Never Murder a Birder

by Edie Claire

  “Look at this dumping!” Bonnie groused, scowling at the tire and rusted lawn mower handle that protruded from the grass in the shallow ditch beside the road. “Despicable!”

  “Looks like the birds are landing right over there!” Sue called out a moment later as she pulled down her binocs and plunged into some brush beside the road.

  “You see either of the caracaras coming down?” Bonnie asked, heading after her. “I’ve only seen them flying before!”

  Leigh moved no closer. But as she studied the area around her, her heart sank steadily into her shoes. She hadn’t spent much time driving around the island in a car, but from what she had seen of the inland waterways, most appeared quite shallow. Those that were deeper were in the heart in the preserve, and only accessible by walking. Yet this private road — or service road, or whatever it might be — skirted quite close to the edge of what looked like a decent-sized pond. She gazed out toward the center of the preserve.

  There it was: Stanley’s observation tower. She raised her binoculars. Jean and Clem were clearly identifiable, standing atop it and waving at her merrily.

  Leigh waved not-so-merrily back. Everything she saw, heard, and felt now made perfect, albeit horrifying, sense.

  She waited.

  A few endless minutes later, Sue and Bonnie reemerged from the grass. Leigh had heard no screams, but she was not surprised. Neither woman seemed the screaming type. In fact, their only concession to their distress was the greenish cast to their faces. “I’m afraid we’ll need to call the police, Leigh,” Sue said calmly. “It’s not a deer. It’s… It was a person.”

  ***

  Leigh never went any closer. Listening to the squawks of the vultures and the occasional splashes of pond water were more than enough to put her into sensory overload as they waited for the police to arrive.

  The state of the body was evidently such that neither of the women were inclined to discuss details. They reported only that it had “been in the water a while,” and that the birds were frustrated and fighting because the wind had only partially beached the object of their attentions, leaving much of it still afloat and inaccessible.

  Bonnie and Sue had interesting reactions to the shock. Both were subdued initially, but as the minutes ticked on Sue grew more thoughtful while Bonnie got more fired up.

  “I don’t know what the Sam Hill this place is coming to!” Bonnie bellowed. “When you can’t go out on a perfectly innocent bird walk two mornings in a row without winding up smack dab in the middle of an episode of CSI?”

  Leigh made no comment.

  “The two events are hardly random,” Sue said with almost preternatural calm. “Don’t you think this is what Stanley saw yesterday?”

  “What, a flock of vultures?” Bonnie asked obtusely.

  Sue threw her a critical look. “You do know that… well, bodies tend to sink at first and then… resurface as they—”

  “Oh. I got you,” Bonnie said heavily. She swore out loud, looked for someplace to sit down, then swore out loud again. Leigh could understand both feelings. Plunking oneself down on either grass or gravel in this particular location meant getting back up with a seriously muddy rear end — if one got up at all, which in Bonnie’s case was not a given. As for the other thing… Leigh didn’t want to think about it, either. But she could hardly deny its plausibility.

  Someone had used this secluded gravel lane to dump off more than trash. Someone had dumped a body here. They had scouted out one of the few spots where they could carry their load straight from their car to some decently deep water without risk of being seen. Or so they had thought… until they looked up and realized that if they could make out a figure on top of the observation tower across the wetlands, that same person might also be able to see them. Not very well, of course.

  Unless he or she had binoculars.

  Leigh shuddered at the thought. Had Stanley’s murderer run out across the wetlands to confront him? She looked toward the tower and decided that was unlikely. There was too much distance, too much water, and too much mud separating them. If Stanley saw his pursuer starting toward him, he could easily slip away on the boardwalk.

  No, it made more sense for the murderer to jump in his car and drive back to the north entrance parking lot. Then he could reach the other end of the boardwalk in seconds and cut off Stanley’s only easy escape route. Even if Stanley had read the other man’s mind and started running from the tower immediately, he might not have reached the parking lot first. Even if he did, he had no car there. Stanley had walked from the RV park.

