim the earth and then lift skywards, a small rodent trapped in its claws. “Late lunch.”
“Shana’s not a predator, Bob. Besides, Jack was nobody’s fool. Just look at the corporations and politicians he’s taken on in the last couple years. Ever since Minnesota passed the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment in 2008, Jack O’Keefe has been knocking heads together in St. Paul to make sure conservation legislation gets passed and implemented. From what I understand, he’s just about abandoned the family business to devote all his time to the environment.”
Tom slowed down to read a mile marker, then turned right onto the next road.
“I almost forgot—there’s a seepage meadow up here on Rice Creek that I birded last year about this time,” he explained. “I found some Upland Sandpipers there. Since we’re in the neighborhood, we might as well check it out. You know, now that I think about it, I bet Jack got so involved with conservation because of Shana. She went to grad school in ecology or something.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said again. I didn’t tell him how well I knew it, either. I didn’t think he needed to hear about my teenage crush and how I nursed a broken heart during my senior year in high school because the older woman of my dreams had tossed me over to go dredging through muck in a graduate program.
Me or muck, Shana?
Gee, when I put it that way, it almost hurt all over again. Except for the fact that I’d finally arrived at the brilliant insight years later that she’d never considered me anything near a romantic candidate, thinking she chose muck over me might really put a dent in my self-esteem.
Good thing I’m a tough old bird, huh?
Of course, having Luce in my life probably made Shana’s early rejection of me a lot more manageable now.
Actually, having Luce in my life made everything more manageable now.
Except for Tom’s driving.
I bumped my head again on the roof of the car as he hit another pothole.
“Sorry,” he said. “These roads aren’t too well maintained, are they?”
“I think we’re on a cattle trail, Tom, not a road.”
“Oh no, this is the road. Look up ahead.”
Sure enough, there was an open wetland situated on what looked to be an old streambed about a hundred yards in front of us. It was bordered on one side by a stand of forest, with a few old oaks scattered across the surrounding hillocks. I noticed some wire fencing along the forest side, with a few “No trespassing” signs hanging along the edges.
Tom parked the car and we got out to walk closer to the meadow. Once we got within forty yards of the wetland, we saw two Upland Sandpipers poking their long bills into the soggy earth. Hoping to not disturb them, we skirted the meadow and slid in close to the forest where a portion of the fencing had been torn down. Then I had the weirdest sensation, like someone was watching me.
Behind me, brush moved.
A lot of brush.
I slowly turned around and there, about twenty feet away, was a cat.
A big jungle cat.
A tiger, in fact.
Oh joy. I’d apparently found the missing part of the circus, but unfortunately, I’d forgotten to bring my chair and whip.
Hello, kitty.
Chapter Six
Don’t move,” Tom breathed behind me. What? Did he think I was going to tap dance? I wasn’t exactly Fred Astaire on a good day, let alone when I was facing a six-hundred pound tiger. Besides, I’d come to the conclusion at the same instant I’d locked eyes with the beast that I was probably never going to move again.
Except through the digestive tract of a charismatic megafauna.
That’s ecological-speak for a big animal that environmental activists liked to use as a poster child for conservation programs.
Only usually, poster children weren’t prowling around near a seepage meadow in southeastern Minnesota where they could eat birders for an afternoon pick-me-up.
Fortunately, though, I didn’t have the time to imagine myself as an hors d’oeuvre because the tiger jumped straight at me.
And then, as I sucked in what I knew would be my last breath, my death froze mid-air. I thought it was that slowing of time thing that happened sometimes in car accidents when a person saw the truck bearing down and watched kind of in hyperspeed as it sped into the crash. But the huge cat didn’t slowly spread deadly claws and open a gaping, toothed maw. No. Instead it dropped to the ground, unconscious.
“Yes! Works like a charm!” came from somewhere to my right.
Or maybe it was to my left. I don’t know. It could have been God himself calling down from heaven at that point. I was still stuck in that last long gasp, unable to check it out. Then, when it penetrated my petrified brain that I really wasn’t eaten, I was hanging my head between my knees so I wouldn’t pass out or throw up. Or both.
