A Murder of Crows

by Jan Dunlap

  “Hey, Sara.”

  I walked over to the table and checked out the front panel on the flour. “You’ve still got Robin, I see.”

  “You can’t have him,” she was quick to inform me. “You’re a cannibal. You ate my last baby.”

  “It’s a bag of flour, Sara. It’s only pretending to be your baby.”

  “Ms. Knorsen said that a lot of times, a woman’s maternal feelings don’t kick in immediately after birth,” she reported. “That sometimes, it takes a while for the mother to bond with the baby because her hormones are all screwed up and she’s really worn out. I figure that’s why I didn’t do so well with my first baby—my hormones are always screwed up, and I was really worn out.”

  “I don’t know about the hormones part, but of course you were worn out,” I agreed with her. “You’d just driven to Wisconsin and back.”

  She gave me a glare.

  “Only because a certain counselor,” she emphasized, “loaded me down with an impossible class schedule that was so bad I had to get away for a day so I wouldn’t have a total mental and emotional collapse.”

  “So it’s my fault you ditched school and drove to Wisconsin?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “Sara, I think we need to work on the concept of personal responsibility a little bit,” I suggested. “You ditched school. That was your decision, not mine.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No buts,” I cut her off. “No matter what the reason you had for skipping classes, it was your decision to act on those reasons in that particular way. You have to take responsibility, Sara, for both the good and the bad you do. That’s what growing up is about.”

  Sara gathered the bag of flour into her arms and pulled it against her chest.

  “I was going to say ‘but I talked it over with Ms. Knorsen’ before I was so rudely interrupted,” she said. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “Sorry,” I apologized, only mildly repentant. “Yes, I want to hear this.”

  She sat back in her chair, the bag of flour clutched against her body.

  “When I told Ms. Knorsen that you had switched my baby because I had left it with you, she said that we all make mistakes—even, sometimes, when we think we’re doing the right thing—and it takes a mature person to own up to it and to learn from it. She said, if I wanted, that I could give the assignment another try since it was clear my maternal instincts were just slow in developing the first time.”

  She slid the flour up to her shoulder and gently patted its back.

  “I really don’t want an F in the class, Mr. White,” Sara explained. “I want to pass all my classes so I can graduate and get out of high school and get on with my life. Ms. Knorsen is the first teacher who’s even tried to understand me, and I want to prove to her I can do better. I want to show her I can take responsibility.”

  I stared at the young woman in the chair. She wanted to pass her classes and graduate? She wanted to be responsible?

  Who was she?

  “If I’m ever going to have kids of my own,” the Sara imposter said, “I’m going to have to set an example for them. And that means being responsible.”

  Holy cow. Gina Knorsen was a miracle worker with a bag of flour, and Sara Schiller was a born-again student.

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

  “And if I were responsible, then maybe Ms. Knorsen would introduce me to Noah,” Sara added.

  “Who’s Noah?”

  Sara slid me a sly grin. “Ms. Knorsen’s brother. I saw him talking to her Monday morning before class, and I’m guessing he’s like twenty-six, which is sort of old, but I could make an exception for him.”

  She patted Robin on the back again and sighed dreamily. “I could definitely make an exception for Noah.”

  Wonderful. Just what I didn’t need to know: Sara Schiller had her eye on a twenty-six-year-old who happened to be the brother of a faculty member.

  “Although he’s kind of a crab from what I could tell,” she continued. “He was arguing with Ms. Knorsen about something, and he left all angry, and then she was pretty upset during class.”

  My eyes drifted to the clock on the wall.

  It was after four, and I didn’t want to hear anything more about Gina or any other Knorsen, especially one that Sara had a crush on. As far as I was concerned, business hours were over, and I was done for the day. Besides, I had a couple of errands to run before dinner, and then I needed to check the MOU postings on the computer list serve to see if the Ferruginous Hawk had made an appearance in Stevens County today. If it had, there was still a good chance I could find it tomorrow.

  “Was there something you wanted to see me about?” I asked Sara, beginning to back up toward my office, already planning my route home.

  She bolted upright in her seat, Robin still glued to her chest.

  “Yes! I know it was a mistake to ask you last time to watch my baby, and I take full responsibility for that, but could you take Robin—”

  “No.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, turning my back on her and heading into my office to collect my jacket and briefcase. “I’m going out of town,” I said over my shoulder, “I’ll be up in Morris tomorrow.”

  I grabbed my jacket and briefcase and then locked my office door. When I turned around, Sara was still in the chair at the table, glaring at me.

  “So what’s up in Morris that everyone is going there?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s where Ms. Knorsen’s brother said he was going when he stomped off on Monday,” she explained. “He said his job was done down here and he was going home, whether she liked it or not. I think he quit his job or something, and that’s what they were arguing about.”

  “You shouldn’t be listening to other people’s conversations, Sara,” I scolded.

  “Other people shouldn’t be arguing in front of me,” she retorted. “Especially when one of them is as hot as Noah Knorsen.”

  She stood up and balanced Robin on her hip. “I bet he’s got a killer smile to go with those abs. Did I mention that he’s ripped, too?”

