Never Murder a Birder

by Edie Claire

  She began to feel slightly better, and when her guide mentioned the name “Finney” she redoubled her effort to pay attention. “Is this the family?” she asked, straining her neck to see a photograph high up on the wall.

  “Why, yes!” the man replied with glee. “That’s Cortland and Debra and the kids at the diner right here in Port Mesten, although that building wasn’t the original. We have a picture of their very first diner over here—”

  He pointed off someplace else, but Leigh’s attention was focused on the photograph in front of her, which was part of a display touting the local origin of Cortland’s Famous Fish Rub. The photograph had been in color, once, but was now faded to dull swirls of brownish red and blue. A young couple stood in front of the glass door to a restaurant with cars parked close on either side of them. The woman was wearing a mini dress and holding an infant, while the man supported a toddler with one arm. Two preschoolers played peek-a-boo around their legs. Leigh studied the children and surmised a birth order of boy, girl, girl, with a question mark over the infant. The oldest boy and girl had darker hair, whereas the toddler girl’s hair looked lighter. The woman was thin, dark, and pretty with a charming smile — she looked as though she were bubbling with energy. Cortland was tall, lean, and fair with a calm expression that indicated a quiet demeanor, but his close-set, brooding eyes also made Leigh believe that he was a man who concealed things.

  “Did you know them?” she asked her guide.

  “Well, of course!” he said proudly, standing as tall as his hunched spine would allow. “Everyone knew Cort. He spent practically his whole life here. His wife Debra, too. Lovely people, just lovely. They’ve both passed away now, sad to say. But they were as good as they come. Hard workers and smart as whips, both of them.”

  “And their children?” Leigh watched the man’s eyes closely. She felt a flicker of remorse for setting him up, but she was certain he was too polite to be honest with his words.

  She was wrong.

  His kind, wrinkled face changed in an instant from beaming with pride to stewing with long-suppressed hostility. His eyes clouded over with concentration and his jaws worked as he formulated a response. “I wouldn’t say the children took after the parents, no,” he replied finally. Then he forced a smile back on his face. “I suppose that happens sometimes.”

  He pivoted with his cane and directed her towards another display. “And over here, you can learn all about the glory days of the tarpon…”

  Clearly, although the community’s disappointment in the younger generation of Finneys was no secret, the residents of Port Mesten did not relish dissing their own, either. Leigh indulged her guide with more friendly chitchat as his tour led them around the circle of the four rooms. The displays moved forward in time, and in the last room Leigh caught herself paying extra attention to the photographs with crowd scenes. She was searching for the faces of the two men who had stared at her. She was also searching for a face like her own.

  The elderly guide did not seem to find her appearance familiar. Nor had Hap or Beverly noted any similarity between her and any local woman they knew. But still, Leigh couldn’t stop hoping. It would make the perfect explanation.

  Her official “introductory” tour concluded, and Leigh indulged both herself and her host by making a second loop through the museum alone. She read several interesting stories about the indigenous people, the hurricanes, and the tarpon, then returned to the last room for another look at all the recent photographs. Still, none of the faces struck a chord. Disappointed, she moved on to the tiny gift shop, which consisted of a few shelves of handmade crafts, trinkets printed with the name of the town, and local maps and books. She leafed through a few paperbacks self-published by locals, but all were fiction, and none included any photographs. “Has anyone ever written a biography of Cortland Finney, or the story of the family business?” she asked her guide, who had seated himself behind the counter.

  He chuckled softly. “Oh my, no. They wouldn’t get much cooperation from Cort on something like that! He was a private person. But now that he’s gone, who knows? Maybe someday. Is there anything you’d like to purchase?”

  Leigh looked around. The man had been terribly nice, and the museum was free. She really should buy something.

  “I highly recommend the fudge,” he stage-whispered. “It’s made right here in Port Mesten by one of our most dedicated volunteers!”

  Fudge had never been one of Leigh’s favorites, and the last thing she needed was more sweets, but she could see no gracious way out of it. She picked up a gaily decorated plastic bag of homemade fudge, paid for it, and dropped some extra cash in the donation box as well.

