by Jan Dunlap
“If I tell you—”
“I know, I know,” I interrupted him. “You’ll have to kill me. Got it. Now tell me what it is.”
Stan’s mouth twitched. That was his smile. As usual, his eyes were masked by dark reflective sunglasses, so I had to gauge his emotional responses from the millimeter movement of the corner of his upper lip. He was a laugh a minute at parties, I had no doubt.
“Dart gun,” Stan informed me. “Uses shellfish toxin. Lethal.”
“This is for hunting?” I asked in disbelief. “Hunting for what? Rabid squirrels?”
I realized he’d said “lethal” and totally forgot what I was saying.
Stan’s upper lip twitched again. “Bigger game, White. Animal control for parks. And I didn’t shoot you, either. Threw a little rock. Catch your attention.”
I glared into his sunglasses and changed the subject. “You saw the Ross’s Goose, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
“I got a Ferruginous Hawk and a Purple Sandpiper today, too,” I casually noted.
He inclined his head a fraction of an inch. I could tell he was massively impressed.
My eyes traveled to the dart gun in his hand. “Shellfish toxin?”
“Yes.”
“Lethal.”
“Yes.”
I suddenly wondered how much Stan knew about poisons.
“Would hemlock tea give someone convulsions?” I asked him.
“You’re talking about Sonny,” he said. “I birded with him, too, White.”
“Stan, how quickly would hemlock tea give someone convulsions?”
He stood silently, motionless.
“Fifteen minutes,” he answered.
“So Sonny could have walked into the woods by himself before he knew anything was wrong.”
Stan nodded.
“And that means his killer didn’t have to carry him there,” I pointed out.
I paused a few seconds while I tried to put together a sequence of events. In the distance, a flock of Canada Geese flew in formation.
“He could have taken the poisoned tea from his killer, tossed the cup after drinking it, and walked for fifteen minutes before he had his first seizure.”
“Possible.”
“He would have stumbled off the path, convulsed, lost consciousness.”
I glanced at Stan, but he made no response.
“He’d lay where he fell, his limbs contorted from the seizure,” I said.
I looked back at the shining lake, but my eyes were seeing a dead Sonny Delite sprawled against a tree amidst a pile of russet leaves, with a murder of crows perched above him. “He’d look like a scarecrow set against a tree.”
“Where’d he get the tea?” Stan asked, his monotone sounding grimmer than usual.
My gaze sought out the Ross’s Goose, and I lifted my binos to my eyes to catch it in the lens. Like Sonny’s killer, the small goose practiced deception as a survival strategy: slip into the crowd and no one could single you out. You’d be safe as long as you acted like everyone else.
So who, among the cast of my own suspects, had most faded into the background?
Certainly not Noah or Boo—their size alone precluded them from ever becoming anybody’s wallpaper. You’ve have to be blindfolded to not notice them in a crowd. Besides, they were both so attached to Gina, I couldn’t see either one of them jeopardizing that relationship with a murder rap.
Arlene Weebler, on the other hand, didn’t seem to give a rip about what anyone thought of her. Judging from her behavior today, she could give in-your-face lessons to my most talented discipline problem students back at Savage. Now that I thought about it, I also couldn’t imagine she would forego the chance to mercilessly harass Sonny with blackmail by hiring some thugs to do the deed for her. Even a loose cannon needs a target.
Which left Gina and Red and Prudence.
Could I share Rick’s trust in Gina, or was there a lot more to his new girlfriend than even he realized?
Can you say “duct tape”?
As for Red and Prudence, I tried again to recall every detail from Sunday morning in Millie’s Deli. Red had been extremely protective of Prudence, and told me that her friend didn’t handle stress well. She’d reminded Sonny’s widow to take one step at a time to get through the crisis, and I’d thought that Red would have made a good counselor.
Crisis.
Red sounded like she was doing crisis counseling.
And the reason for that would be …
“I think I have an idea,” I finally answered Stan, “But I’ve got one last question I need answered, and I know just who to ask.”
