“I do.” Bobby shook his head and leaned back in the chair. “I recognized that name as soon as I heard Dakota say it. Sean Madigan.” He looked at me expectantly, as though he thought I should recognize that name too. Sean Madigan. I didn’t.
“Sorry,” I said. “Should that mean something to me?”
“It was in all the papers six years ago,” Bobby said. “He went to jail.”
“That was back when I was living in Florida,” I said. “Must have missed it. Anyway, what does this Sean Madigan person have to do with Dakota? Why did he go to jail?”
Bobby moved forward in his chair again, looking at me intently while a new thought flashed through my poor tired brain.
I’m involved in a wedding where not only is a bird the ring bearer, but—according to Bobby—a jailbird is the best man.
“I went to some classes with Sean in Boston. Museum of Fine Arts.”
Would he ever get to the point? I hoped he didn’t ramble this way when he taught his art students at the Tabby. “I know. Famous school. Bobby, what did you hear?”
“I didn’t even realize he was out of jail, you know? Did six years. Sentenced to ten but had good behavior, I guess. Anyway Shannon was telling Dakota that she’s worried about having Sean stay at her dad’s house on account of his being—you know—kind of a thief.”
“What kind of a thief? What did this guy steal?”
“Paintings. He stole small, very good paintings from small, very good museums. I don’t remember how he did it exactly, but I’m going to look it up. Anyway, then he copied them and put them back. Got away with it for quite a while too.” Bobby’s tone had slipped from worried to respectful. “Of course, eventually he got caught. Anyway, they haven’t told Shannon’s dad who the best man is going to be yet. But see, they have to. Sean’s in Salem already and now Shannon’s invited him to stay at her dad’s place. Big, big house. You ever seen it?”
“No. I never have. If this Sean has—as they say—paid his debt to society, won’t Shannon’s father be understanding about it?” I paused for a moment, thinking of this rather peculiar crime. “Why did he do it? Steal them then put them back?”
“Sold the copies as the real thing to underground collectors. He’s really very good at making copies. We all made copies at the museum. Copying the masters is part of the learning process. But later on Sean took it to another level.” His tone reflected grudging admiration. “The son of a gun figured out how to do the varnishes, the brushwork, the type of canvas, the cracking of the paint. Never used pigments or binding that was introduced after the artist’s death. Amazing talent.”
“You said ‘underground collectors’?”
“Yeah. There are people who don’t care if a painting is stolen. They just want to own a real Cézanne, or Degas, or Van Gogh, or whatever.”
“They must have to keep it hidden. Never show it to anybody. How strange.”
“I know. Anyway. Madigan would anonymously sell copies to two or three of these collectors for big bucks—in cash—then send the original back to where he’d stolen it from.”
“Uh-oh. How’d he do that?’
“Rolled it up, put it in a tube mailer, and dropped it in a mailbox. Always from another state. Then after a while, probably when he ran out of money, he’d steal another one, paint copies, find a new group of collectors—they’re all over the world, you know—and do it again.”
That made a certain amount of sense. “I see. And when the collectors learned that the real one had been returned, they couldn’t report the fakes because knowingly buying stolen paintings is a crime.”
He nodded. “Right. Anyway, Sean’s the one who taught Dakota how to do those paintings that look like gravestone rubbings. You’ve seen them. Wonderful things.” Bobby gave a low whistle. “I hope when he visits my class next semester he’ll give a demonstration. You think he might? You seem to know him pretty well.”
“He does them in plain sight at the cemetery, so I don’t see why he wouldn’t.” I didn’t actually know Dakota all that well. We’d met only a few months ago, but I had to admit to myself, it’d been a pretty intense couple of months—involving one of Salem’s most historic cemeteries where not all of the bodies always rest in peace. I stood, brushing a few crumbs from my skirt, and picked up my empty punch cup. “Well, guess I should get back to the reception.”
“Me too,” Bobby said and followed me down one of the long corridors to the Trumbull’s formal parlor, with its blue moire taffeta wall coverings, antique furniture, and assorted oil paintings in gilded frames.
