The Kiskadee of Death

by Jan Dunlap

  No MOBsters crossed our path in our pursuit of the parrots, and that night was a quiet one at the Birds Nest, with no dog alarms or notes tacked on our guest suite door.

  This morning, we were starting the day with our second trip to Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. Once again, the sun was out, and the air was warm. With the car windows rolled down, a light breeze tickled my face. I could almost forget that back home, Old Man Winter was still dumping inches upon inches of snow in my backyard.

  “I have an idea,” I said to Luce as we passed by a new housing development just outside Bentsen-Rio Grande. “Let’s play ‘let’s pretend’ and go look at some model homes. We can imagine what it would be like to live where you never have ice freezing your back patio door shut three months out of the year.”

  Luce laughed. “That’s true. Just think! We could spend all our time birding right here, right where the two migratory corridors—the Central and the Mississippi—”

  “Converge,” we said in unison.

  “You could give senior birding tours,” she reminded me. “CPR included. I bet you’d be a huge hit, especially with all the ladies.”

  I watched the last house of the row of model homes disappear from my rear view mirror.

  “On second thought,” I said, “frozen doors aren’t that bad, especially when I have a gorgeous wife cooking something good and hot in the oven.”

  Luce laughed again. “You are such a chauvinist.”

  “No, I’m not,” I protested. “I’m practical. You’re a chef, I’m not. It just happens that you’re also gorgeous. I’m simply making an observation. That’s what I do. I observe. Birds. Students. My wife. I’m a master of detail.”

  This time, Luce snickered. “Okay, master of detail. What is today’s date?”

  I drew a blank.

  “No fair,” I said. “We’re on vacation. I don’t keep track of dates when we’re on vacation.”

  “Then you’re not a master of detail, Bobby,” she chided me. “If you were, you’d know why today’s date is important.”

  Oh, no.

  I frantically searched my memory for anything that would tip me off to why today’s date was important, but nothing surfaced.

  It wasn’t Luce’s birthday.

  It wasn’t our wedding anniversary.

  I was positive that Valentine’s Day was next month.

  Crap.

  It was one of those moments—the ones that fill the heart of every married man with dread: I’d forgotten something important, or at least, something that was important to my wife.

  Note that the two are not always the same: something important, and something important to my wife.

  Never, however, will a man say that to his lovely bride.

  Unless he’s looking for a night or two out on the sofa instead of in his own bed.

  What was the big deal about the date?

  “You don’t know, do you?” Luce asked.

  I could have sworn she sounded amused. Of course, she knew I didn’t know. My wife can always read my mind, even when I can’t.

  I slowly shook my head, my eyes focused on the left-hand turn lane ahead that would take us into the state park.

  “I am a failure as a husband,” I admitted.

  My wife laughed once more.

  “Oh, no, you’re not,” she assured me. “You’re just not good with numbers, Mr. Master of Details.”

  “I know how many more Valley specialties we need to find,” I defended myself, making my left turn towards Bentsen-Rio Grande, “to make this trip a perfect grand slam.”

  “Oh, I think this trip has been perfect even if we don’t find the last few specialties,” she said. “Aside from a murder, Eddie getting framed, and our threatening note, that is.”

  She placed her left hand over my right on the steering wheel and gave it a warm, soft squeeze. “This trip is a life-changing experience, if you ask me.”

  I nodded in agreement. “The kind of birding you can do around here is nothing short of amazing, that’s for sure. It’s set a whole new bar for birding trips, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Beside me, Luce laughed.

  “You got that right,” she said.

  I parked the car in the half-full lot, and we walked along the sidewalk into the main entrance of Bentsen-Rio Grande. I scanned the tops of the trees that lined the road, and caught the profile of an approaching bird.

  “Some kind of hawk,” I said, lifting my binoculars.

  It flew directly overhead, giving me a clear look at its broad wings, gray body, and the three wide bands of black feathers on its tail.

  “My, my,” Luce said, her voice holding a hint of awe. “A Gray Hawk. Now that’s a bird you don’t see every day.”

  “Not even around here,” I replied, feeling my own excitement kicking in at the unexpected sighting. “It’s a permanent resident, but I guess the locals don’t see it frequently.”

  Why that was the case, I wasn’t sure. A member of the southern buteo family, the Gray Hawk is mostly found south of the Mexican border. Yet on all the bird lists we’d seen at the World Birding Centers, the Gray Hawk was considered uncommon for the area, so to have one fly right over our heads was a real score with which to start our last full day of birding along the Rio Grande.

  “Good thing the birds don’t have to have papers to cross into the U.S.,” I commented. “I’d hate to see what immigration laws would do to our life lists if that were the case.”

  From behind me, I heard the sound of wheels rolling and squeaking. I turned around and watched a young couple pulling along a canoe on wheels. Fishing poles stuck out on one side of the craft.

  “Fishing on the Rio Grande today?” I called to the two.

  The fellow nodded. “There’s a good spot to put in at the edge of the park,” he called back. “As long as we don’t drift over the international border, we’re fine.”