I lowered my binos. “I’ve got to get back to Savage.”
“Wait.”
I looked back at Stan, but he was pointing toward the lake.
I followed the direction of his finger and spotted a stocky duck with an especially sloped profile. I captured it in my binoculars and studied it carefully. Its bill tapered into a hard shield that stretched almost up to its eyes, and its black cap contrasted starkly with its white back.
“Common Eider?” Stan asked.
I blinked a few times to be sure I was really seeing what I thought I saw. To my knowledge, only four of the sea ducks had ever been recorded in Minnesota, and three of those were in the northern third of the state. A native of Arctic waters, the Common Eider preferred the company of its own kind, and hardly ever traveled alone inland from the frozen coasts of Alaska or the northeastern edges of North America.
A Common Eider didn’t belong in the Alberta Marsh.
But there it was.
“Yes, Stan,” I finally confirmed. “It is, indeed.”
I watched the eider for a few more moments as it floated along with the other ducks and geese in the lake, occasionally diving and coming up shortly thereafter.
“Poor thing,” I commiserated. “You probably thought you knew exactly where you were headed, but something went wrong, a fluke of nature, and here you are, swimming in uncharted waters.”
And just like that, I knew for sure who had killed Sonny Delite … and why.
“Holy crap,” I breathed.
“Post it,” Stan said.
“What?” I looked at him in confusion, the story behind Sonny’s murder finally coming together in my head.
“The bird,” he said, pulling my attention back to the eider.
“Oh, right.” I fumbled in my jacket pocket for my phone.
“No one is going to believe that you and I were birding together,” I said, beginning to text a message to the MOU list serve, “let alone that we found a Common Eider.”
I turned to Stan, but he had already vanished.
As usual.
I finished sending the post and walked back to the car. A Killdeer skittered across the parking area and out into the prairie beyond.
“Can’t fool me,” I told the bird. “I’m on to you.”
I pulled out of Alberta Marsh and headed home, reviewing my finds for the day. I’d made positive IDs of a Purple Sandpiper, a Ferruginous Hawk, a Common Eider … and a killer.
Not bad for a day off from work.
Before I made my turn onto Highway 12 east, I stopped on the road shoulder and called Rick.
“I need to talk to Gina,” I told him. “Can you give me her phone number?”
“She’s right here,” he replied. “You want to speak with her?”
“Not right now,” I said. Over the phone was not the way I wanted to do this. I needed to see her reaction when we talked. I now knew that Gina could avoid the truth, but I doubted that her body language was capable of it.
“How about I just stop at your place when I get back to Savage?” I asked.
“Sounds great, Bob,” Rick said. “We’ll be waiting. Hey, did you get the hawk?”
“I did,” I said.
But I didn’t tell him what else I’d discovered.
He would be finding out soon enough.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The smell of burgers on the grill wafted over me as soon as I stepped out of my SUV in Rick’s driveway. I walked up to the door through a mat of wind-blown leaves that crunched under my feet with each step. Posed on a wooden chair beside the door was a life-size plastic skeleton, with one bony hand wrapped around an empty beer can and a sign looped over its ribcage that read “Let the Party Begin.”
Shoot. I’d been so absorbed by puzzling out Sonny’s death that I still hadn’t settled on a costume for the faculty party next weekend.
Thankfully, that particular preoccupation was about to come to a screeching end, though, which meant I could apply my problem-solving skills to something much more enjoyable than contemplating motives for murder.
I reached for the door buzzer, and the perfect costume idea popped into my head.
At the same moment, Rick’s front door opened, and I looked down into the pretty face of Gina Knorsen.
“I know what you did,” I told her.
Her eyes narrowed. “Really. Who told you?”
“No one,” I assured her. “I figured it out myself. Can I come in?”
She stepped aside and Rick’s voice carried into the house from his back porch.
“All right, Bob. Get out here and tell me what I missed today in Morris.”