  The birder also had no means of calling for help. Like many men his age, he wasn’t in the habit of carrying a cell phone around, and even if he had screamed or shouted, no one else was near enough to hear him.

  Leigh remembered the pattern of trampled grass she had seen yesterday morning as she and Walter came upon the body. The two men’s footprints would have been washed away by the overnight rain, but the grass they had trampled showed that Stanley and his pursuer had been roaming around well off the boardwalk. If Stanley had gotten trapped on his way out of the preserve, he would have had nowhere to flee but the open wetlands.

  “Police are here,” Sue said evenly.

  The women stepped off the gravel road onto the least muddy patch of earth available and waited for the cruiser to stop. Behind it trundled another car. Leigh looked through the windshield of the cruiser and saw two officers. The driver was the chief of police, Del Mayfield. Feeling less than totally confident in their saviors, Leigh looked to the second car, hoping to see the Texas Rangers. It was a silver Infiniti Q70.

  Bruce Finney’s car.

  Leigh steeled herself for another confrontation. Bruce opened the door of the shiny sedan and pulled his long legs out slowly. He has no reason to be here, she thought with annoyance. Why does the chief put up with it?

  Del Mayfield did not appear to notice. He and the female officer riding with him got out and strode toward the women. The chief seemed like a pleasant-enough fellow. He was somewhere in his early forties, with a ready grin and no trace of guile. But his attempts at paternalism were, in the present case, sadly misguided.

  “Hello, ladies,” he said in a soothing tone. “What’s all this hysteria about another body? Now, I know it’s unusual for a place like Port Mesten to have two such unfortunate events in one week, but I promise you, there’s no need to panic every time we see a few vultures overhead! This happens all the time around here. Why, it could just be a dead chipmunk! But if it’ll make you feel better—”

  “Now you see here!” a red-faced Bonnie boomed, drawing to her full height and puffing up her bounteous chest. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I worked as a nurse for thirty-four years, near half of them in an ER, and I think I damn well know a human body when I see one! Particularly when it’s wearing clothes!”

  Del blinked. The female officer who was with him quietly departed from his side and headed off into the scrub.

  The chief pulled a notebook from his pocket, his eyes still locked with Bonnie’s. “And your name is?” He took down her basic information and Sue’s, then turned to Leigh. Unfortunately, this time she made more of an impression on him. The chief’s brow creased. “I interviewed you yesterday,” he said flatly. His gaze was suspicious.

  Perfect.

  “Leigh didn’t even see it!” Sue said impatiently. “Only Bonnie and I did, when we walked around the edge of the pond to get a better view of the birds.” She pointed in that direction. “You have to walk around those bushes.”

  Del seemed torn. His gaze alternated between Leigh and the direction Sue pointed.

  “Chief!” the female officer called out, her voice fraught with tension.

  Decision made for him, the chief turned and followed the sound of the other officer’s voice.

  “Bloomin’ yokel,” Bonnie muttered. “Telling me I don’t know a human from a flippin’ chipmunk!”

  “As if that many sc
avengers would gather for something so small!” Sue muttered with equal indignation.

  Bonnie swore, mopped her sweating forehead with a shirtsleeve, then began walking toward the police cruiser. “Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable.”

  “Yes,” Sue agreed, walking with her, phone in hand. “I’m going to report to Bev.”

  “Tell her if the Texas Rangers don’t show up in five minutes, we’re going to call them ourselves,” Bonnie scoffed as she leaned upon the cruiser’s front bumper. “Incompetents!”

  Leigh intended to follow them, but she hadn’t quite got her feet moving before Bruce Finney appeared at her elbow. She was not unaware of his presence; she had been keeping an eye on him with her peripheral vision ever since he had stepped out of his car. But she had also been keeping alive the hope that her hat and scarf would sufficiently disguise her. Since Bruce had said nothing and was being ignored by everyone else, Leigh had decided to try ignoring him also.

