Owl Be Home for Christmas

by Donna Andrews

  “I haven’t eaten since breakfast,” I said. “Which consisted of a single croissant. If I have to wait until six to eat, I will probably die of starvation.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  I took a seat at a table just inside the restaurant entrance, where I’d be able to see anyone who went into or came out of the Command Post.

  Dad came rushing up.

  “Let me see your fingers!” he said. “And was there any sign of numbness in your toes? Let’s check them out.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “No sign of numbness.”

  But Dad insisted, so I let him check me for signs of frostbite. It would pass the time until my salad arrived. And as I watched him tugging off my shoes and socks, it occurred to me that he could help me catch up on whatever had happened while I’d been gone.

  “Did I miss any excitement?” I asked. “While I was helping with the search and crawling through the snow tunnels?”

  “Well … Ned Czerny had kind of a breakdown during lunch,” he said. “Some people at the table next to him were laughing over something—nothing to do with Dr. Frogmore, but he suddenly got up and yelled something about how heartless everyone was and ran out.”

  “Sounds dramatic,” I said.

  “Rose Noire and Ben Green ran after him, and I guess they calmed him down. He showed up for the one o’clock panel, at any rate, and seemed calm and composed, although come to think of it, he didn’t say a word. And I was a little worried when your grandfather rather took him to task—came right out and told him to grow a backbone and find a new boss who wasn’t a jackass like Frogmore, but Czerny actually took it pretty well. And Nils Lindquist disappeared for quite a while—we might not have noticed except that we thought maybe Czerny wouldn’t be up for the one o’clock panel and we might want Nils to sub.”

  “But Dr. Czerny showed up and all was well.”

  “Ye-es—except by then we were a little worried about Nils. I mean, we’d had one person poisoned already. And he wasn’t anywhere to be found and didn’t answer his room phone or come to his door when they knocked on it. And then when the chief said he wanted to interview him again—well, that got us really worried. But then he showed up just as the one o’clock panel was ending, and it turned out he’d felt a migraine coming on and had to lie down for a bit to let his meds work.”

  Eduardo showed up with my salad, and I dug in. Dad waited until Eduardo had left before continuing.

  “And then just as the panel was breaking up, I heard a rumor that your search had found something incriminating.” He looked at me with a faint air of disappointment, no doubt because he’d had to hear the rumor from someone else, instead of the straight scoop from me. Since this was the first time I’d seen him since the end of the search, I resisted the urge to apologize.

  “What did the rumor say?” I asked instead.

  “You should know,” he protested. “You were there.”

  “And I’ll tell you what we found. First, tell me what the rumor was.”

  “I heard two versions. Both involved finding incriminating evidence in your grandfather’s cottage. Which wouldn’t be all that incriminating, of course, since anyone at the conference could waltz in there anytime during the day.”

  “As the chief well knows. What did the rumor say they found?”

  “One version was that it was the package from the poison used to kill Dr. Frogmore.”

  I nodded. That was the version Dr. Craine had heard.

  “The other was that they found … well … more Viagra tablets in his bedside drawer. Minus the proper packaging. Which doesn’t seem very plausible.”

  “I wonder if Grandfather would find that statement insulting or a vote of confidence.” I found it amusing that Dad seemed mildly embarrassed—normally he’d have had no qualms about discussing erectile dysfunction medications. “No, they didn’t find any more Viagra. They did find a folded-up paper that appears to be the product information insert from a package of nitroglycerin lingual spray.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Horace thinks it’s the same brand and dosage as the almost empty spray bottle he found under Frogmore’s table. It’s on his to-do list to check with you to make sure, but with only the two of them—”

  “I understand. And someone planted it in your grandfather’s cottage?”

  “No. We found it in Lindquist’s room.”

  Dad’s eyes widened and I could see him putting pieces together.

