A Bobwhite Killing

by Jan Dunlap

  Skip, meanwhile, was outlining how he’d put his story together to connect the ancient saber-tooth cat with Kami’s Nigel.

  “They’re both megafauna,” he reminded us. “Both big cats. How cool is that? One is extinct and played a role in the eco-system here twenty-two thousand years ago, and now Nigel is here, a walking symbol of ecological preservation, right next to where they want to build Minnesota’s first eco-community. I think this story could really rock.”

  “It would certainly rock the plans of the ATV manufacturer,” Alan observed. “You start promoting this site as a possible prehistoric find, and there’s no way the council is going to rezone it for commercial use, let alone give anyone permission to develop an ATV riding park here. Soil erosion is already a huge problem for the state’s engineers, and they sure aren’t going to want to encourage more of that happening here, especially if it threatens a natural history goldmine.”

  Goldmine.

  Renee’s words from last night came slamming back into my head.

  “He kept telling us that one day he was going to find a goldmine in Fillmore.”

  I turned to Kami. “Does Ben know about the caves? I mean, the caves that might be under your property?”

  She drew her handgun out of her shorts and slid it neatly into the holster strapped to her leg. She noticed me watching her, and smiled that pixie smile of hers. “When Nigel’s loose, I bring both kinds of ammunition. I don’t want to hurt him, but if he’s a danger to somebody, I won’t have a choice.” She tapped the butt of the gun. “It’s also useful in getting a person’s attention.”

  “Worked for me,” I said.

  “Sure, Ben knows about the caverns around here,” she replied in answer to my previous question. “Like your young friend here explained, the kids learn about it in school. It’s a great opportunity to learn about earth science when your backyards are sitting on top of unusual geological formations. All the kids around here go exploring at some point. I know we did, when we were growing up.” She shrugged. “Not a whole lot else to do when you’re a kid in Fillmore County.”

  “But I mean about your property in particular, Kami. Do you know for a fact that there are caverns beneath it?”

  “I’ve never been in any, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Has Ben?”

  Kami tipped her head to the side and considered my question. She tapped the rifle tip on the ground a few times, frowned, then suddenly froze.

  “Yes. Now that you mention it, he has. I’d forgotten about it. When we were about—oh, I don’t know—maybe fourteen, he told me that he’d found a cave entrance near the seepage meadow on the other side of my parents’ property. He wanted me to go in the cave with him, but I wouldn’t do it.” She glanced at Nigel, who was beginning to stir. “I hate bats,” she said. “I was afraid there would be bats in the cave.”

  “Man, I hate bats, too,” Alan agreed. “There was this old house Bob and I roomed in our senior year in college, and we could hear the bats flying around in the attic on some nights. Creeped me out. One night I opened the closet door in my bedroom, and this bat comes whipping out of there. I almost had a heart attack. I don’t think I opened that door again the whole time we lived there.”

  “You didn’t,” I reminded him, “because the next morning, you took all your stuff out of the closet and taped all around the edges of the door with duct tape. Triple-taped it as I recall. In fact, by the time you were done, nobody could tell there was even a door underneath all the tape.”

  “It worked, didn’t it? I didn’t have any more bats in my room the rest of the year.”

  I rolled my eyes and caught a glimpse of Nigel shaking his head.

  “The seepage meadow,” I asked Kami, “is it where I ran into Eddie yesterday?”

  She nodded in agreement, walking back towards the wire fencing where she’d pulled it low. She stepped over it back onto her property, then turned and stretched the fencing up as high as she could reach. “You guys need to go. I don’t want to give Nigel another dose of sedative.”