But there was one thing I was sure of—I’d never look at a box of Frosted Flakes in the same way again. Tony the Tiger had just taken on a whole new dimension of meaning in my eyes.
“Thought I recognized that red head of yours,” my savior announced.
I took a deep breath, straightened up and turned around.
Crazy Eddie Edvarg, my old DNR pal, was standing next to Tom, who was looking more than a little shocky himself. He jovially thumped Tom on the back. “Scared you, huh? That big old cat was just having some fun with you. He gets fed plenty, but he misses the hunt. Instinct, you know.”
Tom nodded slowly. “Yeah, right,” he croaked. “Instinct.”
“Let me take a wild stab here,” I said, my heart returning to its normal rhythm.
Eddie laughed. “Wild stab. Funny, Bob.”
I slid him my not-funny-at-all look. “You’re not the one who just thought he was going to be lunch.” I waved my hand at the edge of the woods. “You’re doing some kind of electronics job.” I glanced back at the tiger that was sprawled in the tall grasses behind me. “And judging from the jolt that cat must have taken, I’d say you’ve got one heck of a powerful invisible electric fence installed here.”
Eddie tapped the tip of his nose. “Got it in one, Bob. I just finished getting it online earlier this week. When Kami called me up—that’s the owner here, Kami Marsden—to tell me she was having trouble with her old security system, I hustled on down here to check it out. You sure don’t want glitches when you’ve got a tiger for a house pet.” He nodded at the now snoring big cat. “I was tracking Nigel today with my remote sensors when I saw your vehicle turning into the meadow. I didn’t think there’d be a problem with the invisible fence, but Kami’s had some sections of both the wire and electronic fencing randomly go down this week, so I thought I’d play it safe. Especially since this portion of the fencing hasn’t been functioning properly since very early this morning.”
He held up a black, palm-sized box in his hand.
“It’s a manual control for Nigel’s collar,” he explained. “If the electric fencing was down, I could shock him to sleep myself. But I didn’t have to. The new program I installed on the fence worked like a charm—it zapped Nigel as soon as he hit the new perimeter, which is ten feet inside the wire fence.”
“Inside the fence?”
“Of course. You think a wire fence could keep Nigel in?” Eddie snorted. “We’re talking about six hundred and fifty pounds of Bengal tiger here, Bob. The wire fence is to keep people out. The invisible fence is to keep Nigel in.”
He scanned the ground around us until he saw what he was apparently looking for, some ten yards away partially hidden behind an oak tree.
“Looks like we had some more vandalism last night,” he said, pointing to the section of wire fencing that peeked out from one side of the tree. “I just checked this perimeter yesterday, and it was solid. All I can figure is that somebody’s got a death wish
if they’re trying to break into Kami’s sanctuary.”
Tom pointed to the wire fencing that ran the length of the meadow and disappeared over the rolling hills. “So this is a wildlife sanctuary? I never had a clue it was anything but private property.”
“Not wildlife sanctuary,” Eddie said. “Exotic animal sanctuary. There’s a difference.”
Eddie tucked the control box into the breast pocket of his trademark flannel shirt. I noticed that his white beard was growing back to its customary Santa-shape after having been close-cropped the last time I’d seen him.
“And I’m not surprised you didn’t know about it,” he continued. “Kami’s a pretty private person. She’s had this place a good twenty years now and never had any problems with her animals getting loose till the last couple of weeks. I think she’s always figured if she was going to keep exotic animals here, she’d best keep a low profile. Better that way for both her and her animals.”
On the other side of the fence, Nigel started to stir. I automatically backed up a few more steps.