I wonder if the paintings are originals or copies. How can you tell?
I said so long to Bobby and looked around for Aunt Ibby. Deciding that she’d probably already left, I chatted for a few minutes with visitors, ate a tiny frosted cupcake, and took the elegantly appointed Trumbull family elevator down one floor. The old store elevators provided the rest of the trip to the street level. I liked those best. The directory on the pressed tin walls still bore the original postings: lingerie; foundations; hosiery; sportswear; millinery . . .
The Buick wasn’t in the parking lot. Neither was Dakota Berman’s pickup truck. I assumed that the engaged couple and their crow had (wisely) left the premises. I backed the Vette out and headed down Washington Street to Church Street to home.
There are lots of beautiful trees in our neighborhood—maples, oaks, chestnuts. They’re always pretty. In the springtime the chestnut trees are bright with green buds and even some white blossoms. Summer brings the full display of leaves and fruit, acorns and chestnuts, and in the fall the resplendent golds and reds and browns are magnificent. Even in winter when snow and ice coat bare branches, they glisten like diamonds. But on this early summer day, after the commencement at the Tabby, when I turned onto Oliver Street the trees had a different look. It seemed that they were full of birds. Dark birds calling to one another. Blackbirds? Ravens?
They were crows. Not the black and white mottled ones, the pied crows. These were plain old black crows. Nothing rare there. But I didn’t remember ever seeing them in numbers like this in our neighborhood. There must have been about fifty of them in and around the trees along the street, and their raucous “caw-caw-caw” was both loud and monotonous.
Maybe, I told myself, maybe they’d just arrived from down south, like the robins do every spring. Do crows migrate? I’d have to ask Aunt Ibby. It’s very handy, having a reference librarian for an aunt. My own live-in, human Google. I tapped my garage door opener and pulled the Vette inside, hoping that the noisy birds hadn’t pooped on it, and parked next to the Buick.
She beat me home. Maybe she skipped the reception. I didn’t see her in the Trumbull suite.
Hurrying through the backyard, past Aunt Ibby’s vegetable and herb garden, I wondered how a scarecrow might look among the pole beans and pumpkins. After climbing the back steps I unlocked the door. As usual, O’Ryan was there to greet me with loud purrs and his “cat smile,” kind of a head cocked to one side, eyes wide, happy look on his fuzzy face. I bent and picked him up, disregarding the likelihood of cat hair on the needs-to-be-dry-cleaned suit. I pulled the door closed, realizing at that moment that the bird noise had suddenly stopped.
I paused for a moment, debating whether to start up the stairs to my apartment or stop to check on my aunt. O’Ryan made that decision for me, jumping down from my arms and disappearing through the cat door into Aunt Ibby’s kitchen. I heard the clink of dishes and the ping of pans, so I knew she was in there cooking—or cleaning. I knocked.
“Is that you, Maralee?” she called. “Wait a second while I dry my hands.”
“It’s me.” I answered. “Take your time. Just want to say hi.”
“Come in, come in.” She opened the door, wiping her hands on a red-and-white-striped apron with “Kiss the Cook” embroidered on it. “It was a lovely ceremony, wasn’t it? I thought Rupert’s speech was excellent, didn’t you?”
“Excellent,” I agreed, not remem
bering much of what he’d said. “But I missed seeing you at the reception. Were you there?”
“No. I skipped it.” She patted her waistline. “Didn’t need the calories, and besides, I had some research I wanted to do.”
“Research? About what?”
“Crows,” she said.
CHAPTER 9
“Crows? Like the ones in the trees out back?” I asked. “What’s going on with them anyway?”
“That’s what the Massachusetts Audubon Society is trying to figure out. You know I’m a member.” My aunt spoke proudly.
“Of course.” O’Ryan, checking out the contents of his red bowl, looked up at the mention of crows and gave a low growl. The sound surprised me. He’s always shown a normal catlike interest in birds, but I’ve never known him to harm one. “Sounds as though O’Ryan doesn’t like them in his yard.”