  I watched the tiger blink sleepily as Kami approached him, crooning his name. He was a beauty, his coat shiny and thick, his orange and black stripes vivid against the green backdrop of the woods that bordered the wasted prairie. Living in southeastern Minnesota, at least half a world away from his native land, obviously agreed with Nigel. With Kami as his keeper, he was living the good life, safe from big-game hunters and poachers. I wondered how he’d match up in size to the saber-tooth cats that had preceded him in this area twenty-two thousand years ago. Maybe Skip really did have a tiger by the tail—figuratively speaking, of course—with this article he was talking about writing. I knew that the idea of huge cats stalking prey sure changed how I viewed Minnesota’s distant past. When I was a kid, the big prehistoric hits at the Science Museum in St. Paul were the giant beaver skeleton and the claw from an enormous ground sloth. I think there might also have been some bones from musk oxen and maybe even a woolly mammoth or two. Large lumbering herbivores, every one of them.

  Not exactly fodder for exciting boyhood fantasies. As far as I know, no film director has been inspired to produce a sci-fi thriller called “Sloth Park.” Watching slow-moving beasts shuffle across the big screen didn’t sound especially compelling, if you ask me. But a saber-tooth cat? Now, that was cool. I had to believe that Skip would be able to catch some editor’s eye with a piece about a prehistoric predator and its contemporary descendent.

  As I climbed back into Alan’s car, though, I began to wonder about another, entirely different type of predator.

  One who might be preying on Kami in order to gain access to a subterranean goldmine … of fossils.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  So what do you know about the fossil trade?” I asked Alan as he followed my directions to the seepage meadow where I’d first made Nigel’s acquaintance yesterday.

  “Only the little I gleaned from a program on the History Channel,” he replied.

  No surprise there. The History Channel was another one of Alan’s favorite pasttimes. Even when we roomed together in college, I’d find him up late into the night, glued to shows about naval battles during World War II, or the training of Japanese samurai, or secrets from Confederate army diaries. Those shows put me to sleep in the first ten minutes of the telecast, but for Alan, they acted like prescription-strength stimulants.

  I hoped Lily was ready for a lifetime of boring documentaries.

  Then again, not everyone is crazy about my hobby, either. When I was in high school, my buddies called me the Bird Nerd. It wasn’t till I was in college that my pals came to appreciate the extent of my ornithological expertise: I can’t remember how many times our team squeaked out a win for the free pitcher of beer at the local bar on Trivia Night because I was the only person in the place who knew the Latin name of the American Robin. Believe me, my buddies developed a whole new respect for my chosen avocation.

  “And what does the History Channel say?” I asked Alan.

  “Apparently, fossils are big business,” he replied. “And there’s a brisk commercial trade for them, too, which has opened more than one can of worms. On the one hand, you’ve got the scientists—the paleontologists—trying to preserve collection sites because so much of what they can learn about the fossils and the animals they once were depends on the little details they find around them.”

  “You mean like nesting materials, or prehistoric dunghills,” I prompted him.

  “Exactly. The site of a fossil find is critical to understanding the fossils themselves. So the paleontologists want all that preserved. Most of the commercial collectors, on the other hand, don’t give a rip about the integrity of the sites because all they want to do is cash in on selling the fossils to everyone from tourist gift shops to fancy interior decorating firms to museum curators looking for rare display pieces. And since some of the best fossil finds—especially dinosaurs—seem to be in North America, international buyers, both mu
seums and private collectors, are ready to shell out big bucks to buy American.”

  “And the government doesn’t have a problem with that?” For all the other facets of life that our politicians wanted to control, I found it hard to believe that this particular industry was escaping regulation.

  “America is wide open for business when it comes to fossil sales, Bob,” Alan reported. “Other countries have laws about the export of fossils, but not the United States. As a result, any private individual who owns the land can legally sell what he finds on it. Or underneath it. And that’s just the legal market we’re talking about. I have to believe there’s an illegal market as well.”

  “The black market for bones,” I observed.

  “Yup.” He made the right hand turn off the main road towards the meadow along Rice Creek, just as Tom had done the day before. His car navigated the rutted road a whole lot better than Tom’s old beast, though. I didn’t get my head bounced against the ceiling even once.

