Birdie looked up, spoke a little louder. “You’re making a theory of the case.”
“That’s right,” the sheriff said.
“Well then—out with it,” said Grammy.
The sheriff shook his head. “It’s too soon.”
Mama spoke up. “How is that fair, Sheriff? You come here to collect facts and we do our best to help, but it’s been a one-way street so far.”
The sheriff gazed at Mama, and not in the friendliest way.
“Election coming up, Mr. Cannon,” Grammy said, making the mister part stand out.
The sheriff whipped around toward her. He glared at Grammy, now looking real angry. Grammy glared right back. Did the sheriff think he could beat Grammy in a glaring contest? Grammy was the heavyweight glaring champion of the world! And maybe the sheriff realized that, because all of a sudden he started laughing.
“Something funny?” Grammy said.
The sheriff got himself under control, shook his head. “No, ma’am.” He put his hands together, the way humans do when they’re praying, whatever that is, praying being a complete mystery to me. “Theories of the case aren’t something you want to jump into too fast.” He glanced at Birdie. “Don’t want to hitch yourself to the wrong wagon.”
Wrong wagon? This was interesting. I’d seen one of my kind pulling a wagon on TV and had wanted to take a crack at it myself ever since. Imagine me pulling Birdie along in a wagon, faster and faster and faster! There’s no getting better than that. Was today the day? I went on high alert.
“But,” the sheriff went on, “sometimes it’s hard to resist. A theory starts suggesting itself and won’t wait. So here’s what I’m thinking so far. Drea Bolden’s arrival in our town and the break-in at nineteen Gentilly Lane are related.”
The sheriff sat back, waiting for everybody to take in what he’d just said. If he was waiting for me to take it in, too, then we’d be here for some time. But in fact, Birdie spoke almost right away, her face amazed, and not in a good way.
“You’re saying Drea did the break-in?”
“You yourself said Drea was aware of Kramer’s Kold Kases, Birdie. I’ve had the opportunity to make a few calls down to New Orleans in the last hour or so, including one to her seventh-grade teacher—Drea was in seventh grade when her dad was murdered. According to the teacher, Drea had been a model kid until then, but she went off the rails. I won’t go into all of that. What’s important is that she became unstrung and never got restrung. And part of what ate away at her—a big part—was the not knowing.” The sheriff glanced at Mama. “Not knowing the details, plus the fact that the killer or killers were still out there.” Mama looked down. “So along comes Kramer’s Kold Kases and this post about a missing notebook and the answers that might be in it. We’re dealing with a very impulsive individual. She hops on her bike, breaks into Nineteen Gentilly Lane, and hunts around.”
“She thought the notebook was here?” Mama said, glancing around the kitchen.
“What a load of nonsense!” said Grammy.
“Why couldn’t she have just asked us?” Birdie said.
“I’m not saying it’s a proven theory,” the sheriff said. “It’s a working theory.”
“But there was a horrible mess,” Birdie said. “Drea wouldn’t have done it that way.”
“No?” said the sheriff. “What about how she treated the guitar? Frustrated people do violent things.”
“Meaning she didn’t find the notebook?” Mama said.
“No godforsaken notebook to be found,” Grammy said.
“Correct, at least the part about not finding the notebook,” the sheriff said. “After that—the complete crushing of her hopes—I think Drea fell into despair and took herself down to Mr. Santini’s pond.”
There was a long silence. The sheriff rose soundlessly, like he was afraid of waking somebody. He put on his hat, touched the brim, opened the door, and went outside. We all stayed where we were, kind of strangely frozen in place. Then Birdie got up, walked quickly across the room and out the door. I followed, although by the time we came to the door I was in the lead. That was the first normal thing that had happened for some time.
We caught up to the sheriff as he was getting into his cruiser, one foot already inside. “Yes, Birdie?” he said. “Something I can do for you?”
“What about the other break-in?” Birdie said. “At the Richelieus’?”
“What about it?”
“Well, you said they were connected. The two break-ins, I mean. So are you saying Drea did the Richelieu break-in, too?”
Sheriff Cannon gazed down at her. When he spoke his voice was gentle but his eyes were not. Humans could be tricky at times—never their best times, in my opinion. “What are you up to, Birdie?”
Birdie backed away.
“I’m on your side,” the sheriff said. “But I don’t like to see a young lady disappointing her family.”
Birdie’s face turned bright red. I could feel the heat rising off her again. Was she mad at the sheriff? Because he was tricky? That was as far as I could take it. But if Birdie was mad, then wasn’t it my job to be mad, too? I tried to make myself mad, found it a bit slowgoing.
“I—I would never do that,” Birdie said. “They’re the most—” Sometimes the human voice breaks in the middle of something they’re saying, which I think was what happened to Birdie at that moment.
“Would they want you to lie to an officer of the law?” the sheriff said.
“I’m not lying to you!”
“There’s lying and there’s not coming clean. Real close to the same thing, the way I see it.”
“Not coming clean? You’re saying I’m not coming clean about something?”
“About your relationship with Drea Bolden. I think she got in touch with you long before she came here to St. Roch. I think there were letters back and forth. I think you let her know when nobody would be home at Nineteen Gentilly Lane. And I think that after the break-in you did things to cover your tracks.”
