by Jan Dunlap
“Of course it is,” I agreed. “But like I said, Prudence has issues. I’m not sure she can function on her own, to be honest with you. When I saw her earlier today at Millie’s Deli, it was like she’s attached herself to Red, as if she was incapable of making any decisions for herself. My guess is that she hasn’t told Red yet, because she’s waiting for her memory lapses to clear before she can ask her what to do. Or maybe Prudence did tell Red about it when they were finally alone on Sunday, going down the stairs at Millie’s, and it caught Red so much by surprise, she tripped and fell down the stairs. Who knows?”
The smell of cooked burgers grew suddenly stronger, and I pointed to the grill on the porch. “You two better eat before all that’s left is charcoal.”
Gina got up and moved the burgers to a platter on the table, while Rick finished his call and returned his phone to his pocket.
“They’re going to bring Prudence Delite in for some serious conversation,” he reported. He stuck his hand out and smiled. “Thanks, buddy. This should go a long way to getting me off the suspect list. I owe you one.”
I shook his hand and nodded.
“Take care of the ankle,” I told him. “Are you going to be out of that brace in time for the big Halloween party?”
“I hope so,” he said. “I owe Gina some dancing.”
“You could be Fred Astaire,” I suggested. I looked at Gina, who had returned to her perch near Rick.
“And you could be Ginger Rogers,” I winked at her. “I bet you know all about fancy footwork, don’t you … Crusher?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I stuck the unlit pipe back into my mouth and sat back on the leather sectional that stretched across Alan and Lily’s living room. From the kitchen, I could hear laughter and the voices of several faculty members as they helped themselves to the Halloween party buffet set out on the kitchen island. Beside me, Luce held Baby Lou, dressed in an Incredibles sleeper, on her lap, alternately raising and lowering her own costume’s English bowler hat over her eyes, playing peek-a-boo with our niece.
“Ah, you’re teaching her to solve mysteries already, my dear Watson,” I told my wife in my worst English accent. I gave Baby Lou’s tummy a nudge with my pipe. Her little eyes went wide with surprise.
“Sherlock!” Rick said, calling to me from the front door, where he and Gina had just arrived.
“Old chap!” I called back, waving my pipe in the air.
I whistled as they approached. Rick’s slicked-back hair and black tux made a perfect contrast with Gina’s—or should I say Ginger’s?—ball gown of ruffled layers of yellow chiffon as they practically glided over to us.
“You two could have stepped right out of Top Hat,” Luce said. “I love the dress, Gina. It’s gorgeous.”
Gina laughed. “I feel like a fire hazard with all this material floating around me. I hope there’s no fondue on the buffet—I might spontaneously combust if I get too close to a flame. I assume Alan and Lily have a fire extinguisher in their kitchen.”
Rick dropped a light kiss on Gina’s temple. “She’s already made me replace my smoke alarm batteries,” he told us. “I’m beginning to think she has a future as a fire marshal.”
“Just being safety-conscious,” she pointed out and smiled at Baby Lou.
“She does teach our child development class,” I reminded Rick, “and she’s doing a fantastic job of it, by the way. Even Sara Schiller said so this week.”
“She is really coming around, Bob,” Gina said, looping her hand through Rick’s elbow. “She didn’t miss a single class this week, and she told me all about the war memorabilia show she attended with Mr. and Mrs. Metternick last Saturday. I’m beginning to think she just needed a strong mentor in her life to turn her behavior around.”
I was rapidly coming to the same conclusion about my favorite truant, or, as of this week at least, my favorite former truant. In the ten days since she’d met Vern Metternick and learned to shoot off a bazooka, Sara had cleaned up both her class-skipping and bad attitude act. She still wasn’t crazy about her art class, but at least she was showing up for it.
“Speaking of behavior,” Rick said, “it looks like Prudence Delight is cooperating fully with the police, now. She’s got a lawyer and a mental health counselor working with her. I think they’ll work out some kind of plea bargain for her since it really was an accident.”
“I heard on the news that the police finally located a witness at a gas station where Sonny stopped for gas before heading to the Arboretum that morning,” Luce said, bouncing Baby Lou on her lap.
Rick nodded, straightening the white carnation in his tux’s lapel. “It was the cashier at the gas station,” he reported. “While he was ringing up Sonny’s gas purchase, he saw Sonny take a sip from a paper cup with a hotel logo on it. The reason he remembered was because he saw Sonny make a face like he’d just burned his mouth on whatever it was he was drinking.”
I reached over and took Baby Lou from Luce, tucking her warm weight against my chest. I looked at the capital letter “I” emblazoned on her little sleeper. Alan had done well in choosing his daughter’s first Halloween costume: she really was incredible.
And now that she was a part of our lives, I couldn’t imagine life without her.
“I’ll take her.”