“He can’t hurt you, Bob. The fence—the invisible electric one—is solid. It’s a big improvement over the old electrified fencing Kami was using on the other side of her property. That fencing was frying some very unlucky coyotes. She shut it down a while ago. We worked with a security equipment company out of St. Paul for the new system. Secure A-Man was the name. The owner is an old friend of Kami’s.” He chuckled into his beard. “Still, I bet they never considered they might be securing a tiger. ”
He nodded at Nigel, who had flopped back on the ground. “Besides, he’ll be groggy for a little while. I’ll probably track him with the remotes for the rest of the afternoon just to be sure he’s shaking off the shock okay. You boys done here?”
“Yup,” Tom and I both answered. I guessed neither one of us was too excited about sticking around until Nigel woke up. Not that I doubted the security of Eddie’s fence—my old buddy knew his stuff when it came to electronics.
I’ve just never been a cat person.
Especially when they weigh over three times more than I do.
My cell phone rang in my pocket. I took it out and flipped it open.
“Bob, you better get back here.”
It was Bernie.
“Shana’s stepson is here, and he’s raising a real ruckus. Says he’s calling the sheriff to arrest Shana for killing his dad.” She paused a moment, and I could hear two voices yelling in the background. “I don’t think he likes Shana, Bob.”
From what I could make out of the shouting, I’d say Shana didn’t like her stepson much, either, unless “bastard” was an O’Keefe family term of endearment.
“We’re on our way,” I told Bernie.
Chapter seven
By the time Tom and I arrived back at the Inn & Suites, the sheriff’s car was parked in front of the lobby entrance. I came in through the automatic sliding door and started down the hallway before I remembered I didn’t know which room was Shana’s.
Then I realized I didn’t need to know which room she was in, because I could hear the yelling almost all the way out to the lobby. Heck, they could probably hear the yelling all the way to the next county, for that matter. As it was, the door to her room was wide open and I almost had to fight my way through the crowd of our fellow birders that blocked the hallway.
“I want her arrested!”
Just inside the room, Chuck O’Keefe had his face inches from Sheriff Paulsen’s. For his sake, I hope he’d used mouthwash because he’d need every bit of leverage he could get to make friends with that sheriff. After spending a good portion of the morning being thoroughly questioned by the lady lawman—make that lady lawwoman—I knew that Sheriff Paulsen was one tough cookie and wasn’t about to let some man from the city tell her what needed to be done in “her” county. On top of that, she’d actually seemed to warm up to Shana after we’d settled into her squad car this morning for the ride to the police station to make our report.
“Sorry about the bumping,” she’d apologized as we jolted onto the blacktop that led back to town. “Some of these county roads can do a real number on a car’s suspension—even police cars that are practically built like tanks. You doing okay, Mrs. O’Keefe?”
Of course, that might just have been the sheriff trying to be nice to the pregnant lady. Once Sheriff Paulsen saw how awkward it was for Shana to climb into the cruiser’s back seat, she’d probably figured she was going to have to get a car-sized can opener to get Shana back out. I wondered how quickly the Minneapolis police department could get a Jaws of Life to Fillmore County.
Seeing Paulsen stare down Chuck now, I had to admit that I was glad to have the sheriff on our side because I was fairly sure that if Chuck thought he could bully her into doing what he asked, he had another thing coming.
Or maybe even a pair of handcuffs, courtesy of Fillmore County’s finest.
Shana, meanwhile, was standing on the opposite side of the room, her hands on her hips and her green eyes blazing with anger. A big bear of an older man I didn’t recognize was patting her right shoulder, speaking hurriedly to her in an obvious attempt to calm her down.
Good luck with that. Even when she was an average-sized, nonpregnant woman, Shana had had the tenacity of a king-sized bulldog when challenged about anything. Don’t even ask me about the time she insisted we could find a Mississippi Kite near Caledonia, down in the southeastern corner of Minnesota. Since those birds rarely make it north of the Iowa border to nest, I laughed when Shana told me she’d seen one in Houston County the summer before we met. Determined to prove it to me, she’d dragged me down to Caledonia three weekends in a row that following June to look for the bird—three miserably cold, rainy weekends. And sure enough, she found the Kite on our third try, not even a mile from where she’d located it the previous summer. Being the generous, gracious man I am—was, even back then at age sixteen—I conceded that she had been right and vowed to never again question her birding prowess. Shana, on the other hand, was not generous or gracious—she rubbed it in all summer long that she had been right and I had been proven wrong. If I learned nothing else about Shana from that experience, it was that I’d better be willing to take the consequences if I challenged her integrity.
