A Bobwhite Killing

by Jan Dunlap

  “You just don’t want to be alone on that altar when Lily comes marching down the aisle,” I accused him.

  “Damn straight,” he agreed. “What’s a best friend for, anyway?” He nodded towards the shrub that had held the calling Northern Bobwhite. “You going to tell your buddy Stan about the birds?”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my hand over my forehead. Stan had been a huge help in the last two days, trying to track down Ben’s dealings to solve Jack’s murder. For that and for Shana’s sake, I was grateful.

  He was, however, my longtime rival in the world of Minnesota birding, and I’d already handed one rare bird to him today.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell Scary Stan.” I paused a beat and grinned. “Tomorrow.”

  Chapter Thrity-Seven

  John and Julianne O’Keefe looked impossibly small, their faces all scrunched up beneath little knit caps in their cribs in the hospital nursery.

  “It’s a good thing babies get better looking,” I commented to Tom, who was standing at the big nursery window with me. “Those puffy eyelids look like they’ve been on a heck of a bender all night.”

  “You’d look that way too if you’d just spent nine months immersed in fluid,” Tom replied. “And I don’t recommend you give it a try, either.” He nodded towards the twins. “They look great, especially considering they were about a month early. They don’t even have to spend time in the preemie ward. These are a couple of healthy kids.”

  I watched John and Julianne continue to sleep in their twin cribs and wondered if either of them would have Shana’s emerald eyes. Judging from the wisps of black hair escaping from under the little caps, the O’Keefe kids definitely had their mother’s raven hair.

  Bernie stood next to me, the middle of her body looking especially bulky thanks to the bandaging around her ribs beneath her shirt. “Have you seen Shana yet?”

  I hadn’t. After reporting back to Kami that Alan and I had located a probable cave entrance in the far side of the seepage meadow, we’d been swept up by Stan and his numerous friends from various law enforcement agencies to accompany them to the nearest police station. While we drank enough coffee to float a flotilla, we laid out everything we knew about Big Ben, Sheriff Paulsen, fossil finds, Jack, Billy, ATV manufacturers, and invisible fencing for exotic animal sanctuaries. Four hours later, Alan had headed home to his blushing bride-to-be, and I’d driven over to the hospital to see how Shana’s labor was progressing.

  Obviously, it had progressed very well. In fact, according to Tom, the ambulance had barely reached the ER before the twins made their grand entrance.

  “I’m sure she’d like to see you,” Bernie said. “Come on, I’ll take you to her room.”

  We walked down the hall to a door that had two helium balloons—one pink, one blue—tied to the nameplate beside it. Just as Bernie reached for the door handle, though, it opened from the inside.

  “Stan.”

  “White.”

  “Shana’s not sleeping, is she?” Bernie asked. “I know she’d like to see Bob before he leaves for the Cities.”

  “She’s awake,” Stan said and walked away down the hall.

  Bernie’s eyes followed Stan past the nurses’ station until he turned a corner and disappeared.

  “Not exactly Mr. Conversation, is he?” she noted.

  “Not exactly,” I agreed. “But his actions definitely speak louder—and volumes more—than his words. If Stan hadn’t been so quick to dig up information about Ben’s questionable finances, I don’t know if Sheriff Paulsen would be in custody right now for a double murder. I do know that without Stan and his friends, Alan, Kami, and I would probably still be sitting in the seepage meadow trying to figure out how to turn in a sheriff to her own police department.”

  “I heard the nurses say that Big Ben is in custody, too,” Bernie said. When I gave her a startled look, she grinned. “News travels fast in a small town, Bob. Actually, I’m surprised the big city media hasn’t shown up yet. They’ve got to have sources down here.”

  “Hey, Mr. White!”

  Bernie and I both turned towards the end of the hall. Skip Swenson was waving at us, his forward progress blocked by two determined nurses.

  “The press has arrived,” I announced, waving back at Skip. “Wait here a minute. I’ll go talk to him.”

