The Woodpecker Always Pecks Twice

by J. R. Ripley

  “Yes, fine. In answer to your question—yes, I was an English major. But I took a Birds of North America class from Mason as an elective. You know birds have always been my passion.” Now they were my job.

  “Esther, would you mind running over to Otelia’s Chocolates and picking up a pound? I remember Mason was a fanatic about chocolate,” I called as I carefully maneuvered the wooden ladder between the flowers. Otelia’s chocolate shop sits catercorner to Birds & Bees and is within shouting distance of Ruby Lake and the marina.

  “Sure. Anything special?” she asked with peppermint-scented breath. I was sure she sucked on the hard candies to cover the smell of tobacco.

  “Something fun. Use your best judgment.” I’d give Mason the chocolates later at the book signing. “My purse is behind the counter.”

  Esther went inside and returned with my credit card. “I’ll be right back. Either of you ladies want anything for yourselves?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to a half pound of maple fudge,” Kim answered quickly.

  “What about you, Amy?” Esther hollered as she started down the brick path to the sidewalk. Bright yellow and red flowers, red salvia and yellow coreopsis, bordered the edges and were alive with bees. I was hoping to attract at least one hummingbird to my yard while Mason was in town.

  “I wouldn’t say no to some maple fudge either,” I said. I laid the ladder down along the edge of the sidewalk and moved to a feeder pole I had earlier asked Cousin Riley to place in the center of a bed of hummingbird sage, formally known as Salvia spathacea.

  “That’s my problem.” I ran my fingers over my tummy. “A half pound of fudge seems to equal about four pounds of body fat. So nothing for me, thanks.”

  “How is that even possible?” Kim chuckled as Esther crossed the street, ignoring the crosswalk and the moving vehicles and their blaring horns. Like I said, Esther is not big on rules. Even rules of the road.

  “Must be my metabolism.”

  I left Kim to finish hanging the last couple of hummingbird feeders while I went upstairs to get the sugar water I had prepared earlier for the birds.

  “Okay, I’ll top off the regular bird feeders while I’m at it,” Kim answered. We have several bird feeders outside the shop. We keep them filled mostly with unshelled black oil sunflower seeds with occasional treats like peanuts or safflower seeds. The idea was to attract the birds to the feeders and the customers to the birds and then Birds & Bees. So far, it seemed to be working fairly well. Business had picked up since opening several months back. With summer in full swing, I was hoping that upward trend would continue.

  I climbed up to the third level of the old Queen Anne Victorian-era house where I lived with my mother. The second floor was occupied by my current renters, Esther Pilaster and Paul Anderson. The business occupied the entire ground floor.

  Some say the old house is haunted. I like to joke that it will cease being haunted once Esther moves out. She was on the last year of her legacy lease and I, for one, was looking forward to her moving on.

  “Hi, Amy,” said my mother, looking up from the English-countryside mystery novel she was reading. “Everything okay in the store?”

  “Fine, Mom.” I crossed the apartment to the kitchen on the other side of the small flat. We shared a two-bedroom, open concept apartment. Open concept because there was one bathroom, two bedrooms, and the living-area-slash-kitchen; we lived our lives in the open, like it or not. I pulled the plastic jug from the fridge and set it on the counter. “I came back for the hummingbird nectar.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got it.” I yanked open the freezer. “Thanks for boiling it up for me though.” Hummingbird-feeder food is easy to make at home: four parts water to one part sugar. We dissolved the sugar in a saucepan of boiling water, let it cool, then stored it in a plastic jug in the fridge. Mom had prepared a batch for me the night before while I’d been out on a date.

  I pulled the ice tray from the freezer and stabbed a cube with my finger. “Solid as a rock.” I grinned with satisfaction. Mom had made up such a big batch of sugar water that I’d had the idea to try to freeze the extra in an ice-cube tray.

  Mom looked up from her book. She appeared tired. Mom suffers from muscular dystrophy. She’d been getting worse there for a while, but the disease seemed to be in check now, which was a great thing. Still, she wears out easily and I do my best not to be a source of stress or worry for her. Sometimes I succeed. “How did it turn out?”