“I know. It’s uncommon for them to be here in Salem in such numbers at this time of year. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Do they migrate here from some other place? I was wondering about that just a few minutes ago.”
“Some do. We have a year-round population and then there are the ones who fly down south in the winter. They should be coming back. We’re thinking that maybe these birds have come from south of here and are stopping in Salem for some reason on their way home.”
“They don’t usually do that?”
“I’ve been here all my life, Maralee, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They’re all over the city.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Very interesting. In fact, do you think it might be a good topic for a beginning investigative reporter to look into?”
Her eyes sparkled and a smile lit up her face. “It’s perfect! I’ll bet Bruce Doan will love it.”
“I’m counting on that,” I said.
“I’ve already started digging into it, so why don’t you check with him?”
“I will,” I said. “Right away. And I’ll see if he’ll assign Therese to video the action. We’ll get started first thing in the morning.”
O’Ryan looked up from his bowl. “Nnyah,” he said.
“No?”
“Nnyah.”
“Oh, you’re right. I have to go gown shopping tomorrow morning with Shannon.”
Aunt Ibby laughed. “You realize you’re talking to a cat, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah. You do it too.” It was true. There’s no doubt about it. O’Ryan is no ordinary house cat. I can’t explain it and wouldn’t even try. It may have something to do with the witch Ariel. O’Ryan, so people say, was her “familiar.” We just know he’s special.
“Well, you may as well begin gathering information,” my aunt said, hanging her apron on a hook behind the pantry door. “It’ll probably impress Mr. Doan if you have a grasp of some facts about the creatures before you propose the project. Want to see what I’ve learned so far?”
“I do. Let me run upstairs and change fast into something comfortable and I’ll be right back.”
I wasn’t kidding about changing fast. O’Ryan followed me up to my apartment, where I washed my face and hands, brushed some cat hair from the suit and hung it carefully in my closet, and put on faded old cutoffs and a Police Athletic League T-shirt. Racing down the back stairs, I even beat the cat to the kitchen. Having an idea for my brand new investigative reporter gig was exciting, and getting some answers to the mysterious sudden influx of crows to Salem made the whole thing more intriguing.
I joined Aunt Ibby in her office, where she looked happily at home amid her impressive collection of the latest gadgets from the world of technology. “Look, Maralee. This is interesting. It says here that one reason we’re seeing so many crows in urban areas lately is because of the plentiful food sources we humans provide for them—like parking lots and along roadsides.”
“I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess it’s true. I mean the parking lots outside fast-food places alone must provide plenty of French fries and bread crumbs.” I frowned. “There aren’t any fast-food places around here, but there are sure lots of birds in the trees on Oliver Street.”
“Winter Street too. Maybe they’re building nesting sites.” She sounded doubtful. “People all over the city are posting notices and pictures about crows in their neighborhoods that hadn’t been there before. There’s something unusual going on.”
Thoughts of the old Alfred Hitchcock movie came to mind, but I didn’t say anything about that to my aunt. For over an hour we researched crows. And ravens. And magpies. And grackles. We looked up all the black-feathered members of the family Corvidae we could think of and came up with quite a few reasons why groups of crows had chosen to congregate in various neighborhoods all over the city—but no explanation of why similar things were not happening in nearby cities. Aunt Ibby contacted bird-watchers in Beverly, Danvers, Peabody, Boxford, Gloucester, Marblehead. Nothing out of the ordinary crow-wise was apparently going on in any of their communities. In fact, the crow-tree phenomenon seemed to begin and end at the Salem city limits.
“What did you think of Shannon’s feathered friend?” I asked my aunt. “Of course, Poe isn’t a common American crow, so I guess he’s not involved in these strange roostings, nestings, or whatever they’re doing.”
“The pied crow. A handsome bird. I like his name,” she said. “But how did he know your nickname? Had you met before today?”
“Nope. That was kind of creepy. He’s going to be ring bearer at the wedding. I just found out about it. Shannon’s father raised Poe practically from an egg, I guess. He’s over twenty.”