  “What exactly are we looking for here?” Alan asked, easing the hybrid over the bumps in the track. “For some reason, I get the distinct impression that this stop isn’t about adding to my very short list of birds for the day.”

  “Very astute, professor. We’re trading in our binoculars for caving equipment.”

  Alan shot me a look of panic. “You have got to be kidding me. No way am I looking for a cave. Bats, remember?”

  I socked him lightly on his right shoulder. “Gotcha, didn’t I?”

  “Not funny,” he answered. “It also wasn’t especially funny when I felt the ground give way beneath me back in that prairie, Bob. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes, but I did think about Lily.”

  “So did I. I thought she’d kill me if you disappeared from the face of the earth, especially if it was during my watch.”

  Alan laughed. “Your sister is a marshmallow. You have no idea.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I have no idea. And I never will. She lives to boss me around. I was kind of hoping maybe she’d direct some of that bossing around at you, now, and that she’d give me the break I so richly deserve.”

  “You marry Luce, and I’m sure Lily will let up. She’ll just pass the torch to her.”

  “Luce doesn’t boss me around. Luce is the easiest person in the world to live with.”

  “So why aren’t you living with her?”

  That made me pause. Why wasn’t I living with her?

  “I guess I’m just an old-fashioned kind of guy,” I finally said. “Besides, the point is now moot, isn’t it? I lost the bet. I’m going to propose to Luce, get married and live happily ever after with her.”

  Even as the words left my mouth, I felt stunned by how right they felt to say. I was going to spend the rest of my days and nights happy with Luce.

  The earth moved beneath me in revelation.

  “Geez!” Alan hissed as we heard a rock scrape the car’s undercarriage.

  Oops. My mistake: it wasn’t a revelation after all, just the car jolting over the lousy road.

  “I’m going to end up with some damage thanks to this track,” Alan groused. “You’d have to have a car built like a tank to get in and out of here to avoid any repair bills.”

  “Just pull into the grass and park,” I told him. “We’re going to be walking all around the meadow, so you might as well get off the road.”

  “Gladly.” Alan glided a few feet into the meadow and switched off the engine. Silence filled the afternoon.

  I got out of the car and surveyed the meadow. To one side, Kami’s wire fencing stretched along the grasses; the big hole in the fence that had tempted Nigel was still there, though the torn wire had been cleared away. Walking closer to the fence, I tossed a stick at the wires to gauge if it was electrified. As Eddie had said, it wasn’t, and the stick fell to the ground without striking a spark.

  “And that was supposed to make me feel more secure in case Nigel shows up?” Alan asked from behind me. “Knowing that this little old wire fence is absolutely useless in defending itself against a stick, let alone a full-grown tiger?”

  I pointed at the fence in front of me and repeated to Alan what Eddie had explained to me. “None of this is electrified anymore, Alan. It’s to keep people off Kami’s property, not to secure Nigel inside it. The fence to keep Nigel in is invisible, and it’s set up about ten feet inside of this one that you see. The wire fencing might give you some peace of mind, but it’s the invisible one that does the job, and as long as it’s operating, Nigel’s not leaving the farm.”

  “Plus he has that collar that Kami used to zap him, right?”

  “Right. It gives her a back-up for restraining him. And it’s got a tracking device so she can check on his location anytime. That’s how she knew he was by the ATV track.”

  “Slick. Though I guess you want the slickest system you can find if you’re going to be keeping a tiger on your property.” He squinted into the sun beating down on the meadow. “Of course, that system is only good as long as it’s not compromised, which seems to beg the question of who else has access to Kami’s control center?”

  “That is the question, all right,” I agreed. “I know that Eddie upgraded it because he said that he designed the new invisible fencing system, but other than the company that helped him install it, I don’t know who else might even know about it.”

  Alan squinted my way. “Ben?”

