Die Like an Eagle

by Donna Andrews

  Ranged behind her were three exceedingly large young male cousins with excited looks on their faces, as if eager to show off their prowess as bouncers in front of Mother and the assembled family. Biff had seemed untroubled by Mother’s glare—more fool him—but now he looked a little uneasy.

  “No, actually it would be helpful if he stayed for a little bit,” I said. “I need to talk to him, and I’ve had no luck reaching him over the past few weeks.”

  “Trying to get in touch with me?” Biff looked as if he was bouncing back. In fact, he was starting to look smug. “Sorry, Mrs. Waterston, but I think you’re mistaken.”

  “Professionally, I go by my maiden name,” I said. “Meg Langslow. Executive assistant to Mayor Shiffley. Since you’re here, let’s talk about your progress on the town square renovation contract.”

  Biff’s jaw dropped, and he took several steps back.

  “I’m not in my office right now,” he said. “So I can’t possibly give you an update on any particular project—we have so many going on. Call my secretary on Monday.”

  “I did, this Monday,” I said. “And last Monday, and the Monday before that. Also the last few Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. You could probably paper a wall with all the While You Were Out slips your secretary has written for me. Assuming she’s actually writing them. Either you have an incompetent secretary, or you need to stop dodging customers who want to talk to you.”

  “Can’t talk now—I have to be somewhere else,” Biff said. Anywhere else, his face said. “At the ball field. A lot to do to get it ready for Opening Day tomorrow.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Because it needs a lot of work. What’s happening with that kid from one of the other teams, the one who sprained his ankle tripping over that big rock in the outfield at practice last week—are his parents really planning to sue?”

  Biff backpedaled some more.

  Caroline Willner strode forward with a tall paper cup in her hands.

  “Here; you could use some lemonade,” she said. She shoved it forward with one hand while patting him on the shoulder with the other. I’d have been mildly annoyed with the interruption if Biff hadn’t reacted to the lemonade as if she’d tried to hand him a cup of poison.

  “No, no,” he said. “Not necessary. I’m not staying.”

  “I put it in a paper cup so you could take it with you,” she said. “It’s warm for this time of year—you need to keep hydrated.”

  Biff reluctantly allowed her to shove the cup into his hands and flinched slightly as she patted him on the shoulder again.

  “So how about if I drop by to see you?” I went on. “Say, Monday morning at ten.”

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” Biff said over his shoulder as he strode—almost sprinted—away from me.

  “Let’s make sure he actually leaves,” Caroline said. She took my arm, and we began strolling in Biff’s wake.

  “I was about to pin him down to an appointment time, you know,” I said.

  “And if you had, do you really think he’d have been there when you showed up?” she said. “I figured getting rid of him as soon as possible was the best thing.”

  “He could always come back,” I said. “Or sneak back.”

  “We’ll have a warning if he does,” she said. “I tagged him.”

  Chapter 4

  “Tagged him? You mean Biff?” Surely I hadn’t heard Caroline properly. “And tagged him with what?”

  “Your grandfather and I are testing a bunch of new geolocator tags for birds and small mammals.” She held up a little lumpy metal gadget about the size of a nickel. “Miniature GPS device. The weasels have been regularly escaping from their habitat. We’ve attached these to the little devils, so the next time they pull a Houdini, we can not only find them faster, we can also figure out where they’re escaping from. Should work for human weasels, too, so I dropped one in the jerk’s pocket.”

  “Like belling the cat,” I said. “But how do we keep track of him?”

  Caroline pulled out her cell phone and punched in some numbers.

  “Willner here. Two new tracking devices activated.” She rattled off two long strings of numbers and letters. “That’s right. Special short-term instructions on these two. Can you read my present position?… Excellent! Right now those two new devices should be near my position but headed away. If either of them comes within, say, two miles of our position, send an alert to my number and the following number.” She recited a familiar string of digits—my own cell phone number—before thanking whoever was on the other end and hanging up.

  “They’ll call or text you if Biff comes anywhere near your house,” she said.

  “Biff and who else?” I asked. “You said two new devices.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure I’d manage to slip one in his jacket,” she said. “And I almost didn’t—had to try a second time. And there’s a good possibility he’ll find it eventually and toss it away, because it just looks like a little bit of junk. So I had one of your cousins attach one to his car. That’ll stay put for a while, and its battery should last a couple months. I suppose it was wasteful, putting the one in his jacket—it’s not as if he looks like the kind of guy who’d park his car a few miles away and try to hike across a couple of miles of farmland to sneak up on us from behind, but you never know.”

  “Awesome,” I said. “But isn’t it illegal?”

  “Probably,” Caroline said. “I’m sure any data we got from the trackers wouldn’t be admissible in court as evidence. But we’re not trying to sue him—we just want a little early warning if he tries to barge in again. Brilliant if you ask me. Here—call this number any time you want an update on his whereabouts.”

  She held out her phone and waited while I entered the number into my contact list. Then she strolled off, still chuckling at her own cleverness.

  I still wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But it was too late to stop her, and I doubted there was any way we could retrieve the devices without Biff catching on to what she’d done.