  “Oh, dear,” he said finally. “I do hope it’s not him. I rather like him. As does your grandfather. And I know he was very angry with Dr. Frogmore but that doesn’t automatically mean…”

  His voice trailed off.

  “He’s in with the chief now,” I said. “And—”

  I broke off when I saw the door to the Command Post open. Dr. Lindquist stumbled out looking anxious and disoriented. The chief followed him. They exchanged a few words. Then Dr. Lindquist stumbled off. Not toward the conference. Toward the elevators.

  The chief saw the two of us peering out of the restaurant and walked over.

  “Are you arresting Dr. Lindquist?” Dad asked.

  “Not yet,” the chief said. “But I’ve told him I don’t want him leaving town just yet, even assuming that might become possible sometime soon. We don’t have a full case yet—we don’t even officially know what Frogmore died of—but it’s not looking good for Dr. Lindquist.”

  “Grandfather thinks the world of him,” I said.

  Dad nodded and looked worried, no doubt at the thought of how Grandfather would react. The chief merely nodded. I wondered if the bits of evidence I knew about—the stolen key and the package insert—were enough to convince him of Lindquist’s guilt or if there were other factors. Since Lindquist was from Washington State—well west of the storm—the chief could have used his satellite phone to check up on Lindquist. What had he found?

  Maybe I should put in my own call to my nephew Kevin.

  “Does Lindquist have an alibi for the time when I was getting shoved out in the cold?” I asked.

  “No.” The chief frowned. “He says he started feeling a migraine coming on about the time we were starting to search people’s rooms, and since he couldn’t lie down in his own room, he put a towel over his face and lay down on the floor of one of the ice- and vending-machine rooms until his medicine took effect. Doesn’t sound all that plausible. Peculiar thing to do.”

  “Not if you get migraines,” Dad said. “If you’re lucky enough that you get warning of an oncoming migraine—and lucky enough to have found a medication that will stave it off—you’ll do anything that works. Lying down in whatever place you can find is pretty normal. I had a patient who swore that he could short-circuit a migraine by drinking a slushy really fast—brings on a sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia—”

  “In English, that’s a brain freeze,” I put in.

  “—and when that goes away, so does his migraine,” Dad continued.

  “Point taken,” the chief said. “Although it would help if we could find anyone who actually saw Dr. Lindquist lying on the ice- and vending-machine room floor—we’re checking with the staff who handle that floor. Because right now we have only his word for it that he was getting a migraine—and I hope you won’t consider me insensitive to the pain of the migraine sufferer if I point out that it would be a pretty easy thing to fake if you needed an excuse for not being someplace you’re expected to be.”

  “Agreed,” Dad said. “Although he does appear to be a migraine sufferer.”

  “Really?” The chief looked slightly surprised. “You can tell by looking at him?”

  “No, I can tell from his medications,” Dad explained. “Horace shared the list of those you found in the rooms you searched—in case any of them might be substances that could have contributed to Dr. Frogmore’s condition. Dr. Lindquist had Imitrex in his bathroom. Which is one of the medicines that can help avert a migraine if you feel it coming on. And it’s not something d
octors hand out just because someone complains of headaches—there’s a whole diagnostic procedure.”

  “So Dr. Lindquist probably is a migraine sufferer,” the chief said. “It still doesn’t prove he was having one today.”

  “No.” Dad shook his head.

  “I’m off to help Horace process our latest crime scene,” the chief said. “You’ve got the number of my satellite phone in case anything comes up.”

  Dad and I both nodded, and the chief headed off toward the elevators.

  “And the last panel should be starting any minute now,” Dad said. “Let’s go.”

  He hurried off toward the door that led to the conference area. I finished the last forkful of salad and followed. I wasn’t sure I would find the contents of the last panel interesting. But I definitely wanted to see it. Because it would be the last panel of the conference.

  Chapter 28

  The last panel. Finally.

