A Bobwhite Killing

by Jan Dunlap

  Unless she landed in jail on a murder charge before I could get to her.

  That would be a problem.

  I wondered what really happened to Jack O’Keefe. Thanks to Eddie’s tape, there was no doubt that our birding leader had been at Kami’s last night; according to Shana’s admission that Jack never got home, it also meant that Kami may have been the last person to see him alive.

  If she’d shot him, then she was definitely the last person to see him alive.

  Then again, Jack wasn’t the only man at Kami’s last night: Eddie’s tape proved that Billy was there, too. So what was going on, and who saw who doing what? And what reason would Kami have to kill Jack or Billy? If she and Jack had quarreled, murder was a pretty extreme measure for settling an argument. Not to mention how inconvenient it would have been for Kami to chase him down to the youth camp to do the deed. And how would that play out?

  “Hey, Jack, I’m furious with you. Could you just walk down this slope and go behind the old covered wagon there? No reason. I just want to shoot a couple of bullets into your heart.”

  I don’t think so.

  Trying to factor in Billy, too, only made the whole mess worse. Did the sheriff think that after Kami killed Jack, she took off after Billy? Just because he’d been on her property? Valuing one’s privacy, I could understand. But to murder for it? There again, the woman must have been pretty determined to do the deed if she’d followed Billy to Mystery Cave. Or did she have a standing appointment with Billy to kill him later?

  “I’m going to be busy a little while offing Jack, so could we just meet at Mystery Cave in about an hour? By that big logpile off the main trail? You’re an administrative aide, you understand how challenging schedules can be.”

  Right.

  Heck, if she’d planned to kill the guy, she could have just fed him to Nigel and saved herself a bunch of time, if not gas money. As someone who does a lot of driving to go birding, I certainly appreciate the price of gas and the dent it can put in my budget—it’s not like gas coupons grow on trees in Minnesota. The way the media was already painting Kami, though, she sounded less like an economizing driver and more like a serial killer on a shooting spree. True, I didn’t know Kami, but I did know Jack, and I couldn’t see him being involved with a woman who had a problem with violence.

  For that matter, I couldn’t see him involved with anyone but his wife. Especially when that wife was Shana.

  But I was no sheriff either, and since the two men were on Kami’s property shortly before their murders, that was enough of a link for Sheriff Paulsen to question Kami about both deaths. Obviously, I had a lot to learn about investigating murders because, from my perspective, the sheriff was making quite an assumption that the two deaths were linked to Kami. I mean, for all the sheriff knew, maybe Billy had taken off to spend the morning birding alone after doing his spying gig for Shana, and he’d just had the rotten bad luck to accidentally walk into a random bullet.

  Happens all the time, right?

  Not.

  Which meant the deaths were linked. But whether Kami was the connection was still hard for me to swallow. Even Shana, who suspected that Jack and Kami were having an affair, immediately thought that Jack’s death had something to do with the work he’d been doing with eco-communities. She told us all that Jack had made enemies.

  Although, to be one hundred percent accurate, her first comment was that she had killed him.

  At the time I’d chalked it up to hysteria, but now that I recalled her exact words, I felt a ripple of unease slide up my spine.

  Shana had said, “It’s all my fault.”

  All?

  What was Shana not telling us?

  Chapter Eleven

  “Bob!”

  I turned my head to see Renee and Mac Ackerman, two members of our birding group, walk into the lobby. Since we were all going to be having dinner together at the A&W across the street, they plopped down on the sofa next to my armchair and began to tell me what I’d missed when Shana and I had slipped out the hotel window to escape the media circus.

  “That Chuck O’Keefe sure hates Shana,” Renee reported. “He kept yelling at the sheriff, saying that Shana was a manipulative schemer, and that he wasn’t fooled by her innocent grieving widow act. He said she had more irons in the fire than anyone knew about, and he wasn’t about to let her take OK Industries away from Jack’s real family.”

  “OK Industries?”