  And since it was still part of my job for Caerphilly to track him down and extract an update on the progress (or lack thereof) on the town square renovations …

  I called the number Caroline had given me.

  “Zoo Security,” a cheerful female voice answered. “How can I help you?”

  “This is Meg Langslow,” I said. “Can you give me a current location on those last two tracking devices Caroline activated?”

  “Absolutely! Just give me a moment … both devices are in the same location. On our maps, it’s something called Percy Pruitt Park.”

  I thanked her and hung up. Percy Pruitt Park was still the official name of what we locals usually called the county ball field. Nobody had fond memories of the Pruitts, who had arrived in Caerphilly just after the Civil War and pretty much run the town as their personal fiefdom until a few years ago, when we’d finally figured out how to get rid of them and elected Randall Shiffley as the new reform mayor. No one had complained when one of the Brown Construction trucks had knocked down the park’s signpost some time ago. Maybe it was time to propose a name change.

  I scribbled an item in my notebook to that effect and then returned to the party.

  “Biff gone?” Michael asked.

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “Before I had the chance to bug him about the renovations to the town square.”

  “Well, maybe you can catch him tomorrow,” Michael said. “At the game.”

  “Yes, he’ll probably be there for the opening ceremonies,” I said.

  “And the whole game,” Michael said. “We’re playing his team, you know.”

  With that, he dashed back to where the boys were resuming their practice.

  “Great,” I muttered. I didn’t much like the notion of ruining my enjoyment of the boys’ first game by trying to tackle Biff at the ballpark. But was he going to continue dodging me indefinitely?

  An idea came to me. I strolled into the barn
where it was a little quieter, sat on a hay bale, pulled out my cell phone, and called the town clerk’s office. To my surprise, I got a live voice.

  “Caerphilly Town Clerk’s Office, Phineas T. Throckmorton speaking.”

  “Phinny, what are you doing there this late? What happened to that vow to start working sane hours?”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Phinny said. “Because I’m not working—I’m hosting a role-playing game. Call of Cthulhu—it’s like Dungeons & Dragons, only based on H.P. Lovecraft.”

  “Yes, I know what it is,” I said. “My brother’s a game lord, remember?”

  “Yes, we’re hoping he can join us later tonight. I should get back to the game—was there a reason you called?”

  “I was planning to leave you a voice mail asking you to do something for me when you’re back at work next week,” I said.

  “Is it important? Urgent? I could do it now.”

  “Important, but not urgent.” After all, I’d been trying to reach Biff for weeks now. A few more days wouldn’t matter. “Any chance you could give me a list of recent construction permits issued to Brown Construction?”

  “Those wretches who have yet to do a lick of work on the square? Absolutely! Will this help you get us out of the contract with them?”

  “At the moment I just want to talk to other people who’ve used them,” I said. “Maybe get some tips on the best way to work on them. And if it comes to getting out of the contract—well, the more information we have, the better.” I was also thinking that if I knew what other jobs he had going, I could show up to badger him at his work sites, but I’d keep that idea to myself.

  “Not a problem,” Phinny said. “I probably won’t have time to do it tonight—oh, splendid, the pizza just arrived—but I’ll get it to you as soon as possible. I’ve got to go before Dr. Smoot collars all of the bacon and anchovy.”

  “Not on your own time,” I said. “Next week will be soon enough.” But he’d already hung up.

  Pizza and role-playing games in the basement of the courthouse. It might sound tame to some, but for Phinny it represented a massive expansion of his social life. And the basement’s ancient stone corridors probably made a pretty cool atmosphere for gaming.

  I scribbled a reminder in my notebook to check with Phinny if I hadn’t heard back from him in a few days. And then I closed my notebook, took a deep breath, and tried to banish Biff from my thoughts. I often teased my cousin Rose Noire that she’d never met a New Age concept she didn’t like. Her latest one for dealing with stresses and worries was the mental eraser.

  “Picture the source of your stress,” she’d said. “Now pick up an imaginary eraser and rub whatever’s stressing you out of the picture.”

  Of course, all the examples she used were inanimate objects, like bills and malfunctioning appliances. Was it quite ethical to imagine erasing a human being?

  I tried it anyway. I pictured Biff, leaning on the outfield fence. Then I pulled out my mental eraser and gently but thoroughly removed him from the scene, leaving only the chain-link fence, the exuberant green of the woods behind it, and the Stars and Stripes rippling in the breeze against a perfect blue sky.

  “I feel better already,” I said.

  I was searching for the best possible image of Biff in our backyard, to repeat the erasure exercise, when bright light suddenly spilled through the gap where I’d left the barn door open. Bright light accompanied by cheering outside.

  “Have they set something on fire?” I muttered, as I hurried over to the barn door. Even for my family, cheering on a conflagration seemed a little strange, but you never knew.

  I stepped outside to find Mother beaming with approval at the backyard, where a brilliant if slightly harsh light was illuminating the buffet table and the Xtreme Croquet game. I spotted a portable light tower, the sort construction companies used when they had to work into the night.

  “Wasn’t it nice of Randall to bring the lights over?” Mother said, as I stepped to her side.