  “Let me get you a bag for the that,” the man offered. As he leaned to the side, Leigh could see on the wall behind him a framed newspaper article celebrating the opening of the museum, with a photograph of a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the front steps. A man she recognized immediately as a much older Cortland Finney stood prominently in the front row. But it was another face that made her heart skip.

  “Here you go!” the guide said, handing over her laboriously bagged fudge with unsteady hands. His torso blocked the image again.

  “Excuse me,” Leigh said, pointing behind him. “That picture there?”

  With effort, the man twisted around on his stool. Leigh dearly hoped he would not fall off the edge of it. “Oh, yes!” he replied. “That was our grand opening. That’s Sheff Howard, our first director, cutting the ribbon. Tad Jenkins, head of the Chamber of Commerce at the time. And Cortland Finney. He was a major donor, of course.”

  “Who is that man?” Leigh pointed impatiently, embarrassed to hear the tremor in her voice. “The one on the far right? Wearing a tee shirt?”

  The picture was in black and white, it was at least a decade old, and the faces on the periphery of the action were grainy. But Leigh could swear she knew the beady dark eyes that peered out from under the prominent brow bone. She should, shouldn’t she? They’d been staring at her only an hour ago.

  “Oh,” the old man answered, all enthusiasm drained from his voice. “That’s Bruce Finney. Cortland’s son.”

  Chapter 5

  Leigh was a good distance from the Silver King Hotel when, after hours of mere spitting and sprinkling, the sky suddenly let loose with a downpour. She had walked out of the museum in a daze, headed for the beach, and kept on walking, hardly noticing the rain. How long she’d walked and how far she’d gone, she had no idea, but water was now pouring off her scanty umbrella and dripping onto her shoes. She needed to turn around. More immediately, some shelter would be nice.

  The near worthless umbrella quaked in the wind as she held it close to her face to survey her options. Aha. There was a wooden pavilion just ahead, across the roadway. It was open sided, but it was better than nothing.

  Leigh tromped across the soggy dunes, over the wet asphalt, and along the road’s shoulder until she reached a gravel path leading toward the pavilion. When she saw the small parking area and restroom building ahead, she realized where she must be. The nature preserve she had visited yesterday comprised a wide swath of the wetlands abutting the town, and more than one section of it was accessible with boardwalks and trails. She had obviously reached one of the preserve’s other entrances.

  The rain continued to pound all around her as she finished the last hundred yards to the pavilion at a jog. Other visitors were emerging from the boardwalk and rushing for their cars in the parking lot, while two women in plastic ponchos preceded Leigh to shelter in the pavilion. Leigh grabbed an unoccupied bench, plopped herself down, and pulled out her phone. She did nothing with it except hold it, but it served as a suitable diversion. She really didn’t want to engage right now.

  That’s Bruce Finney. Cortland’s son.

  The museum guide’s words still rattled her. It was one thing to contemplate, in a removed and theoretical sort of way, the possibility that one or more of Cortland and Debra’s ne’er-do-well offspring cou
ld have offed their corporation’s bean counter. The connection seemed obvious enough. The split-up of the family business was already disputed. If the man had been killed in the corporation’s “swanky offices” in downtown Corpus Christi, what would the guilty parties do with his body, after all? The birdwatcher at the beach was right. If the murderer owned a boat — and it was a good bet that the Finney family did — a burial at sea was a pathetically obvious choice. Maybe “the kids” just weren’t smart enough to do it right. To go far enough out. To weight the body down…

  Leigh stifled a groan. She shouldn’t be thinking about such things. But really, how could she not? How could anyone not? She was sure that Hap had considered the possibility. Most likely, all four kids were suspects in the CFO’s murder. Still, aside from Leigh’s feeling sorry for Hap because he obviously felt sorry for Cortland, she should have no reason to care.

  But now she did, dammit.

  Because Bruce Finney had been staring at her.