“You have no idea,” I muttered to myself.
I motioned for Gina to precede me through the house out to where Rick was sitting on an outdoor lounger, his ankle wrapped in a blue cloth brace and propped up on the foot of the lounger. Four hamburgers sizzled on his gas grill, and laid out on the small patio table were an assortment of condiments, hamburger buns, a bowl of potato salad, and a pan of homemade brownies.
“Let me guess,” I greeted him, eyeing the picnic spread. “Instead of sucking it up and dragging your bum leg along with me for the six-hour round trip drive to Stevens, you spent the day being miserable, but pampered, by …” I shot an accusatory stare at Gina, “Savage High’s very own Family and Consumer Science instructor.”
“Absolutely not,” Rick insisted. “Believe me, I was not miserable for even a second. And I did help stir the brownies, I’ll have you know.”
Gina offered me a cold can of beer from the cooler on the porch, but I turned it down.
“I’m not going to be here that long,” I told her. “Luce is waiting for me.”
“So tell me what you found,” Rick said, taking a drink from his own beer can.
Gina perched on the edge of the lounger near Rick’s foot.
“Wait a minute,” I said, the word “perch” triggering another realization in my head. I looked at Gina. “You’re the one who told Boo that Rick and I were going to Morris. He said a little bird had told him, and I’d assumed it was Rick, since they were such good buddies.”
Gina looked at Rick, then back at me.
“Rick told me about the birding trip when he asked me to go dancing. Was I not supposed to tell anyone?” Gina asked, confusion in her voice. “Boo said he was thinking of going home to see his dad, and I mentioned that I knew that Rick and you were planning to go up there birding.”
“No,” I replied. “It wasn’t any big secret or anything. I just realized it was one more wrong assumption I made in the last few days.”
“Like the one that Boo and I were such good buddies?” Rick asked.
He turned to Gina.
“Boo’s a great guy, really,” he said. “I’m just not that comfortable around him, now. You know—since we’ve started seeing each other.”
“But we’ve been over this, Rick,” Gina gently reminded him. “I’m not in love with him. I was a high school senior when he asked me to marry him, and I said ‘no.’ Noah is the only other person who knows about it. Boo’s just overprotective of me, that’s all. We practically grew up together.”
Whoa. News to me, that was for sure.
When Boo had admitted his feelings for Gina on the way to Spinit, he’d neglected to include that little detail. No wonder he tackled Noah as soon as he saw him. Not only did Boo hate liars, but he thought Noah had killed Sonny and lied to the woman he loved about it.
Thanks to me, that is.
What was that—wrong assumption #24 of the week? Something like that, I was sure.
But it also reminded me of the real reason I’d stopped at Rick’s place. I needed to ask Gina a rather personal question.
“Speaking of being overprotective,” I eased into the conversation, “I met your brother Noah today, Gina.”
Fine lines of tension formed around her mouth, and I saw the pupils in her eyes dilate.
She shifted slightly on the lounger, and I noticed her fingers curling into fists in her lap.
Ah, yes. Good old body language. Where would a counselor be without it?
Especially when you wanted the truth … for a change.
“He kind of reminded me of me,” I continued. “I think we have the same opinions of our big sisters.”
“How so?” Rick asked. “I’ve known Lily almost as long as I’ve known you, Bob, and she adores you. She may not always show it,” he added, “but underneath all that bossiness and your bruised shins, all she wants is for you to be happy.”
He turned to Gina.
“Do you kick your brother’s shins?” he asked her.
“She wants her brother to be happy,” I answered for her. “So much so, that sometimes Noah feels a little stifled by her protectiveness.” I looked at Gina. “He’s a big boy, Gina. You need to give him some space. That’s really why he went back to Spinit, isn’t it?”
Gina’s smile was tight. “He’s my only sibling. My mom died when we were kids. I’ve always felt that Noah was my responsibility, and I needed to be there for him.”