  “Sara—”

  “I’m outta here. Have fun in Morris. Tell Noah ‘hello’ for me if you see him. I hear it’s a small town.” She grabbed her backpack with her free hand. “I just might have to take a drive up there next week and check it out for myself.”

  “As long as it’s not during school hours,” I told her. “Officer Cook will send a posse of state patrolmen after you if you pull that little trick again.”

  She gave me a pouty look.

  “Girls just want to have fun,” she said. “Spoilsport.”

  “Sara, go home.”

  “All right, I’m leaving already,” she snapped, hugging Robin back to her chest. “Why anyone ever thought you would be a good counselor is beyond me. Honestly, you can be so clueless sometimes, Mr. White. Bye.”

  Clueless?

  I shook my head in exasperation as I made my way out of the building towards the staff parking lot behind the gym where I’d left the car this morning before playing basketball. If anyone was clueless, it was my perennial delinquent Sara Schiller who somehow thought she was going to attract a man ten years her senior by her demonstration of responsibility towards a bag of flour.

  Man, was I glad the day was over.

  Except that it wasn’t.

  I stood behind my cardinal red SUV and silently ran through the same list of profanities that Rick had used while he was sprawled on the gym floor this morning.

  All four of my tires had been slashed.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Need a ride?”

  A sleek black car pulled up next to me with Paul Brand leaning out of the driver’s window.

  “A lift to the Tire Shoppe would be good,” I said. “Looks like I need a new set of tires.”

  “It’s on m
y way home. Hop in,” Paul invited me.

  I slid around the front of the vehicle, noting the polished chrome and smooth hood.

  “Nice car,” I told Paul. “It looks new.”

  “It is,” he replied. “It’s Honda’s new CR-Z hybrid. Today’s muscle machine.”

  I glanced appreciatively around the black leather interior and spotted his art satchel stashed behind his seat. Yup, those were definitely wrestlers on the bag’s front panel. I stole a look at Paul’s profile as he peeled us out of the faculty parking area.

  I tried again to imagine the black mask and leotard on him. Somehow, sitting in his sporty black muscle car, whipping down the road a good ten miles over the speed limit, it wasn’t nearly as hard to see Paul Brand in a wrestling ring.

  With or without his art satchel.

  And now that I really thought about it, what better way to disguise a broken nose than with a full facemask?

  “I promised myself I would go hybrid with my next car,” Paul said. “I’m already seeing a huge drop in my gas bill.”

  He hit the brakes and came to a screeching halt at a stop sign.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I like speed.”

  “No problem,” I told him. “I tend to drive a little fast myself.”

  “Thanks for talking to Sara,” Paul said, accelerating into the intersection. “She was in class today.”

  “She’s a good kid,” I told him. “She just doesn’t think through to the consequences of what she does. She acts first, thinks later. And then, once she realizes she’s screwed up, she has no idea how to fix things, so she just plows on ahead, which only digs her deeper into her original mistake.”

  “Like if she misses one class, she figures she might as well miss the rest.”

  “Exactly.”

  Paul pulled a hard right into the Tire Shoppe’s parking lot.

  “I think we’re all slow learners at times, don’t you?”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “We all do stupid things.”

  “Like painting a bulls-eye on your car with a vanity plate?”

  I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

  Instead, I immediately thought of all the times my license plate had gotten me into trouble: the extra highway stops by state patrol officers who recognized my BRRDMAN license. The time my brakes were tampered with to discourage me from pursuing a murderer. The flat tires I got when a killer put bullets in them to frame another suspect.

  Gee, I guess that meant I wasn’t exceptionally quick on the uptake, now was I?

  “You’re saying you don’t think my tires getting slashed was a random early Halloween prank?” I asked Paul.

  I’d assumed it was a no-brainer. Halloween was getting close, it was a school parking lot, and students liked to pull pranks—especially the students who had too much time on their hands because they skipped classes to hang out in the parking lot to pull pranks.

  He shook his head. “Nobody else in that whole parking lot had slashed tires, Bob. Your car was the only one vandalized in any way. You might want to consider getting rid of the plates.”

  I opened the door and climbed out of Paul’s car.

  “Say, Bob,” he added, leaning across the now-empty passenger seat to catch my eye. “It’s not always a great thing for people to know too much about you. I speak from personal experience.”

  He grabbed the inside door handle and pulled it shut. With a roar from the engine, he sped out of the Tire Shoppe’s lot.

  Who would want to slash my tires?

  And what kind of personal experience was Paul Brand referring to?

  I watched his car careen expertly around a corner. He had quick reflexes, that was obvious. He also didn’t offer much in the way of personal information about himself. I tried to remember everything I knew about our new art teacher, and realized much of it was only rumor. From our brief conversation this morning, all I’d learned was that he’d taken worse hits than the one that broke his nose in a high school hockey tournament; where and when he took those hits was a mystery, because he hadn’t elaborated.

  Just like he hadn’t elaborated about his personal experience of it being better to be an enigma than someone who publicized his identity on his license plate.