  Apparently, fish didn’t need papers either to cross the border, although they did run the risk of getting eaten if they got caught.

  As far as I knew, the human type of illegal immigrants just got sent back to Mexico.

  We watched the couple head off on one of the roads inside the park, towing their canoe behind them.

  “I wish we could use wheels when we transport our canoe in the Boundary Waters instead of portaging it on our heads,” Luce observed. “I’d be inclined to stay in the wilderness and enjoy it a lot more if I didn’t have to carry around a canoe.”

  A vision of the canoe lying atop Birdy Johnson at Alligator Lake popped into my head.

  Why was a canoe on Alligator Lake? There were, after all, alligators in Alligator Lake. I assumed that a body of water frequented by big reptiles with very sharp teeth and surprising speed would not be a popular spot for watersports.

  Had Birdy used the canoe to go place his sensors? I knew from looking at maps of the park that a trail around the lake led to the shore where Birdy’s body was found, and I’d guessed that was how he’d gotten there. But if that were the case, how did the canoe get there?

  I looked in the direction the young couple with the canoe had gone, and it occurred to me that perhaps Birdy’s killer had used the canoe to approach Birdy as quietly as possible so as to catch him unaware. Canoes on wheels might make a lot of noise, but a canoe in the water was virtually silent. Paddling the canoe across the lake would also be a quicker way to reach Birdy than taking the trail that wound around the lake. And if the killer heard others approaching on the opposite shore, it would be a simple matter to escape the scene of the murder by slipping into the woods behind it.

  None of which gave me a clue as to who might have guided that canoe across the water to kill Birdy. It did, however, tell me that Birdy’s murder was well planned out ahead of time. His killer knew e
xactly how to get away with murder.

  A MOB hitman?

  For some reason, I seriously doubted that a birding club of senior citizens required the services of a professional killer. What would be the reason? To keep birders in line if they made false reports of rarities?

  Surely a slap on the wrist would be sufficient. Heck, a simple email rejection did the trick for us in Minnesota. Besides, it wasn’t like the MOB was a secret enclave of world-class competitive birders vying for international birding stardom.

  After the few days I’d spent around the MOBsters, I’d gotten the impression that a lot of them were happy just to be able to get out and about and see whatever happened to be flying by. Their ­attitude reminded me of every birder I’ve ever met: birding was fun. Unlike some hobbies that required peak physical conditioning or over-the-top stamina, birding offered enjoyment for whatever level of activity an individual might choose. I knew a lot of birders, for example, who found their favorite birdwatching right in their own backyards, usually equipped with a multitude of stocked bird feeders for their feathered visitors and comfortable lounge chairs for themselves. I also knew birders who’d traveled the world to see exotic rarities. It didn’t matter if you were new at it or had years of experience, birding was a hobby anyone could enjoy regardless of age, financial situation, health conditions, or skill.

  Birds were everywhere.

  At that very moment, my own “everywhere” was a rustic feeding station just outside the exhibit center of the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park. A noisy flock of more than thirty Plain Chachalacas mobbed the dirt floor of the cleared area that hosted a variety of bird feeders. When we’d visited here earlier in the week, we’d watched park staffers refilling feeders in different locations around the park and marveled at the way the birds seemed to time their arrivals to coincide with the refilling of the feeders.

  I don’t know if birds can tell time, but they sure knew when it was time to eat and where.

  On second thought, maybe it wasn’t any different than the way I showed up in our kitchen every night just before Luce started making dinner.

  Yes, it was true: a Bob White could be trained.

  As the last of the rowdy avian crowd on the ground dispersed, a Green Jay flew through the clearing to land on a feeding platform strewn with seeds. Three more of the birds immediately joined the first one, each of them repeatedly dipping their brilliant blue heads to pick up seeds. Their jet-black bibs reached up and over their eyes, while their mostly green bodies blended in with the greenery behind them. Meanwhile, in a tree nearby, a Great Kiskadee loudly ­announced its own arrival at the feeding station with a triple riff of its signature bird call.

  “It’s Grand Central Station around here,” Luce commented.

  “Rio Grande Central Station,” I corrected her.

  “Hey, Bob!”

  Luce and I both turned in the direction of the human call to see Cynnie Scott making her way over to us from the exhibit center. Dressed in faded blue jeans and a rolled-sleeve work shirt, the local birding legend had a pair of binoculars around her neck and a set of keys in her hand. Today her long silver hair was tied back into a fat ponytail.

  “I just got a text from some birders down by the river,” she said, “they say they’re looking at that Eared Grebe I missed two days ago at Estero Llano. Want to join me?”

  She held up the keys and jingled them. “I’m borrowing a park cart to get over there pronto,” she explained. “I’m not missing it again!”