  The nurses parted to let me through, and I took Skip by the shoulder, turning him around and leading him to a small waiting area at the end of the hallway where we could talk in private.

  “What a story!” he gushed. “I called the hotline at two television stations in the Cities, and they’re sending crews right away to cover the whole thing. If this doesn’t get me an internship, I don’t know what will.”

  “That’s great, Skip. But do me one favor, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You tell the crews that Mrs. O’Keefe isn’t talking with anyone for a day or two. She just had her babies, and that’s what she needs to focus on right now. I’m sure she’ll make a statement later, but for now, you keep the media clear of her. Can you do that for me?”

  “I’ll try, but some of these media people can be really persistent, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know. Present company excepted, right?”

  Skip blushed and ducked his head. “Yeah.”

  “And something else, Skip?” He looked back up at me. “Okay, it’s two favors I need. Leave me and Mr. Thunderhawk out of it.”

  “But,” he started to say as I cut him off with my hand.

  “Skip, there are plenty of other people involved in this story, and I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to talk with you and the media. More power to them. I just want to go home and forget about a really bad birding weekend. Do this for me,” I added, sweetening the pot, “and I’ll personally help you find an internship for next summer—in the Twin Cities.”

  I glanced down the hall at Bernie, who was waiting for me outside Shana’s room. Even from down the hall, I could hear her making fussing noises to the nurses about Shana’s care. The woman was an incorrigible mother hen. I smiled at Skip. “In fact, I may even know a sweet old lady who’d love to rent you a room in her house and mother you to death for the summer. Deal?”

  Skip brushed his blonde bangs off his forehead, then held out his hand to shake mine. “Deal,” he said, and we shook on it.

  “Great. Now keep the press out of here when they show up, because I’ve already been on the nighttime news one more time than I ever wanted to be.” I patted his shoulder a final time and went back to Bernie.

  “Anyone else in there?” I asked, nodding towards Shana’s open door.

  “Nope. It’s your turn, Bob.” And with that, Bernie fluttered away to badger the nursing staff some more.

  I knocked on the door frame and walked in.

  “Hi,” Shana said from her hospital bed. She had an IV dripping into one arm and wore a hospital gown covered in little angels.

  She was also wearing a very pretty smile that lit up those emerald eyes of hers.

  “Did you see them?” she asked, her voice tired but filled with unmistakable pride and joy.

  I pulled a chair next to her bed and sat down. “They’re beautiful, Shana. You do nice work.”

  She laughed and tears clouded her eyes. “Yeah, I do,” she agreed. “Me and Jack. He would have been an extraordinary father, Bob.”

  I reached out and took her hand. “Absolutely.”

  She smiled and color rushed into her cheeks. “About Bobwhites—”

  “It was a great summer, wasn’t it?” I interrupted her. “You and I birding all over the Cities. Man, we were just kids, weren’t we?”

  “Yeah, we were.” She smiled, and for a split-second, I could almost smell the White Shoulders perfume from that summer. “I had a huge crush on you, you know,” she quietly admitted. “You were the first guy anywhere close to my own age I’d ever met who got as excited as I did to wade through a swamp just to see a bird.”
>
  I laughed, too, then patted her hand. “The feeling was mutual, Shana. I never thought I’d meet anyone else like you. When you left for grad school, you broke my heart. I didn’t think I’d ever recover.”

  Her eyes met mine and she smiled. “But you did. And so did I. We birders are a very resilient species, aren’t we?”

  I returned her smile. “Yes, we are.”

  “And extremely clever, too, if half of what Stan told me is true about how you solved Jack’s and Billy’s murders.”

  “Depends on what he told you.” Thinking of Stan, I couldn’t help but add, “That’s assuming he actually spoke to you in full sentences.”

  Shana laughed again. “Stan’s a good man. A little verbally challenged at times, but a good man.” She studied my hand over hers. “We worked together for a while.”

  “You were an accountant?”