  “Good chance, I’d say. If he had a key to the house, I’d expect he’d know about the security system. At the very least, we know that whoever could access it to turn it off today also knew that Kami wasn’t at home, or at least, came calling and found she was gone, leaving the perfect opportunity to sabotage another piece of the fence. Wait a minute,” I interrupted myself. “If someone came to Kami’s house this morning, there might be a record of it.”

  I pulled out my cell phone to place a call. “If Eddie’s monitors caught Jack and Billy’s cars at Kami’s place on Friday night, then that means there are mounted cameras somewhere near her house. As long as those cameras were running this morning, they would have captured any visitors.” I tapped in Eddie’s number and after a short conversation with him, ended the call.

  “He says the cameras are motion activated,” I told Alan, “so if someone parked near the house, it will be on the surveillance loop.”

  “And then you’ll have a suspect. At least for sabotaging Kami’s fence.”

  “Right.” I waved my hand out at the meadow. “And, if I’m not mistaken, I think we’re going to find the motive for Jack’s death right here in this meadow. Start looking for water trails, Alan. One of them is going to lead us to that cave Ben wanted to show Kami decades ago.”

  “A cave filled with prehistoric fossil specimens?”

  “Either that, or it’s the entrance to a network of caverns. My guess is that the caverns lead under Kami’s property—that would explain Ben’s sudden urge to marry Kami now after all these years. He’d get joint title to the property and would own whatever he found. This seepage meadow isn’t part of Kami’s parcel—it’s state land, and no one can claim any fossils found on it, or underneath it. But Kami’s land is privately owned, which means whoever lives upstairs can legally explore the basement.”

  I shaded my eyes with my hand from the glaring sunlight, straining to see if I could spot some creeks sparkling in the meadow, and another piece of the Ben puzzle fell into place.

  “That’s why Ben hasn’t publicly supported the ATV manufacturer and the recreational vehicle park,” I realized. “He doesn’t want them to have the land any more than he wants an eco-community built on it. He’s hoping the whole conflict will come to a stalemate with the zoning council, and then, Chuck’s property, which is already trashed, won’t be worth anything to anyone else. He’ll be able to snap it up at a bargain, combine it with Kami’s place, and bingo! He’s sitting on top of his personal, prehistoric goldmine.”

  “Assuming Kami marries him, which I think
is looking pretty doubtful given her rather distraught reaction to your comments this morning, Bob,” Alan reminded me. “And even if she did, that still doesn’t guarantee the council is going to stall out on making a decision favoring either of the other two parties—the ATV gang or the eco-community group. Typically, in local cases like this, one or the other party will get the nod. That’s still a hurdle if Ben wants ownership of the land.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “No, it’s not, Alan. Ben might be taking a low profile in this debate, but the fact is, he has a lot of pull in this county. Ask anyone. Big Ben plays the fiddle down here and everybody dances. Besides, as a local boy, he’s probably got long histories with enough council members to guarantee that nobody gets the nod to develop that property unless he says so. As for the ATV people, they must think he’s working behind the scenes to help them out, especially since he’s funneling Chuck’s money into their lobbying group.”

  “But you think he’s playing them for fools, using them to stonewall the eco-community while he manipulates the zoning council to shut both groups out.”

  “That’s exactly what I think,” I assured him. “If nobody can get the zoning they need, the land can’t be developed, which means the buyers go away, and the property continues to sit and deteriorate.”

  “Which drives the price of the land even further down.”

  “Absolutely. Then Ben, Chuck’s good old family friend, offers to take the property off his hands at a bargain price. Chuck can say ‘good riddance’ to a painful reminder of his quarrel with his father, and Ben gets legal rights—at a cut-rate price—to whatever he finds underground, maximizing his bone-selling profits.”

  I scanned the meadow again and caught some sun reflecting off the surface of a stream that meandered through the sedge. “I’m starting with that one,” I said, striding towards the little ribbon of water. “Don’t fall through the earth again, Alan. Or if you do, yell really loud so I can hear you.”

  “This is crazy!” he called after me. “We don’t know anything about finding caves.”