  “O’Keefe Industries, Bob,” Mac clarified for me. “It’s the family empire. They’ve got interests in just about every business in the state. Mills, real estate, grocery stores, banking.”

  “Jack O’Keefe came a long way from his humble origins, that’s for sure,” Renee added. “I told the reporters that when Jack was in high school, all the girls were in love with him.” A distinct red blush colored her cheeks. “Including me.”

  Mac threw his arm around his smiling wife and hugged her close. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, it was,” Renee agreed, wiping away a tear that had crept into her eyes when she’d said Jack’s name. “But it doesn’t make it any easier to see someone you know … dead.”

  She sniffed and turned away to dig into her purse for a tissue.

  “Yeah, if it hadn’t been for that Ben Graham, I don’t think the sheriff would have ever gotten Chuck to calm down, let alone leave the hotel. I guess he’s an old pal of Jack’s, and he’s known Chuck since he was a baby,” Mac continued. “Anyway, as soon as he told the reporters about Jack and Kami Marsden having an affair, they could have cared less about Chuck, I think. I guess a sex scandal beats an outraged stepson when you’re looking for headlines.”

  “Say that again?”

  Mac looked at me for a moment in confusion. “I guess a sex scandal—“

  “No, not that part,” I interrupted him. “The part about Jack and Kami Marsden.”

  “You mean about them having an affair?” Renee was back in the conversation. “Apparently it was common knowledge down here in Spring Valley. The sheriff didn’t seem surprised at all when Big Ben—he’s the mayor, you know,” she added for my benefit, “mentioned it. Of course, he didn’t come right out at first and say ‘affair.’ He said they had a ‘close, personal relationship,’ but of course, everyone could figure out what he wasn’t saying. And then the sheriff told the reporters that private affairs weren’t her concern, but murder was, and that she would be talking with Kami later today. Which I guess she did, according to the radio.”

  Renee sniffed one last time into the tissue in her hand. “Poor Shana. I can’t imagine how she must feel.”

  “Actually, I’m pretty hungry.”

  We all looked up to see Shana and Bernie standing at the edge of the lobby. Renee’s cheeks blazed a brighter red in embarrassment, and Mac quickly rose from the sofa, pulling his wife up with him.

  “I think we’ll go on across the street and find a table,” he said. “See you there.”

  Renee ducked her head and made a beeline for the hotel’s front doors.

  I watched Shana’s green eyes follow Renee’s back out the hotel entrance and had no clue what to say.

  “Too bad Renee wasn’t in such a rush this morning to get to coffee,” Bernie commented as she and Shana crossed the lobby to me. “As I recall, we waited a good half-hour for her to get back from that twenty-four hour pharmacy with her allergy prescription. If it hadn’t been for her, we could have gotten an earlier start on our birding. I mean, really, how could the woman forget her allergy medication at home when it’s allergy season? Talk about being unprepared.”

  As I motioned for Shana to precede me through the hotel doors, her eyes caught mine, a hint of a smile playing around the corners of her full lips, and I immediately knew what she was thinking. Without a moment’s hesitation, I could feel my memory flying back to the summer I was sixteen and Shana Lewis was the woman of my dreams …

  “Talk about being unprepared,” I’d moaned, trying not t
o scratch at the million mosquito bites that were welling up all over my legs and arms.

  “You didn’t have to go into the swamp with me,” Shana laughed. “I told you you weren’t properly dressed, but you just couldn’t stand the thought of me getting that Louisiana Waterthrush when you haven’t been able to find it all summer, could you?” She pulled a tube of bite balm out of her backpack. “That competitive streak is going to get you into trouble, Bob, mark my words. Now turn around.”

  And then she proceeded to massage the whole tube into the backs of my stinging legs. For that one short moment, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

  But not because the balm soothed the itching.

  Because Shana, who was driving me crazier every time I was near her, had her hands on me.