Birdie’s eyes and mouth opened wide, like she was totally blown away. “But that—that’s crazy!”
“You’re calling me crazy?”
“None of what you said happened! It’s all wrong!”
“Maybe some of the details need fixing,” the sheriff said. “But these aren’t just a bunch of wild suppositions on my part. I’ve got some proof.”
“Proof? Proof of what?”
“I’ve seen some interesting video recently,” the sheriff said. “Did you know there’s twenty-four-hour video surveillance down at the post office?”
Birdie backed up another step.
“You made a brief appearance the other day. The camera wasn’t aimed at a perfect angle, but from what I saw I believe you’d changed your mind about some letter you’d sent to Drea and concocted a plan to intercept it en route. A plan involving mail theft, by the way, which is a serious crime. But I’m willing to forget about that if you play ball. You can start by telling me about that letter.”
“You want me to come clean?” Birdie said, backing away some more, her voice rising and rising. “You want me to come clean?”
Oh, how upset she was! I couldn’t bear it. All I knew was that the sheriff had upset her and it was my job to stop him and stop him now. Suddenly, it was real easy to be mad. I felt my lips curling back all on their own, giving my teeth—big and sharp, in case you didn’t know that yet—plenty of room to operate. Who knows what would have happened next? An episode with lots of red in it, that’s for sure. But there was no red episode, because Birdie wheeled around and raced into the house, me right beside her.
We zoomed through the kitchen, now empty, and hurried into our bedroom. Birdie closed the door and grabbed her desk chair. In no time at all, she’d placed it on the bed, climbed up, and fished the rolled-up photo of Miranda Richelieu and her pearls out of the ceiling vent. Then—zoom—we flew back down the hall and out the door. We were moving and moving fast, which is when we’re at o
ur best, me and Birdie. As for why we were moving and moving fast, I had no idea. But did it even matter? What mattered were Birdie, me, and speed.
The sheriff was standing by his cruiser now, eyes on us, maybe looking a bit confused. Birdie went right up to him and handed—no. No, you couldn’t say she handed the photo to Sheriff Cannon. More like she thrust it at him! Then she said, “Don’t you whup Rory!”
Did the sheriff seem to tip backward a bit? I couldn’t be sure, because we were already on the run again, back into the house. Birdie slammed the door.
From down the hall came Mama’s voice. “Birdie? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Birdie said.
MAMA KNOCKED ON OUR DOOR. HUMANS all have different knocks. Grammy’s wasn’t the loudest I’d ever heard but it was the sharpest. Mama’s was softer, although her hands were very strong. For example, down at the store recently, Snoozy was having trouble opening a jar of peanut butter and Mama had unscrewed the top just like that. As for me and my kind, we don’t knock on doors. Clawing gets the job done for us.
“Birdie?” Mama called through the door. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” said Birdie.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Birdie took the chair off the bed, put it in its place by the desk.
Mama came in. She looked around. “Such a lovely little room. Do you remember when we painted those clouds on the wall?”
“Yeah.”
“That was a fun day.” Mama sat on the edge of the bed. Birdie leaned against the desk. I sat beside Birdie, or possibly in front of her, maybe even somewhat on her feet.
“How are you?” Mama said.
“Me?” said Birdie. “Fine.”
“This is all so upsetting. I know I’m upset, and Grammy, too. So you must be, as well.”
Birdie nodded.
“No need to be a stoic around me, sweetheart. Say what’s on your mind.”
“What’s a stoic?”
“Someone who just sucks it up.”
“Was my dad a stoic?” Birdie said.
“I’d have to say yes.”
“Around you?”
Mama tilted her head, like she was trying to see Birdie from a different angle. I sometimes do the same thing. “You mean when it was just the two of us together?”
“Yeah.”
Mama looked past Birdie, gazed at our wall—meaning Birdie’s and mine—the sky-blue wall dotted with puffy white clouds. “No, he shared with me,” Mama said. She turned to Birdie. “But never in a complaining way, that’s true.”
“Is that like a family thing?” Birdie said. “Not complaining?”
“Kind of,” Mama said. “But it’s not complaining to have a real discussion about what we just heard from the sheriff. So let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”
“You first,” Birdie said.
Mama laughed. “Fair enough.” Her face got real serious. “Here’s what I’ve got to say. Whatever investigations you’ve been doing—or you and your new buddy Junior Tebbets—must stop now. First there’s the break-in, and now this horrible death of a strange young woman—”
“She wasn’t strange!”
“—who seems to have taken an interest in you for reasons I don’t understand. So until the sheriff clears all this up, put that curiosity of yours on the back burner.”
“But the sheriff’s wrong about Drea! No way she ever would have broken into our house.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. And not just that, but the other thing, too. About … about despair and going in the pond and all that.”
“Then let the sheriff discover that for himself.”
“But will he? Is he a good sheriff? That’s what’s on my mind, Mama.”
“He’s a good man, as far as I can tell.”
“But is he good at his job? What did my dad think?”
“Mr. Cannon was still a deputy then, and we were down in the city, so we didn’t see him much.”