  Leigh pursed her lips. Then it occurred to her that doing so must make her look like her mother. She forced her mouth into a grim line instead. She’d gone over the available facts a hundred times so far, but no matter how she sliced it, she came up with the same result. Bruce Finney, who might or might not be a murderer, thought he knew her. Most likely, because he was mistaking her for someone else. And his assumption couldn’t be totally off base, because one other individual in Port Mesten had made the same mistake yesterday.

  Neither man had been threatening in any way. Either event, in isolation, could be easily dismissed. She could even forget both of them if she convinced herself that she resembled some perfectly harmless individual who used to frequent the island…

  She smiled wryly. Both men were middle aged. Perhaps her double was a blast from their past. A one-time pole dancer in Corpus, perhaps? The thought amused. But only until Leigh remembered one other disturbing similarity between the incidents: Both times, when she’d first seen the men, they’d been talking to cops.

  Leigh didn’t like that at all. Not that she had a problem with law enforcement. Her best and oldest friend was a homicide detective, after all. She just preferred not to associate with the police in any official capacity while on vacation.

  Or at any other time.

  For the rest of her natural life.

  “Have you ever seen a roseate spoonbill?” someone asked.

  Leigh glanced out of the corner of her eye to confirm that the woman standing by the balustrade holding a small pair of binoculars was indeed talking to her. Apparently Leigh’s effort to appear engaged in her phone was unconvincing. Perhaps because her screen was blank. She gave up and put it away. “I’m sorry. Have I seen what?”

  “The roseate spoonbills!” the woman answered excitedly. She appeared to be somewhere in her sixties. She had shoulder-length, light-brown hair that was liberally streaked with gray. Pale blue eyes sparkled through her bifocals, and her stick-thin frame practically quivered with nervous energy. “They’re such beautiful creatures. But you have to know where to find them. So many tourists never bother! Here, take a look!”

  Leigh couldn’t refuse. She rose, took the proffered binoculars, and brought them up to her eyes, fully prepared to lie about whatever it was she knew she wouldn’t see.

  “Oh, no, not that way,” the woman corrected gently. “You find the bird with your naked eye first, then raise the binoculars and focus in. Here, I’ll turn the magnification down for you. That will make it easier.” She fiddled with the dial, then pointed out over the water. “Way over there. See those specks of pink?”

  Leigh did. And amazingly enough, with the woman’s help, she soon had a wonderfully clear view of several bizarre birds that looked like flamingos, but had long, dark, spoon-shaped bills. She’d never seen anything like them before, outside of zoos. “Another aptly named species,” she commented, admiring the rosy hue of their feathers.

  “Oh look, Bonnie, the rain has stopped already!” the woman said with enthusiasm.

  A primal groan sounded from behind them. “Oh, for crying out loud, Sue, I just sat my carcass down here!” her companion complained. “Can’t we rest a bit? My heel’s killing me.”

  Leigh shot a glance at the second woman, who was seated at one of the benches. Aside from the fact that Bonnie appeared to be around the same age as Sue and was also carrying binoculars, the two birdwatchers could not look more different. Bonnie appeared tall, broad, and “stout,” to put it politely, with most of her weight concentrated around her middle. She had very short, spiky white hair and deep-set gray eyes that peered out from a perpetually glowering face. And yet, buried somewhere in the tone of her deep, drawling voice, Leigh detected humor.

  “Thank you,” Leigh said to Sue, returning the binoculars with a smile. “I needed that.” She looked out over the rest of the preserve and noticed that the trail the pavilion was on, which skirted around the outside of the wetland, connected with another elevated boardwalk that headed straight into the center of the marsh. Some distance ahead she could see another wooden observation tower, similar to the one she had climbed yesterday. “Have you seen any gators?” she asked.

  “Not here,” Sue answered gaily. “The water along this boardwalk isn’t deep enough. But there are several regulars over by the south entrance. Have you—” She snapped her binoculars up to her eyes. “Bonnie!” she exclaimed. “Thrasher!”

  Bonnie snapped to attention. “Brown?”

  “I don’t think so!” Sue called back in a singsong. Leigh tried to follow her line of sight but had no idea what the woman was looking at. “It looked more gray! It just went into the grass. Come on!”