I looked up to see my brother-in-law in a red leotard with the same “I” on his chest as the one on Baby Lou’s.
“It’s somebody’s bedtime,” he said, lifting my niece up and against his shoulder. He turned to greet the new arrivals. “Hey, Gina, you look great. What are you doing with Savage’s worst?”
Rick clasped his hand around Gina’s and tugged slightly on his white bow tie.
“Since I am too much of a gentleman tonight to respond to that insult in the company of these lovely ladies,” Rick announced, “I will instead see you on the basketball court, very soon, and I will repay you for your words then.”
“I will crush you,” Alan promised him.
“In your dreams, Mr. Incredible.” Rick nodded at Alan’s shoulder. “There’s drool on your suit, big guy. And, by the way,” he said, turning back to me. “I think we identified your tire slasher, Bob. We finally got a good image from the security camera in the high school parking lot. Does the name Greg Bernson ring a bell?”
I groaned. Greg Bernson was already my number one pick for delinquent of the year, with more hours logged sitting in my office this fall than even Sara Schiller, prior to her turn-around, that is. Less than six days into the new school year, Rick had predicted that Greg wasn’t going to make it three weeks before he became a regular in detention hall, and unless my memory failed me, I’d just renewed Greg’s detention pass the day before my tires were slashed.
“Can you spell ‘suspension’?” Rick asked me.
A chorus of laughter rang out from the front hallway.
“Who’s here?” Alan asked, rubbing his daughter’s back, her eyes already closing.
A lean, muscular man, clad in a head-to-toe leotard, stepped into the living room. He struck a wrestling pose I recognized from the internet photos Alan and I had looked at weeks ago.
“Hey, Alan! What do you think?” Paul Brand’s voice carried across the room.
“I knew it!” Alan said, throwing me a grin. “You owe me ten, White-man.”
“Do I?” I asked, pointing at another party-goer who had followed Paul into the room.
It was another, slightly larger, Bonecrusher.
“I’m the man,” Boo said as he peeled his mask off.
Though he still looked huge, I had to admit that the black was slimming on him. From a distance, the two men could almost be identical.
I looked at Alan’s face for his reaction. His eyes jumped from one Crusher to the other and back again. Paul pulled off his face mask, and he and Boo circled each other while other faculty members cheered them on.
“It’s not either one of them, is it?” Alan asked me. “If the Bonecrusher wants to kee
p his secret identity secret, he’s sure not going to show up at a Halloween party in his old work clothes.”
“You wouldn’t think so,” I agreed, putting my arm around my wife and pulling her close. “What do you think, Dr. Watson?” I asked her.
Luce threw a smile at Rick and Gina. “I think the mystery remains a mystery, Sherlock.”
“So much for your skill with clues, White-man,” Alan groused. “I think you better stick to birding.”
I grinned and tipped my Sherlock Holmes hat.
“With pleasure, old boy. With pleasure.”
Bob White’s A Murder of Crows Bird List
Canada Goose
Wild Turkey
Green Heron
American Crow
American Goldfinch
Red-winged Blackbirds
Downy Woodpecker
Bluejays
Sanderling
Purple Sandpiper
Red Phalarope
Merlin
Red-tailed Hawk
Ferruginous Hawk
Tundra Swan
Killdeer
Northern Shoveler
Mallard
Redhead
Ruddy Duck
Snow Goose
Common Eider
Acknowledgements
As always, I am grateful to many people for their kind assistance in helping me out with the details that make my stories real. My brother-in-law took time out of his busy schedule to track down some facts and figures for me regarding wind farm leases, and Dean Beck of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources verified that the Frog Lake named in the 1964 Birding Almanac of Stevens County is today’s Gorder Lake. The controversy about the power line project through the LeSeur/Henderson Recovery Zone is well documented and was my initial inspiration for this story; I want to thank Delores Hagen for her enduring commitment to the birds of the Minnesota River Valley. Once again, I am indebted to my son Bob, who continues to have enormous patience with his mother’s requests for his birding expertise, and to my husband Tom and daughter Colleen for their endless support and witty repartee that makes me think they should be writing the Birder Murders, and not me.
My enjoyment of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum has spanned decades, and even though I think the annual scarecrow display is pretty creepy, I couldn’t resist using it as the setting for a murder. Finally, I want to salute the real Chef Tom, Red, and everyone at Millie’s Deli for the wonderful meals my family enjoyed there over the years. You are sorely missed!
Table of Contents
Copyright © 2012 Jan Dunlap
www.northstarpress.com
Don’t miss the other books in the Bob White Birder Murder Mystery Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bob White’s A Murder of Crows Bird List
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Copyright © 2012 Jan Dunlap
www.northstarpress.com
Don’t miss the other books in the Bob White Birder Murder Mystery Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bob White’s A Murder of Crows Bird List
Acknowledgements