  “Perfect. I’ll use the liquid now and the frozen cubes will be ready next time our little friends need their feeders refilled.”

  The sugar water only lasted in the feeders for about three days tops. That wasn’t necessarily because the birds drank it all up, but the liquid tends to get a bit funky out there in the hot sun, not to mention the effects of the insects that sometimes drown in the water and decompose therein. For the health of the hummingbirds, it was always best to clean the feeders and refill them every third day.

  “Do hummingbirds really live on sugar water?” Mom asked. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “It isn’t. The sugar water is a nectar substitute. Hummingbirds also eat a lot of spiders and other insects. Sometimes when you see a hummingbird hovering over a flower it isn’t because it’s about to feed on nectar—it could very well be that the bird has spotted a tasty spider or even an insect trapped in a spider’s web.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “It’s quite common. They also perform hover-hawking and what’s called sally-hawking.”

  Hawking? Yep. I grabbed a bowl from a shelf, set it on the kitchen counter, and twisted the frozen sugar cubes free of the ice-cube tray, then dumped them in the bowl. “Hummingbirds might fly through a swarm of insects, like gnats, and snatch them as they pass. Kind of like swifts do. That’s called hover-hawking. Or they might sit on a branch, spot their prey, and make a beeline for it. That’s sally-hawking.” I jiggled the bowl of cubes.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever learn everything there is to know about birds,” sighed Mom.

  I started to smile. “That makes two of us!”

  Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

  The distinctive doglike hooting of a barred owl sounded from outside the house. But there was something funny about this call, it sounded a bit . . . metallic. Not to mention, I’d never seen a barred owl hanging around the Town of Ruby Lake in the middle of the day.

  Mom turned her head toward the front window. “What on earth is that?”

  “I don’t know. It sounded like it came from the street.” I refilled the ice-cube tray and slid it back in the freezer. “I’ll take a look.” I crossed to my bedroom, from which I have a great view of Lake Shore Drive, the main road that sweeps along the lake and into town. The busy street is home to much of the tourist industry and shopping in our fair burg. It was the perfect location for Birds & Bees.

  “What is that thing?” Mom had come to my room and she peered over my shoulder to the street below.

  I cocked my head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was a giant birdhouse!”

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J.R. Ripley is the pen name of Glenn Meganck, the critically acclaimed author of the Tony Kozol mystery series, the Maggie Miller Mysteries, and the Kitty Karlyle Pet Chef Mysteries (written as Marie Celine), among other novels. For more information about him, visit www.jrripley.net.

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of the next

  Bird Lover’s mystery

  Die, Die Birdie

  coming soon wherever e-books are sold!

  1

  “Welcome to Ruby Lake. Relax . . . Enjoy!” read the sign at the edge of the road.

  Two perfectly nice sentiments, but I was perfectly unable to indulge in either of them at the moment.

  I whizzed by the sign into town and kept on driving. It was late and the night was falling down on me like th
e final curtain of a closing Broadway musical. There was so much to do—too much to do. This couldn’t be happening. I was two days from opening my new and first business, Birds & Bees. And, so far, it seemed like all I had was a hornet’s nest of troubles.

  Relax and enjoy were mere dreams at this point. The stuff of fantasies. Like imagining myself starring in a big Broadway musical when I can’t even carry a tune.

  Why couldn’t I relax? Why couldn’t I enjoy?

  First, my major birdseed supplier hadn’t shown up. When I’d called the distributor down in Charlotte, I was told the driver’s truck had broken down somewhere between here and there. It may as well have been Timbuktu and Sri Lanka for all the good that bit of information was doing me. How do you sell bird food and birding supplies when you have an insufficient amount of one and none of the other?

  Second, my best friend and partner in this little enterprise, Kim, had had to leave suddenly for Florida to attend to her mother, who’d broken her hip in a spill outside the swimming pool of her retirement complex. Kim had been gone a week and I wasn’t sure if she’d be back in time for our pending grand opening. My last voicemails and texts to her had gone unanswered. Not a good sign.