  Not the last event—we still had the Hanukkah dinner to look forward to—although it had now expanded into a Hanukkah, winter solstice, end-of-the-conference, thank-heaven-the-snowplows-are-coming dinner. After that would be the group caroling session in the lobby and the exchange of Secret Santa presents. An undetermined number of attendees would be staying around for an as-yet-unpredictable amount of time, and they were all making plans to occupy themselves Monday with improvised panels, informal discussions, ad hoc debates, impromptu strategic planning sessions, and maybe even field trips into the woods to do a bit of owling, weather permitting. But this was the last official panel.

  Which Grandfather had described, rather vaguely, as a time for “wrapping up the conference and looking forward at issues facing us.” He’d originally invited Vera Craine, Ben Green, George Voss, and Nils Lindquist to join him on the panel—not being expert in the field, I wasn’t quite sure if they were the most distinguished ornithologists in attendance or merely the ones Grandfather found most entertaining. Alas, Dr. Lindquist’s seat was conspicuously empty. I wasn’t sure if the chief had told him he couldn’t attend or if he preferred not to. Maybe his migraine had come back. Or maybe becoming a prime suspect had brought one on for real.

  As people filed in and took their seats, I found Dr. Czerny standing near the back, gazing at the panel with a lugubrious expression.

  “If only Dr. Frogmore could be here to take part,” he said when he noticed me looking at him.

  “If only,” I agreed. Not that Frogmore would add much to the panel if he were here—or that Grandfather necessarily would have invited him to be one of the participants. But life would be so much less complicated if Frogmore were still alive. And if Czerny was under the erroneous impression that we’d left the fifth seat behind the head table vacant in Frogmore’s honor, and not in the hope that Dr. Lindquist would eventually show up, I wasn’t going to disillusion him.

  And to give Czerny credit, he didn’t seem to resent not being tapped to carry the Frogmorian banner on the panel. He just looked melancholy. He took a seat in the back, as far as possible from the rest of the participants—no doubt so he could more easily maintain his position as the one person still dutifully grieving his fallen hero.

  Grandfather took his seat at one end of the panel, to general applause.

  “I’m not going to introduce myself or the other panelists,” he said. “If you don’t know us by now, you haven’t been paying attention.”

  More applause, and a few cheers.

  “I’m thinking of holding this shindig again next year,” Grandfather went on.

  Enthusiastic applause greeted this announcement.

  “So if any of you have any suggestions about how we could improve things for Owl Fest 2020, don’t be shy about speaking up. Not that most of you ever are.” Laughter rippled through the room. “And before you all bring it up, if we hold it next year, we’ll have it a little earlier. September, October—even November would be an improvement. Not close to Thanksgiving, though, or Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, and well before the weather gets really bad around here. Meg will help me figure out the best date.”

  More applause and a few people turned to smile and wave at me.

  “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, any suggestions?”

  “Bring back the Owlettes!” someone called, to much laughter and scattered applause. Apparently SPOOR had been a hit.

  “I have a suggestion.” Melissa McKendrick stood. “Next year, can we select the sacrificial victim by popular vote?” Clearly this was a little edgy for some—Dr. Czerny looked thunderous—but still, most of the crowd laughed. “Not that I’m complaining about this year’s selection, you understand, but if we’re going to make this a regular feature of the conference, I think it would be good to get all the attendees involved in the decision. More democratic.”

  “I’m sure we can all think of a few candidates,” Grandfather said. “And I bet I’d be on a few people’s lists.”

  Many shouts of “No!”

  “I have an idea.” Dr. Craine leaned forward to her microphone.

  I noticed someone moving forward from the back of the room. I initially assumed it was someone coming to the front to make a suggestion—real or humorous. Then I realized it was Mr. Ackley. What was he even doing in the panel, much less making suggestions? I started to follow him, out of some instinct that maybe whatever he was up to would be something we’d want to fend off.