  Good thing I hadn’t already spent those ten dollars I bet Alan about the Bonecrusher being Boo Metternick. After spending a little more time in Paul Brand’s company, I had to admit that Alan’s pick for our secret faculty celebrity wasn’t as far-fetched as I’d originally thought. Paul had a penchant for speed, muscle, style, and mystery. He’d been an athlete in high school, and he had a bag with a wrestler on it.

  If he showed up at the faculty Halloween party in a black leotard, I was going to be kissing my ten bucks goodbye.

  So much for my being a great judge of character. Maybe Sara Schiller was onto something when she said I could be clueless.

  Clueless? Me?

  Not in a million years.

  I had plenty of clues.

  I just didn’t always come to the right conclusions.

  Like why my tires got slashed.

  I had to admit, Paul had a point about anonymity. If nothing else, I bet I’d see a real reduction in how often I got pulled over for speeding if I got rid of my vanity license plates. I knew I was somewhat of a celebrity myself among the state highway patrol officers, since over the years, I’d met police in almost every county in the state. Rick had even tried to convince me that there was a BRRDMAN club for everyone who had ever given me a warning or citation.

  If that’s what I have to deal with as a birder, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a world-famous celebrity wrestler. I’d peel off that leotard so fast and try to find the furthest spot I could away from the public eye.

  I’d become a teacher in a little high school in Savage, Minnesota.

  So now I had to ask myself: what would I be teaching in that little Minnesota high school?

  Physics or art?

  Only the Crusher knew.

  Well, that wasn’t completely true.

  Rick, scum and now-lame, knew who the Crusher was, too.

  I heard a distant crying noise above me and looked up to see a large flock of Red-winged Blackbirds flying south. It reminded me that by this time tomorrow, with any luck, I’d be adding a Ferruginous Hawk to my life list.

  But not unless I had four new tires on my SUV first.

  I watched the last blackbird disappear into the horizon, walked over to the Tire Shoppe’s front door, and pulled it open.

  Crap.

  Rick wasn’t going with me to Morris. That meant he wasn’t going to tell me who the Bonecrusher was in exchange for getting the Ferruginous Hawk.

  No matter. I was going to find that hawk, anyway.

  Just like I was going to figure out which teacher was the Crusher.

  I walked into the Tire Shoppe and spied my regular car-care guy at the service desk.

  “You got a set of tires I can buy?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two hours later than I had originally anticipated, I parked my car—with its brand new tires—in the garage next to Luce’s Volvo.

  “Honey, I’m home!” I announced as I walked through the door into the house.

  “I love it when you call me honey,” Rick said, his foot propped up on the coffee table in my living room.

  “You’re not my wife,” I observed.

  “Whoa! You’re quick,” Rick said.

  Luce walked in from the kitchen and handed Rick a tall glass of iced tea.

  “He called me for a ride when I was leaving work,” she said, placing a warm kiss on my cheek. “He told me it was your fault he had a sprained ankle and that I could at least invite him to have dinner with us to make up for it.”

  “It wasn’t my fault. He thought he could outrun Boo Metternick.”

  “You invited him to play with us,” Rick pointed out.

  “Well, yeah. I’m not going to tell the Hulk he can’t play with us. Ar
e you crazy? The man could squash us like bugs if he wanted to. Besides, he played nicely enough with us last week, didn’t he?”

  “That was before I found out he has a thing for Gina,” he complained.

  “Speaking of which,” I said, “did you know that they’re both from the Morris area? For all we know, they’re related. Kissing cousins. Morris is a small town, after all.”

  “Not that small.”

  Luce stepped directly in front of me, making a time-out sign with her hands.

  “Could we start this conversation over so I know what you two are talking about?”

  I grabbed her hands and brought them up to my lips for another kiss. “Your wish is my command.”

  “Spare me,” Rick muttered.

  I quickly explained to Luce about the morning basketball game, then gave them both the highlights of my conversation with Sara.

  I left out the part about my being clueless, though. Between Luce and Rick, I was pretty sure they would have a field day with that part, and we’d never get the conversation back on track.

  “I knew that Gina’s brother had a job in the southwest suburbs, but I didn’t know what he did,” Rick said, “or that he quit on Monday. His employment situation wasn’t at the top of my list of questions when Gina and I talked last night about her connection to Sonny Delite and why she’d gotten a 2:00 a.m. phone call from him just hours before you found him at the Arboretum on Sunday morning.”

  I waited a beat for him to continue, but he didn’t.

  “Why don’t we move this to the dining room and have dinner before it gets even colder?” Luce suggested.

  “Sorry,” I apologized. “The Tire Shoppe was busier than I expected. I was just happy they had the tires I needed in stock. I’m going to find that hawk tomorrow if it kills me.”

  Rick pulled himself up and balanced on his crutches. “I’d rather you not put it quite that way, Bob. Too many things are beginning to get weird around here.”

  I watched him hobble into the dining room.

  “What things?” Luce asked me, a note of concern in her voice.

  I took her shoulders in my hands and turned her toward the dining room. “I have no idea,” I lied.