  “Was its breast streaked? Could you see its bill?” Bonnie demanded.

  “What does it matter?” Sue called as she rushed off. “For you, it’s a lifer either way!”

  Bonnie swore fluently. But much to Leigh’s amazement, she immediately hefted her “carcass” up from the bench and hobbled after Sue. Leigh watched, amused, as the women stalked whatever the bird was until it flew out of the patch of shrub it was hiding in. When they pursued the bird to its next location as well, Leigh was left alone with her thoughts again.

  Forget about the Finneys, she counseled herself, feeling better now for whatever reason. So she looked like somebody two men in town used to know, one of whom could possibly be a murderer. So what? She knew lots of murderers.

  I am still not involved.

  Her spirits remained high, even though the trek back to the hotel seemed exponentially longer than the walk out had been. By the time she climbed the last few steps to the second level of the Silver King and opened the door to her room, she was limping on a painful crop of blisters. Cursing her own stupidity at having rubbed her skin raw with soaking wet shoes and socks, she stripped off the offending footwear immediately and limped to her suitcase to retrieve some bandages. She dug out the black travel bag in which she always kept her medical supplies, unzipped the top, looked in, and stopped short.

  Something was wrong. She studied the plastic bag of bandages and antibiotic cream that she always carried with her on trips. It was lying right on top. Underneath it was the usual assortment of over-the-counter painkillers, allergy and cold medicines, and topical remedies for rashes and bites. She had the mom-travel-bag thing down to a science. She packed the same way every time, because with the twins she was always scrambling to find something either in a moving car or in a dark room in the middle of the night. The only difference this time was that she’d left the kids’ meds at home.

  The bag of bandages didn’t go on top. That space was reserved for Allison’s emergency inhaler. When Leigh had packed this bag and zipped it up, she’d noticed the empty space. The bag had been easier to zip shut.

  She fingered through the rest of the contents, and a strong feeling of unease came over her. The items were not as she had packed them. Someone else’s fingers had also been here.

  Warren? Could he have gotten a hangnail or something?<
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  The explanation was perfectly plausible. But Leigh did not feel better. Her eyes roved over the remainder of her suitcase. At first glance, all was as it should be. But the closer she looked, the more small things she noticed. Her shirt stack was crumpled along the suitcase’s edges, as if a hand had been run between her clothes and the inside wall. Her deodorant, usually thrown carelessly on top, had fallen to the bottom at the back. Her underwear and socks were packed more loosely than she remembered — she’d had to jam them down to squeeze in her coat after they’d walked into the Pittsburgh airport from the parking lot.

  She dashed to the closet, stumbling on her sore feet in the process. She opened the door to see Warren’s business shirts and pants, his extra sport jacket, and both their winter coats, all hanging neatly on hangers. Warren himself had hung everything the night they arrived. Leigh remembered that he had offered to hang her coat right after she opened her suitcase.

  The coat was where it should be, hanging neat and square. Her mittens were still in her pockets. The phone pouch in the inner left front panel still held her emergency twenty-dollar bill. But Leigh was not comforted. While every one of her husband’s garments faced to the left, her coat faced to the right. If she was hanging it herself, that would happen half the time.

  With Warren, it would happen never.

  She whirled around and looked at the room as a whole. It was clean; the bed had been made. Housekeeping had clearly been here. Was there any good reason the staff would rifle through her closet and suitcase?

  No. Was she overreacting out of sheer paranoia? Warren could have been digging around in her suitcase. Maybe the housekeeper had knocked her coat off the rack and rehung it. The important question was, had anything been taken?

  Leigh forced herself to take a few calming breaths. Then, after bandaging up her blisters, she set out on a more systematic search. Everywhere she looked, she imagined that both her things and Warren’s seemed just a little bit… violated. The thought of it brought a sick feeling to the pit of her stomach, but try as she might, she could find no hard evidence of tampering. Not one item was actually missing. Warren had left change on the dresser; Leigh had cash in both her coat pocket and in her beach bag, none of which was touched. Her laptop and Warren’s tablet remained in the drawer hidden beneath his socks. So why?