“Crows are remarkably intelligent. I don’t doubt for a minute that Shannon can train him to be a ring bearer. He’s probably known someone with red hair before. Since he’s a pet, though, I’m quite sure he isn’t part of this murder of crows that’s suddenly landed in Salem.”
“What did you call it? A murder of crows?”
“Uh-huh. That’s the term for a big group of them. Like a flock of sheep. A herd of cows. A murder of crows.”
CHAPTER 10
I didn’t like the sound of it. A murder of crows. If Aunt Ibby said it was so, it was so. But I still didn’t like it. “Why not a flock? A gaggle? A swarm?” I asked. “Why on earth would they call it a ‘murder’?”
“There are several theories about that,” she said. “I don’t believe anybody really knows. But Maralee, wouldn’t it make a grand title for your investigative report?”
Bingo! She was right. I thought of what the station manager had said: “Talk about something interesting that the community needs to know about.”
“Mr. Doan will love it,” I said. “I’m almost beginning to love it myself. Let’s print out what we’ve found so far and I’ll put together a presentation for him.”
Two hours later it was finished. Pleased with myself, I admired the typewritten pages. Footnoted dissertations on the species, copies of bulletins from the Audubon Society, an article by Roger Tory Peterson, and a couple of nice clear photos of the crows in an oak tree next to our garage. They’d all stopped squawking and cawing for a moment and seemed to be posing for my camera. The black cat with the red collar who’d been hanging around our yard lately was in one of the pictures, sitting on the back fence, making a nice contrast to the birds. Aunt Ibby had provided current Nielsen figures from shows about birds on the Discovery Channel. I put the whole thing in a clear plastic binder titled “A Murder of Crows,” feeling sure that Mr. Doan would happily agree to my investigation of the “Great Salem Crow Invasion.”
Pete and I hadn’t made any plans for the evening. His PAL peewee hockey team had an out-of-town tournament going on, so I had plenty of time to grab one of my old college textbooks and do a little studying about my new career move. I grabbed a Pepsi from the refrigerator and sat at the kitchen table with the open book in front of me. The window was partially open, admitting a gentle spring breeze with the faint smell of roses. The raucous cawing from the birds had stopped
, at least for the moment, and O’Ryan hopped up onto the windowsill next to me, peering over my shoulder at the printed words.
The chapter began with a succinct definition. Investigative journalism is the process of researching and telling a story, usually one that someone else is trying to hide.
Trying to hide? I knew there was a story to tell. I knew Aunt Ibby and I were equipped to do careful research. But clearly no one could hide hundreds, probably thousands, of crows. And if anyone knew the reason for this strange bird behavior, why would that person try to hide it?
I put the book down, took a sip of soda, and looked out the kitchen window. O’Ryan followed my gaze. There were no cats on the fence. There wouldn’t have been room for them. Crows, evenly spaced, sat in a long silent row along the top of the wooden boards. I looked from the crows to the cat and back. O’Ryan was silent too. No low growl. No cat comment at all on the sight.
After a while, one by one, the crows flew away—some toward Winter Street, some toward Oliver—and one by one, the visiting cats appeared. The small gray cat was first. I was quite sure she came from Pete’s sister Marie’s neighborhood. At least that’s where I’d first seen her. I thought that Frankie, the white cat, lived somewhere nearby, maybe even next door on Winter Street. I hadn’t seen the sleek black lady cat with the red collar for a long time, but she looked well fed and well cared for. Maybe she belonged to one of the fine old homes on nearby Washington Square. O’Ryan watched from his vantage point as each of the three girl cats took her position on the fence. He lay quietly sprawled out full length along the sill. I returned to my reading.
A good investigative reporter is curious, determined, and possesses a well-developed sense of skepticism.
I mentally checked off those attributes, comfortable in believing I had them all, although I’m not quite as skeptical as I once was. A lot has happened in my life recently that has left some of my former beliefs turned upside down.
It Takes a Coven Page 6