  Her eyes flew back to mine and her lips twitched in amusement. “No, I wasn’t an accountant.”

  I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant, but then it hit me like a sudden downpour.

  Shana had worked for the CIA.

  “Costa Rica?” I asked, remembering Chuck’s nasty accusations about Shana’s first marriage and her murdered husband.

  “After that, actually,” she said. “My first husband—Dennis—unknowingly tripped across a smuggling ring in Nicaragua and was murdered. Stan was working the case and recruited me to help with the investigation, and then, for a couple years, I continued to do some jobs for the agency. Meeting Jack changed all that. I wanted to come home, settle down, have kids. Pretty dull, I know, but I’d had enough excitement in my life.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Newsflash, honey. The excitement isn’t over yet, not by a long shot. You’ve got a couple of gorgeous kids to raise. And between Bernie, Tom, me, and everyone else who cares about you, you’re going to have more help than you ever imagined. Maybe even Stan will help out—he could teach John and Julianne how to hold entire conversations using only one-word sentences.”

  Shana laughed. “Oh great. My kids will sound like teenage boys their whole lives.”

  “Hey, I was a teenage boy once.”

  “I know. And I was crazy about you, but you were still barely articulate.”

  I squeezed her hand again. “I don’t have to take this kind of abuse from you. I’ve got a sister who dedicates herself to abusing me. I’m going home.” I stood up and then leaned over to plant a kiss on her cheek. “Take care of yourself, Shana. Call me?”

  She nodded. “Definitely. I want the twins to learn birding from only the best.” She paused, her eyes misting. “Thanks, Bob, for everything.”

  I gave her a little salute and went out into the hall, where Tom and Bernie were waiting.

  “Taking off?” Tom asked me.

  “Yeah, I need to get back home. Are you two sticking around a while?”

  “Just till Shana’s folks get here,” Bernie said. “Their flight should be landing in Rochester in the next hour.”

  “Good. She needs her family.”

  “Speaking of which, we just left Chuck O’Keefe in front of the nursery,” Tom told me. “I got the distinct impression he plans to make amends with Shana. I told him good luck with that, but he seemed pretty intent on making things right between him and his new siblings.”

  “I hope she makes his life miserable,” Bernie objected. “He deserves it for the way he’s treated her, not to mention the scam he was pulling on his dad.”

  “Why, Bernie,” I said, “I’m surprised. Here I thought you were such a sweetheart. No way I would have pegged you for a vengeful woman.”

  “I’ve got a cracked rib,” she pointed out, “thanks to him.”

  I frowned. “Chuck cut my brake line? Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. But I figure it’s like that nursery rhyme, ‘This is the house that Jack built.’”

  “Come again?”

  “‘This is the house that Jack built.’ One thing leads to another. If Chuck hadn’t funded the ATV group against his dad’s eco-community project, there wouldn’t have been a zoning dispute which the sheriff was trying to force by cutting Kami’s fences and Jack wouldn’t have caught her in the act and gotten himself killed.”

  “And this has to do with my car … how?”

  Bernie rubbed her bandaged side. “Well, I don’t know exactly, but I’m sure it’s connected somehow.”

  “You just want to blame Chuck because he was so mean to Shana,” Tom said.

  “Maybe I do. He’s a poor excuse for a son-in-law.”

  Since I’d already made my feelings about Chuck O’Keefe abundantly clear when I’d decked him earlier in the day, I decided it was as good a time as any to make my exit.

  “I’m out of here,” I told them. “Call me if the sheriff breaks down and spills her guts to Stan and his friends. From what I overheard at the police station, they’re going to need either a confession or some hard evidence to prove she’s guilty. Everything else is just circumstantial.”

  Which, in the birding world, is all you need sometimes: the right circumstances conspiring together to help you find a bird—the right location, the right time of year, the right weather. Of course, dumb luck never hurts either. Just like the way Alan and I had stumbled on the Bobwhite this afternoon.