  Not that it meant anything more to her than having to take care of a stupid, careless, proud and overconfident young birder. After all, she had been the one wearing the long-sleeved bug shirt and pants that covered almost every inch of her beautiful, ivory skin in mosquito-proof protection.

  I, on the other hand, had been the “What NOT to wear for birding in August” model. Dressed in a tee-shirt and shorts, I was every mosquito’s fantasy feast—skin, skin, and more skin. I think it was a week before I could sit down without my legs tingling from the overwhelming need to itch. But even then, every time I thought about Shana touching me, I would have walked right back into that swamp had I been given the choice.

  Yeah, I’d been unprepared back then.

  Just like I was unprepared right now as the memory of that summer flooded over me, filling me with a yearning I couldn’t begin to describe.

  “Are you going to stand there all evening with your mouth open catching flies, or are we going to dinner?” Bernie called back to me from the other side of the hotel’s entrance drive.

  Only then did I realize I was frozen in the path of the hotel’s sliding doors. Shana, standing on the far curb with Bernie, also looked back at me, smiling, and I kicked myself in the head for so easily losing my sense of time and place, not to mention control of my libido. A whiff of White Shoulders lingered with me in the doorway, and I shook my head to clear it.

  How about some focus, here, buddy? I asked myself. You want to help Shana, then get a grip, because the last thing she needs is a mutton-headed sixteen-year-old following her around.

  A scream of brakes rounded the corner of the hotel as a news van headed straight for Shana and Bernie.

  I was wrong.

  The last thing Shana needed was an unexpected visit from the media.

  Then I realized that the cameraman hanging out the window on the passenger side of the van wasn’t aiming his camera at Shana.

  He was aiming it at me.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Turn away!” Shana shouted at me, but it was too late. The van roared off, the cameraman grinning as he waved good-bye.

  I crossed the driveway to Shana and Bernie. “This is not a good thing, is it?”

  “Not unless you don’t mind having your personal life totally and completely appropriated by the media,” Shana replied, a quiet resentment lacing her voice. “When I married Jack, he warned me that our marriage was going to be a bonanza for gossip-mongers, so I’ve spent the last five years ducking the press as much as possible so we could have a real marriage, and not an unending media event.” She glanced in the direction of the disappearing van. “I’m afraid to even think about what’s going to be leading the news on television tonight.”

  It took a second or two for me to catch Shana’s meaning, but when I did, it wasn’t pretty.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Jack’s murder is going to be at the top of the hour, with more details to follow. Details like you,” I pointed at Shana, and then curved my finger toward my chest. “And me.”

  Shana nodded slowly in affirmation.

  “Oh boy!” Bernie said, linking her arms through Shana’s right elbow and my left. She turned us toward the street and started pulling us along. “I’m having dinner with two celebrities! Wait till I tell the girls back home. They’ll be so jealous.”

  Jealous?

  Oh, man.

  I almost stumbled over my own feet. What if my face did show up on the evening news as the lovelier-than-ever Shana O’Keefe’s brand-new companion? And what if Luce, the woman I loved, saw it?

  Luce, the woman to whom I hadn’t mentioned Shana O’Keefe.

  “I think I just lost my appetite,” I muttered.

  “Nonsense,” Bernie said. “What you need is a good meal to fortify you for the night ahead. We’re going owling after dinner, aren’t we? I know I’m looking forward to some evening walking. If we have to stick around till tomorrow like the sheriff asked, I don’t see why we can’t just pick up what was on our original weekend birding plan for tonight anyway.” She gave Shana’s arm an extra pat with her hand. “I know it’s been an awful day for you, honey, but I can’t think of a better way to get your mind off your troubles than to go birding.”

  And with that remark, our self-appointed mother hen hustled us across the two-lane road that separated the hotel from the restaurant and then ushered us into the old A&W drive-in. As soon as we walked in, Tom called to us from a table at the far end of the diner. I noted that Renee and Mac were seated with another couple from our birding group at the table next to ours and that everyone seemed fairly engrossed in reading through the menu.