  So much for that. She stiffened in annoyance, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Not with Sue and Bonnie only steps away and two purportedly non-corrupt police officers within shouting distance. Still, it was unnatural for him to have moved so close to her. He had placed himself within whispering distance, and whispering is exactly what he did. The second that Sue and Bonnie became distracted with their own conversation, he leaned down to within inches of Leigh’s ear and spoke to her as if they were bosom buddies.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Chapter 18

  Leigh closed her eyes a moment. Really, this was too rich. Bruce Finney, President and CEO of Finney Enterprises, was asking her what was going on?

  I am not involved.

  She whirled around and faced him. “Who are you?” she asked at full voice. “And what are you talking about?”

  Bruce’s face — which already had a permanent glowering look to it — reddened with anger. At the same time he seemed surprisingly nervous. Bullets of sweat beaded up on his imposing brow, and he seemed to have trouble standing still. “Don’t play with me,” he hissed back in another whisper. “You said three days! We need to meet.”

  Leigh stared back at the man, flummoxed. She really didn’t know what he was talking about, but she knew a great deal more about him than she wanted him to realize. And since she had never been a particularly good liar, she supposed that her blanket denial had probably just made her sound guilty.

  “You have me confused with someone else,” she tried again, making eye contact. “I told the other man that, too.”

  Bruce’s pupils dilated.

  Aha! Now she had his attention.

  “Other man?” he repeated.

  “There are two of you staring at me,” Leigh returned, feeling gutsier now that she could tell the straight truth. “I told him, and I’ll tell you. I am a tourist, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to the police!”

  Bruce’s face seethed with confusion and frustration. He shot a glance toward Sue and Bonnie, and when he did, Leigh noticed that both women were standing in silence now, watching them intently. The women did not seem inclined to interrupt the conversation, but it was clear they considered themselves “on call.” Bruce straightened. He could get away with nothing threatening, every word he said above a whisper could be overheard. Yet whatever his mission was, he seemed unable to give it up.

  “Please,” he whispered again, his tone gentler, more persuasive. “I’m sorry to push you. But we don’t have time for this. Just tell me what to do. Whatever you need.”

  Leigh’s brain tried to process the offer. Whatever she needed? Russell’s words of a few hours earlier came back to her: We can get you out of this… I can help you!

  Leigh shook her head in disbelief. This numbskull thought she was a killer, too! If he and his brother were so sure she was some kind of murderess, why the hell didn’t they turn her in, instead of offering to help her?

  The Finney sibs were insane. Totally bonkers, lampshade-wearing cuckoo birds.

  No offense to the actual cuckoo bird.

  “Forget the others,” he said, his voice dropping so low she could barely hear him herself. “Keep this between you and me and you can be out of here in an hour.” He threw his eyes in the direction the chief had walked. “I can make it happen.”

  “You all right, Leigh?” Bonnie barked.

  “I’m fine,” Leigh called back, figuring her name would be no secret from Bruce after today, regardless. He could always ask his buddy Del for information about her. And the police had her current address in the RV park.

  Dammit. This was all so unfair!

  Leigh decided she had had enough of the Finneys. She dropped her eyes and took a step closer to Bonnie and Sue.

  “You can’t just walk away!” Bruce fired back at her, no longer bothering to whisper.

  Leigh whirled around and was stunned to see his limbs shaking. If he had been shaking from sheer anger, she would have ducked and run for cover. But the vibe she perceived from him was far more complex. As frustrated and as annoyed as he obviously was with her, he seemed to be suffering from some deep-seated fear. And whatever he was afraid of, it appeared to be keeping his anger in check.

  “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this,” Leigh repeated slowly. “But you have the wrong woman!”

  Their gazes locked, and they studied each other. For one brief, shining moment, Leigh saw a sparkle deep in his dark brown eyes that she thought might signal acceptance of the truth. But before she could be sure, the crackling of brush alerted them all to the return of the police chief. Ignoring Bruce as usual, he walked directly to Bonnie and Sue.