“I hear a but,” Birdie said.
Mama laughed. “Okay, okay. Rob—your dad—once said that Mr. Cannon had a tendency to jump to conclusions. Rob believed in resisting conclusions, making them come to him.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Neither did I, really,” Mama said. “I wish—”
Grammy poked her head in the doorway. “Told her yet?”
“I was getting to it,” Mama said. “First I wanted to—”
“Told me what?” said Birdie.
Mama sighed. “All right,” she said. “Birdie, we’ve received an offer on the house.”
“Huh?” said Birdie.
“On this house,” Mama said. “Our house. Someone has offered to buy it, offered a very good price.”
“Far more than it’s worth,” Grammy said. “Unless we’re sitting on a diamond mine, which we most surely are not.”
“Maybe more than it’s worth to us, but not to him,” Mama said.
“To who?” said Birdie. “What’s going on? I don’t understand.”
“And,” Mama went on, still talking to Grammy, “with the extra money we’ll be able to buy a nicer place. Maybe even build our own house—there’s a lot for sale in Hilltop Estates.”
“Pah,” said Grammy.
“Doesn’t have to be Hilltop Estates,” Mama said. She gave Grammy one of those pointed looks. “Although it is gated. In any case, we’d be free to—”
“You’re selling our house?” Birdie said.
“Nothing’s definite yet,” Mama said.
“But—but why? I love our house! Are we having, like, money problems?” Birdie went still. “This is because of losing your—of what happened at your job, isn’t it?”
“No, no,” Mama said. “It’s—”
Grammy cleared her throat in a very loud way. In fact, it was the loudest throat clearing I’d ever heard, reminding me of the machine shop across the bayou from Gaux Family Fish and Bait.
Mama whipped around toward her. “Please! This is hard enough.”
“Very well,” Grammy said, backing into the hall. “But there are ulterior motives at play, sure as shootin’.”
Grammy moved off down the hall. Mama turned back toward Birdie.
“I don’t want you worrying about money. I’ve got three interviews next week and they all look promising.”
“For the same kind of job as before?”
“Maybe not quite the same, but plenty good enough. The point is this offer that’s come in for the house could really change our situation.”
“How much is the offer?”
Mama said some complicated number, too hard for me to follow.
“That’s a lot, huh?” Birdie said.
“Sure is,” said Mama.
“You really want to live in a gated community, Mama?”
“I’m starting to think there’s a lot to be said for it.”
Birdie was quiet for a moment or two. “Who’s the person?” she said.
“The person who wants to buy?” Mama licked her lips, like they’d gone dry. “It’s Vin—Mr. Pardo.”
“He … he wants to buy our house?”
“Most definitely.”
“Doesn’t he live in New Orleans?”
“Correct,” said Mama. “But he wants to establish what he calls a beachhead here in St. Roch.”
“Beachhead? We don’t have beaches here, Mama.”
Mama smiled. “A beachhead just means a point of entry, a place to get started. He wants to build a high-tech business in St. Roch, all about renting out time on these new servers he’s buying in China.”
“He’s going to put a high-tech business in our house?”
Mama laughed. “The house will be where his initial team lives while they’re getting the business set up. I think he’s planning to build a sort of warehouse for the servers on that vacant land out past Hector’s Ice Cream.”
Birdie, still leaning against the desk, folded her arms. “What’s ‘ulterior m
otive’?”
“Oh, that.” Mama’s face got a bit pink. You saw pink on a lot on people’s faces here in St. Roch—it was the hot time of year—although this particular pinkness seemed different. “An ulterior motive is when you say you have a reason for doing something but the real reason is something else.”
Birdie thought about that. I did not. Why? Way too hard, that’s why. “So,” she said, “Mr. Pardo doesn’t really want to do the servers thing?”
“Oh, boy,” said Mama. “There it is again.”
“There what is?”
“That laser in your brain—always zeroing in on the key question.”
“Laser in my brain? I got mostly Bs this year.”
“It’s not about Bs,” Mama said. “And it’s way more important than Bs in the long run. Your dad had it, too. As for ulterior motives, Grammy thinks that Vin’s main interest in buying the house is to help me out.”
“Why would he want to do that?”
“He’s a generous person and a very successful one. He likes giving back.”
“Is that what Grammy thinks? It’s because he’s generous?”
“Ka-boom!” said Mama. “Laser strike! No, Birdie, that’s not what Grammy thinks. But she’s wrong. Vin is doing this for business reasons. The extra amount he’s paying for the house is what he calls an inducement for us to sell when we had no previous plans to do that.”
“Oh.”
“So how do you feel about all this?”
Birdie put her hand between my ears and gave me a little scratch. How did she know I was itchy? I hadn’t even known myself, not until she’d started scratching. Was this part of the laser thing in her mind, whatever that was all about? I had no idea, and didn’t care. Birdie was the best scratcher in the whole swamp, end of story.
She looked up. “What happened to his head?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Pardo’s forehead. He had a bandage on it.”
“Oh, that,” said Mama. “Bumped into an overhanging branch, I think he said. But you haven’t answered my question. How do you feel about all this?”
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