  In the same way, I could only hope that all the right circumstances would come together for the detectives now investigating Jack’s and Billy’s deaths, and with any luck—dumb or otherwise—Sheriff Paulsen would be put away for a long, long time.

  I drove out of the hospital parking lot and headed for home.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I was almost home when my cell phone rang on the passenger seat beside me. I flipped it open and hit the loudspeaker key. “Hello?”

  A stranger’s voice came on. “I’m looking for a Bob White.”

  So was I, I thought, recalling how I’d turned around from the cave entrance that afternoon and seen a Northern Bobwhite in the branch of a shrub. And I found it, too, I congratulated myself.

  “This is Bob.”

  “This is Detective Harriman in Fillmore County. Stan Miller asked me to call you and let you know we found evidence that Sheriff Paulsen was the one who cut your brake line. We found a tool in her squad car trunk with brake fluid on it. I understand that your vehicle is readily identified by your vanity plates, so that would explain how she knew which car was yours at the hotel lot on Saturday night.”

  No surprise there. It wasn’t the first time my plates had given me away. Usually it was to the highway patrol when I was racking up speeding tickets. Tagging my car for sabotage was a novelty.

  “We also know that you spoke with the sheriff Saturday night concerning your suspicions about Ben Graham. We’re operating on the assumption that was her motive for cutting your brake line—she didn’t want you nosing any further into his affairs, so she decided to make you feel unwelcome in town.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” I noted. “Especially since it resulted in an accident that injured my friend. It could, conceivably, have been a lot worse, Detective. We could have been killed.”

  “That’s why I’m calling. Do you want to press charges?”

  I wasn’t sure. Naturally, I wanted justice for Bernie and myself, but at the same time, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to be a part of the media feeding frenzy that was bound to spring up around a sensational double murder case like this one. I’d already had a taste of sound-byte fame on television, and it sure hadn’t left me with an appetite for more.

  “Can I get back to you on that?”

  “Your call, Mr. White. Oh, and Stan said I should tell you something else we found. The bug on Billy Mason’s car not only broadcast location, but it was an amazing piece of hardware. It actually recorded conversations in the car—in particular, we got one side of a phone conversation that Billy had with Ben Graham after he’d witnessed Jack’s murder. Billy told the mayor he had some information about the sheriff th
at could ruin them both and he set up a drop point for a blackmail payoff at Mystery Cave. We played the tape for Graham, and he admitted he’d called the sheriff about it. Apparently, they both decided that Paulsen should be the one to meet Billy. And the gun that shot O’Keefe? It turns out it was one that had gone missing from the evidence room at the police station.”

  “So you’ve got enough for a solid case against the sheriff?”

  “I’d say so. The prosecutor in this case is going to have his pick of charges, for both the sheriff and the mayor. That little bug turned out to be a big break for us.”

  “Thank you, Eddie Edvarg,” I said. Crazy Eddie’s electronic wizardry had once again won one for the home team.

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the phone connection. “The name’s Harriman,” the detective reminded me, “but you’re welcome anyway. Let me know what you decide about charges.”

  I closed the phone and turned into the driveway of my townhouse. The automatic garage door opener jammed and refused to raise the door, so I left my car outside and let myself in through the front door.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Sprawled across my living room sofa was Luce, sound asleep. Her long blonde hair trailed over the cushions and her left hand hung off the couch, almost touching the floor rug. A couple of cartons from her favorite Chinese take-out place were sitting on the coffee table, empty, but still filling the room with a lingering aroma of lemon chicken.

  I sat next to her hip and laid my hand on her shoulder.

  “Luce. Wake up. I’m home.”

  She made some sleepy noises and blinked her eyes open.

  “You’re home.”

  “I know. Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here? You knew I was gone.”

  She pulled herself up onto her elbows and yawned. “I’m in hiding.”

  “From?”

  “Your sister. She’s driving me crazy. I don’t think I want to be a maid of honor anymore.”

  I traced my finger over her full lips and smiled. “Then how about being the bride instead?”