  “My apologies, ladies,” Del said humbly, looking genuinely miserable. “It looks like the make-believe’s on my part today. I really didn’t want it to be true.”

  Bruce swore. Then, without a word to Del or anyone else, he made a beeline for his car and hopped in.

  “I’ve called the Rangers,” the chief continued, not seeming surprised by his friend’s abrupt departure. “They should be here soon.”

  Leigh watched as Bruce backed his Infiniti down the road.

  Had he believed her? Finally? Could she be so lucky?

  She tensed up all over again. Maybe Bruce had believed her. Maybe he had taken off so quickly in order to avoid any further awkwardness between them.

  More likely, though, he wanted to avoid the Texas Rangers.

  ***

  “Don’t you worry about us, Bev,” Sue said briskly, even as she accepted a coconut macaroon. “We’re fine. It’s Leigh we’re worried about.”

  “And how!” Bonnie agreed, mumbling through her own cookie. “She’s still awfully pale looking.”

  Leigh felt Bev’s sympathetic, motherly gaze on her and flushed with embarrassment. “That’s only because I’ve been wearing your sun hat all week,” she insisted. “I’m fine. Really. I keep telling you, Bruce didn’t threaten me. He just said a bunch of stuff that made no sense.”

  Bev put two coconut macaroons on a napkin and placed them in Leigh’s lap. The four women were commiserating in the RV park office while Bev worked. Bev had brought in some extra folding chairs as well as her obligatory plate of pastries, never mind that the three others had already had fruit smoothies in Sue’s motorhome once the Rangers had finally finished with them. Morning had dragged well into afternoon without Leigh’s having any memory of lunch, so this time the carbs were fully justified.

  “Nothing any of Cort’s kids does makes a lick of sense,” Bev said with frustration. She looked down at her phone, then rose to stand by her wall map. She pulled out a blue pin and moved it to another location. “I swear, ever since this afternoon they’ve been buzzing around this town like a hive of bees!”

  “What do you mean?” Leigh asked, feeling ambivalent even as she did so. As much as she longed to understand everything that was happening, and now, a big part of her simply wanted to return to her tr
ailer, lock the door, and take a nap with Snowbell until Warren returned.

  “Well, Bruce went straight home after he left y’all,” Bev reported. “But he wasn’t home a half hour before Janelle bolted. She drove straight to the Silver King, looking for Sharonna no doubt, but Sharonna wasn’t there because she was out following Russell around. Finally Russell went out to the mansion, but when he saw Bruce’s car he left again, and then Bruce left too. Right now all four of them are out in separate cars driving around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off!”

  Leigh felt a wave of dizziness. “But why?”

  Bev threw her palms up. “Who knows? It’s almost like they’re keeping tabs on each other — each one afraid the others are up to no good!”

  “I don’t know them from Jack, and I can tell you none of them are any good!” Bonnie pronounced. “I saw the way that Bruce fellow was hassling Leigh, and I didn’t like it one bit. This isn’t some idle preoccupation that man’s got. Whatever he’s on about, to him it’s life or death!”

  Leigh’s jaws clenched. She did not disagree, but nor did she want to hear it.

  “I’m with Bonnie,” Sue agreed, popping up and beginning to pace. “I think the man is dangerous. He seemed quite desperate for Leigh’s help.”

  “Well, she can’t help him!” Bev exclaimed with irritation, taking a macaroon for herself. “So where does that leave her? Leigh, dear, I think it’s time you had a little talk with the Rangers yourself.”

  “And tell them what?” Leigh protested. “We’re leaving the day after tomorrow, and I refuse to spend my last day here being interrogated by multiple police departments over something I have nothing to do with and know nothing about! All I want is one carefree day on the beach with a husband who isn’t working. Is that so much to ask?”

  The other women looked at each other.

  “Besides,” Leigh continued to argue. “I think I may have gotten through to Bruce at the end. He looked like he finally believed me. If he does, maybe they’ll all start turning their attention to someone else now.”