  Which, to be honest, wasn’t going to take too long since the A&W specialized in burger baskets and not much else. Not exactly nouveau cuisine, if you know what I mean. But definitely familiar fare for birding weekend trip regulars. I’m sure I’m not the only Minnesota birder who can say he’s eaten burgers in nearly every county in the great state of Minnesota.

  Come to think of it, maybe the weekends should be renamed. “Birds and burgs” might work. Although then the trip leader better proofread the flyers carefully or we might be signing up for “birds and bugs” weekends.

  Actually, I’ve been on some of those too. Trust me, when someone asks you to go birding in the Sax-Zim bog in July, say, “No.” The birds might be good ones, but the mosquitoes can carry off small children.

  Glancing at Renee and friends as I headed towards Tom and our table, it occurred to me that their intense menu perusal was more likely out of consideration for Shana’s circumstances than any gastronomical curiosity. In fact, it seemed almost too obvious that the four birders were feverishly intent on not making eye contact with Shana as she passed their table.

  Respect for a grieving widow was one thing, but the vibes I picked up from the group before I sat down next to Tom seemed distinctly different than sympathy.

  Embarrassment?

  Maybe. In the hotel lobby, Shana had walked in on the last part of Renee and Mac’s “sex scandal” commentary, casting Shana in the role of the naive wife. Having already had that conversation with Shana myself, I knew how she felt about people’s intrusive speculations, as well as her determination not to be labeled as the poor, pitiful wife who was caught unaware by her husband’s infidelity. So, sure, maybe Renee was feeling a little residual discomfort from that earlier encounter in the hotel.

  Yet embarrassment didn’t quite fit the mood I felt emanating from the adjacent table. If I had to make a gut call on it, I would have said it was smugness, like they knew something the four of us at my table didn’t.

  And that got me to wondering what else had happened at the hotel after Shana and I had made our window exit. Between Chuck’s accusations and Big Ben the Mayor’s revelations, I figured Jack must have been cringing in his grave.

  Well, maybe not in his grave, since he wasn’t buried yet, but you get my point. The man’s dirty laundry was being strung out on the line for the whole world to see, and he wasn’t even around to throw a little bleach at it. It sure didn’t look like his best friend the mayor was going to be of any help in salvaging Jack’s reputation, either. In fact, based on Renee and Mac’s report, it sounded like
good old Big Ben had been all too ready to throw the choicest bits of gossip meat to the media pack.

  A best friend like that, nobody needs.

  Yet he’d shown up pretty quickly to offer Shana condolences and support.

  A soft chuckle interrupted my thoughts, and I glanced at Shana sitting beside me. Tom was telling her about our afternoon encounter with Nigel and had managed not only to amuse her, but elicit a small laugh. The woman was holding up pretty darn well, I thought, especially in light of what she’d been through since sunrise this morning. But then again, the Shana I’d known was like that: a real trooper who didn’t think twice about taking on the world or wading through mud for a chance to find a rarity.

  Actually, Shana herself was the rarity.

  No matter what the situation, it seemed like passion virtually spilled out of her, whether she was facing down a vengeful stepson or planning a future of research in exotic locations. The more I thought about it, the only time I’d ever seen her falter was this morning when she’d cried for Jack in my arms. And even that was passionate—I don’t know that I’d ever seen such stark grief in a person’s face as when Shana first saw Jack’s frozen features. Yet here she was, sitting in a diner with Bernie, Tom and me, planning a night of owling to pass the time while Sheriff Paulsen tried to solve her husband’s murder.

  The fact was, Shana O’Keefe was a woman any man would be attracted to. If her raven-haired beauty didn’t catch a guy’s eye, her sheer vitality would. Heck, even here in the A&W, I noticed that the high school boys flipping the burgers were checking her out.

  So why, I asked myself for the hundredth time, would Jack have cheated on her?

  And why would Big Ben have been so eager to let the world know about it?

  The waitress brought us the basket of onion rings that Tom had already ordered for us, but something didn’t smell right to me.