The way Chuck was doing right now in a hotel room at the Inn & Suites.
“She killed my father!” he shouted, his finger pointing at Shana.
“No, she didn’t,” Sheriff Paulsen stated unequivocally. “She wasn’t anywhere near your father at the time of his death, Mr. O’Keefe. She’s got witnesses and an airtight alibi.”
“She didn’t have to be near him!” Chuck yelled. “She’d get someone else to do it. Do you think she’s stupid? Believe me, she’s not. She’s had this one planned since the day she met my father. Marry the rich old guy, give him some great new cause to distract him, and then stick in the knife when he’s not looking. Oh, and that doesn’t even include the pregnancy part. Now she’s got heirs to claim the family fortune. ”
For a second, I thought Shana was going to leap over the bed—big belly or not—and go straight for Chuck’s throat, but just as she moved forward, the man behind her grabbed both of her arms and held her back. It didn’t stop her from shouting at Chuck, though.
“You bastard! As long as Jack was married to the company, you were happy. But you could never forgive him for finding something else to care about when he met me, could you? Especially since you saw me first. Don’t think I don’t know it, Chuck. You were so jealous of Jack and me that it ate you up. And now you want me to be punished for it.”
She turned briefly to the man holding her arms. “Let me go, Ben. I’m not going to touch Chuck.”
He did as she asked, but seemed reluctant to let her get too far out of his arms’ reach.
Shana raked her hand through her chin-length black hair, dragging in a long deep breath. From where I stood in the room’s doorway, I could tell that some of the fire in her eyes had gone out as s
he looked back at Chuck.
“If you want to know the truth, Chuck, I do hold myself responsible for Jack’s death. But it has nothing to do with the family fortune.” Her eyes shifted to the sheriff. “Now will you please get my stepson out of here?”
I moved aside as Paulsen pulled Chuck out of the room and down the hallway. Behind me, Bernie was shooing the other birders off into their own rooms, promising everyone a full report later at dinner at the A&W. I turned to leave, too, but Shana called my name.
“Bob, please don’t go.”
The tenacious bulldog had disappeared, and in its place was a very tired, very pale Shana. She indicated the man next to her. “I want you to meet Ben Graham. He’s an old friend of Jack’s and the mayor of Spring Valley. Ben, this is Bob White. He’s a birding pal from way back.”
I stepped further into the room and shook the man’s hand.
“I’m sorry to be meeting you under these circumstances, Mr. White. I’ve known Jack my whole life. We grew up together. It’s a terrible day for all of us.”
I nodded in agreement and stole a glance at Shana, who’d practically collapsed into the armchair in the corner of the room. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Mayor. Jack was a great guy.”
“Yes, he was,” Graham replied, sorrow thick in his voice. “And call me Big Ben. Please. Everybody around here does.” He rubbed a huge hand over his forehead and closed his eyes briefly. “Sheriff Paulsen called me about noon with the news, and I tried to get over here for Shana as soon as I could. Unfortunately, Chuck beat me to it.”
“He hates me,” Shana said, her eyes fixed on the flat white ceiling. “From the moment I met Jack, Chuck started hating me. I’d just finished speaking at a fund-raising dinner for the Nature Conservancy at the Hilton in downtown Minneapolis, and Chuck was an attendee. He suggested we go downstairs to the bar in the lobby for an after-dinner drink. I was done shaking hands and begging for money for the night, so I said sure. We took the escalator down, and then, just as he pulled out a chair for me at a table in the bar, Jack walked in. He’d been at a board meeting in one of the hotel’s other ballrooms. Chuck invited him to join us and … four months later, I quit my job with the Conservancy to move back to Minneapolis and marry Jack.”