  At least the rain had stopped.

  I shot a glance in the rearview mirror. I took comfort in the fact that I at least had a batch of brand-new handcrafted bluebird houses to add to my understocked shelves. I’d purchased them from Aaron Maddley, a local farmer who was a woodworker on the side. He did good work too. The darling houses had gingerbread roofs, copper trim, and were each hand-painted pale blue. The birdhouses ought to sell well. I couldn’t wait to get to the shop and set them up. Finding Aaron had been a prize.

  I’d had a pair of bluebirds hanging around an old birdhouse at the edge of my front porch. The pine house was rotted and warped. I vowed to replace it with one of Aaron’s new cedar ones as soon as I had the chance. Not only were they far more aesthetically pleasing, it would be good advertising. What customer wouldn’t want one once they got a look at it? Especially if my bluebirds decided to create a nest.

  As I pulled up to the curb outside my fledgling shop, I caught sight of Gertie Hammer walking past. She had wrapped herself up in a puffy, lime-green, plus-size, three-quarter-length down jacket that made her look like a big green shrub with a cold, holly-berry-red face. Her lips were pulled tight and her mitten-covered fists were balled up even tighter. She wasn’t my biggest fan. She’d sold me the rundown old three-story Victorian Queen Anne–style house thinking she’d gotten the best of me.

  Now I was turning the place into a store for bird lovers, bee lovers, and all things nature. If I was lucky, business would thrive, my love life would spark to life, and I’d be getting the best of Gertie Hammer. Our families have a long history. Think Thirty Years’ War, western North Carolina style.

  I wiggled my fingers in her direction. I knew that would get her goat. And it did. The woman practically bleated as she turned on her heel and headed across the street to Ruby’s Diner, whose slogan was Eat Here, Get Gas. It was an old joke, but then Moire Leora Breeder, the café’s owner, is an old jokester—well, older than me by a few years anyway.

  Besides, the diner really had been a gas station originally, so it made sense. Moire had added the slogan to the old diner once she’d bought it from the retiring owner. Other than that, things hadn’t changed much. The sign with the big green dinosaur on it still stood proudly in the parking lot at the edge of the street. Moire Leora did serve up her own take on a bronto burger as an homage to the corporate apatosaurus.

  Moire Leora wouldn’t be too happy about Gertie showing up at the diner. When Gertie ate in Moire’s place, everybody else got indigestion.

  I parked and opened the back door of the minivan. She’s a white Kia Sedona with tan upholstery, what little there is left of it. The minivan’s a bit of a dinosaur herself. The old girl’s got 117,000-plus miles on her, but I’m sure she’d be good for plenty more—like 118,000, fingers crossed. The aging Sedona may not be the sweetest-looking vehicle on the road, but it suited my requirements, with plenty of room for everything I needed to haul, both in and out.

  I glanced up toward the second floor of Birds & Bees. Sure enough, Esther Pilaster, Esther Pester, as I liked to call her—in private, of course—was peeking out her window.

  Typical. Esther was my renter, at least for another nine months. She’d unfortunately come with the property and her lease wouldn’t be up till the end of the year. I couldn’t wait. The woman could teach a class in Busybody 101.

  I walked up the short, uneven pink brick path and climbed the broad steps to the porch leading to the double French doors. I wasn’t surprised to find one of them unlocked. With so many distractions, I’d been forgetting that a lot lately. Besides, Esther Pester sometimes used the front door, though I’d told her time and time again to stick to the rear entrance. Front for customers, rear for renters. I preached it over and over to the woman like a mantra. But it had always been in vain. You’d think she’d learn to listen. You’d think I’d learn to save my breath.

  Maybe the Pester needed new hearing aid batteries. Maybe she needed a whole new hearing aid. Maybe I’d take up a collection for her.