  “Very nice.” I had to shade my eyes against the brightness. “Although we usually manage with a scattering of luminarias.”

  “But those wouldn’t have done for the ball field.” Mother pointed beyond the yard, where our makeshift baseball diamond was illuminated by another three light towers.

  “Oh, great,” I said. “And if Biff comes back to spy on us again, we’ll just hand him a pair of sunglasses and hope he doesn’t notice.”

  “If he comes back, I’m sure you’ll be able to chase him away again,” Mother said. “And if he thinks he can bully the Eagles into not practicing when they want to—well! He’ll learn. I’ve been talking to some of the other team families. Everyone knows he just makes up all those rules as he goes along. People are getting tired of it, and asking what can be done about it. You can put me down as another charter member of NAFOB.”

  “NAFOB?” Caerphilly was rife with acronymed action organizations, from SPOOR—Stop Poisoning Our Owls and Raptors—to CAP—Citizens Against Prohibition, which after achieving its original mission with the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 had reorganized itself into a rather dipsophilic social organization. NAFOB was a new one to me.

  “Not a Friend of Biff,” she said.

  “Count me in on that one,” I said.

  But still, I pulled up my mental image of the ball field and unerased Biff. Right now, I hoped he was there leaning on the outfield fence. Better yet, doing something over there that took a lot of concentration. We were only a couple of miles from the field—for all I knew the sudden glow in our backyard might be visible all the way there.

  I walked over to the pasture, where it was now obvious from pretty far away that practice was taking place. Michael and Chuck were assisted by Tory, Cordelia, and at least half a dozen team fathers.

  Josh came running over when he spotted me leaning against the fence.

  “Mommy, look at the lights,” he exclaimed. “Isn’t it cool? Just like the big leagues!”

  He went running back into the outfield.

  “They haven’t played under the lights at the ball field yet?” asked a cousin who was standing beside me, holding a glass of wine in her hand.

  “We don’t have lights at our field,” I explained.

  “And that’s a pity, isn’t it?” Randall Shiffley had come to lean against the fence on my other side. “Because I think the kids would enjoy a few night games, don’t you?”

  “You think you could see your way to lending those light towers for the games?” I asked.

  “I could,” he said. “Of course, Biff hasn’t scheduled any night games, but if the spring continues as rainy as it has been, we might need a few night slots to get in all the make up games.”

  “Night games are more fun sometimes,” the cousin said.

  “I agree,” I said. “Although I suspect Biff won’t, unless the suggestion comes from someone he gets along with.”

  “Which wouldn’t be me,” Randall said.

  “Or me. I assume you’ll be there to throw out the first ball tomorrow.”

  “No, apparently Biff has invited some bigwig from Summerball’s national organization to do that.” Randall’s tone seemed light and neutral. Maybe a little too much so.

  “Are you bummed about that?” I asked.

  “I’m ticked off he didn’t ask me first,” Randall said. “Or even notify me. If he’d called me up and said he wanted to invite a bigwig from Summerball National, maybe thrown in a little flattery about how great it’s going to be to show off our brand new league, I’d have said ‘Great; look forward to meeting him.’ But to tell me the day before Opening Day that he doesn’t need me for the ceremonies … not cool.”

  “Disrespectful,” the listening cousin put in.

  I found myself wondering if Randall and Biff had had words. Oh, to be a fly on the wall.

  “You know, it wouldn’t be that hard to put up permanent lights at the field,” Randall said. “Assuming the county can wrestle control over
our own field back from Biff.”

  “I’ll put that on my list,” I said.

  “And put it on your list to meet the Summerball National guy tomorrow,” Randall said. “I don’t know how Biff managed to snow the Summerball folks into letting him run the league, but I’m hoping they haven’t really seen him in action. But they will tomorrow, and if Biff runs true to form and meanwhile you and I do our level best to charm the socks off the visitor … you never know.”

  “My money’s on you,” said the cousin. “But I’m confused about something—Meg, I thought you worked for the mayor.”

  “That’s me, ma’am,” Randall said, tipping an imaginary hat.

  “And I thought the ball field was in the county, not the town.”

  “It is,” I said. “But the town and county are working together a lot more cooperatively these days. They used to have completely separate and often actively hostile governments.”

  “The town was run by the Pruitts, a bunch of greedy carpetbaggers, for over a century,” Randall said. “But people finally got wise and voted them out.”

  “And with the Pruitts gone, we came up with a proposal to join forces to save everybody time and money,” I explained.

  “Meg’s doing, actually,” Randall said.

  “So Randall is mayor and also the county executive,” I said. “The town council is also the county board. The chief of police is also the deputy sheriff.”

  “The only people not completely happy about the change were a few folks who were on both payrolls,” Randall said. “And we gave them big raises to sweeten the pill.”

  “That’s why we’re having a four-day holiday weekend instead of a three-day one,” I explained. “The county used to celebrate Founder’s Day on a Friday and the town on a Monday. And neither would budge. So now we celebrate both.”

  “So the town and the county are merged now?” the cousin asked.

  “For the time being, they’re still separate entities,” I said. “And citizens of both have the right to vote the plan out if they don’t think it’s working.”