  “We’d love to,” I said. I grabbed Luce’s hand and we followed Cynnie to an enclosure behind the feeding station where a cart was parked. A huge sack of seed took up the space behind the cramped second row of seats in the cart, so I directed Luce into the passenger seat next to Cynnie and climbed into the back row myself. The naturalist fired up the cart and whipped the little vehicle around to head towards the park trail down to the Rio Grande’s shore.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to visit more the other night at Buzz’s,” Cynnie said. “The club always prides itself on having one of the best floats in the Citrus Parade, and I’m afraid we fell behind schedule this year with our planning and building.”

  She raised an arm to point upwards at a long pouch hanging from a tree off the side of the road.

  “That’s an Altamira Oriole’s nest,” she said.

  It was almost two feet long, I guessed, woven of roots and branches and suspended neatly from the tree’s branch.

  “I’ve seen the birds hunting for smashed grasshoppers on the fronts of cars,” Cynnie tossed out as she zipped along in the park’s converted golf cart. “I don’t know if that means Altamira Orioles are lazy or opportunistic. There they are!”

  This time, she pointed at two of the bright orange and black birds as they foraged along tree branches on the opposite side of the road from the nest we’d seen. The Altamira Oriole also sported a black bib, though its bib narrowed below its beak unlike the broader one of the Green Jay.

  “I also felt I owed you an apology for sounding so negative about SpaceX,” the MOB president added as we bounced along in the little cart. “It’s going to be a boon for the local economy and provide a lot of jobs, which is a good thing for this area. I just get so disappointed that we have to keep trading off conservation for economic growth.”

  “It happens everywhere,” I said. “The upside is when it motivates people to be more conscientious about what we can do to preserve what we still have. Like 3M using their technology to develop bird-safe glass,” I reminded her.

  Cynnie nodded as she pulled into a gravel space near the trail that led down to the river.

  “That’s true,” she agreed. She turned off the cart and we all got out. “Come this way.”

  She led us on a short path that opened up to the Rio Grande.

  “And sometimes, good birding karma just happens,” Cynnie said to us over her shoulder. “I heard a rumor last night that a start-up conservation group is making a bid for some land north of the SpaceX site to establish a new preserve. If they can get it, that might just provide the habitat our displaced birds are going to need when SpaceX is up and running.”

  “Has that been hard for the MOB?” Luce asked. “I mean, you’re the president and one of your members sold the land to the spaceport developer.”

  I glanced at Luce, who was trotting along with me after Cynnie. She lifted her hands in a “well, I thought I’d ask” gesture.

  “Oh, sure, I was mad at Buzz for a while,” Cynnie admitted, “as were several of the club members, but Rosalie and Birdy were always defending Buzz’s decision to everyone. They said he had a plan he was working on. They said he was a sharpshooter, and not just because he used to win medals for it when he was in the service. Buzz was smart, Birdy said, and he always did the right thing, even when it hurt.”

  The word “sharpshooter” stuck in my gut, and I thought of Eddie crouching beside my car with a bullet graze bleeding on his calf.

  Buzz Davis was a sharpshooter.

  Before I could explore that idea, however, Cynnie turned around for a moment to look me in the eye.

  “You know that Buzz resigned from the astronaut program to enter rehab, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He resigned?” Luce asked. “He didn’t get kicked out when Birdy reported him?”

  “Birdy never reported anything that Buzz didn’t want him to,” Cynnie said. “Birdy knew that Buzz was in trouble with alcohol, but he didn’t turn him in to their superiors, if that’s what you’re thinking. The truth is that Birdy helped Buzz get himself into a treatment program. But the guys knew there would be an investigation about Buzz’s performance prior to his resignation, and if it had become known that Birdy knew about Buzz’s addiction, Birdy would have been in trouble for not reporting Buzz as soon as he was aware of the
alcohol problem.”

  “So Buzz protected Birdy by having Birdy publicly blow the whistle on him,” I finished for her. “Buzz didn’t want Birdy’s career crashed with his own.”

  “That’s right,” Cynnie said. “Those two guys were best friends their whole lives. As far as I know, the only thing that ever came between them was a ‘who,’ not a thing.”

  “Rosalie,” Luce said. “They were both in love with Rosalie.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cynnie smiled at Luce. “You can see it, can’t you? The three of them have been good friends for decades, but Buzz has been in love with her for years. Of course, she was married for many of those years, so Buzz never shared his feelings with her. Then, when Rosalie’s husband died five years ago, she and Birdy became really close, probably because Birdy had lost his wife years before that. I’ve heard that sharing that kind of grieving experience can be very bonding for people.”

  “So Buzz lost his chance,” I concluded.

  I shook my head in disbelief. On top of everything else, there was a love triangle involving Birdy Johnson. And Buzz Davis, who happened to be an eagle eye with a rifle, had a plan he was keeping secret from the MOB.

  Geez Louise. Let a Hollywood scriptwriter get a hold of this murder, and it was going to be a miniseries that ran for years.

  “I hope that Eared Grebe is still here,” I finally said, “because my crime-solving karma just bottomed out.”

  “Stop right there!” a voice commanded us. “On the ground. Now!”

  The three of us turned to our left, where the voice had come from. A uniformed man stepped out from behind a thicket of mesquite. He had a gun on his hip and a nametag on his jacket.