  The scent of fresh gardenias met me. I’d set two vases full of the flowers in the front window just that morning. I had purchased the gardenias from Francoise Early. Mrs. Early is a seventy-five-year-old widow with the greenest thumb I’ve ever seen. She’s a prim woman with silvery hair, a fleshy nose on whose tip a pair of glasses is normally perched, a ruddy complexion, and a pleasantly plump figure. For all I know, she’s secretly married to Santa Claus, because she looks exactly like I’d pictured Mrs. Claus when I was growing up.

  Francoise Early lives at the edge of town on a large piece of property with its own greenhouse. We’d worked out an arrangement where I’d carry some of her plants in Birds & Bees. Francoise had even agreed to cultivate some of the specialty plants I wanted to make available to my customers, plants to attract and support various species of birds and bees throughout the seasons.

  I sighed with contentment as I hit the light switch near the door, but nothing happened. Oh great. I could feel my contentment leaving like the tide. Did I have any spare lightbulbs? No. I did have some spare daffodil bulbs, but I wasn’t sure what wattage they were. They sure would be eco-friendly if they worked though, wouldn’t they?

  I silently cursed my bad luck and went back to the minivan for the Aaron Maddley houses. It took me three trips, but I hauled all twelve of the bluebird houses in through the front door, dropped them on the counter next to the register, then paused to catch a breath. I know, twelve lightweight red cedar birdhouses shouldn’t have tired me out, but it had been a long day.

  It had been a very long two months. I was looking forward to opening the doors of Birds & Bees and watching all the customers fly in and the products fly out.

  A girl could dream, couldn’t she? Like Dorothy in The Wiz, I just wanted to “Ease On Down the Road” to happiness and success.

  I’d heard some of the comments around town in my daily rounds since coming back home after so many years away. Some folks thought it was crazy to open a bird lover’s shop in Ruby Lake. Well, let them eat crow when I succeed, that’s all I have to say!

  I locked the front door behind me and worked my way through the back. Getting farther and farther from the yellow light cast by the street lamp out front. Not for the first time, I realized just how spooky this old house could be in the dark.

  As a girl growing up in Ruby Lake, I’d heard all the stories too, about the ghost that supposedly dwelt in this old place. I shooed the memory away before I scared myself any further. If I let my thoughts run in that direction any longer, no doubt I’d be hearing ethereal oohs, aahs, and clanking ghostly chains.

  I have a vivid imagination. Sometimes a blessing but sometimes a curse.

  Maybe I could find an extra lightbulb in the storage closet, or unscrew one from somewhere
else for the time being. As I made my way awkwardly across the sales floor, feeling like a bat that’d lost its sense of echolocation, my shin banged against the sharp rim of a low-profile, hand-chiseled granite birdbath. The bowl wobbled. I grabbed it with both hands to prevent it from falling and felt one of my fingernails break against the coarse stone. I started to curse whoever had put the darn birdbath there in the first place, then realized it had been me.

  Rubbing my throbbing shin and cursing some more, I felt around in the dark for the light switch to the small room in back that did double duty as a storeroom-slash-office. The office portion, at this point, consisted of a composition notebook resting atop two cases of berry blast suet cakes stacked on top of each other.

  The light in back wasn’t working either. For the first time, I wondered if the power was out in the entire house. But no, there had been a light on in Esther Pester’s upstairs apartment, so that couldn’t be the problem. Life should be so easy. I hoped the house wasn’t having electrical troubles now. I had problems aplenty as it was. I didn’t need more problems or more expenses. And if the house was having electrical issues, the solution would, no doubt, be expensive. It seemed everything in an old house needs fixing at one time or another and that such fixes are, as a rule, pricey.

  I breathed a sigh of relief at the thought that whatever was wrong with the electrical system was likely limited to the first floor. Mom and I shared an apartment upstairs too, but not on the same floor as Esther. We had the entire third floor to ourselves. Well, there might have been some squirrels roosting between the ceiling and the roof. I hadn’t quite made up my mind yet about those weird scratching noises coming from the rafters. If the noises were animal in nature, I preferred to think they’d emanated from squirrels rather than mice. Squirrels I could live with, at least temporarily. Mice creep me out.

  Anyway, I was glad we weren’t without power. Things were hard enough on Mom.