  He strode forward until he was standing right beside Grandfather, reaching into his jacket for something. Then he turned and I could see that he was holding a gun. He pointed it at Grandfather’s head.

  “Everybody stay in your seats!” he shouted. “Don’t cause trouble and no one will get hurt.”

  Everybody followed orders. The entire crowd seemed frozen, except for Grandfather.

  “What the hell do you want?” he growled.

  “I want to make a public statement,” Mr. Ackley said. “I want you all to listen to it. And I want the media to cover it.”

  “The media?” Grandfather sounded puzzled.

  “The media,” Ackley repeated. “TV. Radio. Newspapers. And all those bloggers and tweakers. I want them all here.”

  I’d edged my way forward to the front row of chairs, though there was still a six-foot gap between me and the table behind which Grandfather and the other panelists were sitting—and Ackley was standing. Since no one else was speaking up, I decided to.

  “The media can’t get here yet,” I said. “There’s more than three feet of snow out there. The county snowplows are still stuck in it. That’s the reason most of these people are still here at the hotel instead of being halfway home by now. They can’t get out, so how do you expect the media to get in?”

  “Then how did the police get here?” Ackley asked.

  “Chief Burke came in a friend’s snowmobile,” I said. “And I heard it was a pretty miserable trip. It could be hours before anyone from the media gets through. Maybe days.”

  “Fine. We’ll just wait, then.” The entitled Ackley was back, the one completely unable to grasp that he couldn’t summon a taxi to take him to the airport in mid-blizzard.

  “Fine.” Grandfather crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Sooner or later you’ll fall asleep, and then we’ll take your silly gun away.”

  The audience, who had variously been whispering, shifting uneasily, looking around, whimpering, or peering hopefully at the exit doors, all gradually settled down, in apparent solidarity, into an imitation of Grandfather’s posture—arms crossed, feet firmly planted on the ground, frowns and eyes locked on Ackley.

  “I want the media here or I’ll start shooting people!” Ackley shouted.

  “Look, there’s no way the conventional media can get here,” I said. “But who needs them in these days of social media? Who here has a cell phone?”

  Most of the audience raised their hands. Craine, and Green followed suit. Even Grandfather grudgingly lifted one hand for a few seconds.

  “We can all take vi
deo,” I said. “And then once we get the Wi-Fi working again, we can all upload the video to the Internet. It’ll go viral.”

  “Go viral.” Ackley frowned. “I never know what people mean when they say that.”

  “Potentially bigger audiences than TV and newspapers combined.” I had no idea if that was true, but it sounded good. Although I couldn’t imagine what Ackley could possibly do or say that really would go viral, and I hoped I never found out.

  “Everybody—get out your smart phones!” I said aloud.

  Those who already had their phones in hand held them up higher, while the rest of the crew dug into purses and pockets. I hoped none of them were armed and under the delusion that starting a gun battle with Ackley would be the smart or heroic thing to do.

  Ackley frowned nervously and held the gun closer to Grandfather’s temple. I could see Grandfather watching him out of the corner of his eye. I had to admire his sangfroid, but I hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid and heroic, either, like trying to wrestle the gun from Ackley’s hand.

  Within a minute or two, nearly all of the almost two hundred people in the audience were holding up their phones. It reminded me of concerts from my youth, when at some point in the evening it always seemed mandatory to hold up a lighter and wave it around. Several of my non-smoking friends had routinely carried lighters just for such occasions. Of course, it had been a while since I’d been to a concert, and I’d heard that these days cell phones had replaced lighters in this time-honored ceremony.

  Ackley gazed out over the sea of iPhones and Galaxies. He looked puzzled, but not entirely unhappy.

  “Are you ready, Mr. Ackley?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Everybody! Three … two … one … action. Take it away, Mr. Ackley.”

  “My name is James Renfield Ackley.”

  If he was expecting a dramatic reaction to this announcement he was disappointed. I saw nothing but blank looks. Blank looks and phones.