I remembered Sara Schiller’s complaint about Gina’s class unit on nurturing families and responsibility.
“But did you feel his happiness was so much your responsibility that you would leave the job you loved just to get him relocated to another town for better job opportunities?”
I could see the awareness growing in Gina’s eyes as she figured out where I was going with this.
I wanted the truth about her time in Henderson.
About her time with Sonny, and what happened afterwards.
“What are you driving at, Bob?” Rick asked, suspicion mounting in his own voice. “Gina didn’t have a choice if she wanted to help Noah. Henderson is tiny. They had to move where he could find work.”
“They had to move,” I informed him, “because Gina couldn’t face teaching about the importance of family relationships in a small town where she’d been involved with a married man—albeit unknowingly—and whose wife then tried to kill herself when she found out about it.”
Rick’s mouth opened and closed.
Twice.
He hadn’t known, just as I hadn’t. It had taken me all week to remember the comment that Rick’s policeman friend had made about being concerned about Prudence hurting herself.
Prudence was suicidal. Red had known it, too—that was why she was so concerned for Prudence on Sunday morning.
“I felt so awful,” Gina said softly. “I felt bad enough, believe me, when I found out that Sonny was married, but when I heard about his wife …”
She covered her face with her hands and took some deep breaths. After a moment, she put her hands back in her lap and looked at me.
“I couldn’t teach there anymore. I needed a fresh start, so I moved us here, which really was better for Noah, employment-wise.” She turned to Rick. “Noah and Boo were the only ones I ever told about the guilt I felt—and still feel—for Mrs. Delite’s attempt at suicide. I didn’t think you needed to know about it, yet,” she confessed.
Rick reached over and covered one of her hands with his own. “I’m so sorry, Gina.”
He looked up at me, a touch of anger beginning to color his cheeks. “And the reason you’re bringing this up?” he asked.
“Because now we know who killed Sonny,” I
said. “Nobody. He made a fatal mistake. Sonny took—and drank—the wrong cup of tea.”
Rick gave me a blank look, but Gina gasped, her hand covering her lips in bleak certainty.
“She did it again,” she whispered. “She tried to kill herself. With poisoned tea.”
I nodded. “She found out that Sonny was having another affair. My guess is that she’d planned her suicide for the last day of the Arboretum’s conference, so that Sonny wouldn’t have to miss any of it because of her.”
Gina’s eyes went wide. “She didn’t want to inconvenience the man who’d cheated on her?”
I shrugged. “I could give you a library of literature to read on the psychology of addiction, unhealthy dependence behaviors, and suicide, but let’s just say she has some very serious issues, and leave it at that.”
“But how did he get the hemlock?”
I looked at Rick, who had pulled out his cell phone.
“You going to call the detective in charge?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “He needs to hear this. So how did Sonny get the tea?” he asked again.
“This is all guesswork, Stud, don’t forget,” I cautioned him, fully aware that I’d already made one wrong accusation today.
Make that “painfully” aware. The ache in my arm where I’d landed in Boo’s front yard was spreading into my shoulder.
“So guess away,” Rick instructed me.
“I think Prudence had the hemlock with her to do the deed as she had planned, and was making their usual morning tea one last time in their hotel room. Sonny said he had to go early to fit in some birding, and he took the wrong cup with him.”
“He was hoping to meet Gina,” Rick surmised. “He was hoping she got the phone message and would show up at Duck Lake Pond.”
I shrugged again. “Whatever the reason, Sonny left the hotel with his wife’s poisoned tea. It’s just a five-minute drive to the Arb from where they were staying, so the poison wouldn’t kick in until after he’d parked and started walking.”
Rick tapped in a number and talked with someone on the other end of the connection.
Gina looked pale.
“It’s not your fault, Gina,” I said. “It was a series of terrible mistakes, all made by Sonny.”
She took another deep breath. “If you’re right, why hasn’t Prudence Delite come forward and confessed to the police? It’s the right thing to do, Bob.”